Saturday, December 29, 2007

Africa Revisited

Saturday, 8 December 2007


So, I hauled out to this town , San Lorenzo, at the northernmost tip of coastal Ecuador, despite many telling me I shouldn't go, that I would get "kidnapped by Colombians" and so on. I went anyway, as you might imagine I would. I don't know if my spirit has gotten bolder or stupider as time has passed, but my luck has remained so well in tact that I feel blindingly confindent about being able to go wherever, whenever I want.

I arrived in San Lorenzo in the mid morning after 4 and half hours on a bus descending from the high mountains of the sierra through the dense, wet, tropicalish cloudforests of the lowlands, passing banana plantations and groves of palm oil trees, cacao and pineapple, to emerge in a dusty, dirty, chaotic fishing town. I worked my way from the bus to the dock where I first came into contact with coastal Spanish. Much, much different from that of the altiplano. Couldn't understand anything it seemed, even the cost of my fresh squeezed orange juice as I tried to replenish the sudden sweat loss that came from the sun and heat of the equatorial sun. And this after being all proud of my newly honed spanish language skills. It was like going to another country. Africa, to be exact. Suddenly, not only was there fierce sun and humid air, but everyone was black.

I knew this, of course. It was part of the reason I went. This is untouristed territory. The only person I've met who went there is this Belgian guy who also spent 6 months in the Colombian jungle. He was prepared.

From the dock I loaded myself and all my stuff onto a little canoe with an outboard motor and went zipping off into the open water where the Pacific meets some river estuary or something. Mangroves everywhere, their multi-branches penetrating the water in such a maze you couldn't tell which ones were descending from the tree, or sprouting up from the silt and sand. We were racing pelicans at one point, their large black sillhouettes flapping fiercely in the glare, keeping apace with our speed. Our first stop was some tiny, bleak outpost, little more than a dock and a sunburnt stall selling coconuts, where 10 naked black boys dove off the cement stairs into the water, unable to take their eyes off of me, the white blonde lady in the boat next to the crates of Coca Cola and Malta sodas being unloaded to stock up some unseen tienda. After picking up a few more passengers we fled to Limones, another dock at another tiny sandbar village, where I disembarked and waited in the sun, happy to stand and stretch my legs, while speaking in terribly broken spanish to the two "captains" of my boat. Answering questions about where I'm from, and how long a flight would be from New York to various other international locales. "How long is it from NY to China? To Japan? To Miami?" Having never been to any of these places, I could only answer, "No se. Depende."

Even though I was really thirsty, and really hot, in my long gringo sleeves and denim trousers, I refused offers of coconuts and their quenching juice. Why? I don't know. That weird apprehension, I guess, that comes with accepting any gift in a place where you don't the rules of gift giving. That, and the fact that I didn't know how long it would be until I could find myself in some semblance of a bathroom. Dehydrating by necessity.

After about an hour, wherein I was the main attraction, I boarded another boat and sailed off to La Tola. Remote by travellers standards, but at least connected to the rest of Ecuador by a road, albeit one of bumpy dirt. I had read that you could walk from La Tola to Olmedo, my destination, but as I peered down the road, through a shimmer of heat waves, I could see nothing but a girl pulling a baby boy on a flat piece of plastic. The reign, a piece of dingy rope, the boy naked. Beyond that, coconut palms and...nothing. I sought shelter and a moment to collect my land legs under the canopy of a comedora. I bought a diet coke and sucked it down thirstily, although now I was really ready and willing to drink from a coconut, regardless of rules. But oddly there were none. I asked how to get to Olmedo, and one person pointed in the direction of the sleigh driving girl, another told me of a bus. I didn't think I neeeded a bus, but was suddenly apprehensive, despite my aforementioned confident fearlessness, about walking through town, glowing white like a spotlight in a moonless night. It has been a long time since I was so bizarrely obvious in any place.

