Carnaval

Carnaval, also known as Fat Tuesday, Carnival, or Mardi Gras, is a last hoorah before the fasting season of Lent and is a popular holiday in Catholic countries. This year, Carnaval fell on February 28th, but in Ecuador we celebrated February 25-28th and it also marked the beginning of vacations for university students.    Traditional Carnval celebrations in Ecuador involve a city-wide water and foam fight. This is also the tradition in some parts of Peru, but other than that I am unaware of any other place in the world that does this. Apparently in the past, if you walked outside in Quito during Carnaval you expected to get wet. Currently, every city in Ecuador celebrates a little differently, but in Loja the water and foam fight is alive and well. The etiquette of the fight, however, depends on the group of people with whom you “play Carnaval.” I played Carnaval with some of the university professors, and we stood in a circle and got dunked one by one. I also played with some of my younger host cousins in Loja, and it was a free for all in the yard. However, this only lasted about 20 minutes because it was cloudy and 60 degrees and the water was cold (they use the Quichua word achaychay here instead of brrrrr).

My host cousins and me after playing Carnaval

  The best day was when we went to the neighboring town of Catamayo to go to a concert. Weather in Catamayo is usually sunny with temperatures in the 80’s, and so it was perfect to play Carnaval. There was an outdoor concert where everyone danced salsa and sang along. Complete strangers would throw water at each other and raise the foam cans in the air and spray everyone around them.   

Pure joy

 

My friend, Mario, and me

  It was unlike any event I have ever attended, but it was so much fun. Even though I was with a group of friends, it was still a very communal event with complete strangers randomly dunking and spraying each other. People of all ages play Carnaval, maybe in different capacities but everyone participates. To me, it is another example of the carefree mentality of having fun in Ecuador. People are not worried about getting wet or dirty, and they uninhibitedly interact with both friends and complete strangers. Carnaval has been my favorite holiday here so far, and I am so glad I got to participate in this singularly cultural event.

 

Ecuadorian Presidential Elections

Ecuadorian presidential elections were held on February 19th, 2017. Like the rest of the world, Ecuadorian seem to be split right down the middle when it comes to politics. The current president, Rafael Correa, is from a socialist party and has been the president for almost 10 years now. The same socialist party ran again but with a different candidate, Lenin Moreno, who many say will only be a puppet of Correa. There were 4 other candidates that ran, but the one with the most support was conservative Guillermo Lasso, an executive in one of the major national banks. Most of the people I am around are tired of Correa and ready for a change even though they do not particularly like Lasso, but they think he has the best shot of winning in opposition to Lenin. Like in the US, campaigning seemed interminable and got dirty, and only served to further divide the country.   The first election was held on February 19th, but in order to win, a candidate needs 40% of the popular vote and needs to lead the next candidate by 10 points, otherwise there is a runoff. Voting is mandatory in Ecuador for 18-65 year old. Voting is optional for 16 and 17 year olds and for people over 65. Lenin won the first election with 39% against 28% for Lasso, but he did not receive enough of the vote to prevent a runoff. There were a lot of accusations of voter fraud, and I even saw videos on Facebook of monitors at the voting tables marking blank ballots for Lenin. Supporters of Lasso protested in the streets, but since they tend to be white collar, middle-upper class, the protests were nonviolent.

Protests in Quito after the first round of elections

  There was more ugly campaigning during the interim period. The runoff vote occurred on April 2nd. We turned on the tv at 5 after the polls closed to watch the results come in. At first, we only saw exit polls by province, which to be fair were just polls and not official results. All but maybe 3 provinces had voted for Lasso. The overall tally based on the exit polls also had Lasso 53% and Lenin 47%. Closer to 7:00, the results suddenly changed. The reporters on tv said that the place where they were counting the votes had “lost power” or “lost connection” to the tv program, and now actually, all of a sudden, Lenin was ahead 52% to 48% Lasso. I am not making this up. Lenin was declared victorious with a final tally of 51% to 49%. Unlike the first round, you do not need to win by a margin, just the majority take all. Again, Lasso supporters are accusing Lenin of voter fraud and demanding a recall, but there has not been a recall. In the newspaper this week, they are saying that Lenin is accusing Lasso of fraud and threatening to put him in jail.     The sudden turn in the election results does make it seem like fraud to me. Most people I know are ready for a change in Ecuador after 10 years and voted Lasso, but that is only a select group of people. And now, all the people who voted for Lasso seem to agree that fraud was involved (most blaming the machines used to scan the ballots after they are marked by hand), but since the country is divided down the middle there is not enough support to question the official results. Furthermore, I am not sure there is anything anyone can do, because the same people remain in power and can destroy any evidence there might be. There have been some additional protests, including by indigenous groups who voted for Lasso. People were afraid that prices would go up and that protests would turn violent, but so far there have been no incidents. However, I expect things will continue to be tense until Lenin takes office in May.

