Ecuador

Monday 5/19/2014 - Enjoying Time with the Family

We woke up at 7 a.m., and went over to the house at 8:15. Being Monday morning, Sisa was already at school. Yupanqui was sick. He had had a cough for the whole time we had been here, but it had gotten worse overnight. He had been unable to sleep and had a sore throat. Tayanta was also starting to get a cough and had a runny nose. Given the climate here, it seems inevitablefor kids to get colds.

For breakfast, we had fried eggs, fried potatoes, little ham, cheese, and cream cheese sandwiches, coffee, and orange juice. Yupanqui said at breakfast that he was sad and didn't want us to leave tomorrow. He was now old enough to understand that when we leave, we are gone for a long time in between visits.

We played with Yupanqui and Tayanta, and gave them some Playskool Wheel Pals barnyard animals. These little toys are adorable plastic animals on wheels with big smiles. We have given them to the kids in Guatemala and Ecuador in the past, and it is amazing how well they hold up. Both households still enjoy playing with them years later. We also gave them Koosh balls. Rosa liked the blue and pink colors of the koosh balls, and said that she might use that color combination when embroidering her next blouse.

Rosa brought us outside and showed us their field of "cebada", which she was harvesting for use in her cooking. Though we didn't know the Spqanish word, Craig guessed based on the scent that it was barley, and he turned out to be right. The barley was growing in the front garden next to where the family's cow was grazing.

We had brought a Spanish-language patient education sheet about Multiple Sclerosis so that the family could learn about Craig's illness. MS does not natutrally occur in tropical latitudes, so it is generally not known in Ecuador. Antonio and Aida read the papers carefully, and then they chatted a bit in Kichwa. Aida went out to gather some plants to make a medicinal bath for Craig tonight. Antonio said he would research natural remedies, and the next time we visit, he'd have a course of treatment ready. We know that a lot of pharmacological remedies have their origin in the rainforests of South America. I have first-hand experience with its efficacy, having used the sap of the sangre de drago plant to heal my wounded fingers in Ecuador in 2010. It worked amazingly effectively and quickly. It was very sweet of Antonio to want to help Craig with their traditional natural medicine, and Craig agreed that he would gladly partake in any treatment offered. This trip was the last one where Craig would need to give himself an injection of medication every morning; soon after we would return home, he would switch to oral pills twice a day.

We went out to the garden with Aida. She had a long hooked branch which she used to pick guaba - a fruit with large seeds and white flesh in a green seed pod. It was delicious and we kept eating more and more with Aida, Yupanqui, and Tayanta. We looked it up when we got home, and it is also known as inga. Wikipedia says that it can be used as a treatment for bronchitis, which makes us think it was no coincidence that Yupanqui was encouraged to eat as many as he could today, when he was feeling sick. Craig went to take a picture of me with Yupanqui, and right as he pressed the button, Yupanqui kissed me on the cheek. He is such a sweet little guy!

Rosa emerged from behind the fire shed carrying their last hen, which she had just dispatched. She boiled water on the fire in the shed, dunked the chicken in, and plucked the feathers. I felt bad for shooing this hen away from the chicks' food this morning. I hadn't known it would be its Last Supper! Rosa butchered the hen in the front garden. I have seen the process before here, but in between playing with the kids I would wander over and observe the butchering. After they removed the organs, when you looked inside the chicken, you could see egg yolks. It was intense. Some were the size of a normal egg yolk, and they got progressively smaller. Some were so small that they were just small yellow bumps. I had never seen anything like it. I called Craig over so that he could also see just how obvious it was that a hen's anatomy is a highly effecient egg factory.

Rosa showed me a recipe book she had gotten through training with Runa Tupari, the tourism company which employs them as guides and guest house hosts. She wanted to make pan licuado today and asked if I'd like to watch. Pan means bread, and licuado means smoothie (at least it does in Guatemala), so I wondered what a bread smoothie could possibly be. Maybe bread pudding? She combined flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, eggs, and shredded cheese, and then cooked them in the oven muffin tins. It turned out that it was a shortcake-like muffin that she then topped with (Craig's favorite) mora (blackberry).

Aida came outside with two cooked egg yolks which had been extracted from the hen. I can be a little bit grossed out by eggs sometimes, and was a bit nervous to try it. But I couldn't pass up a chance to try something so fresh and natural. We ate them and they tasted like gently hard boiled egg yolks, creamy and smooth. Delicious!

Sisa came home from school. She saw the Wheel Pals and Koosh balls we had given the other kids. She asked if they were for everyone to share. I produced a third Wheel Pal and Koosh ball from my pocket, and she was thrilled. Even though the Wheel Pals are marketed toward toddlers, they are so cute and sturdy that even the older kids enjoy them.

The family was supposed to have 2 or 4 guests staying in their guest houses tonight, so Rosa and Aida were doing a lot of preparations for their lodging and food.

