This Little Piggy Went to Market …

What follows is a typical grocery shopping trip for us in Otavalo.  We take our backpacks and walk to the market. 

On the way, our first stop is at a small shop where we bought a chicken and also buy butter and cream.  The chickens and meat actually sit in a refrigerator!  Not always the case with meat, as later photos will show.

Going towards the market we walk along this street which has lovely trees and interesting lighting.  Each of the lights is different, but in this picture you can only see the one on the top-left with the strange mask.

Against the wall under the umbrellas are the shoe-shine people.  To the left of the picture there is someone sitting up on a chair under a red umbrella wearing a green-striped jumper/sweater having his shoes shined.
  

As well as shops and market stalls, there are many mobile vendors.  Wheelbarrows seem to be the vehicle of choice for most. 

These 2 Quichua women each have a barrow of mangoes to sell and were walking towards each other when we first saw them, and it looks as though their kids are happy to meet up again.

Generally the vendors sell fruits from their barrows – strawberries, grapes, mangoes, etc.

Having walked a few blocks further, we are now at the Copacabana market (yes, just like the song.  And no, I don’t know what that means in Spanish.  Google Translate was not helpful in that respect.)

This part of the market has a metal roof, but the rest of the market doesn’t.  We buy our potatoes from a lady with a stall in this section.  She always throws in a few extra potats for us.

Me trying to work out what to buy.   Note the necessary market equipment – backpack, shopping list, coin purse, thoughtful expression. 

The pricing “system” for markets in Otavalo doesn’t go by weight.  You generally ask “how many (onions, carrots, etc) for 50 cents (or 1 dollar, etc)?”. 

At first, I couldn’t keep track of how many of the various things I should get for my dollar, so I decided to write down in a little book what produce I had bought and how many I got for the price.  Then next time I went to the market with my shopping list, next to the item I wanted to buy I would write how many I had previously got for the price, so that when I was quoted a price I would have an idea if that was a good deal or not.

We’ve found that you do need to have your wits about you at the market, as if you are unprepared you can get caught out.  Example.  I wanted to buy some carrots, so I asked one lady “how many carrots for 50 cents”?  She said 6.  I checked my price list and found that the previous week I had bought 6 carrots for 25 cents.  So when I said No, she asked how much I wanted to pay.  I said 25 cents, which she accepted without blinking an eye.  It doesn’t pay to assume that the quoted price is the best price you can get.  Another vendor may also give you a better deal.

Most of the vendors at the market wear the indigenous Quichua clothing.

Yummy!!  Strawberries at the front, on the left behind them is a fruit called “mora”.  They are somewhat similar to a blackberry but are very tart.  Yummy cooked up with some sugar.

To buy one of those grey plastic containers full of mora or strawberries is usually around 1 dollar.

You can buy various grains, flours, pastas, peanuts, beans, etc., here.  Also for sale are packets and tins on the wall shelving.  We buy our peanuts at one of these stalls – it’s cheaper than the supermarket.

Surprisingly, for some things the supermarket is cheaper than the markets. You just need to keep your eyes open and check prices.

Chicken, anyone?  Who needs a refrigerator, anyway?

Brendan said one day he saw a customer pick up a chicken to inspect, dropped it on the ground and then handed it back to the vendor who put it back on the pile.  Probably a good idea to wash things you buy at the market!

These chickens get to be in a glass display case.  Not refrigerated, though.  Maybe refrigeration is over-rated? 

Either the potatoes need to be guarded, or the market is a good place to hang out in case of falling chickens!!

Still at the market, and this is where we buy our eggs.  You can buy a tray of 30 eggs for between $3.35-$3.80, depending on the size.

We generally only buy a dozen, and the egg people are always amused when I hand over my egg carton (which I got at the supermarket) for them to fill. 

If you buy less than a tray of 30 eggs, they just put the eggs in a plastic bag (in the photo above, it looks like that’s what’s happening). 

Having had eggs come to grief both in a 30-egg tray, and in a plastic bag, I thought the egg carton was a good investment.  And it gives the egg people a little amusement.

To the right of the picture you can see 2 women filling a bucket at a water tap for communal use.  Good for washing and freshening the produce.

In the middle of the picture is a man riding a bicycle-powered cart/trolley.  You often see them around the markets filled with produce that people have bought, and at times you see people sitting in the front section with their produce, getting a ride home as well. 

Cheaper than a taxi, I would imagine.