 

Update

The time since New Years seems to have flown by and all of a sudden I am two-thirds of the way through my Fulbright grant. I will try to recap the last few months in this post and go into more detail in following posts.   The first semester at the university ended at the end of February. During January and February, I feel like I really settled into my job, got into a routine, and got to know my students better. Since I did not have class on Friday afternoons, I started leading English field trips in the city. The first week was raining, so we ended up in a cafe drinking coffee and playing cards. I taught them BS and we also played Ecuadorian card games. We watched the game in a local sports bar on Super Bowl Sunday. We also went to the zoo (see photo below.) This was a really good opportunity to teach my students conversational English in a casual setting and for me to get to know them better outside of class.

Some of my students and me at the zoo. We were afraid Kuzko was going to spit on us from behind.

  The last three months have been full of traveling for me. I went to an English teaching conference in Ambato with the other professors from the university back in January. Mostly I wanted to explore a new city in Ecuador, but I learned several helpful activities and tips for my classes. We also had time to explore 2 of the “7 Natural Wonders of Ecuador,” the nearby Quilotoa crater lake and the Pailón del Diablo waterfall in Baños.

Quilotoa crater lake

 

Pailón del Diablo waterfall

  This year, the Fulbright Commission celebrates 70 years and Fulbright Ecuador celebrates 60 years. In February, I went to the celebration in Quito in the beautiful Santo Domingo church. Attendees included current and former Fulbright grantees in Ecuador, as well as Ecuadorians who received Fulbright grants to study in the US. Fulbright alumni spoke at the gathering, as well as the mayor of Quito and the US ambassador to Ecuador. The event was very impressive and I was kind of awestruck to to be in the presence of such distinguished and important people. As always, I walked away inspired by my peers and feeling very honored to be counted among them.

Fulbright Ecuador's 60th anniversary celebration in Santo Domingo church

  The last week of February, all of the Fulbright ETAs met in Quito for the annual mid-term conference with other Fulbright ETAs from Peru and the Dominican Republic. This was also the week of Ecuadorian presidential elections, but more on that later. This was a week of team-building, cultural enrichment, teaching seminars, and sharing experiences, problems, and advice with other English teachers in similar positions. We got to tour the house and museum of Guayasamin, the most famous Ecuadorian artist who used his art to fight for social justice for the indigenous groups in Ecuador. In the middle of the week, we had training seminars and each ETA presented about his or her experience in their assignment. At the end of the week, we went to a hotel outside Quito for team building exercises that really left us feeling refreshed and ready for the second half of the grant period. The last night of the week, all of the Fulbright grantees in Quito joined us for a tour of the historic center of Quito and a gourmet meal in the theater. It was really fun meeting other Fulbright grantees in other Latin American countries, and once again, I was struck by how similar the grantees are in terms of personality and interests.   After the mid-term conference, my inter-semester break at the university began. We celebrated Carnaval, but I will dedicate another post to that. After Carnaval, I set out on two amazing adventures. First, I took a solo trip to Machu Picchu. For whatever reason, it is very difficult to arrive to Cusco from southern Ecuador. The best (cheapest) way that I found was to take an 8-hour bus to Guayaquil, and from there fly to Lima and then to Cusco. However, by far the cheapest option was a 17-hr layover in Lima. Luckily, I had two new friend in Lima from the Fulbright conference, so I spent the night with them and arrived in Cusco two full days after leaving Loja. I toured the Sacred Valley, which ended up being a fantastic tour where I learned a lot. The tour included ruins of several towns in the valley between Cusco and Machu Picchu that I had never heard of before, but were just as enlightening as Machu Picchu.    The second day, I toured Machu Picchu. It is almost perfectly preserved, the only thing missing was the thatched roofs. There were canals of running water throughout the city, and the buildings were built in accordance with and in order to observe the sun, moon, and stars. The two most impressive aspects to me were the agricultural practices and the stonework. The terraces around the city had four levels: boulders, gravel, sand, and rich dirt from the Amazon jungle. This technique was perfected by the Incas and allowed for continual agricultural production year round. On important building like the temples and the king’s house, the Incas used a very precise stonework for building. The stones were cut completely straight (with only a hammer and chisel!) and fit together side-by-side perfectly without any sort of mud or mortar in between. The buildings were also trapezoidal shaped, so the base was wider than the top and protected against earthquakes. The stones were held in place by an interlocking system, kind of like Legos. I also climbed the mountain behind Machu Picchu, Huaynapicchu, and got to look down on the ruins from a higher vantage point. The climb was not easy and consisted of a lot of Incan stairs, but I am so glad I made it. The modern town beneath Machu Picchu is called Aguas Calientes, or hot waters, and I relaxed in the thermal pools after hiking all day. All mountains should have thermal pools at the bottom. The third and final day of my Peru trip consisted in getting back to Cusco and touring the former Incan capital. I would like to go back to Cusco some day and spend more time there because there are so many ruins and museums and so much history to explore.

