Oh Otavalo!

Lost in Translation
Last week kicked off with a “superbowl” type soccer game between the two biggest cities in Ecuador, Quito and Guayaquil. Everyone in Otavalo had on the jerseys of their favorite team in preparation for the big game; Marco and the family are big Quito fans. We watched the game at the house last Sunday afternoon, and unfortunately Quito lost pretty miserably. When the game ended in the early evening, Marco decided to cheer himself up by showing us his collection of American music videos. He kept pulling more and more DVDs out of the cabinet and we went meticulously through every song ever written in the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s. The two of us egged him on, and it was funny to watch Marco rock out to Roxette, Cindy Lauper, Bon Jovi, and Bryan Adams, with a thick Spanish accent. It turned into a 4-hour long 5-person dance party at the house, culminating with a Michael Jackson anthology, and teaching little Marquito a feeble rendition of the moonwalk. It was BAD!

The impromptu dance party was an awkward beginning to an awkward week. It’s taken us this long to realize that we’ve been on the wrong side of the language barrier for some time. This is more of a predicament for Rob, particularly because he has about 18 days of Spanish experience. We’ve realized that he’s having a slightly different experience than Emily is here. For example, last week when the family visited the cemetery on the Day of the Dead, Rob asked Emily, “Is this the grave of Marco’s mother? “ Emily told Rob, “No, Abuelita is Marco’s mother….she’s standing right next to you.” Whooops!

In fumbling with the language, we have come to appreciate how only slight variations in pronunciations of some Spanish words can make a huge difference in meaning. For brevity’s sake, the highlights in English are: fear = poop, fork = bullfighter, sister = beautiful, moth = gay, 3609 = 100 testicles, etc. Needless to say we’ve been accidentally making the family laugh pretty consistently. In another example, Marquito tried to bridge the language barrier himself. We were on a hike to a beautiful waterfall, which Rob described as “sister,” and Marquito was trying to explain something to us. He wanted to get a word across and tried the English word “downhill” several times. With his thick accent, it sounded more like “Dohn-hkee.” Emily, trying hard to understand, started going “EEEEEEE-AWWWWW, EEEEEEE-AWWWWW!” ….like a donkey. Marco was totally confused, and likely a little afraid. Eventually we got that all cleared up, but now we use “EEEEEEEEE-AWWWWWWW” whenever we don’t understand something in Spanish, which unfortunately for us, is pretty often.

Ecu-Wah-Duh?
The awkwardness continued right into the week. After somewhat of a rocky start, we had been enjoying teaching the children at school. However, our frustration with the system grew and came to a head on Wednesday of our second week. As per usual, as soon as we got into the classroom, the teachers decided to take their break in the courtyard. In one class specifically, the kids were out of control and we felt almost defeated. In addition to the discipline problems with some children, we felt like the classes in general didn’t have much direction in their curriculum and we certainly weren’t giving the students any really meaningful lessons. It was hard for us to rationalize why we came all this way to this hole-in-the-wall place if we weren’t doing anything more than just “filling in” for a teacher’s break.

Towards the end of the school day, we were glad to have an unusual distraction. Most of the school went across the street to see a one-tent circus run by a vagabond family. The “Circo Illusions!” was exactly what it advertised . . . the illusion of a circus. The clown made five children cry and the trapeze swinger, wearing a skimpy half-sparkly outfit, was 40lbs overweight. It was the best and worst 25 cents we’ve ever spent.

After that frustrating Wednesday, we took the afternoon to walk around Otavalo town. We felt like we weren’t making the kind of impact we wanted to, and decided to focus our efforts on two specific projects for the school: construction of a big mural near the front gate and a school-wide assembly to sing the Numbers Song and the Food Song.

Goooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalllllls!
As soon as we established these goals, we began moving the school towards them. The immediate response by the students and teachers was amazing and almost instantaneous. Everyone was excited about memorizing the words to the songs, which were in Spanish, English, and Quechua (the indigenous Andean language) and the prospect of singing it together with all classes.

