Voting …

 

In the middle of a lazy Sunday afternoon, we got a phone call which galvanized us to action. We had to drop everything and go and vote!!

Today is Election Day throughout Ecuador, which we thought nothing of as we didn’t figure we had to do anything about it, but as it turns out, we did.

It would, of course, help if I start at the start.

About 18 months ago when our Residency Visas were approved, and we got our Cedulas (identification cards for Ecuador), we asked our lawyers who helped us through the visa process what the situation was as regards voting in elections.

They told us that if you are a citizen of Ecuador, legally you have to vote, and if you are a resident you can choose to register to vote. There are some reasons you may choose to be registered to vote (other than the desire to actually vote), such as if you want to open a bank account or start a business and some other things. (I’m a bit vague about this, as at the time we didn’t see the need to do any of those things so didn’t take much notice.)

Last year when the presidential election was on, it seemed that voting requirements were still the same and we were not required to do anything. But this year for the mayoral elections, change was afoot, we just didn’t know about it!

Election days are a big thing in Ecuador, and meetings are illegal. So, if you have a congregation meeting scheduled for election day, it needs to be changed to another day.

Yesterday, once our congregation meeting had finished, there was an announcement about voting the next day, alerting us to the fact that everyone who was a resident of Ecuador had to attend the polling places and cast a vote or otherwise incur a $45 fine. There was some confusion about this as it was different to what had previously been the case, and some had heard something about the elections and checked a government website to see if they were registered to vote and thought they were in the clear. And apparently people who had got their Cedulas fairly recently were automatically registered to vote, which many were not aware of. We thought we were in the clear, but apparently not.

We got the phone call from one of the brothers in the congregation around 3pm to confirm that every resident who held a Cedula needed to vote. So Brendan looked up the website to see where we were supposed to go, and off we went. Fortunately for us we didn’t have to go far. It appears that where you need to go vote will be fairly close to the address you registered when you got your Cedula. Bit of an issue if you have moved to another part of the country, though.

When we were up north last week, we met an Ecuadorian sister who had moved to another part of Ecuador from where her Cedula was registered (Guayaquil), and she was going to have to make the trip back to Guayaquil to register her vote, or incur the $45 fine. It was going to be a trip of a few hours by bus for her. Her sister married a brother in Canada and is currently living there, and she will incur the $45 fine because she is out of the country and therefore unable to vote.

A brother and sister who are now in our congregation in Cuenca have their Cedulas registered up north in Otavalo. Hmm. Could be difficult getting there on time if you were unaware of the new requirements.

From what I’ve heard, if you don’t have the card to say you have voted, it can create difficulties. For instance if you want to leave the country you may not be allowed to until you can get it all sorted out. Not so good if you are all packed up and ready to go.

We were somewhat nervous about the whole voting thing but it turned out not to be too difficult. The brother who rang Brendan told him what the procedure was, which helped.

We went to the assigned place where the voting was being held (a school), went to a lady sitting under a sign saying “Información” and showed her our Cedulas. She entered our Cedula numbers into her computer and then told me to go to line 9, and Brendan to line 8. It turned out that these lines corresponded to which part of the alphabet your name belonged, and males and females were separate. In Ecuador, when a woman gets married she doesn’t take her husband’s last name (family name), so husbands and wives would not be in the same line anyway. Brendan’s line was quick and he was done in 10 minutes, but mine was the longest line (most of the others were pretty much done by now) and it took about 30 minutes to get to the start of the line.

I handed over my Cedula to the woman overseeing the voting process, who searched through a little stapled book of tear-out cards with names printed on till she found the one which matched my Cedula (this little card subsequently becomes the official Certificate of Voting). She held onto both of these while giving me a large blank card to slot into the computer inside the classroom polling booth. The computer brought up three screens of candidates one by one, all of which I voted “null” to, (a neutral vote) then I pressed “print” and it did, then took my card and put it in the voting box. I went back to the voting lady, and she found my name on another printout of names, I signed next to mine, she signed my Certificate of Voting card and gave me it and my Cedula back.

