This weekend, I went to the country with my mom.
We didn’t leave until Saturday morning, so Friday night I did the usual going to a clube and watching an unmentioned-for-the-sake-of-anonymity friend order “el queso mas barrato” from a bakery and some “birthday soup.”
Anyway, so we got up early Saturday morning, Ecuamadre and I, and ate some ancient cake and coffee for breakfast, then walked to the bus that took us to a another bus stop. Quito, especially in the mornings and evenings, is really beautiful. Its between the two spines of the Andes, so when the sun is going up or down, its hitting either mountain chain. Also, because its in a valley, all the pollution just sort of floats around, leading to athma and spectacular sunsets.
We got to the second bus stop by 8am, when I told my madre I had to go to the bathroom. As we were walking to find one, the bus we needed to take came and left. This would lead to an embarrassingly accurate description of the weekend: Dana makes us miss buses because she has to go to the bathroom. Read on to see the full extent of my akwardness!
We waited at the bus stop for a long time, and the only buses were going to “El Mitdad del Mundo,” the part just outside of town where the equator is. Yeah you know, just livin in the southern hemisphere. There were maybe 12 Midad del Mundo buses in a row, which is a little excessive for early on a Saturday morning. We got so angry, I took a picture of the Midad del Mundo bus. I’ll but it up when I can buy a camera cord.
The bus finally came, and we were very aggressive and third-world acting to get on, pushing, grabbing the bus while it was still moving, etc. My mom congradulated me for acting like an Ecuadorian when we finally got seated. The bus trip was about 2 or three hours long, downhill the whole way. At first it was this arid deseart sort of place, with the awkward Ecuator monument sticking up, and small houses that made cinder blockes. Next, we were hair-pin turning around the mountains, landslide out one window, cliff out the other. Luckily, we could watch Hercules, playing on the bus’ tv. After about an hour of that, we were much lower in altutude, my ears popping, and there jungley plants and air, with little rolling hills covered in mossy grass.
Our second destination was San Pedro Vicente Manldonado (“Pedrito”). It was a little town with one big street and three traffic lights and a lot of people trying to change buses. We found ours quickly, and rode another half an hour to the final destination, El Cisne. El Cisne is a really small town, one wide dirt road and a lot of tiny dirt roads. A lot of people have stores on the bottom floors of their houses, but its not what you’d call a commercial center.
There were two houses we were staying at: Laura’s and The Old People’s. Laura’s was first. It was a modern house, with tile floors, big windows, a sofa, etc. It was also exceedingly clean. We would find out why later. The Old People’s house was up the hill and past this park made entirely of cement. It was also made entirely of cement, with wood accents. Very old school, dirt floors, only wooden furniture, bare walls. Look at my El Salvador pictures for further reference. Also, there are pictures coming.
After looking at the two houses, Pilar took me down to the river. The river was like a normal river that you have to climb down a cliff to get to. There were some kids playing in the river and some grownups sitting on the banks. I was trying to prove myself to the kids because no one knew me, but P was saying all these embarrassing things like “Dita take off your shirt! You don’t want to get it wet!” (all the kids were swimming in their clothes, so I was going to keep my shirt on over my bathing suit), and “Help her in! she’s never gotten into a river with mud and rocks on the bottom before!” (where do I come from, the Sterilized Universe with no muddy rivers?)
Playing in the river got to be fun, after everyone realized I spoke Spanish like a baby, was mostly going to answer questions by repeating key words, but could still understand when they talked about me. We threw a soccer ball around and talked about how cold it was. The moms started yelling at us about how we had to go to mass, so we went home. The were all staying at the old house, so I tried to go to Laura’s house, where my clothes were, but it was locked and empty. So I had to walk through town in my bathing suit and soaking wet Barry Bonds t-shirt and gringo sandles. Woah buddy, really blending in with the culture. After I got to the old house, Juan Carlos, who was surly and about seventeen, was sent to unlock the house for me. He was not into this, and refused to talk to me. Scene two: Late teen with comb and toothbrush in hand, wearing soccer jersey and dress pants walking three meters in front of twenty year old in bare legs and freezing shirt. Cue leering men, judging townsfolk, and curious children.
