One of my students waves me over into the corner of the class with a conspiratorial air. She is holding a small object concealed in a nondescript, black plastic bag. She flashes me a nervous smile.
<<This is a baby. It's for you.>>
This has to go down as one of the creepiest statements I've ever been on the receiving end of. I feel like I've taken a wrong turn and ended up in Royston Vasey (feel free to replace this archetype with your own preferred flavour of disquieting and surreal small-town setting, perhaps something from David Lynch). Apprehensive doesn't begin to cover it.
She reaches her hand into the bag: my breath is held and my fingers crossed in the fervent hope that I'm not about to become enmeshed in a shadowy child trafficking ring or accessory to a case of infanticide.
She draws the small object out from the bag. It is at once both beautiful and grotesque. A bijou, baby-shaped confectionery: all sugared bread and goo and dried fruit.
<<We have them when we celebrate the Day of the Deceased.>>
Well...that's lovely (in a very particular sense of the term lovely). I am taken aback by this apparently unbidden, yet somewhat sinister, generosity.
A few moments later, she comes up to me again, red faced.
<<Incidentally, I think I stole your pen.>>
<<¿How do you know it's my pen?>>
<<It has your name written on it, teacher.>>
And so it does. A Christmas present from my parents, onto which they had my given and family thoughtfully engraved school-jumper style, lest I should forget. I hadn't been quite sure where I'd misplaced it (this is not an unusual state of affairs in the grand lackadaisy that is my humble existence, hence the engraving) but here it is, returned safe and sound
In an odd way, the two gifts share a certain forget-me-not quality, one in remembrance of those past, the other in order that I carry a memento of who I am (that is if I don't leave it lying around for students to inadvertently pilfer).
And with that, the mystery of the unsolicited present comes clear. ¡Ah sweet guilt, oh great shame-flushed bearer of gifts!
So ¿what is this sugar-coated monstrosity? I hear you ask. It's called a 'guagua de pan'. Guagua (or wawa) is the gloriously onomatopoeic word for a baby or young child in the Quechua (and its Ecuadorian cousin Kichwa) and Aymara languages of the Andes. So, a 'guagua de pan' translates literally as a 'bread baby'.
Originally made to represent and honor those who had died young, they are a traditional element of the Ecuadorian celebration of the Día de los Difuntos (Day of the Deceased), which takes place each year on the 2nd of November (shifted from its ancient perch to coincide with the Catholic celebration of All Souls' Day).
The people of the Andes don't lavish quite the same level of macabre opulence upon their commemorations of the departed as the Mexicans do: shell-encrusted, spirit-awakening, dancing skeletons and sugar skulls are conspicuous by their absence.
The difference in approach is rooted in the difference in traditional belief. In the Aztec world, life and death were considered to be intricately intertwined: typical depictions of burial show the greedy earth opening its maw to devour the dead. Skeletal imagery was symbollic of the cycle of fertility and regrowth and the imagery of the Mexican Dia de Muertos reflects this.
Amongst the offerings laid for the adult dead during the Mexican celebrations are bottles of tequila, mezcal and pulque, which would no doubt please Centzon Totochtin, the four hundred hard-partying rabbit gods of drunkenness in Aztec mythology. The focus is definitely upon the joyous celebration of the cycle of rebirth.
In keeping with the more reserved but highly communal nature of the people of the Andes, the focus of their Día de los Difuntos is slightly different. The Inca made a distinction between two deaths, the rather mundane death of the body, and the far more serious social death which occurs when your ancestors cease to remember you. The act of remembrance in the Ecuadorian Día de los Difuntos helps to keep the souls of the departed from suffering this social death.
Differences notwithstanding, what the Andean celebrations do share in common with their Mexican counterpart is that families bring offerings to their deceased relatives and ancestors, often having a picnic at the graveside along with the spirits from the Más Allá (great beyond).
Headstones and burial plots are cleaned, flowers are placed, the living and the dead have a good catch-up and the deceased's favourite foods are consumed for their benefit; along with guaguas de pan and their traditional accompaniment: 'colada morada'.
