Cañar: A Year in the Highlands of Ecuador

Chapter Nineteen: The Way Things Work

chapter nineteen o The Way Things Work mercedes guamán, wearing a cuna indian blouse made with a mola, from panama It’s been a terrible week. Thursday, Mama Purificación, sister-in-law of Mama Michi and wife of Taita Shanto, was badly burned by a gas explosion . Her daughter Puri, a woman in her twenties who still lives at home, came to our house to make a desperate call to her Aunt Vicenta in Quito. Her mother was preparing to fix lunch on their old gas range, Puri said, which she had turned on before fumbling with a match. By the time she struck the match, the room had filled with gas, and the explosion blew out 169 Cañar the window and burned Mama Purificación’s face, hands, and feet. ‘‘She’s in the hospital,’’ Puri said tearfully, ‘‘and we need money to pay for her medications and food. Can you send us something?’’ Puri went on to explain that times were particularly tough because the local indigenous organization she works for was having a financial crisis, and she had not been paid for several weeks. As I listened, I recalled what little I know about Mama Purificación. When we first met her ten years ago, it was obvious something was terribly wrong. The few times I glimpsed her coming in from the fields, carrying wood for the fire or sheaves of grass to feed her guinea pigs, she walked bent over, very slowly, with a short-stepped shuffle. Her gaze, when she tipped her head in my direction to make eye contact, was kindly and intelligent, but when she talked in her small breathy voice, it sounded like gibberish. ‘‘What happened to Mama Purificación?’’ I asked Mama Michi back then. ‘‘She was burned, and was never the same afterward,’’ was all she would say. When I occasionally saw Mama Purificación at Mama Michi’s house or at family gatherings, her interaction with her family seemed minimal. She seemed to live silently in their midst, doing what jobs she could, but largely ignored by everyone. Earlier this year, we heard from Esthela a more detailed version of what was rumored to have happened years back that, if true, has horrible implications. Esthela said Mama Purificación was suffering from rheumatism—a common complaint in this cold climate, where women wash clothes in ice-cold springs, streams, or irrigation canals—and the doctor, or someone, recommended treatment with a hot vapor bath. Purificación’s two daughters, Mariana and Puri, who must have been teenagers then, decided to cure her themselves, according to Esthela’s story. They boiled water, heated stones on a wood fire, and sat their mother under a tent of blankets. No one knows for sure what happened next, but whatever it was caused severe burns to Mama Purificación’s legs and lower torso. She spent months in the hospital, Esthela said, and ‘‘went sort of crazy.’’ When she came home she was practically an invalid, nearly mute, and has been that way ever since. ‘‘And that’s why her daughters have never married,’’ concluded Esthela, her voice lowered dramatically. ‘‘Maybe for shame, they know they have to stay at home and take care of their mother.’’ Puri hung up the phone, wiping tears from her cheeks. Vicenta didn’t have any money at the moment. I asked how much she needed; she said twenty dollars would cover the hospital costs for the bed, medications, and food. (That’s what counts as socialized medicine in a poor country, I 170 The Way Things Work thought cynically.) Puri said she would sell a sheep on the next market day and pay us back. Later that day, Michael and I went to the hospital, a small one-story building on the edge of town. Michael took a piece of his famous banana cake, made that morning, in case Mama Purificación could eat. We found her in thewomen’s ward, a light-filled room with only four beds. She greeted us unintelligibly in her tiny voice, and her gaze, through eyes nearly swollen shut, was sweet and thankful. Her face was blistered and swollen, the skin red and weeping, and her eyebrows were completely gone, but these were not deep burns. We asked about her hands and she showed...