Living in an Ecuadorian Community - Week Two

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Sunday

I arrived back in the indigenous community of San Pablo on Sunday afternoon, all I wanted to do was pass out. My weekend back in civilisation hadn't gone quite to plan, on returning to Rio Bamba and preparing to go out, I was gut-punched by a harsh case of travellers sickness – I blame eating with my muddy hands on the mountain-side the blame. As I opened the door to my little house on the side of Chimborazo mountain, I heard voices and I entered to find a French Canadian family.

There was a lot of energy I the room and I left quickly to get some air as the threesome of Dominique and her two children, Ariel and Justin were preparing their dinner. I walked through the village, feeling weak, but oddly content as I passed the small huts dug into the ground with hay roof-tops, Hobbiton-esque in their stature. I walked to a nearby canyon, around 50 metres deep with several waterfalls flowing down it's sides before returning to the village and my new house-mates.

I still felt lousy and gratefully accepted some great soup made by Dominique before everyone went to bed early.




Monday

I woke up early Monday morning after a strange dream where my mum ran me over with a tractor whilst I was sunbathing on a beach - altitude dreams can be fairly awesome it has to be said. I was still exhausted as I dragged my carcass out of bed, with some strange feeling of mourning that the morning had arrived.

We were preparing breakfast when Juan arrived to let us know that an Australian girl would be arriving shortly, the idea of which I obviously loved – as much as I loved having the company of the Frenadian's, we didn't have a huge amount of shared language, I could speak with Dominique in English, with Ariel in Spanish a little, but Justin not at all.

That morning we went up to the meeting later than we should've though as a family this seemed relatively normal - the kids had to be well fed and this was their vacation after all. Bringing her children on holiday to somewhere like Ecuador seemed like a fantastic thing to me, something so very different to a weeks beach holiday, something that to result in real stories and life experience. Once we made it up the mountainous hill the family headed off with the community to go planting for the day whilst I stayed in the community with my good friend and community father, Juan. We carried out my favourite task of moving the animals, something that I had finally managed to have some success in, sneaking up on the animals to grab their ropes and peg them in the ground.

Once done I headed back to the house and found the Australian girl, Lauren, waiting. We sat in the house awhile as she got used to the surroundings and I will admit that it was definitely nice to have someone of a similar age to me who spoke English as a first language for a change. Montanita seemed like a world and an age ago. We ate lunch and headed back up the village where we joined a small group in a task that took a while for me to comprehend. We used heavy axes and hoes to shatter the dry earth of the trail that passed through the upper village and on up the mountain. The slight but positive reason was that we had to widen the trail and churn the dirt to enable a bus and some other vehicles up the mountain - the community had seen the benefit of tourism in their community and we putting supplies in place for a new route up Chimborazo, directly through their village This would provide a longer route that was better for acclimatisation and an more interesting trip the the current route which involved a bus journey and a short walk to the high base camp. Lauren and I spoke as we worked, exchanging our tools and I tried to teach her a few Spanish words as she crazily spoke absolutely none what-so-ever, but before long it was lunch time so we returned home and ate once more.

After lunch myself and Lauren joined Juan and we headed into the valley to move the cattle. We were joined by a member of the community who couldn't speak and communicated to Juan and us using his hands. I had seen him many times and waved, though I always felt a little sad at the way he seemed to be a little outcast from the community, though I cannot for sure if my feelings were valid. He always appeared happy and spent his day moving the animals and perhaps it was one of those things that a mind can wander upon in such a tranquil and quiet location.

I was near the canyon again so I took Lauren over there before returning to herd the animals, which didn't exactly go to plan when one of the cows decided to head-butt Lauren, knocking her over. It didn't hurt her, but it did shock her unsurprisingly and so she talked a little further away as we walked the cattle up the road back to town, around a blind corner. This didn't seem especially intelligent to begin with, but as the cows began to try to break away into the centre of the road, it seemed particularly stupid. There was sadly no other way though.