On the outer edges of the markets are vendors who only have a small amount of produce to sell.  I once tried to buy some onions from an older lady, but she only spoke Quichua, so that came to nothing.
 

Looking back toward the market, as we head for the supermarket with our backpacks loaded with goodies.
  

Another mobile vendor.  I’ve sometimes thought that if you sat in one place long enough, just about everything you could want to buy would go past, sooner or later!
 

Our last stop just around the corner from the market is the supermarket Santa Maria, where we buy the rest of what we need, then we take a taxi home for $1.

And then this little piggy cried wee wee wee all the way home ....

A Field Service Experience …

 

We had an experience in the field ministry today which reminded us of something similar in the Watchtower of October 15 2014, in the article “They Offered Themselves Willingly in Taiwan”.

We had a Bible study arranged for this morning, so we walked to the shop where the man works. Unfortunately, he was not there, so we turned around and came back.

On our way to the study, we passed a couple of men working in a hole where road work was in progress. On the way back, one man looked up, so we greeted them and he asked if we were Testigos de Jehová (Jehovah’s Witnesses).

After we replied that we were, he spoke to us in rather fast Spanish, which we had difficulty picking up. We could pick up some words and phrases and understood that he himself wasn’t a Witness but that he was “Roman Catolica Apostolica”, and that he was saying something about “explaining the Word of God”, etc, but weren’t sure if he wanted us to explain the Word of God to him or if he wanted to explain it to us.

Fortunately, after a while of us trying to make sense of the bits and pieces we could understand, Brendan worked out that perhaps he wanted some literature that would help explain the Word of God, as we weren’t managing to do such a good job of it by ourselves.

So, I reached into my field service bag for some Spanish magazines (even though we focus on English speakers, it’s always handy to have some literature in Spanish and Quichua for occasions such as these), asked the man if that was what he wanted, and yes, it appeared it was.

This is our field service group at the start of the campaign in August with the tract to promote jw.org

Afterwards we were talking about the frustrations of having an incomplete understanding of the language, and it reminded me of the article I mentioned at the start of this blog.

In it, a couple named Brian and Michelle, moved to Taiwan and ‘at first, they felt that they had no meaningful share in the ministry. But an experienced missionary told them: “Even if you can only hand a tract to someone, you should remember that it will likely be the very first time that person receives a message about Jehovah. So you’re already having an important share in the ministry.”

So even though our Spanish is patchy, there are still opportunities for us to be able to give a witness to those who speak only Spanish.

One thing that still surprises us here is that it’s not uncommon for people to ask for Bible literature, and even if we can’t communicate very well, we are still able to hand them something that will help them.

A couple of times we have been in the field ministry when someone approached us in the street and asked for magazines, and once we were knocking at a door and a lady was up on her roof doing the washing and she also called down to ask for literature.

So, we figure if we are out there and available, we can still be of use in spreading the message, even with our incomplete knowledge of the language.

Some of our territory – on the outskirts of the town of San Antonio, near Ibarra

The Dry (and Windy and Dusty) Season

 

Well, as we’ve had some rain lately, it seems the Dry Season in the north of Ecuador is on its way out. Although with the way the weather seems to be going in most parts of the world lately, who knows what’s going on?

Because we are on the equator here in Ecuador, we don’t have 4 seasons like most of the rest of the world does, but instead we have Wet and Dry Seasons, which vary depending on which part of the country you are in, and on local microclimates.

When we still lived in Cuenca, we really only had a Dry Season the first year (2012), around the middle of the year, and it really was dry – the grass in the parks dried out and it was sunny and warm (but not unpleasantly so). But the next 2 Dry Seasons weren’t really dry at all – it rained and was cloudy and cool. Although we had moved up to Otavalo before the Cuenca Dry Season of 2014, we did visit Cuenca around the end of July and it was rainy then and the grass was green, and friends there said that it had been rainy.

Up here in Otavalo and surrounding areas, there was no doubt we had a Dry Season this year. For 2 or 3 months, we really had no rain at all; maybe a rain shower now and then. You could see it in the surrounding hills as the grass and vegetation dried out, and we began to see smoke from fires that some of the indigenous people traditionally set alight in order to bring rain.

Out in field service, we saw this lady (in the foreground wearing black and grey) moving her cows along – she was jogging along behind them and hitting them with her stick when they didn’t go fast enough!

