Moving house (again)

 

Well, we finally have our own place. You can see it in the photo below.

Oops. This is actually an abandoned house we saw while out witnessing near a river a few weeks ago. Just across the (dirt) road from it are new houses. We still can’t get over the mix of old and new in the one area.

Below are photos of people washing clothes etc. in the river.

The photo below was taken a little further along the river from the mud brick house.

From what we could see and were told, large quantities of garlic are soaked in tubs of river water and then people tread in the tubs of water and garlic, and the garlic skins loosen. Then as you can see from the photo, women skin the garlic cloves and pick out reject cloves and discard them. Apparently the skinned garlic cloves are sold to restaurants and markets. You can also buy them in the supermarket, skinned, in little plastic bags. But they don’t keep as long as if you buy them dry as a whole bulb.

The woman in the photo with one child on her back and one nearby is pretty typical here of women who work in such jobs or in the markets. There are child care centres here in Cuenca but I suspect they are for the wealthy. You often see women who work in menial jobs with their children on their backs or sitting or playing nearby. Apparently, the minimum wage here is $1.50 per hour, which is pretty mind-boggling. Even though things cost less here than in Aus, (someone worked out that on average things here cost around one-third to one-quarter of what they would in Aus), being able to survive on that sort of wage is still pretty hard to comprehend. But there are those university educated people at the other end of the scale (doctors, lawyers, etc.) who apparently earn around $20-$30 per hour, which is rather a lot compared to $1.50 per hour. There is a vast difference between the wealthy and the poor – I think it’s more noticeable here than in Aus. Possibly one reason is that the wealthy and the poor here just about live and work side by side, whereas due to zoning restrictions etc. in Aus, there is likely to be more difference geographically in where people can afford or choose to live.

Even though on average things work out to around one-third to one-quarter of their cost in Aus, to break things down: housing (renting) is probably a quarter of the cost in Aus, vegies etc. would be around a quarter, “gringo” groceries (e.g. condensed milk, Marie biscuits, tin foil, paper towel, tissues) are probably about the same as Aus, clothes probably similar to Aus, plastic goods and kitchen wares (e.g. cutlery, plates, plastic chairs) similar to Aus (we know, we just bought a heap of it). Cars: Petrol is cheaper here than Aus ($1.49 a gallon or $0.39 a litre), although not having car, I haven’t taken much notice. Tyres are around $80 each. But you can go on a bus right across town for 25c. Some things are a lot cheaper, but other things are the same as Aus. I guess the more you can live like a local, the cheaper it will be.

A few weeks ago I mentioned to a sister in the congregation that we were starting to house-hunt, and that all I wanted was a place with some grass and a tree. Now, as Cuenca is a city of joined-together houses and lots of concrete, and very little in the way of private green space, she said “good luck with that!” It took them a year or so of searching to find their place, which does actually have a reasonable yard (by Cuenca standards) with grass.

Often, in order to get a little bit of private green space (unless you have a ton of money to be able to afford one of the pricier areas of Cuenca where there are medium-sized gardens and some trees), you end up on the outskirts of town. Which is fine if you have a car, but if you rely on buses or taxis, it’s not so convenient. The further out you go, the less choice of buses you have and the taxis are less likely to prowl around there. But I guess it all depends on what matters most to you, and where you are prepared to compromise.

We have ended up with a quite new house (only a couple of years old – on Google Earth there is a paddock where our house is now), which is lovely and light and sunny and all the windows (except one bathroom) look out onto the great outdoors. Which is quite an achievement here, where light-wells and skylights are common ways to get light into a house. I actually got my grass and tree – we have a little grassy backyard which is 2.5 metres deep by about 7 metres long (I wanted to run a few head of guinea pigs to keep the grass down, then we can eat them when they get fat!! No not really, although guinea pigs “cuyes” are considered a delicacy here. But Brendy is not keen on the idea). And we have two little lemon trees in the front yard, which is all tiled, except for a 1.5metre square of real dirt where the lemon trees are. The front yard is big enough to park a couple of cars, but that’s it. It’s big enough for bbqs and to sit outside in the sun, so that’s nice. And we have an upstairs terrace and can see all around us. So, we think we are in a pretty good spot, really.

This is looking down our road – our house is on the left further along

This is our place – the sides of the houses here don’t tend to be finished neatly as it is assumed that at some future time someone else will build right up next to it (but the shapes of the houses don’t generally match so it can still look untidy)

 

The house is on a dirt road, and we have a giant mud puddle out the front. And chooks run up and down the road. Again, it’s a mix of newish well-finished houses along with paddocks and half-finished roughly built houses. But we have good bus access within a 10 minute walk and all the small shops you could want as well as a very big market nearby. We catch a bus now to get to the supermarket (we could walk there from our previous place), but I guess you can’t be close to everything.

This is the pretty view of our house!

Looking from entrance (lounge room on right) towards dining room and kitchen. 

Strangely enough here, the prices of items in the small shops is less than you’d pay in the supermarkets. I guess the supermarkets here don’t hold the monopoly over suppliers like they do in Aus. So if you run out of something, from where we are, there are about five small shops within a couple of minutes’ walk. And then I get to practice my bad Spanish on them and make them panic when I come in!! But then they practice their bad English on me and make me panic! So, I guess it works out even in the end.

Panoramic view from upstairs

View of the Cajas (mountains) – they are higher in real life than they look in the photo – going up to 4,000 metres.  Cuenca is at 2,500 metres

View over our back wall – shows the socio-economic mix (big word supplied by Brendy)

 

180 degree view over Cuenca from our third-story patio

We have our District Convention next week, so are catching a little bus with some others from our congregation down to Guayaquil. It’s at sea level, so will be quite a bit warmer than here, although it’s supposed to be less humid at this time of year (the dry season).

So, until next time, Adios.

Witnessing and walking …

 

Witnessing here in the English cong is quite different from how we did it in Aus. In some ways it’s more leisurely, in some ways it’s more sociable, in some ways more challenging, etc etc.

Organising the groups for witnessing is generally more complicated than we’re used to in Tas. Because we have such a large territory (the whole city), it’s hard to be familiar with the territory and to know where the streets etc are. There’s the usual confusion of working out how many cars there are, (generally not enough to fit everybody in), and therefore who’s going by car and who’s taking the bus, and if so, which bus will get you closest to the territory. And then if anyone gets lost on the way or goes to the wrong place, it just makes it more interesting. So things by necessity run to a more lengthy schedule.