The deep purple of a Catholic funeral mass, of mourning and penitence, 'colada morada' translates literally as 'dark purple strained'. It is made from various combinations of fruits such as andean blackberries, strawberries, blueberries, naranjilla and babaco; panela (cane sugar), cornflour, lemongrass, lemon verbana and spices such as cinnamon, cloves, and ishpingo: all mixed together and served up warm and steaming.
In the days leading up to the Día de los Difuntos, guaguas de pan and colada morada suddenly become available from every bakers, every cafe and restaurant and every street stall and peddler's cart in the city. Cuenca's tradespeople are clearly determined to ensure that no soul shall suffer the social death through forgetfulness.
Perhaps now is an apt moment to heed their advice (with or without confectionery assistance) and think upon those who have passed, lest they should die the social death for mere want of remembrance.
In Spanish there is a word, 'trámite',which
means 'an act or process of bureaucracy'. There is also another,
somewhat less formal, word, 'cagatintas', which translates
literally as 'ínk-shitter' and whose closest equivalent in English is the
somewhat less evocative 'penpusher', or perhaps 'jobsworth'. It
is with good reason that the Spanish language possesses these words, as
the Imperial Spanish, and their Latin-american post-colonial successors
have raised the process of form-filling, red-taping, nit-picking,
signed-in-triplicate bureaucracy to a fine art.
And it is towards the first fusillade of this monumental bombardment of paperwork that you find me heading, with a sheaf of passport and visa photocopies in hand, all ready to be notarised.
The lady at the notaries scrutinizes my
photocopies, then my passport, then me, then my photocopies again and
finally, apparently convinced that I am not a diabolical fraudster,
stamps the documents with a satisfyingly large stamp, then another yet
more grand stamp and then, just for good measure, with an even more
elaborate, hardwood, cathedral-doorhandle of a stamp. Satisfied with her
work, she turns to me and says: <<Okay, you are ready. I will take you to see the doctor now.>> This is a somewhat alarming turn of
events. ¿Is there a medical? In my two and a bit months back in the UK over the summer I've been hitting the alcohol pretty hard with a succession of old friends and
relatives. ¿Would my liver be deemed unfit for passport copy
notarisation? She
ushers me through to an adjoining room, wherein sits a gentleman at least as
austere and official as the hardwood stamp that preceded him. Tweed
suited and starch shirted, adorned with elaborate horn-rimmed spectacles
and topped with a shock of tousled-grey hair. It would not have
surprised me in the slighest had he got up at that very moment and ushered his assistant
into a TARDIS with a great burst of light and retro-synth effects, to save the universe from another dalek invasion He
opens his mouth, and out of it emanates a deep, sonorous,
treacle-pudding voice with the gramophone-crackly hints of a long
attachment to fine pipe tobacco: <<¿These documents are yours?>>
<<Yes, doctor.>> I reply, my voice unexpectedly husky.
He peers down at the documents appraisingly, and, with the full gravity of his officialdom, flourishes a signature. The
lady gives me a the slightest of nods, and with a final genuflect to the doctor,
we shuffle deferentially backwards out of the room: a pair of mere
laymen in the presence of the law.
I
wander, still shrouded in my own great humility, to the school I'm working for, in order to
pass my documents across to the member of staff who has been assigned to babystep me through the registration process.
She sweeps a lazy glance over the notarised documents while informing me that I need to go to the local police station next in order to get something called a Movimiento Mirgratorio....
<<Oh, that's interesting.>> She remarks with a tone of mild curioisity.
These are words I have come to truly dread, particularly when coming from someone with certificates hanging on their wall and letters after their names; lawyers, auditors, doctors and the like. You don't want them to find your situation the remotest bit interesting; you want them to find it humdrum and run of the mill, worthy of the merest tick of the pen and not the slightest flicker of interest.
