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.
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.
posted by Solveigh @ 8:44 AM
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