Live From Ecuador 2009

Live from ecuador….one of the first of many blogs …..see www.researchwhales.com for more information about the entire program. But for now….blog 1…30th de agosto…

Ecuador—August 30th (does it really matter here?…I mean the date?)

As I sit in my lonely writer’s garrote (or is it garret), and by this I really mean a garrote in some terms….more like an open 4th story veranda overlooking the poverty of Puerto Lopez. Lonely at the top of the world in some sense.

This morning, I am up early…6 or so and rumble out of bed and boil some water. ….I gaze out of the side window and notice this family slowly waking up. In the size of a small shed, there eventually tumble out 6 children and 1 mother as they each venture to the outhouse in the back…..I witness a cat waking up as well on the roof, taking a huge stretch and watching it’s owners walk back and forth across 20 yards to take a pee. But as I watch this morning ritual unfold, I can’t help but see how little of a difference there really is between the cat and the humans. Each has a ritual; each takes a pee….each stretches before settling down or in or whatever. How strange and yet we as humans are inclined to see us as better than the mere cat. Even more so in a first world country where we have indoor plumbing…..

Another interesting thought was how in this poverty stricken world, they do not feel poverty; they merely feel themselves within this day. They look ahead, just for now. Whether it is the man coming home from a night of fishing with one fish strung on his wire to feed his family or the little 10 year-old girl I now see who is pretending to dance in a grand ball…..she is behind some trees, over there…..see….next to the outhouse. She is dancing and swaying a blanket and kicking her shoes to mimic that of a dance. How funny since I can remember my kids doing the same and we were in a first world country. Yet here, in this dirt floor of a home she immersed from, made of reeds and tied together with slats of thin wood, she is mimicking the ball, the fiesta, and the dance…that will occur tonight as today is the big fiesta. She is simply having fun, all the while. just like I can remember my kids doing,….always on the lookout for an older sibling or heavens forbid and adult….watching her dance away as she might do in a few years with the young men of this town. But does she know poverty…? I don’t think so…..she is happy, she awoke and did what a child in any place would do so poverty to her is a distant cousin.

The mother is now tossing out water from a pan out of the open uncovered window…..breakfast I suppose. Not a pan but a pot so what is for breakfast? No idea but is this any different than a mother in a first world country making a morning feast for her brood? Again, has no idea of poverty…..just existence as in some sense we all just exist within our own world, first or third world.

Today is the big fiesta….oh, there goes a Vermillion Flycatcher, a bright red bird…..I see them all over the place and I take them for granted. But that bird is one that many in the states would love to catch a glimpse of and yet here in this small lovely community, I sight them almost at will, along with green parrots flying about. Amazing, that regardless of where we are….such as in the states, we dream of being here (or our own personal brand of here, wherever that might be) where that red bird is so coveted. As bird lovers we can capture the moment of this sighting and log this occasion in our book of “birds we have seen”…yet again here, I take that bird for granted, as much so as I take the chickens which wander around for granted. I better check in my listing of birds if I have a chicken crossed out but …is it a bird or poultry? I better check, for I wouldn’t want my bird list to be inflated with counts.

Anyways…the huge fiesta today, all day (parade in morning) and party at night. But as I watch the world open here from my garrote I see a day like all others. Men in their motorcycle taxis beginning to drive to work although they drive all day, children off in uniforms to school and far off I see some of those same children banging away on drums of sorts in a distant school preparing for the parade. Of course the day will be shortened considerable but no big deal for whatever is not done today is simply there for tomorrow and the next day and such. No stopping progress, but that begs the question of what is progress. In these folk’s minds, living from day to day is progress, right….and who is to say that is not the way we should live?

So fiesta day….in schools kids bang away at these drums forever….a band of drums and little else or if there is, they will soon become drowned of all noise, and I mean noise. Schools here practice much….and what they do practice they practice all day for hours and in unison. Yesterday as I walked into town and passed one of these schools, (passing can be anywhere from next to–to that of blocks away as this unison noise carries along ways) I became aware of the entire school yelling out the awe-inspiring learning of 1-2-3….over and over again. This is not a primary school but a secondary one….1-2-3-, ……1-2-3…over and over. Must be some hidden learning in that I thought to myself as an educator. But yes, there is, but not unless you put yourself within this world. In order to survive…..whether as a fisherman in one of the boats and amongst your co-fisherman in the boat, or a lady constantly doing laundry or perhaps a person who has job which requires them to stand all day and do nothing (think?…what is think), just exist ….that 1-2-3 builds a sense of comrade—all of us,….all of us….are in this together and we as a community support the others. So true here…this is one big 1-2-3 in progress. No one is alone, they all watch for each other, help. support and exist within this environment so to teach (I doubt if the educators here have thought of this) in unison and to continue to practice the words yelled out as loud as one can for hours…1-2-3….well, that is learning here right. Do they need much more? Or is “that” the cat’s meow for to learn much more would almost make one a non-entity here in this town for you couldn’t simply “stand” to exist here. Too much knowledge is not a good thing here.

I always have pondered, what do people dream about in Bangladesh? Do they dream? I think I have answered my own ponderment….sure they dream. Just as the girl dancing is dreaming of being in the ball, the fisherman is thinking of what others will say in passing as they admire his great catch of one for the day….or perhaps other mother’s are in envy of how the mother next door tends to her flock, washes the laundry etc. Dreaming is universal, as is counting to 1-2-3 in unison, whether here in a poverty strickened country or perhaps that of our first world country as we all count 1-2-3 in some sense as we trudge off to work and earn money so we can spend it on something purchased at Walmart. Oh, thank god for small wonders….no Walmarts down here,….they are not needed for the endless peddlement of junk only tends to change a culture and as I look over this bright morning, what is there to change.

My battery is about to die…..but so what….it will come back and I will return another time to my garrote atop of the world in some sense here…..Another day to tap out words of wisdom as life in Puerto Lopez slowly unfolds….doesn’t evolve, but does unfold. jim

www.researchwhales.com