A week ago, we had the circuit overseer’s visit, and Brendan and another brother were supposed to meet some others at a particular park in town (some going by bus, some going by car). Due to a mix-up, Brendan and the other brother ended up on one side of town, and the others on the other side of town. After texting back and forth and walking up and down quite a bit, and still not getting any closer, at 11 am they gave up ever trying to find each other, and did their own thing.

In Aus, when witnessing we try to be discreet, and not congregate on street corners (although we still do!), or hang about unnecessarily or clog up the street with large numbers of Witnesses. But in Ecuador, it’s par for the course! There are just so many more people wandering about anyway, or waiting for buses, or just chatting or making noise, that a few extra Witnesses here or there just isn’t going to make any difference. And if we have an extra person without a partner, they just tag along with another pair, and go in threes. Because the houses here are right on the street front, you actually stand on the footpath and either bang on their gate with something noisy like a coin, umbrella, drink bottle etc, or you ring the intercom which is also at the gate. (The gate is considered equal to the front door – even if the gate is open, you generally don’t enter.) And often you have to wait a while for a response. One sister told me that when she first came to Ecuador and was witnessing in a country area with a long driveway between the gate and the house, they banged on the gate and waited a while, and after a bit someone looked out from the house (turned out to be a servant) and then after about 10 minutes all up, the householder came out. So there is a certain amount of hanging about and chatting amongst ourselves goes on (although we generally don’t wait 10 minutes). And a lot of houses don’t have street numbers, and sometimes there are no street names, or else they are really hard to find. Just to add to the general confusion.

This is how we hang about in Cuenca

 

There are lots of little shops (rather like our milk bars, except a lot small smaller – some are more like kiosks) and other businesses dotted among the houses, so after you have asked them in your broken Spanish whether anyone there speaks English and they have said “no”, if you are hungry, you can purchase a little packet of sugared peanuts (yum!), or chocolate (the sister I was with on Saturday bought me chocolate as a cure-all, as I was feeling a bit low about how long it would take to acquire even a passing amount of Spanish and therefore feel even a little bit useful), or water, etc. So it’s not unusual to see brothers and sisters wandering along munching on their purchases while witnessing.

 

Back home, because most people have their own car, when we finish territory or calls, we tend to all go our own way home, but here, due to the lack of cars, we always car-pool or go by bus to the territory. So when we have finished (generally about 12-ish) there is usually a bunch of us all walking (you can’t help but get fit here, due to all the walking) in the one direction, and somebody may suggest a coffee or lunch spot on the way, or a quick bus ride to a favourite, spot, so off we all go. Food tends to be a lot cheaper here (if you manage it right you can get a $2.50 lunch, although that doesn’t happen all the time), but by the time you’ve done that a few times a week, it does add up!

I think because our congregation of possibly 40 publishers live spread all over the city (a bus ride from one end to the other would probably take about 45 minutes – but only cost 25 cents), we tend to take advantage of the times we are together anyway, as most of us don’t have cars to just jump in and go for a quick visit. So often, after the Sunday meeting (we meet at 11 am, which is a strange time, as by the time the meeting has finished and everyone has chatted, it’s probably about 1.30pm, which is a bit late to go home and start preparing a large Ecuadorean lunch – lunch is the main meal of the day), someone might suggest the chicken place down the road, or a nice hamburger place, and a bunch of us might all jump on a bus and go there. A couple of weeks ago, Brendan and I and another family had decided to have lunch at the chicken place down the road, and half the cong also decided to go there too. I think the man there was a bit stunned when about 20 of us turned up all at once!

Views of Cuenca

If you don’t have a car here, you’ve got to allow a lot longer to do anything. Example. Brendan and another brother had a Bible study to go on, on Saturday. They left the Kingdom Hall around 9.30 am, and after consulting the bus schedule and concluding there were no direct buses, they caught a bus part-way there and walked the rest of the way, getting there about 10 am. The man was not there, so they walked towards where the rest of us were witnessing – after Brendan had rung me to ask where we were (I had no idea, of course, but told him roughly where I thought we were – I was only about 3 or 4 blocks out!), and they had wandered around looking for us, walked back to our place, as it wasn’t too far from there (well, maybe another 15 minutes’ walk). He later figured out they had walked about 12 km’s that day.

Brendy thinks he’s a mountain goat!

Brendan went on a Bible study today with another brother, with an 81 year old Ecuadorean man who walks about 9 or 10 blocks to get to the meetings! For many people here, there probably never comes a time when you can say “I’m too old to run”, as we were on the bus one day and saw a little old indigenous woman jogging to meet the bus which was coming towards her, but then it over-shot the bus stop, so she had to turn around and jog back the other way. The bus drivers have no mercy, just because you may not be so sprightly.

A couple of weeks ago, we had gone into a shop and asked for English-speaking people and someone there had said that a lady who spoke English would be there on Monday afternoon. So, come Monday afternoon, we put on our walking shoes and walked down to the shop (about 15 minutes away) to see if the lady was there. She wasn’t. So then we walked home. We talked about the fact that if we were in Aus, there is no way we would have walked there, we would have jumped in the car and gone. But here, because there is no car, you just allow the time and walk. And we quite like walking. Sometimes we just go exploring to see what’s around us.

Look what we saw out witnessing today! 

(Well actually, we were witnessing – not the alpaca! ;P)

We have started to look for a place of our own to rent. Our house-sit ends mid July, although if we haven’t found anything by then, there is another apartment we can house-sit for a month if we need to. We thought it would make sense to find something near the Kingdom Hall, rather than having to bus half-way across town, although many do (including us currently). That would then allow more time for sleeping! Often people put up signs in the windows of places that are up for rent, and you can wander around looking, and ring the phone number and check it out. We were wandering around near the Hall, and an older Ecuadorean man saw us looking at a sign in a window and indicated in his non-English that he had an apartment above his place, and we indicated in our non-Spanish that we would like to look at it. So, he took us upstairs, where his wife rang their grand-daughter who spoke English (the younger generations are more inclined to speak English, as they learn it at school) and told us what the rent was etc, etc. Then they took us upstairs to show us the apartment. They actually had two apartments – the first one we saw had 3 or 4 rooms with unfinished/unsealed wooden floors, no cupboards, a very basic kitchen (cupboards and a sink – you generally have to supply your own stove here) and an outdoor bathroom – it was out on the balcony (an afterthought, perhaps?), and contained an “electric shower” (an interesting combination of water and electricity) and a toilet. No basin, although the “laundry” was adjacent. It did have a couple of windows out to the street which was a good thing, as I will go on to explain.

After we had politely said “no, gracias” in our best Spanish, they said they would show us their other apartment (going by the apartment we had just seen, we didn’t hold out much hope of the other being any better, but we went along with them anyway – it’s hard when you can’t really communicate, and they were doing their best to be helpful).