The iconic view

The Incas were master stonemasons.

The Temple of the Three Windows

Water mirrors for studying the stars

Agricultural terraces in the background

The crazy Incan steps near the top of Huaynapicchu

At the top of Huaynapicchu mountain

  I traveled back to Guayaquil and stayed with my friend there, another Fulbright ETA, before we set out for the Galapagos Islands and met another friend of hers there from Peru. The Galapagos are an interesting mix of tropical island adventure, living laboratory, and conservation project. There are so many unique species of plants and animals there, and the animals have no reason to fear humans so there is a lot of close interaction. There are sea lions on and under every bench, and iguanas lay all over the docks, sidewalks, and beaches. Occasionally, you see a giant tortoise walking along the road. I was very impressed by the conservation effort. For the most part, these amazing animals live in their natural habitat and humans get to observe them there rather than in a zoo. Luggage is strictly inspected entering and leaving the islands to prevent introducing contaminants. There is also a large effort to educate both tourists and the rest of the world about the uniqueness of the Galapagos and the importance of conservation. We went snorkeling most days on different islands and saw sea lions, sea turtles, manta rays, black tipped sharks, white tipped sharks, an eel, and all sorts of tropical fish. The baby sea lions are very curious, and will come very close to snorkelers before darting away at the last second, wanting to play. The sea turtles also came very close to us, but completely ignored us. The sharks and rays tended to bury in the sand or swim away from us if we disturbed the water too much. Above water, we saw lots of blue footed boobys, iguanas, a frigatebird, and one Galapagos penguin. We also hiked a volcano on Isla Isabela and got to see some of the many microclimates that exist on the islands. We had a great trip, and I am so glad I got to experience this treasure of Ecuador.

Giant tortoise reserve

Sea lions everywhere

Marine iguanas underfoot

 

Snorkeling off Santa Fe Island

Swimming with curious baby sea lions

Unperturbed sea turtle swimming underneath me

Stair stepping

Blue footed booby and Galapagos penguin

Leon Dormido rock formation

Hiking Sierra Negra Volcano on Isabela Island

The remains of Lonesome George, recently returned to the islandds

A few days after I got back from the Galapagos, my mom came to visit, her first time in Latin America. I am so glad I got to share this beautiful country with her and that she got to meet some of my very dear friends here. We saw some of the colonial history of Quito, the Incan ruins of Ingapirca, the Pailon del Diablo waterfall in Baños on the edge of the jungle, the markets, and my life here in Loja. I am so proud she made the trip and it was so good to spend a week with her.

Mom and me separated by the equator.

Loja sign

Plaza San Sebastián in Loja

 

My Ecuadorian family and my mom

Selfie from the top of the Loja city gate. My host brother is wearing his new University of Tennessee shirt, go Vols.

  I was supposed to start classes again on March 27th, but there continue to be issues in the university. There are not enough professors and the administration still refused to sign the contracts of the professors it did have. We finally started again on April 10th, and though the general atmosphere is still tense, the English department is fully staffed and the students are back so we carry on. I wonder how long they can keep this up.      I am finally caught up! I am starting a new semester with new classes. The students are mostly the same except for the ones who graduated last semester and the new first semester students. We also have three new professors for this semester. This first week we are still settling in, but I am sure it will be busy soon enough. Today is Ecuadorian Teacher’s Appreciation Day, and it is a very big deal here. The students put on a program for us, most hugged me, and everyone has been wishing me a Happy Teacher’s Day, even people who are not my students. Very sweet. I just have three more months of classes in my time in Ecuador, but I do not want to to think about that just yet.

The English professors during the students' Teacher's Appreciation Day program