Life at Latitude 3

I had told my owners that I was moving out, had packed up all of the CEDEI owned things in my apt, had found and paid rent on another place, and even moved most of my things over.  2 days before turning in my key, my owners saw me with my big packpack, and asked me where I was going.  My owners are sweet but a bit elderly, and they must´ve not have understood me, or just didn´t want to believe, when I told them the 1st time that I would be leaving.  I told them, again, that I couldn´t afford rent for the entire apt., and that I´d had no luck finding roommmates.  Without even blinking, they offered to lower the rent for me.  We agreed on a price which was slightly higher than what I would pay if there were 2 other people in the apt, (so that I would have an incentive to find roommates) but that if I were unable to find roommates (as I had been), I could still afford the apt.  And then, as luck had it, I found another roommate that very day!  Megan had just flown in from Quito, and was needing a place.  It´s one of the few situations in which everyone ended up feeling happy. 

But while the situation had a good ending, it had been a stressful and unsettled week for me.  The indigenous people here don´t believe in the western concepts of medicine and illnesses.  They believe that we experience malestar (a poor state of being) when we are disconnected from the source from which we came, pachamama (the sacred mother earth). Well, I definitely felt very disconnected after that week, and as a result, I came down with one of the ugliest colds of my life.  It dídn´t help that right now the southern hemisphere is experiencing winter.  Winter here is of course NOT the same as winter in Wisconsin or Iowa.  But most ecuadorians buildings don´t have heating, so when the temperature drops, there´s no escaping the coldness, and you better hope you have enough sweaters, blankets, and tea in your aresenal.   

On the morning of July 4th, I woke up and felt a little better.  “A little better” is a relative term, meaning that I felt miserable, vs. wanting to die.  I did something I did only once in 7 yrs at the UW – I took a sick day.  Even if I had had the energy to work with the little ones at the preschool, I didn´t want to get them sick.  I did however, have enough energy to figure out how to get to Baños, a tiny town just outside of Cuenca which has some thermal spas. For 2 glorious hours, my throat didn´t feel like it was swallowing glass, and I could enjoy breathing freely.  And when I got tired of looking at the gorgeous mountain views while soaking in the warm soothing outdoorbaths, I discovered the eucalyptus vapor room, which contains eucalyptus leaves steaming over thermal waters.  To wake up the olfactory senses, pick off 1 or 2 of the moist eucalyptus leaves, rub them in your hands, then sniff.  ahhhhhhhhh. And it opens up the skin too.  In as little as 10 min. you can slough off dead skin cells, revealing soft fresh skin underneath. I´ve been back to Baños a few times, and think I´ve found an easy and cheap ecuadorian addiction. 

That nasty cold is over now, but I think I´ve developed an allergy down here.  I was telling someone that despite the fact that I continue to run down here and that I walk every where, I never feel like I have 100% of my energy or health, that there´s always some congestion in my nose, etc.  The person turned to me and said, You´ve never had allergies before, have you?  Which is true – until now, I didn´t know what it meant to suffer from an allergy.  I´m convinced that it´s the noxious fumes emited from all of the vehicles that is doing it to me.  It´s too bad I didn´t live in Cuenca even 20 yrs ago when cars were still a rare thing, and not the sign of social status that they are now.  I won´t go into a rant about cars and the role they play in ecuadorian society, but for now I´ll say that I´m sure I´m allergice to ecuadorian vehicles.  

Besides the Baños outside of Cuenca, the more famous Baños in ecuador is outside of Ambato.  Right now, that Baños is serving as a refuge for thousands of ecuadorians who have been displaced by the recent eruption of Tunguruahua, which from here on out I´ll just call T (to save typing effort).  No lava came out of T, but plenty of ashen debris, which has caused thousands of people and animals to suffer.  All this week I was late to work as I was fixated to the morning news, listening to the latest news about T and its destruction.  The sad part is that T resides in one of the poorest regions in Ecuador.  People who already were living impoverished and marginalized lives were slammed by T.  Not that you ever want a natural disaster to affect anyone, but somehow it seems even more tragic when it happens to people who were already on the harsh end of life. 

Let´s move from a life-changing incident like a volcanic eruption to something really significant and interesting – my Spanish. I am still nowhere near fluent, but I´m improving in ways that make me happy enough to not care.  I am slowly ironing out pesky little grammatical details, and continue to plump up my vocabulary with great new spanish and quechua words.  The World Cup of course added a whole list of new words (goalie, referee, penalty kicks, overtime, etc.), but I´ve learned several other good words.  In english we say “yippee!”, but in spanish (or at least in cuenca) they say “yoopie!”  In english a chick says “cheep cheep” but in spanish they say “pio pio!”  In English when we want to call a cat, we say “Here Kitty kitty kitty!”  But here they say “Mischy Mischy Mischiy” which is quechua for Cat.  But one of my favorites – when we´re cold in english we say Brrrrr!  But in the ecuadorian highlands, they say “Aichachay!” which sounds like “Aye Ch Chai!” which is also quechua.  I have come to learn that most of my favorite spanish/quechua words involve CH: chupeta (lollipop), chendo (“joking”), aichachay, chompa (jacket), and lechuga (lettuce).

I´m learning quite a few new words from my friend Tito, of whom I will tell you about in the next blog entry…..con much cariño de ecuador!