Amistaad

The three women on the bus came to consensus that this road was the best one to take to La Escuela de Magdalena, so I paid my eighteen cents and stepped out into the sunshine. The bus pulled away in a cloud of diesel smoke, leaving me staring up a dirt road just drying from the previous nights rain. Mud walls with adorned with shoots of green grass and flowers in yellow and pink lined the camina and it was quiet, minus the birds. I began walking, feeling the clean air fill my lungs, and feeling grateful that this didn’t hurt after my respiratory infection. I moved my feet quickly over the soft earth and felt light. What was remarkable about that morning was not just the clear weather and stunning walk up into the mountains, but my complete lack of self-judgment. I was not worried about what connections I might make or fearful of mistakes- I was simply allowing myself to be a traveler, walking this road, taking in the steep patchwork mountains, the clucking hens and grunting pigs. When I encountered an abuelita on the road, we talked about where we were headed and why, sharing pace for a little while, and when I was ready to walk quickly again, I bid her farewell and did not worry that my western pace was keeping me from making friends. I have not made many what I would consider friends here.

Cameron has commented on my hierarchy of friendship, and how sometimes I am so intense about my friendships that I let more casual friendships go and do not give them much value. I was at first insulted by this, but since have mulled it over and realized, yes this is true. I suppose I have looked at it in this way: I only have so much energy, and I want to be sure that I use it wisely, and so I will carefully chose where I put my social energy. In the last few years I have spent much time, energy, and money maintaining these friendships that are so important to me, and also geographically very distant. I have had to ask myself more than once if this fierce commitment has at times gotten in the way of creating community where I live, and then I arrived in South America where Cameron and I have both felt very far away and alone.

Are Cameron and I a part of this community here in Zuleta? I don’t know. Will our absence be felt when we leave? Without a doubt. Here we have a multitude of friendly acquaintances. When we walk down the road we are greeted by name, nickname, and a million different friendly phrases that make me smile. Today one of the kitchen staff took my hand and made me run with her to the Patron’s kitchen, for no other reason than the company. It is true, there is no one here besides my husband with whom I sit and bare my soul. There really is no one with whom I feel I can ask to go for a walk, or have a cup of coffee. I have spent so much time since we have been here wondering if this is my fault, chastising myself for moments when I was shy, and laboring over the consequence of any and all of my social interactions. Now, towards the end, as I accept it for what it is, without judgment on myself or the community for the whys, I began to see all the ways I have been welcomed here. I already feel nostalgia for the beauty of the whole town knowing my name and saying with it with friendship, even if they do not invite me into their homes. I realize that if I really want the community I dream of, I have to make sure that I have the energy to build it. I have to open to the casual acquaintances and friendships, and value the people who always greet me with affection almost as much as those deep soul friends that I lean so heavily on.

As I walked away from the grandmother carrying her onions to continue briskly towards the school, she called out to me, Dios le pague, mija, Dios le pague. God will pay you, my daughter, god will pay you (this I assume in thanks for the work in the schools). It felt good to be called daughter, even though she did not know my name, and it did not in any way cheapen the power of the word, just as embracing those in the community around me as friends will never diminish the depth of the long term friendships I share.

en la Emergencia

It is not a good sign when you go to the bathroom at the doctors, and there are some strange looking medical instruments in a pan of dirty water on the floor. What are these instruments for? And why, for god’s sake, are they on the floor in the bathroom, stewing in a liquid that looks like at has been there for a week?

In truth, it wasn’t bad, and aside from the bathroom seemed relatively clean. We exited with an emergency room exam for each of us on a Sunday evening costing only $20.00 each. With this, I wonder, is the quality of our health care in the states worth the cost? Is it worth the limited access? It is so hard to say. I am thankful always for the medical care that saved my life when I was gravely injured as a teeneager, and pray that I am never seriously ill or injured while in Ecuador, but $20. That’s hard to beat.

We are both on antibiotics now for our respective infections and are doing just fine.

