I have happy memories 8 years on of the various social aspects with the Bear Project. I had a lot of fun travelling around in the local buses or hitching rides in everything from dumper trucks, jeeps, open cattle trucks, horses and bikes in the sun and wind through stunning scenery. One night we returned from a fiesta at Cazarpamba at 1-2am in the back of an open jeep looking up at a magical, dancing night sky of the milky way.
We stood in the back on top of soil or gravel for road building and milk trucks with milk churns collecting milk at farms and trucks with furniture, sacks of food, calves, cookers, beer and anyone from babe in arms to 90. On another occasion, kids aged 6 to 12 offered us long green fruits which I cheerfully copied as to how to eat; open with grubby hands, suck the white pith from the big black seeds and spit from the jeep as we bounced along. I recall thinking UK H&S etc would preclude much of this travel style but I found it refreshingly pragmatic and sociable. The cost varied from 1.75 dollars for 2 hour ride on the bus to 25 cents to 1 dollar in a truck closer to home. All our lifts were friendly, sociable, family orientated with a relaxed attitude to life.
I got the impression from a couple of conversations there was an overload of ‘westerners’ wanting to be ‘helpful’. I was part of this and a useful reality check – why should I be there, what did I bring that local people couldn’t do themselves and how would I feel if some ‘good souls’ turned up in my village to tell me how to manage matters? I don’t have more answers 8 years on as a volunteer at home but hopefully a wider awareness.
The trip from Otovalo to Pucara along the occasional double to single track gravel- dirt road wound its way around an endless series of hairpin bends through the foothills with the bus grinding its way between 1st and 3rd gears from 1200m up to 3100m and down again. Landslides were not uncommon as the road had been blasted along ravine edges. The bus navigated around cows grazing the roadsides occasionally herded by small child or a woman knitting.
The indigenous people seemed to have mostly Inca indian type faces and of short stature with other characteristics of African negroid from the slave trade in Brazil. Many were dressed in traditional costume as their ordinary day wear which varied between villages such as skirt length but I mostly saw ankle length navy, black or purple wrap around skirt with colourful embroidered wide belt, white scoop neck lacy embroidered blouse, one shoulder type shawl and long shawl or pill box shape hat with dangly ear-rings, gold necklaces and black and white espadrilles. The men had brilliant white calf length trousers with blue – white shirt, navy poncho, panama type hat and often long hair tied and wrapped in a braid. This attire went hand in hand with mobile phones and alongside people in jeans and T shirt.
We saw a small, rustic moonshine distillery in the hills where sugar cane was turned into 60 or 80% proof puro. Fascinating to see the methods using simple diesel motor, pulleys and crusher to extract the juice and then boiled- fermented in vats over open fires with couple of kids and chickens wandering about. The fumes are overpowering and I hated the stuff but can just about drink it in hot tea with canella. The locals imbibed the stuff as the cheap way to chill out!
We also walked to a trout farm high in the hills near Cazarpamba where as another income source, a farmer had dug 5 large pits and diverted a spring-stream water to hold trout of various ages. We bought 4 and they were duly caught with a net and bashed on the head until they eventually stopped jumping on the grass.
Fiestas were great fun if you liked puro, loud music and dancing. I drank beer instead, wrapped in fleece jacket, jeans and hiking boots as it was cool in the hills with young and old gyrating to booming Ecuadorian music. The Cazerpamba fiesta took place in the chapel yard with big speakers and I did the shuffle dance for 2 hours with various blokes who kindly asked me to dance. The puro fumes were overwhelming especially as the men were my height, but all very sociable if highly inebriated. I recall too the couple of great nights out in bars in Otovalo with Bear House pals, finding a live Andean music band, fabulous rum cubra libres and a cheerful bloke who had little neck like a bull and happy to dance with our zany trio.
Social life in Pucara was mainly limited to watching chickens or blokes playing volleyball. Once, we watched a bloke on horseback gallop around the sports pitch pursued by 5 snapping dogs. A short pause then off again. There were occasional football matches where one goal was deflected by a chicken who was trying to feed on the pitch. At another football event with 10 or so villages heralding teams we sat in the stand for 3 hours watching the teams walk on with a beauty queen, lots of speeches, national anthem and good humour but no football.
We went to the important passing out parade in Pucara school where at a certain age the kids sing the anthem and kiss the flag whilst solemnly proclaiming to honour president and country to booming music. J was an ex teacher who had just taken redundancy from a private school in UK and gone travelling for a year after spending 16 years or so teaching in Kuwait and Kenya. It was lovely to lounge in outdoor hot pools and idly chat.
Last night I ended up with A (who spoke fluent Spanish and was a 6 month volunteer teacher) in a nearby house listening intently for 2 hours to conversations about Easter and other celebrations where people do things in cemeteries with lots of food piled up including fish and puro, families, school and farming whilst being fed 3 sweet bread buns the farmer´s wife makes for the market and sweet tea. She then started to gag as an acid reflux but we thought it was the 6th baby about to appear whilst the husband was being ill in the yard. After checking she was all right, we walked home and stumbled over two horses feeding in the roadside ditch.
Our diet comprised mainly white processed food such as endless heavy bread buns, rice, pasta and potatoes with some lentils and vegetables. C. at the Bear House was a cheerful cook who between boiling drinking water and cooking huge pots of rice, weaved handbags from cabuya on the verandah. Our picnic lunches were of bread, savoury and sweet biscuits with cream cheese, can of tuna and fruit. We occasionally made pizza, nachos with guacamole and cake when left to fend for ourselves, accompanied by beer or puro.
Opposite the Bear House the same owners opened up a small cafe- bar selling sugar cane juice and meat snacks. We were invited over for guinea pig and I had the half back end but needed help to tear apart the legs to chomp away. At Don Efren farm where we camped the food was generally plentiful and mainly of carbs as lots of potato and pasta soup with occasional chicken bits such as feet swimming around with home made blackberry juice and unpasteurised milk from a cow being milked in the yard. The calf had some then the family.
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