Pictures

1) The little girl is the daughter of the Lady doing the cooking etc. (with one of the 1000 little chicks running around here.

2) The river I was talking about -just 3min on foot from my littel hut.

3) One on the nuns taking me to the jungle -en canoa :)))

4) Coco-nuts growing on the school's playground (it's a pity you can't see how hight this tree is in reality.

Two Problems

MASSES IN KICHUWA
Dear friends. I’ve had all of this on my mind for a long time but never wrote down any of it in order to avoid the chaos you’ll find below. Ela’s recent mail, however, kinda urged me to put down at least some of it and here’s the mess it was bound to be:

One of my early observations was an uncertain weird feeling during masses. (Yes Mom, I normally attend mass on Sunday and the “Oracion” on Thursday plus occasional rosaries that are prayed here every afternoon with a group of kids from the neighbourhood; I’m actually quite glad Padre Luis now –for health-reasons- spends most of his Time in Tena and Archidona: If he was here I’d have to attend the 6 o’clock-mass every morning! This way, I’m woken by the dim morning-light, the birds and the kids that start rushing by my little hut at about 6:30 am). I came to think that all these nuns and priests presenting and insisting on their (sorry) Catholic faith, in this environment of Kichwa-People (despite these very people’s loyalty) seem somewhat out of place. Having masses, orations and Christian songs held, prayed and sung in Kichwa feels wrong. The Christian religion is not part of their cultural background (the most obvious indice being the many “Dioses”, “Señors”, “Jesuses” and “Marias” fit in in Spanish as there are no words for them in the Kichwan culture.

I am in fact very sceptical of the role the nuns are to play here. I don’t see how they are doing anything for the people (I don’t say they never did so, though) and live (compared to everyone else) in luxury.

Glaubenskrise
Here, more than ever I came to ask myself why it is I go to church and whether I believe in God or not. If I believe in God, I (that’s my opinion) have to proof so in other and more important ways than attending mass every Sunday or oftener. Thus I came to justify my going-to-church by claiming that doing so is part of my cultural background and being a Christian (that is to say a person from that cultural background) it is important for me to learn more about the latter and not detach with it. For me, I think, (well, nothing of all this is anything absolute, right?) attending mass became like a visit to some museum telling me about my/our history, enlightening (a very positive word) and teaching me in that way more about myself and my society/culture.
Well, this argument does not provide any justification for the Kichwa-people attending mass (it’s not about their but about other people’s business).
Whether I believe in God or not? Uff, I don’t know. I only observe that the more rosaries I pray the less critical I get (I remember how ridiculous all of that seemed the first time –yes I prayed my first rosary in Ecuador AND in Spanish- and all the questions I had: Why 5x10 Ave Marias and not 5x1 or 5xnone or qué sé yo…. Now, however, I just brabbl along empty-minded or lost in other thoughts). I remember a period when I had the feeling that all this praying (in Tena I attended an extra oration every afternoon) actually makes you believe and right now I have the feeling, the more I get of it the more ridiculous and wrong it seems.


