Hospitalidad in Lumbisí

Sense I arrived last Thursday I am yet again overwhelmed by the hospitality and joy that I have felt and experienced among my family, friends, and even those that I am just getting to know. This small town has taught me more about life in community than anything else ever could. In a place where the people have at most a few dollars to their name on any given day I have been fed, gifted and welcomed into humble homes as an esteemed guest.

As I walk though the streets of Lumbisí some recognize me and call me by name (or something close to it..Courley, Corney, Korlik), asking about my family and how I have returned. Others, mostly children, run into my arms without words holding on as if for dear life, or possibly just because they know my time will again be temporary as it is with most gringos. Many others, however, just stare. They might ask ‘y los negritos?’, referring of course to my two best friends, Diego and Wilmer. They know that if we are not together we have mistakenly gotten separated.

I have passed whole days visiting with different families, chatting while a mothers puts on boiling water for tea, or pour different flavors of cola into small glasses. I have a backload of invitations to eat, stay the night or even just play a game of futbol.

I feel very honored to be remembered and welcomed by such a beautiful little town. I can already tell that its going to be hard to move to Quito.

La Capilla del Hombre

La Capilla del Hombre, "the chapel of Man", is amuseumhousing the artwork of Guayasamín, a famous 20th century artist from Quito. His works depict the struggles and suffering of downtrodden people. A tour through his paintings is an unsettling journey through Ecuador’s turbulent history. He does well to illustrate the pain and sadness of having lost friends and colleagues in insurrections and political upheavals throughout South America. The Chapel’s contemplative environment and Guayasamin’s impressive larger-than-life paintings refreshed my memory of Latin American history, the root of Ecuador’s continuous struggles and challenges.

In his time a good friend of Fidel Castro and Chaves, Guayasamín was an idealist who protested enslavement in Africa, European cruelty and Indigenous rights with his artwork. He had a heart for the suffering population from Hiroshima victims and Jew’s in the World-wars to mothers who lost children in Chilean catastrophes to the general starvingpeoples of his impoverished continent. He dreamed of a new sort of social system that would rescue and empower those at the bottom. The following a few of his words and works that, for me, evoked a lot of emotion.

• “Art encompasses life; it is a way to love.”

• This girl is LatinAmerica. She is mestizo, waking up at her earlypre-colombian beginnings. The different shades and colors represent her people’s mix of race and origin.

• “Painting is a sort of prayer as well as a cry."

Two portrayals of Jesus’ death. In the painting on the left Guayasamin took Quarton’s famous painting and made is fit into a latin-american context. Jesus, it appears is dying from hunger or malnutrition rather than his death on the cross. There is no halo over the heads of the saints and the use of red reflects Guayasamin’s emotional component.

I loved this picture because each square can actually more to create a new sort of story and meaning for the piece as a whole. The different images reflect Ecuador and its various struggles.

VIVIR JUNTOS

This is a poem that one of my best friends, Christine Kirschner, wrote during her time in Peru. Although I have changed a few of the words to describe community here, our experience is the same. Her words seem to capture the unexplainable sentiment that drawls me into to Latin American culture:

VIVIR JUNTOS

Vivir juntos …
Means we all eat the same food.
Even if we don’t like it. Even if it’s burned. Even if we aren’t used to it.
We eat together.
And when there is no food,
we don’t. No one does.
Means your friend is mine. Your sister is mine.
Your newborn daughter is my niece. I rejoice in her life with you … as much as you do.
I hold her to my heart.
Is laughter and tickles. When I make a mistake, you laugh … and so do I.
Your joy is mine. My joy is yours.

Means your problems are my problems and mine have become yours.

I need help and you drop everything.
Is cuddling in bed. Is sharing body heat in the cold of the night.
Is placing your cold feet under my warm ones.
Is crying with you. Is hearing your story as if it were mine.
As if I had been beaten by my own brother.
As if I had been threatened by my own husband.
As if I had been neglected by my own father.
Is entering your hurts without trying to escape, explain, fix.

Means greeting each other every morning and every time we pass with a kiss even if I don’t feel like being social.
Means washing clothes and cooking and cleaning on Saturdays. We.
Means watching TV. Lots of it. Disney movies I have seen a thousand times.
Only now in Spanish.
Means learning more than teaching.
Validating what you know.
Accepting.
Quietly. Patiently.
Means being late. Waiting for you to
brush your hair, finish your knitting, drink your tea, change your clothes again …
Involves being without doing.
Involves taking interest in what interests you.
Involves disagreeing but respecting. Being offended but not lashing out.
Offending but accepting forgiveness. Listening and not just hearing.
Means crowded buses, forced to all but embrace you, a stranger sitting on my lap.
This is how we go to work together.
Means that when I’m angry at you, you can tell. And I tell you.
And we still do life together.
When I look sad you ask why. And I tell you.
Or if you don’t ask why, I don’t hold it against you.
Sharing. When you are hungry, you buy 2 oranges.
One for you and one for me.
When there is only one mattress,
We sleep on it together.
Sacrificing. When it’s your turn to pay, but you don’t have anything,
I pay. Without worrying that you’ll pay me back.
When I want to sleep, but you want to talk,
I listen.
Accompanying. When I have things to do, but you have an errand to run,
I go. Without rushing you.
And waiting. Why am I here? To be with you.
Your reality is my reality is our reality.
Vivimos JUNTOS.

PLACEMENT!

Hey guys, I just got my placement! I will be teaching English at Centro de Educación Continua which is part of the Escuela Politécnica Nacional. It is located right outside of the Mariscal in Downtown Quito. AWESOME!