One of the not so pleasant things about the dry season is that many of the country roads are not paved, and if you happen to have to walk along them, you find yourself walking in dust (very hard to keep your shoes looking clean and tidy) and also the sand fleas tend to find and bite you, which is not pleasant.

Brendan and another brother walking along a dusty road out in field service – there was supposed to be an English speaking man out there, but we couldn’t find him

One thing that happens with the Dry Season in the north of Ecuador is that at some point there are a few weeks where it can get extremely windy. In moderation, the warm wind is quite pleasant – I’ve enjoyed being able to hang my washing up on the washing line on our flat roof and to have the sun and the wind dry it, shake the wrinkles out and make it all fresh, and to be able to get it in again within a couple of hours. But there’s also a measure of necessity in not leaving your washing up there any longer than you have to – it may blow off the washing line never to be seen again!!

I was inside our apartment one day, looking towards the window, and I could hear a really strong wind coming towards us, and I quickly went to shut the sliding door as I knew there would be a lot of dust coming along with the wind. What I did see being blown along with the wind was a pair of jeans from the washing line of an apartment just near us.

A couple of weeks earlier, someone’s sheet blew off their line. It’s the time of year that doubling up on clothes pegs is essential if you want to be able to bring in as many items as you hung out on the line!

I also came to realise why it is that many of the houses or apartments here that don’t have concrete roofs as we do, but have corrugated iron or cement sheet roofing, also have car or truck tyres, or cement blocks sitting up on their roofs. It kinda holds your roof on when it’s windy!

 

Oops!  One of the pieces of cement sheet that was on the roof is now shattered into a thousand tiny pieces on the ground below

It’s a good thing someone invented cement blocks – they are handy for roofs as well as for walls!

Field Service in Ecuador

 

Thought we’d share something of what it’s like to go witnessing in the English-speaking field in Ecuador.

Since we’ve moved up north to Otavalo, it means an earlier start for us.  We were finding the buses a bit unpredictable, and decided we needed to start from home earlier to make sure we got to the meeting for field service on time.  So now we leave home at 7.30 am for the 8.30 am meeting at Atuntaqui.  If we catch the 7.30 bus, it goes express and we arrive at the Kingdom Hall at around 7.50 am, leaving a lot of time before the group.  So I fill in some of the time by doing some street witnessing with Spanish tracts.

Previous to our deciding we needed to make a ridiculously early start, we would leave home at 7.45am  and catch whichever bus was heading in the right direction.  Mostly that worked okay, but one day we were waiting for a bus (the buses were coming, but for some reason they were not stopping to let anyone on) and by  8.10 am, we were still waiting at the bus stop. 

The problem is that it takes at least 20 minutes to get there – longer if the bus goes into the terminal at Otavalo to pick up passengers (which most of them do), and the only reason we got to the group on time that day was that a brother with a car who lives near us, spotted us at the bus stop, pulled over and we jumped in and drove with him to the hall.

One of the nice things about being up here is that we get to see the countryside as we travel to field service and to the various towns in which we work.  In Cuenca, we travelled through the city all the time, but we much prefer to see trees and grass to concrete and cars.

I wonder if this unsuspecting little porker thinks he’s just going for a nice country drive?

Since we’ve moved up here, we’ve had to start all over again in finding people who speak English who are interested in learning about the Bible.

For a few weeks, not much was happening, probably because a lot of the areas we were working in were made up mainly of houses and apartments, and just as in other countries, not many people are at home during the day.

When we started working in areas where there are lots of businesses and shops, then the fun begins! If you can actually find people to speak to, then the likelihood of meeting people who speak English increases. Quite a few Ecuadorians have learned English either at school or because of having lived in the United States or Canada etc for a few years.

One morning, we were working in the town of San Antonio (between the towns of Ibarra and Atuntaqui). We went into a small shop and asked if there were any English-speaking people there. The man and woman in the shop said that their son spoke English and would be back in an hour. So we said we would return then.

When we called back, we met the son and explained that we were looking for English-speaking people who were interested in studying the Bible. He asked if we were Jehovah’s Witnesses, and then said that he was already studying the Bible with Witnesses in Spanish.

 

The town of San Antonio is well known for its wood work and wood carvings.  The man here has spent 1 month making this and another matching carved wood panel

It’s not unusual here to meet people who are already studying the Bible, as Ecuadorians generally have a great love and respect for the Bible. It’s not uncommon to go into a store and find the person who works there sitting reading their Bible.

