Tell me a story...

I have quite the story to tell you all, but first: I’m thinking about changing my blog updates a little. What with school and homework and such, I’m only really getting time to write once a week, but I don’t want to keep you all waiting on the edges of your seats to read more. So, what do you all say to a long post or two every week and I will try to post a picture or something like that every day I have access to my computer and internet? I’m going to give it a shot this week and see how it works out; you all let me know what you think!

Now for the interesting stuff.

My oral literature of Ecuador class requires me to do a large investigation to collect a story or two or a few from someone. Generally speaking, this means we have to go somewhere outside of Quito and find someone who knows some traditional stories that have been passed down from generation to generation. We are doing this project in groups of three, and one of the other two girls in my group is from the Oriente (the part of Ecuador on the Amazon side of the Andes). This last weekend, we started our project. Emanuela and I travelled back to Diana’s home town with her, leaving after classes finished on Friday. We first went by bus to the main station in southern Quito, then from there we took a 5-hour bus ride to Puyo, an actual city in the middle of the amozonian jungle of Ecuador. We couldn’t finish the trip to Diana’s hometown that night because it was too late, so we stayed in a hotel in Puyo. The trip there was an adventure in and of itself. Nearly the entire ride to Puyo, we watched Jackie Chan dibbed in Spanish. We made it through 3 whole movies on the trip, broken up only by the young man who got on the bus to give us a speech about his life and try to sell us lollipops. Our morning in Puyo was also interesting. We stopped at a restaurant for breakfast and then walked to a couple of stores where Diana bought decorations and other things for a fiesta her family was putting on that evening (more on that later). We even had to stop and pick up a giant cake for this fiesta, one that wouldn’t fit in any of the boxes the bakery had. Diana had to go looking for a bigger box so that the cake wouldn’t be ruined on the bus to Arajuno, her town. Since it had been dark on the ride into Puyo the night before, I was surprised by the jungle-y-ness we encountered as soon as we left Puyo. It was quite the green and verdant forest out there, and the road was one I don’t think any bus driver in the US would ever want to take a bus down. Particularly not on a 2 hour journey.

When we arrived in Arajuno, we all walked over to Diana’s house and met the family. I don’t know exactly how old Diana is, but none-the-less, we got to meet her 3-year-old daughter, her mother, and practically her entire extended family. She served us chicha, a drink made from yucca that tastes a little strange, and made us feel welcome in the house. I was very grateful that I wasn’t the only one from outside of the family who was there. Emanuela was also great to have around because she was nearly as much of a foreigner as I was in this town, but speaks the language perfectly. I generally figured if I didn’t know what was going on I could ask her and she could actually explain it to me, instead of just giving me some general information and expecting me to figure out the rest. Once we were fully introduced to the family, we went in search of a hotel room to stay in. Turns out, there’s rooms above one of the few little stores in the town, so we got a room, dropped off our stuff, and went to help set up for the party.

This was going to be a party of epic proportions, because it was the 15^th birthday of Diana’s littlest sister. 15^th birthdays here are a big deal. They call them quinciñeras. It’s kind of like sweet 16, but a bigger deal. We were setting up the community’s dance hall (that was basically what it was) for hours, blowing up balloons, hanging streamers, and generally making the place look festive. Meanwhile, one of the sisters (I think) was trying to teach all the teenaged cousins how to waltz so that the birthday girl could have a special choreographed dance. Emanuela and I started dancing around to the waltz they were playing just for the heck of it and I was teaching her the little I know about waltzing that comes from being a white American. Of course, the sister saw me dancing and enlisted my help in teaching everyone else since apparently no one there actually knew how to dance to a waltz. As an attempt at a break, Emanuela and I went back to the hotel, but the entire building was locked up so that we couldn’t get in and the neighbors said the owners were at Mass. Go figure. Apparently small town hotels here aren’t the most reliable for staying open all the time. Once everyone was totally exhausted and sweaty back at the dance hall (the oriente is HOT) Diana arrived with a bucket full of fresh-squeezed juice. A bucket. Not, a jug, or something that I would usually expect to see food in, but a black plastic pail. After everyone had had some to drink, out of the two cups that Diana brought with the pail, we hopped on the back of the motorcycle-wagon (basically a tricycle with the back half functioning as a wagon) and headed back to her house for lunch. Post lunch, we were invited to go to the river and swim. Neither Emanuela nor I had brought a swimsuit, but we went anyway to see what it was like. What it was like was beautiful, but the bugs were out and I am still suffering from the many bug bites I got on my legs.

