Monday, April 25, 2011

Easter Cuy

Happy Easter! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and were surrounded by loved ones. I had a wonderful day.  We slept in forever, woke up to a wonderful breakfast of müesli y cafe, went horseback riding, ate some more, and relaxed in a very beautiful place.  We finally made it to Ricardo`s farm (Ricardo is the Ecuadorian who has lived in the states for 10 years, so he speaks English pretty well). His farm is about 45 minutes away from Pimampiro, up in the mountains.  He (his parents) have a huge house, tons of rooms, several kitchens, huge piece of farm land, horses, guinea pigs, and cows. The whole shebang. The town itself is called El Tambo, and it consists of about 60 families, although when I did a vuelta today on Luna the horse, I only saw about 25 houses. Very small, peaceful, quiet.  Makes Pimampiro look like a metropolis  :) Yesterday we started the day in Otavalo, which is said to be the world`s largest open air market.  It was pretty big, lots of people came down from the mountains to sell their goods.  So we did some shopping, ate a $1.50 almuerzo, and went back to Ibarra. Ricardo picked us up from there and off we went to El Tambo.  We had a wonderful evening, drank good wine, cooked a nice dinner (I got to de-poop a lot of shrimp), and sat outside in the pitch blackness with only a candle burning because the electricity went out on the whole mountain side. Pretty crazy. I have always wanted to live like Laura Ingalls, and I finally got my chance. Riding the horse. Ricardo saddled up his two horses, I jumped on the first one, and Jana got on the second one.  Luna, my horse, turned out to be a little crazy. "You have to show her who`s in charge," Ricardo tells me as Luna is running into the crop field and refusing to move when I tell her to. It took me about 20 minutes of swearing and yelling (in English so Luna didn`t understand), before I felt like I had some sort of control.  The guy sitting on the corner in town told me to use my reign tail as a whip, which helped a little. I still couldn´t really get her to stop when I wanted to, and if she didn`t want to go where I wanted to go, we didn`t go that way. Oh well. We managed. Riding through the fields in the mountains was all very brokeback mountain feeling. It was beautiful.  She also had her 3 month old baby following her (us), which made the tight squeeze spaces even tighter. She was pretty cute though. Jana`s horse on the other hand refused to go any faster than a slow walk.  Which Ricardo told us after about 45 minutes of riding around the town that her horse was pregnant. It makes sense now. Jana was kicking her baby. She didn`t feel like running. Easter dinner.  We ate guinea pig (cuy).  Yum. Mariela, the woman that cooks and cleans for Ricardo on the weekends, prepared 6 or 7 cuys for us. Long process. She killed them in the morning, skinned them, gutted them, cleaned out their innards, boils them, then bakes them. Whew. They were really good, but it was little awkward eating an animal with it`s head and legs attached. I took one with a happy face though. Some of them looked really upset. It was a great easter dinner, but grandma, nothing can compare to your ham.

Semana Santa (Holy week) was a great time to be in Pimampiro. There are a lot of traditions here that are unique to this town.  Thursday night there were three processions: 9pm, midnight, and 3am. Tons of people gather in the street and walk around the town singing a certain song, and carrying a huge cross. This cross is 2.5 kintales, which we decided is about 120 pounds, and is carried by one person at a time. So we walk slow. The song they sang was really beautiful, a cappella.  It reminded me of this time in Haiti when I was working a night shift and around 3am, a  group of people dressed in white came to the gates of the hospital and were singing and playing instruments. It was one of the moments you wish you could freeze and that would never end. You close your eyes, breathe, and try your hardest to remember the perfection of the moment.  We walked with both the 9pm and midnight processions, which end at the church.  The church was filled with incense, so much that the air was thick. Before the midnight procession, we were hanging out with Carmen Amelia (Elena`s daughter) and her friends.  Carmen Amelia informed us that we were waiting outside the church because some one was going to steal "Diosito," from the church and go running by.  This translation was a little confusing. "They`re going to steal Little God??" "Yes, God." "Where is God? What is it?" "God is in the church, and someone is going to steal Him." "On purpose?? Is this planned? Should we stop them? They`re stealing God? What does He look like?" "It`s planned. God is inside the church." Ok, sounds good. Let`s stick around and we`ll finally get to see what God looks like!  Who knew that God was in Pimampiro?? No I. Welllllllllllll, total bummer, we got there too late. God had already been stolen .A little disappointing. It turns out that Diosito is Jesus.  Not God. Why not Jesus (like hey-sus)?  When we went back in the church, the statue of Jesus was gone. Interesting. Never really got to the bottom of why he was stolen, where he went, and who took him.  I guess we`ll never know. The next day we went a little town called Urcuqui with Ricardo. He said that they make a big deal of Good Friday and there would be a lot going on. There wasn`t much going on. They carried a bunch of heavy things from the church (like the Jesus statue and Mary shrine) through the street, lots of death figures walking around, sickle and all. (We had seen "death" walking down the street of Pimampiro the morning before and were a little scared. There was a guy next to him carrying an offering tray. We didn`t pay him. Seemed like bad karma. But we luckily got to redeem ourselves. We paid a total of 55 cents to death in Urcuqui between the four of us. Seemed sufficient). By this time we were desensitized to the whole man of death thing.  They were just regular people walking around in all black ku-klux-klan looking outfits holding sharp objects. Just another good Friday right? We did however ride the ferris wheel in Urcuqui. Probably not the safest choice, but who could pass it up. The motor on it was started like a lawn mower and looked like the ever-lasting-gobstopper machine in Willy Wonka`s Chocolate Factory. Everything was rusty. We were on it for way too long. By the end I thought I was going to puke. I was wearing a skirt too, which made the escape route plan a little tricky. Luckily, we didn`t have to use it. We were ready though. Always good to plan for the worst. We also rode the "gusanito," which means little worm. It`s a car/train sort of device that is driven around the town, mostly at slow speeds (there are speed bumps), but occasionaly the driver threw in a loop or wiggle. I think it was more fun for us than the kids.  The kids ride in the back of trucks everyday, which feels sort of like riding in the gusanito. We made fools of ourselves, waving to everyone in the streets, holding up our arms like we were on a roller coaster. Later we ate some Fanesca (third time now!), and went back to Pimampiro where........there was another parade! More carrying heavy things from the church around the streets, singing, and whatnot.  

