Friday, February 20
We spent all day nearly writing reports on interviews and the past week. There was much to say and much care to be taken to get it right. After supper, we had a very good conversation with Albert and Magdalena. They are such good people, very kind, hard-working and hospitable. We are invited to visit Baños with them tomorrow. Albert's grandmother has a home there, very rustic, and we will visit the famous hot springs there. We are both looking forward to it.
Saturday, February 21 - Sunday, February 22
We were to leave at 6 a.m., but because Albert and Magdalena needed to deliver some finished products, we left closer to 8 a.m. With dismay, Albert realized that this was a work day, to make up for the holidays enjoyed earlier in the week. The traffic was pretty bad (not as bad as Manila, say, or Los Angeles). Albert was very, very patient, and as people took chances with their lives to get into the flow of traffic, there was a lot of sudden braking, but almost no honking of horns. Magdalena observed that people here were fairly "tranquilo," or calm. Not a lot of road rage! We drove for over four hours to reach Baños, stopping for brunch and an ice cream in a little cafe. The volcanoes (many of them snow-capped) were very beautiful, like exotic dancers disappearing behind veils of cloud, then tantalizingly reappearing against the dark blue sky. To me, Chimborazo is the most beautiful of all, its blown out peak looking like a silver crown. There's a whole line of them crossing the equator, but only a few are currently active.
We reached Baños in early afternoon, spent some time cleaning the house of ash, which is constantly falling on the city of Baños from nearby volcano Tungurahua (Throat of Fire), then decided to walk around the town. We had tea, fruit and bread for supper and then each couple sought one of the two double beds in the main room. A comedic scene in the middle of the night played out when Susanne, needing to find the outdoor bathroom in the dark, woke the entire household trying to open a door which was latched shut. Early Sunday morning, we walked to the baths and got in quite quickly with no line. A few hours later, the line was hours long, so it was good we had gone with Albert and Magdalena, who know the drill. The water was lovely, relaxing and the famous waterfall was mesmerizing, dropping nearly straight down 260 feet to feed the community laundry (dozens of stone basins free for all to do their washing). Toward noon it began to be very crowded, with people stepping on our toes to go past and kids splashing wildly, so we retreated to a restaurant for a very nice lunch. I learned not to spent five hours in a hot bath by becoming very dizzy and nauseous after exiting the pool. But really? The alternative was to plunge myself into an extremely cold waterfall for several minutes longer than I felt I could survive. So as they say here, "Vale la pena." It was worth the pain. The church here is beautiful, and built of volcanic rock in the center. Afterward, Albert drove us up to the tree house on a high hill adjacent to Tungurahua, where there is a bit of a tourist attraction just sitting on the lawn looking up at the mountain, wreathed today in clouds, and watching the young people swinging out over a 400 foot drop into the ravine at the base of the volcano. There was a long line of people wanting to climb the tree house, while we demurred and simply enjoyed the view. Such beautiful views were available on the back side of the waterfall behind the town of Baños! We found ourselves to be totally relaxed, carefree and mellow--without any artificial aids. What a wonderful weekend this was.
Our generous hosts were pleased that we had enjoyed it so much, while we were blessed that they gave us such a treat. It is amazing, when life is pared down to the essentials, how simple and lovely it is. Thank you, Albert and Magdalena.
Friday, February 27, 2015
Friday, February 20, 2015
Thursday, February 19, 2015 - Misunderstandings
Woke up to the sound of rain on the tin roof. Off and on during the day, there were several downpours, at least it sounded like that on the roof. Vincent says it was a light rain, at least the part he was in. This is, after all, the rainy season.
We spent most of the morning catching up on our reporting. This morning, Vincent went out to the shops to get some bread and tea for breakfast (also called “cafecito” here). Albert came to pick him up and showed him the site of the new home and workshop they are building. I stayed on writing, and Vincent came back at noon to walk back with me. He had been photographing the dyeing for a couple of hours in the morning. When we walked down to the Espins’ house, we saw the dyeing process about mid-way through. There were two big “ollas” or cookpots boiling with red dye. These are from some of the beads that were made yesterday and even earlier. I tried to help out by stirring the pots and spreading out the flat beads to dry.
I had a conversation with Magdalena that was eye-opening, even disturbing. I now have a lot of questions about what “fair” in fair trade means. For example, the beads used in fair trade jewelry from some other countries are Czech. Are the Czech workers paid fairly? Do they have good working conditions? It is a lot more complicated when you look into the details of the supply chain. When you buy a sample from an artisan, have you bought the design? I took some time to make some designs for them, which they are free to use, adapt, or not. She has had some experiences of people using her designs without her permission—I wanted to try to make it up to her a tiny bit.
The dyeing process is very laborious, involving lugging heavy pots of water and beads back and forth many times. Magdalena needs a young man to help her, but so far they haven’t either found or engaged him. The red is a particularly hard color to get right. She boiled the beads for three hours and they were still not right—after another two hours and the addition of more dye, they finally matched the sample. A long, exhausting day for Magdalena.
After supper, we asked Albert and Magdalena if they had any questions for us. Magdalena said to Alberth, “You first. I have one, too.” Albert said the kindest thing—he didn’t have any questions, he felt that we were kindred spirits and he was really glad we have come. Then Magdalena wanted to know what our religion was. Here in Ecuador, that is not the kind of personal question that raises eyebrows back home. My initial response was, “At what time?” I have been through an odyssey of the different Christian denominations that would make your head spin. We were all laughing and enjoying the dialogue. It seems, we are quite similar in faith, too, to this family.
Afterwards, we had the most hilarious conversation. Alberth was telling us he could drop us up to the house at 9 in the morning. They had to go visit their son in university until 10:30 at night. That was what I heard. We were busy planning out tomorrow on our own, then. They were bewildered by what we were saying. At last Magdalena laughed out loud. “We’re talking about tonight, not tomorrow!” It is simply amazing how quickly, and by one word, a conversation and the necessary understanding can get off track, and how long it can take in a foreign language to get it back on track again.
I think the theme of the day is that misunderstanding can happen at every turn in a relationship. We have to be so careful to check our understanding to make sure it is correct.
Feb. 18, 2015 Work of Human Hands
February 18, 2015
After our first night in a real bed for a while, all I can say is, hurray for mattresses! Alberth picked us up at the top of the hill and we went to his house for the day. They have four bedrooms, one for each of the two grown sons in university, one for Albert & Magdalena and one for Alberth’s 87-year-old grandmother, who also lives with them. This morning, Alberth’s mother came in wearing a toddler on her back. Later on, two nieces on vacation from school arrived to spend the day in one of the bedrooms playing and listening to music. With us on the couch in the living room using our laptops, and the artisans popping in to speak to Alberth, it was Grand Central Station all day.
I was engaged nearly all day in financial tasks for the business. After paying our mortgage online (yayyy!), I tried unsuccessfully to download a repaired file from QuickBooks which I had received a week previously. I was on the phone nearly all day (at 20 cents per minute, this is going to be a big expense!) trying to download this file. Intuit on January 14 said it would take three days. It took more than 30 days. Guess what, my friends—the case had been closed, the file disappeared and I had to upload it to them again to wait another putative 3 days for it to be fixed. QuickBooks—now there’s an oxymoron. I can only hope it won’t take another 30 days, the case closed and the file disappeared again. I feel like the movie Groundhog Day.
While I was wasting my day online, Vincent was in the workshop photographing the process of producing beads for another order. It came home to us both how much work is involved in the production of a single bracelet or necklace. Juanita and Andrés purchase their beads from suppliers on the coast. Alberth and Magdalena make theirs from the raw dried seeds. Alberth is a gifted mechanic and has designed and constructed most of their machinery. The women wear all kinds of protective gear—masks for the dust, safety goggles to ward against any flying chips, ear protection against the noise of the equipment, aprons, gloves, etc. The room in which they work is murky with dust—they are working toward purchasing evacuators. One fact which came home to us today in a much clearer way—every single bead is cut, shaped and smoothed individually by hand. It is literally unimaginable. As many as 10,000 beads for one order of 400 bracelets! Tomorrow they get dyed in different colors for each type of bead.
Next time I look at a tagua bracelet, I am going to remember this. This isn’t really mass production. The tools make the drilling, cutting, sanding and shaping simpler and quicker, but that is all—there aren’t any automated processes, or molds or anything. Vincent noted that this jewelry really is the work of human hands.
Once the beads were finished, Magdalena pulled out her clipboard and told Alberth how many of each color there should be. Alberth, Vincent and I did the counting, assisted by Alberth’s grandmother, who could not be dissuaded from helping. She struggled with the task for about forty minutes and then quietly put all the ones she’d tried to count back into the bowl for us to count. Bless her, she tried her best!
After supper, the four of us had a conversation about the workers, what their incentives are, how the training is done and what the challenges are (getting them to wear their protective equipment, for one).
In 2007, there were four workers in the shop. The business has grown significantly in the last 8 years. Most of their output is sold in France. Only about 25-35% of it is sold in the U.S., with the remainder going to England, Switzerland and Japan. None is sold in Ecuador. In October of 2014, there were so many orders that they had to hire nine temporary workers to complete them.
They remember the difficult years. They try to hire people who need the work most—single moms, mildly disabled folks, people without many opportunities for employment. We noted yesterday that most of the people in the shop had found out about the opportunity through friends, neighbors, and relatives. This makes for a friendly team of workers, but there are problems, Alberth and Magdalena noted. She does all the training and most of the discipline. In October, when she had nine new employees to train, she devoted most of her time to them, resulting in the senior workers feeling abandoned. They said she didn’t care about them any more, just the new people. She had to explain to them all that she did still care about them, but that the new people needed to be trained so that they could get all their tasks accomplished. She also noted that as the disciplinarian, she is sometimes called “bruja,” as she has to keep the work on schedule, prevent the women from coming in late or manufacturing excuses, and so on. To me, the fact that the senior workers felt she didn’t care about them indicates just how much they normally feel she DOES care about them.
It’s not a job she takes lightly, and she related how hard it is to hire temporaries, because it is so challenging to tell someone, “We don’t need you any more.” Of the nine, four left for one reason or another, and they have employed the other five full-time. It is a challenge to keep the orders coming in, and they feel the responsibility for the now 15 women who work for them, to keep them employed and able to take care of their families. Work is so hard to come by here. The women in the shop related there are many, many more women whom they know who are looking for work and can’t get any.
They feel lucky to be in a place where they are treated well, paid well, and have a friendly, relaxed atmosphere in which to work. We discussed the benefits the Espins provide to keep trained, skilled workers. They include excursions, an annual trip to the coast where families are invited, help with school expenses in May, an annual bonus (if profits allow), insurance, lunches brought in on occasion, 15 days paid vacation with an extra day for each year worked above 5. These all make the production costs higher for them. They feel that without making their own beads, the quality would suffer so much that they would lose customers. They feel the pressures of the market to lower costs, to keep people employed fairly, innovate new designs, cover their costs and increase their sales. At times they get tired, Magdalena noted. But their passion is to keep their 15 employees, and more if possible, in good work as long as they possibly can. We can only applaud—and try to sell as much of their jewelry as possible.
Feb. 17 Standing on Holy Ground
This day was a holiday for the workers on the house of Andrés and Juanita. We had gone to sleep not knowing whether we were being picked up from there or dropped off at Alberth and Magdalena’s place in Quito. We were quite startled when Juanita came up the stairs at 8:30 to say Alberth would be here at 9:00! We shoved everything into suitcases and tumbled down the stairs to breakfast. I was sad to leave the family, it had come to feel like home. Vincent had said to me when we woke up that he didn’t want to do any interviewing today, he needed to rest. I said to myself, “Well, we’ll see.” I can’t predict anything about Ecuador. Even the cultural “arriving late” doesn’t always apply, as right on time, Alberth arrived to bring us to Quito.
We piled in and I encountered my first shock—I thought my Spanish was getting better. But it was mostly Juanita’s speaking slowly and distinctly that had created that impression. After a week with the Flores family, I was understanding all of them better and better. But Alberth speaks differently, more rapidly, with more run-together words. So I did my “swing me slow” speech, and we managed to communicate a little better until he took off running again.
When we arrived at their home, Magdalena was delighted to see us. Our room is above her sister’s house about six blocks away. She was so concerned that we have everything we need. She thought maybe it would be better for us to bunk on a mattress in the corner of the living room if we needed internet, as her sister has none. We assured her that wouldn’t be necessary, that we’d already had breakfast and didn’t need to eat more, and Alberth led us to the workshop below their house to meet the women who work there.
He explained that because business had increased since we were last there (in 2011), he had hired five more workers. The room was long and narrow with a table full of tagua beads in the center, 11 women ranged around the table. They all wore sky-blue shopcoats and caps, the senior workers with their names embroidered on their coats. We explained why we were there and they introduced themselves. We asked how many had children (it is a common icebreaker here). Everyone raised her hand. There were about five or so younger women, six or seven middle-aged ones and only two or three older ones (40s or above). We asked how they had heard about the job and each one explained she was a relative of one of the owners, she was a relative of one of the current or former workers, she was a neighbor of one of the workers, her cousin had told her about it. No matter where you go, it is always about whom you know, isn’t it?
