Nate ñuca shutik kan (my name is Nate)

Well I´m back in Quito after spending a week in Riobamba. Originally Manuel, the man with whom I spoke in the last post, was going to set me up with a friend of his to stay for the week. After I stayed with Manuel´s family for a night and we all connected really well, we just decided that it would be the best possible situation if I just stayed with their family instead! It´s always amazing how drastically things can differ from your expectations. My first meeting with Manuel was nerve-wracking and discouraging but by the next day we had become very good friends.

Alright, so the day after my meeting with Manuel I went back to his house for another chat. There was another miscommunication about meeting time so I ended up spending the afternoon with his 17-year-old son Luis (or Israel) talking, playing chess, and making lunch. When Manuel got home that afternoon he suggested that I just stay the night with them since he didn´t have a family. After I got settled Manuel invited me to the preparations for a wedding to be held the following day. Manuel is an extremely important community leader (he actually had two meetings with Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa during the week I was with him) and conducts many of the more important ritruals in the community. That night Manuel led a few prayers for the marriage and led a really interesting pre-matrimony ritual that involved the fiancés force-feeding each other, much like the American wedding cake tradition. We also met Manuel´s parents that night and had a beautiful view of the Southern Cross constellation.

The next day we woke up at 4:30 (the normal wake-up time for the family) and headed back to the groom´s house for a ritual bath. As we were sitting around waiting for the bath and watching the sun rise an ancient Quechua woman came hobbling out of the house dragging a large bucket. When I got up to help her carry it I realized the bucket was full of probably 70 skinned guinea pigs for the wedding feast. The night before I´d explained to Manuel that guinea pigs are only used at pets in the U.S. and he very somberly replied, "Many pets will die tomorrow." Manuel, Luis, and I collected herbs and plants from the garden to use in the bathing and then headed out into the field behind the guinea pig hut. The bath consisted of Manuel dripping, splashing, and throwing alternating ice cold and luke warm water on the bather (the bride actually broke out in tears from the shock of the cold). Not having woken up at 4:30 for nothing, I too was brought close to tears as, standing in a field in my underwear, I was thrashed with cold water and orange peels.

While the bath in itself was definitely refreshing, being ritually cleansed also allowed me to help Manuel with the actual marriage ceremony that afternoon. It was held outside La Balbenera, the oldest Catholic church in Ecuador, were Manuel, Luis, a friend Pati, and I set up the ritual space with a fruit border, an offering of geometrically arranged food at the center, and a special burning. It was a very elaborate ritual lasting about 40 minutes in the noon sun. The ritual burning had to be lit by a non-menstruating woman and only people who had been bathed could even enter the sacred space. All in all a very interesting afternoon. When we got home I had lunch with Rosario (Manuel´s wife) and the kids, Ruth (20), Luis (17), and Koreths (13) where we traded Quechua and English words and phrases. That evening I went to a youth service at Ruth´s evangelical church which was very interesting.

The next we also woke up obscenely early and headed off to an Inti Raymi (the summer solstice festival, inti=sun and raymi=festival in Quechua) ritual in Cacha, a traditional community high in the mountains above Riobamba . When we got there we were immediately put to work making breakfast for a group of visiting American medical students and the community leaders who would be attending the ritual. It was a lot of fun to be on the inside, making the salads and traditional drinks and getting to serve people instead of being served. Most of the Ecuadorian attendees got a kick out of being served by the American visitor and were really patient. The Americans were just confused. The breakfast was followed by the actual Inti Raymi festival where Manuel was once again leading the proceedings. It combined several of the same elements of the previous day´s ritual but was much better attended. On the ride home Manuel and I talked about indigenous politics and tourism after so many of the people at the ritual were either foreigners or Ecuadorians from the city with little interest in the actual ritual. I was amazed at how carelessly and disrespectfully the Americans and Europeans would push there way through the crowd to get a view, walk through the sacred space, and snap pictures despite Manuel´s request that they not.

The rest of the week passed relatively calmly with cooking, cleaning, reading, birthday parties, Incan exercises, Quechua/English lessons, community visits, a marriage offer from a Quechua woman, conversations about politics, religion, academia, and background, walks, and views of Chimborazo, Tungarhua, and El Altar (the highest mountains in the country) from my bathroom window. It feels incredible that I became so close with this family after such a short period of time but saying goodbye was much more difficult than I´d ever anticipated. I´m sure we´ll stay in touch as I want to improve my Quechua and everyone in the family is very enthusiastic about learning English. Manuel is also very interested in American indigenous politics and would like to make a connection between Jatun Sacha Wasi (the Quechua university in Riobamba of which he is the director) and a Sioux college in South Dakota. Hopefully something will work out.

