Cañar: A Year in the Highlands of Ecuador

Chapter Nine: Life in Ca

chapter nine o Life in Cañar at Three Months paiwa maynato, our goddaughter, at three years Three months in Ecuador. Our life on the Paseo de los Cañaris has settled into a comfortable routine, and our trips to Cuenca grow less frequent . ‘‘Things are so much more interesting here,’’ one of us says to the other at least once a day. Still, every week or ten days, we make the two-hour bus ride to the city and spend a day and night in our snug apartment. Michael plays hours of chess at the Cafecito and shops for specialty foods at the SuperMaxi, the only good (i.e. expensive) supermarket in the region. This 77 Cañar week his list includes the makings for pizza: tomato paste, mozzarella, dried oregano, and dried mushrooms, plus fresh basil, fresh ginger, canned Spanish olives, peanut butter, anchovies, and pasta. My more prosaic routine includes taking care of thirty or forty e-mails, making the rounds of post office, photocopy place, and office supply store, going to a meeting now and then at the university (where I will teach a course later this year), and meeting my friend Lynn for lunch. Michael and I both enjoy long hot showers, a restaurant meal or two, and the least terrible of the movies playing at the three shabby local theaters. In Cañar, as in country towns everywhere, the weather is a main player in daily life. The highland year is measured by two major seasons. The dry season, called verano, summer, lasts roughly from June to December; the wet season, winter, invierno, extends from January to May. A couple of ‘‘miniseasons ’’ during each period allow farmers to plant two or three times a year. After a few false starts, our overdue winter appears to have arrived. We’ve had rain the last few afternoons and all last night; this morning it is still raining. Michael and I lie in bed later than usual, listening to the steady drip in the back patio, not wanting to get up. The nighttime temperatures this time of year hover in the forties, and we depend on the morning sun to get us out from under our mountain of blankets. Even at this high altitude, when there is sun it doesn’t take long to warm the house. But today, as I sit writing at my table by the window in the sala, I’m wrapped in layers of polar fleece, a sweater, and a wool shawl, with my signature black beret on my head. My hands are constantly cold; today I will go into town, buy some cheap wool gloves, and cut off the fingertips for working on the computer and in the darkroom. On the table beside me sits a big cup of the camp-style boiled coffeewe’ve grown addicted to in the mornings. Michael and I have an arrangement: he gets up first to brew the coffee, and in exchange I make the bed. Sometimes we catch up on the news by listening to the morning report on La Voz de Ingapirca, a local Lutheran missionary radio station that broadcasts in Quichua and Spanish. Every morning at eight an announcer reads directly from one of the daily papers, El Universo; when he pauses mid-sentence we can actually hear him turning the page. But we’ve forgotten to tune in lately, and the newspaper is usually sold out once I get to town, so we haven’t had any news of the outside world for a week. With the addition of two double bed frames, which Michael made last month, and the two bedside tables that he knocked together after lunch yesterday—one with a little post and reading light attached—our household furnishings are complete. In the sala we have three large tables, two 78 Life in Cañar at Three Months benches, and a variety of stools and straight-backed chairs (all unpainted). In the eating area and kitchen, there’s a small fridge, a cabinet for food, three gas burners, and a countertop oven. We have curtains on all the large windows, so the house is pleasantly filled with diffused light, even on dark days. Our luxury items include a radio, a CD player with tiny speakers that we brought from home, and three small table lamps that I insisted on buying to mitigate...