I THINK I’LL PASS

October 23

     One of the joys of travel is to shed the skin of the city and venture out into the country. Ah yes, leave the crowded streets, the dusty museums, and tourist joints behind. Go out and find the volcanoes, the birds, the people of the land. So, while we were in Ecuador we rented a vehicle to drive on our own-a nice Chevy Luv 4-wheel drive pickup. [For those of you who keep track of these things, yes, they still make (the) Luv here in Latin America.]

     Our little Luv was diesel powered, which made it easy on the pocketbook because diesel fuel here is priced at a very welcome $1 per gallon. The truck was nearly new, clean, and comfortable. Jeri was, as usual, ready with her maps and helpful hints, such as: “Don’t turn here, you fool, it’s a one way street!” and “If you had followed my directions we wouldn’t be lost.” Etcetera.

      Once behind the wheel, it didn’t take long to realize that driving here would be far different from driving at home. Some of the differences where physical- trucks belching out exhaust smoke; small, hard to read directional signs that for some reason come after the junction you needed to turn at; detours that appear spontaneously, aren’t marked, and leave you somewhere you can’t escape from; 3 lanes going your way that suddenly become 1; rocks on the roads, good-sized ones; potholes to make Hawaii proud; lanes that are not separated by painted lines; unannounced road work strategically positioned on blind curves; and some very significant speed bumps.  Some of these bumps (the tallest ones) were unmarked. Hitting one at speed in the Luv, with its stiff suspension, would knock our heads against the roof. As most of you know, I left the states with a full head of hair, “bushy” is the term I would use.  But thanks to these roads, I’m now nearly bald on top.

     These problems pale, however, when compared to the challenges provided by the local drivers, with whom we “shared the road.”  Away from their cars and highways, Ecuadorians are some of the most relaxed, helpful people we have met, but when they get behind the wheel all this changes. A sort of fatalism takes over, it’s almost as if they have a death wish and can’t wait to test it.  This “wish” is most obvious when they pass other vehicles, especially on mountain roads, of which there are plenty. Part Kamikaze exercise, part poker game, ever vigilant, they pass whenever there is the slightest opening. If an Ecuadorian driver isn’t passing someone else, he isn’t happy. And of course, he expects you to pass too. These roads in the Andes are busy with a nearly constant stream of cargo trucks, some large, some small, creeping up the steep, curvy grades at varying speeds depending upon their load and engine displacement. The faster trucks pass the slower trucks, and the cars pass all of them, leaving Jeri and I caught in the middle. The cars, however, are mostly small economy models with small engines, so they have to keep their speed up by tailgating and then passing with their foot to the floor. Some of the situations they get themselves into are not particularly pretty. Passing on blind curves is common. Once we watched withheld breath as up ahead the two lanes of the road were being shared by 4 vehicles abreast, two going our way, and two coming at us. It was not unusual to see cars passing trucks that were passing other trucks. I found myself yelling “Oh, shit” a number of times, which, by the way, is the most common thing you hear from the “blackbox” tapes of airline pilots as they realize they are heading straight into the ground.

     This innate urge to pass, regardless of the circumstances, occurs in a number of other forms. One case involved a fellow who found himself at the back of a long line of traffic stopped at a red light at the entrance to a town. Rather than wait his turn, he simply pulled into the opposing lane, and passed all the waiting vehicles, taking what he thought was his well-deserved place at the head of the line, with half his car sticking out into the intersection at the red light. This so impressed some of the drivers waiting their turn in line that they tried it out for themselves at the next light, one of the most rapid examples of cultural evolution that I have ever witnessed.

     What is amazing about all this is that in 5 days of driving we never saw an accident of any kind -a huge number of close calls, but never an accident. What seems to be a free for all, is apparently a well ordered, working system, with its own unwritten rules based on an accepted code of conduct. I am not sure if I can explain these rules to you since I really don’t understand them, but I will give it a try. (Explaining things that I don’t understand, is after all, what I did for a living for 30 years in the classroom!)

