and not a drop to drink

sooo I’m 21 now.
WOOOOO PARTYYYYYYYYYYYY no en serio no es la realidad.

I spent my 21st birthday farming, essentially.

using a hoe for the first time, as in legitimate breaking up land I’m in a Van Gogh or Millet painting only in South America oops there goes my blister from cutting alfalfa a couple days ago god I’m tired Inés you’re still going?! Second soup kettle bath.  In bed by, I don’t know, 8:30.

It was a farreado, or holiday, and I was hoping I would get the chance to meet some people around my age over a coupld beers to ease the akwardness, or meet some more of the family, or something. Inés and I were working till dark on this and that. What happened as night fell, we went out to see if her mother was making bread for the day of the dead and see if they needed help. I realized, is that A. there does not seem to be anyone my age in La Calera at least that I have easy access to, as the population  cut off seems to be around 17 and starts up again around 30 and B. all the men were getting way too drunk, and the women were sitting outside on the corner with not a drop to drink. I didn’t drink either. honestly it scared me. wayyy borracho, esos hombres. It just reminded me of the story Inés told me, her story, of the abuse she suffered from her husband especially when he got drunk. beatings. he would lock her in a room. once she had a meeting at the asemblea in town, as she is one politically active woman, and escaped through the window.

they were done making bread.

we went home.

a drunk neighbor or cousin or uncle I don’t know, came into the house, so drunk I didn’t know how he was standing, basically in Kairik’s face going on and on, something about Kairik’s father, maybe their shared alchoholism, but his words were too slurred for me to understand. I’m sitting at the table slightly agape waiting for Inés to throw him fucking out. he´s in her kids face. but she just waited and watched and eventually he wandered away. Borracho, dijo Kairik. he knew what was going on, obviously had seen it before. I bit my lip. it was hard to see.

it’s lonely here. it’s only been a week, but it’s lonely at times, and hard, god it’s hard to teach here.

day after my birthday, walked for about an hour with Inés and her sister and her husband´s sister (…who HAPPENED to be my age! but doesn´t live here during the week arrgh), who when she told me how she knew the family all I could think is, well, how evil her brother had been to Inés, and Peta – now on referred to as Mishari, her kiwcha name and what I just found out she prefers to be called – and Kairik, to the cementary. It was like a fair – people selling toys and candy and food everywhere, soo many people just sitting by their families tombstones and eating eating eating. everyone sharing food, so everyone is carrying insane amounts of bread or cooked beans or eggs or platanos on their back, sets it down, and then people go around with bowls and exchange. it was surreal. I could have stayed all day but went into Quito.

oh! finally I am able to travel small (SAFE, Mom, SAFE) distances by myself without feeling panicky! At least this is a sign of major improvement in my Spanish. went into Quito to hang out with two friends who stayed in the area and celebrate my birthday a little more united states like. had a mojito and a banana split and some indian food, which, while wasn’t that good, was five million times better in terms of flavor then the food here because….well..IT HAD FLAVOR.

the bread, oh god, the bread. I just keep putting more and more of it in my mouth, maybe expecting THIS time it is going to have a taste! wait, oops, no. okay, let’s try again. nope, nothing. maybe one bite more…ahh what am I thinking.

at least I’m eating vegetables now and walking more.

came back into Otavalo today and re-visited a shop that I believe has the best pie on either side of the hemisphere. had a slice of mora and some coffee and watched tourists walk by. my birthday treat to myself.

feeling extremely homesick lately. having trouble focusing on the here and now and find myself daydreaming about when I’m going back, what my life will be like, etc. the one thing that’s grounding me right now is the fact that I still am determined to get the best spanish I can, actually learn the language, and the only way that’s going to stick is if I stay. that, and my determination to get to Machu Picchu, climb Mt. Cotopaxi, get to the beach again, and manage these damn 7th graders. that and perhaps make a shadow puppet show about my experience when I get back.

 

unease queasiness as nightmares of teeth crumbling in my mouth as I eat continue since the age of four, well maybe the taste would be something other then potato or rice or corn, the streets are dust and don’t have any names, packs, packs of dogs five cent candy and the smudged cheeks of children, the ambercrombie shirts of the boys as soon as they hit 13. my ankles roll out if I hit the random cobblestone wrong. my skin peels as it handles rough wooden handles. my sides quiver as I dump water over my head from a soup bowl, crouched in the shower that has no water. face a classroom of students and realize, well there are no balls make one from my scarf. there are no markers or paper can we scrounge for nubs of crayons and colored pencils? do you have a notebook? um, no tape. I hate schools. I want out. I wrote my major about education reform. what the hell am I thinking.  I want to run away. I want to go home. I want to be in a stage. I want to find the hippies of Quito and travel through South America making bracelets and never having ties to anything except the knots I make in my macrame necklace.

 

earthquakes inside waves rolling through. someone remind me: this is what I wanted.

why do I always choose the hardest thing? perhaps what’s harder for me is choosing something easy. giving myself a break.

 

but I talked with a woman for two hours last night back outside of Quito about birth, birth stories, I love birth stories. had a little wine so the spanish was rolling off my tongue. told her about my mother, three months in bed, even here no one can believe. two hours of conversation about birth and pain and women and mothers and not a drop of english. well a couple splatters here and there but, well, three months ago that would be i-m-p-o-s-s-i-b-l-e.

 

how can we connect, stay connected, to use a phrase I absolutely hate – in the digital age? more then that. the distance. the digital is what allows me to stay connected at all. but it disconnects me from now. seeing production photos from the latest play at the U keeps me “up to date” but in a way just pushes tme closer to an edge farther away from the horizon of Imbabura. I need to stare at the mountains more. well I wake up everyday and do so because it still shocks me, so surreal, terror awe, but I need to do so more. look at the damn cuys in the corral. stick my fingers in the dirt. at the moment I’m temporally geographically emotionally physically and spiritually, linguistically, displaced.

 

I can actually feel the earth spinning.