Interesting is a long, precedent-setting and above all expensive court case; interesting is an as yet incurable new strain of disease which will provide them with a much talked about research paper and you with a singularly excruciating death; interesting is an exhuastive and destitution inducing audit of your affairs which dredges up incriminating paper trails to all those offshore accounts you thought you'd hidden so well. Interesting means complications, trouble and reams of paperwork. It turned out that the border control at Quito had wrongly
stamped the visa in my passport as a 12-iii and not a 12viii. A 12iii stamp would technically make me a British
diplomat. After drifting briefly off into a daydream about what I could do with all that sweet
impunity (swimming in a pool of forged banknotes with the coked-up ambassadors that I'd invited to shmooze at my on-the-hush-hush diplomatic speakeasy), I crash landed back on planet what-do-I-have-to-do-about-it with a resounding thud.
The problem, she said, was not one that could be handled at the Cuenca police headquarters. The upshot of which was that I'd have to go to Guayaquil (a day trip away) the following Friday to get it sorted. But it was alright, I could (1) take the three and a half hour bus-ride there, (2) find the polive headquarters, (3) jump through the necessary hoops and (4) hop the bus straight back in time to teach my evening lesson. I made a mental note to (1) sort out asap another teacher to cover my lesson instead.
And I would have company too. I wasn't the only one who had had their passports wrongly stamped, there were two other teachers from the school going. Somehow the prospect of company didn't quite offset the gravity of the fact that more than a tenth of the new intake of teachers had had their passports mis-stamped: a whole gaggle of educators unintentionally posing as retirees, business-people and diplomats.
I've heard mixed reviews about Guayaquil, Ecuador's biggest city and apparently a somewhat characterless metropolis, but my trip has
armed me with scant evidence to confirm or deny these rumours. Some
of the highlights of my trip included; the van station; the bus station
food court; the sunbaked concrete pavement where I spent a jolly half
hour sweating out a fair proportion of my body fluids in the midday sun
waiting for the Jefatura Provincial de Migracion to re-open post-siesta; numerous minor brawls,
which are apparently the Guayaquil equivalent of queuing; and an hour sat
on the Jefatura's attractively vac-formed, primary-colours-only-please
plastic seating awaiting the updating of my visa.
As well as being the highlights of my time in Guayaquil, these were also my only experiences during my time in
Guayaquil. As it
was, we eventually got our Movimiento Migratorios, hopped the next van
back to Cuenca and arrived back just in time to be an hour late for our
classes.
The following Monday I returned to the school to discover that my notarised copies had to be in colour not black and white so I would have to get more copies and have them notarised
I arrived at the familiar city centre notaries to discover that they were closed for siesta. Ah well, I figured, I could maybe squeeze a quick notarisation session in during my hour and a half between lessons this afternoon. A few hours later, I am exiting the school with the intention of hunting out a nearby notary when I run into Oliver, another teacher from the school, coming the other way. Formerly of London, England, he's been living in Cuenca for some time now and I've been told that he's a man in the know. Perhaps now is the time to test his street-savvy. <<¡Oliver! ¿Do you happen to know where there is a notary near here?>>
<<Well the one the school uses is just over that way past the football stadium.>>
<<¿What road is it on?>>
<<You can't miss it. Go past the stadium and it's on the big road, between a bunch of taco places and a sex shop.>> <<¡¿Between a taco place and a sex shop?!>> <<Yeah, it's called Sexta>> <<¿What the sex shop?>> <<No, the notaries.>> Street-savvy tested and found not wanting.
It's interesting (at least for a language nerd such as myself) to note that the sexta I
was now gong to is etymolgycially entangled with the siesta that had
just caused me to miss the previous notary. The siesta or midday repose of Spain derives ultimately from the latin 'hora sexta', that being the sixth hour from dawn. There
is a reason for this midday drowsiness. From the point when one wakes,
the homeostatic drive towards sleep begins to grow, in the mid-afternoon
it becomes counterbalanced by the circadian signal for wakefulness.
The urge to siesta strikes when the homeostatic signal has had time to build
but the circadian signal has not yet kicked in. The
sex of 'sex shop' however, most probably originated from a different
etymological root (Australians - the pun is intended) altogether,
connected to the latin 'secare' (to divide or cut) with the idea of the
division of the two genders. It wasn't until that filthy old toerag D.H.Lawrence put pen to paper in 1929 that we first have it written down
in the sense of 'sexual intercourse'. But its neither sexta nor sex shop that I stumble across first, but another notary's office entirely. I wander in through the door but not a step further. The queue trundles back across the office and fills up all the seats around to the door.
