somewhere under the sky

the return

so what did i do in saraguro? this entry will be for the 1st week and a half i was there...

i worked a little bit with la Fundación Kawsay, which you can check out at www.kawsay.org. the first part of the week i went around with a woman named Lorjia, who works with disabled people. so to explain a little, there is the town of Saraguro and then around it are different communities of campesinos (mestizos, mixed, farming people) and indigenous people. right now the foundation works with 5 representives in these communities who either work in the daycare with children with disabilities, or with teenagers, or visiting older people. they help in all kinds of areas, methods for helping language disabilities, down´s syndrome, etc. so Lorjia was going out for visits to these communities and i just sort of tagged along. which was awesome for me to see. one that sticks in my head was an older guy, around 75 years old who we went to see, and all these people live out in the country in the middle of absolutely beautiful nowhere. anyway he only spoke kichwa and so we sat there with the representative, who talked to him in kichwa, while he was weaving a fan for the fire, and surrounded by chickens. apparently he once had up to 200 chickens roaming around his house. i loved seeing a different world than the one i know.
turns out i love that world and i would gladly drop everything, buy a farm in saraguro, and live off the land. and find a husband.
the other work i did involved translating tourism packets. pretty straightforward.
during this time i stayed with 3 different families in 2 communities and loved them all. i learned about their food, their family life, their work, etc. i had a fantastic talk with one of the fathers. in order to start conversation, i just asked him if the majority of the people in the community were catholic and he ended up telling me his entire philosophy and how this indigenous community is trying to recover their andean roots, mentality, and religion and moving away from the catholocism implanted by the spaniards. and this is one of the reasons i love it so much, because the andean philosophy is deeply connected to the earth, because it gives them life, and therefore a deep respect of everything that is living, and everything IS living. and this is something i really connect to, sustainable living, respect for the earth and people, and is something that really isn´t present in the united states. or not widespread. and i´m not saying it´s widespread in ecuador, by no means, just that i listened to this man and almost cried because what he said was so beautiful.
so that´s a little of my experience in this week and a half.

posted by leah v @ 8:39 AM