How to Wear the Otavalo Typical Clothing (for Women)

 
Throughout Ecuador, there are particular styles of indigenous clothing that are unique to the different areas.

The style we’ve become most familiar with is that of the Otavalo area, because that’s where we live and probably half of the women here are indigenous and therefore wear the indigenous clothing. Also, because Edith, our Spanish teacher, dressed me up in some of her typical clothing.

The different styles of indigenous clothing in Ecuador suit the various climates, and as the weather here is fairly temperate, the clothing is fairly lightweight.

The typical clothing for indigenous women in the Otavalo area is a lightweight white embroidered blouse with frilly sleeves, sometimes with a plain square shawl (fachalina in Quichua) worn either around the shoulders or over one shoulder and under the other arm.

Then a long 2-layered “skirt” or anacos (not like any skirt known to the western world) made up of separate 2 pieces of fabric, with the darker layer on the outside and the lighter-coloured one on the inside, with the 2 fabric layers being held in place by two wide woven belts (one is worn directly underneath the other, and therefore is unseen) chosen to match the colour scheme of the embroidery on the blouse.

Shoes (alpargate) for everyday wear are a simple flat open-back shoe of either black or navy blue, or for fiestas, the same flat shoe but in coloured patterns.  (I’ve got my party shoes on in the photo above)

Typical jewellery consists of a multi-strand necklace (walka) of gold-coloured glass beads or occasionally strands of gold, and bracelets of small red beads wrapped around and around each wrist.

Their long hair is worn in a pony-tail which is bound around and around with a lovely brightly coloured woven ribbon.

How to get dressed

 

If you are not used to wearing the indigenous Otavalo clothing, you’ll definitely need someone who knows what they are doing to help you, although those who wear it all the time do it without help.

The blouse is straightforward, but it’s the “skirt” that’s tricky as it needs to be wrapped and folded a certain way and then held in place by the woven belts (chumbi).

Edith wrapped the lighter-coloured under-layer of fabric around my waist a few inches above the waistline, making a large forward-facing pleat at one side, and meeting the two edges together at the other side and instructing me to hold onto each side. Then the dark outer layer went on – same process but starting at the opposite side, resulting in the pleated under-layer peeping out from the gap where the darker outer layer meets. (Kinda confusing unless you see it done)

Now, how to make it all stay put, as there are no seams, buttons,  zips or safety pins. Normally, two chumbis are used, one over the other. The inside chumbi is called mama chumbi and is quite firm, and the outer decorative one is called gua gua chumbi, or baby chumbi). If this is all done correctly, the anacos will stay in position all day, but for the purposes of this experiment, we just used one chumbi.

I’m still holding onto each side of the anacos and Edith comes up to me with the chumbi, saying, “breathe in” and starts to wrap it around me, starting at the waistline and working up. I breathe in unsuspectingly, and that’s the last decent breath I take until I can remove the chumbi. It’s sooooooo tight and not very comfortable. Probably like corsets used to be, in the past.

But that’s what you have to do to get the anacos to stay put. I have a new respect for those who wear them!

I enjoyed trying on a different style of clothing, and seeing how it looked on me, and being able to see how it all goes together, but it’s not a style I plan on adopting in a hurry. I enjoy breathing!!
 

Me and Edith – clothes swap complete!

We Learn the Difference Between a “Gallina” and a “Pollo”

 

In Ecuador, gallina and pollo are both Spanish words for “chicken”.

If I remember correctly, it was explained to us that a gallina is a living chicken and a pollo is a dead chicken, for eating. But we were also told that a pollito is a little chicken which is still very much alive. Work that out!!

We’ve found that buying chicken to cook here in Ecuador is not always straightforward. You can buy it in supermarkets already in a plastic bag probably processed in a factory somewhere, and we tried it but weren’t all that impressed.

You can buy chickens from shops where they sit at room temperature and you can sometimes buy them in shops where they sit in a refrigerator.

We have normally opted for the refrigerated version until we worked out that often those chickens have been pre-frozen and are now thawing in the refrigerator. As we like to cut up and freeze our own chicken, pre-frozen, pre-thawed chicken is not an option due to food safety concerns.