POVERTY AND HELPLESSNES
Another of my early observations was that I didn’t (and still do not, really) know how to react to the kind of poverty prevailing here. This is not the kind of poverty one might encounter in the cities, where people are either dying in the streets as there is no access to food or pitifully looking for food in the rich people’s garbage and generally leading a life one can only call humiliating (and other words I can’t think of in English). Here, en cambio, there is no way of dying of hunger. This green and fertile paradise provides everything. One puts a seed in the soil and little time later there is something to harvest. (I’ve already mentioned earlier that there is coco, banana, grape-fruit, oranges and much more growing in abundance in the back-garden. When I am enjoying my free time, as I often do, taking some kids to visit some hidden waterfalls, lakes or simply have fun swimming in the river, they would always find some fruits: Cacao (and they had a lot of fun when I ate the cacao-beans instead of only the eating the sweet white stuff surrounding them) –sry, that’s the only one I can name- and a lot of other strange but good ones: Long and green (up to one metre), short and green, short and yellow, red and hard ones, green and round ones, yellow and round ones –pink inside- and a lot more.)
What is it then I would like to give to these people? This question was especially keeping me busy (no, I didn’t get to any conclusion) when I got back from spending my Christmas-holidays in the sierra (@my dear mum: “The sierra” is everything that is not Costa nor Oriente which leaves the Andes) having had noticed that I know perfectly well what I would change there if I could (I wanted to write about that long ago but never got down to it): Giving the kids more freedom from their tyranning parents (most of all dads). I was with a 24year-old girl that had to ask permission to go and meet her friends no matter whether it was plain day or pitch-dark (sadly I had to learn, that this was the norm here and that girls are normally not allowed anything, freedom at the very least). I would take away their TVs and take them out to see some of their beautiful country they know so little of. And other things.
Here, on the other hand. What would one give these kids? Their way of life is the healthiest I’ve ever got to know (I got to know a Austrian Hebamme –eh, a nurse that helps women giving birth to their children- and she told me that cases in which “something goes wrong” amount to a diminishing small number of 3% here, while they amount to the shocking number of 30% (was that number even higher?) in Europe; Pollution is minimum (well, no. You should see that black stuff coming out of the buses). Education here is basic, but it is provided. (Many of the adults, however, are illiterate or very very bad at reading. I swear, I could read out the lectures during mass, more fluent than the native-speakers here. Reading is something one does not do here. I guess it’s like not having cock-fights in Europe or something). Every European (I hope) would be shocked by the amount of periods that simply do not take place because of some event or other or worse because the teachers having a reunion (hardly any week goes by without lessons missing). But what do the kids need education for? What do they need English for? (I’m aware, I’m exaggerating here, but you get the point, right?). They’ll never leave this place (that’s not quite true: in the year of 2006 a total of 8 people left Talag. Four of them went to Spain, one to the USA, one to Columbia and one to Italy). Do I want them to emigrate to the Cities? To other Countries? Leading an unhappy immigrant’s life in for example Germany? Do I want them to join the vicious cycle most of us materialistically orientated are caught in? Well, I know that our society is far from being one to strive for.
But what should one wish for these people? That they continue their basic (would one call it naïve) lives?

And dear Ela, I can asure you: You wouldn’t say all that to the people. All that about how they should be happy with what they have and about how they have no clue what f****** materialism can do to society and every individual’s happiness or anything about them being poor on our expense etc. Neither will any of the other dialogues one goes through in his head (I know precisely what you’re talking about) take place.

I’ll tell you why. At first the things you observe render you speechless(1). (After that comes your own struggling with your new life etc) and after you get disillusioned noticing that all the conversations directed only to the slightest to any of those matters you always wanted to touch upon will end up as mere failures(2).

FOR EXAMPLE RUBBISH
(1) So often I’ve enthusiastically called this place paradise but sadly I have to concede that there does not seem to exist such a thing as paradise (on earth, I mean) any more (has there ever been such a place?). I’m talking of a place where people are 100% in tune with their environments and 100% content with the lives they are leading etc. (The latter, however, would be the case here a lot more than at home, of course).

Let me give you an example of the things that would “render you speechless”. It cannot be long that this funny watery ice-cream (how do you call “Wassereis” in English?), named “bonice”, has been introduced to Ecuador. It is now been sold in every corner and marking together with those other things (like for example crisps) Ecuador’s movement to being a “westernised” country: The increasing consumption of unhealthy (produced of little more than chemics) food that is moreover and most sadly of all wrapped in plastics, or worse aluminium, that do not rot (please note that Ecuador’s system of waste-deposal is –when existing- way worse than ours!).
Back to the point (if there is any): What renders you speechless is the carelessness (I want to say Selbstverständlichkeit) with which people flung their rubbish out of the window. The daily scenario is the following: Many of the 60 people squeezed in a bus made for 20 and suffering from some 35 degrees Celsius decide to spend 10cent and buy themselves a “Bonice” (quite understandable considering the heat, the temptation of the trendy and colourful refreshment probably produced in the States? (it is normal to print for example “made in Italy” on shoe-boxes to make people buy) and the opportunity to show-off that one is affluent enough to waste money is such a way –which is often, however, not the case). All of these people flung their rubbish out of the window. What you’d hear is “Daddy, daddy, open the window, I want to throw out my rubbish”, or “Excuse me please, can you lean forward a little, I want to throw out my rubbish?”. Plastic-bags, empty bottles, bonice-wrappings, everything is flung out of the window making me feel like being hit on the back of my head every time (and me blaming myself for not having succeeded in saying anything to anyone not even once and the feeling of shame making it much worse).
Can you blame them? (always bearing in mind the picture of how people behave in Europe. Think of McDonalds and the surrounding). Being much less “sensitive” in regards to that aspect then we are; Given the fact that public wastebaskets are very very rare and most important of all: How is one to understand that waste should not be disposed of in such a way when all that happens to one’s waste at home is but the very same thing: Left to itself in the forest.