Once we got back to Laura’s house, it was unlocked and there were a ton of people there. Juan Carlos just turned his trasero around to go do his hair.
The mass began at three. About fifty relatives and friends gathered on tables under some tents in the front yard, drinking beer slowly, and watching the ceremony. I have tons of pictures of this, so I’ll save that for later.
Afterwards, we sat around for a while, chatting and drinking beer. During this interlude, I met my four friends for the evening.
Friend one: Joel, age three. Very excited to play, bit me really really hard on the hand.
Friend two: Isiah, age six. Really into the sparkly streamers that decorated the room, and interpretive dancing with them.
Friend three: twenty-seven year old Spanish firefighter named Bolo. When I asked “Like the tie?” He responded “Yup, cowboys wear me around their necks.”
Friend four: Twenty-four year old Spanish meathead named….Stalin. When I asked “Are you a cruel dictator? Do you kill Jews?” He responded “No, I am not as mean as him. I won’t send you to Siberia.”
Snappy comebacks for stupid names.
Friend 5: Fran? Unsure of name. Brazil transplant to England, on vacation with his Ecuadorian wife. Horrible Spanish. We were talking in our poor Spanish, and I let something English slip, like “ok” or “umm,” and he exclaimed “You speak English! I miss speaking English! I haven’t spoken it in a week!”
Anyway, Stalin and Bolo had taken in among themselves to keep the party supplied with drinks. In Ecuador, this means walking around with a liter of beer and a jelly jar, offering people shots of Pilsner. So you end up drinking a fair amount of beer, but very slowly and unsanitarily. Also, when Bolo and Stalin are the only people in the party that will talk to you as you sit on a couch with your hoard of elementary-school boys, you end up either drinking lots of tiny cups of beer, which I consider poor form in front of children, or Bolo and Stalin either drink a lot of the tiny cups of beer. Either way, I was happy when it was time for dinner.
I wanted to sit with my mom for dinner, but she was helping with the food, so I ended up at a table with strangers. VERY BAD CHOICE. Time for some dialogue.
Scene One
Man at Table 1: How old are you?
Dita: Twenty.
Man at Table 2: Oh man, only twenty!
D: yes
MT1: oh wow. Oh wow, only twenty.
MT2. Oh wow. Oh man. I wish I was still twenty
D: ha ha.
Women at table: eyes of jealousy and hatred.
Scene Two
MT 1: So have you had Euadorian food?
D: yeah sure, I like it
MT 1: but have you had REAL ECUADORIAN FOOD?!?!?!
D: I think so….
MT 2: Have you had yucca?
D: yeah, I love yucca!
MT 2: Have you had verdes? (those are plantains)
D: yeah, I’ve had verdes
MT 2: Have you had pollo seco (that's basically chicken and rice)
D: Yeah, that’s good, I like caldos too.
MT 1: Then I bet you will love this food tonight
D: Yeah, I hope so, I’m really hungry
MT 2: You should eat it all, its going to be really good.
Enter: Plates of Food.
Contents of Plate:
-Entire fried plantain
-two fist-sized pieces of deep fried yucca.
-some raw onions
-two cups of rice
-an entire steak
-Two large strips of some sort of breaded meat. These sort of look like enlarged gyro meat that you would find in a school cafeteria.
These look the least appetizing, so I start there. I stab the strip with my fork, and try to take a bite, but it won’t go. The meat is so tough that all I get is some breading I scraped off with my front teeth. The people around me are grasping and wripping with their hands, so I do that too, peeling off a long strip. The meat is purple-grey and almost tasteless. Immedietley, there are shards stuck between every tooth in my mouth. “So, what kind of meat is this?” I ask. “Chiva!” responds Man at Table 2, with rice in his moustache.