The last episode

I walked from my house to the library this morning. A short stretch lined with Eucalyptus, the tax I felt in my body finally let me accept that I have actually been sick the past few days and not just hiding from Ecuador. Friday night we borrowed a DVD player and thanks to the thriving pirated DVD industry here in Ecuador, began the last season of Six Feet Under. Saturday we finished it. It has been hard for me to place the emotions I have around the end of this series. Saying goodbye to these characters is saying goodbye to this part of me that for the last four years has retreated into this story that is not my own, but yet at moments has shed perspective on my own. Sunday, trying to enjoy hot springs a long bus ride from Zuleta, this flu began to take over my muscles, my throat, my lungs, and after the monumental task of leading a field trip in Spanish Monday morning, I curled up into tea, two wool blankets, and repeat viewings. The beginning of my time with this show was deeply personal, the first two seasons viewed alone, and the discovery of the series in coincidence with the commencement of therapy for depression. So I suppose it shouldn’t have been surprising that watching the last episode again on my own should bring forth a deeper set of emotions. I bawled, and have been incredibly weepy since. For the record, I cry easily, but something about this particular moment has cracked me open and let me be where I am instead of judging it so fiercely. I am ready to go home and start my life, and yet this is an indefinite idea of the future. Home. I am juxtaposed against wanting to be here and take advantage of all it has to offer, and wanting to feel the comfort of my own language, my friends, the culture I know and feel free to push against, judge, criticize, and recreate in my own light. This crack has left me raw with want for community, family, a baby. Is it just that Six Feet Under is so much about death that it makes me want to live? but what better way to live than be here in the present? Maybe that’s not me right now. I want what I don’t have.

There was a fight

There was a fight. He wanted quiet, I wanted to make noise (this a reoccurring theme), and now we sit in silence punctuated by forks scraping metal plates, the undiscussed tears resting heavily between us.

Wendy wrote of a meal in Los Angeles during which her head wandered to a fantasy of Ecuador. Here I sit in Ecuador eating the fruits of my labor, traditional llampinganchos (though not perfect, quite delicious), and not even the fried crispy potato outside can keep my mind from wandering away here, where the lights create mirrors of windows and the cold causes me to huddle in my sweater, he in his jacket, heads bent, food to mouth.

In my mind, I am driving in my red truck, following Jen north through Wyoming, the yellow tarp around the mattress she has hauled from South Carolina whipping in the wind of the grass lands. Flat, open. Jen is driving my truck over Lolo pass after a weekend of paddling the Lochsa River and I sit in the passenger seat, windows down, we both belt out Happy Woman Blues, Lucinda Williams. Becca Drives in the dark through high snow banks- the heater pumping, mountains looming, our skis bouncing in the back. We stop at a small bar in Gardner for grilled cheese, french fries, beer, and juke box. Candace and I drive down the one in California listening to Manu Chau. The sun blazes on an ocean far below as we pull over at the end of a long dirt road and watch the sun make its long journey down, dinner replaced by Gillian Welch and PBR. Cameron and I drive through the redwoods curving sharply into the mountains (and I am caught off guard that he is not absent from this reverie of motion, freedom, westward united states, connection) this time not to Henflings, but to a silly italian restaurant where the waiters dance and sing and the owner wears leather pants that say “fuck” all over them. We both sing Neko Case and smoke hand rolled cigarettes, me in my favorite tight skirt and flame boots, this night part of the reconciliation that brought us here, married.

When he finishes, he says politely “That was very good, thank-you.” He watches me eat the last of my salad with my fingers, then sop up the leftover dressing with the extra lettuce (he picked from the garden) sitting in a bowl. When I finish, he asks “Would you like to talk now or later?” I answer, “I think later.” He clears the plates, and I marvel at how calm and patient he is, such a contrast to my temper which has been boiling so close to the surface lately.

I go to my (our) room and put on the head phones, wrap myself in Neko Case, always the anthem of my restless, persistent teenage heart. I sing at the top of my lungs to the entire album The Tigers Have Spoken, and then the first half of Furnace Room Lullaby. I travel my (many of them our) memories and I knit, stopping only to use the needles as drum sticks. I let the sound fill me up and spill out, releasing with it the need to leave, to drive, to run. I sing until I am ready to be quiet, ready to open the door. and (with more struggle than I would have liked) let him back in.

Waking up on the right side of the bed

I have, since Colombia, questioned my time here in Ecuador greatly. It has been difficult to get projects moving, support has been spotty, friends have been few and far between, and I have been cold and lonely. With the advent of our youth training on Thursday, however, I felt a renewed sense of purpose and commitment to the community. We are working with 7 sixteen - nineteen year old boys who are also English students of Cameron's. I'll admit- they scared me at first with their constant joking, budding manhood, Quechua language, and crotch grabbing. But, as with so many situations, once we moved past the exterior they were attentive, funny, open to the games and learning, and into taking on the role of teacher for the environmental education project. Friday they went for a preliminary session with children from the community, and although there were many problems, the day was beautiful, the kids psyched, and the teeangers proud. For me, it was just what I needed to boot me out of my homesick lethargy and believe in what we are doing again.

I have to wake up and be here before I wake up back in the U.S.