TALKING ABOUT ALL THIS WITH THE PEOPLE
(2) Yes, I did try. In the beginning, that is to say when I was still not shaken in my enthusiasm and not yet enlightened in my naïve belief that I can converse with the people here, as I can converse with the people at home. (I am still not clear about this: Are these people just different, is it a different level of education? Is it a lack of experience in regards to other people, other countries, other customs? I do not know). It does not, however, seem that many of them have been spending much time on thinking about their lives, their standards of living or their position as a society in a imaginable global ranking. Much less about aims, ideals, ways of proceeding towards such or ways of solving existing problems (given they see them –I’m not saying everyone in Europe does so but at least many of the people surrounding me do). Oh, I’m a little frustrated about all this, if you get what I mean.

Notes on Food, Everyday Life and More

-Oh, I’m enjoying this one thing: I’ve never in my life (except, maybe when I was a small kid and my dear mom used to take care of me so well) lived so much in accordance with any of the anthroposophists’ principle as I do here. I take my meals at 6:30am, 12am and 6pm, I go to bed early (at nine at the very latest), there is neither television nor music (“aus der Blechbüchse”) except for the music I play myself (one of the nuns lent me a recorder and I’m eagerly learning how to play the guitar) nor anything except books and paper to write and draw. The only temptation there is is sleep. Never in my life have I produced thus little garbage. As for food: about once in three weeks there is atún coming from a tin and that’s about it. (By the way: I’ve stopped eating meat again when I came here. Reasons? For one part I don’t want meat in my everyday life for more or less the same reasons as before and for another, more important part, I saw how precious meat is here and how little I value it at the same time and thus concluded that I better wouldn’t have it then. Btw: People here tend to slaughter and eat the domestic animals they have here; People in the cities, however, eat consume about the same amount of meat as we do and for this reason meat is produced in pretty much the same way as is ours). I’m recycling paper more than ever (another very valuable good here). I’ve certainly never lived thus sweetie- and chocolate-free in my life. There is none of that to be found here and unless I buy some when I get round to Tena once a week on Fridays (a temptation I easily resist) there is not such a thing for me.

-As for sports: Well, I took up my daily exercises again, I play basketball with the kids (I happily discouraged a group of eager teenagers of trying and get me into their soccer-team –greetings to Lisa, should she ever get round to reading this ;p), I’m part of a brand-new dance-group and I spend a lot of time swimming in the rivers and walking (always trying to find some cave or other… J).

-@my dear mom: Nah, I don’t eat with the nuns and never have done so (A pity in fact. If it was other ways, I presume, there would be a lot more of important conversations taking place –this way, however, opportunities for such are rare). In Tena, at first, I was really hurt and tried to understand why they’d put me in an isolated room when there is plenty of space where they eat plus some sweet internas that could be my company. But silently I accepted that this is the way it is (in Talag, I eat in the back-part of the kitchen), just as I accepted the rosary and all the other stuff that felt strange in the beginning and after all learnt to actually be quite glad about the way things are (I can eat as quickly or slowly as I want and without much praying and not under the nose of 4 nuns).

--Oh, and I enjoy reading: They have a small unused and run-down library here but I still found many of the stories I always wanted do read: Uncle Tom’s Hut, Moby Dick, Ben Hur, Don Quijote, The Ghost of Cantaville, Gulliver’s Travels but also Voltaire, Tolstoy, Kafka, Melville, DH Lawrence, Henry James, The Bible and others. I also take time for drawing, making necklaces of the seeds I find outside and writing.

