Swapping Stories with Strangers in Otavalo, Ecuador (Jul 2006)

I squeeze onto the bus at 6am and quickly appropriate a window seat, sliding my backpack onto the floor underneath my feet. It’s my third day here and I don’t trust my pack out of my sight yet; I’d rather ride for several hours crunched into the fetal position clutching my meager belongings than watch the handlers toss it up on the roof. I’ll be crunched into the fetal position anyway, as these buses seem to be designed for riders with a maximum height of 5’4”. Looking around, I can understand why; I am definitely the anomaly here, my nearly 6’ of paleness contorted as if I’m in a medieval torture device.

My glance is quick, though, and safely hidden behind mirrored sunglasses. I don’t want to make eye contact with anybody, I’m nervous and alone and I don’t speak Spanish and I stick out like the proverbial sore thumb. I stare aggressively out the window as if the dirty bus station is the most fascinating thing I have ever seen in my life. It may be my first time visiting the third world, but at least I’m an expert at GO AWAY body language.

The bus is filling up, and the empty seat beside me is bound to be filled eventually. I am rather dreading it, not knowing if I will be sitting next to a woman clutching a dirty child, or a shabby package tied with string, or a chicken, or worse next to a leering man (no taller than 5’4”) with black teeth and dirty fingernails. These seem to be the options, and whoever it is even after three days I know they’ll likely spend the three hour bus ride gawking openly at me. It’s almost definitely not malicious or mean-spirited; if you got on a bus and the last empty seat was next to Sasquatch you’d stare too.

I’m staring out the window so aggressively that I don’t even see the man when he stops at my row. “May I sit here?” he asks politely, in American-inflected English. I start, which rather ruins the image I’ve been cultivating, and stammer, “S-sure.” He is indeed around 5’4”, and settles in with a modern-looking backpack cradled on his lap. No chickens or children. I return to my aggressive staring.

“Where are you from?” He asks, again politely. No gawking, no leering, and his teeth seem to be in pretty good shape.

“New York.”

“The city? What part?”

“…Brooklyn?”

“I lived in Manhattan Valley when I was there.”

“Really? When did you live in New York?” My tense GO AWAY posture is dissolving.

“A couple of years ago. I was studying Performance at NYU.”

Unbelievable. The random stranger who chose the seat next to Sasquatch on the bus to Otovalo is in my field, and it’s a pretty small field with two main schools. I went to the other one, but as we compare notes we determine that we do indeed know many of the same people.

His name is Wolf, which is probably a name he gave himself but isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds in the performance field, where people take on personas and end by living them. He’s going to Otovalo to work with a community performance group on an activist piece, using traditional performance styles and mask puppetry to raise awareness of issues within the indigenous population. Damn, this is interesting.

We talk about Ecuador, too, and traveling. He tries to advise me, saying “Just try not to look like a touris…” and breaks off, taking another look at me. “I know. I’m tall,blonde, and I have a backpack. It’s not gonna happen.” We laugh together.

He invites me to come to their performance workshop that evening; I uncertainly demur. No matter how interesting this is, he’s still a stranger and a male in a foreign country known for it’s machismo attitudes towards women, especially women alone.

The bus pulls in to it’s stop outside of town at 8am. My guidebook is silent on this, I don’t know how to get to the market from the bus stop. Wolf guides me, we share a cab to town and I check into my hotel, randomly chosen from the Rough Guide because it’s right on the main square. We part ways, him to make masks and me to shop, but have agreed to meet for an early dinner or a late lunch, however it shakes out.

Otovalo’s Sunday market is rumored to be the largest on the South American continent, and spreads over more than a square mile. I plunge into the middle of it, dodging the tour groups of fifteen or more that plod together. We’re all tourists, all Sasquatches, but I enjoy a private feeling of slight superiority that at least I’m not wearing a souvenir sun visor and a fanny pack while treading closely on the heels of a weary guide. There are bright tapestries everywhere, and toy llamas, and smoke billows everywhere from grubby hot plates issuing delicious odors of cooking meat that will probably give me food poisoning. Guinea pig is the specialty here. I eat a slice of watermelon instead.

