In Their Shoes: In Their Shoes

23: Ecuador—Living with los Viejos

23: OcuaJorJ !ivinr with los740s ({Our life is what our thoughts make ofit.» -Marcus Aurelius ~we define aging as growing old, what does it mean? When does one get "old"? John Howard Griffin, author of Black Like Me) once told me, "Growing oldthat 's for your parents, other people. It never happens to you." Exceptional age does not automatically invite feebleness or decrepitude. Does anyone grow old without feeling it? I felt as young as I did at twenty or thirty in 1974, when at age fifty-one, I went to stay awhile among the oldest people in the southern hemisphere. They lived in a virtual Shangri-la in southern Ecuador. Did they have secrets for a long and healthy life? Did they have a special diet? Was it exercise? A mental attitude toward others and life in general? Perhaps I could bring back some recipes for healthy living, for stalling that condition we call "old and feeble." First I flew to the Ecuadorian capital of Quito, then I traveled by bus through the towering Andes. Mter a bus journey of some five hundred miles, I saw the "Sacred Valley" of Vileabamba from a distance, as harmoniously arranged as if it had been executed on a canvas and set in a frame. 243 244 In Their Shoes Once I began living in the village, I felt stress fall from my body as if I had suddenly shed excess weight. As on a long and tranquil ocean voyage, time seemed almost suspended . The stillness suggested that the valley might have been entombed for a millennium. Until the seventies, there was no all-purpose road that led into Vileabamba. Nestled at an altitude of forty-five hundred feet among mountains covered with lush tropical foliage, the village rested untouched by neon, mercantile business and those smoking portents of a polluted environment. It reminded me at a glance of the mystical celestial city of James Hilton's Lost Horizon. While there, I spent time with los viejos) the old ones, some of whom were well over a hundred. One man, Gabriel Sanchez, reportedly was 113. He did not live within the confines of the village, but I borrowed a horse in Vileabamba and following directions set out to find him. I slowly ascended into the mountains, but soon the Andean terrain became too rugged, and I dismounted, leading the horse, wondering, even if I got to the top, if I would possibly find Gabriel Sanchez there. But eventually I found him, atop a mountain called El Chaupi. When I arrived at the mountaintop, I immediately sat down, exhausted. But Sanchez continued standing, his hands on the top ofa hoe. Finally, at my insistence, he sat beside me. Addressing me in Spanish, with a title implying respect, as if I might be a medical doctor or a professor, he asked, "Little doctor, how did you get up here?" It had not been easy for me, and I wondered how such an old one could have made the climb. As we talked, he was outgoing and candid. Perhaps, because I was a stranger-and one often reveals what is most real to one who is only passing by-he was soon telling me ofthe saddest aspect of his life, the loss of a son. The river currents caught the boy and he drowned. Sanchez's eyes filled with grief as he relived his story of loss. Ecuador: Living with los Viejos 245 About five-foot-five, with an enormous chest from decades of climbing, Sanchez was wearing an old but clean shirt and trousers. Studying him, I saw him as an integral part of the mountain, almost like another rock, as much an ingredient of the soil as its mineral contents. He had lived all of his life close to nature. He had never known an office, never been barricaded behind walled rooms. Each day, Sanchez rose at five and climbed to the top of the mountain to work a field, not for himself but for a rich hacienda owner, his patron or boss. Why, I asked, did he continue to work? "I would be ashamed, sitting at home, my arms folded, doing nothing," he said. Under the hacienda system, when Sanchez worked a large field for his patron, he was permitted to cultivate a small plot for himself and his family. Peasants such as Senor Sanchez have never really known a money...