I waited for the bus. When it came, I got on board only to be let off less than 3 minutes later. And that was a 5 minute walk PAST the entrance to the village. As I hiked back in the direction the controllador had pointed, I came upon a locked gate that seemed to lead only to a noisy grinding silo of sorts. Then out of nowhere, a man in a pickup appeared. He asked where I was going. Anyone would have. I mean, look at me, if you can in your mind: a lone white girl with a heavy load on a dusty road in the middle of Afro-Ecuadorian nowhere. I got in, and he drove me through the proper entrada and deposited me amidst even more curious stares at the foot of a footbridge. There was supposed to be a hostal in the village, an eco-tourist endeavor, a cooperativa run by a group of women. "La Hostal?" I asked. People pointed with a curving motion of their arms over the bridge. I climbed up a plank and manuevered my way across a rocking, creaking piece of construction. At the other side, I swear to you, it was Apam, Ghana. It was that little muddy, dusty, litter-strewn and loving village where I lived in coastal west Africa. It was amazing. I had returned to Africa, somehow, by way of Ecuador. The moment I crossed the bridge I was embraced in a multitude of literal and figurative ways by the people that lived there.


Sometimes the immediate pleasure lies solely in the arrival. This is especially true when the journey is long, difficult, and confusing. A journey and an arrival I fretted about. One I feared. One I worried I would not make. One I was so relieved to have achieved. Just the arrival. I waited on the veranda of a beautifully constructed, if completely out of place, wooden hostel on stilts at the waters edge. Every other building around me was made of warping, blanched wood and deteriorating concrete. Windows were mere tiny open holes. Everything raised above the damp, sandy, watery earth. Families of 7, 8, 9 or more lived in one room separated only by curtains of thinning cloth. After meeting Sobeida, a grandmother or dozens and jefa of the cooperativa, I dropped my luggage on my bed, untucked a tank top from my pack, and went about seeing the village.

I was immediately met by a group of young children, 3 of them related to Sobeida. Marcial, Yuleici, and Harinson, who would come to be known to me affectionately as Hachi, and their mom, Marcia. I complimented Marcia's pedicure, all pink and cute little polka dots, fading on worn weather beaten toenails. "My daughter," she said. "You want?" Now? Yes, now. And so, looking down at the worn patchy red of a long ago New York pedicure on my own feet, I went with her to their house where Yuleici painted my toes by dimming light, creating the most perfect multicolored detailed butterflies on my busted up toes. She was 16. Cut the tips of her nailpolish brushes herself, making them fine and precise. All of this while sitting on their torn and stuffing-less sofa under a poster of Shakira, hips a-shaking, while the youngest, 6 years old, fried me some plantains and peeled me an orange. No money was ever asked for. When I left, I wrote Yuleici a note and enclosed a five dollar bill. Telling her, "For more colors." I had seen her drawings in a little notebook, they were really good, and her mother spoke of wanting to send her to colegio in another, larger, better town. But of course, there is no money. God how I hate that this story lives again and again, and all I can do is write sweet notes in purple ink and leave $5 in my wake.


The children claimed me as though I was a prize to be won. I shared my dinner with them, rice and fish. I took Harinson with me on my canoe tour the next day, and when he got to steer the boat, a smile ripping across his face from ear to adorable ear, I took a picture to preserve that memory of his simple, singular joy in being included in a rare adventure. I went crabbing in the morning with the grandmother and then ate those self same crabs we caught with lemon for our dinner in a tiny kitchen while I tried, tried so hard, to understand the stories she spun for me. I gave my guide my compass, though he asked for more, much more. We shared kisses under my mosquito net, but I could give him no direction other than a little grey green metal circle of north and south and east and west.

No one called me Obruni. Only Maggie.

Friday, December 14, 2007

About Friends

"You don't have to go. I know, you know, you know. But if you gotta go, safe travels." --Peter and the Wolf, from Linda Feldman's Ecuador Mix, given to me the night before my departure.

Someone wrote me and said he's beginning to think my entire trip is about llamas and volcanoes. Well, he actually wasn't that far off the mark. I have spent nearly the entirety of my past 11 weeks in the northern and central sierra, Ecuador's Andes--host to llamas and volcanoes aplenty.

I have been living and working between 6,000 and 12,000 feet. My shoulders and face have freckled in the equatorial sun, but my legs have been ensconsed in rubber boots and knee high socks, and at night I am wrapped in wool and alpaca. Blankets, sweaters, scarves, the lot of them. Sometimes, all of them. But now, that is about to change. Sort of.