I’m here to shop, and shop I shall. I wander through the same streets many times, the vendors calling out to me in words I don’t understand. I try to keep moving, a permanent half smile pasted on my face and still shielded from eye contact. I start buying things, slowly at first, hesitant. I don’t know what these things are worth, and they’re certainly not going to tell me. I haggle for my first item, a small toy llama. I’m sure I overpay for it, but it’s a mistake that costs all of a dollar and I’m ok with that. I buy more things, jewelry and sweaters and ponchos, bargaining blindly. I don’t even know if I want these things, but even as a not terribly consumerist American, I know how to buy stuff. Americans are good at buying stuff and spending money, one of the few reasons we are welcomed as tourists.

By early afternoon I’ve exhausted the market, but it’s too early to meet Wolf. I drop off my bags at the hotel and consult my guidebook. Wolf had mentioned a waterfall near town, an easy bus ride away. I have time to kill so I decide to walk, noting the directions to “go out of town to the road paralleling the railroad tracks.” This road doesn’t have a name, but then again none of them do. My guidebook says, “You can’t miss it,” although I know they’ve grossly underestimated my ability to miss things. Nonetheless I head out again; I don’t have a sun visor or a fanny pack, I didn’t come here to hunker in my hotel room and wait for someone to tell me what to do.

The sun is brilliant up here, at high altitude in this Andean valley, with rafts of clouds breaking up the sunbeams playing over the landscape. I push back through the market, faster this time, no half smile, and then out trying to find the railroad tracks. I find them, eventually, and start walking up the nameless dirt road, just praying that I have not indeed missed an unmissable road that lies elsewhere.

I’m the only non-native in sight, walking alone up this road, while locals occasionally pass by going the other way. They stare openly, as if to confirm that I’m lost and clearly not anywhere that tourists should be. It’s not unfriendly, though, and it’s still broad daylight and I can turn back and retrace my steps if I need to, so I keep going. Some kids are playing soccer in a field to my left, and a stray kick sends the ball straight towards me. Ten faces turn towards me in unison, expectant grins hovering just out of sight—how great is it going to make their day when the gringa kicks the ball back into the game?

I try, but I miss the ball entirely the first time. The second time I make contact but the ball skews off in the wrong direction. The kids are all laughing now, but it’s not unkind laughter, exultant in a different way; they get to feel superior to this awkward first worlder, and that’s fine with me. I smile and wave back and then continue on.

And on. I see a herd of llamas grazing, which is interesting enough to distract me from my increasing conviction that I’m going the wrong way. Finally I see a steep gravel road branching off to the right, and wonder of wonders it’s even signposted. My guidebook only lied a little bit; I was on the right road the whole time, but this whole endeavor was a little more than a casual 15 minute stroll. I’m not sure whether to blame the book, the lingering altitude sickness that leaves me panting and dizzy, or my general poor physical condition. Whatever, I’m here.

The road leads up to a compound on the edge of eucalyptus grove, and there are signs in Spanish and English telling me that this is a sacred waterfall. I’m not really clear on how or why it’s sacred, and as I spend the next few weeks traveling through Ecuador it seems like every waterfall is sacred in some non-specific way. Maybe it’s something they say for the tourists, so we feel like we’re having an authentic experience. Maybe here in this land of mountains and jungles, streams of clear water falling from great heights are always sacred. No way to tell.

The grove is peaceful, despite the chattering stream of people moving up and down the path. It’s not as crowded as the market was by a long shot, and there are no fanny packs or visors; this place isn’t on the group itinerary. I walk slowly, closing my eyes occasionally to breathe in the crisp smell of eucalyptus leaves. I would never have thought to find a grove of eucalyptus here, associated as it is my mind with pandas in China. When I reach the waterfall it’s pretty enough, but for me the forest has more of an impact. I wander around for a while and then turn back, at least it’s downhill this time going down that dirt road that parallels the railroad tracks. The soccer game is over, and the sun is sinking lower, piercing beams slicing at acute angles across the valleys.

