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.
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