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.