That evening, for the first time in San Pablo, I got to witness the sun set into the valley and as the red and orange colours bounced off the snow on Chimborazo I was happy to be back.



Tuesday

I woke up from a deep sleep on Tuesday due to a fairly unpleasant dream. I was at a beach and someone left me leaving me distraught and with only the comments of two friends for company. One continually mocked me for being upset at losing her and the other repeatedly tried to convince me to binge on cocaine. A strange dream.

As some extra zzzz's I woke feeling fantastic and completely recovered from the weekend – on the walk up to the community I even managed to keep pace with the locals up the mountainside.

We were all meant to be working with the alpacas, but we were running a little behind and had to rush off up the mountain in pursuit of the animals and Maria, the lady reported to be looking after them this week. I pushed ahead, knowing that at least on of us had to catch up because if we lost her completely, then we could end up in completely the wrong area of the mountain. Fortunately the skies were clear and I soon spotted Maria and caught up as the others followed.

The others were understandably tired by the ascent, they altitude is heavy in San Pablo and the Lauren in particular was suffering. Lauren had seemingly arrived at the mountain on a complete impulse and had no knowledge what so ever about what it was going to be like and so she was under-dressed to the point of constantly shivering and suffering terribly from the altitude having arrived straight from the coast. I gave her one of my fleeces and carried on ahead talking to Maria who proved to be excellent company thanks to her perfect but slow Spanish.

I was very much enjoying feeling well again and spent a few hours walking across the mountainside climbing rocks for better views. I sat which the others at various points to exchange stories, made possible by this most amazing and tranquil job and location.

As the day went on the alpacas separated increasingly and eventually we had to traverse the mountain to get to a vantage point where Maria and I could attempt to count the animals. It was an almost impossible task, every time I tried to count them, the similarly coloured alpacas merged into one and I reached around 70, almost 30 short. Maria could count more than me, but wasn't close to the actual figures either.

We sat back down and spoke for another hour about her family, Marie was from another village closer to Rio Bamba and 1 of 9 children and has two boys. She asked me the questions I had grown very used to being asked in the community - where was I from, what's it like there, how much money I earn, am I married and so forth. I enjoyed our conversation and listening to her music until we eventually had to shift some of the animals back down into the plain. I spotted Lauren sitting on a rock and went over to speak to her, but she couldn't talk back much, she was extremely cold. I spoke to Marie and told her that I wanted to take Lauren back down the community, but she misunderstood somewhat and we all began to head back down a little early.

For some reason with the extra people, moving the alpacas became a much difficult task. The animals continually spread out and broke away, all before we finally got to within sight of the village where things got much worse.

One of the baby alpacas somehow missed a line of fencing then split the path that we were walking down and the field and in doing so separated himself from his mother, who was walking on the other side of the fence. It took a while, but one it noticed the separation he began to panic and repeatedly tried to squeeze underneath the barbed fence. It finally managed to find a slightly bigger gap when it was scared by Ariel, turned and took off back up the mountain.

I ran as well back after the animal of my side of the fence as Ariel closely followed. As I got close the lost little git took a left and starting belting its way down a side path and I had to stop to try to catch some of the little oxygen that the mountain provided. I took off again and jumped over a wire fence, sprinting across a friend, dodging the holes to try to get in front of the alpaca, something I finally managed after falling over another fence. It took a further 15 minutes of myself and Ariel trying to block any other escape route, but we finally managed to lead our renegade back down the mountain towards the others. On reaching the others we watched the baby reunite with his mother we were approached by Marie who was incredibly relieved to see the little guy was back – she had been about to go down to the village to get help. Ariel I were pretty proud at how impressed she appeared.

As the rain started to fall I met a soggy Juan was smiled broadly when Marie told him how we caught the baby. Ariel and I joined him in collected the cattle before returning to the house for the evening.



Wednesday

I woke Wednesday with the intention of taking a day off work with Lauren to take the long road-side hike up to Chimborazo's high base camp. Lauren didn't fancy it though and to be fair the weather was pretty grim and I had woken with strong thoughts of missing someone and so I felt completely thrown and bailed as well.