I swear we`re doing work too.  We went to the daycare in Paragachi to look around and see if there was anything we could do for them.  The building itself is pretty nice.  Clean and organized. They have 30 kids registered there, and they get $1.20 per kid per day from the government to feed them.  Most of the kids are there at 7am, and some of them stay as late as 6pm.  They all get fed two meals and two snacks per day.  Sometime more than 30 kids show up, and they have to take care of them and feed them as well.  When we walked in there was a little girl, looked about 8 months old, laying on a mat, not moving.  I eventually went over to her and picked her up. She was a limp wet noodle. No energy, little muscle tone, very little reaction to anything.  I asked the teachers about her and they said she was malnourished, like many of the children there. She is 14 months old. One teacher told me that they don`t have the money to buy a variety of food for the kids. The parents don`t have the means to feed their kids properly either. In Paragachi, there is not water for irrigation, and it is illegal to use water from the faucet to water your garden, so growing your own food is very difficult there. Paul is working on a project to get the town irrigation water.  They should have some by the end of the year. YAY! Although by Ecuadorian standards it will probably be longer. So we are going back to the daycare tomorrow to do a real check up on all the kids, and hopefully distribute some clothes and other things they need.

kids at daycare


Speaking of Paragachi, Paul bought a house! Kind of. We are trying to raise $5,000 for a house in Paragachi. I use the word house loosely.  It is a structure, walls, broken windows, dirt floors, beams where a ceiling/floor should be.  A fixer-upper with a lot of potential. It is on a piece of land that is large enough to do a nice size demonstration garden for the bio-intensive organic agriculture. It could also be a starting place for the orphanage Jana and I are dreaming of. Like I said, a lot of potential.  It would probably take another $3,000 to get everything livable and running properly. Why Paragachi? It is said to the armpit of Pimampiro. It`s small, only 150 families. There are very little resources there. Lots of mosquitoes. It`s hot and dry. It is known for it`s roughness. But there is something amazing going on there. The kids that come out of Paragachi are incredible.  Tough and talented.  There is a feeling of comradary in the community that is palpable.  When you have nothing, you get creative and close.  Connected.

Agua. I would just like to take a moment to talk about water. It`s been raining like crazy here, more rain than they have seen in a lone time. Good right? Poop no. All of the rain is causing a lot of landslides, which are breaking the pipes that carry water. For over two weeks now there has been very little water available in Pimampiro. We rejoice when we turn on the faucet and water comes out. Showering is tricky. When there is water, it`s freezing. Not like lukewarm cold, but ice. Terrible. I have not been showering much. Yum. We have also been filling up trashcans and buckets whenever there is water, so we can use it when we need it. Let me tell you how fun it is to wash the dishes by dunking a cup into a bucket of water every time you need a rinse. Or throwing water down the toilet instead of flushing. What we didn`t know was the when there is water now, it is not drinkable. Oops. Found that one out a little late. Elena told us it was "black water." It looked fine to me until I really paid attention to it. It`s not the clearest water I`ve ever seen, that`s for sure. You don`t want to know how my stomach feels about it. Got a little sick for a day or two, but nothing too bad. So now we have to buy bottled water, which is no fun either. I miss the days of the delicious Pimampiro tap water. So simple. So next time you feel like complaining about doing the dishes, cleaning, or that your hot shower got slightly less hot near the end, be thankful for what you do have.




death



cuy!


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