     So, if you ever drive in Ecuador, keep the following in mind: 1. Buses rule. They can do anything they want to, at any time, including running over you. Don’t screw with the buses. 2. Drive offensively because everyone else does. It’s a poker game out there-taking gambles, calling other people’s bluff- it sounds counterintuitive, but it’s the way it is done.  3. Pedestrians have no rights at all. Drive as if they don’t exist. 4. Get on with it! Traffic flow is sacred.  “He who hesitates is lost” takes on a new meaning here. 5. You must always make room for the other fellow, if he has the right of way, especially if he is heading straight for you. But don’t worry about how much room to leave, an inch is as good as a mile. 6. Simply ignore the horn honking. The Ecuadorians don’t know why they are doing it either.

What's In a Name

October 14                           

    This trip to other countries has got me thinking about my own.  I have heard it said that you can tell quite a lot about a people by the words they use. For example, we call Los Angeles, Las Angellas, forgetting that Spain, then Mexico ruled California before our cavalry wrested it from them. One of our quintessential sports heroes, once the invincible quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, calls himself Brent Farve, when the letters on his uniform clearly spell out Favre, a French name by way of Mississippi and his Cajun background. We call the game he played football, overlooking the fact that football is a global game played with the foot, not the hands. Every fall we host the World Series, but  never think to invite teams from other parts of the world, such as Japan, Cuba, the Dominican Republic,  South Korea and Mexico, all of whom play baseball at a high standard.  We call the Western Hemisphere the New World, even though people have been living here for at least 11,000 years, perhaps much more. Because Columbus had a longitude problem, we call indigenous people Indians, when of course they are Sioux, Santee, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Wintu, Yahi, Chumash, Aztec, Maya, and Inca. It is our habit to call our country America, ignoring the fact that it is only one of the Americas. Mexicans, Ecuadorians, Peruvians, Argentines, and the other inhabitants of Central and South America are all Americans too.

     So, where does all this “America bashing” leave us? As most of you have probably guessed, it leads us directly to the Panama Hat! In a sense, Panama Hats are from Panama because they have traditionally been shipped to other parts of the world from there, but they actually  are made in Ecuador, in the high Andes, near the lovely city of Cuenca. Only a few hundred  indigenous women have the skill and temperament  to make these hats. Each one is made of finely split palm leaves from the coast, meticulously knotted and woven into the distinctive shape of a “Panama Hat.” The tighter the weave, the more expensive the hat. A low end hat can be knotted in a day, but it takes up to six months to make a high end model.

     When we were in Cuenca, we visited one of the four finishing factories there. The hats are woven in traditional native villages outside the city, in the homes of the weavers.  Every week, or so, the ladies place the hats they have knotted in a bag, one atop the other, and bring them to the factory, where they are paid based on the quality of their work. We were lucky enough to be there when these colorfully dressed women were lined up , waiting for their sacks of hats to be evaluated by a kindly looking woman sitting in a chair. She turned out to be the great granddaughter of a Senior Ortega, who founded the company. She looked at each hat, adding it to the nested stacks on the floor.  The weavers filled out the door, to return to their homes where they would make more hats. We then visited various parts of the company, where the hats were carefully bleached, pressed, shaped, and trimmed into the finished product. As skilled at selling these hats to tourists as they are at making them, our guide and her assistant had little trouble convincing Jeri and I that our lives would be much better if we each bought one of their creations. Who could blame us? The walls of the sales room were decorated with photographs of famous people -Lady Di, Frank Sinatra, Anthony Hopkins, Jackie Onasis, Brad Pitt, even Winston Churchhill- all wearing “Cuenca Hats.”

     To wrap up this little diatribe, I could go on about why French Fries and  French Kisses are not French, why Canadian Bacon isn’t Canadian, or why we shouldn’t  refer to the Amish of Lancaster County, as “Pennsylvania Dutch.”  But why ruin a perfectly good story about a hat?

 Granddaughter of the Ortega founder still operating business

Hats are woven by villages and then processed at factory then back out to villagers for shaping

Jeri and I will be the next frames on the wall!!

When Bells Ring

October 2, 2011

We are flying south from Quito towards Cuenta, as one great snow clad volcano after another appears out the left hand window. They are nearly perfect cones, like Mounts Ranier and Shasta, made even more beautiful by the slanting rays of thesetting  sun. I can see why the great Prussan explorer, Alexander von Humboltd, traveling  through Ecuador in the 1700s in search of the tallest mountain in the world, christened  this part of the Andes “The Avenue of the Volcanoes.” Humboldt’s name should sound familiar to most of you Californians because many places in our state have been named in his honor-Humboltd County, Humboldt State University, the Humboldt Trail, Humboldt Peak , to name a few. Down here in South America, the cool waters of the Humboldt Current  moving north from the southern reaches of the continent  that allow penquins to live on the equator in Galapagos.   