The mural started as a curiosity, but everyone, even Senor Pancho was eager to scrape old paint, clean the wall, and help in any way they could. The design incorporated symbols of Otavalo and Ecuador as well as the hand-prints of all the students at the school. This became an obsession with the children, who clamored to dip their hands in paint and stamp their contribution on the wall.

Throughout each day we’ve noticed some children walk up to the wall and place their hands over some of the prints. We’ve overheard kids talking to each other, “That one’s mine!” and “Mine is green” for example. It’s also cool when kids walk by singing the Food Song in one of three languages. It’s amazing how injecting a sense of purpose, no matter how small, can have such a big impact.

Anniversario Numero Uno
At the school, the seventh grade with Teacher Liliana is our favorite class. Last Monday they invited us on a hike, which apparently is their substitute for gym class. They asked Rob if he could take his guitar and he agreed, although he didn’t realize the hike was going to be an hour’s walk through goat trails up a steep hill.

At the top we could see all of Otavalo and up and down the valley between the volcanoes, and we sang some songs. It was very “the hills are alive with the sound of music.”

The next day the same class surprised us with gifts for our first wedding anniversary. They gave us two dozen red roses with heart-shaped cards written carefully in English. Then all the students paraded by and gave us 31 individual hugs. It was “super bueno.”

Not to be outdone by a single class, the rest of the teachers rallied and put together a pizza and Fanta party for us after school. Afterwards, they also paraded by us, but mostly just to give us congratulatory smiles and handshakes.

We left school and walked back to the house, a mile up the hill. Abuelita was getting the rest of the family together to take us out for a celebratory lunch of fried guinea pig. We were both curious about fried guinea pig and we quickly discovered that it’s exactly what it sounds like. It appears they fry them in the same way you boil a lobster – you just throw them in the pot. The meat itself didn’t taste much different than chicken, but the little claws kept clinging to the edge of the plate and the beady little eyes never blinked, but seemed like they could. Rob’s guinea pig still had some hair on it. Marco ate everything but the eyes. Happy anniversary to us! Yikes!

Farewells
The culmination of our three weeks at the school was incredible. On Thursday we had the whole school sing the two songs together before dismissal. Everyone, kids, parents, and teachers alike were so stoked about it that we did the whole program two times in a row. We even decided to do an encore the following day.

On Friday, our last day at the school, we sang the songs again and more parents showed up to watch. The children were so excited, so loud, and sang so well in all three languages. They even asked the two of us to sing the Food Song in Swahili for them before we finished all together with a thundering rendition in Spanish. After the songs were through, the teachers put chairs out for us among all the children, who stood up and read “good-bye” messages to us in English. Throughout the whole day children had been running up to us and giving us gifts. The indigenous people here are famous for their craftsmanship, so a lot of the gifts were many of the things we saw in the market. They gave us bracelets, necklaces, belts, panpipes, woven pocketbooks, and even two knitted sweaters. Many of the kids also drew us pictures on scrap paper or cardboard and somebody gave us a framed embroidery (which had obviously been hanging up in their home). They seemed to give us anything and everything they could, including pictures of themselves and their families. We even got four ice cream cones (which is an awkward going-away gift), and a little girl gave Emily a Whinny-the-Pooh doll with no arms. It was an unbelievable shower of gifts, and humbling to say the least.

After the last gifts, we took a picture with everyone in front of the mural, which is right inside the front gate. The kids were slow to leave, each insisting on a big hug from both of us. Some snuck in for two or three hugs; the individual record was a little girl who got 12 hugs from Rob in 20 minutes.

After the kids left we packed up our gifts and hiked back to the house for our last lunch with the family. In the afternoon we went back to the school to put some final touches on the mural and put our own hand prints in the bottom corner. As we walked out of the school for the last time we were overwhelmed by the generosity of the children and were glad to have been able to give something in return.