Quito the City, Intag the Cloud Forest

so that was the soccer game. I forgot to mention that we were on TV because the guy with the video camera decided that 22 gringos were too much of an opportunity to pass by. I also forgot to mention that I managed to coin the phrase “¿quieres un pedazo de mi?” –literally, you want a piece of me? – during the fight that almost broke out between 500 or so Ecuadorian supporters behind us and the three argentinian supporters in the stadium.

but back to more sobering thoughts – the next morning we had an excellent excellent lecture by a resident historian/writer about Ecuadorian current events. I will try to outline the important bits below. I realise that this posting is going to be full of lists of information but its organized at least, right?

one of the current major environmental threats is oil. It seems that there is a massive pipeline starting in Northern Ecuador that is in many ways unhealthy to people and environment alike. A big oil producer by the name of Occidental or Oxy for short, is apparently lieing about the number of barrels it produces so that it doesn’t have to pay Ecuador too much (not that it does anyway) and is otherwise not very nice.

the 2002 North American Free Trade Agreement or Tratido Libre Comercial is a win-win situation for transnational companies but not actually helping anyone else and resulting in numerous economic problems all over latin America. Basically local businesses have problems competing with cheaper multinational companies.

Recently there have been protests in Quito, led by an Archbishop to stop Occidental from continued pipelining and to ask Alfredo Palacios, president of Ecuador, not to sign the new Free Trade Agreement. A side note is that all over town there is gravity of “fuera Oxy” (out oxy) and acronyms like “Tengo La Camisa negra” in protest.

We also talked a lot about Colombia and the war on cocaine – major conclusion of the day: the war on drugs is a cover for US government to secure land and resources for American corporations.

And so forth. Ecuador has had a history of dysfunctional and/or corrupt governments. There have been 2 impeachments in recent times. Asi es la vida. We then had more orientation talks including the program rules. It will please all of you out there that worry about me to know that I am not allowed to drive, scuba dive, bungi jump, ski dive, climb any mountain that requires equipment, kayak, motorcycle and otherwise do anything adrenaline-rush-producing for the duration of the program.

Our second lecture of the day was also cool. It was about what to watch out for during our homestay. Basically it was a quick guide to what Ecuadorians really are thinking. At least the ones living in Quito that have at least one room to spare in their house and want foreign students to live with them.

- Ecuadorians value cleanliness and presentation. Decent clothing strongly recommended. Women do not wear shorts EVER. Except at the beach. I hate my grubby life.
- Gringo women in particular are thought to be very easy. Therefore it is crucial that they don’t show too much skin or even make too much eye-contact with an Ecuadorian man. (hah, nobody pays attention to me!)
- Gringo men are expected to drink like Ecuadorian men – until they are trashed out of their minds. Women who drink in public are looked down on.
- And for what I shall call the Theory of Responsibility: basically for Americans, responsibility for one´s actions comes from within, from yourself. For Ecuadorians, responsibility comes from the environment. Thus, if an Ecuadorian man gets extremely drunk and behaves what Westerners would call inappropriately, its ok here because he was under the influence. I feel that this theory has many applications but I have yet to discover them. Not sure I want to.
- Remnants of colonial life make Ecuadorians eager to avoid confrontation. (Happened in Namibia too.) This was proven one evening when one of our hotel owners came up to our rooms. At that time it was past 11 at night and a group of friends and I were having an extremely loud conversation. The hotel owner told other students sitting outside our room to tell us to be quiet. Then he went back to bed.
- Lastly, in terms of homestay – best to learn through observation and questions. Yay experiential learning.

Other random Quito/Ecuador observations: The sewers are really easily clogged so used toilet paper goes in the wastebasket. One Ecudaorian delicacy (that I do intend to try, don’t judge) is “cuy” aka guinea pig. Random plants and animals are related to those in Africa because they once evolved from the same ancestors millions of years ago in Gondwanaland when India, Africa and South America were joined. I´ve never been so happy to recognize an Acacia. I would have hugged it if I wasn’t in a bus. And if it didn´t have thorns.

Thursday we went to Spanish class for the first time. It wasn’t that hard, but I can´t decide whether to change classes or not cause he promised we would do subjunctive and condicional tomorrow. But I digress. Our teacher is named Luis and he is half Quichua and half mestizo and shorter than me. He laughs at his own corny jokes and my five-person class likes him a lot. We are happily learning a lot about indigenous culture as well as Quichua words. So far we learned that “Chuchakui” means ´hang-over´.
There are two other major things of interest that happened to me on Thursday. One was that we had a salsa class. I wasn’t very good at it. In fact one of the teachers kept pointing at me and laughing (not joking.)
The second and by far more awesome… was ULTIMATE!!!! Yay, can you believe it? There is a group of mostly Americans that gets together twice a week on a school field and plays ultimate Frisbee. One of my friends in the program found out about it during her stay here last semester (she did a different program then) so we went together. It was totally sweet. Except that I couldn’t run much because of the altitude.

