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.
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