The other “apartment” was on the ground floor – well, some of it was. Some apartments here in Cuenca (and possibly the rest of Ecuador) tend to be rooms added on here and there, with little regard for any of those pesky building regulations we have in Aus. So, there was a “kitchen” (again, just a few tile-topped cupboards and a sink), with the only natural light being a small window which opened onto the stairwell, and another nondescript room on the ground floor with a window opening onto a dark courtyard, then you went up a half-flight of stairs to another couple of rooms, this time with the added bonus of no natural light at all, but instead with a built-in damp smell! I didn’t stop to look at the “bathroom”. It was probably a good thing we didn’t have enough Spanish to exclaim, “are you kidding??!!”

So we declined politely, shook hands all round (the Ecuadoreans are heavily into hand-shaking), and left, somewhat shaken.

After this, we decided that although we wouldn’t call ourselves real-estate snobs, you have to draw the line somewhere!

There was a religious festival on with lots of sweets and cakes for sale. (This has been going on for over a week) There was table after table just like this.

 

If anyone wants to reply or email and let us know the latest goings-on in Aus (especially Tas – we already have a couple of spies on the mainland!!), we would really appreciate it. We want to know what’s happening with you too! (If you reply on the blog and want us to reply, you’ll need to leave your name and your email address, as otherwise the addresses don’t show up. Otherwise, just email us.)

Some random thoughts and observations about Ecuador (well, Cuenca, at any rate).

 

Your average pink-skinned Westerner is just never going to blend in in Ecuador. I never realised how pinkish most of us look until we came here (some of us get pinker when we are hot, too). The average Ecuadorean has an olive to dark-olive skin tone. There is some variation – some are lighter skinned, but it seems to be a minority. It really struck me one day when we were sitting waiting and watching the people go by that westerners stand out a mile away, as most of us look rather pale and pastel-coloured in comparison with Ecuadoreans.

For starters, if you don’t have jet-black hair here, you stand out. I think I have yet to see a bald Ecuadorean man, or even one with a receding hair-line. It is very rare for Ecuadorean women to have short hair - the indigenous Indian women wear their hair long and in one or two plaits (along with their shawls and colourful skirts and distinctive hats – see photo of flower market from a blog or two ago) and most other women (particularly young women) wear their hair starting at below-shoulder-length, and generally longer. And there are very few people with grey hair. They seem to go grey a lot later than westerners – maybe not until 60-ish.

And the people are shorter. They don’t make the buses here to fit tall people, and invariably Brendan’s knees are sticking out into the aisle, as he needs an additional 3 or 4 inches of leg room to get his knees in behind the seat in front.

And if you are a female, you have to wear blue jeans. Tight blue jeans (but no hipster jeans, with the accompanying muffin-top effect – thank goodness for that!!), with high heeled, or at least pretty, shoes. Even in Guayaquil, where it’s hot and humid, the rule still applies – people just don’t wear shorts, unless they are tourists. The women rarely wear dresses or skirts even where it’s hot – if they wear work uniforms, they seem to wear slacks, not skirts. Men generally wear jeans too, or slacks, and fortunately the jeans here are not worn around the knees like is common back in Aus.

And there are lots of children. Breast-feeding in public is not uncommon, and why not save time and do so while walking? No-one blinks an eye. Babies and toddlers are not in prams or strollers. Mostly people carry their babies and toddlers in their arms – mums and dads take turns. The indigenous women carry their children on their backs, tied tightly into their shawls (very handy these shawls – they are also good for tying sacks of rice etc onto their backs – these women are tough – some of the loads they carry make your mind boggle!).

Given the state of most of the footpaths we’ve seen, prams (or other wheeled devices) are just not a practical option here. In some areas, footpaths are reasonable, but it seems in most places they are a bit of an obstacle course designed to stop you getting bored while walking! When we were in Devonport (Tas), I used to wonder what possessed the powers-that-be to plant electricity poles right in the middle of the footpath in some areas. Well, here we have: electricity poles in the middle of the path (the path might only be about a metre wide, anyway – although they are a decent width in the old part of town), random bits of metal (such as man-hole handles) sticking up out of the path, which of course you don’t see until you nearly trip over them, sharply bevelled driveways that inconveniently appear out of nowhere (Brendan tripped and fell on one of these, and I nearly twisted my ankle on another one of these). Plus pot-holes and some dog poo. Also on rubbish-collection day, you have to swivel your eyes alternately from down at the path up to the walls or fences of the houses – the racks the rubbish bags are put up on to keep them out of reach of dogs, stick out (they fold back against the wall for non-rubbish days) and generally they are at a level where you can walk into them and smack yourself in the head if you happened to be preoccupied by watching where your feet were going! But the streets and kerbs are very clean – there are always street-sweeping people around. There might be pot-holes, but at least they are clean and tidy pot-holes!

Sometimes it’s just easier to walk on the road …

(click on pictures to enlarge)

The use of seatbelts in cars here is somewhat optional. When I used to see people on TV travelling in cars not wearing seatbelts, I used to think that even if I lived somewhere where you didn’t legally have to wear seatbelts, that I would still do it. But often we don’t! Largely because if you are in a taxi, in the back seat either the seat belts generally are not there, or the strap is, but not the clicky-thing at the bottom to click the belt into. And besides, if you have 4 people in the back of a car, it’s a bit pointless to be worrying about who gets which seatbelt.

The shopping centres/malls and some other buildings have security guards/information men. You could assume that they are just there to help you find things (e.g. toilets, how to work the machine that swaps notes for coins, which government department you need), and they are very helpful and friendly. But the fact that part of their uniform is a bullet-proof vest, makes you wonder!! And some of them carry guns, shotguns and/or truncheons. Hmmm. Haven’t worked that one out yet. But we figure if you don’t give them cheek, you’ll be alright, anyway.

Something that amused me a couple of weeks ago. A while back, we came to the conclusion that “banos” means toilet (we figured this out from signs at shopping centres, etc), and then a couple of weeks ago, we got to the area where we were going to be going witnessing, and there was a traffic sign that indicated a couple of small towns/suburbs nearby. One of which said “Banos”. I just had to ask someone did they seriously name a town after a toilet, coz until then I thought it might be one of those tricky things where the words just sound the same but are spelt differently but here it was exactly the same spelling! But upon clarification it turns out that “banos” means either of “bath”, “baths” (as in warm springs), “basin” etc., depending who you ask (The road sign we saw pointed to a little town where there are warm springs). So we assume that at the shopping centres, “banos” is actually the more polite American usage, meaning “bathroom”, rather than “toilet”, like us Aussies would say.