I wait there for 15 minutes before someone wanders in and joins the queue about ten people in front of me. I am bemused, then mildly peeved and finally realisation dawns. I lean down to the lady in front of me <<¿Excuse me. Is this the queue?>> She simply shakes her head, leaving me a little nonplussed to have been left standing in the doorway for 15 minutes like a numpty. As it happens, it doesn't matter much as the queue hasn't moved one bit in the 15 minutes since I arrived. So I move forward to join the queue proper and obediently wait in line. Well, I say in line. The
word 'line', comes from the Latin 'linea' and originally referred to a
thread of flax (linen) pulled taut for purposes of measurement. Lines are, by definition, straight. This was not a line.
This was a squiggle. A great, curving snake of a squiggle, thin at points, bulging plentifully at others, lazilly arcing its way towards the desks. There is an experiment in physics called the Double-slit Experiment in which photons of light are shot at a plate with two slits. The photons pass through the slits, interfering with each other to produce a pattern of light and dark.
But even when the rate of photons is slowed to the point where they are not able to interfere with each other, the pattern remains. This leads to the mind-boggling conclusion that the photon must be going through both slits simultaneously and interfering with itself (oooh errrr misses, titter). This is because of quantum.
Ecuadorian queuing is very quantum.Sometimes you move on, sometimes you don’t,
other times you both move on and yet get nowhere.Nothing is certain, it's all a question of
probability.
I remained in line for a solid hour of this directionless flux queuing before I ran out of time
The next day I took Oliver's sage advice and hunted out Sexta.
You can tell this photo was taken on a Sunday as the sex shop
owner has shut up shop to go to church.
It turned out to be a rum tip-off as it took me less than 20 minutes to get my copies notarised.Narrowly resisting the urge to pop in next
door and buy a pair of edible knickers on the same trip, I made my way to the final stage of my bureauodyssey; registering with the Foreign Affairs Ministry,
<<I’m here to get my passport visa registered.>>
<<Is that your passport or your visa you want registered?>> Asks the guard/official at the Ministry..
<<I want to register this visa in my passport.>>
<<So that’s the visa then?>>
<<Yes.>>
<<Here’s a ticket.Come back at
11:30.>>
It was 9:30, which meant I now had two hours to kill with non-specified activities.
Cut to 11:30.
<<Good morning, I’m here to get my visa registered.Here’s my ticket.>>
<<Who told you to come here?>>
<<You told me to come back at 11:30.>>
The guard/official recovers with some aplomb.
<<Yes, that does sound like the kind of thing I would say.Take a seat please.>>
After 15 minutes of thumb-twiddling, I am called up to the front-desk where my documents are perused, a few forms are signed, stamps are given a ceremonious stamping and all appears to be well.
<<Ok all done.Now all we need is 2 copies of the stamp and one copy each of the passport
photo page and the visa.>>
The clerk at the front-desk points over to a room containing a giant
photocopier.I wander in, causing the guard/official to shout out in exasperation.
<<No, not there!You need to go to the shop outside.>>
Advice noted, I wander out to the conveniently located copy shop outside and return to the desk with the requested copies.
<<Can you sign these please.>>
I sign them.
<<Ok. That’s everything.Could you just go through to that room over
there.>>
He points over to a room containing a giant
photocopier.I wander in, causing the guard/official to shout out in exasperation.
<<No, you can’t just go in there.You have to take a ticket and wait in line
first.>>
I get a ticket and wait for my number to come up.When it does, I head into the room; taking the blessed lack of exasperated shouting as a good sign.
I sit at the nearest desk and hand my documents to a lady with a well practiced impression of government-sanctioned indifference. She peers down at my papers.
All around is frenetic activity, hustle and bustle, confering and signing and stamping and hubbub. The giant photocopier however, sits resolutely unused. Perhaps its just for display, a pleasant focal point.