And because that foundation is already there, it’s not difficult to build on it. As an example, a couple of weeks ago we were working the shops and businesses in Ibarra. I met a lady who runs a small clothing shop and after first chatting with her about where she had learned English etc (this is helpful to try to determine the level of understanding of English), I said that we were looking for people who were interested in knowing more about the Bible, and brought out some of our new tracts and asked her which interested her the most.

She chose one, and out on the footpath in front of her shop with people walking around us (she had been sweeping the path), we discussed together 2 or 3 of the scriptures mentioned in the tract, with her reading the scriptures in English. She didn’t want to commit to having a Bible study, but was happy for me to return and share some more scriptures with her.

It’s interesting discussing the Bible with people in their shops – generally they will go and get a couple of stools or chairs for us to sit on, and we have the discussion right there in the shop. When customers come in, they excuse themselves and go serve the customer and then come back and we pick up where we left off.

A little while after having spoken to the lady outside her shop, we met up with Brendan and the others, and he said that around the other side of the block he had also met a man in a shop who spoke English who wanted to study the Bible.

That was handy, as I now have a study with another lady (also with a shop) a block or two from there. So we can go visit them all at the same time. And the good thing with people who work in shops is that they are always there. They may be busy and the conversation may be interrupted when customers come in, but they are there.

Anyone for a little goat’s milk?  If you want some, they milk the goat right there (the train only runs once a day – its a tourist train)

Last Saturday we were in field service in Otavalo, and I and the two sisters with me (if we have uneven numbers, we often go in three’s) went into a shop and found a Quichua man (one of the indigenous peoples of Ecuador) who spoke English and Spanish, and of course, Quichua. He’d lived in the United States for five years, so his English was pretty good. He got three stools for us, and we sat.

Part way into the discussion, a customer came in and bought a large quantity of his merchandise – an amazing variety of knitted hats – and when she left, we resumed the discussion.

(One of the good things about visiting people in shops is that you often get to sit and have a rest while they serve customers. We do a lot of walking here, so an opportunity to sit is quite welcome. And we get to check out the merchandise while waiting!)

The shop owner wanted to learn more, so I arranged to go back on Tuesday with Brendan.

This knitted alpaca finger puppet is among the many handicrafts available in Otavalo.  It’s pretty cute, and cost me all of 50 cents!

It’s nice to have a study so close to home – it’s a 10 minute walk, whereas our other studies in Ibarra involve travel time (including a bus trip) of around an hour each way, so it’s good that we have 3 people there we can go visit at the one time.

 

There was no room for Brendan and Kirk in the car, so they rode in the back.  By the time we got to San Antonio, they both had a pretty impressive hair style – a backwards comb-over!!

We are really enjoying field service here, being able to share many scriptures from the Bible every day, and seeing the appreciation the Ecuadorian people have for God’s word.

We Meet by Torchlight …

 

I didn’t know that electricity could be water soluble, but that seems to be a possibility at the Atuntaqui, Ecuador, Kingdom Hall.

Going to the meeting on Tuesday evening it was raining a little, but we were safely on the bus, so it didn’t bother us and we’ve learned to always bring umbrellas when it’s the rainy season. After a little while, the “wet people” started arriving at the Kingdom Hall – the rain had got heavier by now and continued throughout the evening.

The first part of the meeting went uneventfully, and then just after the last student talk (for which I was the householder), the power went off. No lights, no microphones. Apparently this is not an unusual occurrence. Before we moved north to Otavalo, friends had told us that sometimes the power went out at the Kingdom Hall, and we had already experienced it once before in the 2 months we’ve been here, when it was also raining.

And because it’s not an unusual occurrence, one brother began handing out a small collection of battery-powered torches, while others got out their mobile phones and other electronic devices, in order to shine some light on their Bibles and songbooks.

We sang the middle song without music, and with the aid of whatever light we could muster up.

At one point, some of the ceiling lights came on and then flashed on and off, and we had a mini disco for a minute or two, then darkness again.

Brendan had the last part, on “How to help those who have difficulty reading”, which was rather appropriate at that time, as we were all having difficulty reading.

Fortunately one of the brothers at the meeting had some kind of device that brought power from his car or its battery which fed into the Kingdom Hall somehow, and there was enough power for one light on the platform above where the speaker stands and for the microphones, so at least Brendan didn’t have to hold a torch at the same time as attempting to conduct his part. Because there was no light in the rest of the Hall, except for a couple of emergency lights, he said it was hard to see who had their hands up to comment as he couldn’t see their faces.

