Destination: Discovery: Week 2: Preguntas

Tuesday, September 11 – Monday, September 17

As is expected in any extreme cultural adaptation, an initial excitement and love for the culture is usually followed by unending and sometimes unanswerable questions. My second week in Ecuador definitely fit this generalization. In a country with so many aspects to be celebrated, it is hard to accept many of the ironies and realities that come about in daily life. This is what I found myself struggling with over the past week (not to mention the inevitable sickness that came over the weekend but is thankfully now gone).

Every day as I go through my normal progression of activities I am faced with these questions. As I walk to class every morning I pass by the same fruit stand, and every day the same 8 year old boy is there helping his mother. Why isn’t this boy in school, I ask? Then I start to piece together some of the things I have been learning- judging by his mother’s style of dress, he probably comes from an indigenous family. Like many other native peoples, they have probably resorted to abandoning their Andean culture in a small community to come to the bigger city for a better economic opportunity. Not until the last Ecuadorian constitution of 1998 were indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian peoples granted equal rights to the mestizo and blanco races of Ecuador. Nonetheless, the indigenous and black communities have faced oppression since 1492 and the ‘discovery’ of American by you-know-who. Their ancestors have been treated like animals, considered to have no soul and therefore inferior because their language, religion, and overall way of life was not ‘civilized.’ And so now you can begin to put the pieces into place… like 80% of all Ecuadorians, this mother is probably illiterate; therefore, lacking the savvy and foresight to put her son in school, especially since she needs help at the stand. And so now you can begin to see how one simple question has opening up a whole story of understanding- understanding of a history of a people’s hurt, oppression, and sadness, yet an unwillingness to give up their roots.

Just as I pass by the fruit stand, I encounter a short tree that’s been lopped off 2 feet from its base. The tree has been like this for the past 4 days now. Why doesn’t somebody clean it up? All the while I have been walking by spare litter, with an occasional heap shoved in a street corner somewhere. I must plug my nose as I pass by. Why doesn’t somebody clean it up? Now I’ve come to a rather busy street that I must cross, which is a complicated and usually dangerous activity in Quito. Here, the pedestrians have no rights so you must be opportune and sneaky in your strategies. As I slither my way behind a bus in one lane and a taxi in the other, I mistakenly inhale a mouthful of pollution. But it’s not just these two vehicles, it’s every one. Why doesn’t anybody care about the cleanliness of the air they’re breathing? And so now you can see how some questions cannot so easily be answered.

Finally I make my way onto the bus, which only slows to a crawl for me to hop on. I haven’t sat down but for one minute when two street venders pop on the bus, walking up and down the aisle with their breath mints & gum or daily newspapers. Why are they allowed to get on and off for free? I wonder how much they make selling a pack of mints for 25 cents. Later in the week I’m on a coach bus on the way out of town to a place called Baños. Surely there won’t be any interruptions on this ride like on the city buses. Well, actually there were more. There was the typical up-and-down the aisle display and yell technique along with a new bus selling strategy I had never seen before. At least three people employed what I would call the true salesmen strategy- pitching a product for at least 5 minutes, allowing the customer to explore and test the product, and finally complete the sale. There was the man I thought was a representative of the bus company by the way he introduced himself, but instead was selling magnetic bracelets of which he elaborated upon the health benefits for a good 15 minutes. I’d estimate 20 of the 40 people on the bus purchased one for $2. Another man took his time in the spotlight selling candies, but instead of speaking about their health benefits he was giving the captive audience a heartfelt testimony of the difficult living situations of his family. Is his being sincere? If so, how can I justify giving money to him and not the hundreds of other beggars and street children who have approached me? And so now you can start to see how it is hard to ask some of these questions. It’s easy to feel guilty refusing sales to three children- one selling shoe-shines for 25 cents and another mints for 5-on your walk to buy a $45 cell phone that you really don’t need.

My objective in asking these questions is not to criticize a country or its culture. It is just the opposite- to gain a better understanding and to learn the most from my experiences which is all I can ask for here in my time in Ecuador. In our classes, we’ve been talking a lot about a Western definition of development and the Western way of thinking. In our style of living, it is very popular to divide concepts into binaries where one half of the pair is good and the other is exactly the opposite. The lesson I’ve learned from this is to conceptualize every new question or concept I encounter not as good vs. bad, beneficial vs. detrimental, but with humility and an overarching goal of understanding. I’m finding it’s a refreshingly humiliating and enlightening way to view the world.

As I mentioned above, my weekend consisted of a trip to a town called Baños with some good friends from the program. Baños is a beautiful city set in the mountains and known for its natural hot spring baths, hiking and biking paths, rafting, or any other outdoor adventure you could desire. We did a little hiking, biking, and relaxing in the hot springs at night to relax. Here are the pictures to prove it. We’ll see you next week!