--- Original Message -----
From: sara dealoia
Sent: Friday, January 5, 2002 4:09 p.m.
To: …………………
Subject: Hello everyone
Hello everyone: I will be sending out intermittent messages from the Andes. I’m back in Quito – the capital of Ecuador. I’m traveling with a friend named Jacob. We’re in the middle of the tourist district, paying $5.00 a night for a nice room with unreliable hot showers. I’m slowly getting my Spanish tongue back. I am also slowly adjusting to the altitude with only a few headaches and some shortness of breath. I’m also feeling tired and slow.
Jacob and I are both excited to get out of the city and will probably be heading south on Monday or Tuesday. This is a good place to adjust but it feels kind of claustrophobic. Most cities overwhelm me, this one especially as I feel my way around all those Spanish words I had forgotten. I have little more to say at this early date.
City life leaves me anonymous and 9000 feet above sea level finds me tired. More to say as the body adjusts and the mind clears. I am reminded by these mountains how much I love this place – flying here I fought a moment of panic and closed my eyes, picturing the mountains rising on both sides cradling me in strength and vulnerability – reminding me of both within myself. Peace settled in and has remained with me since. It’s great to be back. I hope everyone is well and that peace and happiness accompany all of you today and beyond . . .
---------Original Message---------
From: Dad
Sent: January 18, 2002 7:05 pm
To: Sara
Subject: none
Sara and Jacob -- This e-mail thing is totally new to me so I will get right to it. I can’t imagine what it must be like there; new horizons, different constellations, people and smells. I admire your adventurous sides. One cannot be led astray by looking for the bigger picture, but only broadened in their beliefs. (Whoa... this is starting to feel heavy!) Anyway, looking forward to talking on Sunday . . . so go breathe the air, live the moment, and feel your feet firmly planted on the earth. I will leave you with one of my favorite poems by [Lawrence Ferlinghetti] that reminds me of the process by which your children go off in search of that which will be their future and we parents can only stand aside and watch in awe.
Don't let that horse eat that
Violin cried Chagall's mother
But he kept right on painting
And became famous
And kept on painting
The Horse With Violin In Mouth
And when he finally finished it he jumped upon the horse and rode away waving the violin
And then with a low bow gave it to the first naked nude he ran across
And there were no strings attached
You guys take care of yourselves and I'll try to e-mail again. This was fun.
I love you!!
3 January 2002
We are finally here. I had a moment of panic on the plane halfway between Houston and Quito, sitting next to this stranger I am traveling with. It passed as I dreamed of mountains and shed the layer of skin that’s been suffocating me for the past two years. We are now staying in the Hostal El Taxo – 909 Foch y Luis Cordero. It is owned and operated by artists and is a beautiful, friendly place.
On la calle 10 de Agosto this is on the wall:
La paz es mas que el silencio de los canones.
(“Peace is more than the silence of the cannons”
– or –
“Peace is more than the silence of the canyons”,
we can’t decide)
4 January
Random thoughts and words, questions find definition in Quito. I gave a presentation to archaeology students today at the Universidad Catolica where a fellow archaeologist named Ernesto Salazar teaches. I was totally exhausted by the end – not understanding nor speaking the language of these 15-20 archaeology students. Feeling altitude wooziness and the insecurity of the newness of it all. I think of myself standing in front of this room full of Ecuadorian college students– do they hate me and all my imperial baggage? I can offer them $3,128 for 10 weeks of work. Is it outrageous? Surprising? More than they could dream of? My old fears of not being understood come crashing down. They exhaust me.
I want to scream loudly “I am different!!” but I know in my heart that it is only I who judge myself so harshly. Ernesto is a great host, easing me back to reality. It’s okay that I am not fluent on day 2 he reminds me to remind myself.
Yesterday Jacob and I wandered by a large building with beautiful, life-size mosaic ceramic horses scattered in the yard inside a 12-foot high iron fence. We wondered about their history. We agreed that we should find out about that building and those horses. Walking back from the university today, Ernesto serendipitously provided the answer as we passed by it again accidentally.
“It was a country home for a rich archaeologist 70 years ago,” he tells us. “The new city developed, spread, grew over 70 years and now this house is in the middle of the city.”