She looks up <<Ok these all seem to be in order.Can you go to the bank-teller at the end of
the corridor and pay four dollars.>>
<<I’m sorry.I thought that the
registration process was free.>>
<<Oh it is.This payment is for
the registration of the registration.That costs four dollars.>>
Hmmm, that all seems quite reasonable.
I direct myself towards the bank teller's stall and wait to be served. The nearest guard/official approaches and tells me to queue the right way, despite the fact there is no one else
in the queue and no visible indication of which direction I should be queuing
in.
My queuing faux-pas rectified, the teller appears, I get my receipt, pay and return to the room of the photocopier.
<<Here you go, have a nice day.>> The lady says in a prozac-dead tone which clearly implies she couldn't care less what kind of day I have. She passes me my documents.
A few tentative steps towards the exit don't result in me being shouted at. I figure this means I am okay to go... I go.
All my trámites over (until the next ones), I
wander out into the crisp afternoon sunshine.
And so, with that, I bid you a fond farewell for now.
I leave you with this final comforting thought:
Republics, confederations and empires may rise and fall, but bureaucracy is
here to stay.
<<¿Would it be possible to use the phone to call the airport
and check if our baggage has arrived yet?>>
The hostal receptionist looked at me, his eyes earnest and serious. His look was one of great concern. Clearly he understood the stress of having to spend days without a change of clothes, the potential costs should the bags not be located, not to mention the emotional trauma of losing so many personal items, each one with its own story to tell. Yes, I could see he understood my anguish.
And then he knelt down and tied my shoelaces.
<<You must keep these tied sir, or you will fall over.>>
...he said in reproach. It seems that he was not expressing concern for my predicament, but deploring my lack of basic health and safety.
Perhaps I have got ahead of myself here, leaping bull-in-a-china-shop-esquely into the middle of the story; horns hammering away willy-nilly at the fine porcelain of backstory, until not a shred of context remains. No doubt you have many questions...¿where am I?...¿who am I?....¿what am I? The quick witted amongst you will have noted the peculiar upside down question marks that I persist on slotting in front of my questions and will have come to the conclusion that I am ensconced somewhere in the Spanish speaking world. Those even more quick-witted will have read the title of the blog and concluded that I'm in Ecuador. Well done to you; you clever, clever things.
But it's possible you don't feel that awareness of this one itsy-bitsy seven letter word leaves you fully briefed on my current situation. Maybe you, like myself, have at best a patchy understanding of what in the unholy hell an Ecuador is. If that is so, then come join me in the slow, piecemeal unwrapping of my ignorance. Let's see if we can't dust the cobwebs off our brains, roll up our sleaves and get knee-deep in a bit of Ecuador.
Ecuador, that tiny South American nation bounded by big bruisers like Peru and Colombia; three strips of land running west to east - Pacific coast, Andean mountains, Amazon jungle - eponymously straddling that imaginary line, equidistant from the North and South poles, that girdles the Earth. Ecuador, asylum-granter to floppy-haired Aussie gossip spillers. Ecuador, producer of Pacari chocolate, which put those cuckoo-clock-making, army-knife-wielding types in their place, being crowned the world's best chocolate. Ecuador, birthplace (somewhat confusingly) of the Panama Hat (of which more in a later blog entry). Ecuador, my new home.
This video, as it was filmed in Tenerife to accompany a song written by a bunch of Germans, will teach you no useful new information about Ecaudor.
So, what have I learned so far about Ecuador. It is to foodstuffs and eateries that I turn to illuminate my story. As far as I'm aware there's no good or logical reason for me to do this, but if anyone can suggest one, I will happily supply them with a bar of gold award winning Pacari 70% Raw - Organic and Biodynamic chocolate.
The first thing I have learned is that Ecuadorians are very proud indeed of being Ecuadorian. I learned this from the back of a packet of crisps (North Americans and Aussies - n.b. crisps = potato chips). Not any old packet of crisps mind you. These were Lays Artesenas, pride of Ecuador (company originated in USA, product of PepsiCo since 1965). And how proud they are of being Ecuadorian. So proud in fact, that they explain, in the following exhaustive detail, the nature of their pride on the back of every single packet.
