The Big Dance Number

So, somewhat after the fact now, I would like to say that our end-of-the-school-year program at Katitawa went swimmingly. Actually, it by far exceeded all expectations.

This is not to say that there wasn’t a significant amount of preparation involved, which certainly helped. But hot damn, it was quite impressive.

First of all, at the suggestion of one of the students (hats off to Wamari!), we turned our broken water tank into a small store/command central for events. This ended up being a slightly larger task than we imagined, but it was well worth it. Some bricks, a little cement, bamboo, and plastic and straw (and the requisite landscaping, if course) and then some electricity, and we were all set.

We also went up to the volcano, to collect some rocks for the pachamanka. In case you didn’t know this, you can’t make an earth-oven out of just any rocks. They have to be strong ones; rocks that will not have moisture in them and then explode from the expansion that the heat causes. Volcanic rocks are perfect for this (because, you know, once you get spit out from a volcano, chances are that not much else is going to make you explode). So, up we went to the lava flow, hauling an entire truckload of rocks back to Salasaka. I nearly broke my ass in half in the process, during a gracious (of course) slide down part of the flow, but hey, these things happen.

The kids all did a fantastic job, of course.

The older kids presented a program, or more of an ode, really, to all of the volunteers that had been up at the school in the past year. This involved juggling, and wearing funny hats, and presenting flags for each country represented by the various volunteers (there were 9 in total). And, for the most part, the kids did this all in English, with translations for the guests. It was fantastic. The little kids (ages 3 to 9) did an equally charming program, presenting a story in Spanish about the “Battle of the numbers”, where the different numbers argued with each other over who was “better”, and where they agreed, in the end, that they were all equally important, regardless of their size.
They had the audience busting at the seams with laughter, it was so cute and well-done. Maria Pozo, their amazing teacher, did an incredible job in working with them, as usual.

After the different grade levels were done presenting their separate skits, the kids all got together for a traditional dance program, choreographed by the illustrious Fabiola.

How she got all those kids stepping to the same tune at the same time, we will never know. It was truly a sight to see, though, with everyone swirling around in unison, in their fancy best dress.

We also ate a lot of lamb (one whole lamb, in fact), hot out of the pachamanka oven. Literally, we just grabbed pieces from the oven, and shared between ourselves (yes, eating with our hands). This was after having pet the fat little guy the day before, and having looked into those sweet lamby eyes, and even after the kids had named him, and then later our seeing his hide and wool on the kitchen floor. It was still oh-so-lovely to eat. And then we danced. And ate some more. The parents of the students brought ears of corn and potatoes, and chochos (my favorite), and giant lima beans, and made soup out of the lamb intestines and other innards (yum, magaritza, as if I didn’t love it enough as a kid) and a host of other things, including homemade booze made from agave and then, some not-so-homemade booze, as well. There was nary a guinea pig in sight, I am happy to say.



At some point, our solar power ran out (our battery capacity, even on good days, does not last all that long). But luckily, one of the fathers of the kids had had the foresight to bring up a generator, along with a complete DJ outfit! So, we had music and electricity all night. We even had the perfect DJ booth, what with the new store/event-central building, and all.

Let me just say it one more time: it was all fantastic.

Hats off to all of the volunteers and the teachers, and especially the kids and their parents.

¡Que viva Michigan! (En el Ecuador, pero.)

Frequently you see or hear things here that make you unable to keep a straight face. Sometimes it’s because it is just so unusual (for you), like a random dancing monkey, or a family of four (with one sleeping child included) on a single motorcycle, or a poodle riding on the handlebars of a seventy-year-old man’s bike, with his tongue sticking out like he had his head out a car window (the dog, not the man). Or maybe you hear from your taxi driver that he had to quit his former profession as a welder, due to it having damaged his vision too much to see well anymore (as he is careening you through heavy traffic in the mountainsides of Quito). Lo que sea.

Other times though, the things that make you smile are out of sheer familiarity, within the context of a not-so-familiar place.

I guess that the man in the U of M leather jacket didn’t shock me too much. They are a Big 10 team, after all, with plenty of merchandise to spread all over the world. But still, even in the fairly cosmopolitan provincial capital, it is a bit strange. American football is not televised here at all, and so it made me wonder whether he even knew what a Wolverine (or a Michigan) was.