Before we could leave the house, an Irish guy arrived and so I offered to be his guide for the morning. Anthony was a good guy who was taking some time out from life in Europe and had a couple of crazy stories from his time in Peru where he'd almost died from a stomach suffered whilst volunteering, resulting in a lengthy hospital stay. I showed Anthony around the community and told him what I had learned about community life before taking him to the canyon where a gust of wind kindly blew off my cap to where I would never see it again. I enjoyed this particular morning considerably, it had been really nice to show somewhere around my temporarily home and to speak to an English speaking guy for a change. We sat on the canyon ridge, watching the clouds as the clouds intermittently teased with flashes of blue sky – Anthony unsurprisingly wanted to see the mountain. As it starting to rain we accepted that it wasn't going to happen and I led him to catch us bus back to Rio Bamba.

I went up to community to find the others, but couldn't find anyone, the clouds were incredibly thick. I followed a path through the community to where I managed to spot the outline of the alpacas against the mist and so I wandered to the pens where they were grazing and encountered and elderly lady, Marie's mum. I sat with her for awhile talking. The pair of us made a good Spanish speaking combo thanks to a complete lack of grammatical skills resulting in extremely simple comments. I spotted a big dog and wished her goodbye as I went to investigate.

The dog as useless as the owner in trying to work out where everyone was, it seemed very strange that no one was around and so I returned to Marie's mum where she expressed her shock that neither me or my two brothers didn't have any kids, even more so that none of us were married.

After some time the villagers began pass through the mist, they had been planting trees surprisingly nearby, but hidden from view. I joined them in hoisting torn cotton sacks loaded with new trees, lumbering them up the mountains and working in lines to build a living wall to save the mountain-side eroding away from the cold, dry winds.

After lunch we all returned to find the majority of the community lazing around miscellaneously. I joined two of the women who were chatting away as they took turns at hand spinning alpaca wool. It turned out that the village heads were all away for the afternoon, allowing for a nice break of routine for everyone. The Canadians joined us and the wonderfully eccentric mother had a go at spinning at the amusement of the locals. I appreciated Dominique’s company a lot; she was effortlessly confident and her lack of Spanish caused her no problems as she communicated in a mix of incredibly basic Spanish and English with some French thrown in - she had a fantastic personality.

The community finally began to meander off to work with very little of the day left and we prepared to join them as I was taken by the arm and dragged away by a group of the girls.

They led me down the muddy valley, sadly not for anything frisky, but to a endless slope of dirt where we began to plant more trees. I faced a barrage of questions as we worked in our line, digging holes using long hoes, dropping trees, pushing the mud over and then shifting to the next space. The first question was the most expected, 'tiene novia', loosely translated to 'do you have a girlfriend?'. I admit here that I lied to them, saying that I did; in these situations you already come off as being strange to locals for being where you are and for being alone. My responses to questions like these seem to vary a lot depending on the situation. They asked and I told them about some of the countries that I had seen in South America and then what England was like. They were very surprised when I told them that much of what we grow in the UK is very similar to that which is grown on their mountain – though I did point that we ate slightly less guinea pig, and in fact that people often kept them as pets.

We watched as a bird flew overhead and laughed as one of the girls suggested that would be a cheaper way to travel. I responded in my simple Spanish that I would probably need a bigger bird to carry my heavy weight, resulting in more laughter. In the patched conversation as we each swapped places as everyone moved to new planting spots there there a lot of translation going on for those whose Spanish wasn't as good and most definitely some discussion to decipher my broken language. One of the strange conversation points was about the size of my feet. Most Ecuadorians that I met were fairly petite and those who lived in the Andes were even more so. They mocked me for having such big feet and as I tried to explain that I couldn't find any footwear that fit me in their country. As we works, the girls got more comfortable with asking me slightly more serious questions about me, such as the money questions and even questions about my future – do I want to settle down? I was honest on this one, that I did want to settle within the next few years and have children – that definitely seemed to reassure them that I wasn't completely insane.

