Despedida(s)

We left Dos Mangas for good on Thursday, and the days leading up to our departures were full of good-byes. On Sunday we had the comuna wide celebration for the whole family. I planned to give a little talk, show off some artifacts, and had arranged to provide cake. I figured the families of the people I dug with and the close friends that we made over the course of the year would show up. It was scheduled to start at 4pm. 5:30 rolled around and the was nobody there. I was starting to feel a bit concerned, but about then the cabildo showed up, got on the megaphone, and started calling people to the party. Not only did way more people that I expected show up, but different people from the community contributed to make it a real party. One guy played some traditional songs on the guitar, the women's association did a traditional costeno dance and made me get up there with them, there were several other speeches by cabildo members, and then they pitched in and added empanadas and soda to the little feast. We barely had enough cake to go around, but we made it, and it was a great night!

Me, mid-talk

Getting covered in frosting as I cut the cakes

 I finished my analyses on Tuesday (WOOHOO) and on Wednesday morning we moved everything over to the casa comunal for storage. It was great to get all of that out of house so that the packing could begin in earnest.


Wednesday afternoon we went to Baby Girl's daycare to have a going away party for her. It was so great to see her running around with all her little friends. Once again, when we thought we were just going to do cake, the day care surprised us by making a whole meal and inviting us to eat with them. I think BG was starting to get what was going on and got kind of upset towards the end. Poor little thing.

Baby Girl dancing the a conga line with her classmates

On Wednesday night a bunch of people came over for final farewells, and then we took a walk on Thursday morning to see the people that we hadn't been able to say goodbye to before then. It really started to hit me, and I'll admit that I shed a few tears, not so much about leaving the place, but definitely about leaving the people. Friends gave us a bunch the local handicrafts as we walked along to say goodbye to take home with us a souvenirs. 


Amazingly for us, with our history of moves, we managed to get everything packed and the house cleaned up without pulling a single all-nighter, and we even managed to get out of the house and catch our bus at the time that we planned. Steve shot some video as we left town, and I get misty thinking about it, because people kept coming out of their houses to say good-bye as we drove away. What a great end to an incredible year.

Village Life Part 3: A Tale of Two Houses

We’ve lived in two different houses during our stay in the village, and to say that they were the best of times and the worst of times is certainly true, though I’m not sure that one house or another has a monopoly over the good or bad times.

Our first house was arranged before we arrived. I had seen it in 2006 while the owner was putting the finishing touches on it, and it was certainly a step up from my accommodations during that trip (a bed in the story above a shop, with a non-flushing toilet downstairs and outside, and bathing done in a basin). It was a nice open floor plan, with plenty of room for a simple kitchen, a dining area, living room, and study/artifact space. Two bedrooms and an indoor bathroom and with running water (albeit only a cold shower), and to me it was heaven, at least for Ecuador.

Our first place

The house was located on a hill at the back of the village, so fairly private. But literally right off the frame to the left of the picture was another little house, more tradition, where the caretakers of our house, and the owner’s chickens, lived. It was a family of two adults and seven kids, and six dogs. It was never quiet…either the kids were screaming or blaring music during the day (when Baby Girl needed a nap), or the dogs were barking at night (when all of us were trying to sleep). To add to that, one of those seven kids was the one that stole my phone. So yeah, they didn’t really instill any confidence in us as caretakers.

The kitchen and dining area when we first moved in

But the deal breaker, and why we had to find a different house in the end, was the fact that about two days into our stay the refrigerator broke. Two and a half months of asking the owner to get it taken care of (and eating at the restaurant in town because we had no food storage options), with absolutely no attempt to get it fixed, and Baby Girl losing several pounds simply because we couldn’t keep food on hand for her, and we were out of there.

Shortly before we returned to the States for my cousin’s wedding we moved into a new house. This one took a little bit of negotiating, and explaining the realities of being on a grant to people who sometimes just imagine Americans to have endless supplies of money. In some respects it’s smaller than the first house, but it’s oh so much nicer. It’s the vacation home of the brother of the last comuna president, and he lives in the house right next door.

The new place. Love it!

