27/2/15
I’m writing this on a Friday afternoon on the rooftop of our school Amauta, sharing a rare moment of solitude with the city and a piece of gluten free berry pie from one my favorite gringo cafés.
This morning in Chilca Totora was very relaxed, probably because our main compañera Maria forgot we were coming! Besides a bit of bureaucratic quandary consuming the first couple of chuchaqui desayuno hours, which I escaped seeing as the previous night I busied myself making bracelets for las mujeres de Chilca Totora (the women whom we work with for our “voluntariado”), applying for Dinah Dodd’s Grant, and making my first Spanish music playlist, we had a mellow day eating mote, making “abono orgánico” (organic compost), tilling soil in the small garden, and practicing Quichua in the free moments between.
I was so bummed not to have more color film for my old automatic film camera on me because the weather was perfect/sunny, all of the animals were out (including multiple alpacas snacking on the hillsides, a range of tiny to big pigs napping in the sun, a couple ducks taking a bath, and at least give newborn puppies nursing the nipples of their mama for hours), and we even had some spare time in the afternoon which we spent playing with the puppies and meeting Maria’s 8 month old son Nicólas.
I am realizing my extreme urge to photo-document, & note take/record my time there is definitely rooted in a deeper feeling…There was a moment when I was watching our compañera Maria hacking up some weeds laughing in the corner of the garden next to Manuel who was pick axing the soil under a rose bush that was glimmering in the morning alteration of sun and clouds which were creating moving shadows kissing the open campo and creating the perfect backdrop for these hardworking compañeros- when I definitely realized how much I wished to stay in that moment forever. It wasn’t not like a literally felt the urge to pack up my things and move in with the 7 indigenous women and two men of this group, although that does sound temping, but it is more a feeling of nothing else matters except tilling soil and listening to the Quechua instructions and laugher of these wise compañeros that inspired me to begin cultivating a more distinguished community and/or values of my own that could exist similar to these Quechua mantras of hakoo (¡vamos!) and shamu y mi-cun gapa (¡venga a comer!)
These inspired sentiments also remind me of Carlitos, (our bus driver from our first week in Mindo, Ecuador), who told me- over my first taste of the mango and mora Ecuadorian juices in a butterfly paraphernalia haven of a dining hall (from the butterfly sculpted fruit and curtains to the place matts and the real butterflies joining us over our shoulders through the windows)- that he wakes up every morning and says, “Doy gracias a Dios por levantarme a trabajar y no levantarme a buscar trabajo,” meaning I give thanks to God for waking me to work and not waking me to look for work.
In my own daily search for meaning in this precarious time of my life, at this “liminal” age of 20, (the notion of liminality stemming from Victor Turner’s sense of “the betwixt and between”), and even more so during this liminal four month existence in Ecuador, communitas, which is Turner’s understanding of how a distinct sense of “bonding” is formed within liminal spaces, has been forming in the most unexpected ways and has been happening so often that it is hard to even realize when exactly it is taking place. With the women of Chilca Totora, the outdoor, isolated, and vibrant space makes it so easy, but in my everyday Cuenca city life, I never know what is going to happen or whom I will meet on the next “betwixt and between corner.”
For example, a few weekends ago I befriended the Cañari, Quichua singing group called Los Chaskis, thanks to a few of Judy’s cañalasos and a few riffs of my dad’s Hoiser Boy harmonica from the 1950’s-all this before stumbling off the bus a couple days later back into Cuenca into a pack of “musicales mochileros” (musical travelers) for an impromptu stairway “improvisación/onda” (improv/jam) with at least five other musicians (and their different instruments) right before breakdancing with stud b-boy teacher Cristian in el Parque Central and entertaining an entire audience, who seemed like they’d never seen a dreaded Gringa mochilera bust out b-boy moves, head-spins, freezes, synchronized up-rocks, etc., on a Sunday afternoon (as I noticed how quickly I became photo/video documented on the first couple of passerby’s cellphones).
All this just days before bussing through new cities, roads, and coastlines for the week of Carnaval. First was the city of Ambato, notorious for a carnival celebration y desfiles (parades) so huge that 20,000 extranjeros (out of towners/foreigners) whom travel to there to enjoy the miles/hours of parade/dance/music/food and then turn the streets into a Carioka version of la Guerra entre Ataulpah and Pizarro in Cajamarca in 1532. Except the Incas are the locals of Ambato, and unlike the war of Cajamarca, the tiny Pizarro army of gringos, which was us- our group of 6 gringos, definitely did not conquer the outnumbering group of Incas; meaning we are so lucky to still have all our limbs and senses after those two crazy days of endless Carioka attacks. And only a day after surviving the Carnaval “guerra” of Ambato, we found ourselves exploring the coast of Mangroves, beaches, and some of the best sunsets of my life while ending up a home away from home in the most tranquilo (chill) hostel/community/family of (primarily) Argentine bohemios (bohemians) who called themselves, Donde el Pato.
I want to pause here in my entry as I have been reflecting a lot about our time with this amazing group and I have also been writing separate “Donde El Pato” entries over the last week in order to attempt to give our experiences, time, and new friendships there some literary justice.
I will however end on this note: the gratitude I find myself revealing in, not only for these unbelievably unique learning opportunities and newfound relationships here, but also (and sometimes even more so) for my family, friends, compañeros, and mochileros from back home, is so immense, that all the journals, photographs, and letters of my life time could never really do justice, by which I mean that these tangible methods of documentation I’ve used (practically religiously) during my feeble attempts to “permaninze” the magical moments of my subjective perception of life could still never truly capture the enormity of my gratitude and sentiments during these times.
Instead of hyper fixating on this impossible task of “perminization,” especially here and now during my study abroad in Ecuador, I find myself more often than not being drawn to the “doing” of both micro/macro actions, which includes but is not limited to: wire wrapping bracelet making, conversing in Spanish (more than the small talk of “¿como estas?/¿que más?/¿qué pasa?/etc.”) every second I can, smiling at the friendly faces of ice-cream eating children on the bus, Skyping with my Grandparents, parents, and brother even though I have terrible internet connection and a deep seeded luddite[1] prejudice against virtual/digital communication technology and of course massaging the tense shoulders of my host family. These “doings” are just a few examples of the small yet sincere ways [beyond my overly comfortable of passion for documentation] that I am exploring in order to better communicate my gracias por todo to those around me, both geographically/physically and metaphysically speaking.
[1] Lud·dite. Noun. Luddite; plural noun: Luddites 1 a member of any of the bands of English workers who destroyed machinery, especially in cotton and woolen mills, that they believed was threatening their jobs/a person opposed to increased industrialization or new technology (Merriam-Webster).