As we swung our axes into the earth and plants the trees I could feel the number of eyes observing me. I felt like I was starring in the Andean equivalent of the Coca Cola advert with the shirtless male window cleaner outside the window of a office full of women. Just swap the office for the volcano-side and the muscular guy for a generic but novelty white guy and it was more or less the same.

As the working day drew to a close I was sent off on what seemed like a community style date, to head off with one of the few single young women to round up the penned alpacas and return them to the village. I won't pretend that I didn't appreciate the attention.

The day had been an interesting, fun and strange too, but it got stranger as one of the alpacas spat in my face and shortly after two of them decided to have really strange and lazy sex noisily. Dominique found it as hilarious as me, and commented on how she felt bad for the female; the male was clearly not a stud. A strange strange day.

The five of us jumped in the back of a pick-up with a group of locals and watched the mountain grow taller as we went down the slope, before it began to shrink into the distance – we were headed back to civilisation for a mini-break. The Canadians simply needed some extra food and they jumped out in the first village that had a shop, whilst Lauren and I returned to Rio Bamba. Lauren craved proper food, which wasn't entirely surprising having seen her live off noodles for three days, whilst I craved meat and wanted to use the internet.

I gave Lauren instructions on how to get back to the bus terminal (one block and then left) before we went our separate ways I managed to guzzle some chicken and cram in a phone call to Mor before having to spring back to the terminal for the last bus back to San Pablo.

It really had been a fantastic day all round, I had hung out with a guy I could relate to for the first time in almost two weeks, had fun working with the girls, ate a mountain of fried chicken and managed to get on skype. I felt content and I fell asleep with thoughts and questions over whether I should extend my stay in peaceful mountain paradise.



Thursday

I crawled out of bed to the news that Lauren hadn't returned the evening before; we were all concerned, but being in the middle of nowhere, we really couldn't do much. There was no way that she could have gotten lost in Rio Bamba, it was only one corner from where I had left her before a straight walk to the bus stop and of course, she was a young blonde girl in a foreign country. We spoke and reasoned that she must have simply stayed late and missed the bus and found somewhere to stay in the city for the night.

It was Dominque and her family's last day in San Pablo and we were back on planting duty. This task was split into three different jobs, though no one appeared to strictly being doing any single task and everyone helped as required. The first task to build a sling out of an old plastic mesh bag and to fill it up with 20-30 of the tree sprouts before carefully slinging it over shoulders and lumping the heavy load up the steep depraved volcano. Task number two was digging the holes with the long hoes in the spots that had been marked out by someone slinging the plants where they were to go (hang on, that's four tasks then). The third job job was of course to plant the trees, something that myself and the Canadians did by hand, much to the confused of the gloved locals. As my fingers started to freeze over, I once again pondering how bizarre we must have seemed to them.

When we returned for lunch we happily found Lauren in the kitchen reading the Bible; she had in fact got lost, despite being on the correct street – it was hard to work out, but I think she simply walked past the terminal and had ended up turning back round and spotting the agency. She had been taken from there back to the Rio Bamba house for the night. She didn't mind though as she's managed to gorge on some McDonalds.

We returned to planting for the remainder of the afternoon and I personally enjoyed being part of the larger group for a change, Dominique was endlessly entertaining and walked in between the villagers, taking photos of each of them who wanted their photo taken, and persuaded those who were unsure as well. All sorts of poses were taken from meek and shy to posing atop rocks dramatically and cheesily. Most of them loved seeing their image on the back of her camera, whilst some were perhaps a little disappointed with what they saw. We arranged that she would print the photos off in Rio Bamba and that I would pick them up and bring them back on the weekend.

After a long day of hard work I wished the Canadian's and Lauren goodbye and they returned to the city – the Canadians were heading to the Amazon to volunteer next, whilst Lauren was to gear-up and attempt climbing Chimborazo. I was alone in the quiet house once more and I feel asleep instantly – I felt like was home, I was happy I was at peace.