The first floor is split in half, with a living room (our office area), dining room, and kitchen on one side, and the bedroom and bathroom on the other. There’s also a loft which gives us some more storage space and room for people to bunk down for a few days when we have visitors.

View of the kitchen and dining area (with Dennis) from the loft

Arrrrg, walk the plank, matey!

The kitchen is small and kind of basic, and we don’t have our own fridge, but we share one with the former president next door. One of Steve’s favorite things about the house is the catwalk/gangplank that connects the two houses. MY favorite thing about the house, however, is definitely the bathroom. We have a bathtub!!! And hot water from a tank and not one of those wimpy electrical things!!!! It has made bathtime fun for Baby Girl (and us) again, instead of a freakout fest when we have to heat water to the right temp and try to get BG to stay put in a plastic basin while we clean her off.

Pests

Both houses had their fare share of pests. At the first place, the owner had a chicken farm on the property (and right next to the house), and Steve suspects that at least some of his incessant illnesses were caused by them. We also had mice in the kitchen, who would try to get into the few dry goods that we kept around. But for me, the worst pest we had were ants. They would appear out of nowhere and swarm all over things. And it didn’t matter if you kept the place spotless because when it rained they would stream down the walls and into the house, thousands of them. And they bite! We used up several cans of our bug spray killing ants while trying not to get bit by them. <> While we were in that house I had recurrent dreams that somehow swarms of ants were spilling out of the bed despite the mosquito netting (it probably didn’t help that one did manage to get in the bed, and bit me several times on the leg, even after I killed it).

The new house came with bats. My clever husband, however, figured out where the holes in the eaves were, blocked them up, and now we are bat free (no longer the bat cave). We also had mice, but Steve waged a pretty effective campaign against them (aided by some poison) and once again we are vermin free. I think the final body count was 15. Our current battle, and we have the rainy season working against us on this one, is with cockroaches. We got lax in doing dishes, and the house has been continuously occupied for more than a few weeks for the first time ever, and so the cockroaches moved in. I’ve gotten pretty good at smacking them with a shoe, but we’ve also turned to poison to get rid of them. They’re just so wriggly and can get into so many places (excuse me while I shriek like a little girl). They seem to be retreating, and I’ll be glad when they’re gone, though I do get a thrill out of saying “Survive THIS” right before I smack them.

Perspective

We’re pretty much living in the lap of luxury for this area. There are screens in our windows, and even panes of glass. We have interior walls and doors, and even more importantly, an indoor bathroom (with hot water, did I mention we have hot water?). A lot of the houses in the area are basically cinder block squares, with gaps between the outer walls and the roof, and sometimes even missing parts of the walls. People use plastic in gaps and at windows to keep the rain coming in. There is very little privacy, with several beds in a single room, and several people sharing each bed. A lot of kitchens don’t even have plumbing, so doing dishes is a whole other chore.

That said, I can’t wait to get home, where bugs and mice aren’t invading the house, where I have a dishwasher, and an oven, and a microwave. And properly fitted windows that don’t gap. And air conditioning. And a vacuum cleaner. And cable and fast internet. As always, though, I’ll take the memory of this time back with, and be all the more grateful of what I do have for going without.

Village Life Part 2: Animals

People and animals live in pretty close quarters here. I always hesitate on the customs form returning to the States when it asks if I’ve been on a farm. The answer is no, I haven’t, and I have entered any animal enclosures, but you can’t walk down the street without inadvertently stepping in animal feces of one kind of another (which is why we have dedicated indoor shoes).

The most numerous animal in town has got to be cows, which is probably why “moooo” was one of Baby Girl’s first animal noises. Many people have herds that are corralled right in town. There’s one pen just on the other side of our next door neighbors. Most are Brahma-type cows, and they are bred for meat. There are a few male Holsteins in town, but the vegetation in the area is generally not good enough to support milk production. These cows can be kind of aggressive, and it’s always a little daunting when someone’s driving a herd of them down the road at you!