On Monday, Linda arrives from New York. Though we will spend about a week overall in the mountains, our shared goal is the beach. First, I am forcing her to ride some white water on a raft in one of Ecuador's many rivers. I am also taking her to both The Tungurahua Tea Room and to Misi Wasi so she, too, can experience llamas and volcanoes. But we are both looking forward to shedding clothes and swatting mosquitoes while lounging in the sun, eating fresh catch cevche from a triciclero beachside, and drinking tropical batidos--milkshakes of banana, coconut and pineapple, mango--adorned with a salad of fruits on the rim for breakfast, and sipping capirhiñas at sunset...or earlier. Who can wait for sunset?

The last time I visited Ecuador, in 2005, I went to the beach in July. Our summer, their winter. I searched for sun during my week, even forcing the two girls I was with to follow my hairbrained idea of leaving one beach in the south to go to one ABOVE the equator, where I rationalized it was still another hemisphere, and thus, another season. Um, I was wrong. Our search was fruitless. We only got stuck in a road strike and spent a full day on busses trying to work our way around it. We ended up in Atacames, but still "suffered" only warm, cloudy days, and one insanely reckless whale-watching excursion that involved shoddy lifejackets and a speedboat "captained" by a barefoot teenager balancing on the bow and shouting "Mira! Mira! Siga! Siga!" as we tore through the Pacific like modern day harpooners "hunting" humpbacks. But now, the end of December is approaching High Season for sun, surf (surfers!) and sand. So I will be liberally applying sunscreen hoping to lessen, with caution, the blinding white glare of my scabby and bruised lower body.

I am overwhelmed with excitement and gratitude as I anxiously await Linda's arrival. The fact that she has made the financial investment to come here and visit me is a most amazing Christmas gift. She is also acting as my "mule," carting down here a new stock of supplies (books, babywipes, SPF, saline solution, etc...) to replenish my waning stash. My parents have mailed her part of this carepack and I am immensely grateful to them as well, for hunting up an Argentina guide book and an electric voltage converter for my trips south after Ecuador. Linda is bearing this burden and bringing me all of this in her bulging pack. She's also taken time out of her life to search out some much desired books I've been wanting on Permaculture and South American politics. I am so constantly reminded of how blessed I am to have such incredible friends and family.

Perhaps most crucial is that Linda will be here with me when I move from the 12th into the 13th week of traveling, marking the longest period I've ever dared to be away from home. Having one of my absolute best friends by my side as I maneuver this odd, momentous, life-hump, is more that I ever could have hoped for.

As I was planning this trip for much of last year, she would joke about coming to visit, as many of my friends did. But she really meant it! And she has found a way to make it happen. I know it is damn near impossible for most people to find the money and the time to make such a trip, and really, my time here isn't about just going to the beach with my friends from home. But this--Linda coming--this is special for both of us. She will be my Christmas angel, my Hannukah blessing, my New Year's wish. I will get to watch her as she wonders at this little country that has captured my heart and astonished my imagination. She will be my companion, my girl talk, my co-conspirator, my dance partner, my sunscreen slatherer, my lookout, my wingwoman, my family. No llama can do all of that. I hope to be all of that for her, too.

I am so thankful, not only for her coming, but for her in general. At 23 this will be her first trip to the "3rd World". She will be stepping outside of her comfort zone, outside of the rectilineal 'hood in Brooklyn that we are both in love with, but that we also both need to leave now and again. She is daring to embrace discomfort and unanswerable questions and I am so proud of her, and so thrilled to be her witness.

We have had a frenzied and fabulous and somewhat tumultuous friendship that has changed both of us in unforseen and confusing ways in just 2 years. All of this makes her coming even more incredible and deepens my love for and gratitude towards her. We keep on figuring out how to love and trust each other even though we can both be difficult in our own ways. We have tested each other's capacity for patience and forgiveness. I think Linda may have taught me more about "relationships" than any boyfriend ever has.

