Where did you learn Spanish? …September 2013

That question was put to me repeatedly by taxi drivers and others during our early months in Cuenca.  And it was often followed by the statement that not many extranjeros (foreigners) speak it here.  A Colorado grade school introduction to Spanish, seven years of classroom study, and regular use while working with Mexican immigrants from 2000 to 2006 boosted my communication in Ecuador. I found great joy in talking with women at church (photo), shopkeepers, and friendly people on the bus.

Friends at the Episcopal Mission Church

By September, our fourth month in Ecuador, Bill found a good Spanish teacher and I began writing regularly (about Haitian women and family history)…one of my major goals for "retirement."  We learned that the cost of importing a couple pallets of goods was prohibitive.  And mid-month we traveled south to visit Loja and Vilcabamba…Ecuador's famous valley of longevity.

Second Cuenca apartment

Journal entries

September 8, 2013:  Letting go

Letting go of the need to freight boxes down here has been freeing…we can live with so little, as we have been doing!  Layer by layer, it seems, we must divest ourselves not only of possessions, but of...expectations of a standard of living that is beyond what the world can sustain for all.

September 10, 2013:  Encounters on the bus

Luzmila and I meet waiting for the #3 bus on Juan Jaramillo one chilly afternoon and talk all the way to her stop at Ciudadela Eucalyptos.  A widow for 10 years, she has two children and five grandchildren and asks me to pray for them.  She is a lab tech with the Federal Department of Health.

At the same stop a day later I meet Lucas, a 19 year old university student studying gastronomia.  He is interested in how we got residency, and in our sons (23, in Texas; 21, in Japan).  I tell him of their struggles and their profound encounters with God and ask if he has faith. "No."  I will pray for him.

Our neighborhood, Cuenca

On the same bus are a mother and daughter.  They exit behind me and I turn and say "We are neighbors."  Betty tells me her son is taking English lessons and would like to speak English with us.  Daughter Carmen (19) chatters happily, hand in hand with Betty.  They invite me to their house and I meet tall, handsome Giovanni and Giovanni Junior (16) who greets me with a kiss and quickly escapes to his room.  They ask about our apartment (direct questions about money are very common!) and tell me we are paying too much rent.

September 13, 2013:  Traveling to Loja

We journey up and down mountains and across high ridges with views to verdant valleys and hills.  A stretch near Ona (halfway point) reminds me of Haiti, over-farmed.  A sign in the area declares "Trees purify the air…don't cut them down."

Loja

After Ona, we pass a small town where men trim roadside growth with machetes, and then a field with cows and calves and women milking.

It's a festival day in Loja, with a parade and floats from each of the cantons in the region…the themes are of cows and hummingbirds and flowers and lavishly dressed Inca princesses throwing baubles or candy to the crowd.  Loja has a friendly feel.

Parade around Loja's Plaza Central; main cathedral in background

September 16, 2013:  Vilcabamba

Vilcabamba, home to 500 extranjeros; pop. 5000

Loja and now Vilcabamba are warmer places [than Cuenca], and the view from our little cabin reminds me of Haiti, Mexico, Africa.  What a gift to have five days in this quiet place.  We'll reflect on a possible move to Loja…pros and cons…and see if a place to live presents itself this coming weekend.

September 25, 2013:  Housing in Loja

Expectations about what we need to live hit me in the face as we considered places without centralized hot water, shabby, exposed to fumes and noisy traffic…the stuff of life for most people in the urban third world!  Somehow we will come to a happy medium…a step down from the luxury of our Cuenca apartments to perhaps a second world setting.  I was deeply touched by the devotion of the (relatively poor) women of Loja…their faces turned toward the altars of the several beautiful churches of central Loja.

My favorite chapel in Loja…used mostly for weddings