Horses are fewer in number, but still pretty common. There’s something pretty nifty and wild-West about horses galloping through town. On several occasions one of my workers would lend me his horse to get out to the site, but not before I used it to drop Baby Girl off at daycare. Our neighbors have several dozen horses, which they hitch out front of our house, and use for harvesting cane, paja, and wood from the forest.

Pretty much everyone in the village owns chickens. These are not cage-enclosed, grain-fed chicken, these are crillollo chickens. They run around the streets, eat what they find, get served table scraps (including pieces of other chicken – yummy, cannibal chickens!), and are free to reproduce and often have a longer life than caged chickens. Locals claim these birds are more flavorful, and they generally are, but you can also get some really tough suckers that are barely fit for soup!

Cats and dogs are ubiquitous, but are not pets in the traditional sense. Cats are mousers and semi-wild and dogs are used for security and hunting in the montaña. Many families have multiple dogs (like, three to six) and they are largely untrained and unsupervised. Dogs roam the streets (or just sleep in them, making them kind of like the turtle shells in Mario Cart). Some of the dogs are cute and nice and well-behaved, but many of them are mean, flea-bitten, and all but abandoned. It’s really quite sad, seeing very mangy dogs with wounds from fighting with other dogs. The area could really benefit from a neutering program. The animal control plan currently consists of quietly poisoning dogs if they bite children, rather than pet owners taking responsibility for their animals.

So, with all these animals running around, it’s no wonder that BG wants a kitty or a puppy of her very own. I think it will come as a shock to her when we return to the States and there aren’t animals moseying down the road. Steve and I, on the other hand, are kind of looking forward to it (and not having to worry about the quantity of poop on our shoes).

 Next installment: Houses

Village Life Part 1: Dos Mangas

I’ve had some requests for more information about where we’re living, so I’ll try to paint a picture of life here in the village, with some of the more amusing qualities, as well as the annoying ones. A disclaimer at the beginning: we've been here over 9 months now, and have over two months left, so while the picture I paint may be more vivid than it would have been 6 months ago, it's also more tired. We're looking forward to coming home.

Dos Mangas is located in the Santa Elena Province, on the north side of the Manglaralto River Vallye, a seasonal river. The road coming into the village (from the coast) and out of the village (further into the "mountains") both cross the river. When rains are heavy and the river rises (which hasn't happened yet this year) the village is essentially cut off from the rest of the world. Supplies, and the occasional person, have to be ferried across on rafts.

The village has two principal roads running parallel to the river with several side streets connecting them. The town has a daycare, an elementary school, an internet café, and numerous little shops that people run out of their houses, selling sundry and food items. There’s currently one restaurant, and a woman who sells roast chicken skewers on Saturday nights (these are awesome, both because we don’t have to cook those nights, but also because they kind of taste like bacon).


The population in the village is between 900 and 1000 people, with nearly a third of these under the age of 12. Most children do not continue school past sixth or eighth grade. Some families cite the cost of schooling, but others just need the help in the family business. Fourteen to sixteen seems to be the average age at which people get married and start having children. This is apparently a switch from even a generation ago when people were getting married in their twenties. We recently attended a First Communion where one of the kids participating was only a few months away from getting married and becoming a father. People live with their extended families - grandparents, parents, children, and the children's children often under the same roof, or in houses right next door to each other. Because of this it seems that there's always people around to help, whether preparing meals, caring for children, taking care of livestock, etc. It has also been my observation, though, that it's usually the parents, and not the young, newly parented children (did that make sense) who actually care for youngest members of the family. From the experience I had when my phone was stolen by a married 14 year-old girl, it is clear that the families still consider these individuals children, and not the adults that their responsibilities would demand they be.

Dos Mangas is a comuna, which is a legal entity under Ecuadorian law. Among other things, it means that the comuna as a whole is the actual landowner of most of the land adjacent (and not so adjacent) to the village – it leases out the right for people to work the land, often times in un-ending leases that approach private ownership, but the comuna still retains the right to recall the land. Only about half the population of Dos Mangas are comuna members. That means only half pay dues to the comuna, but the benefits that the comuna gains from the government or NGOs generally is shared by the entire community.