HOWEVER, as I was coming home from working the other evening, I got stuck behind a bus (with no time to pass, not in my terms, anyway) and started to get impatient. And then I looked up to see this. There truly is a reason for (almost) everything, as it turns out. Yes, that is correct: the biggest and most ostentatious of the decals that he has on the bus is of the Saginaw Eagles, of all things.* I couldn’t stop laughing, for whatever reason. And so, that puts you to thinking: How did he even end up with that particular decal? Does he have family there? (Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t seem to remember there being a large Ecuadorian immigrant population in that (or any) part of Michigan.) Alternately, was there a huge boatload of hockey/other sport paraphernalia “lost” on its way to Saginaw, and unloaded at the Guayaquil port, only to end up somewhere on the back of a bus in (literally) the middle of Ecuador? I imagine a bunch of adolescent males in Saginaw, melancholy over not being able to trod out their fanaticism on the back of their lowered, black-lit-from-the-bottom Hondas, because the merch ended up on a side-road off the Panamerican. This makes me laugh even harder.

It also seems that Stephen Colbert has to be culpable here, somehow.**



*The other decals, in case you don’t read Spanish, proclaim things like “Don’t follow me, I’m lost”, “Danger: Cheater’s Zone”, “The Immortal” and “Just because I’m really friendly, they call me a womanizer”.

**Yes, we could likely recognize this as yet another form of branding in the so-called “3rd World”, or of exoticism, or as any number of other things involving class and race and power, but (and I apologize for this in advance) it is simply funnier to think of dudes in baseball caps in (lower) Northern Michigan, pining for their Eagles gear. And of course, the very happy bus-driver that ended up with it instead, in rural Ecuador. Don’t you think so?

This Salasacan Life

It has been raining a lot, even in Salasaca. In the late afternoons, the clouds sometimes clear up and you are treated to a couple hours of sun and breathtaking views, and then an even more breathtaking sunset usually follows suit. Not so bad.

With all of the rain, our crop up at the school has really shot up. It is amazing to see what a little water can do, especially compared to our drip irrigation system. (In addition to that, we only get irrigation water in our sector of the community one day a week, on Tuesdays.) Anyhow, the corn seems to have grown literally overnight. This is as green as things get, around here. In the recent photo, (besides the obvious corn), if you look hard enough, you can see: onion, radish, cauliflower, broccoli, lettuce, beans, peas, quinoa, wild spinach, chamomile, carrots, swiss chard, baby stinging nettles, ají pepper, aloe, nopal cactus, and tree tomato.*

Also, just compare the recent photo (at left) with a photo from one year ago (below). It seems like we have grown some stuff, that is for certain.

The apple, avocado, and citrus seedlings (not pictured) have also appreciated the long cold drink of water that the rain has given them. Hopefully someday, they will actually bear some fruit.

In the far right of the (top) picture, you may notice a chicken coop and a small fence (which predictably, is made out of... you guessed it... chicken-wire). This is our new experiment. We have 6 chickens (which have grown even faster than the plants lately). Two of them, someone realized, are roosters, so one will have to be eaten (by us) before they mature completely and start fighting. Darn. The coop itself was built and donated by some lovely volunteers. They (the chickens, not the volunteers) spend most of the day roaming around in their enclosure doing what it is that they do best: peck at stuff that they think might be food and bobble around. Both the coop and the fence are also movable, which is key. We can rotate them around the rows, where they aerate the soil for a period of time and also provide fertilizer for it. Then we plant again. The soil here needs lots of amending, and while our compost helps greatly, the caca de pollo fertilizer does even more so. We could buy it, I suppose, but it is expensive (not to mention stinky to haul around in sacks). Plus, why buy it when we can make it right here for a fraction of the cost? And have fresh eggs, too?

Otherwise, the kids at the school are all preparing for the end-of-the-school-year program, where they get to showcase what they’ve learned in the last year.

Me, well, I am getting ready for that, too. Along with the whole lamb we are going to roast in the pachamanka oven for the day of the program.






*Side bar: Does anyone know what tree tomatoes are, exactly? They are called “tomate de arbol” in Spanish, but I have never seen or heard of them outside of South America. As their name suggests, they grow in rather large (nay, treelike) plants, and are shaped like Roma tomatoes. They don’t seem to be tomatoes at all, though; or at least, they don’t taste anything like tomatoes. Their most common application is in juices.