the ladies of ecuador

Staying in on a lovely Saturday night.  I've been filling this thing with weekend adventures, thus entirely neglecting the homefront.

So, just to give you an idea.

Living with a queen.  Disclaimer, if you are a relative of my Ecuadorian host family, I'm totally exaggerating and none of this is true and your mother/grandmother/sister/cousin is the best host mom ever.  God, I hope your English sucks.  If you aren't, here's a little glimpse into our world.  While the vast majority of Ecuadorians know the value of a dollar (four bus rides, half of a three-course lunch), others live a mile above the rest. 

Once, when she had her 10 sisters (11? 9?  whatever, once you're past nine children they stop mattering) over for a tea.  I was surrounded by such a gran cantidad of shoulder pads, delicate china, and dark lipstick that an alarm went off in my head to evacuate the situation.  In my escape, I couldn't help but feel as though this could have taken place in a different century, in a different country.  Think an English queen with some baronesses and chancellor's wives over for teatime. 

I've accepted that the conversation flows better when she's sharing with me the high value of her chunky gold rings, and how this bracelet she likes to wear to the beach during trips taken with her Foundation of Señoras who help poor children (aka have tea parties with each other), and that necklace she would never wear to the bank.  The other day she answered a question I didn't ask by explaining that a hair stylist would be coming to the house to do her hair that afternoon.  He is very famous, the owner of two peluquerías, but because they are on such good terms he comes all the way to the house to do her hair.  Oh, and he owns two peliquerías, too.  Very well-known.

While driving in her shiny new silver SUV, she remarks how that's the car she really wanted, oh, and if only she owned that one!  This car is so horrendous.  I couldn't really notice a difference between the multiple silver SUVs in question, but with a Japanese brand stamped on the hood of the car next to you, how could you possibly stand to be seen driving this awful American make?

Don't get me wrong, I am on great terms with my host mom.  She treats me very well, and we share many a-laugh on cute, light subjects.  It is only because there exists such a stark contrast between the life I am a part of and the life of the hundreds of thousands sans an SUV, nay enough money to keep their children from having to start their lives as street venders at age 8.  Really, I cannot be resentful of their wealth.  Her husband worked very hard to bring them to these standards, and every family has their problems, whether they be depressed children or a financial debt.

Yesterday I threw open my bedroom door in response to a booming, rich melody I heard from outside only to see my host mother... playing the accordion...really fuckin' well.  I couldn't help but laugh at how awesome this new discovery was.  She had started practicing the accordian when she was a little girl, and even though she hadn't picked it up for two years, there she was.  Her left hand had a mind of its own darting across the millions of buttons, her arm lifted open the air-filled folds of the huge instrument, and her right hand flew across the keys of the piano part.  Toe-tappin'.  All at once.  (Pictures to come!)

So the accordion wheezed its complex tunes and July and I swayed along.  I couldn't shake that smile.  As easy and tempting as it is to generalize in regards to character flaws and personality traits, you really never know about a person.  I love getting proven wrong in this respect, it's a nice kick off the high-horse.  So, mi querida Mechita, it's not your fault you have a nice life, and it's not my place to make judgments in response.

On the other side of the spectrum... Many middle- to upper-class families have what's called an "empleada," a live-in (or not) cook/maid/chore-doer who is usually from a lower class area (el campo, as they say).  July (joo-lee) is from la Costa, and due to the coastal accent and that snaggletooth that, over time, I now see as adorable, I had an impossible time understanding her Spanish.  I still probably only catch 60-70% of what she's saying, and in spite of the number of times I've thrown up my hands in surrender, laughing at my inability to understand what was said after five repetitions of the same simple phrase, I am improving.

She has this bewilderingly irrational thought process.  For the first time all semester, I requested pimienta to add to my soup the other day.  Her soups are always delicious, filled many a-time with potatoes, a large-kerneled corn called choclo, various veggies, and always a bucket or two of salt.  During my first few weeks here, I would wake up with a desert-dry mouth from the sodium consumed just at dinnertime.  So anyway, she passed me the pepper and scolded me for adding so much of an ingredient that is so bad for the kidneys.  You shouldn't use pepper at all, only a tiny pinch for things like salads, because it will ruin your kidneys.

What?

She showed me that she only uses three particular dried herbs for any given soup.  She passed me a bottle of one of these, and I uncapped it to take a whiff.  Hmm, unable to place what scent it was, I sniffed again.  Hurry! she said, Put the cap on or the scent will dissipate! 

Huh?

Toward the beginning of the semester, she told me that all things from China are bad... "como tu!!" Ja-ja-ja, she went, with an accusing finger directed at me.  Nah-UH, I responded to her racist statement, look at this mug, July, see?  Don't you like this mug? 

No, she said, it's bad! 

And she went on to point to a variety of things that were bad and coincidentally made in China.  Finally we agreed on a thing that she liked.  I flipped over the plate and it clearly read "Made in USA."  Hum, okay so maybe she has a point here.  At least I eventually helped make the distinction between China and Japan, and she agreed that okay, Japan is good.  But China is still really bad!

Another time I was told that I have to marry a "chino, porque eres china!"  ja-ja-ja!

In Ecuador, and probably most of Central/South America, anyone with squinty eyes is referred to as Chinese, because obviously that country sufficiently represents the entire continent.

My dear July.  Since I eat my meals by myself, of everyone in the family I spend the most time talking to the empleada, who is usually bustling around in the kitchen as I chow down.