When we moved in together in the summer of last year, friends of ours, unbeknownst to us, made bets--with real money!--as to how long it would last. Like a Hollywood wedding, or as though our lives and our friendship were some sort of joke. We did make it the whole year, but I think sometimes we survived out of defiance to each other, ourselves, and our wagering friends. And we were both a bit relieved--yet sad--when that year was over. Our friends, I believe, were relieved, too. They got to stop listening to us complain! But our survival and definace has bonded us in a way I can't say I have with any other human being on earth. There were dismal moments during that year of co-habitation when I couldn't imagine we'd even remain friends, let alone that she'd be spending a whollop of money on airfare and her whole 2 weeks of yearly vacation time to come backpack around Ecuador with me.

I have written and spoken about the blessings that come from the challenge of travelling alone, but man oh man, it is an amazing gift, something to cherish beyond description, to create memories in a foreign place with a friend from home. Meeting new people, strangers, and travelling with them is phenomenal, but to know there is someone from your "real life" who will actually see some of what you've seen, with whom you can re-live those days you spent together in a world other than your own, someone who "gets it" when you describe a bus ride or a view, and someone with whom you, and no one else, can share those memories--it is far more special than I have words for here at this time.

Bienvenidos, Linda. Mi linda Linda. Y gracias, por el pasado y el futuro. Viaje con cuidado. Te amo.

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

On The Move

"You lived in the mountains as if cupped in a puzzle of unclimbable blue ridges and uncrossable gorges. To travel through that place, you needed to know not only where you wanted to go but also that roundabout was often the only way to get there." --Charles Frazier, Thirteen Moons.

Well, I have left Misi Wasi, the last farm I was working on, a week earlier than originally intended. The reasons shall not be made known in this forum. Suffice it to say I had some needs that could not be met, and some beliefs that could not be compromised. However, make no mistake, my three weeks high in the puzzle of unclimbable mountains above Otavalo were an incredible experience. Michaela went to great lengths to provide a comfortable home for her volunteers, complete with luxurious bedding and private rooms, a fireplace, hot showers and delicious vegan food. I planted over 40 trees and shrubs, tended to a burgeouning green house where I transplanted leafy greens like Chinese Mustard, Chard and Mesculun. I became acquainted for the first time with the concept of Lunar Farming, used by indigenous socities all over the world for centuries, dating as far back, maybe even farther, as the Incas. I learned how to use power tools when I built a door for her composting toilets, and also became familiar once again with good old fashioned hacksaws, hammer and nails. I made friends with llamas, and with young men from California and the UK. I even tried my hand at making tortillas.

Part of the impetus to leave early was the fact that I had to appear in "court" as a witness to a kind of crime, perpetrated against my friend Cherie who owns the cafe in Otavalo. One Sunday morning, at 7am, while she and I and her daughter, Sasha, were all sleeping, 2 young men busted down the door to the cafe in a drunken stupor, insisting on seeing Sasha. The ringleader was Sasha's exboyfriend. I woke to hear Cherie yelling and then some loud crashing as they threw several of her cafe benches into the courtyard and she then duly beat them with a stick until they went running out the door. I saw them from my window as they made their stumbly escape. I appeared in front of the sherrif twice, giving my testimony in English, which was then translated into Spanish by Cherie's lawyer who spent nearly 10 years in New York. In the end there was a victory, though it was unsatisfactory to all of our standards. Hiro had to pay a fine of $50. A hefty sum by Ecuadorian standards, but surely not good enough to teach this dirtbag a lesson. Cherie is concerned about future trouble. But next time...he goes to jail. I think Cherie is actually looking forward to another chance to beat him with a stick.

The day before our final testimony, I came down off the mountain to spend the day with Deb and Bob in Cotacachi. They are the American couple who hosted me for Thanksgiving. I adore them both. They treat me like a daughter in some ways, but as a friend in most others. Not only did I get to luxuriate in a steaming hot bathtub under a moonlit skylight, and sleep under 2 down comforters, they also treated me to dinner at La Mirage, a Relais-Chateaux restaurant in the middle of an Ecuadorian village. This French distinction is given to a select few restaurants around the world, and is better than what we know to be "5 Star." Not only is it the nicest restaurant in all of Ecuador, it is thus one of the best in all the world, and certainly the nicest I have ever been to in all my life. To get there, we walked down a grass and dirt road, having to move a cow out of the path at one point. It was the Dirt Road to the Five Stars. And despite the grand and elegant nature of the restaurant, part of the larger hacienda which serves as a hotel and spa, I was still able to wear my dirty jeans and sport sandals. God love Ecuador. Our amuse bouche, or pre-appetizer, was served...in a music box. A hand carved music box. Three indigenous women in full dress appeared and placed the wooden boxes down in front of us at the same time, and then simultaneously lifted the lid. I had a goat cheese tartlette with carmelized onions set to the theme of Ice Castles.