The majority of people in the village practice a mixed economic strategy - they farm various crops (corn, tomatoes, watermelon, etc.), they raise cattle and own horses, they harvest goods from the forest that can be sold (paja, cane, lumber), and some family members have wage jobs in the surrounding region. A decent cash income is around $200 a month, and families with children get a small monthly stipend from the government. 


Some people in the village bring in income as guides. Because the communal lands of Dos Mangas include several beautiful natural features, including a waterfall along one river and river pools along another, Dos Mangas has an organized groups of community guides who take tourists on ecological hikes to these areas. The group plans on adding the archaeological site to the tour. This work is seasonal, occurring primarily between January and April. 


Others make a living producing handicrafts that they sell to said tourists. The primary crafts are paja toqilla (woven palm) items - such as handbags, placemats, and baskets - and tagua nut (vegetable ivory) jewelry, keychains, and pipes (often with marijuana leaves on them - Dos Mangas is just a few miles away from Montanita, a town known for surfing and for drugs). Well organized cooperatives exist in the village to gather, prepare, and create these goods. There is a rough gender division, with women weaving the paja toquilla items and men carving the tagua.

One of the women drying paja.

In the forest!

One of the roles that the community has embraced is as protector of the forests. There are limits placed on the number of trees that can be cut down, and the community has teamed up with environmental groups like Fundacion Natura and other comunas in the area to help protect the Colonche Hills. They certainly are beautiful, draped in clouds and filled with animals, including howler monkeys, jaguars, boa constrictors, wild boar and deer (which are both hunted and yummy), and many others. The community seems to take this role very seriously, however they currently have an agreement with the government to mine the river bed adjacent to the village for stones and sand to temper the concrete that they're laying down to re-do the coastal highway. To me, this suggests a certain disconnect between conservation efforts, and perhaps what they are conserving for tourists, versus what they are conserving for themselves.




Next installment: Animals!

New Year's Eve

We were back in the village for New Year’s Eve, and one of the families that have adopted us invited us to celebrate New Year’s Eve with them. The tradition in Ecuador is that each family builds a Viejo, a mannequin that represents the Old Year. Sometime these are personifications of actual people (someone the family has had bad dealings with), but mostly it’s just a general representation of the Old Year. Most are men, but there were also Bart Simpsons and even Sid, from Ice Age. At midnight the families drag their Viejos out into the street and set them on fire, burning away all the bad of the Old Year and bringing good luck in the New Year (at least that’s the hope; one friend remarked to me that they’d needed to burn more than one Viejo to bring them any luck).

Here’s the Viejo of our friends, before and after the burning. This was one of the more elaborate presentations that we saw in the village. Our friend dedicated it to his new son in-law and his first grandchild, which will be born in May.

It was quite a site, seeing spots of fire all up and down the road in the village. There were about two dozen in all, so not every house had one, but generally each extended family prepared a Viejo. The site of the burning bodies was a bit disturbing to us, and Baby Girl had a few restless nights afterwards, but I don’t know if that was connected. Many of the Viejos had little fireworks hidden inside them, and people were setting off bottle rockets. Each time one went off BG would point up into the sky and shout “BOOM”. I think that was the highlight of her night.

Godmother by Accident

I went to a wedding (almost two weeks ago now!) for one of my occasional workers. He and his wife had been legally married by the State for at least ten years (I think), but were being remarried by the Catholic church so that their daughter could take part in First Communion. I showed up at the church for the ceremony as our family representative, and a good thing that I was feeling up to it! Alfredo, my worker, was short his best man/godfather, who, as mayor of Santa Elena Province, was stuck in the capital town meeting with Rafael Correa, the country's president. So I guess one gringa equals an alcalde?

Left to Right: Alfredo, Me, Cecilia, and Otto

The party afterward was a blast, especially since I actually know people now. I actually had fun dancing, even to the cumbia! Otto, the intended godfather, arrived sometime around 1am. I stayed as long as I could (about 2:30am) but had to leave so I could wake up to get the house in order for our guests who were coming the next day.