Shortly before the meeting ended, the power came on again, and we had light and music in time for the concluding song. Fortunately, Brendan didn’t have to lead us in song (he said that, not me!)

Strange as it may seem, things such as having the power go off now and then (as long as it doesn’t happen too often), and having to walk home the last 10 minutes in the rain while dodging puddles, as the bus driver wasn’t going to stop at the bus stop near our house, is one of the things I like about Ecuador.

In western lands, we get used to everything running smoothly and we expect things to continue that way in spite of difficulties such as extreme weather events, etc, and we can get very indignant when things don’t run perfectly.

Whereas here, you tend to have to take more responsibility for yourself and what happens to you and around you. I think it’s a more down-to-earth way to live. And I like it.

Snow on Mount Cotacachi (height 16204 ft / 4939 m) behind the Kingdom Hall in Atuntaqui. But it’s not cold.  If you were that close to a snowy mountain in Tasmania, Australia, you’d certainly know about it!  (Cheers to all our friends in Tassie!)

Why Are There So Many Unfinished Houses in Ecuador?

 

One thing that you soon notice when you come to Ecuador is the amount of unfinished houses and apartments in varying stages of completion.

In the bottom right hand window, you can see a big pile of sand ready for if/when building recommences

It’s quite a difference from Australia where it’s unusual to see many half-finished buildings, and where town or planning regulations, or mortgage conditions may require that a building be completed within a certain period of time.

It’s something that you can’t help noticing here, and I’ve asked around to try to understand what’s going on.

There seem to be two main schools of thought. The first being that if houses are not finished, then you don’t have to pay property tax on them.

And the second being that Ecuadorians tend to build when they have money, and when the money runs out, the building works are postponed.

It looks like they are building an additional floor onto an older ground floor

When we first moved to Cuenca, there was an apartment building under construction a couple of blocks from our house. The outside walls were up and the roof was on. And nothing happened for months. Then one day we saw workmen there, putting up internal walls, putting in the roller doors for the garage. Then after a few weeks of work, again nothing. A few months went by and we realised that somewhere in that period of time the outside of the building had been painted. Then somewhere after that the windows went in. As far as we know the building is still empty, and that’s more than two years from when we first noticed it.

There are other partly-finished buildings we’ve watched in that 2 year period and nothing has happened at all.

This mud brick house could do with a little maintenance … Or a lot …

Now, as to the first theory on why this happens – not having to pay property tax on unfinished buildings. We talked to a brother who is building a little house on some land about 1 ½ hours out of Cuenca. He pays property tax on his land and his house is barely started. It costs him all of $6 per year.

We asked a couple who have lived in Ecuador most of their lives, speak English and have lived in the States for a few years, run a business in Ecuador and are aware of what goes on in Ecuador. They disagreed with the property tax theory and said that building according to the cash available is just how Ecuadorians do things.

Unlike western countries where credit is king and most people borrow money in order to buy or build a house, apparently most Ecuadorians do not. Credit is not such a big thing here.

An article in Cuenca High Life of April 20, 2014 said:

“A new study shows that 69% of homes in Cuenca are owned by their occupants. It is the highest rate of home ownership in Ecuador, according to the Ecuador Ministry of Economic and Social Inclusion.

“The study … also showed that … 62% of homes are owned outright with no mortgage …”

The finished version – sometimes that does happen!

If people do borrow in order to build a house or part of a house, generally the money is not in the form of a bank loan, rather, it comes from the government social security service at quite a low rate of interest. And when the money from that loan has been spent on building, people wait until they can save up or can afford to pay off another loan, and then continue building.

This is a new build near us – the cement is still wet

When we were first here, I found the amount of unfinished buildings a bit depressing and ugly. They are still somewhat ugly (a lot of buildings are made with concrete blocks, and unfinished, unpainted concrete blocks with boarded up windows are just not pretty!), but once you get used to it and understand why it works that way, it’s easier to live with. And you learn to “tune it out”.

This one appears to have been here a while.  On the wall is painted “se vende” (for sale)

Some houses are just not finished at all and no-one lives in them. You can tell by the state of the concrete and the weathering that they have sat there for quite a while. With some houses, it has probably been years and years. Others, maybe just months.