They were working on an order for Ten Thousand Villages for 700 bracelets. The order was to be finished today. The atmosphere was relaxed, but everyone was working at a good clip except for one of the older women. They explained that she was slow, but that her work was of excellent quality. She particularly excelled in fine, detailed work. Others all had their specialties or assignments—one was quality control, one was timekeeper, three of them liked the crochet designs and so forth. The radio was playing up-tempo Andean music and as they got used to the presence of the foreigners, they relaxed. A bit of gentle banter and teasing punctuated the intense concentration. Normally they work 8 to 5, with an hour off for lunch. Since today was a holiday, Alberth told them they could leave early when they had finished 60 bracelets. The pace and the laughter quickened. The two women on the ends of the table nearest me were the fastest of all the workers. They quickly counted how much they had each done and then set to work at a blazing pace. Alberth encouraged them a little bit by whispering to them how much the other had left to make. They worked still faster, with jokes and smiles all around the table. About 11:30, Magdalena took us on a tour of the workshop, showed us the machines which Alberth, a gifted mechanic, had invented and constructed to make the production of tagua jewelry faster and therefore more economically rewarding. She then showed us the design room at the top of the building and left us to prepare lunch.
At 1:00 we broke for lunch, chicken and rice in a very savory broth. Afterwards, Magdalena stayed with us and we began the interview process with her. As we had started at the beginning, we very quickly got into the days of great struggle she and Alberth had experienced. They were married in July, 1992. They were living near the coast, Alberth worked for an Italian manufacturer of buttons repairing the machinery and equipment to keep the plant running smoothly. For the last six months of his employment, all the paychecks he received bounced. One day he arrived at the factory to discover that all the machinery, supplies and furniture were gone. Magdalena said simply, “We were robbed.”
This was how the work carving tagua began. Alberth had a friend who knew how to carve animal figures. In 1993, they learned how to make them and began a ten-year odyssey making and selling tagua animals. Magdalena’s first piece was a turtle, Alberth’s an elephant. They started with just these two pieces and very little else. Magdalena would walk up and down the beach selling the figures, and anything else she could. She likes to sell, but it was very difficult to sell enough to live. By this time her daughter Diana was born, and she brought her along on these walks, tied to her back at first, then toddling. At one point, she had asked a friend in France what she thought of the idea of Magdalena’s going to Spain to look for work to support the family. Her friend replied, no, it was better to try to work in Ecuador, as it wasn’t guaranteed she would find anything in a new place, and then what? Better to stay with her family. And so she did.
In 1995, the country went into a financial panic. They raised chickens, painted houses, worked in the fields with machetes, sold tagua jewelry and did whatever work they could find to survive. Juanita felt desperate. Conditions on the coast got so bad, they decided to return to Quito in hopes of finding a better market for their work. They found a remote place to rent which was cheaper. Magdalena went from shop to shop with her (now) two children, carrying boxes of tagua jewelry and figurines up and down the streets to shops, to the airport, anywhere she could find to try to sell their work. She left the house to wash clothes for other women in their homes. She sold fried potatoes in the streets. She told me simply, “There was much suffering.”
There were tears in her eyes (and mine) as she related all this. She said, “Remembering this history is painful.” Vincent paused the interview to say, “Everyone who looks at a piece of your jewelry can see not only your skill and artistry, but the pain and struggle that went into it. That is what makes it beautiful.” Then we all started to cry, shared tears, holy tears, I felt, as we encountered and felt for ourselves the sharp stones on the Calvary road they had walked.
With difficulty, we gathered ourselves to finish the story. At this time (early 2000s) Alberth was trying to get enough money to invest in parts so he could make machinery to speed up the tagua finishing process and so gain more income. They could only make 20 figurines in 18 hours. The machinery could help make this more profitable. Little by little, they gained the money to buy what they needed to get their business going. In spite of all the other work they had to do, they kept working with the tagua.
When they got a polishing machine, they were able to work more in jewelry than in the figures, which did not sell as well. At first there weren’t many buyers for the tagua, because it was all in the natural state—an ivory color. They were giving away samples trying to get clients. Then they began to dye the pieces. The market for their jewelry increased significantly, as colored tagua was not much available anywhere else. So they stopped making the animals and concentrated on jewelry.
They had gained a fair trade client in 1995—Camari, based in Quito, but exporting all over the world. In 2007, two other meetings significantly altered the course of their business. In January, they met Chris Keefe, owner of Minga Imports. In March, they met Doug Lapp, buyer for Ten Thousand Villages. Suddenly there were a lot of orders. They hired four women to help and trained them. They like to hire women who are most in need of money, (in particular, single moms and moderately disabled women) because they remember their own hard years so keenly. With the financial assistance of a local cooperative, they were able to buy in 2007 the house they currently live in. Their workshop is located there now, too. Before that, it had been impossible even to borrow as much as $500, so they mark 2007 as the beginning of the good times. They have grown about 25% in their sales in the last eight years, and have hired 11 more women. They have a customer in France who buys 50-60% of their output. North America, including Camari and Minga is 25-35%, and the rest come from Switzerland, Japan, England and a few other European countries.
This intensive interview lasted over four hours. We took a break, all of us, and went outside to walk around the neighborhood. Their home is fairly high, so we were able to see the tops of several volcanoes covered with snow. The lights were coming on in the city of Quito, an amazing sight. Since most of the houses are the same height, it looks like a carpet of buildings spread out over the mountains and ridges, valleys and arroyos. It was quite a beautiful evening. We had a simple supper, and I listened to my online course afterwards. About 9:40, we piled into the car to find our room, unpack and get some rest. We drove up and up a dark, bumpy road and came to a stop in front of—nothing. There was a steep (more than 60 degrees) hill, partly covered in grass, and a cement block wall on the right. Magdalena was headed straight up this hill with a pair of wool blankets in her hands. We followed blindly, stumbling up the bank in near-total darkness. Halfway up the hill (about 40 yards), Magdalena stopped and banged on a corrugated tin gate. Two dogs began barking, rousing all (approximately 20) the neighborhood dogs to imitate them. Magdalena’s sister came out, let us in, and we all climbed the cement stairs to the second floor, where wonder of wonders, we encountered a spacious room including kitchenette, bathroom with shower and a large area for two beds, a TV, a closet and a couple of chairs. Vincent was so happy to see something in the room besides a bed!
Needless to say, we toppled into sleep from the cliff of exhaustion. My thoughts on this day were centered on gratitude—gratitude for our work, for Alberth and Magdalena’s making it through such a long ordeal—and awe. Our new hosts are people of such rock-solid faith, keeping their sense of humor through all kinds of setbacks and focusing on what they can do to make life better, not only for themselves and their families, but for the 15 women who work for them. They care for them as Jesus taught—as if they were their own family. We may be out of oxygen. We may be out of energy. We may be out of our comfort zone (by a large margin). But we are standing on ground made holy by the tears and sacrifice and faith of Alberth and Magdalena.
Monday, February 16, 2015
Monday, February 16 Redefining Success
We got up very late this morning--9:30! Not surprising for me, and Vincent had spent a good part of last evening playing basketball with the Flores family (while I devoted hours of painstakingly evacuating every part of my food processing plant), so he was very tired, too.
Today has been one of typing up loose ends, literally. We finished our report for Minga for this week (and the second half of last week), tying together the many parts of our interview(s) with Juanita and Andrés, and now Vincent has gone to bed and I am pulling together the last bits of our blog. Another beautiful, sunny and pleasantly cool day here. Juanita and I made an "ensalada" for lunch today. I have never had a part hot, part cold salad before. My contribution was to chop carrots, green and red peppers, cilantro, broccoli, celery, Bermuda onion (called cebolla colorada here) and other vegetables. Juanita cooked the carrots, peas (fresh ones!), broccoli, soaked the peppers, cilantro and onion in lime juice and added salt, white vinegar and avocado oil (yum!) to the mix and tossed it. It was delicious. She had made a soup especially for my poor, violated stomach, with rice and potatoes and a tiny bit of cilantro, which was very soothing, so I dared take two bites of the salad. It was really, really tasty.
Afterwards, we worked some more on our reports, and Juanita helped Emily with her homework. At four, we four adults drove to the shop at Mitad del Mundo and wound up our series of interviews asking questions which covered some of the gaps in their story. We noted how difficult it is with a natural product like tagua (which is a seed hardened to the consistency of wood) to achieve any kind of uniformity. The pink tube beads, especially, did not match the light pink interstitial beads. They had been bought at different times and contrasted too much. Rosita had been putting them together with white elastic as well, and black works better, as it doesn't show dirt as much. She grumbled (cheerfully) about having to redo them and made jokes about how she just wanted to go home and forget about her day. The place was packed with tourists, and Juanita and Andrés were kept pretty busy engraving names on tagua plaque bracelets for them. (At $1 each, it was a steal!)
While we were asking questions of the Flores, we watched Juanita making some changes to some of the samples we saw two weeks ago. It was amazing to see how much improvement there was. I am hoping they will sell very, very well for them and be new products they can be proud of.
Everyone was in a cheerful, relaxed mood, and we wound up the evening with a merienda (or what Juanita calls a cafecito) of tea, bread and peach marmalade. For the past five hours, we've been processing the experiences and conversations of this week. I am so grateful to feel better from my purgation!
One thing is crystal clear to me--health is by far the greatest possession one can have, and when it is lost, it doesn't matter how many other things I have, all I can think of is the suffering. NOTHING else registers. Juanita said a few days ago that every order she finishes is a success. Every item she sells is a success, and that it's important to celebrate all the successes, no matter how small, because it could so easily be otherwise. For me, every day I am healthy is a reason to celebrate with much gratitude. It's easy to forget how great it is to feel well. I vow afresh to remember as often as I can. I am thinking every day about what real wealth is--not what the media say, but being at peace, having meaningful work to do, having loving people around me, being able to touch and taste and smell and see and hear the sounds of joyfully living things. This is living life to the full. I am filled with gratitude and awe for the way Andrés and Juanita have taught me--again--the goodness of being alive.
Today has been one of typing up loose ends, literally. We finished our report for Minga for this week (and the second half of last week), tying together the many parts of our interview(s) with Juanita and Andrés, and now Vincent has gone to bed and I am pulling together the last bits of our blog. Another beautiful, sunny and pleasantly cool day here. Juanita and I made an "ensalada" for lunch today. I have never had a part hot, part cold salad before. My contribution was to chop carrots, green and red peppers, cilantro, broccoli, celery, Bermuda onion (called cebolla colorada here) and other vegetables. Juanita cooked the carrots, peas (fresh ones!), broccoli, soaked the peppers, cilantro and onion in lime juice and added salt, white vinegar and avocado oil (yum!) to the mix and tossed it. It was delicious. She had made a soup especially for my poor, violated stomach, with rice and potatoes and a tiny bit of cilantro, which was very soothing, so I dared take two bites of the salad. It was really, really tasty.
Afterwards, we worked some more on our reports, and Juanita helped Emily with her homework. At four, we four adults drove to the shop at Mitad del Mundo and wound up our series of interviews asking questions which covered some of the gaps in their story. We noted how difficult it is with a natural product like tagua (which is a seed hardened to the consistency of wood) to achieve any kind of uniformity. The pink tube beads, especially, did not match the light pink interstitial beads. They had been bought at different times and contrasted too much. Rosita had been putting them together with white elastic as well, and black works better, as it doesn't show dirt as much. She grumbled (cheerfully) about having to redo them and made jokes about how she just wanted to go home and forget about her day. The place was packed with tourists, and Juanita and Andrés were kept pretty busy engraving names on tagua plaque bracelets for them. (At $1 each, it was a steal!)
While we were asking questions of the Flores, we watched Juanita making some changes to some of the samples we saw two weeks ago. It was amazing to see how much improvement there was. I am hoping they will sell very, very well for them and be new products they can be proud of.
Everyone was in a cheerful, relaxed mood, and we wound up the evening with a merienda (or what Juanita calls a cafecito) of tea, bread and peach marmalade. For the past five hours, we've been processing the experiences and conversations of this week. I am so grateful to feel better from my purgation!
One thing is crystal clear to me--health is by far the greatest possession one can have, and when it is lost, it doesn't matter how many other things I have, all I can think of is the suffering. NOTHING else registers. Juanita said a few days ago that every order she finishes is a success. Every item she sells is a success, and that it's important to celebrate all the successes, no matter how small, because it could so easily be otherwise. For me, every day I am healthy is a reason to celebrate with much gratitude. It's easy to forget how great it is to feel well. I vow afresh to remember as often as I can. I am thinking every day about what real wealth is--not what the media say, but being at peace, having meaningful work to do, having loving people around me, being able to touch and taste and smell and see and hear the sounds of joyfully living things. This is living life to the full. I am filled with gratitude and awe for the way Andrés and Juanita have taught me--again--the goodness of being alive.
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Welcome to Carnaval in Mitad del Mundo--the middle of the world! We awoke late on this Sunday morning after our long trip to and from Paradise yesterday. Two young women from Germany arrived yesterday evening, Birgit and Martina, and we chatted with them over breakfast about their adventures. Birgit has been in Ecuador many times before and speaks fluent Spanish (and English!) Martina is better in English than Spanish right now. It was an interesting cross-lingual experience (no, we did not commingle tongues, just languages). I told Birgit I dared not try to use my college German for fear of getting it permanently tangled with Spanish. We turned the jump rope for the kids a few times and then went upstairs to start working on our reports for Minga. I heard band music outside.
Curious, I stuck my head out the window and saw the most fantastic parade going by just up the street--huge puppets and arches of balloons, bands playing, dancers whirling. We had to go investigate. This turned out to be the Carnaval celebration for the city. Colorful, energetic and noisy! In 2000, when I was here for the first time during Carnaval, people were getting doused with water all over the place. I was told then that the whole country takes off work to celebrate the last days before the beginning of Lent by drenching each other, or in drier parts, dumping flour all over each other's heads, and in some places, eggs. Yechhh! Apparently, this year, aerosol cans of foam are de rigueur. Both parade participants and spectators were thus armed with different sizes of cans. It was a hot mess! Everyone laughed, though, and continued to douse each other with colored foam. I wasn't too pleased when I returned home to discover that my new embroidered white blouse was stained, but it washed out...