So we decided to buy fresh, unrefrigerated chicken from the lady from whom we normally buy the refrigerated, but pre-frozen chickens, as we knew that the fresh chickens were normally delivered shortly before we usually arrived.

I asked for a couple of fresh pollos and she said that those were not pollos but gallinas. I asked what was the difference, and from what we could understand she said that the gallinas were tougher, raised in the country and had a stronger flavour, and that we probably really wanted pollos.

So I bought the pollos, but later had opportunity to ask a local person (who spoke English) about chickens, and the difference between pollos and gallinas and how they are processed, etc. She didn’t know of any difference but thought that the lady at the shop probably preferred to sell pre-frozen ones as they would weigh more due to having more water in them and therefore she would get a better price for them.

So today I went to the chicken lady and asked for 2 gallinas. She checked that I wanted gallinas and not pollos, then chose 2 from the plastic bin they’d arrived in that morning, and then proceeded to put them into a plastic bag for me.

Usually when I buy pollos from her, she takes off the head and the feet without asking (I’ve trained her well!), and weighs them on the scales, but this time I got the whole bird at a set price, she didn’t remove the offending body parts and I got a free liver or kidney (I tried not to look!) thrown in.

The gallinas did look a little different from the pollos, scrawny rather than plump, but I figured I’d check them out properly when I got home.

I had to psyche myself up to dissect them as they still had their heads and feet and probably their intestines (big yuk!) still inside, and normally those are gone by the time I get them.

I surprised myself by being able to cut off the heads, necks and feet without batting an eyelid. I was pretty pleased with myself and thought, maybe this proves I’m becoming Ecuadorian!

The wings, drums, etc, also were not a problem. Until I turned the chicken over to cut off the breast and realised that along with the usual array of intestines, there were unformed eggs inside!!!! Aaaarrrgghhh!

Apparently this is a delicacy in Ecuador, but I’m afraid It’s not one that Brendan and I appreciate.

Maybe that’s the real difference between a pollo and a gallina!

I think I’ll stick to pollos in future!

.

How to Find an Interested Person …

 

Brendan and I were recently given the contact details of an Ecuadorian man who speaks English who had been contacted through phone witnessing, and wanted to learn more about the Bible.

We phoned to make contact with him and found that he has a proper street address in a town about an hour or more away where he lives most days of the week, but on Saturdays he is in Otavalo, nice and close to us. But the address was rather vague – opposite the estadio or stadium, near an old white adobe house, but he assured us that if we asked the neighbours they would point out which house was his.

A week or two ago we checked out what we understood to be the stadium in Otavalo, but couldn’t find any houses – just a playground and some businesses. We eventually realised that what we thought was the stadium is referred to in Ecuador as a coliseo. We found out that a coliseo is a covered sports venue whereas an estadio is an open air venue. (Kind of important to know what we were actually looking for!)

So then Brendan looked on Google Maps and found that there is an open air stadium not far out of Otavalo as you head north at a place called Carabuela which we could easily get to by bus.

On Saturday morning before field service, I phoned the man we were trying to find and confirmed that it was the stadium at Carabuela that we were looking for, so we arranged to meet him around 3pm.

We caught the bus just near our house and in no time were at the stadium at Carabuela. “That was easy”, we thought. Little did we know!

The stadium is large, new and in good repair but it’s really in the middle of nowhere, on a dirt road, with not many houses or people around.

First, we had to find an old white adobe house. Not immediately obvious, so we asked some people at one house and no, they hadn’t heard of the man we were looking for.

There were people hoeing corn in a nearby field, so we approached them. One lady came over and spent quite some time reading and re-reading the directions I had written down and trying to work it all out and said she didn’t know him, and there was no old white house and not many houses in the area at all.