Two nights later I found myself sitting alone in a flourescent lit dormitory room in the tiny and silent town of La Esperanza, eating avocado smeared on bread with my swiss army knife. The contrasts speak for themselves, but what is most interesting is that I was equally happy in both situations.

La Esperanza is a town comprised of one long cobbled road leading up to the base of Volcan Imbabura. On either side of the road are houses, behind which are steep fields of green sloping down into the river valley. These fields are famous for possessing a microclimate perfect for growing magical mushrooms. In the 1970´s La Esperanza, and a woman named Aida who owns the only hostal in the area, made names for themselves with the hippies of the world. Including Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Joan Baez, and many others. Go to Casa Aida and she'll show you the notebooks she has full of everyone's names. I went with Sasha to see the town and to do an entirely different kind of farming for one day. We made out like a couple of hippie bandits. The mushrooms are easily identifiable, growing out of dried up splats of cow manure and sporting a gleaming, metallic top, in either gold or dark bronze. They have a "skirt" or little black ruffle in the middle of their stem, and they wrinkle and go purple or iridescent turquoise when picked. Even though they are a legal commodity here in Ecuador, the people of La Esperanza do not harvest or sell them, and so we were able to walk freely onto a huge, flat field at the end of a long grassy lane and pick freely of the bounty. Though Sasha enjoyed some of our harverst immediately, I was content to pick and search and gather, and to lie in the grass and look at the psychadelic surroundings--mushrooms not necessary.

La Esperanza was on my way from the farm to the coast--which is my next destination. Having decided to leave Misi Wasi, I was left with nearly 2 weeks before my friend Linda arrives from New York. Now that I've been in the mountains for 10 weeks, my skin is dry and whiter than it was when I left New York. I am yearning for some humidity and moisture and water that is not still in the middle of a mountain lake. Tomorrow morning I will leave Ibarra, the provincial capital of the Northern Sierra, and a town I explored today on foot, spending hours walking up and down and in and out of their palm tree lined plazas and central squares marked by grand cathedrals and butterscotch colored municipal buildings. From here I will head to San Lorenzo, the northernmost coastal town in Ecuador, an ill-advised crossing point into the lowlands of Colombia. When I went to buy my ticket to San Lorenzo, everyone I asked or told of my destination repeated the name with a quizzical look. "San Lorenzo?" Si, San Lorenzo. "Porque?" Their shock and concern is not solely because San Lorenzo is a rarely-touristed area. Many tell me it's dangerous, which, by virtue of being a frontier town, and this frontier on the edge of Colombia, it may well be. But much of the reputation is based only on the fact that San Lorenzo is "El pueblo de Negros." People are surprised I am going there not just because I am a tourist, but because I am white. San Lorenzo is in the heart of the Afro-Ecuadorian community, a community severely marginalized by the rest of Ecuador. Some things, no matter where you go, never change.

Now, before you go getting all worried, I'm not planning to hang out there. I'm catching a morning boat from the river port, taking it two-and-a-half hours south through the scarce remaining tangled mangrove forests of Ecuador's coast and lowlands. (I leave the puzzle of the unclimbable mountains for a maze of salt water vegetation.) After that, I will go by foot through one village to another, where there is a cooperativa-hostal run by a group of enterprising Afro-Ecuadorian women. It stands on stilts in the tidal pools and from there they can arrange canoe-excursions into deeper mangroves. I have never seen this part of Ecuador, and am insatiably curious. The Afro-Ecuadorian population is pretty much relegated to the Esmereldas province, but most of it is quickly by-passed for the beach resorts further south. I plan to take a little bit of time in this less travelled place before heading to the beach. And yes, the beach is where I will end up. More news soon from the mellow surf of the pacific.