Only 70 years. Countryside enveloped by development. Upwards development is replaced by urban sprawl in this capitol city. Three million official inhabitants, mas o menos, and all that they carry with them roll over these mountains in a web of urban growth. All this life despite the Volcano Pichincha which keeps an ever-watchful eye on it’s urban neighbor and still grumbles and smokes to remind Quito who is in charge.
My infatuation with this place, these people, the culture and lifestyle – maybe I am ethnocentric. I am confused and afraid in some unnamable way. All my anthropology classes and training feel far away as I wander through this city searching for some feeling of connection. I can’t get a feel for the people yet or for the place. Sun beating blue sky gives some indication of what’s to come. Mariscal is full of tourists but also comfort that feels so good for these first awkward days.
It is lonely walking in a foreign city. Not ready to speak the language. The people assume you don’t. Except for a few words and phrases mumbled shyly I do not disappoint at this early stage. I gave $1.65 to a kid asking for money to help disabled children just because he spoke Spanish to me. Jacob scoffed at my naivete, thinking the kid couldn’t really be giving the money to someone else. I didn’t care who he gave it to, knowing that I really did give him money because he allowed me the opportunity to practice Spanish. Two days and still we have spoken to so few.
People are everywhere here. The streets are alive, in constant, dizzying motion. It’s dizzying in a way that is the antithesis of the busy streets of say New York City, though. It’s more organic here, the smell of growing things and the shortness of the buildings can almost make you forget the size of the city and the push of people – hanging out with their kids, making out on street-corners, selling, buying, sitting, standing, waiting, moving purposefully in every direction.
We went to the Museo de Guayasamin this afternoon. Guayasamin is a world-renowned Indian painter. The first rooms of the museum were filled with his early paintings as well as a collection of artifacts from all over Ecuador and South America. In the last part of the museum his work shifts into faces and bodies and body parts. These paintings go directly to the core of my own body like a punch in the stomach. The images of contorted bodies and faces reacting to pain, suffering, torture, anguish, defeat, resignation, injustice and struggle. They were not all showing defeat but the struggle and fear were definitely clear in the faces, the hands, the eyes. But there was so much beauty and strength reflected there too. Haunted by this life. This era was known as La Edad de Ira. I asked the guide to explain this to me but I did not understand as my ears still grasp for comprehension even as my tongue begins to comprehend.
5 January
First thing this morning we met with Ernesto and his wife, Miriam who is also an archaeologist. They drove us to the Incan site known as Pucara de Rumicocho., which is a little bit north of the equator or mitad del mundo. Pucara means fortress. The site was on top of a mountain. We learned that this vantage point was chosen so that the land all around could be viewed in case of attack. However, Miriam and Ernesto pointed out several other pucaras situated much higher and within viewing distance of the one we visited.
They say that maybe instead it should be interpreted as a tambo, which is a site where Incan armies, travelers and runners could refuel on their travels over Incan roads. These sites are supposedly evenly spaced (every 30 miles or so) throughout the Andes from Ecuador to Chile and from the Pacific coast to the Amazon rainforest.
Miriam says that when she excavated at this site 15 years ago there was much evidence of textile production, some weaponry and several circular spaces that were highly symbolic and sacred in Incan culture. The area around this site and the mitad del mundo was dry – barren with lots of dust and rocks. To the north, Rumicocho overlooked a place known to be a last battlefield of the Inca as they pushed further northward. The Inca, who may have been looking for the birthplace of their most important god and father – the sun – a place where no shadow is cast. This spot is very close.
Ernesto says, “This site is often visited on the solstice by people who want to get high and feel the power of the ancients”. He laughs this off, but I am not so dismissive.
After Rumicocho we drove by the mitad del mundo monument (which I found out is too far south to really be the mitad) then we went to get helado de paila at a small roadside stand. This is a kind of milkless, delicious ice cream, perfect for that dry, dusty landscape.
I really felt the altitude on this excursion. My head was stuffed and I was dizzy for most of the day. I felt like I was floating one foot above the ground, my head disconnected from this strange heavy body. I was also really dehydrated.
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