Friday

This day was far too brief and sadly my last day in San Pablo. I woke up feeling energised and fit, the outdoors life at high altitude had done my body a lot of good, purging my system of the excesses of Christmas. I practically hopped up the steep mountain path, arriving at the community meeting in good time. This was a far larger meeting than normal, for reasons that a lack of Quechua language understanding keep hidden from me. I sat on a grubby mound of dirt wearing my warm mountain beard as two of the community mutts, Scrappy and Redhead wandered over to adopt me. It had taken two weeks, but they finally wanted to befriend me.

We headed up to go planting again and seemingly accepted by the locals, perhaps more so now as the others had left, I ate pieces of boiled potato and fried pork from a paper bag offered to me by one of the team leaders. I crouched amongst the long sharp strands of dry grass as the clouds hung heavily above, shifting across the mountain as a pack with the community, digging holes and shoving baby trees inside those, before sweeping the dirt over and stomping the ground firm. The previous evening I had stored a number of photos on my MP4 player and pulled it out when we stopped for one of the many breath-catching breaks. I had showed a few of the photos to Marie, before more and more of the villagers began to wander over to take a look as well. I didn't have a huge number, but they were varied; I showed them Hereford in the winter, the damp green tops of the Black Mountains, some of my friends in England and a few from different places in South America that I knew they would like to see such as Rio and Machu Picchu. Plenty more questions flew my way as we continued to work until it was time for a nice community lunch.

Everyone gathered outside the hay covered hole in the mountain-side as metal bowls were fill with a salty chicken and rice soup. We spooned and slurped away the beautiful hot food in record time; funny how something that I wouldn't have chosen to eat in my real world unless there was nothing else, became fantastic comfort food here. Desert was the cup of rice in water – a loose and milk-less rice pudding sort of thing. It wasn't great, but topped up with sugar it went down very nicely.

The day before I had promised Dominique that I would pick up her photos and return them to the community before I left the mountain and with that in mind I wished everyone in the community well and jumped on a bus back to Rio Bamba. I spent little time there before heading to the agency only to find out that the photos weren't there as they had already been picked up by Juan's son. I was disappointed, I wanted to be the one to show them off! I left the agency and returned to the community one last time. I stayed in the close vicinity of the community for the afternoon, helping clear up the last construction areas of the new community bathroom and septic tank. I worked with Juan one last time, moving the sheep and cows around the community to fresher pastures. We work well together, there was a comfortable atmosphere between us. I met the community as they returned for the evening, along with the alpaca army and I helped round the knife eared troubles into their pen for the night.




Saturday

I woke late on Saturday morning having made the decision about my future the evening before. I wasn't going to attempt to climb Chimborazo. Lauren hadn't got very far out of the high base camp on her over-priced attempt and I met several others, people who were far better prepared and acclimatised. who had passed through the village after failed climbs. The mountain was going to be incredibly hard, the weather fantastically unpredictable and the altitude even more brutal than Huayna Potosi that I failed upon in Bolivia. My knees ache every single day, it doesn't matter what I do, and to attempt this climb would be misplaced optimism of the highest kind.

I walked around the village one final time, those who were still present for the weekend were lazing in their houses, but eventually I found Juan. He was putting the finishing touches to the decoration in the bathroom and I thought back to my first day in San Pablo when it seemed like the project had only just started. I smiled as I remembered helping to dig the trench as the community looked confused. I remember when the rain fell and we retreated to the kitchen hut and they shared a coarse spirit that burnt its way through my insides.

We spoke some final words and I asked him to say goodbye and to send everyone my good wishes. I wished him good luck for the the season and thanked him for his amazing hospitality, welcome and even for the scary barbecued guinea pig. I returned to my house, picked up my backpack and left San Pablo for Quito and for the journey to Colombia, the final chapter in my South America journey.

Or at least that is what I thought I thought at the time...

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