¡No hay bien más preciado que la libertad... There is no good more precious than liberty... ni orgullo más grande que ser ecuatoriano! nor pride greater than being Ecuadorian! Nuestra historia está llena de gestas heroicas Our history is full of heroic gestures and brave y hombres valientes que han defendido el men who have defended the inalienable right derecho inalienable de todo hombre y de of every man and of every people... todo pueblo... el derecho a ser libres. the right to be free. Nombres como Atahualpa, Rumiñahui, Names like Atahualpa, Rumiñahui, Espejo, Montúfar, Sáenz, Olmedo, Calderón, Espejo, Montúfar, Sáenz, Olmedo, Calderón, Alfaro y otros, engrandecen neustra historia and Alfaro, amongst others, elevate our history y sirven de ejemplo a las nuevas generaciones. and serve as an example to new generations. Fuimos ejemplo de América, no en vano, un 10 We were an example of America, and not in de agosto de 1809 un grupo de idealistas y vain, one fateful 10th of August, 1809, when patriotas se renuió para rebelarse contra las a group of patriots and idealists gathered injusticias de su tiempo, guiando por los caminos together to rebel against the injustices of their de la libertad a los pueblos de América. time, guiding the peoples of America along the road to liberty. Hoy, al recordar un nuevo aniversario de aquella Today, in remembrance of a new anniversary gesta, debemos sentirnos más orgullosos de ser of that gesture, we ought to feel more proud ecuatorianos y saber que las cosas que hacemos, than ever to be Ecuadorian and know that las hacemos bien. the things we do, we do well.
And, having fought their way to the end of the long hard road to liberty, the people are now free to get down to their god-given task of baking the finest of salted potato snacks. Free at last of the scourge of potato-hoarding, imperialist oppressors.
The second thing that I have learned about Ecuador is that it is a nation attempting to embrace a new kind of socialism.
The powerhouse pushing this change forward is a US and Belgium-educated economist by the name of Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado. Since 2007, Señor Correa has been performing the singularly impressive trick of staying President of Ecuador. Now, any old fool can be President of Ecuador (and it seems that several of them have), but staying President of Ecuador appears to be a far more daunting prospect.
In the ten years prior to Correa's election in 2006, Ecuador had a blink-and-you'll-miss-'em of Presidents, none of whom managed to complete a term. One of them, Lucio Gutiérrez,
was so unpopular that he had to flee the Presidential Palace by
helicopter to seek asylum with the Brazilian ambassador after his
attempt to flee the country by plane from Quito airport was cut short by
hundreds of angry protestors smashing through airport security and
blocking the airstrip. Another, Abdalá Bucaram was nicknamed 'el loco' and removed from office when he was declared mentally unfit to rule. His successor, Rosalía Arteaga, lasted a grand total of two days as Ecuador's first female president before being ousted, with the army's support, by her political rivalFabián Alarcón who in turn lasted a mere 6 months in office.
Common themes which have run through all of these short-lived and wildly unpopular presidencies are a strict adherence to neoliberal economic policies, a reliance on international institutions such as the IMF and WTO and attempts to maintain a close relationship with the USA Correa's approach has been somewhat different.
He has stated that one of the formative influences which shaped his political approach was the post-graduation year he spent volunteering in a kindergarten in a small town in the Cotopaxi province of Ecuador called Zumbahua. At this kindergarten, run by Salesian monks, he met a Veronese monk called Padre Pio Baschirotto with whom he struck up a friendship. As a result of his conversations with the padre and his experiences of the crippling poverty suffered by the local people, he developed a feeling of the importance of helping the poorest in the country, learned to speak the indigenous language Quichua, worked to increase the literacy of the indigenous population, as well as providing support for micro-enterprise development and developed a wish to create a new form of socialism for the 21st century.