In Quito, a chiva is an open-air bus you rent for a party. You drive around playing music and making the people on the sidewalk jealous of the alcohol included in the price. But a chiva is something else. I picture the “Farm Animal” page in my visual dictionary. It's a goat. An old moutain goat. There is still a strip and a half left on my plate.
I eat silently and slowly for fourty-five minutes. The steak is good, admittedly. The rice is good. The yucca is hard in the middle, and the chiva never seems to get any smaller. At an unspecified time, I jump up from the table and skedaddle over the side yard to go vomit behind a bush. Unfortunately, Juan Carlos is there, looking surly at another cousin, so that won't work. I grab a trash bag and go up into the bathroom. Oh yeah, this hosue has no running water right now. Sometimes it does, it has a sink and a shower and all, but right now, no. so the toilet is just filled with like fifteen people’s pee, and no one is washing their hands. I crouch in the dry shower and vom into the garbage bag. The chiva looks remarkabley different coming up. Maybe that was the raw onions. I carry the bag of my own excretions down stairs, where I find approx imately 75000 women preparing yogurt. I throw my sack in a oil drum behind the house filled with other refuse, and go back to my table, grinning with scraps of meet still stuck between my teeth.
After this, things get hazy. I slept for about two hours, lying on a bed upstairs with my shoes still on. When I woke up, most of the guests had left, but the crew that was left was still partying hard. Bolo and Stalin continued their rounds, only this time with whiskey, still in a juice glass. I stuck with some soupy purple yogurt, served out of an enormous punch bowl. Around ten thirty, a DJ showed up with an enormous sound system and began playing fifties hits, Lady Gaga and Bolero music. Lots of dancing. People started changing into different clothing so as to permit more dancing. The popular style for men was to have shirts unbuttoned to the waist. The most uttered phrase was “We’re going to party until x in the morning!” (19).
I made it to 11:30, then sacked out on the bed again.
There was no rest for the wicked on Sunday morning. Laura got us up at 7:30 to clean. This woman is a cleaning fenatic. To fully scour everything, she removed all the furnature from her living room and was on her knees scrubbing when Madre and I crawled down stairs. She made three consecutive people sweep the porch, then did it again her self. She washed the windows. There was still no water, so she made the other guests bring up trash cans of water, most of which she boiled to wash with.
The upside of not having water was I got to go to a pila. Here, they call them lavanderias, but its always going to be a pila to me, for my El Salvador memories. Its really not a good day for me unless it starts with pouring cold rainwater over on my head from a bucked I filled my self with several semi-strangers just a cement wall away. That’s what really makes me feel alive. I think this makes it hard for me to make friends.
All fresh and clean, we walked to the old house, where everyone was sitting around, drinking coffee and eating stale bread with pinapple-stuff in the middle. Oh yeah, then there was Elsa. Elsa was about 65, and there was something wrong with her. She was one of those people that sits in the corner in a nightgown all day with no teeth and only smiles like a child or cries. So everyone was crowing about Elsa making the coffee, and this coffee was lava-hot and thick with sugar. Elsa was reading a picture book, either about the Bible or jokes, and drinking Coke.
Madre and I decided to take a walk. We started walking through the town (pictures to come!) and found ourselves on a side road. We were just strolling, haha nothing bad can happen to us, and then all of a sudden we were sliding down mud into a jungle. Whoops. I tried very hard not to hyperventilate/ die.
We walked back, chilled out in the house.
Walked to river! Pictures!
Then, Pilar was like “OMG its two pm wtf we have to go.” The family served us lunch: Rice, giant hunk of yucca, giant hunk of meat.
I was like, “There is no way I can eat all this. I have enough protein and carbohydrates to reconstitute all of Burma.”
“What can’t you eat?” asked madre, Elsa supervising from behind her picture book.
“Well, the yucca first of all…and the…”
“Elsa, eat the yucca”
At least she was obedient, aside from all the crying.
And so that was how I came to eat what I later found out was pork for the first time in 7 or so years. It tasted like greasy shoes.
That´s all we have time for now, folks! The rest of our journey and the pictures will be forthcoming!
No comments:
Post a Comment