This one’s been here a while too – long enough for moss to start growing on the walls

Other houses may have more than one level, but only one level is finished and lived in. Most of the new houses being built here are 2 or 3 storeys and may be designed to have one family on one level, another on the next level, etc. It’s not uncommon to have 3 generations all living in the one house. So perhaps the bottom level is finished and is lived in, and the next level or two have the outside walls up, but for now, that’s that. Or maybe they didn’t even get that far.

Steelwork is often left sticking out of rooves – ready for the next level!

With the global economic downturn and people losing their houses, having to move in with their parents etc due to the cost of housing, the idea of actually having a paid-for house, even if it’s not as finished as it could be, makes a lot of sense.

A random cornfield to finish off with. The corn here grows pretty tall – it’s probably 8-10 feet high

We Go Without Internet for 2 Weeks …

One Saturday, about 3 weeks ago, we woke to find we had no internet. We weren’t all that concerned initially, as these things happen from time to time.

Sunday: still, no internet. Then I thought it would be a good idea to check to see if we had actually paid the account, which, as it turned out, we hadn’t. Somehow with moving and the general confusion, we thought it wasn’t due for another few weeks.

Monday, we head down to the internet office bright and early to pay the account. The cashier tells us that the internet will be re-connected within 15 minutes of payment.

So, we happily head for home, assuming the problem is all sorted. Alas, on getting back, still no internet. We’ll give it a bit longer, we say, as sometimes these things don’t happen straight away.
Tuesday, still no internet. By now we are thinking we need to go down to the internet office again, and feel we need to get the assistance of someone with better Spanish than us, so we call up the friendly brother who helped us with organising to rent our apartment here in Otavalo and off we all go to the internet people.

We explain the situation to the helpful internet lady, who prints out a work order and gives us the assurance that a technician would be there in the next day or two.

Then we go to a park in town that has free wi-fi to check whether we have any urgent emails. Nothing pressing, and the world is still turning without us, so we send off a couple of quick emails to explain our absence from the world wide web and head home.

(The photos in this blog have nothing to do with the topic, but add some colour to an otherwise black and white page!)

Siesta time by a river in Cuenca
 

Wednesday afternoon, we get a phone call (in Spanish of course) from the technician, who asks something which I cannot understand, and then says he will be at our place in the morning.

Thursday morning, and on into the afternoon – no technician.

Friday afternoon, we again head to the internet office (without our translator, but with the help of Brendan’s electronic tablet, set to “translate”) and endeavour to explain the problem.

The internet lady is helpful and offers “a thousand apologies” for the technician who said he would come but did not, sends an email to the supervisor of technicians, and again says someone should come Saturday or Monday. So, we stay home. By this time we are getting pretty fed up with being stuck at home, as previous to the whole internet debacle we had been home sick with a cold virus for 2 weeks.

Friday evening, we put our laptops in our backpacks and walk 5-10 minutes to a friend’s house, who lets us use their internet.

On Saturday, Brendan suggests seeing if our Ecuadorian landlady can talk to the internet people and see if that does the trick. Apparently she had been having problems with her internet too, and to make matters even more interesting, we realised the address on the work order was not correct. Addresses in Ecuador tend to be pretty vague at the best of times, but we thought that with an incorrect address, the technician didn’t stand a chance of finding us.

So, our landlady said she would go down and see them on Monday.

She must have known what to say or who to ask, as we finally got an answer that sounded promising.
The story is that the internet company are changing the lines to give better internet service, and that someone will come out in 5 days’ time to do so. And that we should be at home for them to come.

We weren’t sure if the 5 days would be the Friday or the Saturday, so early Friday I went to see our landlady to see if she knew anything further. She did, and that was that we now have a new landline number (which we didn’t know we had!), which she gave us. The problem was, she wrote the number down wrong, so then we had to find someone who had a landline (only 15% of homes in Ecuador have landlines) and who also had Caller Number Display, ring them from our new number, and have them tell us what our new phone number was!

Cows on the moooooooove

Naturally, the internet man didn’t come on the Friday, so Saturday Brendan stayed home while I went in field service. Just before I left to catch the bus, we got a phone call from an internet technician (in Spanish, naturally), and as far as I could work out he was asking, “did we have a problem with our internet, and was someone at home now?”, to which I said “yes” and “yes”. And then told Brendan excitedly that as far as I could work out, the internet man was coming, and it sounded like almost immediately.