The parade participants were from all over the area, including a group of three who were representing an indigenous group whose antecedents here date back to before the Conquistadores. Each ethnic group, particularly the more indigenous ones, are struggling hard to retain language, customs and culture in the face of the tremendous onslaught of Madison Avenue and modern media. One group had decorated their float with all sorts of plants, fruits and flowers from the jungle--their sign read that they were attacking deforestation by replanting in various areas. Another wore costumes with masks of white faces with curlicued mustaches. Many of them danced in the most colorful garb as some people in the crowd (including myself, because what I really wanted to do was join in the dancing) clapped along. After about an hour or so, the parade ended, we all piled into the car and went to lunch. For me, this was the beginning of the end of the day. We did not hear the name of the juice they served when the waiter came out to say what was for lunch. You guessed it: it turned out to be tomate de arbol. Not knowing this, I drank it, although it didn't seem to sit very well with me. I guess my memory is wayyy too short. We walked about the fair some more, visiting various tents which were set up to display (and sell) various food products, flowers and other things from the region. We learned some fascinating things, including that avocados are thought to be good to prevent Alzheimer's, and jicama to ward off diseases of the prostate! Who knew? Jicama tastes pretty good raw, too.
Tired and happy, we walked home and lay down for a nap. I awoke sicker than Harry's dog. The next 16 hours or so were spent running back and forth from bed to bathroom and back. Oooohhhh, then I remembered and asked Juanita what the juice had been. She confirmed my fears, it was indeed tomate de arbol. Juanita asked if I had had that in 2011 when we were here. I remembered one day I had had to spend in the hotel sick after drinking some unfamiliar juice in a cafe. I suspect, though I cannot be sure, it was my nemesis, t.d.a. Now if I see an orange colored juice, I will ASK, no matter what.
I can say no more about this day, except that the first part of it was fun, and the second, hell. Maybe there is some kind of lesson in that, but I have to go to the bathroom now and don't have time to think about it.
Curious, I stuck my head out the window and saw the most fantastic parade going by just up the street--huge puppets and arches of balloons, bands playing, dancers whirling. We had to go investigate. This turned out to be the Carnaval celebration for the city. Colorful, energetic and noisy! In 2000, when I was here for the first time during Carnaval, people were getting doused with water all over the place. I was told then that the whole country takes off work to celebrate the last days before the beginning of Lent by drenching each other, or in drier parts, dumping flour all over each other's heads, and in some places, eggs. Yechhh! Apparently, this year, aerosol cans of foam are de rigueur. Both parade participants and spectators were thus armed with different sizes of cans. It was a hot mess! Everyone laughed, though, and continued to douse each other with colored foam. I wasn't too pleased when I returned home to discover that my new embroidered white blouse was stained, but it washed out...
The parade participants were from all over the area, including a group of three who were representing an indigenous group whose antecedents here date back to before the Conquistadores. Each ethnic group, particularly the more indigenous ones, are struggling hard to retain language, customs and culture in the face of the tremendous onslaught of Madison Avenue and modern media. One group had decorated their float with all sorts of plants, fruits and flowers from the jungle--their sign read that they were attacking deforestation by replanting in various areas. Another wore costumes with masks of white faces with curlicued mustaches. Many of them danced in the most colorful garb as some people in the crowd (including myself, because what I really wanted to do was join in the dancing) clapped along. After about an hour or so, the parade ended, we all piled into the car and went to lunch. For me, this was the beginning of the end of the day. We did not hear the name of the juice they served when the waiter came out to say what was for lunch. You guessed it: it turned out to be tomate de arbol. Not knowing this, I drank it, although it didn't seem to sit very well with me. I guess my memory is wayyy too short. We walked about the fair some more, visiting various tents which were set up to display (and sell) various food products, flowers and other things from the region. We learned some fascinating things, including that avocados are thought to be good to prevent Alzheimer's, and jicama to ward off diseases of the prostate! Who knew? Jicama tastes pretty good raw, too.
Tired and happy, we walked home and lay down for a nap. I awoke sicker than Harry's dog. The next 16 hours or so were spent running back and forth from bed to bathroom and back. Oooohhhh, then I remembered and asked Juanita what the juice had been. She confirmed my fears, it was indeed tomate de arbol. Juanita asked if I had had that in 2011 when we were here. I remembered one day I had had to spend in the hotel sick after drinking some unfamiliar juice in a cafe. I suspect, though I cannot be sure, it was my nemesis, t.d.a. Now if I see an orange colored juice, I will ASK, no matter what.
I can say no more about this day, except that the first part of it was fun, and the second, hell. Maybe there is some kind of lesson in that, but I have to go to the bathroom now and don't have time to think about it.
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Saturday, February 14 A Glimpse of Paradise
My first sight this morning was my sweetheart's smiling face. The first words were, "Happy Valentine's Day." I have to say it was an adjustment. Even though Valentine's Day is celebrated here, I felt a little bit of culture shock. All my associations with this day are planted firmly in the U.S., yet here we are in a different world, saying familiar things. The kaleidoscope seems to be slipping into yet another view. It's a little like being inside a washing machine, looking out.
When we came down for breakfast to a smiling Juanita, at the sight of our laptops, she said, "No work today! We are going to Paraiso." After filling us with tea, bread and fried plátanos madura (green plantains), we began the search for ropes for the hammocks. We are going to the cloud forest! I took down the clothesline and found some more rope in the storeroom. Juanita's best friend is going too, with her two children. With a searching look, Juanita asked Vincent, "Do you drive?" Her friend had a bad headache and was not wanting to.
While we waited for her friend to arrive, an excited Emily wanted to jump rope, so we turned for her and Mateo. Vincent and Juanita jumped, too. We were all fairly bouncing with excitement. Vincent especially had cabin fever. The drive took about 45 minutes to an hour up (and up and UP) a winding two-lane highway. I cannot emphasize enough how high it was. I am used to mountain driving, and going around a curve looking down into a ravine full of trees. But this was ten times that. I kept looking down on the top of 150-200 foot trees which were only half-way down the slope--it just kept going! It wasn't frightening because the turns were not really sharp, just numerous, and there was plenty of shoulder. Simple astonishment overwhelmed me in waves of awe.
When we arrived, we were welcomed by a sign that said, "Paraíso del Pescador," fisherman's paradise. I thought of my father, how much he would have loved this. The kids excitedly rented poles, received blobs of "masa" (bread dough) and scampered down to the edge of the lake. In a more leisurely fashion, the adults examined the mass of flowers on display (hydrangea, dahlia, New Guinea impatiens, rose, canna, bougainvillea and some we couldn't name) at the entrance.
As if they had been cued, the fish began jumping onto the kids' hooks, and before we knew it, there were eight fat trout in the bucket. I couldn't help but feel sorry for the poor things. Suffocation seems like a horrible way to die. An employee delivered the coup de grace, which rendered them more still, but not completely devoid of life. Each of the four kids posed for a picture holding a (still damply wiggling) trout, and we headed up the hill to an outdoor restaurant, whose employees cleaned the fish and cooked them to our order, adding fresh tomato, onion and lime, rice and patacones--five of us for $13. Thirty minutes, they said, so Juanita and I went back down the hill to where the children were playing in the rocks at a very dangerous spot in the rapids. They were directed firmly by their mothers to a more placid stretch of the river, and Vincent, Juanita, Andrés and I tried out the hammocks. Juanita said they try to get out into the natural environment at least once a week. It strengthens the soul for the work ahead.
Thirty minutes later, we climbed back up the hill to sit down to the tastiest fish I have ever put into my mouth. Thoroughly stuffed, Vincent and Andrés retreated to the hammocks, the kids to the river, and Juanita, her friend and I trekked up the steps to the observation tower. Oh my, the views! All afternoon, the clouds had been winding around the tops of the trees, and now droplets of fog spattered our faces. By this time, we were in the clouds themselves. Several mountains arranged themselves in the distance like the teeth of a comb. We could see from the tower 500 feet down to the hatcheries and feeding ponds where they grow the fry and from which the lake is stocked. Once again, my father and the trout he raised in the rocky desert around Beaumont, CA, came to mind. The runs were neat and clean, just the way he kept his. Worlds apart, but he would have loved this, and I felt his imprint on my being like a deep thumbprint. Down we came, feeling less stuffed, and Juanita's friend passed around tamarind and maracuyá lollipops as we all climbed into the cars and headed home.
Only a few yards from the parking lot, Andrés stopped the car, Juanita climbed out and stretched way up toward some overhanging branches and returned with a fistful of mora, or black raspberries. We drove back down the mountain then, in a dreamy silence, punctuated only by a few gasps as other drivers took desperate chances to pass a slow van with bunches of plantains on top, a bus and other slow travelers.
Today was like inhabiting a dream. I could observe all around me, even my thoughts as they slipped by in the stream like the trout, elusive, mysterious, diaphanous as clouds. It seemed to me that each conscious moment was stitched together to the next, the tiny gaps in between simply a part of the slide show, nothing really missing, only my awareness slipping in and out of gear. This was restful, and without stress. I wish I could live like this every day. Perhaps I can. Perhaps I am learning how.
When we came down for breakfast to a smiling Juanita, at the sight of our laptops, she said, "No work today! We are going to Paraiso." After filling us with tea, bread and fried plátanos madura (green plantains), we began the search for ropes for the hammocks. We are going to the cloud forest! I took down the clothesline and found some more rope in the storeroom. Juanita's best friend is going too, with her two children. With a searching look, Juanita asked Vincent, "Do you drive?" Her friend had a bad headache and was not wanting to.
While we waited for her friend to arrive, an excited Emily wanted to jump rope, so we turned for her and Mateo. Vincent and Juanita jumped, too. We were all fairly bouncing with excitement. Vincent especially had cabin fever. The drive took about 45 minutes to an hour up (and up and UP) a winding two-lane highway. I cannot emphasize enough how high it was. I am used to mountain driving, and going around a curve looking down into a ravine full of trees. But this was ten times that. I kept looking down on the top of 150-200 foot trees which were only half-way down the slope--it just kept going! It wasn't frightening because the turns were not really sharp, just numerous, and there was plenty of shoulder. Simple astonishment overwhelmed me in waves of awe.
When we arrived, we were welcomed by a sign that said, "Paraíso del Pescador," fisherman's paradise. I thought of my father, how much he would have loved this. The kids excitedly rented poles, received blobs of "masa" (bread dough) and scampered down to the edge of the lake. In a more leisurely fashion, the adults examined the mass of flowers on display (hydrangea, dahlia, New Guinea impatiens, rose, canna, bougainvillea and some we couldn't name) at the entrance.
As if they had been cued, the fish began jumping onto the kids' hooks, and before we knew it, there were eight fat trout in the bucket. I couldn't help but feel sorry for the poor things. Suffocation seems like a horrible way to die. An employee delivered the coup de grace, which rendered them more still, but not completely devoid of life. Each of the four kids posed for a picture holding a (still damply wiggling) trout, and we headed up the hill to an outdoor restaurant, whose employees cleaned the fish and cooked them to our order, adding fresh tomato, onion and lime, rice and patacones--five of us for $13. Thirty minutes, they said, so Juanita and I went back down the hill to where the children were playing in the rocks at a very dangerous spot in the rapids. They were directed firmly by their mothers to a more placid stretch of the river, and Vincent, Juanita, Andrés and I tried out the hammocks. Juanita said they try to get out into the natural environment at least once a week. It strengthens the soul for the work ahead.
Thirty minutes later, we climbed back up the hill to sit down to the tastiest fish I have ever put into my mouth. Thoroughly stuffed, Vincent and Andrés retreated to the hammocks, the kids to the river, and Juanita, her friend and I trekked up the steps to the observation tower. Oh my, the views! All afternoon, the clouds had been winding around the tops of the trees, and now droplets of fog spattered our faces. By this time, we were in the clouds themselves. Several mountains arranged themselves in the distance like the teeth of a comb. We could see from the tower 500 feet down to the hatcheries and feeding ponds where they grow the fry and from which the lake is stocked. Once again, my father and the trout he raised in the rocky desert around Beaumont, CA, came to mind. The runs were neat and clean, just the way he kept his. Worlds apart, but he would have loved this, and I felt his imprint on my being like a deep thumbprint. Down we came, feeling less stuffed, and Juanita's friend passed around tamarind and maracuyá lollipops as we all climbed into the cars and headed home.
Only a few yards from the parking lot, Andrés stopped the car, Juanita climbed out and stretched way up toward some overhanging branches and returned with a fistful of mora, or black raspberries. We drove back down the mountain then, in a dreamy silence, punctuated only by a few gasps as other drivers took desperate chances to pass a slow van with bunches of plantains on top, a bus and other slow travelers.
Today was like inhabiting a dream. I could observe all around me, even my thoughts as they slipped by in the stream like the trout, elusive, mysterious, diaphanous as clouds. It seemed to me that each conscious moment was stitched together to the next, the tiny gaps in between simply a part of the slide show, nothing really missing, only my awareness slipping in and out of gear. This was restful, and without stress. I wish I could live like this every day. Perhaps I can. Perhaps I am learning how.