Just then some more people walked past, so she hailed them and brought them into the conversation. It was all quite friendly and everyone was helpful, and in the end after much discussion, the conclusion was that this wasn’t the stadium we wanted after all. Somewhere else on the directions it mentioned the name of a community, and it was thought that maybe that was where the stadium was. They said that there is an old stadium at Carabuela, whereas the one we were at was the new one, and they thought it was the old one that we wanted. So they pointed roughly where to go, and gave us more directions (only some of which we understood), and off we went.

We figured we would just ask anyone we could find, and hopefully in the end we would find the stadium and the white adobe house and the man we were looking for.

We spoke to various people, some of whom were also hoeing corn or working outside, and they all pointed us roughly the same way, or showed us a shortcut, so we figured we were on the right track.

Brendan and I walked along this shortcut between cornfields

After around half an hour of walking, we came upon more houses and it appeared we were coming into the town of Carabuela. We saw a grassy playing field with a few people sitting around it, some houses nearby and an old adobe building. We thought, if an estadio is an open air playing field, maybe that’s it? So we asked if anyone knew the man we were after, but no. So we walked on.

The directions various people had given us indicated that we had to go downhill and maybe turn left, etc etc, so we just kept on going downhill, asking people along the way.

We found this couple couple hoeing their corn (with help from their chickens) and also asked them

One man was pasturing 3 or 4 cows and a pig by the side of the road, so we asked him if he knew of the man we were looking for or of the old stadium at Carabuela, or if he knew where that particular community was situated. He said that the community we were after was back towards Otavalo – not what we wanted to hear!

We did have the phone number of the man we were looking for, but as we had no idea where we were, no idea where he was and no street names were marked anywhere, we didn’t figure that would help.

By this stage, Brendan had got out his phone to look at the maps program to see if we could work anything out. He found another stadium further along in the direction we were going, so we just kept walking.

In spite of so far not finding what we were after, we found the walk interesting as we hadn’t been in this area before, and it was nice and quiet with hardly any cars, the roads were dirt or cobblestone, and there were occasional cows, pigs, chickens, etc., and lovely views of the countryside. We’d seen the area from buses as we drove along the Pan American Highway, but hadn’t actually been there.

So far we had been walking downhill, away from the Pan American Highway, but as we went in pursuit of our third stadium the road started going uphill. By this stage, we’d probably been at it for an hour or so and it was starting to be not so much fun.

Somewhere along the way, we came across a couple of Quichua men also walking along the road. We greeted them, and asked the usual questions, but the younger man said nothing, and the older man spoke in a mix of Quichua, Spanish, and a little too much alcohol. So that was no help.

After walking (staggering, by now) to the top of a hill, we found a few more houses, another playing field, a little church, an old adobe building, and a little shop at which I asked the usual questions. The young man said, yes, that’s an old adobe building, yes, that’s an estadio, and no, he didn’t know the man we were looking for.

We got to enjoy some lovely scenery along the way

We hoped we were finally in the right place, so asked at a few shops and houses, but nobody knew who we were looking for. At one shop, the lady said a man in the area had a very similar name, and was it he we were looking for? She also indicated that the community we were looking for was still further on.

By this stage we were definitely running out of steam, and although Brendan’s trusty map program indicated yet another stadium 500 meters in the direction the lady had indicated, we’d had enough for one day.

We’d noticed a local bus service running up and down the road all the time we’d been slogging it out on foot, and as we were currently next to a bus stop, we decided that was as good a place as any to call it quits.

While we sat on a low wall waiting for a bus, our new Quichua friend wandered over and “chatted” to us in his peculiar mix of languages. I think he asked us why we were looking for this particular man, and I explained about teaching the Bible, and gave him a tract in Quichua.

Fortunately for us and our lack of understanding of his particular idiom, the bus came then came and took us away.

So, we will need to make another phone call to the interested man and check that we have his name correct or whether, in fact, he is the man the lady in the shop knew of, and also to check whether we need to find a fourth stadium with a fourth white adobe house next to it.

But at least we know next time we can let the trusty bus service do all the uphill work for us!

The view from the bus stop – not such a bad way to fill in some time!

Almuerzo

 

Before we came to Ecuador we had heard about the “almuerzo” or lunch time meal for a couple of dollars that is available throughout Ecuador.