It has taken us a while to get used to witnessing here (still getting used to it!). Before we came here, we read various experiences and blogs of people witnessing in the Spanish congregations, and having lots of studies and lots of interest etc etc. But because we are in the English-speaking congregation, it’s rather different. Mainly we are trying to locate people who are either native English-speakers (there are lots of ex-pats here – you see them at the main park in the centre of town, or at the American-style supermarkets, or near the visa/passport departments), or who speak very good English, and we leave the Spanish speaking people up to the Ecuadorean brothers (there is no shortage of willing Ecuadorean brothers). But in order to locate the English speakers, we have to call at all the houses, and ask, in Spanish, if there are any English-speaking people there. Within the English congregation (around 40 publishers), we have about half Ecuadoreans, who have chosen to go to the English cong, and the rest are native English-speakers with varying amounts of Spanish. The problem with asking a question in Spanish is that you are likely to get an answer in Spanish!! If they just say “no” (same in both languages), we can handle that. But if someone starts getting chatty, we have problems. So we always make sure we go with someone else who has more Spanish than us – that would be just about anybody!

Outside of our Kingdom Hall – along with two Spanish speaking congregations, and a sign language congregation, the English congregation meets here.

Inside our Kingdom Hall. 

All of the Kingdom Halls in Ecuador have been financed and built by the branch in Ecuador from funds that have been donated worldwide, because the brothers here can’t afford to build them without outside help.

 

We’ve had conversations with different ones in the congregation and asked them about learning Spanish, how they’ve gone about it, how do they think they are going, did they have lessons and if so, what sort, etc. There seems to be endless different answers. Some who are really focused get stuck in straight away (possibly these may be the ones who go straight into a Spanish congregation even without very much Spanish to start off with – from what I can gather, it can be a hard slog, but you will learn the language a lot quicker), whereas others choose to go in “at the shallow end”, and do it more gradually. I guess it comes down to what you feel you are capable of as an individual, and if you have family, what would be best for them too. Also learning styles – what will work for one person may not work for someone else, and one person’s time-scale is not going to work for everybody. Some have said it helped them to soak up some of the culture first and find their way around and get somewhat settled and get a general feel for things, before worrying too much about learning the language. So, from my various conversations, I gathered that you ask lots of people, gather information, have a think about it, and make your own decision as to what you think will work best for you.

Having said that, we really have to work on our numbers (the problem is, so many of them all sound confusingly alike, once you get past “10” – yes, that is a bit pathetic, isn’t it!). We’ve been brave and gone to the local market by ourselves the last couple of weeks. It’s actually really colourful and exciting and interesting and different and so much better than the supermarket, (plus cheaper) but more challenging as well, as there are no tickets with prices for the fruit and veg. And half the time (no, more like most of the time) we don’t know what they are saying, and hope that we give the right answer and don’t end up with 10 kilos of broad beans, or something equally disgusting. We suspect that at times we get “gringoed” (where they see gringos/ westerners coming and know that they won’t have a clue what the prices should be and therefore charge them more), but we figure it’s a learning experience and each time we do it we will get braver and hopefully have a better idea of what’s going on. You can tell that it’s market day, as there are people from all over the neighbourhood carrying bags and baskets and heading in the direction of the market.

A concrete soccer field for most of the week turns into a thriving market on Fridays

Fruit and veg

Anyone for a steak? (Fortunately, there are very few insects at this altitude)

Something smells a bit fishy around here!!

We’ve been told to wash/scrub/soak all fruits and veg really well (there are various solutions and potions people use for this), as foreigners are apparently very susceptible to the local stomach bugs and other nasties – different ones we’ve talked to here have got really sick at times.

We are finding the food here rather different from home. Can’t get used to the bread – there are lots of little bakeries (“panederia” – “pan” is Spanish for bread) around and they do little rolls, rather than large loaves. But they all taste slightly sweet. I’m told that Ecuadoreans like to put sugar in everything, so I’m not sure if the problem is too much sugar in the bread, or just not enough salt. And it has a different texture – almost like a cream bun or doughnut, and it doesn’t squash up when you bite into it, like Aussie bread, which is not a bad thing. But it’s still strange. And it can be hard to cook recipes here that you would cook without thinking twice about, in Aus – you get used to certain brands, (and certain items being easily available) and how sweet or salty or how strong they are. We bought vanilla essence here, and it was quite thick but not sweet. And I bought cocoa and it was way too sweet (I tried to make the choc chip biscuits I always made in Aus – not too bad, but definitely too sweet – and cooking at altitude – 2,500 metres above sea level - does not help either – they came out rather flat). The chilli powder we bought is not very potent at all. The white rice is possibly not as refined as in Aus, or at least processed differently – it has a very slight brown rice taste to it (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing – it just illustrates that most things range from slightly different to a lot different). Very hard to get a tasty matured cheese, and they cost a lot and are not the same – they do a lot of fresh or soft cheeses here. Sliced meats, e.g. ham, again, very rare, expensive and completely different from Aus - and not in a good way. So, for instance, hard to make pizza like we used to in Aus. Parmesan cheese that actually has some taste to it is difficult to find – the first one was almost tasteless, and we are onto our second brand and shall trial it shortly. Most of us non-Ecuadoreans conclude that you either keep looking and asking until you find a good substitute, or you go without. There’s a fair bit of trial and error goes on. Fortunately, we have enough Vegemite to last us for a while, so we should survive!!

Wanna buy a wheelchair, a stretcher, or a dentist’s chair?  (Dentist’s chair only costs $2,500)

These are available from the same store that we buy our weekly groceries.  This place is massive and  would be the same as combining a Coles supermarket, K-mart, a small Bunnings, an appliance store, a toy shop,  and a few other small shops for good measure.

 

The contrast between the open air markets and the store mentioned above, is quite bizarre, but it seems to work here.

Google Translate – not without its limitations!

 

We are house-sitting for a couple of months, and the landlady (who lives upstairs) speaks about as much English as we do Spanish (always a recipe for disaster). She came downstairs to ask us something about the electricity bill, and after some gesturing, pointing and arm waving, we thought “Aha! Google Translate! That will do the trick”, so got her to type in her message in Spanish and pressed the button to translate it to English, figuring all would become clear. It did seem to help for starters, but after a while we reached a stalemate of misunderstanding.