Friday, February 13, 2015
Friday the 13th of February Bouquets of Friendship
We got up early this morning (5 a.m.) to drive to Quito to visit the flower market to try to order flowers for Juanita's niece' wedding next weekend. The market is a large open square of blacktop which is surrounded by large trucks around the edge, with their tailgates facing the open square. Vincent took a lot of photos and counted more than 30 vendors there. I was dying of curiosity to know how things are run at this market. It seems to be a city project, as there is a manager of the whole market, and each vendor wears a red vest that has the name of the market on it and a badge. Our visit was mostly unsuccessful, as the bride's chosen colors are a blue-purple only found in nature in statice and asters, plus white. We did see some dyed roses, but the vendors said there was no way they could guarantee those would be there next week. So I told Juanita how I would do it, and she agreed that that would probably work best. When I suggested the alternative of dying the roses herself, she said, no, she liked the first idea better. Why complicate her life, was her question. Why indeed? I wish I had thought of that question more often myself.
Afterwards, we drove to Camari's office. It is another fair trade group which Andrés jokingly called, "the competition." The offices were extremely nice inside, the place was swarming with employees, each of whom greeted us (I could swear some of them, more than once), and each other, with tremendous warmth and friendliness. Juanita's interview lasted about half an hour and happily, resulted in an order for samples. When that business was concluded, we visited Camari's shop downstairs, which had an amazing array of foods, especially vegetarian and organic things, and also the crafts they export to other countries. We asked Andrés to show us some of the things he and Juanita make for Camari, and he did. We are very glad they have more than one outlet.
We drove then to Sadecom to deliver the products for shipment later this month. All went well until the end, when we realized that one of the bags of product had been left at home! Here is one answer why things that were on the order and on the list for the shipment don't actually arrive (it happens sometimes, and no one could figure out why). Very important when you're driving an hour into Quito to remember everything you're supposed to bring.
Then we drove to a shop similar to a Home Depot and bought three light switches for the new part of the house and I promised Juanita I would show her how to use a paring knife for arranging flowers rather than gardener's shears, which is more tiring. Our final stop was a home supply place, where Andrés bought a few more tiles to finish the red bathroom, then we drove the hour back home. I want to try to describe the way things are done here. On every corner is someone selling fruit. On every other corner is someone selling textiles, housewares, jewelry, kids' clothes, anything you can conceive of is brought to the sidewalk and hawked either in the street or on the sidewalk or both. It's hard to see how driving is even possible. There are frequent contretemps, but no one blows his horn, and people just slam on their brakes and wait for the other car or bus or taxi to get out of the way. Every time we've been out on a major highway between towns, we've seen an accident, and this morning was no exception--a four-car pileup apparently involving the car in front stopping suddenly.
By the time we returned, shortly before noon, Vincent had shot his wad, in terms of energy, and Juanita made him a bowl of soup and rice with fresh garlic (which everyone in the world knows is good for killing all kinds of bugs.) He stayed home while we picked up the kids and went to the local restaurant for lunch. My stomach is not in really good shape, either, so I had only the soup and rice. When we came back, everyone was exhausted, even the kids, so we all had an hour nap.
We were off again then to Quito and an extremely large mall, where I think Andrés was trying to find a bank that was open. When I say large, I mean really, really large. All the banks we saw were thronged with lines and lines of people. So after walking up and down the mall twice (exhausting), we gave up and continued on. Because it is the day before Valentine's Day, the mall was filled with displays of flowers. We had to stop and admire each one, because Juanita and I are both flower nuts. Then we needed to take pictures of everyone at each one, really needed to.
From there, Andrés dropped Juanita and me off to buy sheets for the new bed, different size rings for the new jewelry piece they are introducing and a mysterious errand to a place where there was a cashier in a cage and Juanita exchanged five single dollar coins for a piece of paper. I feel at times as if I am simply bobbing along in the wake of all that passes and after the occasional swamping, I find a quiet space to wonder what is going on.
At last, we reached Juanita's sister's house, where I was swallowed up by her sister Olgita, parked on her couch and interviewed in the typical kindly, Ecuadorean fashion, shown the photos from the last wedding two years ago, and surreptitiously kicked and pinched by the two-year-old granddaughter, who took an immediate dislike to me, I don't know why. As the waves of family washed back and forth through this room, Olgita's husband returned home from work and talked with Andrés for a while. When Andrés was summoned back to the wedding flower planning, Papi, as the granddaughter, Sophie, called him, took up the host's duties and asked me about where things were in the U.S. He knew it was between two oceans, Canada and Panama. So I filled in a few missing points for him. There were a LOT of people in this house, kids and adults, grandparents, parents, cousins, sisters, boyfriends. I sat there for a while by myself when the hosts answered the phone, and I have to say I was grateful for the time out. Vincent says he really misses hearing English spoken, and although I do not have the same feeling, I do need to pause for breath from time to time and try to sort it all out--who is who and what is happening.
We drove home, arriving about 8, found Vincent awake and started making bread and tea for supper. Vincent related that the electricity had been out about two hours in the afternoon in the whole neighborhood. I've no idea how frequent this occurrence may be, but Juanita didn't seem at all surprised. In terms of length and busyness, this rivals any day we spent with Chris! Juanita gave me another hug, again making me glad we have come.
I have only to keep my eyes and my heart open, and I believe eventually I will figure out what's going on. Certainly this country seems to open its arms to us.
Afterwards, we drove to Camari's office. It is another fair trade group which Andrés jokingly called, "the competition." The offices were extremely nice inside, the place was swarming with employees, each of whom greeted us (I could swear some of them, more than once), and each other, with tremendous warmth and friendliness. Juanita's interview lasted about half an hour and happily, resulted in an order for samples. When that business was concluded, we visited Camari's shop downstairs, which had an amazing array of foods, especially vegetarian and organic things, and also the crafts they export to other countries. We asked Andrés to show us some of the things he and Juanita make for Camari, and he did. We are very glad they have more than one outlet.
We drove then to Sadecom to deliver the products for shipment later this month. All went well until the end, when we realized that one of the bags of product had been left at home! Here is one answer why things that were on the order and on the list for the shipment don't actually arrive (it happens sometimes, and no one could figure out why). Very important when you're driving an hour into Quito to remember everything you're supposed to bring.
Then we drove to a shop similar to a Home Depot and bought three light switches for the new part of the house and I promised Juanita I would show her how to use a paring knife for arranging flowers rather than gardener's shears, which is more tiring. Our final stop was a home supply place, where Andrés bought a few more tiles to finish the red bathroom, then we drove the hour back home. I want to try to describe the way things are done here. On every corner is someone selling fruit. On every other corner is someone selling textiles, housewares, jewelry, kids' clothes, anything you can conceive of is brought to the sidewalk and hawked either in the street or on the sidewalk or both. It's hard to see how driving is even possible. There are frequent contretemps, but no one blows his horn, and people just slam on their brakes and wait for the other car or bus or taxi to get out of the way. Every time we've been out on a major highway between towns, we've seen an accident, and this morning was no exception--a four-car pileup apparently involving the car in front stopping suddenly.
By the time we returned, shortly before noon, Vincent had shot his wad, in terms of energy, and Juanita made him a bowl of soup and rice with fresh garlic (which everyone in the world knows is good for killing all kinds of bugs.) He stayed home while we picked up the kids and went to the local restaurant for lunch. My stomach is not in really good shape, either, so I had only the soup and rice. When we came back, everyone was exhausted, even the kids, so we all had an hour nap.
We were off again then to Quito and an extremely large mall, where I think Andrés was trying to find a bank that was open. When I say large, I mean really, really large. All the banks we saw were thronged with lines and lines of people. So after walking up and down the mall twice (exhausting), we gave up and continued on. Because it is the day before Valentine's Day, the mall was filled with displays of flowers. We had to stop and admire each one, because Juanita and I are both flower nuts. Then we needed to take pictures of everyone at each one, really needed to.
From there, Andrés dropped Juanita and me off to buy sheets for the new bed, different size rings for the new jewelry piece they are introducing and a mysterious errand to a place where there was a cashier in a cage and Juanita exchanged five single dollar coins for a piece of paper. I feel at times as if I am simply bobbing along in the wake of all that passes and after the occasional swamping, I find a quiet space to wonder what is going on.
At last, we reached Juanita's sister's house, where I was swallowed up by her sister Olgita, parked on her couch and interviewed in the typical kindly, Ecuadorean fashion, shown the photos from the last wedding two years ago, and surreptitiously kicked and pinched by the two-year-old granddaughter, who took an immediate dislike to me, I don't know why. As the waves of family washed back and forth through this room, Olgita's husband returned home from work and talked with Andrés for a while. When Andrés was summoned back to the wedding flower planning, Papi, as the granddaughter, Sophie, called him, took up the host's duties and asked me about where things were in the U.S. He knew it was between two oceans, Canada and Panama. So I filled in a few missing points for him. There were a LOT of people in this house, kids and adults, grandparents, parents, cousins, sisters, boyfriends. I sat there for a while by myself when the hosts answered the phone, and I have to say I was grateful for the time out. Vincent says he really misses hearing English spoken, and although I do not have the same feeling, I do need to pause for breath from time to time and try to sort it all out--who is who and what is happening.
We drove home, arriving about 8, found Vincent awake and started making bread and tea for supper. Vincent related that the electricity had been out about two hours in the afternoon in the whole neighborhood. I've no idea how frequent this occurrence may be, but Juanita didn't seem at all surprised. In terms of length and busyness, this rivals any day we spent with Chris! Juanita gave me another hug, again making me glad we have come.
I have only to keep my eyes and my heart open, and I believe eventually I will figure out what's going on. Certainly this country seems to open its arms to us.
Thursday, February 12 Ecuador's Warmth
Rooster serenade at 5, workers' onslaught on the walls at 7, breakfast at 8:30--watermelon, eggs and yucca, tea. This is definitely reversing my pattern of eating fruit and oatmeal about 10:00 am, getting up and writing about 7 or 8. It's all good, as Vincent says. It's good that I am not too much a creature of habit or I would be feeling seriously "woogered," as my grandma used to say, meaning pulled out of shape.
We had a brief Skype conversation with the Minga office in the U.S. and now the sun is shining brilliantly and it's time for us to help put earrings into bags with necklaces. The shipment goes tomorrow, so our help is welcome, I think, making it less of a push for them. At least, I seriously hope so. Megan told us it is 9 degrees in Wisconsin. I try not to feel too guilty for those left behind.
The Flores' house is in the process of being remade. Here they do interesting things. First they build the walls out of cement blocks. Then they chisel long channels alone the side of the wall of cement blocks to make room for the plumbing and electrical conduits! The internal workings of the house look so strange to me, being on the outside of it. This afternoon after we finished the packing of the order, we watched two of the "maestros," as Juanita is calling them, and Andrés carry their new mattress upstairs to the newly completed bedroom across the hall from us. It was quite perilous, as the steps are open to the air and have no railing. Anyone who has ever carried a mattress knows how it gets topheavy and flips sometimes, and that happened a couple of times. They did manage to get themselves and the mattress up the stairs in one piece, for which I was immensely grateful.
Their bedroom was just finished today, and although the boxspring part of their bed is delayed until next week, they mopped the floor and swept out the remaining dust and slept there last night, all four of them. It was a delight to watch them so happy with the new arrangement. Andrés bathroom is completed, a nice cream and brown. Juanita's is red-orange and blue, and quite nice with an amazing shower, but it is not quite finished (shower surround not completed). Andrés asked me which was the nicer bathroom--I was not about to be trapped. I replied, "Whichever one is finished is the nicest to me."
Vincent has been sick all night and now all day. A seriously woogered intestinal tract he has, pobrecito. He just sort of opted out of meals all day, and car trips, too.
We are looking forward to the trip to Quito tomorrow, because not only will we deliver the jewelry the family has made but also visit the flower market early in the morning to choose flowers for Juanita's niece's wedding next week. I am so happy to have met Juanita--she has just welcomed me into her family and into her heart. She gave me a giant hug and called me "amiga." I was deeply touched.
The people we have met have been universally open and friendly, greeting us with a kiss and a handshake, seeming genuinely delighted to meet us, even if they are our host's second cousin thirty times removed. They ask how we are, then ask where we are from. The third question is invariably, "Do you like Ecuador?" The next questions are an exchange of numbers, ages, and genders of children, siblings, city of origin, occupation and lastly, age. That is not at all a tabu subject here. They are relentlessly curious and present in the conversation to a degree I have only found among close friends. They are very patient, waiting for the gringa to finish a sentence, exploding into machine-gun Spanish, then waiting very patiently while I try to repeat back what I heard, so we can both know if I understood. The children seem very respectful to their parents. It's amazing to see! As I watch them together, I understand that family is of primary importance here, followed by the community. There is much more of that here than I generally see in the U.S., and it seems so crucial for everyone to have a sense of belonging where they are. How hard when you don't have that, and how invisible the loss! And how amazing to be included, just because you are present.
We had a brief Skype conversation with the Minga office in the U.S. and now the sun is shining brilliantly and it's time for us to help put earrings into bags with necklaces. The shipment goes tomorrow, so our help is welcome, I think, making it less of a push for them. At least, I seriously hope so. Megan told us it is 9 degrees in Wisconsin. I try not to feel too guilty for those left behind.
The Flores' house is in the process of being remade. Here they do interesting things. First they build the walls out of cement blocks. Then they chisel long channels alone the side of the wall of cement blocks to make room for the plumbing and electrical conduits! The internal workings of the house look so strange to me, being on the outside of it. This afternoon after we finished the packing of the order, we watched two of the "maestros," as Juanita is calling them, and Andrés carry their new mattress upstairs to the newly completed bedroom across the hall from us. It was quite perilous, as the steps are open to the air and have no railing. Anyone who has ever carried a mattress knows how it gets topheavy and flips sometimes, and that happened a couple of times. They did manage to get themselves and the mattress up the stairs in one piece, for which I was immensely grateful.