Friday was more Spanish class and so forth.
Saturday we left Quito for the first time on our excursion to El Bosque Nublado – the Cloud Forest. In particular we went to Intag, to the north-west of Otavalo, a 5 hour or so ride by bus. From readings we learned that the cloud forest is a phenomenon that occurs at higher altitudes where precipitation can build up along the mountains and basically lots of greenery is therefore allowed. Think Namibia´s opposite. Or Swarthmore on steroids.
So Saturday morning we all pile into a bus. In otavalo we stop to ask whether we can take the short route because it is often blocked by frequent mudslides. The bus goes up and down in the mountains, curving like crazy and bumping most of the time on the dirt roads. I think the driver honks before we go around corners because the mist impedes our view forward. We stopped in the paramo area on the way – much more grassland vegetation basically and looked around for a bit. It was around this time also that I look out the window and see a few horses next to the road. I notice one lying down and stretching out its extremely long neck. Realization takes hold, I´m looking at a llama. Kind of furryish and not that big really, they come in a variety of colors.

Finally finally we arrive at a little townish area where we get out and walk another 45 minutes or so in the mud to La Florida Reserve. I decide unfortunately to follow my instincts and carry all my stuff the whole way )as opposed to piling it on the horse.) I made it but am fairly tired by that time. La Florida is a farm that specializes in sustainability. From shade-growing coffee to pineapples, lemons tree-tomatoes, white carrots etc our host Carlos, explains that he doesn’t use pesticides or any kind of chemicals and it seems that he let everything grow where it wanted to grow. In other words, there aren’t fields of crops that took over the forest or something. Deforestation is a huge problem here especially with local culture dictating that hunting and cutting down trees without any limitations is ok.
Us students get set up nicely in a few different cabin buildings and I immediately call a bed in the attic. Outdoor showers and drop-off toilets for use, we are served dinner under a roof but in the open air.
The next day is a big one. I get up at 6 am to peer upwards into the trees for an hour or so trying to see a cock-of-the-rock do a mating dance. These birds are thought to be one of the most beautiful in Ecuador and from what I can tell they are extremely red. Finally we get to a gap in the jungle and see out over a little valley. The forest is dense, muddy, wet and cloudy most of the time. Its warm and smells like earth. We can hear a waterfall in the distance and the mountains slope all around us.
More lectures, more hiking and finally homestay! Our large group is split in half so that some can go with our families today and others later. We are presented to members of a womens collective that make beautiful woven handicrafts or artesianas and sell them. They are made from leaves of the agave plant that can be stripped to make the thread. Fair-trade at its heart. The ladies presented their collective and then half of us went home to their families. I went home with Justina and her son Darwin on horseback. We rode for 40 minutes along treacherous paths until we finally reached their home at the heart of their farm. Justina and her family were really friendly and easy-going. I couldn’t understand her husband Venino that well because he mumbled a lot but all in all we got along very well. My Spanish wasn’t great but I still joked around. Besides for 11 year old Darwin, I had two other brothers living at home – 17 year old Alex and 19 year old Sylvio, whom I didn’t see as much of since he worked in the fields all day.

- The first night after much laughter about vegetarian student that they had had in the past, I struggled to finish two huge portions of potato-other-vegetable soup. Venino informed me proudly that Ecuadorians eat a lot and I was soon to find that out. They didn’t let me serve myself, they gave me juice, coffee and milk with every meal, and snacks in between. I ate just about everything because I didn’t want to offend anybody but I was pretty green by the end of a couple meals.
- It seemed that their farm had pretty much everything. We ate fried white carrots and plantains, rice with lentils, beans, juice from lemons, pineapples, mora (which I think is blackberries) and tree tomatoes, misperos (little yellow things that are apparently good for cholesterol), cheremoyas, tuna, beef and the last night chicken (full account below), sugar cane flavouring for juice, torillas, empanadas, rodillas and so forth. No guinea pig. I was almost disappointed.
- I eagerly offered to help with all farm chores: these included milking the cows, feeding los chanchos (the pigs), washing dishes, peeling numerous vegetables and so forth. I tried to learn to knit with the agave thread but I was horrible at it. Alex tried to show me but results were below satisfactory.
- After the first breakfast Sylvio and Alex took me to fetch a cow. This involved climbing a mountain and nearly falling on my face in the mud several times. Everyone wore their botas de gaucho – rubber boots – in the field and it sure helped. My feet reeked though. The view from above of the area was amazing. Nearby was a little town called Plaza Gutierrez and all around were numerous farmish-looking areas separated by forest. In the distance my new brothers pointed out a tiny whitish thing. That, they informed me, was our bus.
- I got along very well with my family. I taught Alex how to juggle, played chess with him and Darwin and also taught Darwin a few simple card games and performed silly magic tricks. I also tried to describe spitting cobras, landscapes of sand, the desert, dry riverbeds, and ostriches. Luckily I had pictures on my digital camera as proof.
- The house was pleasantly laid out, simple wood construction. The kitchen and dining room were combined, there was a TV room complete with DVD, TV and blaring sound system, as well as a few other sleeping rooms. They gave me one of the boys´rooms I think. It wasn’t that small with a large bed. It had lots of calendar pictures and others on the walls. For some reason it took me a moment to realize that I was looking at many scantly clad women. I noted that all of them were white and the completely naked ones happened to be blond. Experiential learning.
- My only homestay assignment was too interview, talk to and observe members of the family and find out about education, migration and roles of family member in the house and in the community. I found out that according to my family the youth are leaving the rural areas, the indians all live on the paramo (not in Intag), education is expensive and most people have primary school education only, there was practically no environmental education until Carlos and an NGO called DECOIN rallied the people against copper mining in the area (still a big issue), men work in the field and women work in the house but both do farm chores and everyone helped make handicrafts.