Once he got into power, he wasted no time putting this wish into action. In his time in office he has defaulted on Ecuador's national debt, declaring it odious debt contracted by previous corrupt regimes, declared he would fight Ecuador's creditors in the international courts and succeeded in reducing the price of outstanding bonds by more than 60%; challenged foreign investors to provide US$3.6bn in contributions to maintain a moratorium on drilling in the remote Yasuni national park (to a deafening silence which has resulted in the moratorium being dropped); used high oil revenues as a result of soaring oil prices to pay for the building of roads, schools and hospitals and to invest heavily in social programmes, including providing free education and healthcare; slashed poverty rates from 37% in 2007 to 27% in 2012; brought Ecuador into the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, joining forces with like-minded regional leaders such as the late Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia; reformed the constitution to recognise the rights of nature and the indigenous concept of Pachamama; had Quichua and Shuar declared national languages; refused to allow the IMF to monitor Ecuador's economic plans and trodden on a hell of a lot of toes.
He has been accused of stifling the free press, has distanced Ecuador considerably from the USA (when Hugo Chavez likened former US President George W. Bush to Satan, Correa commented that this was somewhat unfair on the devil) and built up over $4 billion of debt to China.
Although he has annoyed a number of multinational companies, particularly oil giants such as Chevron, Correa's socialism of the 21st Century is not directly opposed to commerce and rejects traditional socialist concepts such as centralized planning.
To illustrate this, I would like to draw your attention to the following complimentary packet of Ecuadorian sugar.
I'm pretty sure you wouldn't have seen that in the old USS of R.
The third thing I have learned about Ecuador is that it is a nation which has grown out of ethnic diversity.
When the Spanish Conquistadores arrived in Ecuador in the 16th Century ready to civilize and Christianize with the help of a goodly dose of guns, germs and steel, they found a patchwork of languages and ethnicities which had only partly been absorbed into the great Inca Empire.
In the 17th Century, a slave-trading galleon was shipwrecked off the coast of the northern province of Esmereldas, and the few black African survivors swam ashore and set up home there, soon to be joined by more cimarrones, escaped slaves from the north.
Many hundreds of years of inter-marriage and plain old rape resulted in the highly complex casta system of ethnic classification, with its cast of blancos (whites both 'peninsulares' born in Europe and 'criollos' born in the Americas), negros (black Africans), indios (non-differentiated indigenous peoples), mestizos (mixed white and indigenous), mulattos (mixed white and black). zambos (mixed indigenous and black), pardos (mixed white, black and indigenous), cholos (mostly indigenous with a little white mixed in there for good measure) and so on ad infinitum e nauseam.
If you'd like further clarification of this ethnological hairsplitting, you can consult this highly illuminating 18th century 'pintura de castas':
A fairly small amount of immigration in the 20th and 21st centuries has added only a little to the mix, with a tiny Jewish, Lebanese and Palestinian presence (approximately 0.4% of the population) and an even smaller influx of Asians (small enough I think to be classified as a trace element).
This limited addition of new blood has resulted in a rather hazy understanding of foreign cultures, which I think is ably demonstrated by the Taj Mahal restaurant in Cuenca, which serves such traditional Indian fayre as kebabs and pita bread.
This occasional tendency to view foreigners as a hodgepodge of other is tempered by the extraordinary kindness, politeness and generosity of the Ecuadorian people.
Which brings us back to our friend the hostal receptionist. Having given me the important footwear health and safety announcement, he was more than happy to let me use the phone to contact the airline about our missing luggage. Not that this helped me in the slightest with the retrieval of the aforementioned wayward luggage items.
You see, as I was to discover later when a veritable sea of blue, yellow and red-clad bodies could no longer be ignored, Ecuador were playing an important world cup qualifying match against Bolivia that afternoon and, entirely coincidentally, Quito's American Airlines team happened to be not answering their phone number throughout the same afternoon. It seems the crisp packet was right, Ecuadorian pride does indeed trump all, office hours included.
The luggage eventually had to be flown across to Cuenca from Quito some fourteen days after our arrival in Ecuador.
My final victual-based discovery about Ecuador is an assertion about the males of Ecuador which I have as yet been unable to verify.
And so we come rambling on to the end of my first set of musings. In the next entry, I shall share with you my initial impressions of my new town of residence, Cuenca.