Best for last.  Unhappy with my snail-pace improvement in Spanish, last week I began one-on-one lessons with Isabel at a spanish school near my house.  The usual format is 4-hrs intensive immersion in Spanish, but what with my real classes at the university, I see her for two hours a few times a week.  I already have lectures in my grammar class, so all I really need is to practice speaking, to gradually form sentences in my head without having to go UHH before every verb conjugation.  Okay, maybe that's not all I needed.  What I really craved was some sort of stimulating conversation--someone with whom I could speak animatedly about pollution, or who could tell me more about economic disparities, city planning, religion, political corruption, etc.

I got what I wanted, and now when I walk home from school I notice the men carrying heavy bureaus to loading trucks and the ancient woman sitting by her display of shoe insoles in a different light.  There's a skip in my step, if you will.

Back to Isabel.  Having grown up exploring the mountains near her home south of the city, she decided to pursue a degree in Tourism to become a tour guide in high-altitude climbs.  That same year that she graduated from college, she spent a night accompanying her brother as he drove a night-bus from Quito to a city ten hours away.  Usually she would just sleep on the bus, but this one night her brother asked her to come sit up front with him, as co-pilot, so that she could keep him company and they could converse.  So, at five in the morning, Isabel reached to secure her seatbelt when she heard a the unusually strong honk from her brother.  She looked up only to see the truck of a driver who had fallen asleep on the road swerve toward them.  The driver had woken up to the horn, and tried to salvage himself from drifting too far over.  His huge truck hit only one part of the bus--the front corner, and crushed Isabel's body against her chair.  She might have been able to throw herself to the aisle had her seatbelt not been secured, but that split second of time went to waste.  She told me that after the impact, she lifted up her hands, only to see a chunk of her palm that didn't come with the rest.  She deliriously picked it up, thinking "hey, that's me!" and put the meat back in her hand.  Eventually the doctors did use that same piece of flesh to sew it back into her, as shown by the square-shaped scar.  They took three hours to extract her body from the crash--the only person injured out of a full bus.  She waited another three hours in a clinic, covered in blood on a stretcher in the waiting room, before she was given medical attention by a surgeon.  Crowds of journalists snapped photos of her naked body, and those photos were in the papers for weeks. 

She ended up spending an entire year in the hospital, as her right leg was stripped of all of its 'carne' and as she was recuperating it grew so infected that it did not respond to medicine.  She couldn't leave the bed for over half a year, thinking every day that she'd never be able to walk again.

Dreams shot, the psychological damage was the worst, she said. 

But now, she's got this great job as a teacher and assistant director of a Spanish school, and seems to always be in 'buen humor.'  She can't climb mountains regularly, but she can walk well now, and even run.

The other day she showed me a video she took of a corrupt cop holding up a bus for a bribe of juice from the bus in front of them, but that's another story for another time.

things don't work and that's okay

OCTOBER 23, 2011

Okay, so maybe it seems like the uneven sidewalks are going out of their way to stub your toe, or the shower is laughing at you as its temperature switches between scalding and frigid at will, but Ecuador, you're getting the job done. 

This is a city of millions, growing every year, and everybody's out to make a dolla.  The pollution is bad but the nobody gives a rat's ass because the buses are all getting us from point A to point B.  Naturally as a foreigner, it's easy to see how much more smoothly things run in the States. 

if Quito didn't exist, this terrain would extend for miles and miles

On Friday, I accompanied two friends to a bike path that extends 50km over an old rail way.  We forked over $5 for rental bikes and were off!  I was irrationally expecting something similar to the Norwottuck Rail Trail in Amherst, which was converted quite successfully to a beautifully flat, paved bike path, with a spraypainted warning at every crack in the asphalt.  Instead I was greeted by a bumpy, gravel road that was always sloped in one direction or another.  We hit a beautiful valley after about an hour, and called it a good point to turn around.   At that point we were thirteen kilometers out, and mi amiga admits that her front tire is completely flat.  That's funny, the only other story I had heard about this path was from a friend who had to hitchhike back when her buddy's bike lost air.  So, our lil' trooper said she's fine, and vamanos!  We make it for a few kilometers, with the normally strong girl trudging along far behind, until she calls for a break.  We switch, and the rugby girl takes over.  A few more kilometers pass, when we see that the rubber from the tire has fallen right out of the rim--she had been riding on pure metal. 

Sharing the road with some asses. (look at the rope on the left)

Luckily we were at a crossroad where many a-car were passing, and we hesitantly began to wave down trucks.  A nice young guy pulled over in his Mazda Protogé and told us he'd go grab his truck and come back for us.  It was then that I told my buddies that this entire semester has just been filled with a series of losing and regaining faith in humanity.  People like him were the best type of ambassador for the country.

We waited 20 minutes, and naturally he never came back.  Ahem, nevermind then.

A few more people stopped for us, but they weren't heading in the same direction, or they offered tools instead of a ride.  It's okay, guys.  Let's just rough it out so we can get back before the sun goes down.

So it was my turn, and we only had a few miles to go.  At one downhill point, my hands turned to a pretty beet color from all the friction of the handlebars being propelled up and down by the metal-on-tierra action.  Within a hundred meters I saw that same car parked on the side of the road.  That nice young guy was probably chowing down some dinner inside.  The rest of the trip was a climb, slow and unrewarding, until we finally returned the bike to the rental lady.  She had an extremely unsurprised look on her face as I returned the broken bicycle.

Excuse the conspicuous analogy, but this bike sums up what I think of Quito.  The tire was broken, but the bike still went.

So, instead of anthropomorphizing the plumbing, I remind myself that this bipolar shower is still getting me clean, and the sidewalks, however uneven, support my weight alongside every car-filled road.  And, okay, maybe it's not the most effective method for the propane trucks to beepbeepbeep a horn that sounds like it belongs to Bozo the Clown to alert the neighborhood that it is passing through, but the tanks get distributed. 

Whatever works, man.