On our last day, we took a trip to Plaza Gutierrez to see Justina´s mother and daughter. Alex and Venino came along as well and we went to see the church at the top of the hill. It was pretty big and I had to explain why I didn’t believe in the Virgin. Happily a group of people all started a soccer game and one of the other students in my program who was homestaying nearby joined in as well, so we all got very very sweaty in the sun.

When we finally got home, Venino called for a chicken and then announced that he was going to slaughter it. Despite a misunderstanding involving me going to change my shoes in preparation for walking somewhere to slaughter it, I managed to convince my host family that I shouldn’t kill the chicken because I didn’t know how and might thus cause it unnecessary pain. Venino nodded and wrung its neck. I then got to watch Justina pluck feathers and clean it. It had an egg inside and we ate that too eventually. I took lots of pictures. I´ll post them if I get the chance. We then had the best chicken noodle soup for dinner that I have had in a very long time.

I might add two things. I was lucky that I managed to fall feet first when I slid in the mud off the side of a mountain path when Alex and I were bringing food to the men working in the fields. I fell six feet or so.
I was also lucky that I didn’t try to use the Spanish miscognate of to be embarrassed aka “estoy embarazada” like another student did during her homestay. She spent the next few minutes denying that she was pregnant.
Sadly it was time to leave my family. On Wednesday, we walked back to La Florida and there I enjoyed two days of botany. I learned to identify about 15 families of plants: including melastomataceae nicknamed (by me) “turtle-man” because of its turtley-patterned leaves, gesneraceae with plants that had beautiful red flowers, fabaceae eg legumes and others. We had another “drop-off” in the forest where we all went out on our own and drew pictures and wrote down questions about the forest for 3 hours. It was pretty cool. I was proud of spotting a strong billed woodcreeper and not getting lost. Actually, the paths made it easy to not get too disoriented.
At night we watched insects in our light trap and identified moths of all sizes and a scary bug with pinchers called megaloptera. Under Xavier´s instruction, I picked it up. We also set up a mistnet on Thursday morning to catch birds and measure their wings, tarsuses and weight them. We were truly lucky – we caught two hummingbirds (one a rare species) and also a cock-of-the-rock that Sylvia said she had never before caught with mistnet before. It was truly beautiful with a bulbous crested head that I got to touch and amazing eyes. Black with orange outlines. The bird was big though, and angry, and he managed to bite Sylvia several times during the taking-out-of-net-and-measuring process. She was too excited to care. I got to hold a bird myself – a slate-throated whitestart that wasn’t hazardous to my health and was fairly quiet. I could feel his heart beating at my fingers.

And our last day in Intag we did a “Minga” or collective farmwork. The whole group came back together from homestays and we finished our Field Investigation Projects. Mine involved identifying and counting all insects I could find within a square area called a quadrat.
Ok so the Minga was great. We ended up walking for a really long time to get to the site of a botanical garden. On the way we stopped to pick up tools and the door to the building was locked. Guess who got to squeeze in through the window? We finally arrive and get to help dig out big rocks and move logs to make moss beds for orchids and bromeliads. It was hard work but the guys who were showing us were very timid to make us do anything so I (and others) unfortunately felt that we didn’t achieve that much. In the process of the minga I also managed to cut my hand on that window, drop a rock on my foot and ram log into my crotch without being allowed to drop it at the time. This was all before lunch. The walk back took forever, but that was mostly because I brought my Frisbee along and we kept throwing it off the road and having to climb through barbed wire fence to get it. Luckily it wasn’t the coily irritating kind of wire that they have all over the walls in Windhoek.
Anyways, on Saturday we left for Quito and got back in time to check emails and eat before well deserved rest.