When we got back from the river, it was basically time for the fiesta. We arrived at the hall about an hour after the set time for the beginning of the party, but we were still there an hour before the festivities actually began. These people definitely run on Ecua-time. The birthday girl had set out a whole program of things that were going to happen during the fiesta. There was an entrance for the birthday girl, a welcome, a couple of speeches, a couple of dances, and more. Some of the things were borrowed directly from wedding parties. For example, they did the whole garter thing and the throwing of the bouquet, which for me seemed a little strange to be doing at a 15-year-old’s birthday party. The birthday girl also had to “kill” the cake by biting into it without using a fork or knife. Which meant she was going to get frosting all over her face. Not only that, but one of her brothers of cousins or uncles pushed her face even further into the cake and she got frosting everywhere. Everyone but me seemed to be expecting it though, so I guess that’s normal? One of the “events” of the night that I found very interesting was a baptism. I guess in the catholic tradition here, children are baptized at birth and at confirmation. Well, Karina (the birthday girl) got baptized a third time for various reasons I didn’t fully understand. The baptism was one of the times that the mixing of the Spanish culture with the indigenous culture was most evident to me. Karina’s uncle was the baptizer, and he was dressed in an embroidered shirt that was clearly of indigenous origin, with I think a rosary around his neck. During the short ceremony, he asked for the favor of God, Jesus, and Pachamama, the mother earth figure in the indigenous religion that existed before the Spanish Conquest. The night was full of contrasts and mixed cultures. A quinciñera is a completely non-indegenous thing, but this indigenous family had one, and did it their own way. One of the things that was very noticeable for me was the prevalent use of Quichua. Many of the speeches that were made during the night were totally incomprehensible to me because they were said in this language. I also really enjoyed observing the culture of these people, mixed or not. Unlike my family here in Quito, Diana’s family doesn’t always give a kiss on the cheek as a greeting, they used a pseudo-handshake sometimes instead. Which was handy since there were so many of them. I also enjoyed watching all of the little kids running around. They clearly were unable to sit still for the hour and a half of planned events for the fiesta before the eating and dancing began. But no one seemed too concerned with them. The kids just sort of ran around chasing after balloons and each other and getting in everyone’s way. None of the kids needed their parents to give them something to do, they all just kept themselves busy, even the tiny ones. There was one boy who might have been about four, who had been given the task of looking after what I assume was his younger brother, a little kid who couldn’t have been any more than two, if that. He had a ball sticking ribbons in the back of his brother’s shirt so that the little one was toddling around looking like he had a tail made of streamers. The kids also kept returning to the cake to steal frosting until there were a number of little holes in the side of the cake that weren’t quite as sweet as they had been before. Where I sat for most of the night, there were a few young girls sitting next to me who took a great interest in the gringa and clung to me the whole night. They helped me braid my hair to get it out of the way and kept dressing me up with ribbons that the little boys would later rip off and throw around the room. When the cake was served a food fight broke out among the cousins. No one was given untensils to eat the cake with (a typical thing here), so the cousins started touching their sticky frosting-y fingers to each other’s faces. And no one seemed to mind much that they were getting frosting all over the place. This sort of fits with what I noticed there about dirt and cleanliness. I’ve always needed to be clean or I feel really uncomfortable, but out there in the oriente, I think they have a harder time staying clean since it’s often very rainy and muddy and water to clean with isn’t as easy to access as it is in the city. People just don’t mind being a little dirty, whether the dirt is from the ground, or food related, or whatever. They aren’t bothered by it.

At about 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning, we decided we had had enough dancing and were walked back to the hotel by one of Diana’s many cousins. Fortunately, the hotel was open this time and we went upstairs and crashed. Breakfast the next morning was at Diana’s where we were served eggs and fried yucca. But not until after we finally got around to our class project. Diana introduced us to one of her aunts who told us two traditional Quichua stories (but in Spanish). One was about the creation of the moon, the other about three monsters who were captured but will return at the end of the world. This story was interesting to hear because the aunt clearly believed that the end of the world would happen basically as it says in the Bible and God will save all believers, but she also believed that those who were not saved would be killed by these three monsters. I will try to post the stories in more detail once we have them transcribed from the tape we recorded them on. And in English, since I don’t think the Spanish versions would do much for most of you.

Post-stories and breakfast and general goodbyes, at about 10 am, we got on the bus back to Puyo where we caught the next bus to back to Quito, arriving at about 7pm. After that we had to take another bus to where Emanuela’s parents picked the two of us up and were kind enough to drop me off at my house. The trip took about 11 hours in total, with a fair amount of confusion on my part. But I got home safely and I had an amazing time, and I think that’s what matters.

The weekend was definitely an experience, and one I don’t think I would ever be able to repeat, though I wouldn’t mind doing it all again.