On the way out of the school at the gates there were a few stall-holders ready and willing to laminate your new Certificate of Voting for you for the small fee of 50 cents. So ready and willing in fact, that they approach you and practically drag you to their particular stall rather than running the risk that their rivals might get to you first!

So that’s all done. Now we have an extra piece of documentation to not lose!

WE VISIT ATUNTAQUI ENGLISH CONGREGATION

 

One of the nice things about being in a foreign language congregation in a foreign land is the people you meet and the places that takes you.

Last year we had a Canadian couple, Brian and Ruth Eckhardt, stay with us in Cuenca for 2 weeks. They also visited some other parts of Ecuador and liked it so much that they came back again for 3 months, this time staying up north in the Ibarra/Otavalo area. (Ibarra is the biggest town but Otavalo is probably one of the best known towns in the area due to its large textile and craft market.)

(You can check out what the Eckhardts have been up to and more about the congregation, field service and the area in their blog: Return to Ecuador (click here)

There is a small (close to 40 publishers) English-language congregation located in the town of Atuntaqui. The congregation’s territory covers four of the towns in the vicinity – Otavalo, Cotacachi, Atuntaqui and Ibarra.

The Eckhardts had taken a furnished apartment in Cotacachi and invited us to stay for part of the same time as friends of theirs who were also visiting, Roger and Ann Hopcraft, from Canada.

Left to right:  Roger and Ann Hopcraft, Brian and Ruth Eckhardt, and Juan, a local driver

Cotacachi is a town that is marketed towards foreigners (check the internet, and you’ll see!) more so than other towns in the area (and the cost of rentals is consequently higher). The apartment block we stayed in is one of four blocks set amongst lovely landscaped gardens. There are some other apartments and houses nearby which are also marketed towards foreigners and are well-kept with lovely gardens, maintained by local workers. There are avocado and citrus trees and a vegetable garden, and the residents are free to help themselves. It’s rather nice to go wandering in the garden and come home with armfuls of ripe avocadoes.

 

Some views of the gardens and apartments within the complex

Inside the furnished apartment

 

Results of a casual stroll through the gardens

Not sure what these are (they taste okay), but when you cut them in half they look like in the photo above (with the avocadoes)

Google Translate translates this as “Please do not disturb/bother/annoy the flowers”.

Once I saw that sign, I couldn’t help myself – suddenly I did want to annoy the flowers!!

The centre and main shopping area of Cotacachi is very neat and tidy and is close to the part of town where the foreigners tend to live. There are restaurants marketed to foreigners where varying amounts of English is spoken. If you didn’t leave that small area, you could almost convince yourself that you weren’t in Ecuador at all. But once you walk further down the streets, you’re back in Ecuador again.

One of the nice old buildings in Cotacachi, near the bus stop

Another old building just near the apartment complex where we were staying

If you want to buy leather goods in Ecuador, then Cotacachi is the place to go. In the main part of town, almost every shop sells leather goods! Bags, purses, shoes, boots, jackets, coats. Otavalo is the place to go for all sorts of blankets, shawls, scarves, ponchos, bead jewellery and handcrafts. And Atuntaqui is where you go to buy knitwear. It’s kind of weird, but that’s how they do things in Ecuador.

Roger, Ann and Brendan at the Otavalo market

Me and Brendan at Otavalo

This is Atuntaqui, park on the left

One of the more up-market knitwear shops

The Kingdom Hall in Atuntaqui is right on the main road, the Pan American Highway, or “Pana”, as the locals call it, which is handy as the buses go right past it and stop a couple of blocks from the hall. There are only a few families in the congregation with cars, so buses and taxis are necessary. And taxis here are cheaper than in Cuenca (the taxis in Cuenca and up here don’t use meters – it’s all about knowing the price – a lot of trips were only $1. Whereas the minimum trip in Cuenca is $1.50 to $2).

