Bye, Ecuador

I’m the kind of exhausted you are when you do six or eight weeks’ worth of stuff in two weeks. A part of me wants to stay for much longer and another part of me, the part that’s going to get what it wants, would like to go home and take a nap. But before that happens, a few final things that didn’t get into earlier posts:

Despite this sort of thing everywhere, I have not experienced a loss of power during the entire time I’ve been here.

We think we know fruit, but really we don’t know fruit.

There are dogs everywhere – in the restaurants, on the roads, along the highways, in the stores, everywhere. They’re not mangy wild dogs, they’re happy, healthy well-fed dogs that certainly belong to someone. One day Lucas, Caroline and I were having coffee in a park. There was a dog sleeping on a bench and, in his sleep did one of those highly satisfying canine stretches, rolled on his back, and fell off the bench onto the ground. Then he gave us a “yeah that’s right.  I meant to do that” look and went back to sleep.

This is the monument in Quito celebrating Ecuador’s independence from Spain. At the bottom the lion (representing Spain) is looking up at the Condor (Ecuador’s national bird), thinking “Wait, what? What the hell just happened? I’m a lion, how did I get defeated by a bird.” To celebrate the occasion, Ecuador decided to go all out and hire an Italian artist to make the statue in Italy. But Italians don’t know what condors look like, so Ecuador killed one and sent it to Italy. Now, 200 years later, condors are an endangered species. There are fewer than 150 left here.

Despite the crushing Spanish influence, there are still hundreds of indigenous communities throughout Ecuador. It’s not an easy life. When we had lunch in Ozogoche, we learned that although the community has been there for hundreds of years, the land around it was designated a national park (and later a UNESCO world heritage site), so the people in the town can’t do anything with the land that might help improve their lives. The only thing they’re allowed to do is graze cattle. They sell the milk to a wholesaler for 30 cents per liter, and other than the periodic lunches they prepare for groups like ours, that milk revenue is all they get in terms of income. Everything else they need comes from trading vegetables or fish in the markets unless they happen to have a job in the nearest town, which is many miles from their homes, via a rutted dirt road. A little perspective goes a long way.

Nadine asked this Ozogoche resident for permission before she took this picture. As soon as she finished, he held up his index finger to say “That’ll be one dollar, please.” Fair enough.