After numerous attempts of us trying to clarify in English (translated into Spanish) and her trying to clarify in Spanish (translated into English), and then telephoning someone in the congregation who spoke both (which we thought clarified things, but it actually hadn’t), we somehow worked out what needed to be done - after about 45 minutes! Part of the problem which kept occurring, was that the landlady’s message, when translated into English, kept coming up as variations of “ the code (or number) for gift of the house …”, which didn’t make any sense at all in relation to the electricity bill. We figured something had gone wrong somewhere, as the word “gift” kept coming up, and totally confusing us. After she had gone upstairs (to ring her cousin who spoke English and Spanish), we looked up “gift”, and it turns out that in Spanish, the name “Don” translates into English as “gift”. What she had been asking for, was the phone number of the brother who lives here (whose name is Don), so she could ask him about the electricity bill. Easy when you know! So, we have now learnt another useful Spanish word!!

But there are much easier ways of working out what words mean. For instance. When we first got here, we were driving through the city and there were various road signs. One said “una via”, which didn’t mean much to us, other than “one-something”. Then later there was a sign that said “doble via”, and traffic was going both ways, so we had an “aha!” moment, and figured that seeing as the roads that said “una via” the traffic only went one way, “doble via” should mean “double ways” or “both ways”. Context is very effective, and because you have seen the words in their context a few times, they stay in your brain better than if you just saw them written in a book or a dictionary.

Having said that, while some words in Spanish are similar enough to the English, we figured out that the shop with a sign saying “Ferreteria”, near our bus stop, is not actually a place where you buy your ferrets and ferreting needs, but is a hardware/ironmonger store!

We are finding that so far it’s near impossible to understand what people say in Spanish, but if you can see the words written, it is a bit easier. Guessing is good too. Sometimes you are actually right when you guess, particularly if it’s a fairly predictable situation, such as going through a supermarket checkout. Some of the Aussies in the congregation say that it takes a while for the ear to become attuned to hearing Spanish when you are not used to it.

ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL … AND IGUANAS

On Monday 14th we caught the bus to Guayaquil in another attempt to get our 6-month visas stamped. (In an earlier blog, I mentioned that we attempted to do this when we first landed in Guayaquil, but it didn’t happen.)

We got up at the crack of dawn with the plan to get there early and “get it over and done with” – an expression we will one day learn is inappropriate for use in Ecuador. We had a couple of changes of clothes in our backpack and had booked a hotel for the Monday night (just in case!) as we had been warned by numerous people here that things always take a lot longer than you think, and to be prepared. We had planned to stay in Guayaquil for only one night, but wouldn’t you know it the brothers predictions came true and because of red-tape we ended up needing to stay two nights.

The bus ride itself took about 3 ½ hours, and the road was pretty good – concrete all the way (they seem to do concrete roads here, rather than asphalt) and in good repair. Cuenca is about 2,500 metres above sea-level, and it was cool at around 6 am when we left. The scenery on the way out of Cuenca reminded us a bit of the hills and trees and scattered houses of parts of North-West Tasmania (except the hills were a LOT higher – we are up in the Andes Mountains). After about half an hour, we got into the Cajas National Park, which is even higher and misty. The scenery is very alpine – not much in the ways of trees etc. After a while we started to go down, and got to sea-level. Then heat and humidity took over. It is very flat and tropical, with channels of water, and lots of bananas (and other things I couldn’t identify), growing and rice paddies, etc. The difference in scenery, altitude and climate in just 3 ½ hours of driving was amazing.

On our first attempt to get our visas stamped 3 weeks ago, we went to the address we were given by the Ecuadorean Embassy in Sydney. The chap on the reception desk there told us we were at the wrong place, and eventually we worked out where we were supposed to go, and the next day, dutifully went there. After being shuffled about a bit by staff doing their best to understand our dodgy Spanish and finger-pointing, we were directed to a likely looking young man, who, upon looking at our paperwork, said that we needed to go and get three colour photocopies of certain pages of our passports and bring them back, along with a manilla folder! That floored us, as we had no idea where or how to do that, and we couldn’t understand why he couldn’t just do it himself!

(But now after 3 or 4 weeks here, we are more attuned to how things work – ie, there are little shops which do photocopies and also sell folders, envelopes etc, on every block. And the government departments we have dealt with seem to out-source the photocopying – that is, you get to do it! Saves them money, I guess.)

So, for this attempt, we had photocopies, manilla folders, the works (or so we thought!), and fronted up to find the young man from the previous attempt, only to get there, and find that department closed! We managed to communicate with other staff, and took a number and went and sat somewhere else for a while. Eventually, it came our turn, and after we and the staff member concluded that we couldn’t understand each other, she returned with someone else who spoke English, and eventually we had 3 or 4 people all speaking varying degrees of English, all trying to work out what was going on and what needed to be done. They wrote down on a piece of paper the addresses of the places we had to go and what we had to get there, so off we went again, back to the first place we went to 3 weeks ago. This time, instead of telling us we were at the wrong place, the chap on reception gave us a ticket and pointed to where we should wait. (It’s a bit hard to know if your ticket is called, when it is done in a language you don’t understand, but fortunately the young man next to us gave us a nudge when it was our turn. Or we might still be sitting there!)

We handed over our passports and copies etc, which was all correct, but it turned out that now an additional page of the passport needed copying (but not in triplicate, unlike previously advised). Fortunately, we knew there was a copy shop (actually the outdoor booth with multi-function printer, etc, mentioned in a previous blog) nearby, so Brendan went off to attend to that, and all was well. Until she said that the passports needed to be stamped and we could pick them up on Wednesday (This was still only Monday!) to which Brendan indignantly replied, “but we live in Cuenca!!” So she thought about it and said,”come back Tuesday after 2pm and it should be done”. (Hello, it’s just a stamp!)

So, what to do in Guayaquil (which is way too hot and humid for our liking) for a whole day until our passports are ready? If it had been anywhere else (that was even a half-decent temperature) we would have gone wandering and exploring, but instead we hibernated for the rest of Monday in an air-conditioned shopping centre and in the hotel with the air-con running.

On Tuesday, we went over to the park across the road from our hotel and hung out there in the shade for most of the morning and watched the people go by. (The heat/humidity was making me feel ill, so the options of what to do were limited) Guayaquil is on the coast, and our hotel was just across the road from the park which is next to the sea (which is nothing to write home about, so I won’t). It’s an absolutely lovely park, and runs for quite a distance between the road and the sea, it’s well-designed and maintained with lots of tropical plants and water features and shady areas (there is an army of gardeners and cleaning people there all the time – they really look after the parks and gardens here). It was lovely and cool (well, relatively so!).