It’s time to meet up with Wolf. Actually, it’s too early for dinner but I don’t care, I’m starving and have eaten only a slice watermelon today and that was before my inadvertent hike. I take a quick shower and wear my new poncho and the red beaded necklace.

We walk through town to a restaurant that Wolf knows, Italian food, oddly enough. There are long, heavy wooden tables with benches and a fireplace, but it’s too warm for a fire. We are the only people there, and the staff welcomes Wolf as a familiar face. There’s a minimum of smirking at the fact that he’s accompanied by me. He recommends a pasta dish, assuring me that it’s safe to eat even for a delicate, pampered tummy like mine.

We talk over dinner, and I explain that I don’t speak a word of Spanish although I can understand some of it filtered through my spotty memory of French. He insists that I should just start speaking it, as much as I can even if it’s only a word or two and that I will learn quickly. In fact, he suggests that we carry on our dinner conversation in Spanish only, that he will speak Spanish to me and I will find that I understand it. I protest that the conversation will get a lot less interesting and a lot more frustrating, and eventually we broker a deal—we will tell each other stories. We’re both trained performers and storytellers after all, this is what we do. He will tell me a story in Spanish, and while I am simply not capable of telling him a story in Spanish unless the whole story is “Que? No se,” I reluctantly agree that I will try to tell a story in French (which he speaks in addition to English, Spanish, and Portugese).

He begins. He is using simple words and pausing frequently, his eyes locked on mine to see if I am comprehending.

“Esto es una historia que mi abuelo dijo a mi padre.”

Confusion.

“Esto es una historia de el padre de mi padre.”

“This is… a story of your grandfather?”

“Sí. Un día el padre de mi padre--mi abuelo--montaba en las montañas en night."

“…montaba?”

“En un caballo, vaya”

There are gestures. “On a horse? Your grandfather was on a horse in the…”

“montañas”

“In the mountains! In the mountains at night.”

We go on this way for the rest of the story.

“Sí. Y él vio una luz. Había una luz. Y cuando él vio esta luz, él montó a ella. Era atrasada y él buscaba un lugar para dormir.

La luz estaba en una casa, y la puerta estaba abierta. Él entró la casa.

Un cadáver estaba en la casa. La luz era una vela al lado del cadáver. Mi abuelo se sentó por el cadáver con la noche. En el amanecer él se fue. Esto era porque usted debe nunca dejar un cadáver solo en la noche.”

That is what I remember of the story, at least, the story of his grandfather riding through a deserted stretch of mountains late at night and seeing a light in the distance. He went towards the light, looking for shelter, and found an abandoned house with a candle in the window and a corpse laid out in the main room. On seeing this, he sat down, and stayed with the body through the night until dawn. This was because it is a custom in the mountains that the dead must not be left alone through the night before burial.

Now it’s my turn, and I quickly realize how much French I’ve forgotten. My story is studded with cursing at myself and occasional phrases of English.

“J’allais… driving?? Crap! J'allais… sur une route. C'était nuit, avant le jour. J'allais à l'ouest. J'étais seul. J'ai vu les étoiles et la lune devant moi, et le soleil derrière moi. J'étais entre le jour et la nuit.”

It wasn’t even a story, really, just a moment I remember, driving across New Mexico in the pre-dawn darkness, alone for miles with only headlights for company, looking into the inky blackness of the night in front of me studded with stars and a sinking moon, seeing the first rays of dawn behind me in the rearview mirror, alone in the place between day and night.

Wolf is proud of me. He invites me to join him that evening, at a party in the local community. There will be a bonfire, and dancing, and they will work with the masks he’s been making. It sounds like an amazing experience, an unlooked for chance to get behind the scenes and to a place where a tourist like me would normally never get to go.

I turn him down. Yes, it sounds amazing, but he’s also a stranger and I’m a stranger here, and I’m tired, and while it would be appealing to get away from tourist things there is comfort there, a sense of protection. I’m not ready for this experience yet, I’ve only been here three days and I can’t even make eye contact with people.

I thank Wolf for dinner, and for the story, and then I go back to my hotel and go to sleep.