El Levantamiento de 2009, Part 2

So while we were out of the country more drama ensued (see my previous entry here). The community, with the help of the Ministry of Tourism, had some lovely signs made that were posted at the trail heads to the waterfalls and natural pools that they take tourists to. Well, the resident malos came by with machetes and destroyed the signs. That prompted the community to vote, in the absence of any official decision from the provincial government, to declare Bonnie and Clyde persona non grata within the community. When we got back to Dos Mangas we drove under a banner hung at the entrance to the community saying as much.

Last week the police accompanied B&C to move their stuff out of their houses, but lo an behold, discovered an illegal arsenal which could out gun the local police force, as well as all kinds of black market or smuggled machinery, motorcycles, etc. and that was only what was at two of their three houses, not to mention what could be hidden out on their land. It was big enough news to appear in the main coastal newspaper, El Universo. There’s all kinds of speculation within the community that they were smuggling the guns for FARC, and also that they were drug runners too, what with Montañita being right up the road. I’m just extremely glad that the time I was up there filming with some comuneros that we had a bunch of armed police with us! The two are now under house arrest and facing some serious jail time, which of course won’t be anything new for one of them.

Family Feud!

So, I think I am officially feuding with one of the families here in Dos Mangas. The mother totally ripped us of to prepare food for us, the daughter stole my cell phone, and the grandfather tried to forcibly yank a skull out of the ground where we are excavating (all he managed to do was break it into a zillion pieces, which he left, and then grabbed some teeth).

Seriously, what is it with these people?!?!?! I would be so happy if I never had to deal with any of them again, but in a village of 1000 people related in all kinds of ways, that's not too likely. But if anyone else from this same family tries to pull any more stuff like this I'm going to completely flip out on them!

The Mound, a flood, and the Levantamiento (not necessarily in that order)

So, I’m realizing to my horror that it’s been nearly a month since I’ve updated the blog. A lot has been happening, not the least of which was Baby Girl baptizing my computer with a cup of tea. Between taking it apart to mop up the tea and let everything dry, and then waiting until I could get to Libertad to buy a new keyboard (the one casualty of the whole affair) I lost nearly two weeks of computer usage. But, we’re up and running again, so all is well in the world.

The community has been embroiled in a fairly interesting and lengthy political demonstration for the last few weeks to assert their control of community lands and access to different resources on community property. This has mainly consisted of blocking the main road going in and out of town, and setting up a 24 hour guard to monitor the traffic going in and out of town. It all started when someone who leases community lands decided that they’d go and fence off the road that the community uses to take tourists to some very pretty cascading pools of water, effectively declaring both that portion of the road and the pools to be private property. These same leasees also waved guns at community members as they went along this road, for trespassing on their “property”. The community set up the blockade to prevent these people from moving freely to and from the land that they are leasing.

As you might imagine, the police and local and provincial governments got involved in this dispute, which still does not have a resolution. The leasees claim that the community is trying to kick them off the land (and there is some claim on their part that they bought this land, though that is impossible because the whole territory belongs to the community), while the community contends that the leasees are trying to develop tourism privately and thus deprive the community of an important source of revenue. You might be able to guess where my sympathies lie. I got invited along by community members on one of the inspections by the provincial government because I could record video with my camera. The rhetoric each side was using was really interesting – “cultural patrimony” versus “my property” – and it was also pretty clear that the Inspector (the third one to check out the situation) was fairly well in the pocket of the leasees. There is certainly a lot at stake in the outcome of this dispute; not only the livelihood of community members but their physical safety as well. In the course of the dispute it was revealed that one of the leasees was released from jail just a few years ago after serving 13 years for robbery and double homicide. And most of the problems started after he arrived on the scene.

Last weekend Steve and I became godparents to a newly married couple in the village. It’s not the same as becoming godparents to an infant – more like a cross between being godparents and the best man/matron of honor – which made it all the odder that we didn’t really know these people that well. It was one of those things, though, where I felt like I couldn’t say no, like the act of asking obligated us. Steve was still sick, so put in a brief appearance with Baby Girl and then took her home to sleep. I on the other hand had to stay and drink until the wee hours of the morning, and even then I chickened out and headed home around 3. I just don’t have the stamina for it like I used to.

