And Now, More Thoughts from the Equator

1. Does anyone remember pogs (anyone who went to middle school between 1995 and 2000 should be nodding their heads)? Because for whatever reason, they´re huge here right now. Most of my kids bring them out at least once throughout the day and I always see kids playing them in the street. I remember having a vague notion that they were ridiculous when I cared about them, but watching it now from the other side all I can do is scratch my head that the phenomenon continues.

2. As any of my female friends here can tell you, Ecuador is still more or less a bastion of machismo despite improvements in recent years. Men shout and whistle from windows, the sidewalk, and passing vehicles regardless of whether women have male companions or not (not that they should need them). I´ve been amazed at how quickly and passively these traits are picked up by boys too. I´m constantly scolding my boys (ages 10-16) for whistling at passing girls or smacking their lips disgustingly. So far none of them seem to understand why this is a problem but more than any other lesson, this is the one I want to get through to them.

3. Quito is unofficially divided into distinct economic districts. This applies to food markets, the touristy center, business center, and usual divisions that might immediately come to mind but extends to much more specific areas of the city. For example, every day on my walk to my internship I walk up a street completely lined with shoe stores, including an enormous open-air market entirely devoted to the sale of footwear. I also live in the middle of the construction/home improvement area (oddly located around the Basílica), there is also a string of personal hygeine product stores on my way to work, and a couple weeks ago as I was leaving the bus station I stumbled upon three extremely militant army surplus stores, all in a row. The funny thing about all of these similar stores sharing such a small space is that it doesn´t really seem to affect how prices are set. You would think that increased competition would result in lower prices or at least an equalizing of prices (or so my highly developed, largely intuitive knowledge of economics tells me) but prices very widely for the same products in stores right next to each other...very curious...

4. If you´re waiting for a bus in the 4-6 in the afternoon range, especially going south, you´d better be prepared for a very close encounter with approximately 100 of your Ecuadorian comrades. When the bus rumbles up, you can tell immediately how full it is by the amount of bulge in the doors. Regardless of the density of the crowd, everyone on the bus stop pushes in, resulting in this ridiculous situation in which everyone is absolutely mashed together, like potatoes. The buses to the south are more crowded because (I think) the south is the traditionally poorer part of the city and I´m sure that there are more workers from the south in the commercial part of the city who don´t own cars. As a result, when you´re waiting for your hot, smelly, and crowded southbound bus you have to watch almost empty buses pass by heading north.

5. For my independent study project, as I´ve mentioned, I´m looking at how the process of mestization in indigenous youth is reinforced by their experience in school. I thought it might be helpful to visit some of the parents and see what they thought about their childrens´schools and their participation in them. I tried to organize some visits through Sol and some other schools and nothing really would work out, so I just decided to right to the source: the markets. Last Saturday I visited two big markets in Quito where I was planning on interviewing some of the indigenous women about their feelings on education. I´d already been told by Martha, the program director, to clearly and quickly explain myself to anyone I might interview just because they would assume that I´m there on behalf of the government or something else that could be trying to get them in trouble. So I approached three different women and explained who I was, what I was doing, and that by all means, anything they told me would only be used for my paper. The first women started out speaking to me in perfect Spanish, but after the first question of the interview switched to Quichua and pretended like she didn´t understand. The next woman told me that "yes, she had children in the school system here," but when I asked if I could ask a couple quick questions, she corrected herself and said, "Oh, well actually, I don´t have kids." The next woman did the exact same thing. So maybe parents visits aren´t really necessary for this paper after all...