Their bedroom was just finished today, and although the boxspring part of their bed is delayed until next week, they mopped the floor and swept out the remaining dust and slept there last night, all four of them. It was a delight to watch them so happy with the new arrangement. Andrés bathroom is completed, a nice cream and brown. Juanita's is red-orange and blue, and quite nice with an amazing shower, but it is not quite finished (shower surround not completed). Andrés asked me which was the nicer bathroom--I was not about to be trapped. I replied, "Whichever one is finished is the nicest to me."
Vincent has been sick all night and now all day. A seriously woogered intestinal tract he has, pobrecito. He just sort of opted out of meals all day, and car trips, too.
We are looking forward to the trip to Quito tomorrow, because not only will we deliver the jewelry the family has made but also visit the flower market early in the morning to choose flowers for Juanita's niece's wedding next week. I am so happy to have met Juanita--she has just welcomed me into her family and into her heart. She gave me a giant hug and called me "amiga." I was deeply touched.
The people we have met have been universally open and friendly, greeting us with a kiss and a handshake, seeming genuinely delighted to meet us, even if they are our host's second cousin thirty times removed. They ask how we are, then ask where we are from. The third question is invariably, "Do you like Ecuador?" The next questions are an exchange of numbers, ages, and genders of children, siblings, city of origin, occupation and lastly, age. That is not at all a tabu subject here. They are relentlessly curious and present in the conversation to a degree I have only found among close friends. They are very patient, waiting for the gringa to finish a sentence, exploding into machine-gun Spanish, then waiting very patiently while I try to repeat back what I heard, so we can both know if I understood. The children seem very respectful to their parents. It's amazing to see! As I watch them together, I understand that family is of primary importance here, followed by the community. There is much more of that here than I generally see in the U.S., and it seems so crucial for everyone to have a sense of belonging where they are. How hard when you don't have that, and how invisible the loss! And how amazing to be included, just because you are present.
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Wednesday, February 11, Walking by Faith
When I realized today was the 11th, I thought of Anne--her birthday is today. Happy birthday, my beloved friend!
Our days are falling into a sort of routine--wake up at 5 when the roosters begin crowing. There is a neighborhood rooster who I swear is being strangled every morning. Either that or he was removed from the flock too early, because his cry is nothing like the other roosters.' I feel compelled to laugh at his poor imitation! We work on notes for the previous day (internet not available in our room) or sometimes have prayer together.
Around 8 or 8:30, Juanita makes us a huge breakfast--today's was papaya, fried eggs, and patacones (fried green plantain patties). (Monday, it was pancakes, and when I asked what they were called in Spanish, she replied with a smile, "pancakes." :) Some things don't need translation. We return to our room, cover everything to keep out the dust of construction and collect everyone together to go to the shop at the equatorial monument, help out with the work, ask questions and write answers (after repeating them in my minimal Spanish to see if we got the gist). Andrés is with the children this week, since they are on vacation, so he comes with them to pick us up for lunch, and afterwards returns us to the shop where we work and talk some more, then home where we get a "cafecito," which is a hot drink and a snack, such as chocolate bread, which we had yesterday--yum! Juanita often orders food for the folks working at the shop and brings it back for them. If they have food, they offer to share it with us as well. Very neighborly set-up.
No more trouble with the authorities this morning, and we set to work--I, cutting cords for the 480 pairs of earrings which go with the necklaces we finished yesterday, Vincent studying Spanish. A new person arrived this morning, Rosita, who works several days a week at home for Juanita making jewelry. She is older than the others, and a bit shy, I think. Isabel is there four days a week or so. Andrés stayed with us a while working on various tasks around the shop. He went to pick up the children and took us to lunch. On the menu was beef or "internal organs." I could see Vincent turn pale. Everybody had a good laugh at his reaction. It turned out to be intestines, but we ate the beef! Across from the restaurant is an ice cream shop--the ice cream is made not with cows' milk, but coconut milk. Vincent treated everyone to an ice cream (as he had yesterday) and it was absolutely delicious. Everyone chose the coconut flavor, because it is so yummy.
Juanita brought soup back to Rosita and Isabel, which they enjoyed with some of the patacones she had made for breakfast. (There was a small mountain of them). Another neighbor, Manresa (sp?), enjoyed them very much and kept coming back for more.) About mid-afternoon, another employee of Juanita's arrived to work on the earrings. Her name is Paulina. She has a fifteen year-old son (she married at the age of 19) and is from the countryside--the campo--12th of 14 children. She reminded me so much of my mother. She told jokes in Spanish, teased everyone, and laughed a lot. She had us laughing uncontrollable at times, so much so that Vincent teased them about being "borrachas," drunk. She retorted that he was a sapo, which when I looked it up was a "toad." We all fell off our stools laughing. Both of us tried a piece of the earring assembly which was to poke two ends of a loop of cord through the drilled tagua slices. Well! It looked very easy the way they did it, but it was hard! We each managed to get one or two loops through, but had to turn the ones that were stuck over to Pauli or Juanita to finish. We really grew in appreciation for the work the women do. Wow! just poking a loop through a hole is a whole process in and of itself.
It was time to ask the remaining questions of Juanita--what do you want us to say to our customers. She hesitated a long time, then replied that we should say how important the work is to the lives of the mothers who perform it. She related a fact which I had not known before, which is that her daughter, Emily, has a physical condition which the doctors say is permanent. She gets frequent intestinal infections, and in December had to be hospitalized for it (not the first time.) There is a preventive medicine her doctor prescribed, but it comes from the U.S. and cannot be imported to Ecuador. Government policy. So through her friendship with Chris, she has been able to obtain this medicine which allows her not to have to give Emily so many antibiotics, which is the only treatment actually available in Ecuador. She said that Isabel would not be able to deal with her daughter's severe asthma if she did not have the income and that this was true for many mothers. The money helps with food, clothing, schooling and medicine, so she said simply, "Tell them when they buy something, thank you very much."
The tears came to my eyes when I had understood what she said. What a difficult life! And yet, Juanita is almost always smiling, even when she is very tired. "God is good," she says, and she means it. We brought Paulina home, and Rosita's bags, which were too heavy for her to carry, then as we entered the house, Juanita sparkled at me with the words, "We have an invitation." We bundled everyone into the car (Mateo was feeling better) to visit her friend, who speaks pretty good English and prepares an excellent empanada! Her friend explained to us that although she was a journalist, she preferred to care for her two daughters at home. Her husband also is a writer, and she related how difficult it is now to express your opinion in writing. There is definitely censorship of the press and maltreatment of those who dare to criticize the government. She also spoke of the struggles of the indigenous people to protect the environment, the land, and especially the water, as those are what sustain them. They have been protesting actively against the government, especially over land and water rights, opposing the drilling of more oil wells. She said that non-indigenous people are not very actively protesting, but they ought to be supporting the protests, as the indigenes have it right. She told us about a cooperative in the countryside called Yunguilla which are working cooperatively and ecologically on everything. Maybe we'll get a chance to visit. We had already heard about the Intag valley, which is large and has a lot of support from other countries. Yunguilla is much smaller, and it has no outside support, many fewer people, but the idea is the same: protect the land, purify the water, work together.
She felt that tourism in Ecuador was not on the rise, as the government has stated. As we have heard before in other places, there is a lot of public unhappiness with the expensive Ecuador tourism ad during the Super Bowl (sponsored by the Ecuadorean government). For those millions, they could have built more hotels, more infrastructure to receive all the desired tourists and taught more people to speak English to deal with the influx of gringos. Nevertheless, she is content with her life, even with the restricted income of her not working, enjoys being with her kids and loves her husband. He is a good man, as Juanita says. We did not see him because he often works till midnight.
When we got home, I was able to reach Anne by phone, which was so good for me. What a blessing to be able to stay in touch with friends and family even though far away! I went to sleep thinking about how life unfolds so slowly, day by day. It is not often I have a sense of where it is going. But there are so many wonderful sights, sounds, tastes, smells and relationships along the way. When I am reminded of my mother (as Pauli did so strongly) and my father, both of whom are in the next world, I just feel so grateful for all the kind and loving people I have met and for their blessing. We truly do not travel this road alone, as the spirit of Love accompanies us all the way, even in the dark and unclear times. To all of you who are reading this, thank you for your kindness and friendship. We would not have made it this far without you.
Our days are falling into a sort of routine--wake up at 5 when the roosters begin crowing. There is a neighborhood rooster who I swear is being strangled every morning. Either that or he was removed from the flock too early, because his cry is nothing like the other roosters.' I feel compelled to laugh at his poor imitation! We work on notes for the previous day (internet not available in our room) or sometimes have prayer together.
Around 8 or 8:30, Juanita makes us a huge breakfast--today's was papaya, fried eggs, and patacones (fried green plantain patties). (Monday, it was pancakes, and when I asked what they were called in Spanish, she replied with a smile, "pancakes." :) Some things don't need translation. We return to our room, cover everything to keep out the dust of construction and collect everyone together to go to the shop at the equatorial monument, help out with the work, ask questions and write answers (after repeating them in my minimal Spanish to see if we got the gist). Andrés is with the children this week, since they are on vacation, so he comes with them to pick us up for lunch, and afterwards returns us to the shop where we work and talk some more, then home where we get a "cafecito," which is a hot drink and a snack, such as chocolate bread, which we had yesterday--yum! Juanita often orders food for the folks working at the shop and brings it back for them. If they have food, they offer to share it with us as well. Very neighborly set-up.
No more trouble with the authorities this morning, and we set to work--I, cutting cords for the 480 pairs of earrings which go with the necklaces we finished yesterday, Vincent studying Spanish. A new person arrived this morning, Rosita, who works several days a week at home for Juanita making jewelry. She is older than the others, and a bit shy, I think. Isabel is there four days a week or so. Andrés stayed with us a while working on various tasks around the shop. He went to pick up the children and took us to lunch. On the menu was beef or "internal organs." I could see Vincent turn pale. Everybody had a good laugh at his reaction. It turned out to be intestines, but we ate the beef! Across from the restaurant is an ice cream shop--the ice cream is made not with cows' milk, but coconut milk. Vincent treated everyone to an ice cream (as he had yesterday) and it was absolutely delicious. Everyone chose the coconut flavor, because it is so yummy.
Juanita brought soup back to Rosita and Isabel, which they enjoyed with some of the patacones she had made for breakfast. (There was a small mountain of them). Another neighbor, Manresa (sp?), enjoyed them very much and kept coming back for more.) About mid-afternoon, another employee of Juanita's arrived to work on the earrings. Her name is Paulina. She has a fifteen year-old son (she married at the age of 19) and is from the countryside--the campo--12th of 14 children. She reminded me so much of my mother. She told jokes in Spanish, teased everyone, and laughed a lot. She had us laughing uncontrollable at times, so much so that Vincent teased them about being "borrachas," drunk. She retorted that he was a sapo, which when I looked it up was a "toad." We all fell off our stools laughing. Both of us tried a piece of the earring assembly which was to poke two ends of a loop of cord through the drilled tagua slices. Well! It looked very easy the way they did it, but it was hard! We each managed to get one or two loops through, but had to turn the ones that were stuck over to Pauli or Juanita to finish. We really grew in appreciation for the work the women do. Wow! just poking a loop through a hole is a whole process in and of itself.
It was time to ask the remaining questions of Juanita--what do you want us to say to our customers. She hesitated a long time, then replied that we should say how important the work is to the lives of the mothers who perform it. She related a fact which I had not known before, which is that her daughter, Emily, has a physical condition which the doctors say is permanent. She gets frequent intestinal infections, and in December had to be hospitalized for it (not the first time.) There is a preventive medicine her doctor prescribed, but it comes from the U.S. and cannot be imported to Ecuador. Government policy. So through her friendship with Chris, she has been able to obtain this medicine which allows her not to have to give Emily so many antibiotics, which is the only treatment actually available in Ecuador. She said that Isabel would not be able to deal with her daughter's severe asthma if she did not have the income and that this was true for many mothers. The money helps with food, clothing, schooling and medicine, so she said simply, "Tell them when they buy something, thank you very much."
The tears came to my eyes when I had understood what she said. What a difficult life! And yet, Juanita is almost always smiling, even when she is very tired. "God is good," she says, and she means it. We brought Paulina home, and Rosita's bags, which were too heavy for her to carry, then as we entered the house, Juanita sparkled at me with the words, "We have an invitation." We bundled everyone into the car (Mateo was feeling better) to visit her friend, who speaks pretty good English and prepares an excellent empanada! Her friend explained to us that although she was a journalist, she preferred to care for her two daughters at home. Her husband also is a writer, and she related how difficult it is now to express your opinion in writing. There is definitely censorship of the press and maltreatment of those who dare to criticize the government. She also spoke of the struggles of the indigenous people to protect the environment, the land, and especially the water, as those are what sustain them. They have been protesting actively against the government, especially over land and water rights, opposing the drilling of more oil wells. She said that non-indigenous people are not very actively protesting, but they ought to be supporting the protests, as the indigenes have it right. She told us about a cooperative in the countryside called Yunguilla which are working cooperatively and ecologically on everything. Maybe we'll get a chance to visit. We had already heard about the Intag valley, which is large and has a lot of support from other countries. Yunguilla is much smaller, and it has no outside support, many fewer people, but the idea is the same: protect the land, purify the water, work together.
She felt that tourism in Ecuador was not on the rise, as the government has stated. As we have heard before in other places, there is a lot of public unhappiness with the expensive Ecuador tourism ad during the Super Bowl (sponsored by the Ecuadorean government). For those millions, they could have built more hotels, more infrastructure to receive all the desired tourists and taught more people to speak English to deal with the influx of gringos. Nevertheless, she is content with her life, even with the restricted income of her not working, enjoys being with her kids and loves her husband. He is a good man, as Juanita says. We did not see him because he often works till midnight.