As we were away from home at lunch time yesterday we decided to take in an almuerzo at a nice place we have been to before.

The almuerzo is a set lunch, meaning you get what is on offer that day.  Some places will have a menu outside showing what is on offer, while with other places you just go in, sit down and ask for “dos (2) almuerzos” and take your chances with what they’ve got.  Or you could check to make sure it’s nothing weird, like chicken foot soup, or guatita (intestines), etc.  (Yes, they really do eat those things here!)

Generally almuerzos are only available Monday through Friday and are a quick, convenient lunch.  The food comes quickly as it’s all prepared in bulk and is ready to go, so no need for a long wait while everything is individually prepared.

Where we went yesterday is one of the better places. It’s one of the more expensive ones as it costs $3 each! We had a choice of 2 main dishes. At the cheaper places you get lots of rice, not much flavour and not much variety, and it does get rather boring.

Generally you can get an almuerzo for between $2 or $3 (sometimes a little more) and you will get fruit juice, a bowl of soup and a main course which always contains rice, with the variations usually being chicken or beef, possibly some potato (they love carbohydrates here), maybe lentils, a little salad or some vegetables. 

You normally each get a small bowl of popcorn to put into your soup – at first we thought it rather strange, but now we have become properly Ecuadorian and when we have soup at home we make popcorn to eat with the soup.

Every restaurant also has its own version of Aji sauce, a hot sauce that you can put on your rice, meat, or what ever takes your fancy. We have seen some put it in their soup.

If you pay closer to the $3 mark you likely will get a little dessert also, which is a nice way to end the meal. The almuerzo we had yesterday had 4 courses – we also got an entree before the soup.

This is what was on offer yesterday at Bambuza in the town of Ibarra

Here we have maracuya or passionfruit juice drink, a bowl of noodle, beef and potato soup (fideos con carne), and at the front is maduros con queso which as far as we can work out is a piece of fried plantain (or banana?) with a little fresh cheese inside – rather nice, actually

We chose to have Pechuga al la Plancha (chicken breast).  Sometimes the beef options can be a little tough, so we generally avoid them.  Just enough rice (sometimes you get far too much rice) and a little potato to its left - just in case we didn’t get enough carbohydrates after eating the giant pieces of potato in the soup!

… and a little postre (dessert) to finish off with.  A strawberry quartered with a little cream

Where we sat we had a good view of the kitchen which looked clean and we were impressed to see that the kitchen staff all wore hair nets.  And the waiter wore a bow tie!

Normally Ecuadorians only have a light meal in the evening, as after eating an almuerzo, you are definitely not hungry!  You could easily divide the meal between 2 people and both be satisfied.

While we were there a couple of people came in with lunch containers and got the staff to put their lunches in the containers – not a bad take away!

Outside the restaurant was a man who was there to encourage diners to enter and enjoy the meal.  We had earlier been to a Bible study so were dressed in our witnessing clothes and he asked if we were “Testigos de Jehova” or Jehovah’s Witnesses.  He said he was studying the Bible with Jehovah’s Witnesses and asked if we had the current magazines.  He was disappointed when we said we only had them in English! 

Chicken, anyone?

A Trip to Manta …

 

A few weeks ago we received an email from friends who live in Melbourne, Australia, to say that they were on a cruise ship which was going to dock in Manta, Ecuador in a week or so. And would we be able to come and meet them.

Well, never having been to Manta before and not being quite sure how to get there, we figured we needed to give it some thought.

Later that day, we happened to meet up with a brother and sister from our congregation, and mentioned it to them. We said that as we had never been to Manta, and weren’t likely to go unless we had a good reason, we thought this was as good a reason as any to go there (it’s hot – equator hot!). And did they want to come, too.

After a couple of minutes’ thought, they agreed for much the same reasons. They’ve been in Ecuador for around a year, and haven’t seen much of the country either. So we decided we’d work out between us what options there were on how to get there and where to stay.

