Feliz Cumpleanos Papa!

Today has been a very special day. Mostly because it is my fathers birthday, and although I wasn't able to spend it with him I had the next best thing. I am currently in Otavalo, Ecuador. Famous for it's Saturday markets, I am here to shop around a bit and enjoy the natural beauty of this place, montains, lakes, waterfalls. I have made a few local friends here, not counting the various Otavalian young men that insist on walking with me to my various destinations. If anyone asks I have a very large jealous boyfriend of 3 years living in Quito, we are going to be engaged soon and are very happy. The greatest friends I have made here own a store that sells mostly jewelry and figures carved out of Tagua "Ivory of the trees". I found a necklace there I loved on my first day in Otavalo, and the owners asked where I was from which became a question of why I didn't look American and an explanation that I belong to a tribu de indigenas en Estados Unidos. The couple spoke among themselves about how I am not a gringa and once again I couldn't help but be delighted by this distinction. Suddenly I was being offered coffee with lots of sugar and ritz-like crackers (which taste really good when dipped in sweet coffee) and we were somehow communicating despite my major spanish issues (which by the way I still can't speak spanish, but I can understand it way better) about indigenous identity, world views, philosophies, and about the history of Indigenous people here and what they suffered when the spaniards came. When it was dark and I needed to find my hostal (Hostal La Luna, far out of town up in the hills, but way worth it) my new friends negotiated a cheap cab price while I waited in the store. They told me to return the next day, and ofcourse I did.

As a side note, La Luna is an incredibly comfortable and beautiful hostal with a small farm-type feeling to it. Warm fireplaces and great music (oh brother where art thou soundtrack playing when I first arrived), and plenty of hammocks. My dorm is like a little cottage where I am the only visitor, so I have an adorable bed in the corner next to a window where bright blue and yellow birds peer in at me. The owners cute barely 1 year old daughter's name just so happens to be... Emma.

On Saturday I went on a short hike to a good view point above the lake where I could journal. While I was sitting up there I heard a strange striking sound until before I knew it a very old woman appeared, machete in hand out of the brush. I could only think of how much I was panting walking up the same hill and how healthy this little old woman must be. I explained why I was there in spanish, and she laughed and began a long story in Quecha before she moved on to the trees and brush to my right with her two dogs. When I went down to Otavalo I visited with my friends at the shop early in the day and later when I had coffee with them again. They told me about famous Indigenous leaders of the past in Ecuador, Peru and Chile and talked about how they think Chile is like the U.S. in that there are plenty of people who are very poor, but you would never know because they are invisible in the media. They asked what else I wanted to do in Otavalo and I said I had heard of Peguche falls. Elizabeth, the wife told me they were beautiful falls and her husband said we'll go tomorrow, meet me at 9:30.

So today I went to the falls with him and his little 4 or 5 year old daughter. It was like watching my dad and me, as he helped her balance when we walked along the curb and on the unused train tracks when we walked along there. He is really so much like my father in so many ways, a fisherman, an artist, knowledgable in natural medicine and in finding bugs and animals. I learned so much on that walk, it was a situation where I was sometimes surprised to remember there is a language barrier, because I could understand everything he was telling me about the different plants that he invited me and his daughter to touch, smell, taste. He would ask me what different bugs and birds where named in english, and in some cases I could give him both the english and salish names. The falls were beautiful, and my friend and guide pointed out the faces in the rock formations below the falls and later showed me a tree that has knots in the trunk that look like clenched fists. We walked back a different way than we came so I could see their home and visit the home of a Shaman he knows that just so happened to have a teepee up in this yard.

The most exciting moment of this day by far happened when we returned to their shop. I asked about the seeds used in necklaces I recognized in the store as being just like one I had when I was a little girl. The name of the seeds is San Pedro (perhaps from the same plant as the hallucigenic cactus) and they are small smooth and a white-gray. When I was a little girl I had a wild imagination and was terrified of the monsters and bad people in my room, my closet, outside my window, in the toilet, anywhere that I was alone. Fortunately, my wild imagination also created ways of protecting myself from these ugly creatures. I had utmost faith in little songs I made up to say before I used the bathroom alone (to keep the snake in the toilet from biting my tush) and in a necklace that I had from a winter dance or something, a necklace made of red beads and san pedro seeds. I chose this necklace to be my protector while I slept and when I got up in the night, beleiving that as long as I was wearing the necklaces the monsters couldn't see me as I slept. I remember that I had never seen the seeds before, and maybe that is why I felt they had special powers. I wanted to be able to explain these things I made up when I was a child to my friends, because I couldn't understand what he was telling me about the seeds. So I said the most that I could in spanish, that when I was a small girl I wore a necklace of san pedro when I slept, and my friend (my ecuadorian father practically!) said in spanish "yes, they are for protection" as he made the motion of hugging himself.

"yes, they are for protection"

And somehow I knew this when I was almost the same age of his little girl. Strange coincidences abound in travel, and who knew I would have to come all the way to Ecuador to understand one of the many strong beliefs I had as a child.

Another strong belief that I had as a child was that the world was drawn by the creator with a pencil, I remember telling my mom that the proof of this is the thin black lines you can see when you squint at objects. These were the pencil marks that the creature used to separate colors and shapes so that the world made sense visually. I was reminded of this train of thought while I was hiking and bussing in Costa Rica, along with thinking about the vast difference in perspectives created when a person is taught from a young age that animals where put on earth by God FOR humans to consume, for humans to master over, rather than what my dad taught me. He taught me that animals and plants knew humans were coming to earth and they made the selfless decision to offer their flesh, roots, berries so that humans could survive. I don't think that two people raised with these two separate ways of understanding the world could ever look out a bus window at the Costa Rican forest, or sit down to dinner, and see the same forest or the same meal. Totally different attitudes. Just a thought I keep going over.

I am going back to Quito tomorrow, and so I plan to spend the rest of the day reading my book and enjoying my countryside hostal. Had a really fun hitching a ride down to town in the back of a truck this morning and am looking forward to whatever means by which I will return!

Happy Birthday Moddy!