When we got home, I was able to reach Anne by phone, which was so good for me. What a blessing to be able to stay in touch with friends and family even though far away! I went to sleep thinking about how life unfolds so slowly, day by day. It is not often I have a sense of where it is going. But there are so many wonderful sights, sounds, tastes, smells and relationships along the way. When I am reminded of my mother (as Pauli did so strongly) and my father, both of whom are in the next world, I just feel so grateful for all the kind and loving people I have met and for their blessing. We truly do not travel this road alone, as the spirit of Love accompanies us all the way, even in the dark and unclear times. To all of you who are reading this, thank you for your kindness and friendship. We would not have made it this far without you.
Tuesday, February 10 Strangers in a Lovely Land
Up early this morning to go to work with Juanita at the shop. Sunday night she was up till 2 a.m. finishing an order for Minga. She seems quite tired this morning. She works so very hard. She has been having severe pain in her heel, the doctor told her it was from stress and being 40 lb. overweight (which she isn’t). She’s been suffering quite a bit from it lately and was worried about what to do. Last night, her niece gave her a massage, which seems to be helping immensely. She said it was almost 100% better, and we both rejoiced. I know what that pain is like having experienced it myself for many years.
She showed me a wedding invitation from her niece, who visited last night with her fiancé, Christian, and several family members. We talked about flowers—it’s something she does for family weddings, and she invited me to go with her to the flower market on Friday morning. That will be fun! She showed me a church she had decorated for another wedding—she is very skilled.
When we arrived at the shop, we had a bit of kerfuffle when the security guards chased us into the parking lot and wanted to know why we gringos were not paying the entrance fee for tourists. I kept hearing the word pasaporte, as more and more park employees with stern looks and badges arrived and departed. We are not allowed to work in Ecuador without a special visa (as is true in the U.S.) I asked if it made a difference if we were volunteers, which seemed to launch another round of visits from authorities frowning and repeating the word pasaporte. Finally, Juanita went to the park office and came back after about half an hour with a signed permission for us to enter the park with her until next Monday. I think everyone felt relieved that they were not forced to be unpleasant to the strangers.
By this time, Yadira and Isabel had arrived and were ready to go to work. Isabella is actually an employee of the Flores family. Yadira works in the shop next door and helps out as a volunteer when business is slow to mitigate the boredom of working all day with few or no customers. They spent the whole day making necklaces (collares). Vincent and I helped, he by packing finished pieces, I by cutting cord for stringing tagua beads. He noted how striking it was, the human passion for measurement. Here we sit at the park denoting the exact location of the middle of the earth, measuring string to the exact length required. Nearby is a museum relating the fact that although Everest is the tallest mountain on earth, measured from the earth’s center, the volcano Chimborazo is taller because of the equatorial bulge. Ironically, that passion for measurement and exactitude does not seem to be universally shared—the wall in our bedroom, for example, is built around a cement column, and one of the columns in the adjoining room covers part of the window.
The style we were making is called “lilypad,” and we had fun later showing Juanita what a waterlily looks like in the Chicago Botanic Garden in summer. We spent most of the day interviewing Juanita, and when Andrés came, we interviewed him, too. Yadira and Isabel chipped in with their views. Yadira is a high school student, and Isabel is the mother of three, two of whom arrived in the afternoon. Isabel’s youngest, Sarita, has asthma and wasn’t feeling tip-top. Isabel worries about her, as the traditional remedies (breathing steam, for example) don’t seem to help her. She needs an inhaler frequently. The extent of Isabel’s concern indicates the seriousness of her daughter’s condition. The work with Juanita helps her to pay for critical medical expenses. We asked her what she liked best about her work, and she replied that she felt really good that the work with tagua saved elephants’ lives and was good for the environment. Juanita answered this same question by saying that she just loves working with tagua and really enjoys telling customers about how good it is as a food when it is fresh and how hard and durable it is after being dried. It just seems marvelous to her—to us, too.
The interview dissolved into laughter when we asked Andrés what he liked best about his work. His immediate reply was, “When the check comes.” After we recovered, he added that he really likes teaching and helping the workers improve their skills and the quality of their products. He is a soft-spoken, patient man. He does all of the administrative work for the business while Juanita designs and manufactures the product by hand and supervises and works with three other women who work both at home and at the shop with her. She was jubilant that the order for 480 necklaces was completed by nightfall.
Mateo had been feeling unwell at lunch and was still under the weather by the time we returned home. We had a nice snack, and I typed up the notes from the interviews until my class (internet) began at 8 p.m., so I sat in the living room/dining room/kitchen/bedroom/office (where the server is) while Andrés, Juanita and Emily went to a meeting at church. Just as they arrived home, Mateo threw up, and it seemed as if he would be better after that, so as the impromptu babysitter, I was relieved.
It was a day of many mixed feelings. I had a small taste of what it is to be a foreigner. Nothing so bad as what immigrants experience in the U.S! I also felt vicarious relief from chronic pain, family pride, admiration for the family’s resilience and cohesion, strain from trying to understand Spanish, relate what I thought had been said and correct my initial understanding. Instead of writing today’s experiences, I fell into bed and slid straight into sleep, exhausted by emotion.
Monday, February 9, 2015
Monday, Feb. 9 Digestion
Monday, Feb. 9
Monday is the day we turn in our report to the U.S. office about what has been happening. After last week's marathon, it took us nearly six hours together to cover half of what we wanted to say! Each of us had remembered some things slightly differently, so that took some work to sort out, too. I am so grateful we are doing this together--it would not be nearly so fruitful if I were alone.
We were so absorbed that we did not realize our host was waiting for us to finish so he could take us and the kids to lunch. Tontos! We went to a nice little cafe which serves lunch only--and has no menu. Andrés ordered three lunches and two medias for the kids. The juice was maracuyá with some kind of interesting green spice in it. Interestingly, I have never had maracuyá anywhere but here, so naturally it wasn't in the dictionary. Turns out it is the fruit of the passion flower. We came back and finished the first half of the report, then went for a nap. My stomach wasn't feeling so calm, but is okay now.
I realize that jamming all these experiences into such a short time is like stuffing my stomach with new foods. I have to stop and take time to digest before ingesting any more.
Some of the learnings:
God has always been faithful, even when I wasn't. I can count on Him always and all ways.
People are so lovely, for the most part. We all have our dark side, but that is because the bright side shines so brilliantly.
Each of us has been sent here at this time and to this place to finish a job together. People have been there for me in the past, are here for me now, and will show up in the future so that we can accomplish what we were sent here to do.
I am not alone, nor have I ever been. I've only been unconscious of those around me at times.
There is always more than one way to do a job. Mine is not necessarily the best and certainly not the only.
When we think we understand, it's best to check for accuracy. So often we don't really understand and get it completely backwards.
There is always time to learn a better way.
I can trust myself to know what to do next, even if I have to seek counsel to find out.
Getting older is fun! There's always a chance to make something better than it's ever been.
Night night!
Sun. Feb. 8 New Beginnings with Juanita and Andrés
Up early today—leaving at 6:45. The night clerk was sleeping in the hallway so that he could check us out. The Hotel Santa Fe in Otavalo, if anyone would like to know, is a very nice one, with friendly and helpful employees. Last night the rain was the heaviest I had experienced in more than forty years. Very impressive! We emerged to washed streets, said our goodbyes to Romel (we will see him again) and set out for the bus station to Quito.
After a brief but intense bargaining session, Chris convinced the driver that he would do better to take all four of us to Quito rather than the bus station (we saved nearly an hour off that travel time). We had an excellent trip, telling Spanish “stupid” jokes and discussing politics with the driver. President Correa seems to be doing excellent things for the country in terms of infrastructure. In four years, his administration has turned the literacy rate on its head. It used to be one of the lowest in South America. It is now one of the highest. How they did it is very ingenious. Every person seeking a university degree was required to find 5 people every year who could not read or write and teach them. If one of his or her students learned, he or she was required to find another student. In that way, the problem was solved very quickly. The new constitution made university studies free, thus another roadblock was removed. The highway system seems to have improved dramatically from 2000 and even 2011. I learned in high school that improving roads has improved the living standards of civilizations from Rome to Britain and more recently, the U.S., Ireland and Ecuador.
Apparently the new government seems to be taxing the middle class and leaving the rich alone, which some say is making the distribution of wealth even more concentrated at the top, but I do not know what is truth and what is hype, even in my own country. With a generally captive press, I do not know how I can find out, either. I must say that it is a relief to me to not be hearing the polemics of the U.S. right and left on a daily basis. Most people seem to agree that the position of the poor in Ecuador is improving under Correa’s administration.
We arrived in Mitad del Mundo (outlying Quito), an hour earlier than expected. Juanita made us breakfast (mote with eggs) and Andrés (our host) drove us to their shop near the monument and the painted yellow line showing where the equator was determined to be by the international scientific team. The shops are nice, traditional Spanish colonial architecture (new). In the center are some museums and a large open space where traditional music and dance are performed. We helped out in sorting beads and bagging necklaces for a while until everyone was hungry, then all of us—Juanita, Andrés, Emily and Mateo, their two children, Vincent and I piled into the car and went to a neighborhood restaurant for lunch. South Evanston residents: it was a bit like Ted’s, on Dodge and Crain. Everyone knew everyone else in this restaurant, where two other families had gathered for Sunday lunch. It was strange to have flies dive-bombing us—I haven’t seen a fly in several months. Anita armed herself with a swatter and single-handedly wiped out a small battalion of them. Maybe it was only a troop. Still, we sang her praises for this skillful feat as it allowed us to eat in peace. Afterward, we stopped at a shop for ice cream treats, where I sampled the first fig ice cream I have ever seen. Yum! The nevlito (a fine mist of snow similar to ice fog) had begun—Andrés said it comes from the lake above in the mountains surrounding the town. It was quite pleasant!
Returning home, we met Chris coming back from worship and got our marching orders from him—what we should look for, what we should encourage, arranging our schedule, etc. He and Vincent went out for a walk, Juanita continued on with making tagua necklaces, and I had a nice chat with Elspeth and Amber via Face Time before they went out to a movie. When Chris and Vincent returned, we discussed samples with Anita and Andrés, said good-bye to Chris and headed for bed. The coming week will be spent with Anita and Andrés learning from them and interviewing them about their work here. We are excited to begin! Chris told us they are taking us to Manabí, which now we are excited about, too.
Chris told us the theme of worship today was avoiding worry. A good word for us as we begin our first week more or less on our own. We have always been taken care of in the past by our heavenly Father. Why would He stop now?
Saturday, February 7, 2015
Feb. 7 Market Day!
Last night was so late, we had a chance to sleep until 7:30 a.m. Wonderful sleep, I love it so much! After breakfast, Judith from Minga Ecuador came to escort us through the vast indigenous market in the Plaza de Ponchos. Yes, that is actually its name, although many thousands of other things are sold there, including fruits and spices. We saw some unusual products we had not seen before, Vincent took photos of everything and everyone, especially the older people with their weathered faces, full of mystery and experience.
Incredibly, Vincent saw a woman in the market whom he recognized from four years ago. We had bought a poncho from her. Even more incredibly he was not only right about that, but he found her picture on his computer from our last trip here. I am blown away by his memory sometimes. Me, I can barely remember what I had for dinner last night--or if I HAD dinner.
After a couple of hours, the colors, the scents, the variety and sounds of the street musicians all began to feel too much to me. Everyone had "a special price" for us, but anything we buy has to be carried around with us for the next two and a half months. So it was, "No, gracias," over and over all day long. People were kind, though, not pushy; however, if we lingered too long at a booth, the owner would be notified by a watchful neighbor and launch into his or her spiel. I felt terrible not buying anything. It was a great time to practice Spanish, however! We met Ignacio Ramirez, silversmith, who had grown up in Charlotte, NC. He was young, late 20s or early 30s, does beautiful work in both silver and alpaca inset with semi-precious stones. He had worked in Rio for a while, but the heat drove him away. Humid and over 100 a lot of the time there, he reported. I talked with him about his work, which he was very proud of and seemed to have a passion for and got his phone number for Chris, who is always interested in meeting artisans in the market. Ignacio told us he had patented a number of his designs (although it is nearly impossible to protect an artist's ideas anywhere in the world). His worked to me seemed very fine, and it was clearly the work of one person. I hope he did well today in spite of the rain. It can be so devastating to rent a space, set up before dawn and have the weather drive all your customers away.
Judith has no English, so she was a very patient sounding board to practice with. She is one of fourteen children (six girls), the thirteenth, actually. Her mother died of cancer when she was two, her father when she was thirteen. She has two children, a son and a daughter, and the daughter has given her a one-year-old grandson. She had pictures of them all on her phone--also pictures of her three dachshunds in princess dresses--and we spent a wonderful time at lunch hearing her stories about her "loco" brother and watching videos of the baby learning to walk. After we'd been in the cafe about an hour, it began to pour--really pour. Not the misty sort of stuff we've been having, but a rain threatening inundación.
We really felt for the vendors--we've been there ourselves so often! They were taking down as fast as they could, an old woman was holding up a tarp with a stick so that the rain would go away from her stall into the street instead of onto her shawls and scarves. Everything was packed into sturdy four foot high reinforced plastic bags, stacked onto the backs of pickup trucks and carried slowly away through the traffic filled streets.