Later in field service, around 10.30 am, I texted Brendan to see if the man had come and did we have internet. “No”, and “no”.

As the day wore on, we started to wonder, what had actually been said on the phone this morning, and was my Spanish really that bad?

But then around mid-afternoon, there’s a buzz on the intercom, and it’s the daughter of our landlady, who has walked the internet technician around the corner from their place to ours.

So, while letting the technician in, I excitedly give Brendan the “thumbs-up” sign, and we assume all our internet woes are at an end.

The technician goes to the modem and checks it, and tells us that it’s not the modem, it’s an outside problem, in the cables, and that someone will come on Monday to fix it and that someone needs to be home to verify that it’s working.

By now, Brendan is definitely not a happy little Vegemite, as we say in Australia, (2 weeks of no internet is wearing his patience thin) and after mutterings about “I could have told them it wasn’t the modem”, etc etc. we resign ourselves to a few more days of internet silence.

Photograph of a painting we saw in Quito

Monday, we stay home (again), and in the morning, while doing our meeting preparation, we hear a noise from Brendan’s laptop, which he checks and then says, “we’ve got internet!!” Fortunately, we had practically finished our study, as we could hardly contain our excitement.

If this dependence on internet sounds a bit pathetic, try living in another country for a while where, without internet, your distance contact with others in the same country is reduced to mobile/cell phone texts or calls (not always the best call quality), landline calls within the same state or province (our landline is not set up for interstate/intercountry calls), and as well, contact with your home country is now zero.

Things we take for granted, such as on-line banking with your bank back in your home country in order to transfer funds to Ecuador to pay the rent and buy food etc, now require a visit to a friend whose internet works. And anything that needs to be attended to back home gets left undone and you don’t even know it. Plus, many expat Witnesses here work on-line, and without decent and reliable internet, it’s going to hit them hard financially.

I also use Google Translate quite a bit, rather than a Spanish-English dictionary, to check on words or phrases I need to know, and without internet, that was not available either.

We have friends in our congregation who have been without landline and without internet for 4 or 5 weeks now, in spite of going down to the internet office numerous times in order to get the problem fixed.

We’re just grateful that our landlady (who is also a Witness) took up our case, as without her help, I think it likely we could still be without internet.

I think I’ll suggest to our internet-less friends that they borrow our landlady and let her sort out the internet people for them!!

Indigenous dress in Otavalo

We Relocate from Cuenca to Otavalo

 

Having really enjoyed our visit to the Otavalo/Atuntaqui area (in the north of Ecuador) in February of this year (see our blog of 21 February 2014) what choice had we, but to actually move there?

Well, we did actually give it a bit more thought than that, but now, here we are.

Imbabura volcano 4,630 m (15,190 ft). As seen from our new place

The first obstacle to overcome was housing. Fortunately, due to the network among Witnesses, it worked out well.

When we were up north in February, we had mentioned to a few of the brothers and sisters that we were thinking about moving there, and some said they would keep an eye out for accommodation for us. (It’s difficult searching for accommodation when you live a day’s drive away, as is the distance between Cuenca and Otavalo.)

So, at the circuit assembly in early March, a brother from the Atuntaqui congregation said to us, “Are you still interested in moving? If so, you need to speak to Frankie; he’s returning to the States in a few weeks and his apartment will become available.”

Just then, Frankie walked past, so we grabbed him and plied him with questions about the apartment, got him to draw us a floor plan and extracted from him a promise of emailing photos of the apartment etc., which he subsequently did.

It all looked promising, so we started the process of securing the rental of the apartment for around the end of April.

As the apartment is owned by a sister who was in Frankie’s congregation (one of the Spanish-speaking congregations in Otavalo), he was able to start the ball rolling for us, but as his Spanish wasn’t up to the more complicated matters (and ours isn’t, either), he put us onto another brother in his congregation who is fluent and who acted as our go-between and helped us get everything sorted out, even to obtaining the keys and arranging to meet us on the doorstep when we arrived with all our belongings.

So, having got that important matter out of the way, we now needed to work out how to get ourselves and our furniture to the other end of the country. They don’t have specialised furniture removal vans here, so it comes down to hiring a truck.

We asked around in the congregation, and got a couple of recommendations, both of whom were brothers with trucks. One of these lived locally, and we asked if he could come to our house to check whether his truck would be big enough to take our furniture. When he and his truck arrived at our house, Brendan quietly said to me, “I don’t think it’s going to be big enough”. When the brother had gone through the house and established what we wanted to take with us, he shook his head and confirmed our fears; “impossible”, he said.

