The photos are full of colour and sometimes humour. I think you'll enjoy being transported to Latacunga and Malingua Pamba for a few minutes. It kills me to decide which photos to delete to make a slideshow that's short enough to be comfortable, because they all feel so fascinating and amusing to me. It's an agonizing proces.
I will begin by saying that the Latacunga trip wasn't our idea, and I was reluctant; it isn't like I haven't been to rural markets all over the world before, and although I'd happily go there as a short adventure while staying over in Latacunga, I knew it would turn into a long day of travel and waiting around all day for about one hour of photography. And it did. Paulino and Elvia said, "Would you like to come to the market with us tomorrow? Oh, by the way, if you choose to stay home, there won't be any meals because we can't find anyone willing to come in and cook for you." Huh...? What about that string of other women who'd been doing it up until now? And who will be cooking for the boys?
Both of them do work awfully hard and long days; this entire weekend Paulino has been out of sight - "selling gas" is the constant explanation (is he branching out into another line of business? Is that what the $9,000 loan application was for? No se...), and is only now completing delivery of purchases for the schools in the canton that he made on Friday, and that's after a lot of destinations were covered by shipping the groceries to them by bus. Elvia says she couldn't get anyone to cook, and couldn't get people to help her in the market either, even though she offers $10 for the day. Mind you, it's a long day and the official minimum wage works out to about $2 an hour ($4,000/year), so maybe she's underpaying. I do believe from what I saw loaded on the truck and not sorted into bins for the school that there's business over and above the school food - nothing wrong with that, of course, might as well combine time and gas costs. But I'm guessing they're also pinching every penny instead of spreading the wealth by delegating and paying others to help them accomplish this mountain of work.
It was a stupidly long 17 hour day that included sleeping in the bus and napping in the truck at the bus terminal, waiting for Paulino who never did appear, and then waiting for William who after positioning his truck and getting Elvia and Enma to distribute the various school bins to the various buses that showed up (I helped carry a few sacks and bins), took off to his house for two hours while we contined to wait for our return trip to Malingua Pamba. That very long wait, that I can't believe they couldn't have anticipated and been honest about with us, was one of the low points mentioned in my title.
One silver lining is that we fed ourselves like a king and queen at the market on the same daily amount of money we were supposedly paying Elvia. (Pam has recently insisted that because of the amount of work we've been doing for her and the awkwardness of having it out with Elvia over the menu, she prefers to pay for our stay and take our notes to a discussion with Elvia when she arrives here in April.) The ladies asked us several pointed questions about what we'd eaten and what we'd paid, and Josefina insisted we'd actually overpaid for a great meal! And the upshot is that meals have been considerably better through the balance of the weekend, with the inclusion of eggs and chicken at least twice a day. The chicken is always tough and undercooked, leading to intestinal gas, but at least it's animal protein.
When William finally returned we set out, only to encounter a police roadblock and check stop of some kind. Oh, oh! He didn't have a licence, wouldn't have one for another four months...so that's why they'd kept asking me if I could drive a truck! I was reluctant, especially after remembering I'd left my Canadian driver's licence at home, with no expectation that I'd have to rent a vehicle or drive one for someone else. If caught, William expected he'd have to pay $200 to the corrupt cops right on the spot to avoid jail time.
After pretending we were taking a pee break beside the road, and then pretending we were just tourists taking photos, we caught an incredibly lucky break when two construction workers in a little truck drove up and opened the barrier of a closed road we'd parked beside. They instantly comprehended William's situation and waved him through the barrier with them, and from there we took windy, bumpy back roads through potholes filled with water, past villages, and finally found our way out onto the Pan-American highway after the roadblock. William was relieved and elated, and crowed about outwitting the "Polichivatos" - the "goat police", an expression related to the old English one about tugging the beard of the old goat, who represents any authority figure.
Saturday was pleasant. The colegio is in the middle of exams, but we got one class registered and running with duolingo.com, which we hope they'll continue to use after we're gone to acquire more English than we can provide them with in this short visit. We arranged email addresses for a lot of them so they could register.