Sorry for the long post but if you can believe it I´ve left out tons. After a week of waking up at 4:30 (ssoo the opposite of what I´m about) I´m headed for a nap. My mom and sister will be arriving in Quito soon for a week after missing some connections so I´m sure I´ll have more to tell soon. I hope this finds you all well and stay tuned! Yopaichani (Thanks) and ashta kama (until later).

Coming soon: a week with Mom and Lauren in Ecuador

Intimidation in "Frio"bamba

So I have finally arrived in Riobamba, the main site of my time here in Ecuador and a chilly city (it´s a national joke to call Riobamba "Friobamba" because "frio" means "cold" in Spànish) due to the winds that blow down from Chimborazo, the highest mountain in the country. The first week in Quito was sort of boring as I was mostly just trying to connect with my host family from last fall and get the information I need for the rest of my trip. It was relaxing though and I got to reacquaint myself with most of the city at a very leisurely pace. After 4 days of phone tag Juan Carlos and I got together on Tuesday and I got all of the contact information I needed. Although a lot has changed in terms of my family and my place here it was nice to catch up with people and hear about what´s happened in the 6 months since I left.

Now I´m in Riobamba where I met today with Manuel Puma Kiru, the director of the university where Juan Carlos teaches. Although he had a ton of information and eventually connected me with a Quechua family Manuel is a rightfully intimidating man. Almost the very first thing he asked me while maintaining complete eye contact was, "So, why are you here? What do you want to know?" Both valid questions but a bit terrifying and surprisingly direct as I stumbled through my startled responses in Spanish. We talked for 3 hours about the state of Ecuador´s indigenous peoples and the role of foreigners, explicitly including anthropologists, in visiting the country. Talking with Manuel was a strong and necessary reminder that his people (or any people for that matter) aren´t tourist attractions or "lab animals," as he put it. He was very direct in saying that I should know exactly what I´m doing here and to remember that doing research or carrying out a study carries with it implicit power dynamics. While I knew this all along, I think I´d sort of talked myself into thinking that my research was worthwhile and that my position in doing the research validated. Especially at my undergraduate level of anthropology where the difference between research and ethno-tourism is minute, I´m going to have to really re-evaluate if and how I can do this research at all. Luckily though, I can do everything I wanted to do originally only as an experiential cultural exchange (which is the project outline in my fellowship anyway).

The moral of the story is that after an hour and a half of Manuelo interviewing me about my intentions in visiting his community he was confident enough to help me out. We´re meeting tomorrow at 10 to meet the family with whom I will be working and living for the next week!

I´ll probably be out of contact for that time (assuming this works out like I´m hoping it will) so I´ll update you all again in a week when I return to Quito and start the week with my mom and sister! I hope everyone´s doing well and I should have plenty to tell in a week´s time. Until then!

Back to Quito!

If by some miracle I haven´t told you or much more astoundingly my mother hasn´t told you I will be back in the Andes for the summer traveling and doing research on indigenous education thanks to a generous fellowship from Carleton. I´m starting out in Ecuador (I´m actually writing from an internet café in Quito right now) where I´ll stay in a village outside Riobamba for a week and a half before my mom and sister arrive. After we tour around Ecuador for a week I´ll head to Cuzco, Peru where I´ll visit Macchu Picchu and sites and stay for another week+ in a rural village. Finally I´ll end my trip with a quick stop on Lake Titicaca (the highest lake in the world navigable by ocean-faring vessels) and in La Paz, Bolivia before I head to a village outside Cochabamba a little farther to the south. Hopefully then I´ll have just enough time for the 2-3 day bus ride back to Quito to catch my flight home!

Last night I arrived back in Quito, surprisingly pleased that the sounds (car horns, dogs) and smells (gasoline, roasting meat) haven´t changed a bit in 6 months. My taxi driver from the airport said my Spanish was great as we talked about politics and the weather but then again, I was paying him. Otherwise I´m just hanging out for a couple of days until I head down to Riobamba. I´m planning on having lunch with my host dad from the fall tomorrow and hopefully dinner with Charo, my host mom. I´m excited to reestablish contact with everyone.

Well, I´m going to go walk around for a while and get a feel for things again. I´m not sure how often I´ll be able to update but stay tuned!