So, on to investigating other options.

At the going-away party for us and another sister also moving up north (the party has yet to really begin!)

One of the brothers in the congregation used to work in catering…

We had asked a brother in Cuenca English who had moved there from Ibarra (about half an hour’s drive north of Otavalo) with his family a few months ago, how they did it. (More networking coming up … ) They had used a brother from Ibarra with a truck, and he offered to contact the brother for us and make arrangements, which we welcomed, as phone conversations in Spanish are pretty difficult for us at this point.

So, after phone calls and emails and lots of most welcome help from our local brother, that too was all arranged.

One thing he told us is that you need a Police Permit to move furniture, household goods etc., from one province of Ecuador to another. The procedure for moving from Ibarra to Cuenca is slightly different to moving from Cuenca to Ibarra – in either direction, you need to write up an inventory of your furniture, belongings etc, and take that to the Police station in order to get your permit.  If you move south from Ibarra to Cuenca, you first need to get your inventory notarised by a public notary and then take it to the police station. Not sure why, but that’s often how things are, here.

Initially we rolled our eyes about the paperwork, but it does actually make sense as a deterrent to shady characters who may just have filled up a truck with someone else’s household goods and be making off with them. Once you get out of the cities, along some of the roads there are Police checks here and there where driver’s licences and vehicle papers are checked.

So, we took the required paperwork and a helpful bi-lingual sister from the congregation to our local Police station, and because we had been told exactly what we needed, it all went off without a hitch.

The day rolled around to pack our goods and chattels onto the truck. Prior to this, we had been wrapping and boxing and trying to protect our belongings as best we could, as we weren’t sure how well everything would survive a 12-hour truck ride.

Our truck with all our worldly goods

Brendan had roped in a few strong brothers from the congregation to get everything onto the truck, and with a Danish brother directing what to put where, it all fit. (We figure if the Swedes invented flat-packing and IKEA, then having a Danish brother to organize the packing of your furniture has to be the next best thing!)

So, now that all our furniture and bedding is safely packed onto the truck, and it’s Saturday evening and we’re not leaving with the truck until early Sunday morning, where were we to sleep? Fortunately, we were able to stay overnight with a brother and sister in the congregation, and park the truck securely at their house, while Geraldo, our driver, chose to stay overnight at a relative’s house nearby.

The plan was to make an early start on Sunday morning – 4 am!! Not the time of day one usually wants to do anything other than sleep, but it would mean arriving at our destination at around 4pm, a reasonable hour. The plan changed, though, as Geraldo told us he had only had 3 or 4 hours’ sleep the previous night and he would like to start around 8 am instead of 4 am. We agreed with that, as travelling with a sleep-deprived truck driver is never a good idea!

And so began the 12 hour journey.

It’s actually quite a nice drive, just not 12 hours of it!!!

Stopping to stretch our legs

We saw some interesting things along the way, but then interesting things is what Ecuador is all about!

It’s not uncommon to see small trucks or covered utes (utilities) carrying passengers. There is always the usual amount of buses travelling along, but I guess the smaller vehicles catch the overflow passengers or those going to more obscure places.

We stopped at one service station to get fuel, and saw a small truck filled with passengers, as well as a sheep!! I tried to sneak a photo of the sheep without looking too much like a tourist, and this is what I got.

You can just see part of the sheep through the open door

Later, we parked at the side of the road to have lunch, and while we were there, two passenger buses went past, each with a sheep up on a rack on the roof! These were not hill-billy buses from the back of beyond, but quite decent buses that you’d find in western countries. How they got the sheep up there, how they stayed on and what the sheep thought of it all, we’ll never know. Unfortunately, it was too quick for me to be able to get my camera out.

So eventually, after more miles, more fuel stops, more bathroom stops and darkness falling, we finally made it around 8pm.

By this time we were all pretty exhausted, so it was nice to see our brother with the apartment keys waiting for us on the corner, and within a few minutes some brothers and sisters from the local English congregation turned up to help us empty the truck, cart our boxes and furniture upstairs (albeit somewhat dusty from the trip) and put our furniture and bed together, prior to us falling asleep amid boxes and general debris.

So, was it all worth it? Yeah, we reckon.

This is our apartment in Otavalo