After lunch, we met up with Chris at Miguel's shop, "La Tierra." Miguel is a leather artisan we met in 2011. At that time, he was so inspiring as he talked about what motivated him and excited him about his work. In 2015, he has moved to a much bigger shop, and he feels it is much better, has a better offering of high quality products, not just "tourist stuff." He spoke about the competition from people copying his designs, an omnipresent complaint, not only here but in the Philippines, Laos, Guatemala, Peru, and Bolivia. He said, never mind, he just keeps thinking up new ideas. He is inspired by the beauty of nature, and that keeps him going. He is getting very interested in photography and wants to build a gallery of photos above the shop. These would not be for sale, just enjoyment. He also spoke of doing a great deal of exercise lately, eating healthy foods, meditating and not exhausting himself trying to make sales. It's better, he says, if people just refer you to their friends and you gain a reputation. Then people will come to you when they need something.
His wife and two sons were there as well and were very pleasant in greeting us. I doubt he remembered us, because Chris has brought so many visitors to his shop in the past four years, but we certainly remembered how impressed we were with him four years ago and were glad to see him doing so well.
Afterwards, we went to dinner with Chris, who told us that Luis (maker of the sweaters for dogs) had already brought him some samples to take back to the U.S. We had a good talk, a long talk, and arrived home about 9:30. It's 12:30 now and I wonder how to summarize this day. We certainly feel as if we are contributing something to Minga's future success and are very much looking forward to the next few weeks.
Our theme song for the past few months has been "Glorious Unfolding." From thinking we were selling our house and moving to Colorado to where we are now has definitely been a roller coaster ride, and we are still not certain how it will end, but every single day of our lives we have been guided and blessed. Things have kept on unfolding for us; we can only trust that will continue to be true as we go from one day to the next, trying to be faithful in a little.
The heavens just now opened as if a bathtub full of water had been emptied on our heads. I have NEVER heard such rain, not even in the Philippines! Time to go to sleep--we've an early start and a journey back to Quito by bus in the morning. Adiós!
Incredibly, Vincent saw a woman in the market whom he recognized from four years ago. We had bought a poncho from her. Even more incredibly he was not only right about that, but he found her picture on his computer from our last trip here. I am blown away by his memory sometimes. Me, I can barely remember what I had for dinner last night--or if I HAD dinner.
After a couple of hours, the colors, the scents, the variety and sounds of the street musicians all began to feel too much to me. Everyone had "a special price" for us, but anything we buy has to be carried around with us for the next two and a half months. So it was, "No, gracias," over and over all day long. People were kind, though, not pushy; however, if we lingered too long at a booth, the owner would be notified by a watchful neighbor and launch into his or her spiel. I felt terrible not buying anything. It was a great time to practice Spanish, however! We met Ignacio Ramirez, silversmith, who had grown up in Charlotte, NC. He was young, late 20s or early 30s, does beautiful work in both silver and alpaca inset with semi-precious stones. He had worked in Rio for a while, but the heat drove him away. Humid and over 100 a lot of the time there, he reported. I talked with him about his work, which he was very proud of and seemed to have a passion for and got his phone number for Chris, who is always interested in meeting artisans in the market. Ignacio told us he had patented a number of his designs (although it is nearly impossible to protect an artist's ideas anywhere in the world). His worked to me seemed very fine, and it was clearly the work of one person. I hope he did well today in spite of the rain. It can be so devastating to rent a space, set up before dawn and have the weather drive all your customers away.
Judith has no English, so she was a very patient sounding board to practice with. She is one of fourteen children (six girls), the thirteenth, actually. Her mother died of cancer when she was two, her father when she was thirteen. She has two children, a son and a daughter, and the daughter has given her a one-year-old grandson. She had pictures of them all on her phone--also pictures of her three dachshunds in princess dresses--and we spent a wonderful time at lunch hearing her stories about her "loco" brother and watching videos of the baby learning to walk. After we'd been in the cafe about an hour, it began to pour--really pour. Not the misty sort of stuff we've been having, but a rain threatening inundación.
We really felt for the vendors--we've been there ourselves so often! They were taking down as fast as they could, an old woman was holding up a tarp with a stick so that the rain would go away from her stall into the street instead of onto her shawls and scarves. Everything was packed into sturdy four foot high reinforced plastic bags, stacked onto the backs of pickup trucks and carried slowly away through the traffic filled streets.
After lunch, we met up with Chris at Miguel's shop, "La Tierra." Miguel is a leather artisan we met in 2011. At that time, he was so inspiring as he talked about what motivated him and excited him about his work. In 2015, he has moved to a much bigger shop, and he feels it is much better, has a better offering of high quality products, not just "tourist stuff." He spoke about the competition from people copying his designs, an omnipresent complaint, not only here but in the Philippines, Laos, Guatemala, Peru, and Bolivia. He said, never mind, he just keeps thinking up new ideas. He is inspired by the beauty of nature, and that keeps him going. He is getting very interested in photography and wants to build a gallery of photos above the shop. These would not be for sale, just enjoyment. He also spoke of doing a great deal of exercise lately, eating healthy foods, meditating and not exhausting himself trying to make sales. It's better, he says, if people just refer you to their friends and you gain a reputation. Then people will come to you when they need something.
His wife and two sons were there as well and were very pleasant in greeting us. I doubt he remembered us, because Chris has brought so many visitors to his shop in the past four years, but we certainly remembered how impressed we were with him four years ago and were glad to see him doing so well.
Afterwards, we went to dinner with Chris, who told us that Luis (maker of the sweaters for dogs) had already brought him some samples to take back to the U.S. We had a good talk, a long talk, and arrived home about 9:30. It's 12:30 now and I wonder how to summarize this day. We certainly feel as if we are contributing something to Minga's future success and are very much looking forward to the next few weeks.
Our theme song for the past few months has been "Glorious Unfolding." From thinking we were selling our house and moving to Colorado to where we are now has definitely been a roller coaster ride, and we are still not certain how it will end, but every single day of our lives we have been guided and blessed. Things have kept on unfolding for us; we can only trust that will continue to be true as we go from one day to the next, trying to be faithful in a little.
The heavens just now opened as if a bathtub full of water had been emptied on our heads. I have NEVER heard such rain, not even in the Philippines! Time to go to sleep--we've an early start and a journey back to Quito by bus in the morning. Adiós!
Friday, February 6, 2015
Feb. 6 Winding Down in Otavalo
Coming up to the weekend--today was a very busy day as a consequence. Although we didn't get home until one a.m., we nonetheless rose at 8:15 and off to work. Just can't keep an old firehorse in the station, I guess.
Right after breakfast, we met downstairs in the hotel with José and Anita Farinango. If that name doesn't sound Spanish, that's because it's not. José and Anita are clearly full-blood Inca descendants. They didn't remember us from 2011, but we showed them the pictures we took of them and their children, and they were delighted. Such a beautiful couple. Today they came without their children, bringing some lovely samples of their tagua jewelry. I was on a bit of a roll today (I love doing this), so I came up with two new catchy names for the products they brought, and Chris came up with a third. How do you like "Rain Dance" and "Moonglow" and "Picasso" (first two are mine) for names for really cool neckwear?
Chris showed Anita and José how to find the "colors of the year" on the Pantone website, and encouraged them to incorporate them in their designs so that people could coordinate their clothing and their jewelry purchases. They caught on to the idea fairly quickly after an initial hesitation--I'm sure they were wondering what the "colors of the year" could possibly have to do with them, here far away from the fashion world.
Carlos came in before we were done and we had a math session, determining volumes of shipping boxes and how they would stack hats in such a way as to receive no harm from the violent shakings of ships, planes, trains and trucks with all their attendant handlers. Interesting exercise! Vincent of course had the smarts to look up on the internet how people normally do these things. That Google just blows my mind, still! The advantages of having a young husband never end.
After a brief discussion of how the negotiation with the Farinangos and Carlos had gone, we trekked off to Lucila Lema's shop to check out a new shipment of gloves getting ready to go. They were all men's gloves, so there was no point in my trying them on. Lucila had some great new hat samples, one a rainbow hat with a tiny crown on top and a scarf attached that allows you to close your coat OVER the scarf rather than under it, another a Rasta hat complete with dreds. Chris told me that when he was just starting his business, Lucila and another store owner had helped him get going with the loan of several big shipping boxes of product. How kind she was--and is. Her daughter was there to model the hats and help us communicate with her mom, who is now partially deaf. Lucila was very warm and kind, smiling broadly as we left.
We went for lunch at an organic restaurant owned by a young man named William, who has worked several years in the U.S. and was very comfortable speaking to us in English. That felt strange to me. I am getting used to English being the foreign language here, not Spanish.
We next stopped at a tie-dye store owned by a young man and his wife. Chris and Romel had a very hard time understanding how to unravel an inconsistent size issue, but eventually communication triumphed and everyone was satisfied.
Returning to the hotel, we just missed Christián, but when Chris called him, he returned with his leather wallet samples. They are very, very nice and we hope our customers will like them. Christián had fixed all the issues with the samples that we discussed with him earlier in the week, so that negotiation went very quickly.
Another couple came in with questions about the colors for their order, and Chris worked on that with them until they understood how the communication with the U.S. office works.
At the end, Hector Guevara came back with his improved samples, we had a few suggestions to make. I could see Chris getting very, very tired, so we left Romel to finish the price negotiations with Hector.
The message today is that the little nitpicky details that frustrate so many of us are where life is. Minga's commitment to quality means that many measurements must be made, before and after, many corrections must be made to samples with the artisan in person or by e-mail, over and over, until it's right. Without this, you have dissatisfied customers who won't return, artisans with no orders and no income. Patient slogging through the storm of glitches is what's required. It's tiring, but s-o-c-k-s, as Chris says, "That's what it is" in Spanish or any other language.
Vincent and I spent a couple of hours writing up the past two days and then went to dinner at Quino's next door with good food and good prices. The best part? It is next door to the hotel!
Hmm--the hotel front door bell just rang. I see it's 11:00 p.m. That must be Chris coming back from a late dinner with friends.
Time for me to sleep, too. I sometimes wonder what my efforts to help are accomplishing, but then I remember that my only important job is to love. Love you all--sleep well, wake refreshed. Soon the world will change, if only we continue faithful.
Right after breakfast, we met downstairs in the hotel with José and Anita Farinango. If that name doesn't sound Spanish, that's because it's not. José and Anita are clearly full-blood Inca descendants. They didn't remember us from 2011, but we showed them the pictures we took of them and their children, and they were delighted. Such a beautiful couple. Today they came without their children, bringing some lovely samples of their tagua jewelry. I was on a bit of a roll today (I love doing this), so I came up with two new catchy names for the products they brought, and Chris came up with a third. How do you like "Rain Dance" and "Moonglow" and "Picasso" (first two are mine) for names for really cool neckwear?
Chris showed Anita and José how to find the "colors of the year" on the Pantone website, and encouraged them to incorporate them in their designs so that people could coordinate their clothing and their jewelry purchases. They caught on to the idea fairly quickly after an initial hesitation--I'm sure they were wondering what the "colors of the year" could possibly have to do with them, here far away from the fashion world.
Carlos came in before we were done and we had a math session, determining volumes of shipping boxes and how they would stack hats in such a way as to receive no harm from the violent shakings of ships, planes, trains and trucks with all their attendant handlers. Interesting exercise! Vincent of course had the smarts to look up on the internet how people normally do these things. That Google just blows my mind, still! The advantages of having a young husband never end.
After a brief discussion of how the negotiation with the Farinangos and Carlos had gone, we trekked off to Lucila Lema's shop to check out a new shipment of gloves getting ready to go. They were all men's gloves, so there was no point in my trying them on. Lucila had some great new hat samples, one a rainbow hat with a tiny crown on top and a scarf attached that allows you to close your coat OVER the scarf rather than under it, another a Rasta hat complete with dreds. Chris told me that when he was just starting his business, Lucila and another store owner had helped him get going with the loan of several big shipping boxes of product. How kind she was--and is. Her daughter was there to model the hats and help us communicate with her mom, who is now partially deaf. Lucila was very warm and kind, smiling broadly as we left.
We went for lunch at an organic restaurant owned by a young man named William, who has worked several years in the U.S. and was very comfortable speaking to us in English. That felt strange to me. I am getting used to English being the foreign language here, not Spanish.
We next stopped at a tie-dye store owned by a young man and his wife. Chris and Romel had a very hard time understanding how to unravel an inconsistent size issue, but eventually communication triumphed and everyone was satisfied.
Returning to the hotel, we just missed Christián, but when Chris called him, he returned with his leather wallet samples. They are very, very nice and we hope our customers will like them. Christián had fixed all the issues with the samples that we discussed with him earlier in the week, so that negotiation went very quickly.
Another couple came in with questions about the colors for their order, and Chris worked on that with them until they understood how the communication with the U.S. office works.
At the end, Hector Guevara came back with his improved samples, we had a few suggestions to make. I could see Chris getting very, very tired, so we left Romel to finish the price negotiations with Hector.
The message today is that the little nitpicky details that frustrate so many of us are where life is. Minga's commitment to quality means that many measurements must be made, before and after, many corrections must be made to samples with the artisan in person or by e-mail, over and over, until it's right. Without this, you have dissatisfied customers who won't return, artisans with no orders and no income. Patient slogging through the storm of glitches is what's required. It's tiring, but s-o-c-k-s, as Chris says, "That's what it is" in Spanish or any other language.
Vincent and I spent a couple of hours writing up the past two days and then went to dinner at Quino's next door with good food and good prices. The best part? It is next door to the hotel!
Hmm--the hotel front door bell just rang. I see it's 11:00 p.m. That must be Chris coming back from a late dinner with friends.