Ruth and Brian (and others in front) after getting off the bus at Atuntaqui and walking a couple of blocks along the Pana (Pan American Highway) to the Kingdom Hall for field service

Outside the Kingdom Hall – the meetings for field service are at 8.30 am.

The Kingdom Hall here has wooden benches, which are not the most comfortable, and it pays to know which ones squeak, so you can avoid sitting there (the 7th bench from the front in the middle is extremely squeaky – as we found out!).

The 3 congregations that use the Hall are saving up to replace the wooden benches with plastic chairs, which should be much more comfortable.

When we visited the congregation there were a lot of visitors (including us), which pushed the attendance up quite considerably.

After-meeting photograph

The buses here are rather different from the Cuenca city buses. They are more colourful outside, and a lot of the buses are “blinged out” inside, with curtains on the windows with tassels, fringes, etc. And unlike the buses in Cuenca which have a machine with a slot where you drop in your money or scan your bus card as you get on, here they have a real bus conductor who takes your money. It costs 25 cents to get from one town to the next. A taxi would probably cost around $5 for the same trip.

A group of Witnesses walking to the bus stop in Cotacachi.  (The city buses in Cuenca are nowhere near as colourful as the buses here)

You can just about see the “bus bling” in the form of tassels on the window curtains. Some buses are way more “blinged up” than this

Another difference we noticed is that in Cuenca they will cram as many people as possible onto the bus, standing room only and to the point that there is no room to get anyone else onto the bus even with a shoe horn. Here, because of some issues in the past with safety etc, everyone is supposed to be seated, not standing, although they will allow some people standing. What that means at times is that if it’s a busy day for people wanting to travel, and the buses are already full, they won’t pick up additional passengers; which makes things difficult if you have a deadline and really need to get on the bus!

There are a few brothers and sisters who live half way between Cotacachi and the Pan American Highway (the town of Cotacachi is about 5-10 minutes’ drive from the Highway) who at times have problems catching a bus because of this. One sister wanted to catch the bus and said that seven buses went past and didn’t stop because they were already full to capacity. She considered whether she would have to catch a bus back into Cotacachi to the bus terminal, and then catch another bus which would drive past where she had unsuccessfully tried to catch the first bus, and from there eventually get to her destination.

We had the field service group there last Saturday, and afterwards there were quite a few of us waiting to catch the bus to go to Otavalo (a big market day, so lots of people wanting to go there). After a couple of buses had gone by without stopping, those of us who lived or were staying in Cotacachi decided to cross the road to catch a bus back into Cotacachi and do some territory there, as we didn’t know how long it would take to catch a bus.

This is our field service group waiting for a bus

The clothing of the indigenous people in the Otavalo area is quite different from that in Cuenca. And how they tie their babies on their backs is different too! (Who knew there would be so many ways to carry a baby on your back?) In Cuenca, the babies and small children lie diagonally across the mother’s back while encased in a coloured rectangular shawl that is tied over the mother’s shoulder and under the opposite arm.

Up here, the babies are upright, and are wrapped in what appears to be a large piece of white fabric which criss-crosses the front of the mother and is tied in the back under the child’s bottom.

A local family going about their business. Generally the women stick to the traditional dress more than the men do, although here the man wears the traditional plaited pony-tail

A shop selling traditional indigenous clothing for the Otavalo area (and yes, Ecuador is not immune to graffiti artists, although not very common)

Traditional Otavalan clothing – note the baby on the mother’s back

Part of the costume that the indigenous women wear is a pretty embroidered blouse. I asked the price at one shop that made and sold them. We were told the cost was from $25 to $100. That would, of course, be the starting price from which one would then begin to bargain.