(click on the pictures to enlarge)

Park on the left, hotness on the right

The park across the road from our hotel, where we spent lots of time

Our hotel – just to the right of the palm tree

View of a colourful part of Guayaquil – from the park near hotel

So, at 2 pm, we set off once again. Passport was ready, as promised. Then, grab another taxi (they are readily available- it seems every other car is a taxi – we took enough of them!) and off to a department near the bus terminal, where we had to get something else photocopied and an A4 envelope. This time the ladies who ran the copier were allowed to work from inside the building (normally they are outside).

Then, another taxi back to the first department we went to on the Monday (confused? We were, too). Fortunately, the young lady who helped us then was in the reception area (kind of a security/information service, from what we can gather), spotted us and waved us over, and personally escorted us to the right place, and explained to the staff person what the go was etc etc, and it all got sorted! Yay!

It turns out that we had had to jump through hoops not necessary at this point in time. All we needed was the passport stamp. The photocopies and manilla folders etc were to do with an identity document which would happen later down the track. We think the problem began at the very start (when we first arrived in Ecuador) when the chap on reception figured we were after the identity papers/card, rather than just a simple stamp in our passports, and due to language difficulties (not knowing what we were doing or the Ecuadorian system), we just had to trust that the people there knew what was going on (they didn’t). And that’s why we had to go off to various other departments and produce other pieces of paper. Ah well, all’s well that ends well.

And we got to see iguanas. In the flesh. Or scales, or whatever they have.

As we had the rest of Tuesday to fill in before we took the bus back on Wednesday morning, we went and found ourselves another park (which is actually called Iguana Park), and they were everywhere! Very cool. They’re not in a hurry, they just wander around like they know it’s their park, and all the humans are there to be amazed by them, and take photos of them. You can touch them, and they don’t care. I was wondering whether to touch one’s tail (that part being far away from the biting end, just in case), and the locals sitting nearby indicated that I could, so I did. But very quickly, as I still wasn’t convinced.

Iguana

Not quite sure about this

How many iguanas can you fit in one tree?

Check out the iguanas lazing at the base of the statue

We also saw a Guayaquil squirrel. It came scampering down a tree. Brendan looked it up on the internet later, to find out what it was.

Guayaquil squirrel

On the bus on the way to Guayaquil we caught a glimpse of our first alpacas, just wandering along the road.

The alpacas are the tiny blurry things walking along the kerb

In the Caja National Park, in the Andes

So, all up, everything worked out in the end. Came away from Guayaquil this time with a better impression of it than last time (although our views on the climate are unchanged) – largely due to the parks, I think. And having gone there and back on the bus connected the two cities for us geographically, which is something you don’t get by plane.

Some new things we did …

Since last time, we’ve done a few things for the first time.

We are currently in a new location – previously we were south of the city centre (an area called Turi), now we are east of the city centre (Totoracocha) (the airport is also in the east, but we don’t hear it), house-sitting for an Aussie couple for a few months. We seem to be working our way around the points of the compass!

This part of town is a bit more densely populated than where we were for the first couple of weeks, but just about wherever you go in town, the houses are quite tightly packed in together – wall to wall. (We have a little courtyard out the back with pot plants, and outdoor laundry etc. Its quite handy – you can stand at your washing line and hang up your washing while hardly moving!) There are quite a few little grassy parks, some with swings etc., and asphalted soccer/volleyball etc. fields around, which is good, as there is very little outside space for most houses.

A couple of blocks from us is a concreted soccer ground, which on Fridays becomes the local market. The day before, people come in and erect lots of tarpaulins, and the next day, it’s all happening! A brother took us there to show us around and who to buy what from, etc. I actually felt rather lost and somewhat overwhelmed – in your own environment, you don’t have to think about language, communication, culture etc. But suddenly when you are in an unfamiliar environment, with a completely different culture and ways of doing things, and unable to communicate properly, it becomes a big deal. Plus, there was wall-to-wall people, which is not my favourite way to have people.

Most of the fruits and vegies come as either so many pounds (not kilograms, just to add to the confusion) to the dollar, or so many of each fruit or veg to the dollar. So you need to ask the stall-holder, how much per dollar, and then hope you understand what they say! And all the while there are people pushing past you lugging armfuls of bananas or sackful's of rice, etc.

You can also get fresh meat, fish, eggs, etc. It’s a bit confronting to see the meat just sitting there, unrefrigerated. But the bro we were with says if you get there early in the day (we were there at 7 am), it’s all still cold. The meat is killed the night before, so it is fresh. There are no flies, or other nasties buzzing around at the market (in Cuenca we are about 2,500 metres above sea level, so apparently not many bugs; although the earwigs are on the large size!). The chickens generally come with their feet still attached, but you can ask them to cut the head off for you, if you are squeamish and don’t want to do it yourself!!

I think for now, we will stick with the supermarket, and work our way up to the more adventurous ways of getting our supplies! Having said that, a supermarket where everything is written in Spanish is no picnic, either!

We went for a wander around the neighbourhood today to orient ourselves, and to see what’s around us. We were rather struck by the amount of small stores, etc., scattered throughout the neighbourhood. Back in Aus., you’d get the odd corner store here and there, but mostly the shops are all together, and the houses mostly together. Whereas here, on the main thoroughfares you get mostly shops, but always with a house or apartment either at the back of the shop or above the shop. Some of the shops are quite tiny, and there are often little booths where various foods are cooked – the Ecuadorean version of takeaway?

There are a few (maybe 4 or 5?) large-ish shopping malls in Cuenca, each with its own supermarket, which have probably been built in the last five years or so. Which is handy, if you have a car or can afford to take a taxi home with your shopping. But if you can’t, that’s where all these little local stores come in. Coz you can easily walk to get most things. Within a 5 to 10 minute walk from here are at least 5-6 little bakeries, numerous mini-markets, chemists, hardware stores, numerous internet-use places, Laundromat, etc. etc. And that’s your average suburban neighbourhood! Who needs a car?! A lot of the little shops (milk bars in Aus.) are small (seems to be one every 10 houses or so) and are designed so that you can’t go into them. The front of the shop has steel bars with a small opening in it. You walk up to the bars, ask for what you want and pay for it. The owner then passes the item through the opening to you.

This is the park opposite the court we live in – just in this picture, there are two minimart/ corner stores and a hairdresser!

We took our first buses this weekend (they come every 10-15 minutes) – up to now we have either walked or taken taxis. Our bus stop is a gentle 5-minute stroll down hill. You have to allow extra time if you want to get somewhere at a specific time, as if you miss one bus, it could be 10 minutes before the next one. So, you get all very casual, and stop rushing around, as the bus will come when it comes, and you will get there when you get there.