Time for me to sleep, too. I sometimes wonder what my efforts to help are accomplishing, but then I remember that my only important job is to love. Love you all--sleep well, wake refreshed. Soon the world will change, if only we continue faithful.
Feb. 5 Transforming Hope
After breakfast, the four of us started hiking for the bus to the Maldonado home. Providentially, Chris saw someone on the street, another artisan, whom he knew. Carlos was pleased to drive us to our destination, and on the way, Chris was able to discuss a packing problem that Carlos had with the "Panama" hats he makes.
I'll just remind you of the hats' interesting story. They are--and have always been--made in Ecuador. The grass, pajatoquilla (PA-ha-toe-KEE-ya), grows near the western coast of Ecuador. When the international team of scientists came here to map the exact location of the equator, they bought the hats and some of them later went to Panama to help build the Canal. Others bought them as they were very useful in the hot sun, and people assumed the hats they saw had come from Panama. (Another version is that Teddy Roosevelt saw the Canal workers wearing them and mislabeled them Panama hats.)
Whatever really happened, Minga sells hundreds of these nearly indestructible and quite fashionable straw hats made by Carlos and his team. Carlos and Chris spent the ride up into the countryside discussing packing options.
We arrived at the home of Luis and Maria Maldonado, were warmly greeted by them and a very young couple, their daughter Alicia and husband Oscar and their small child. It seems that the five of them live in this house with perhaps some others who were introduced as visiting or not introduced at all. Maria invited us into her home and found four kindergarten size stools for us to occupy while Luis and she related their story. They have been knitting sweaters for dogs for about 18 years. The designs are their own. Fifteen years ago, they approached a U.S. company which began marketing their designs in the U.S. and beyond. All went well for several years until their go-between's brother died. This necessitated his moving out of the area, and they had to find another interpreter. They both speak Quichua and limited Spanish.
A couple from the U.S. approached them and signed them up to make the sweaters for another company (to remain nameless). The couple's names were D and L. The abuses began then. First of all, they never had a contract with this company. The Maldonados would fulfill an order and then wait up to four weeks for payment. When we met with them, they were desperate. They had not been paid since they delivered their last order to D and L's company which was June, 2014--seven months! They had not received any further orders. Furthermore, D and L were patenting for themselves the designs the Maldonados had worked on for many months. They were nearly in tears telling this story and it obviously brought them down to recall it. The poverty of our surroundings began to make sense to us. They had next to no furniture, the room we met in had no light bulb until Chris borrowed one from the main room. Romel told us they had said to him they would have to go looking for work tomorrow, as they had next to nothing left. The walls were rough cinder block, the floor bare cement, with only two grass mats at the door to keep out the mud.
After a while of talking, the daughter demonstrated using a spinning wheel and yarn frame standing just inside the front door to demonstrate how she wound a handful of yarn onto a spool. It gave me such a strange feeling to see the exact same equipment and process I had seen with silk in Laos and cotton in Guatemala!
They invited Vincent to come in and take photos of their workshop. It nearly broke his heart, and mine, too, when I heard about it. It was a small room with several hand knitting machines such as we had seen used to make the pieces for the animal hats. There was no yarn at all in the room, no supplies, completely empty except for the machines.
While this was going on, Chris was talking to Luis about how to get going in production again. They belong to a neighborhood co-op that might give them a loan if they had an order, or so I surmised. So in order to connect to the internet, Luis drove us all in his pickup back to our hotel in Otavalo.
When we were able to connect to the internet, we looked up the company for whom they had worked and found several of their designs being offered for sale. That necessitated that they come up with some new designs to avoid any potential conflict--even though the designs were their own. We think they came up with some good ideas, and they will be sending photos of samples with different colors by internet (which their daughter has access to) to Minga. Orders will come from that, we hope, and the samples will be included in the next shipment from Ecuador and paid for at that time.
The more we talked and Chris explained the procedures employed by Minga, the lighter their faces and spirits seemed to become. Just before they left to go home, Vincent had Chris translate for them the sentiments of all of us--that we hoped and prayed things would get better for them, that they would have enough work, and that their beautiful designs would get a wide audience. Every single one of us was in tears at the end of that session.
This, after all, is the reason we sometimes get up at 1, 2, or 3 a.m. to get ready for a sales event, selling fair trade crafts. Yes, there are other artisans working who are not in such dire straits. However, many of them HAVE been in this situation, where they do not know from where the next meal is coming, and we are so blessed to have the opportunity to help them change their and their children's circumstances. You only have to look at the before and after pictures to understand our joy.
After lunch, Hector Guevara brought some samples of children's cotton summer dresses to the restaurant where we were eating. Chris gave him some feedback about how to change the samples to make them more saleable and we rushed back to the hotel, since we were late for the next artisan meeting.
We met with Martha Constante, who works with knitters to make wool sweaters and mittens. She brought one sample which I thought was quite ingenious. She had designed a cable pattern that was incorporated at the neckline, looking like a row of calla lilies all around the neck of the sweater. It was not attached, but a part of the sweater. We connected to the internet, albeit slowly, and were able to see the feedback from the U.S. about how her samples had sold at the latest show and what the office staff thought of each one. Her group's work is very fine, the wool very soft and not at all scratchy, as I am used to wool being. The designs are quite attractive, I think. This was the first time we had an introduction into how Chris determines prices--it's a back and forth negotiation, and Martha was a fine sparring partner for him.
Vincent asked her how many women worked for her, and she replied, "mil quinientos" or 1,500. We could not believe it and went into an extensive discussion of how she figures this. She has a list of 1,500 women she has worked with over the years. She can call on them when she has an order. They do not all work at once, but she has a network of leaders in several villages. Each leader manages up to forty women. She learns from Martha how to make the sweater and then teaches those in her group. Through the leaders, Martha has an idea of the skills of each group, so she assigns various ones to different groups, depending upon their skills. We simply marveled at the consistent high quality of their work, with so many different groups working on the same things. Martha has to be not only a skilled negotiator but an indefatigable organizer. She visits dozens of homes each week out in the countryside.
Vincent also asked her what inspired her to create new designs. Her face lit up and she said that anything can inspire her--a piece of fabric, something she saw in a magazine. It is her favorite part of the work. She loves to create new designs.
Chris gave her an order for samples before she left, and suddenly she did not look as tired and worn to me as she had when she came in.
It was dark when Martha returned to her home. Fernando and Yolanda, the clothing designers, had invited Chris to a meal at a friend's home, and Vincent and I tagged along. After the stark home of the Maldonados, this one was overwhelming. Although it was simply furnished, it was massive, with whitewashed walls and pine log rafters and beautiful tile floors. Peruvian wool wallhangings decorated several walls, and the lamps were sculpted clay, pierced and polished coconut shells and other amazing things. This home was in an enclave of Americans, Canadians and Europeans similar to a gated community back home, sans gate, but wayyyyyyy back in the countryside. When the lights came on we could see three towns spread out on the hills around us, Cotacachi among them. Fields of corn surrounded the complex.
The contrast between the beginning of the day and the end of it was inescapable. It truly is a world full of stark contrasts and some definite inequalities. Still, I was so blessed to be present as the Maldonados were given back their hope.
I'll just remind you of the hats' interesting story. They are--and have always been--made in Ecuador. The grass, pajatoquilla (PA-ha-toe-KEE-ya), grows near the western coast of Ecuador. When the international team of scientists came here to map the exact location of the equator, they bought the hats and some of them later went to Panama to help build the Canal. Others bought them as they were very useful in the hot sun, and people assumed the hats they saw had come from Panama. (Another version is that Teddy Roosevelt saw the Canal workers wearing them and mislabeled them Panama hats.)
Whatever really happened, Minga sells hundreds of these nearly indestructible and quite fashionable straw hats made by Carlos and his team. Carlos and Chris spent the ride up into the countryside discussing packing options.
We arrived at the home of Luis and Maria Maldonado, were warmly greeted by them and a very young couple, their daughter Alicia and husband Oscar and their small child. It seems that the five of them live in this house with perhaps some others who were introduced as visiting or not introduced at all. Maria invited us into her home and found four kindergarten size stools for us to occupy while Luis and she related their story. They have been knitting sweaters for dogs for about 18 years. The designs are their own. Fifteen years ago, they approached a U.S. company which began marketing their designs in the U.S. and beyond. All went well for several years until their go-between's brother died. This necessitated his moving out of the area, and they had to find another interpreter. They both speak Quichua and limited Spanish.
A couple from the U.S. approached them and signed them up to make the sweaters for another company (to remain nameless). The couple's names were D and L. The abuses began then. First of all, they never had a contract with this company. The Maldonados would fulfill an order and then wait up to four weeks for payment. When we met with them, they were desperate. They had not been paid since they delivered their last order to D and L's company which was June, 2014--seven months! They had not received any further orders. Furthermore, D and L were patenting for themselves the designs the Maldonados had worked on for many months. They were nearly in tears telling this story and it obviously brought them down to recall it. The poverty of our surroundings began to make sense to us. They had next to no furniture, the room we met in had no light bulb until Chris borrowed one from the main room. Romel told us they had said to him they would have to go looking for work tomorrow, as they had next to nothing left. The walls were rough cinder block, the floor bare cement, with only two grass mats at the door to keep out the mud.
After a while of talking, the daughter demonstrated using a spinning wheel and yarn frame standing just inside the front door to demonstrate how she wound a handful of yarn onto a spool. It gave me such a strange feeling to see the exact same equipment and process I had seen with silk in Laos and cotton in Guatemala!
They invited Vincent to come in and take photos of their workshop. It nearly broke his heart, and mine, too, when I heard about it. It was a small room with several hand knitting machines such as we had seen used to make the pieces for the animal hats. There was no yarn at all in the room, no supplies, completely empty except for the machines.
While this was going on, Chris was talking to Luis about how to get going in production again. They belong to a neighborhood co-op that might give them a loan if they had an order, or so I surmised. So in order to connect to the internet, Luis drove us all in his pickup back to our hotel in Otavalo.
When we were able to connect to the internet, we looked up the company for whom they had worked and found several of their designs being offered for sale. That necessitated that they come up with some new designs to avoid any potential conflict--even though the designs were their own. We think they came up with some good ideas, and they will be sending photos of samples with different colors by internet (which their daughter has access to) to Minga. Orders will come from that, we hope, and the samples will be included in the next shipment from Ecuador and paid for at that time.
The more we talked and Chris explained the procedures employed by Minga, the lighter their faces and spirits seemed to become. Just before they left to go home, Vincent had Chris translate for them the sentiments of all of us--that we hoped and prayed things would get better for them, that they would have enough work, and that their beautiful designs would get a wide audience. Every single one of us was in tears at the end of that session.
This, after all, is the reason we sometimes get up at 1, 2, or 3 a.m. to get ready for a sales event, selling fair trade crafts. Yes, there are other artisans working who are not in such dire straits. However, many of them HAVE been in this situation, where they do not know from where the next meal is coming, and we are so blessed to have the opportunity to help them change their and their children's circumstances. You only have to look at the before and after pictures to understand our joy.
After lunch, Hector Guevara brought some samples of children's cotton summer dresses to the restaurant where we were eating. Chris gave him some feedback about how to change the samples to make them more saleable and we rushed back to the hotel, since we were late for the next artisan meeting.
We met with Martha Constante, who works with knitters to make wool sweaters and mittens. She brought one sample which I thought was quite ingenious. She had designed a cable pattern that was incorporated at the neckline, looking like a row of calla lilies all around the neck of the sweater. It was not attached, but a part of the sweater. We connected to the internet, albeit slowly, and were able to see the feedback from the U.S. about how her samples had sold at the latest show and what the office staff thought of each one. Her group's work is very fine, the wool very soft and not at all scratchy, as I am used to wool being. The designs are quite attractive, I think. This was the first time we had an introduction into how Chris determines prices--it's a back and forth negotiation, and Martha was a fine sparring partner for him.
Vincent asked her how many women worked for her, and she replied, "mil quinientos" or 1,500. We could not believe it and went into an extensive discussion of how she figures this. She has a list of 1,500 women she has worked with over the years. She can call on them when she has an order. They do not all work at once, but she has a network of leaders in several villages. Each leader manages up to forty women. She learns from Martha how to make the sweater and then teaches those in her group. Through the leaders, Martha has an idea of the skills of each group, so she assigns various ones to different groups, depending upon their skills. We simply marveled at the consistent high quality of their work, with so many different groups working on the same things. Martha has to be not only a skilled negotiator but an indefatigable organizer. She visits dozens of homes each week out in the countryside.
Vincent also asked her what inspired her to create new designs. Her face lit up and she said that anything can inspire her--a piece of fabric, something she saw in a magazine. It is her favorite part of the work. She loves to create new designs.
Chris gave her an order for samples before she left, and suddenly she did not look as tired and worn to me as she had when she came in.
It was dark when Martha returned to her home. Fernando and Yolanda, the clothing designers, had invited Chris to a meal at a friend's home, and Vincent and I tagged along. After the stark home of the Maldonados, this one was overwhelming. Although it was simply furnished, it was massive, with whitewashed walls and pine log rafters and beautiful tile floors. Peruvian wool wallhangings decorated several walls, and the lamps were sculpted clay, pierced and polished coconut shells and other amazing things. This home was in an enclave of Americans, Canadians and Europeans similar to a gated community back home, sans gate, but wayyyyyyy back in the countryside. When the lights came on we could see three towns spread out on the hills around us, Cotacachi among them. Fields of corn surrounded the complex.
The contrast between the beginning of the day and the end of it was inescapable. It truly is a world full of stark contrasts and some definite inequalities. Still, I was so blessed to be present as the Maldonados were given back their hope.
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