You can buy all sorts of knitted items up here, including crazy hats. Even the adults wear them at times. We went with Roger and Ann to the Otavalo market, and he wanted to find a knitted hat to wear while shovelling snow, to scare the local children. This is the result!

Roger modelling his child-scaring hat

This was the first time we had done a “real” bus trip from Cuenca to Quito and beyond. The other times we have travelled up to Quito were by aeroplane (about 45 minutes) and by a smaller hired bus, for the Special Assembly Day in November.

We asked around about which bus line to take, and found there is one that goes almost non-stop to Quito, and then continues to the Otavalo area, which means you don’t have the hassle of changing buses at Quito in the middle of the night when you are half-asleep.

We booked a few days in advance and got to choose which seats we wanted (we wanted seats with extra leg room to accommodate Brendan’s long legs) and were right up the front. Which was okay, except for in the middle of the night when I needed to use the bathroom which was right down the back, and they had turned off the internal lights on the bus so I had to feel my way along the aisle, while bumping into someone asleep at the back end of the bus (in front of the bathroom door), to find the bathroom locked, feel my way back to the front of the bus and press the bell for the conductor to come out and unlock the bathroom and lock it back up after me. How not-sensible is that? I couldn’t figure out how it makes any sense to lock the bathroom door on a 12 hour bus trip – it’s not as though anyone is going to steal the toilet paper, or use up the soap, or even turn on the water tap – as there are none of the above!!! It’s a strictly “urine only” toilet. At least it was clean, but then I suppose if hardly anyone uses it, it should be!

On the bus trip back to Cuenca we first had a game of musical chairs. The seats were allotted again, and we got on at the second stop, only to find someone else in our seats. We weren’t quite sure what to do (and not having much Spanish is not an incentive to start making a fuss), and figured maybe it doesn’t matter after all, and that maybe the allotted seat numbers were just a suggestion (just as traffic signs and road markings in Ecuador appear to be a suggestion only). So, we sat in someone else’s seat. Then more people got on, and it appeared someone was in their seat, so people got up and moved to other seats, and more people came and wanted people to vacate their seats, and soon the people whose seats we were in turned up, so we moved and then had to oust the people who were in our seats.

It was done all very peacefully, but I couldn’t help wondering why people just didn’t sit where they were supposed to in the first place!!!

This is the main bus terminal at Ibarra, after we arrived for field service.  It’s a hub of activity with buses coming and going all the time.

In the middle of Ibarra

Meeting at the park, to work out how lost we are!

More of the middle of Ibarra

In Cotacachi, Brendan and I walked to the outskirts of town (it didn’t take long!) to a little storefront which sells leather Bible covers, witnessing bags, etc (see below)

In a huddle in Ibarra, during field service

One of the main streets in Otavalo – it actually has street trees!! (Not at all common in Ecuador)

More of Otavalo

Atuntaqui – a rather pretty shopfront and dwelling above, in the main shopping area

Me, Brian and Brendan, in Atuntaqui

Panoramic view over Cotacachi

View of Mount Imbabura – taken in Cotacachi

One of the quiet streets of Atuntaqui – you can almost always see the mountains in the background in this area

Ruth walking along a street in Atuntaqui, as we go to visit a brother and sister in the congregation

Back in Cotacachi. Again, more mountains.  You’d think we were in the Andes!!

In field service in Atuntaqui, with a mud brick/adobe wall behind.

When we were first planning to go up north and stay with Brian and Ruth, we figured we might be gone a week or so, but as they had said we could stay longer if we wanted, and we found we were having such a nice time, we did stay longer – another week.

It was really nice to hang out with our friends, to make new friends, and to get to know different ones within the local congregation.

We enjoyed being in the country (a bit of an ongoing theme, here), and seeing people walking their cows along the street, and parking their donkeys outside people’s houses.

This could be handy if you need to borrow a burro!!

We have our circuit assembly in Cuenca in a few weeks, and we look forward to meeting up with the new friends we met while visiting the Atuntaqui English congregation.