Map of Ecuador with Otavalo and Manta circled in yellow

It would have been interesting to travel by bus during the day and that way see more of the country. So far, we’ve mainly stuck to the mountains, and not really seen much of the country to the east or west of the Andes. One of the issues of not having a car is that travel takes more planning than just throwing a suitcase into the car and driving off. In Ecuador, you can always get somewhere by bus, but it may take a few buses, and you may have to wait a while between buses, depending on where you are going.

So we decided that the less interesting, but sensible and safe, option was to take an overnight bus.

Our plan was to catch the bus on the Wednesday evening around 7.30pm and arrive in Manta 10-11 hours later on Thursday morning, stay a couple of days and catch a bus back home on the Saturday evening.

We had an uneventful bus trip (that’s how we like ‘em!) arriving at the Flota Imbabura terminal (the bus line we took) in Manta between 6 and 6.30am, to be greeted by a welcoming committee of over-enthusiastic taxi drivers who kept asking each of us to agree to take their particular taxi to wherever we were going. Not a good question for people who have been on a bus for 10-11 hours and are half asleep and don’t know if they are coming or going or where their luggage has got to.

We did take a taxi and were charged what seems to be the usual “ignorant tourist surcharge” of double what the fare should have been, (we paid $3 instead of $1.50!).

Our hotel wasn’t far away, and we were able to leave our bags there until we could check in to our rooms later.

Our hotel in Manta with (my) Brendan and Susan and Brendan

We had breakfast at a café and then decided to find somewhere cool and shady to hang out until we could check into the hotel.

Why not go to the beach?!

Deck chairs at the beach at Manta

You can hire beach chairs with umbrellas for shade for a dollar or two each, so we decided that was a good way to occupy the morning. It seemed to me a very “British” thing to do, although Brendan and Susan who came with us and are British, had never done it!

Staying cool – except for the sunburned toes!

We were glad for the shade, and there was a good breeze, which was nice as it was pretty hot!

When I first got off the bus it was warm, but I thought, “this isn’t too bad – it’s not too hot”, and then I realised that it was only 6 o’clock in the morning, and the sun had barely risen!

One of the vendors selling at the beach

While we sat in the shade, various people came by and tried to interest us in buying what they had for sale. A couple of people had ornaments made of tagua, which is also known as vegetable ivory. The ornaments were a good price and pretty cute, so we bought a couple.

Our tagua ornaments.  The blue footed booby cost US$6  and the turtle US$4

This is where the tagua nuts come from

A useful place to go to in Ecuador is the local tourist information office, or ITur. The office in Manta is good because it has air conditioning! And they told us of interesting places to go and how much we should pay for taxi fares. Taxi meters are not always used in Ecuador, so if you are new to the area and don’t know how much you should pay, you can easily end up paying too much.

For instance, the lady in the ITur office told us that we could take a taxi to a nearby town called Monte Cristi where Panama hats are made (the hats actually originate in Ecuador, not Panama), about half an hour inland from Manta, and that the driver would wait for us while we spent an hour there, and then take us back to Manta again, all for $20. So we did that a couple of days later. We actually didn’t see any hat-making as we were taken past the town to a tourist attraction with souvenir shops, a restored steam train and a museum. But no hats.

View over the town of Monte Christi

Looks like Brendan got himself a bird!

The day after we arrived in Manta we went down to the dock to meet Leon and Gina, our friends from Aus who had come in on the cruise ship.

Leon & Gina.  It was rather windy on the beach

The cruise ship.  2 or 3 cruise ships dock in Manta every week

Manta proclaims itself to be the Tuna Capital – if they are all the size of this one, it very well could be!

We spent the morning exploring some of Manta (not too much, as it was hot!), and went to a local market, where Leon and Gina bought locally made Panama hats.

Hat making in action

A photo from the museum at Monte Christi

At the market we saw a man selling silver jewellery and ornaments, and the surprising thing was that we recognized him from the market in Otavalo where we had previously bought a couple of things from him. It seems that often people who sell at markets will travel quite a distance to go to other markets.

