A combination of downtime and some sort of food sickness has forced me to relax for a couple days, and given me some time to do some updating. I gotta say, I’d rather you all stay uninformed and be running around with my head cut off than have whatever has situated itself in my stomach, but such is life.
My time in La Calera is officially done. I’m going to go back to visit my host family and my students when my mom comes to visit, but other than that, I’m moving on.
I feel as though now that I am no longer living in the community, I can divulge a few details that I kept suppressed to keep the worrying of friends and family to a minimum. After arriving in the village, I found out that it has been labeled a “Red Zone” by the government due to gang activity, sexual assault, robbery, etc. The people who live in the village claim that it is a perfectly safe place, and that the only reason this label exists is because whenever something bad happens in any Indigenous village around the area, La Calera is always blamed. I wasn’t quite sure what to think about this statement. Granted, there are far worse-off villages in the area, but after hearing about the danger from numerous people, I started to feel a little bit concerned that the lock on my door was the push kind that people put on bathrooms, and that just about every male in the community had seen where I lived and slept. My unease increased a little more when a taxi driver was decapitated in one of the nearby villages simply for the money he had. I hate to admit it, but I definitely got a little more paranoid every time that I heard noises in the night. However, this being said, I must also relate that outside a few cat calls here and there (which I receive on a daily basis due to the nature of my hair color no matter where I am in this country), I never ran into any problems whatsoever with the people of La Calera. They were nothing but friendly and helpful, and appreciative of my presence. So who knows, maybe all the bad stuff does happen elsewhere, and the people of Calera are forced to take the brunt of it.
So, now I’m back in Cotacachi at the apartment for a few days trying to sort out my plans and my stomach. It’s a little bit like a just stepped back into the U.S. A part of me misses my way of life in La Calera, but another part of me really enjoys being able to walk down the street without fearing that an angry dog is going to attack (an everyday issue in the village for me). You win some, you lose some I suppose.
A few pictures of my last days:
Alison and her birthday cake.
Making banana bread for the fam.
The kids at Alison´s third birthday party.
Quinoa drying
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