Thoughts of penquins and Humboldt  fade away as the plane’s wheels  touch down in Cuenca, the most colonial and beautiful of Ecuador’s cities. Jeri and I are not particularly fond of cities, but Cuenca immediately won us over. Red tile roofs, a beautiful river, narrow streets, peaceful plazas, and a people proud of their heritage and way of life. The place is also full of churches. On the way in from the airport, our taxi driver described the residents of Cuenca in an interesting way. He said they are “very Catholic.” And that they are.  There are 52 churches here, one for every week of the year.  And what churches they are- huge cathedrals, neighborhood chapels, blue -domed basilicas- all very old and beautifully crafted by fine artisans and builders.  Spain, itself, couldn’t be any more impressive.

After settling in in our hotel by the river, I found myself in Cuenca’s main plaza, admiring its plants and people- subtropical trees covered with yellow and blue blossoms, huge Norfolk pines, even azaelas in bloom. Rufous-colared sparrows forage in the trees, as teenage girls walk by in their school uniforms, giggling as only teen age girls do.  It is spring here in the southern hemisphere. Sitting and strolling in this beautiful square is like visiting another time- slow, quiet, and pensive, in a word, civilized. 

I wander over to the corner of the plaza to a flower market where the indigenous ladies are as colorful as the bouquets they are selling.  Bells begin to ring in the tower above, then stop, and resume again.  It says Santuario Mariano above the large carved wooden doors on the church’s entrance. People walking by who do not go into the church cross themselves, then raise their fingers to their lips and walk on. Those who enter do the same, and I follow them in. The narrow high ceilinged space is decorated to the nines with statues and murals and filigree. There is gold ( or gold paint) everywhere. I notice signs listing the times for confession. 

As I wait on a hard bottomed pew, half way towards the altar, the church slowly and quietly fills with worshipers. It is 11 o’clock on a Wednesday  morning, no special occasion as far as I can tell. The audience is mixed- old timers in need of hip transplants, conservatively dressed middle-aged men and women , nuns with downcast eyes, the successful, the poor, the serene, and the sad. There are indigenous ladies with their dark hair covered by bright while shawls, and backpackers who have suddenly found their religious roots. This is a functioning, everyday place of worship, not like the empty cathedrals of Europe, or the churches of our country, locked 6 days out of  7.

The mass begins with singing-lovely women’s voices accompanied by an organ. The acoustics are nearly perfect, and the music settles the audience and focuses their attention.  People in the pews sing along. Up front a very old priest, wearing a beanie and clad in white, is helped out of his chair by a junior attendant, and the service begins. There are many prayers, readings, and what I gather is a sermon. It’s all in Spanish, so I really don’t know what is going on, although I do recognize “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah,”  and the frequent use of the word “Senior,” which I presume refers to the Man upstairs. At one point, the priest gives a command and the fellow in front of me turns and shakes my hand. I do the same with the lady to the left, and the couple behind. These gestures seem to be genuine expressions of welcome, and I half expect one of them to say “Namaste,” as they do in Nepal, meaning “I greet the god within you.” It’s now time for communion, and nearly all of the worshipers walk forward to have a wafer placed on their tongue by the priest. Once this is done, the music and singing begin again. Everyone stands and listened, many lost in their own thoughts.  As they leave the church, their face seem relieved of their burdens, ready once again for the world outside.  Below the altar, with its flying angels, and the statue of Jesus suffering on the cross, the priest kneels for several minutes with his head bowed. An hour has passed and the service is over.

 So what do I make of all this? I am not a Catholic, not even a Protestant. Long separated from the hellfire and brimstone of my Baptist youth, the kindest thing you can say about me is that I am a sincere un-believer.  Yet on this morning, in this church, watching these people, I felt something special. Some of you will say it was God, others will say that it was the mood of the place, with its tinted windows and arches and beautiful art work, and the rest of you will simply conclude that I have gone bonkers. What I do know is those beautiful volcanoes I saw from the plane evoked similar feelings. In my view, the churches and the mountains towering above them are all sacred places.

Volcan Cotapoxi roughly 19,000 feet

Flower Market outside El Carmen de la Asuncion

Mass inside El Carmen de la Asuncion

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