On Sunday we managed the same thing with two more classes, but in one of them a few students walked out on the class when they realized we were completely serious about using all machines for academic purposes only during class time, and they couldn't get away with opening their Facebook windows every few seconds! A twenty minute recess turned into an hour, there was only one teacher (out of four) in the building and he was hiding out alone in his room with his laptop. The kids were going nuts chasing each other, banging doors, throwing water at each other from all directions, and squirting cans of shaving cream on each other - practicing for "Carnival" someone explained (which isn't until February!).
They were very excited about the dance presentation and raffle they were going to present in the afternoon, but I wasn't convinced that the teachers couldn't have kept the lid on if they'd been there to manage the situation. Ignacio returned and I suggested with some mild annoyance that if they really expected Pam's foundation to assist with the costs of their Esmeraldas trip, they ought to be a bit more serious about studying and teaching when that was supposed to be going on. He did a bit of scolding, including being upset about the water and shaving cream in the classrooms, and we ended the morning well with all six networked computers being used for language study and nothing else. He promised that those who'd walked out on the class would be disciplined, but I'll only believe that if I see it with my own eyes, I'm afraid.
The dance performance was probably the "High Point in the Andes" for us during our stay here. The colegio kids, most of whom we've come to know to some degree in the classrooms, did a great job of presenting traditional dances and humorous skits in traditional costumes, not for tourists but for their own community, in grateful appreciation of their families who were supporting their fundraising effort for their school trip.
One of the highlights of the afternoon that split guts all through the courtyard was when one of the chickens held up to demonstrate that particular raffle prize took exception to being put back in the cardboard box and made a dash for freedom. The kids chased him all over the schoolyard while the parents and teachers howled with laughter. I couldn't zoom and focus the camera fast enough to catch the action, just the final act of stuffing him back in the box. That was the Premio Pollo, the prize chicken, that we ate for supper - Paulino won the second place draw, which included three chickens. Elvia's mother won the first place prize, which included the young goat. It was a little odd to me that the draw prizes went to the richest people in the village. The prizes also included three rabbits (conejos), three guinea pigs (cuyes), a couple of fine wool blankets and a dish or pot set called a vajilla - I didn't get to see what was actually in that parcel.
A couple of days ago we had it out with Ignacio, who had come to believe that the constant presence of our camera and our frequent communication with Pam had blamed him for deficiencies at the school, some of which he insisted were a government matter and not a community matter. We managed to convince him, finally, that our purpose wasn't to blame, but to be eyes and ears for Pam and the people he expected to continue sending money and talent to help improve his community, including the school, the hostel, the irrigation and potable water system, etc. Some people feel very uncomfortable under a spotlight, and I recognised that, but couldn't let him get away with imagining that anyone from any part of the world would simply hand out cash with no oversight and no expectations of how their gifts would be stewarded, like winning some sort of lottery. Bottom line is, if you respect and appreciate what you've been given, you show that by taking care of it; and if you want to largesse to continue, you co-operate willingly with the process of deciding in what ways that money could be most effectively used. That was a difficult conversation, and Deb bore the brunt of his onslaught because she could (barely!) keep up with his Spanish, while I simply played tough guy through translation. He came to the gunfight fully loaded - he'd even looked up the word "hurt" in English to make sure he could get his point across! I managed to convince him that others (Eden, Pam) could feel equally hurt if their gifts were not respected and cared for.
All in all, a weekend to feel positive about, which included lots of chores for Pam as well. We got a good start on culling the library, cleaning and making space on the shelves, did some basic accountancy training with the irrigation board at Tunguiche, felt good about launching duolingo with most of the college students, and so on. I believe we'll spend our four remaining days just teaching what we can to the elementary kids before we leave for Latacunga at 3 a.m. on Friday morning and back to Quito on Saturday.
Next: Baby Hummingbirds
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