We also met a man who was originally from the United States and had lived in South America for around 20 years. He said he had a friend with an ice cream shop about 5-10 minutes’ walk away where we could get really nice iced coffee. We decided that was just what we needed and so followed him. After we had followed him up hill for a lot more than 5-10 minutes, we decided he’d lived in South America too long and had picked up the local sense of time!

We finally came to his friend’s shop. He was German, and had also lived in Ecuador for quite a few years. The iced coffee was good and we were in the shade with a nice breeze, so we were happy.

Drinking iced coffees while chatting with the owner (sitting on the right)

We found the style of some of the houses here rather different from what we’ve been used to in the Andes.  These are some of the more interesting older houses.

Some come with built-in air conditioning! There are gaps between the bamboo.

In the evenings we ate at a restaurant next to the beach not far from where we spent our first morning in Manta – there was a good breeze and the food was decent, especially if you like seafood.

Sunset just outside the restaurant, on our last evening in Manta

Saturday evening we were to return home, so we stayed in the hotel (with air conditioning!) until the last possible moment before checkout and then went in search of lunch and shade.

We spent a lot of the afternoon at a shady park watching the iguanas and dozing.  At least Brendan and I did, while the “other” Brendan and Susan went exploring.  They enjoyed the heat more than I did.

A well-disguised iguana climbing a tree in a leisurely fashion

Saturday evening we boarded the bus to take us back home.

After we had travelled half an hour or so, the bus stopped and a policeman came onto the bus and said that we were all to get off and bring with us what possessions we had on us. Outside the bus the men and women were separated, and we were patted down (men by policemen and women by policewomen) and they checked our handbags and what we had with us. Then we were free to get back on the bus and go on our way. It seems they were checking for weapons and other unacceptable things.

When we were first in Ecuador we were rather wary of travelling by bus as we had heard stories about people being robbed etc, and it can still happen if, for instance, you fall asleep with an expensive camera sitting on your lap (that happened to someone we know). So we always make sure that if we have anything valuable it is well out of sight and that we take a safe bus line.

Shortly after that, the bus stopped again and the Police came on board. The problem this time was one of the passengers who had had a bit too much to drink before getting on the bus, had been verbally abusive to the bus conductor ever since we left Manta, and had been loudly talking non-stop to the air or anyone nearby. He and his son were sitting directly in front of Brendan and Susan and so they copped a noseful of the alcohol fumes.

We think the bus conductor must have phoned ahead to the Police as they were waiting for us when the bus pulled over just before the town of Chote.

The Police asked him and his son to get off the bus and they had a conversation with them outside for about 5-10 minutes, during which it appears he promised to behave himself and they got back on the bus with not a peep out of him for the rest of the trip.

The rest of the trip was uneventful, with us arriving in Otavalo around 5 or 6 in the morning and then falling into bed for some proper sleep!

Greetings from Ecuador!

Studying the Bible in Ecuador - even in English

 

On Wednesdays we have a Bible study with an Ecuadorian man named Jaime.

As usual, we arrived at his shop today, and found him talking in the doorway with a young man whom he introduced as his friend, Roberto.

We went inside the shop for the study and Roberto came too and sat with us.

It turns out that although he was introduced as Jaime’s “friend”, they had only met the day before when a friend of Jaime’s asked if he could pick up Roberto from the airport in Quito. (Roberto was born in Ecuador, has lived in Spain since he was 15, and is visiting Ecuador for a month.)

Jaime speaks pretty good English, and he said Roberto speaks and understands some English. We’ve been studying the Good News brochure in English with Jaime, assisted by the Spanish Good News brochure and Bible.

At the start of the study, I handed the Spanish Bible and brochure to Roberto so he could follow along as we read and discussed the information in English. We were discussing Chapter 6, about God’s Kingdom.

Normally after we read the scriptures in English, Jaime also reads them in Spanish to make sure he understands fully, so today after we had read the paragraphs from the brochure and the scriptural verses, Brendan asked Roberto to read them aloud in Spanish, which he happily did.