On Thursday we closed up excavations at the mound. I was actually quite disappointed in how things turned out. The mound appears to be a natural hill that was modified to have a platform on top. The surface is covered in artifacts, but we found virtually no sub-surface features. I was particularly keen to find a structure on the top of the mound, but alas, no joy. There was also very little evidence for use of the flat space around the mound. We did test pits every 5m to recover evidence of different use areas or house floors, but got very little for our efforts. It’s definitely made me question my interpretation a bit more, but I don’t have any new answers.

I feel like the community might be getting a bit disappointed, because they want me to find things that they can use to start a museum, but so far it’s just been the usual ceramic fragments (though my friend Alex reminded me that the spindle whorls, copper bell, and copper tweezers that we found up at the cistern are pretty good by coastal Ecuador standards). Hopefully they have patience with me, and all of our hard work will turn up something interesting and also let us tell the story of life at Dos Mangas back in the day.

The house situation is still at a standstill. We found another place in the community that is REALLY nice, even by general North American standards (hot water and a bathtub – HEAVEN!) but we just can’t afford what the owner wants for monthly rent (like, twice as much(. Right now it’s a bit of a poker game…do we come up a bit, spending money out of savings, and hope that he realizes that he can either rent to us at a lower price and make some money or have an empty house and make no money. We’ll keep you all up to date as thing progress.

Hmmmmm

This post is a little less up beat than the ones in the past have been. The good news is that we made it to Dos Mangas safe and sound. The bad news was that Baby Girl either ate something that didn´t agree with her or got car sick and spewed all over the both of us halfway into the bus ride here. I had no idea her stomach could hold that much! It definitely ranks up there among one of the least pleasant experiences of motherhood, which maybe just means I´ve been very lucky so far.

The house here is really nice, and situated on a large parcel of land planted with tons of fruit trees. There are bunches of different birds that fly from tree to tree, and it´s really nice to sit out in the hammock and watch them all. Inside, the house is probably more spacious than our grad student apartment was, but it´s very empty. I wasn´t anticipating having to buy dishes or pillows or things like that, and I´m finding it a little frustruating that we not only have to put a lot of money into temporary accomodations, but also that I´m having to spend time on it instead of doing archaeology. I really shouldn´t complain though, because the setting is beautiful, we have people cooking dinner for us and keeping the place clean, and even helping to look after Baby Girl. I guess I just had kind of high expectations, and am trying to bring those back down to earth. I´ll post pics soon, both of the house itself and of our nocturnal housemate (....).

This evening I´ll speak with the town council to receive permission from them to do the archaeological project. Apparently one of the reasons why there´s never been any archaeology conducted here is because the town council has always blocked it in the past. It sounds like that´s due to the fact that people wanted to take the artifacts out of the village, and since with my project everything will stay here, hopefully there won´t be any issues. The town also seems very keen on building a site museum, and since my work would generate the objects for it, I´m hoping they will tolerate me (hopefully do more than that, I´d really like the community to be partners in this.

We won´t start excavations until after we´ve received permission from the community, but we´ll start detailed mapping of different areas of the site tomorrow (Monday). It´ll be pretty old school, but it should do the job. I´m really looking forward to getting to work!

Destination Dos Mangas

The field site is located on that lands of the Comuna of Dos Mangas, located in a river valley in Guayas Province. The elevation is low, and the vegetation is lush. Fresh seafood, fruits and veggies every day...Heaven!

The Comuna has about 1000 residents who farm, raise animals, make tourist handicrafts, or work in the larger towns nearby. The Comuna gets a steady stream of eco-tourists and are looking to expand their tourism offerings.

The site dates to the Manteno phase (AD 800-1532). They were contemporaries of the Inca but maintained their autonomy even while neighboring regions were conquered. There are other remains, visible in eroded areas, that testify to human habitation of the valley since the Valdivia phase (3500-1400 BC).

The site is located within a frontier region between two Manteno political/ethnic groups. I won't bore you with the details, but the project will look at political organization and social identity in the ancient community at the site, and the ways in which the people there negotiated their participation in either or both political/ethnic groups.