Otavalo - Long Over Due

After the aforementioned bus ride I arrived in the town of Otavalo at about 9 in the morning and found the famous market. It was early enough yet that it wasn´t flooded with tourist so I was able to pleasantly wander around at my leisure.

This photo doesn´t really do justice to the magnitude of the market.

A few hours later I called Anna, a friend from college, who was living in a town nearby. Anna started a foundation http://www.tandanafoundation.org/ that among other things does volunteer medical vacations in the highlands of Ecuador. This happened to be the last weekend of her last medical trip for the fall, as well as the weekend in which the Tandana intern (who had been living with a family in the pueblito of Quinchinche for the past 7 months) was being made Godmother to two of the children in the family with whom she lived. When I called Anna, the baptism ceremony was about to start, so I took a cab to the church and quietly slipped in the back.

The godmother/godfather role is very important in Ecuadorian society. As Ecuador is primarily a Catholic country, the godparents are expected to have a major role in helping to guide a child´s spiritual life. They become coparents in effect, (actually comadre, and compadre).

Lindsey, La Madrina (Godmother) in the middle with the two boys infront of her and the family around.

After the ceremony, we went to the family´s home to begin the traditional two day celebration, but on the way there Anna made sure we stopped at her family's house to pick up a number of plastic grocery bags. It was a one room house, about 30 by 15 with a dirt floor. Normally one side of the house held the kitchen and the other side of the house was occupied by the parents bed, but for this special occasion the kitchen had been moved out to the guinea pig shed (and the guinea pig cages were moved outside) and we coudldn´t figure out where the parents bed went. In their place a number of wooden benches had been set against the walls and a large table had been created with a sheet of plywood and a couple of sawhorses. The first course was a chicken soup with potatoes. This was a bowl of soup fit for a meal, not just a course and before we were done, the second course arrived, corn colada (the consistency of runny hummus) and fried "cuy" which is guinea pig. Half way through my colada I´m full and wondering what I´m going to do because I know there is another course coming and it´s rude not to finish your food. The third course is "seco," a dry plate consisting of a grain, usually rice, but in this case a type of white jumbo sized corn kernels that I can´t remember the name of at the moment, and meat, lots of meat. The heaping plate is put in front of me and I have no idea how I´m going got manage because I´m already uncomfortably full when I notice those around me pulling out plastic bags grocery bags and subtly putting food into them under the table. Everywhere around the room I see greasy grocery bags stashed next to purses and coats. Apparently is it less rude to take your food home with you than to not eat it.

Anna, Lindsey and I with our Colada and Cuy.

The family then began to present Lindsey, La Madrian, with the traditional gifts, baskets of food and alcohol. Given that this family is very poor, we were glad that Lindsay lives with the family so they´d have to help her eat it. Another tradition is that all the alcohol has to be consumed before the end of the party. How this is done is La Madrina, or someone she designates on her behalf, goes around the room, from person to person, with a single plastic cup offering them a drink. The guest has the option to say no thank you, take the cup and drink, or first instruct the person serving the beverage to drink a glass before drinking one themselves. Now, the person serving the beverage can not refuse the drink if instructed to drink by the guest. Since Anna and Lindsay didn´t particularly like beer, I had the privilege of serving the beer. It was a tough job.

La Madrina with her godsons and all her baskets of food. The outfits the boys are wearing were provided by the godmother, as part of the tradition.
After all the guests had eaten, which happened in shifts because the table could only accommodate about 14 at a time, the party started heating up. Anna had arranged for a band of traditional musicians to play. The maternal godparents, not knowing there was already a band coming, had arranged for a DJ to come as a surprise, so we had both. At first there seems to be a bit of a turf war going on but by the end the DJ helped amp the band so all was well.

Abuelito getting his groove on, the paternal grandfather to the godsons, and the cutest little old man ever.

We didn´t stay until the end, but I’m told the party raged well into the night largely due to some homemade cane alcohol that was later brought out.

The next day a group of us hiked to a local waterfall. The two girls in the photo are scholarship recipients from Anna´s foundation.

This one´s for the Whiman Magazine. Those girls are 19 and 22 if anybody's wondering.

My Love to All,

Dayna