For lunch, we had the freshest chicken soup ever (made of this morning's hen), spaghetti, rice, salad, and potatoes. The pan licuado was a delicious dessert; a shortcake glazed in blackberries. Sisa said at lunch that she was sad and didn't want us to leave. She was the second child to voice this concern so far today. We could tell that it would be a difficult goodbye, both for us and for them.

After lunch, Rosa got the guest rooms ready. Sisa took me into the rooms and I explained to her that the first time we ever met her, when she was only a baby, we had stayed in the larger room, before our casita was built. She took the guest book from the bedside table and I found our entry from 2010. We showed it to Rosa, who read it aloud.

Craig and I took a walk to the back of the property to enjoy the landscape in the late afternoon light. At this time of year, the field is covered with very tall cornstalks. Property lines had recently been tagged by the government, so we were able to see where their property starts and ends by following the pink spraypaint. The kids eventualy found us back there and entreated us to come back to the courtyard to play with them. We found a nice book which had color pictures from the community and explained about the Otavalan people. We brought it with us, and Yupanqui paged through it with Craig. They identified pictures in Spanish and English.

The kids performed some songs while I took videos of them. We played them back on the camera. I helped Aida to fold some clothes and put them away. The kids generate a lot of laundry, and she does it all by hand. It is amazing how clean she keeps them. In addition to the kids' clothes, she had also washed Craig's white pants and white shirt, along with our shoes and my cream skirt. She did an excellent job and everything was already dry and ready to be packed.

Today was a gorgeous day with no rain. The chicks got to stay outside all day. At one point, Yupanqui walked over to the refrigerator and kissed the picture of us held in place by a magnet. It was adorable. These kids are all so sweet and loving!

We played with the wooden blocks that we had brought on a previous trip. Antonio started playing his flute and the three kids fell into step behind him, marching around the yard. As it started to get dark, we walked over to say hello to Abuela, who was cooking out in the fire shed.

Antonio got a phone call saying that the guests were not coming tonight after all. Rosa and Aida had spent a lot of time cleaning the rooms and had cooked enough food for additional people. They count on income from guests, so this was quite disappointing.

We had dinner - soup made with the fresh barley collected from the garden, marinated stew beef, rice, beans, and cherry juice. Soon afterwards, some of Antonio's frends came over. He went outside and sat and chatted with them. Aida went out to boil some medicinal plants in the fire shed, to prepare for Craig's treatment. Sisa sat with us at the kitchen table and did our hair. She had me take pictures of the hairstyles. It was very cute. Rosa gave us some gelatine for dessert. It had the consistency and look of yogurt and tasted like berries.

Aida came back into the kitchen and excitedly announced that she will be starting a new job in the morning. She would be working in Otavalo (leaving home at 5:30 a.m. and returning at 6 p.m.) cleaning and cooking for a household. She said that she would take Tayanta with her, and Tayanta would spend the days with other children while she worked. Aida hadn't worked in several months, and her income is very important for the family. Work is difficult to come by, and she seemed really thrilled at her opportunity. We congratulated her and told her how proud we are of her.

We would be leaving the house at 3 a.m. to get to the airport in time for our flight. This would mean waking up at 2 a.m. As much as the family usually insists on accompanying us to and from the airport, Aida and Tayanta had to go to Otavalo in the morning, and we all agreed that it made no sense for Rosa and the kids to get up in the middle of the night to see us off. Antonio would go to the airport with us, but we would need to say our goodbyes to the others tonight.

We all went outside to the patio. Yupanqui had actually fallen asleep on Antonio's lap. They had to wake him up to say goodbye to us. He was very sad. Sisa was upset and almost didn't even want to hug us. In the past, the kids had been too young to realize what leaving implied. This time it would be even more difficult than usual for us to say goodbye, seeing how unhappy the kids were.

After numerous "one more hug and kiss" from Sisa and Yupanqui, and enthusiastic hand-waving "Chao!" from Tayanta, we went to our room and packed everything up. Aida had put the boiling medicinal bath in a large plastic bucket in our shower. But during the course of saying goodbye to the family, it had cooled down. Rosa camne to retrieve the bucket so that she could warm it up for Craig.

We packed Craig's hat, poncho, and our slipper/shoes in the suitcase that we would once again leave here. The hat and poncho are very bulky and difficult to take back and forth on the plane, so it makes things a lot easier to keep them here.

When Rosa came back to deliver the warmed-up water, the whole family accompanied her. We stole more hugs and kisses, and thanked them for their generous hospitality and affection. Morochos is truly another home for us, and our compadres are family.

When we finished packing, we were ready to apply the family's herbal medicinal treatments. We got Craig into the shower. I poured all of the green medicinal bath water over him. Then, as per the family's specific instructions, we didn't rinse or dry him off, and got him straight into his long underwear. Then we took three leaves and used a bandana to secure them to his forehead. Then he went straight to sleep while I wrote in the journal. We were in bed by 10:15 p.m.