Kasama

This year’s semana santa was anything but ordinary. Sure I spent the earlier part of the week hanging out in Lita reading and trying to get those environmental ed modules going with not much success. A small group of volunteers were planning a trip down to Santo Domingo de los Tsachilas to spend the easter weekend there as the indigenous group, Tsachila, celebrate their new year that saturday. I was reluctant at first, more or less enjoying quiet Lita especially since both water and electricity are miraculously back.  After a few calls with my fellow volunteers, I decided to tag along on the trip. It turned out to be a brilliant decision as this break from the Lita routine was exactly what I needed to refocus. We were six volunteers to go to the party including two who actually live and work with the Tsachila and sent the invite in the first place. Santo Domingo is an 8 hour bus ride from Lita so two  days were spent on the road, but never being alone made the trip go smoothly.

The Tsachilas are similar to the Awá in the sense that they are also traditionally hunter and gatherers and live in the forest. They speak their own language, Tsafiki, which apparently has common roots with Awapit. Both indigenous groups also suffer from outside invasions and pressures that is hindering their cultural strength and unity. However they have quite different features and customs. The Tsachilas traditionally paint their hair with achiote, a red natural dye, and also paint their body using the fruit from a local tree. The elders still wear their traditional clothes with are colorful skirts both for men and women. As Santo Domingo expanded, now the fourth largest city in Ecuador, it encroached on the Tsachilas ancestral territory and led to massive deforestation of the area. As one of the volunteers woring with them said: “it’s a dying culture”. I feel the same way about the Awá who are turning more and more as mestizo campesinos rather than the forest people they have always been because of the introduction of cattle.

We spent a night in one of the volunteer’s house. It was a traditional Tsachila house made of local wood and hatched roof. I was impressed by the how all the construction around it were all traditionally built without any zinc roofing that is now predominant in Awá territory. The Tsachila also play the marimba just like the Awá and have chamans do curations using medicinal plants. We were supposed to wake up at 4am for a morning bath (before the toad wakes up) and cleansing but the father of the family we were with was not a chaman so it was a regular soap bath which I prefered to dodge for a few more hours of sleep. The family of the other volunteer in Tsachila land has a real chaman which performed a herb purification for the folks who slept there. The next day we headed to the Kasama party, the Tsachila new year.

It was a big field party with a big stage for all the speeches and performances, the food huts serving traditional dishes and bush meat, and the artisan stands. It was a great day and we all had awesome time. The two local volunteers were painted entirely as the tradition mandates. I just asked for a small line on my forearm because I didn’t feel comfortable overdoing it which I kind of regret now. It’s like having a temporary tattoo, it only lasts for about ten days. I ate guanta which they also hunt in Awá land and their mushed dried plantain that I found tasteless, I much prefer the chiro. The main attractions apart from the sexy Tsachila women in their traditional mini-skirts and not-so traditional high-heels was the election of the new queen and an arm-wrestling battle. The elders were also passing along chicha using one glass for the hundereds of people there which I managed to dodge. Only the elders were dressed and painted traditionally and you could see from the crowd that the traditions are being dilluted by the omnipresent mestizo culture. At night we went out and partied a bit in Santo Domingo and I headed back north on sunday with my buddy from Crystal.

This short trip reinvigorated me and I feel much more focued and concentrated on my work. I need to submit the Awá environmental education modules by the end of June so I am feeling the heat. I also have a zillion other small projects scheduled at the same time so I really need to manage my time carefully. The Wildlife Conservation Society is paying for me to go to a 5 day environmental ed workshop in Cuenca at the end of the month and I also have to give a small business workshop to the new PC trainees before that. Next month, the volunteer in el Crystal and I are starting english classes here in Lita, 8 modules of ecotourism english classes. That should be fun. I’m especially excited about doing some real work in Lita because many people see me here without really knowing what I’m up to. The Awá absorb almost all my time.