We’re not sure what his background is or his beliefs, but he seemed somewhat familiar with the Bible and to believe in it, as he was able to find the scriptures without too much help, and at one point when he had quickly read the paragraph from the brochure to himself, he went ahead and looked up the scripture mentioned in the paragraph, while Jaime was still reading the paragraph aloud in English.

We were struck by how he just joined in and read along and looked up the scriptures, and at times made comments on some things he had read. A couple of times he asked questions (in Spanish) about what we had just read, which Jaime translated into English for us, and then we read further scriptures in English and Spanish and we could see he understood.

Somewhere during the study, Jaime must have felt that Roberto would benefit from some background information on what we were studying, so he broke into Spanish and explained some of what he’d learnt.

At the end of the study, Roberto said he had a question, and asked what happened to unborn babies who had died. Jaime translated this for us, and Brendan suggested that he explain it to Roberto, as in the last month or two we had just studied what hope there is for those who have died.

It was hard to pick up most of the explanation, as understanding Español muy rapido (very fast Spanish) is not our speciality, so Jaime gave us the gist of it, and he’d understood it well. We were happy that he had an opportunity to explain it to his friend.

I asked Jaime if it would be okay to give his Spanish copy of the Good News brochure to Roberto (after promising to bring him another copy next time), and pointed out that there was a section discussing what happens after death. Roberto has his own Bible, so we encouraged him to read the information and to look up the scriptures.

We hope that this could be the planting of seeds of Truth for Roberto.

Another thing that is rather different in Ecuador from countries such as Australia is that many Bible students have their study while at work. At times we have passed a shop or a business and find the owner of the shop sitting down to have a Bible study. (Two of our three studies are conducted in a shop.) Sometimes the student will close up the shop for the duration of the study, but more often the study continues around the customers.

We have a study in English with a lady who runs an appliance shop. A few customers come in from time to time, and we can tell she would rather be going on with her study than having to go and help them spend money, which we find rather amusing.

We’d just been discussing the chapter with her about the family (also in the Good News brochure), and it was very encouraging to hear her comment that what the Bible said about families and its moral values was “very important”, and that she hadn’t been taught anything like that in the Catholic church.

The divorce rate in Ecuador is as high or higher than in Western countries, and she felt that if people read and did what the Bible said, then it would definitely help families to be happy and stay together.

Another man we started to study the Bible with was a bank guard named Marcelo.

A brother and sister who live at the other end of our territory had spoken with him while at the bank in their town and found that he spoke some English, and was interested in studying the Bible. Bank guards here are often rotated as to their place of work, so are not in the same place or town for long, and it can be hard to find them again.

It turned out that he lives in the same town as us, so the brother who first met him arranged for Brendan to call on him and try to start a study. We arranged to meet him outside the bank at the end of his shift. We waited … and waited … but he didn’t come.

So we contacted him by phone and made a similar arrangement. Again, same lack of result. In the meantime, another sister in our congregation said that she had also met Marcelo and was trying to find him again as he wanted to study, and another couple had also spoken to him about the Bible.

The third time we waited we had success, and went with him back to his house and had the first study and made arrangements to continue. It was another couple of weeks before we were able to have another study, as his work hours varied, and we couldn’t contact him by phone so we waited outside his house for an hour or more a few different times with no result.

Eventually we were able to have a second study, and sometime during it we all realised that with his not-so-good English and our not-so-good Spanish it was not the best way for him to learn about the Bible, so we asked him if he would prefer to study with someone who spoke Spanish. He quickly agreed, so on the way back to our house we stopped in at the apartment of a brother from the U.S. who speaks Spanish and asked him if he would like to study the Bible with Marcelo. He said he would, so we passed the study on to him.

The preaching work is definitely a team effort, and we were glad that between all of us we were able to eventually track Marcelo down, and find someone who could study the Bible with him in a language that would be best for him.

It’s interesting here in Ecuador that there isn’t the prejudice against the Bible or being seen to read or discuss it that there is in many other countries. And that a friendship of one day’s standing is sufficient to have someone join in on a Bible study.