-For the social life: It’s been a while now that I opened up to the flood of people overwhelming me in the beginning. I kind of made friends even though it remains challenging for me to converse with the people here (as already mentioned elsewhere) as I am used to converse to my friends in Europe. It seems to be easiest to just go out, swimming or some other place, looking for fruits etc. For me, it is funny to observe myself among the people here and those I would finally make friends with: One of them is a 17 year-old guy coming from far-away Riobamba (Sierra) spending his last year of school here with his aunt and uncle (having got into a fight with his mum), another one is a teacher having worked for quite some years in Coca and about to leave to the States in order to found her own school after. They always tend to come from some other place or have some extra-experiences that allow them to see things from a different perspective. Others are surrounding me and I spent time with them but as already mentioned, I’m always rather waiting for the meetings to end.

-One other, very positive thing I noticed is that people tend to swear very very little (resulting in the fact that I know but very few swear-words in Spanish ;p) and that the kids, during our basketball-matches, always play extraordinarily fair. It seems to be less about winning than about creating a “nice” game. I’m impressed every time. Especially when remembering our basketball-matches (against the Spaniards for example ;p).

-Another thing that makes me smile is when I come back from some trip late at night (eh, when it is already dark, that is to say) and kids from all sides of the roads call “good morning”, “good morning, teacher” to greet me.

-It`s been a long time I put on socks. Here, I need neither socks nor shoes (running around happily in Flip-Flops all the time)

-Ah, the nuns don’t really seem to mind whether one is Catholic or Protestant –as long as one comes and offers free-help, that is to say. (I have overheard them blaming the Protestants of misleading “their” people quite fiercely).

-I often ask myself why I do not spend more time sitting by the beautiful river passing maybe 5 minutes from were I live. It’s a beautiful place: It reminds me very much of the story of “The secret garden”. There is no one there, it’s wonderfully silent, surrounded by nature, there are plenty of stones to sit on and you can bath in the water. The perfect place to read, write, study, draw, play music and enjoy being there. The answer is however simple: There is just nothing to flee from here. You have nature just outside your window and it is silent and peaceful anyway. If there was such a place thus close to my house in Europe, I would certainly spend as much time as possible there.

-Means of communication: (I’ve already mentioned there is neither telephone nor internet here. Electricity was brought to Talag some years ago but I guess we are about the only ones to have running water). If there is something to announce (for example that there is free transport provided to allow people from Talag to attend the fiestas in Tena –the 55cents are way too much for most of the people here) there is a car driving up and down Talag spreading the news with the help on a megaphone. Two days ago, for example, everyone was asked to empty everything containing water to prevent the risk of Dengue-Fever.

-Some imaginations about what it will be like when coming back: I guess I’ll suffer from being the smallest again (here I’m kinda tall!) and I’ll have to learn to speak (and write!!!) proper German again (oh dear, I was always sneering at people who were complaining about how they were losing their language etc but it’s true: that’s just what happens!). Apart from that (and all the experiences) I imagine things to be and feel pretty much the same: I’ll quickly get the hang of driving again, I’ll have to get used to the different, unpleasantly busy way of bustling about that I remember people (including me, I know that ;p) over there to have again etc but when I imagine eating all the good stuff again, I presume, it won’t be any different as if this gap-year had never existed (bread, butter, marmalade, sauces, mama’s pizza, pasta and simply everything).

-ILLUSIONS I really don’t know where this idea comes from that children from Africa, South-America (economically developing countries in general?) etc are more eager to learn than ours. I also used to hold that opinion, but after my experiences in Zambia and here, I dare to claim that the interest children take in learning seems to be just the same in all parts of the world. Children love to learn (each one according to his interests and capacities, of course. Which is where pedagogy comes in failing and passing this hard task of allowing each individual to develop his own capacities etc).

-communication problems. There is one example I can think of: A few days ago, some guy (who is obviously interested in me) asked me whether I’ve bought any mobile yet (I had considered doing so in the beginning) when I burst out explaining that no, for there was no service in Talag etc AND that moreover, I was glad to be freed of all this kind of stuff for some time (completely forgetting, that he –he himself being one of the few and proud to possess a mobile- was not going to have the slightest clue what I was talking about).

