Reinas y Desfiles

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Last night Susan and I, as well as two of my counterparts, Karina and Katherina, went to the crowning ceremony for the Reina Indigenas (Indigenous Queen) for our province. There were seven indigenous nations present, but only six had candidates for Queen. The ceremony was supposed to start at 8:00, but that usually means it will start at 8:30 or 9:00 and...that it did. The ceremony had all the pageantry that one would expect for a competition such as this. It is also had a wide display of indigenous inspired music and dance. Eventually, the candidates came out one at a time to introduce themselves and put on a dance for the audience and judges. Each was escorted by at least one of their tribesman. Susan´s group, the Waorani were the most bold for sure. Each were dressed scantily in the traditional garb. The young man wore a headress some jewerly and carried a spear - that was it - pretty much totally nude. The young woman had more clothes on, but still would be considered unfit for public tv in the States. It is definitely part of their culture and it was impressive how they carried themselves and how accepting the audience was.

The ceremony lasted about 5 hours - sitting in a bleacher seat that long was killing me. Just when you thought they were getting ready to present the winner, another group would come on stage and perform songs or dance. Then the girls came back out to answer questions. The MC of the show would speak and then be followed by two different women translating what he said into the indigenous languages. Finally, it was time to calculate the results, which took the judges over 45 minutes to accomplish. Meanwhile, the poor gals had to stand on stage holding flowers, waiting, and looking the part. Finally the announcement came...in the States, for a pageant such as this, you´d announce the top three, and not all of them. Here they announced all six places and the points each scored. So it is one thing to stand up there and not win and quite another to be told you were last out of six. It was especially bad, because the Waorani girl was 6th and she was fantastic and much better than 3 of the other gals. The three who finished directly in front of her, stumbled through their questions, were less polished in the dances, and not confident at all. The 1st place girl was Kichwa and the 2nd place girl was Shuar. They were deserving of the award for sure (in our humble opinions, the Queen could have been either of those two or the Waorani girl. I can´t help but wonder if the judges were taken aback by the clothing of the Waoranis. I hope that is not the case, but I can´t find any other fault that would have made her 6th. Perhaps some fuzzy math was going on - the judges were right in front of us and many times they appeared to have a final list, names circled, only to have one of them come and change something and then the list the names over again. This happened about 8 different times.

When it was all said and done, Sue and I got home a little after 1:30 I believe and quickly crashed. I slept soundly until I had to get up for work this morning. Luckily, today should be a short day - Friday´s, since we work until 6:30 the other days, is an early day, we finish at 2:30, but of course we skip the lunch break.

Today, the indigenous groups had their annual parade through town. I will be the first to that I was impressed. The seven nations, wearing the traditional clothes, dancing, it was something to behold. Sue took a bunch of photos that we´ll post soon enough.

I am going to try my hand at baking some cookies today in our toaster oven. It has taken 3 weeks to find all the ingredients I needed, finding baking soda was a pain, but now I have them all and will attempt to master the toaster oven by baking 4 cookies at a time. Not the most efficient method, but it will have to do I guess. This weekend, I plan on doing a whole lot of nothing.

Monday morning, I leave for Riobamba for a workshop on stream monitoring. I´ll staying there on Monday night, then heading to Baños for a couple days. Baños is off-limits to PCV´s because of an active volcano nearby, but I have permission to be there so all is good. Hopefully, I´ll get the opportunity to explore Baños a bit while I am there, but it looks like the workshop schedule is really booked solid with activities. I will also be without the aid of any English speakers, so that will be a challenge in and of itself.

Peace,
Jeremy

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Comments

[Allison]

Wow! As Always...
Simply Amazing! Tan interesante... Buena suerte con las galletas! Enjoy and keep the wonderful stories comin'! Adios :)