We are constantly amazed at what people are prepared to do here, without batting an eyelid, to study the Bible. These are things that would rarely, if ever, happen in Australia, and from what we are told, in the US as well. Studying in a business environment, in shops, having friends sit in on studies, etc.

It’s a wonderful feeling and we would recommend to anyone that if they have the circumstances to serve where the need is greater, even for a short time, they will never regret it. Every day is an adventure for us.

Pan Pipes, Zampoñas & Textiles

 

A friend in Australia asked us to send him a set of pan pipes, and seeing as we live in the land of pan pipes, we figured it was as good as done.

There are a few shops here in Otavalo that sell musical instruments including pipes and flutes, but we were told of a place in a little town called Peguche (which is about 10 minutes drive from here and has a nearby waterfall) where they make and sell pipes, so we thought that would be more fun and more authentic.

We took the bus to Peguche and got out at the main plaza. Just as we jumped off the bus, who should pull up in their car but a couple from our congregation who had come to Peguche to visit a local weaving workshop. So we decided to join forces and we would check out the textiles with them, and they would come to the pipe place with us.

Just across from the plaza in Peguche is the weaving workshop of a man named Jose Cotacachi (just like the town of the same name not far from here).

He has a loom which he works by hand, and makes amazing wall hangings.

 

He doesn’t consult a pattern or any instructions; he just seems to know what he is doing. He does different colour schemes with the same design, and he already had a completed version of what he was working on displayed on the wall for sale.

After checking out his workshop, we walked down to the pipe workshop. The couple we were with had been there before, so we followed them.

This is the front of the workshop.  The sign translates to :   “Welcome. Workshop of Andean instruments. Nanda Mañachi. Exhibition with traditional music. Wholesale and retail.”

We walked down a driveway to one side of the workshop and into the back area where all the action was happening.

The pipes are made from bamboo, and we didn’t find out why these were lying on the ground, but they looked like they may have been from old pipes pulled apart.

We could hear music, and saw a young man playing a rather unusual-looking instrument, which he said was a harp. Not like any harp I’ve ever seen!

 

A woman there welcomed us and said she would demonstrate the various instruments for us. She asked if we spoke Spanish and we said “un pocotito”, which is even smaller than “un poco“ or “un pocito”!!

But it was fairly self-explanatory, and we got the general idea.

Displayed on the wall were pipes from various South American countries and areas of Ecuador.

The brightly coloured instruments in the left hand corner and hanging up near the bottom make a sound like rain falling

 

Here the lady is first demonstrating one of the instruments that sounds like rain falling, and the next instrument she said was for communication, like a telephone!  Although I suspect that most people nowadays use their mobile phones!

 

We found out that the double pipes played in the video above are not actually called pan pipes but are called “zampoña”. The pipes set in a single row are pan pipes.

There were a variety of pipes and instruments for sale.

 

This rather weird-looking creature/instrument is a reproduction of a pre-Columbian instrument used especially for funerals. We decided to buy one. We found out it is made of ceramic when the lady dropped one as she was putting it into a bag for us!

 

This is a demonstration of how to play it.

After a fun visit, and having bought the above-mentioned weird instrument and  pipes for our friend in Aus, we walked back to our starting point near the plaza.

There was another textile shop which we had walked past on the way to the pipe workshop, and this time we went in. I think this may be the main outlet for the weaver Jose Cotacachi, as there were many more woven wall hangings of all colours and designs, and all sorts of other textiles for sale.

If you like textiles of all sorts, this is the place to come! And bring lots of cash!

One wall hanging caught my eye, (actually, just about everything caught my eye!) so we brought it home with us and it now decorates one of our walls.

It’s all woven on the loom, except for the ponytails of the women which are attached as a 3-D detail. It’s just like how the indigenous women in Otavalo do their hair – a multi-coloured ribbon wrapped round and round their ponytail. It’s called a “wonga” in Quichua, although I’m not sure of the correct spelling.

After that, we went for a drive to a nearby lookout with views over Otavalo and surrounding areas.

This is overlooking Otavalo.  We live the other side of the eucalyptus trees to the right.