-KARNAVAL. (I stayed in Tena during the days of Carnaval and went to visit different tourist-attractions with some friends). People throw balloons filled with water, Karaoke (a kind of mousse sprayed at people), flour, eggs and confetti at people and each other (or they pour down buckets full with water from the top of their houses as they did to me a couple of times J), there is music and dancing and those that can afford it get drunk. (There is no disguising and no “desfiles” as there is in Germany) The town to experience Carnaval in must be Ambato (My friends from Ambato had invited me to spend Carnaval there, but I just didn’t feel like travelling to the Sierra AGAIN…)

-ONE MORE THING. I already got so used to everything that is different here. Everything already feels so normal, that I have to concentrate hard to name the uncomfortable things (I even made friends with the mosquitoes, just imagine!?). I guess I never really minded comfort or not comfort and if I did I stopped doing so during my voyage at the latest. However, when I now imagine what it will be like when my dear Daddy comes over to visit (something I enjoy doing very much indeed!!!) I sometimes think that the poverty suggested by the meals taken in the back of the kitchen, by the open fire everything is cooked on and by the water-canal I go to, to wash myself in two times a day, will be a lot clearer to him than it is to me now. The bed we’ll offer him to sleep in (probably mine, and I move to another ;p) will be rather uncomfortable (there is a mattress that can hardly be called a mattress put on plain wood). The light is dim and the toilet of a state that I would probably refuse to use it in Europe etc. However, I am very thankful to be allowed to enjoy this luxury here. Especially as I know how difficult it is to keep anything clean and in a useable state as the humidity is attacking everything (you can’t imagine what the library looks like. Books rot away in no time); I’m quite content with my little room.

Some Numbers

-My classes (7 of them plus 3 afternoon-classes) contain 20-30 kids each. It’s amazing how different they all are (my favourites are 2nd, 3rd and 5th grade)

-A teacher’s salary (5 tough hours of teaching every day) is 170USD.

-Donations 2003: a total of 18,62USD; 2004: 25,08USD; 2005: 33,70USD; 2006: 74,50USD (this is not a lot of money! –not even here. There are two masses held each Sunday morning when the church fills up as ours do barely do at Christmas). (There are some announcements of that kind hung up in the church):

-In 2006 11 people died (I really don’t know out of how many this number is taken). They were of 2, 19, 28, 33, 43, 3x44, 68, 70 and 80 years old.

-To get their children baptised people have to pay 2USD, for Confirmation 3USD and for marriages 8USD.

AID

Dear Ela, your idea of introducing environmental-friendly soap is of course a great one and there is nothing I wish more for these people than that they may not make the same mistakes as we did polluting the environment etc whilst recklessly striving for development and money. However, in my opinion (I think we already once discussed this) this is something that has to be done on a large scale level. The local (and of course national) government has to introduce laws to cut down pollutions of all kind (they could start with the obvious: filters for cars, for example), if they have nothing to clean polluted water it is their duty to replace all the chemistry being used by environmental-friendly stuff (the same should be done in Europe just as well, of course!!!). I already insinuated that I dare not imagine the look on people’s faces if I told them to not throw there rubbish out of the bus-window. Just imagine what would happen if I told them something about using some other kind of soap (whilst they are struggling to afford the kind they have). Furthermore, would it be sustainable giving out some restricted amount of soap, (Well, it would hopefully bring overall awareness one step further, of course) if there is no way people would (be able to) continue using such. How effective would it be?

It would be a dream to organise demonstrations, but up banners and stuff concerning these issues (there are many of them, just as in Europe).

The money I have at my disposal (originally 100USD donated by my dear family) I’m using to pay for teaching materials (to make photo-copies, I have to take the printed sheets (there is a computer here) to Tena and pay 3cents for each copy -I have 165 students in the school only). Another project of the near future is to decorate the school a little bit. I would like to create some small gardens around the school and plant some flowers (colours around the school are a rarity), we will paint stones (which is for once something we have in abundance ;p) and put them around the school (trees, gardens, playgrounds etc) for decoration, I would also like to put up some signs to point out the essence of wastebaskets and the like. This kind of project would of course have it’s pedagogic effect to it and at the same time help making the kid’s school a nicer place (which will do its own to further on motivate the children). There are many more projects I have in mind. I would like to put up a huge Labyrinth (costs of such would be minimal), maybe some mosaics, benches (there is nothing for the kids to sit on), some more wastebaskets (There is a total of three to be found here: about 400 students sharing 3 waste-baskets. Yes, I have already talked about that to the Headmaster and put an extra bucket outside my door). I’d like to realize some workshops dealing with wood and maybe some drawing-lessons (materials= very expensive) for the students of the Colegio. I will, however, have to find some more ways to help financing all of this.