It has been almost 3 months since I’ve last written for this blog and so with this one you will find some serious gaps in my adventures here in Ecuador as I do not plan to recount them here. I will only talk about what has been happening recently in these parts down south.
I am currently in Carchi in my placement in the small community of Jesús del Gran Poder, where everybody knows each other and they are all somehow related. As I write it is in my room, fingers icy with a view out my window of green patchwork quilt mountain tops and clouds. I can only get into town about once a week to use the internet but such things as this I can write beforehand.
Yesterday I spent my day with five farmers, one the owner of the land on which we were working, harvesting artichokes or alcachofas as they are called here. For hours we spent walking the hectares of land, in between the rows cutting down artichokes the size of baseballs and putting them in the buckets hanging at our sides. When it started raining (as it does every day here) we continued working. By the time we had finished we had harvested around thirty 33 kilo bags, all to be brought to Quito where they are to be processed and then exported to places like Europe and the U.S, to be eaten by people who will never know the faces of those who made a part of their meal possible.
And here that is what I am doing. Working and talking with farmers, trying to find out why it is they are producing what they are, for whom, and how that might have an effect on their livelihoods.
Pesticides are used a lot here. Prior to coming to my community, I had this romantic and idealistic imaginary world in my head where nobody uses pesticides, everything is organically produced and the land and people would be healthier for it. Being here, I see now just how far-fetched this pretend world of mine really is. Before it was easy for me to think this way because I come from a place where, for a few people, this is possible. Here I feel I have been given the opportunity to understand something that I otherwise would have remained ignorant to.
I am just over half way into my seventh month here which is crazy to think about. Crazy too to think about the fact that it’s been almost seven months since I’ve seen my family and friends; that Christmas for me passed by without snow or the same old gatherings; that most of my past year has been spent in a different country, with different smells and people and foods and traditions and ways of communication; that I will spend my 22nd birthday with a family that has come to treat me like one of their own; that in May I will be back in a familiar country that might not seem so familiar to me anymore.
Admittedly though, home is something that I and many of the students here have been thinking of a lot lately. To be completely comfortable in ones house. To eat whatever one wishes to and when. To sleep in past 6:30am and not feel like we are being lazy. To be with people we’ve been missing. I think that is what we are craving the most: friends and family who are, in spite of emails and phone calls, still worlds away from where we are right now. In talking to them when we can, they are sure to say something like “ just enjoy it while you can, live in the moment, you will be home sooner than you think”, but this is not so easy when the one thing you want the most cannot be had.
Homesickness is the worst kind of illness. It is incurable though the symptoms of it can be, to some extent, relieved. It is always exacerbated by physical sickness as we seem to revert back to child-like dependency in our most vulnerable states and want nothing more than to be taken care of by our parents. It is like a constant tugging at your heart, a void that can be filled only one way. And time, as if to mock those experiencing homesickness, passes by even more slowly. This is what can ruin your present whereabouts. So the trick is to not let it take you too far ahead into the future, where in your mind you are already home amongst the things and people you’ve been longing for. But of course like most things, this is easier said than done.
Surely it should be said that my time here in Carchi has been amongst my most valuable here in Ecuador and I have been extremely lucky to have found a placement so well-suited to my interests and passions. I have been accepted by people whom I would have otherwise never gotten the opportunity to meet and I have been learning an immense amount from many of them. When they ask me if I will ever come back to Ecuador, I say yes, seeing myself returning to this place and being welcomed back warmly and with open arms.
And so here I am. Eating a lemon in my bed trying to fend off the last of a sore throat, waiting for Monday to come when I will go into town and send this to all of you and for a few brief hours, feel connected to people back home. And then I will be back here, working and learning and counting down the days until I am back in Quito, until I am travelling again, and finally until I am in Canada, snapping my fingers together with one of my dearest friends, marveling with her at just how quickly time does move and slip between ones fingers like water.