The first bus we took was Friday night, to get to our meeting. That was a really packed bus, as Friday nights are a busy time. We had earlier got bus passes (a rather pretty little plastic disc with leaves printed on it, and a key-chain to go with it – it saves having to have the correct change), and after you leap hastily onto the bus (the bus drivers are on a mission – they don’t wait around) you scan your bus pass into the machine (or put in 25 cents in coins if you have them) which then says “Gracias”, and then you make for a seat asap before you end up on the floor while the bus lurches merrily up the road. That Friday night, so many people got on, that in the end the bus driver didn’t stop to take any more passengers – there was nowhere to put them, anyway!

We concluded that buses are more interesting than taxis (also lots cheaper, and slower – a 20 minute taxi trip is 30 minutes by bus), as you can see outside better, and the people inside are more interesting than just the back of the taxi driver’s head. Example: on the Saturday, after witnessing, we had caught a bus near the Fiera Libre market (a really big market with all sorts of things for sale and notorious for being a pick-pocketer’s paradise), and a couple got on the bus, who had obviously shopped at the market as they had various bags of fruit and veg etc. which they put on the floor, and at one stage the bus driver stopped really suddenly, and the melons the couple had bought went rolling merrily along the floor toward the front of the bus. You also get various unusual people get on the bus who try to sell things. There’s just more interesting things going on in a bus than in your average taxi.

Witnessing on Saturday was rather different from how we do it in Aus. Because we are in the English congregation, we are looking specifically for native English-speakers (there are apparently about 4,000 in Cuenca), as the Ecuadorean brothers will talk to the Spanish-speaking people. So, if somebody is at home, we ask if there are any English-speaking people living there, and if so, we talk to them, if not, we leave it to the Ecuadorean brothers. We have the whole city to cover. (The population of Cuenca is 500,000 as at the last census a couple of years ago.) All the houses here have high fences and locked gates (they are very security-conscious in Cuenca and most cities in Ecuador, from what I can gather), with some having intercoms at the gate. Some don’t have intercoms which makes it difficult to try to attract the attention of anybody inside. We did manage to find a couple of locals who spoke English, but none from elsewhere. It is also hard to keep track of streets and house numbers, as the street names are not as obviously marked as in Aus., and many houses have no numbers. Whenever anyone gives you a direction to their house or place they will give it as the nearest intersection of two roads (eg. Marsical Sucre and Benigno Malo will bring you to Parque Abdon Calderon (park in centre of town). I guess you have to look out for landmarks and hope for the best!!

Sunday after the meeting, a couple of families were going to a Chinese restaurant for lunch, so we went too. We thought it would be interesting to see what an Ecuadorean version of Chinese food would be like. Ecuadorian food generally is fairly plain, not spicy, and the Chinese lunch lived up to that! It’s interesting how there are different versions of how food should be – I believe that Aussie Chinese food is rather different from how people in China would eat, and the Ecuadorean Chinese food is different from how Aussies would eat it. Having said that, we decided we didn’t need to go there again!

We currently are living in the house at the top end of this little court.

A street nearby to show a general idea of the neighbourhood.

Our First Week

We flew in to Cuenca on Saturday evening, and a brother from the English congregation here came to meet us and drop us at our accommodation. When we got outside and saw his car – a 3 door hatch-back – we thought, there is no way that he, and we and our six suitcases and 2 backpacks are going to fit into his car! We thought we would probably have to hire a taxi as well, to get everything in. We had previously seen some rather thrifty but scary means of making the most of available transport (such as three people on one motorbike, etc, etc), and we became another example of what can be done with a little Ecuadorean determination and ingenuity. The man at the trolley place helped us with our cases, and was determined that we and all our cases would fit. After rearranging cases a few times and forcing things into spaces way too small for them, to our amazement, it all did fit! The fact that the driver couldn’t see out the back or that I was wedged in the back with a backpack on top of me just added to the feeling of “when in Ecuador, do as the Ecuadoreans do!”

Cuenca is rather different from Guayaquil. Guayaquil has a greyness about the buildings – just about all the roofs are tiled in grey, whereas Cuenca has mostly all terracotta roofs, and from where we are staying (on a hill), we can see Cuenca spread out in front of us. And there are gum trees! And lots of other plants the same as Australia. The climate here in Cuenca is similar to Tassie.

We went to the English meeting on Sunday – there are 5 or 6 Aussies other than us there, as well as some Americans and local Ecuadoreans who speak English. On Monday we caught up with a couple of the Aussies, and we picked their brains as to the do’s and don’ts of Ecuador, etc. and arranged to catch up with them on Tuesday to get help with getting bus passes, mobile phones, visas, etc. (The sister speaks Spanish, so that helps heaps).

We walked into town today (Tues), via the track at the back of where we are staying – the part where we are is quite a steep hill, so the track is a bit mountain-goaty, and very rustic – the handrails and steps, etc are just lengths of tree branches joined together. It’s rather nice, and unpretentious. But definitely slippery when wet, as the trail is just grass.

The road crosses a river, flowing quite fast, and we saw native women doing piles of washing at the river, while wearing their distinctive hats, skirts and shawls. Rather strange when you consider the hundreds of modern cars driving by only a few hundred metres away.

Being a pedestrian can be a rather nerve-wracking experience here – part of the problem, other than the fact that motorists see no reason why they should give way to you, is that because they all drive on the wrong side of the road, and some roads are one way and some are two way, there are cars appearing out of all sorts of directions that you don’t expect. You definitely get a good run for your money – literally!

We had a good walk around the old part of town – the streets are quite narrow and paved with large stones and the buildings are 2 or 3 storeys high and old, old Spanish style. Very pretty.

WEDNESDAY

Walked into town again (about 40+ minutes from our place) with the Aussie couple, to try to sort out some more things – eg, visas, getting a P.O. box etc. It must have been a day for running into ex-pat brothers and sisters – while we were at the visa place, we ran into a brother and sister from the States (he gave our public talk on Sunday at the meeting) - they were also sorting out something to do with their visas, then later we went into a café for a well earned coffee, and there was the brother who lives downstairs from the Aussie brother and sister we were with – his Spanish lessons were nearby and he was having some lunch until time to go to his class. While we were in the café, a sister who is a solicitor who is helping the Aussie bro and sis with their visas went past, and stopped for conversation, then after that we were walking through the main park in the city centre, and there were another couple of Aussies from the congregation – they had been witnessing, and were waiting for their daughter. Maybe the ex-pats all go to the same places?

There was a market nearby so we had a wander and checked it out. There were lots of women in native dress (very colourful) in the flower market, and lots of other stalls with ponchos, scarves, etc, etc.

