What I´m Doing and Where I´m Going for Spring Break aka. Semana Santa

So we have a good week and a half break for Semana Santa(Pascua====>Easter)....



I will be flying now out of Quito tomorrow morning to Guayaquil, the most important port city in Ecuador. From there me and 4 friends will be taking a flight at 7pm to Lima,Peru where we will be meeting up with professor Florencio Delgado who is the prof. for Arqueaologia Andina. Chisara and I are not in the class but our other two friends are. Us 4 will be accompanying another 10ish students for the trip.

The flight was only $60 as opposed to a 10hr $10 bus ride. While 50 is a lot because of the heavy and unusual amount of rain that Ecuador has experienced over the past month there have been alot of derrumbes or mudslides that have really damaged the carreteras or highways which are already dangerous because they all traverse the Andes Mountains. We, as a 4 person group, decided our lives were worth an extra $50 bus ride.

We will spend a couple of days in Lima before boarding on a 20hr bus ride from Lima to Cuzco. Cuzco is the colonial town and former capital of the Incan empire before Francisco Pizzarro burned it down and built the Spanish city that stands today. From there we will travel to Aguas Calientes which is the city right below Machu Picchu before going up into the city!



All in all I´ll be gone from the 21 to the 31 of March!



I´ll have a blog to update the Semana Santa trip upon my return.

wish me luck

Teddy



Below is a pic of where I have been in red. Where I will be flying tomorrow in Blue. And in green a colonial city called Cuenca that I plan on travelling to in bus sometime in April.

Mascarilla and Muisne

(Sugar Cane in Mascarilla)

This past week my friend who I traveled with, Chisara, had two friends from back home come visit her for a week and left yesterday, needless to say I did as much traveling in the past week as I´ve done in a month here for them...

They came on Wednesday night and that night we all met up at La Mariscal which as you may remember is the hip place for the youngsters to commute packed with clubs, bars and restaurants. They went to a club, I went home. The next day they came to school with us where many groups at school had stands up, mostly from marketing and business classes trying to sell food, or an oxygen bar, or a slack line(where you basically walk a tightrope).

There was a group that Thursday from the province of Esmeraldas playing and dancing the Carambe. Here are some pictures...

That Saturday Chisara wanted to take Alana and Alex(the friends visiting) to Mascarilla. Mascarilla is a small town in the Valle de Chota north of Quito in the province of Imbabura, the same as Otavalo. So it took 3-4 hours by bus to get to Mascarilla, but we finally made it. It was very arid and dry and the entire Valle de Chota is known for it´s Afro-Ecuadorian population, mostly because of football(soccer) athletes.

The Afro-Ecuadorians in Chota are all descendents of slaves in the region where the major crop is sugar cane as seen in this amazing picture. In Mascarilla the artesanias are involved in a project where they make masks in an attempt to strengthen and represent black choteñan identity through the masks that they make from clay. They work with agencies in Italy and travel there once a year and masks are shipped all over the world. Chisara works there during most weekends through CARE. One of the artists, Betty, showed us around the shop and a video further explaining the importance of their project. She also demonstrated the Bomba which is a dance unique to the Valle de Chota where the women dance with bottles on their heads. It was very amazing and the music was very African, rhythmically.

Betty explained some of the history of the Afro-Choteñans and the sugar canes and this monument dedicated to their ancestors. They want to erect a museum dedicated to them as well but obviously will be pricey. This all exactly what I was looking for in better understanding and connecting the African Diaspora that we discuss so much in African-American Studies. Their agricultural way of life and everything is reminiscent of where my father grew up in Abernant, Alabama. The smell of the town was something that hit me as I could be in rural Abernant where my grandmother raised and killed hogs practically till the day she died in her 70s. It really was remarkable. From there we took two buses to Otavalo for the friends to purchase stuff like we did the first month, of course I again blew way too much money on gifts but it was worth it. Oh and here´s a picture of the 4 masks I bought below

Chisara´s co-worker at CARE, Sophia, took us to the Teleferico which takes us to the top of the mountain Pichincha and also is the highest teleferico(gondala) in the world. Excellent views of Quito and the mountain/volcano. The volcano erupted in 1999 and is still active but no like the other one Turunghaua. Then she took us to Mitad del Mundo. It´s a city dedicated to celebrating the equator and claims to be positioned right on it although it is off by a ways it´s the closest you´ll get and is a popular spot for married couples to get married stattling the equator.

The next day on Sunday we took a bus at 11:45PM! to a beach town in the province of Esmeraldas called Muisne that is about an hr from Atacames the place we went before. However this place did not reak of poo, was not covered in clubs and tourists. It as muy tranquilo. We took a taxi around the beach and stopped at this one house where a guy cut down two pipas from this palm tree where we drank the juice inside and ate the meat around it, very cool. We stayed at a hostal where we were not torn up by bugs and had fun showing alana and alex around all week!!

Political Climate in Ecuador

I don´t know how big of a story it is in the U.S. but the political situation between Colombia and Ecuador right now is at full steam...

As I understand it last Saturday Colombian military forces crossed the Ecuador-Colombian border and killed FARC´s(Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or in spanish...Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) second in command. This event led to the Ecuadorian president, Rafael Correa, to break political ties with Colombia and expell the Colombian ambassador. In a move of solidarity, Venzuela and Nicaragua both did the same. There were demonstrations throughout Quito the past week in support of the Ecuadorian presidents decision and against Colombian-U.S. actions. Here is a good article for understanding less biased facts on the situation:

To read, listen to, or watch the whole story:http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/4/with_us_assistance_colombia_carries_out

Things are a little better now that the Colombian president has apologized but tensions between the two countries are ever present. There are over 150,000 displaced colombians in Ecuador due to the previous civil war and ongoing conflicts between FARC and the Colombian government, adding to ecuadorians discontent. Although I haven´t seen any demonstrations I have seen a huge rise in the amount of grafitti denouncing colombian prez Uribe and Colombia´s ties to the U.S. government.

Other than political news, I´ve been really sick the past week with a self-diagnosed sinus infection. But today I feel much better and just need to keep blowing my nose. Some friends went to Baños, a popular tourist town in direct threat of the active volcano Turunghaua. But I´m in a computer lab doing homework and getting up to the minute updates on the UAB-Memphis game. I have 2 8-page paper proposals due next week and need to figure out what I´m going to do and how i´m going to do it.