We are finding that immersion is a good way to learn language – you have no choice but to absorb it and attempt to converse in it. All the street signs and shop signs, and items in supermarkets and menus etc are in Spanish. Our Spanish-English dictionary and Google Translate are getting a good work-out. I am writing the items for my shopping list in Spanish in the hopes things will stick in my brain.

They have an unusual (by Australian standards) way of having rubbish collected – in Cuenca, the rubbish is picked up 3 days a week – eg, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. People put small bags of rubbish either outside their front fence, or up on a foldable rack attached to their front fence (so the wandering dogs don’t rip it apart and make a mess). Haven’t actually seen what happens next, but seeing as lots of manual labour goes on here (the street sweepers are actually people, not trucks) it wouldn’t surprise me if there are lots of people collecting it, rather than 1 man in a truck picking up bins.

It looks like we will probably have to go back to Guayaquil to get our visa stamped (it can’t be done here), but we are a bit more confident about getting around now. We have worked out a system with taxis (there are lots of them, and most rides are about $2), seeing as at the moment our Spanish is just about non-existent. We have printed out addresses of places we will go often, and have put them in a small photo book with plastic pages, and depending on where we would like to go, when we jump in a taxi, we turn to the desired page and point to the address, and Bob’s your uncle! It works well.

Chicken here tastes much nicer than in Oz – and by the size of them, they’ve lived long enough to have a reasonable life-span. Our landlady gave us some fat red bananas – perhaps a slightly milder taste than our usual Aussie bananas, and rather nice. A few days ago, we went to the supermarket to get some groceries, and there were all sorts of strange fruits – at the time I wasn’t feeling brave enough to take a punt (too much jet-lag, altitude adjustment and a head cold), but we will get there.

Thursday.

Brendy’s got the lurgy – we expected sooner or later to get some diarrhoea, etc. Apparently those from “outside” generally get sick, have stomach troubles, etc soon after arriving here. We suspect that it may have been yesterday’s lunch – we ate at a café in town - maybe the salad wasn’t washed – or maybe it was?!

Its strange getting used to the fact that when it comes to money here, coins are actually useful! The bus is 25cents, taxis 2 or 3 dollars, and you can actually buy things for less than a dollar! Generally small shops are not keen on notes over $10 – possibly due to fear of counterfeit notes. We were trying to work out how to get a useful amount of coins, and notes in small denominations (the ATMs give you $20 notes), and someone told us that there is a machine at the mall (10 mins walk from here) that you put in your notes and it spits out change instead. I put a $20 note in and it gave me a heap of $1 and 25cents (“quarters”). So that’s very useful to know. It’s all those little things that you take for granted when you’ve lived somewhere for ages, but when you go somewhere completely foreign, you feel rather at sea.

The temperatures here are similar to Devonport. It’s generally a bit misty overnight and early morning, but by midday the sun is out and can feel quite warm. So, pleasant so far.

A view over part of Cuenca, coming down the path behind our place.

Native women at the flower market

Here at last

Wed 18^th/Thursday 19^th Abril, 2012

Well, we are here.  After an uneventful flight (well, three flights actually – Melbourne to Sydney, then Sydney to Santiago (Chile) (about 12 hour flight) then Santiago to Guayaquil (Ecuador) (5 hour flight) plus waiting around and napping on our backpacks at Santiago airport for about 7-8 hours), we are currently at Ecuador Bethel at Guayaquil.  And it’s hot and humid.  It was apparently 30 degrees when we landed last night at 10pm local time!!  We were very glad to see the two Bethel bros who picked us up at the airport and drove us to Bethel.  By this time we didn’t know which time zone we were on or what day of the week it is (Ecuador is approx 15 hours behind Eastern Australia) but we did know we were in desperate need of some sleep, and being night time, we slept.

Lots of signs at the airports are in English and Spanish, and procedures are the same, and aeroplane announcements come in both languages, so we didn’t have any problems there.

The most disconcerting thing we have found so far is getting our heads around the fact that people here actually don’t converse in English!- while we of course knew that intellectually, living it is another thing.   The  language we have learnt and used since birth, is no longer the language people around us are using, and It will probably take us a while before we confidently or automatically respond in Spanish rather than in English, even for such basic things as hello, thank you, etc..  Plus we are rather self-conscious about doing impolite things to the Spanish language with our bad pronunciation.   But the more we do it, the easier it will get.

We had a taste of traffic Ecuador style this afternoon – a brother took us into town (Bethel  is 23.5 kms out of Guayaquil) to get our visas stamped.  A lot of roads don’t have lanes marked  and drivers make up their own lanes!  There is lots of swerving, lane swapping, braking, tooting, pushing in etc, but without the road rage you’d get in Aus if someone tried such things.   Surprisingly there seems to be some kind of method in the madness, as it somehow seems to work.  We were very surprised that none of the cars we saw had scrape marks along the sides! 

 Apparently the president of Ecuador has only recently given the Police powers to make and enforce speed limits, and with the revenue from speeding fines they buy more police cars.  It used to be that if a policeman (on foot) needed  a car, if you happened to be driving along, he could just wave you over, and you would have to let him use your car! 

It turned out that the address we were given for visas was not the correct one after all.   So in the process of finding out where we should have gone, the bro used a “public telephone” – there was an area that had four or five open-air stalls on a street corner – such as prepared  food, a multi-function printer such as you would have at home – presumably for making photocopies, and a couple of telephones, where you gave a person some money and they dialled the number  for you and you talked.  Very strange.  Especially in view of the fact that mobile phones are quite common here.  A juxtaposition of old and new (there’s a big word!)

The bro who drove us spoke some English, but between that and our lack of Spanish, we couldn’t always understand each other, until Brendan and I guessed that the bro knew Ecuadorean sign language (there are quite a few sign language groups and congregations in Guayaquil).  So after that, it got a bit easier, as he and Brendan signed  when the spoken word was unclear.  Some signs are similar enough that the meaning was sometimes made clearer. 

We did a Bethel tour this morning – the Ecuadorean Bethel has been expanded  at least twice since it was built, due to rapid growth.  Ecuador is one of the countries in which kingdom halls are paid for by funds donated worldwide for the kingdom hall construction program.  Around 350 halls have so far been built this way (all to the same basic plan) – the backlog has nearly been caught up -  with a plan to build approx 34 new halls a year.

Bethel is set in lovely tropical gardens and at this time of year (the wet season) is very green and lush.  Apparently iguanas come out in the afternoons and laze around on the grass.  We haven’t seen any yet.

The brothers and sisters at Bethel have been very friendly and welcoming and have managed to cope with our lack of Spanish.

Have attached a couple of pictures of Ecuador Bethel.  (one includes a random brother)