A Human Experence

These pictures represent some of my experences in Zumbagwa! There will be more to come.
This place is a place like no other. I had every experence immaginable here. It is forever with me in all its beauty and blood.

In the Mountains

Life on a hill

People

People


Boys



Negra Mask


Cat Mask


Cat Mask 2


Girl


Red


Ivan



Sax

Mom and Daughter

I awoke, thirty minutes later we were driving and an hour and a half later the fog layer was a thousand feet below our little capsule on wings. Six hours later the sweet sound of rubber hitting pavement put us in Miami at 7:30pm. For security purposes my subconscious seemed to be on a sabotage mission and we, all of us over here, lost the tickets that were to get us from there to here so my first priority was to deal with my ticket to Quito. After being on the phone for five hours the situation finally sunk in and the solution became astoundingly clear, I bought another ticket. Done. Time to go sleep. Somewhat frustrated with myself I sat my butt down next to a Brazilin woman and an Ecuadorian girl who earlier I noticed had a vibe that felt light and easy. Immediately conversation erupted from Nadia, the Ecuadorian girl, and my frustration fell to the floor and was swept away by the Cuban man pushing his broom. As 2:30am approached Janice, the Brazilian woman, having had a very black cup of coffee, decided sleep was not an option, it was time to Samba. For the next 90 minutes we lost our realities into the soulful steps of Brazilian dance. As it does in the most beautiful moments in life, time stopped and the airport magically transformed into Rio - only the Cubin man pushing his mop knew where we really were.
Samba is like that.
When the second hand started ticking again the life of trees ten thousand year old was allowing metal to defy gravity in a way that always makes me scratch my head. I was able to get a brief look out the window at Florida far below before the 24hours of sleepless travel hit me. I sleep my way over Cuba and Columbia and woke to the thud of the ground hitting our 747. Gladdened to feel the ground directly beneath me, I was half awake and half asleep, half relieved and half anxious,
half there and half here,
I had arrived.

Tumbaco
Ivan’s face among the fast pace un-understandable voices allowed me to breathe out. He haggled us a cab and we were on our way. Tearing threw the streets I was trying to grasp the reality in which I had entered, one where cars don’t stop for people and horns are an extension of a voice saying “watch out”, busses spew black death and at stop lights men painted silver, head to toe, ask you for money.
I questioned my sanity.
We went threw Quito and the fast food filled Cumbaya finding our way to tranquil Tumbaco where a la direcha y a la izquierda and we were at Ivan’s/our apartment. A living room, three bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, five avocado trees, six lemon, three cherimoyas and a white wall to surround it all - $150 a month.
Home.
Sweaty, exhausted, and overwhelmed, my body, following the space my mind had been in for the last 3 hours, crashed on Ivan’s bed for the afternoon.
Tumbaco is a suburb of Quito that sits in a valley about 15 miles to the east. The temperate climate and mild humidity has the feel of San Diego on a warn spring day. The side streets are mostly dirt - the paving that has occurred has happened on election years and sometimes never got finished. A two minute walk down the street is a vegetable stand and a market that has most anything one truly needs – eggs, crackers, soap, shampoo, chiflas (banana chips that I’m already hooked on) and all the rest of the unneeded stuff that everyone in every country buys - packed into an 8x8 space. Close by there is a pool hall with four tables packed into the corrugated metal covered, hog wire enclosed, front porch of a con-block house and an owner who habitually stares at the players. On the corner is an internet cafe and my connection to you all. I can already tell I am going to fall in love with that place.

On the Road
Sunday we pack our daypacks for a week’s mission, locked the door behind us and vamos a Puhili, el sur de Quito. The bus system here is dependable and extensive, leaving only the most remote places inaccessible (primarily because those places, in general, are only accessible by foot). We took the bus to Quito, the trolley to the southern (el sur) end of Quito, another bus to Latacunga and a final bus to Puhili; an overall trip time of four hours and a cost of $1.60. The buses are an experience all of their own; covered in auburn lace, dangly balls and pictures and statues of Mother Mary, Jesus, and el Nino (a huge thing here). Spanish and American 80’s music blasts over blown out speakers while the sheep that get tied on the roof bleet into the wind blowing threw their pelt. Driving here makes the aggressive driving of San Francisco look like the back roads of Bakersfield. Cars pass in plane sight of on coming traffic, nonchalantly waiting until the last second to slide back to the right and pedestrians lazily stroll across the street, possibly pausing on a striped line for a group of cars to pass before mozzing to the other side; it is as if everyone knows and completely trusts the driving habits of everyone on the road - as if they have danced together before.
In Puhili we found a room (if one could actually call it that) for $5 for the both of us. Leaving our things there we headed out to see what we could see. The market was happening and people moved about buying hunks of meat that hang from hooks in long rows and gathering their weekly veggies from piles on the ground. Staring at us, a couple of whighties walking threw, it felt as if they were wondering if we came to take their children away or buy their souls. Either way they wanted our money. This feeling persisted for fifteen minuets or so until I went within, shifting my perception, instantly beautifully chiseled faces and innocent children appeared from behind the layers of my projections and I felt my center return and I remembered how ugly or beautiful it can be to create our reality.
At this area in the Andes they have somewhat of a central valley running down the center of them where the big cities – Quito, Ambato, Latacunga and others – are slowly sprawling into the large agricultural areas that fill the space between them. On either side of them the Andes rise up 10,000 to 15,000 ft. where little towns are nestled in valleys or perched on the sides of heavily worked slopes – Salusaca, Zimbagwa, Banos and so many others. The town of Puhili is at the base of the east side of the western rise of the Andes. It’s an older town of somewhat lower middle class and lower class people combined - these descriptions of classes really have no reference to what they refer to in the US for there is a large gap between the lower middle class and the upper middle class and overall and more accurately it feels as though there is only a lower class and an upper class. The town plaza, with its large pathways that lead from the corners to a 10 ft. cement fountain in the center, has semi-maintained open grass areas and trees with large canopies that create an inviting area for a picnic or for a mid day siesta to escape the relentless sun. A cobble stone walk connects the park with a church that, with two formal bell towers and a large arching body leading to a golden dome, is built of impressively large and raw stone blocks. A sterol government building and clean store fronts fill the three other surrounding blocks. Inside the church there are many large owl coves, each dedicated to an eloquently carved 8 ft. tall wooden statue of a saint of whom I would have a hard time naming but felt had very attractive energy. A long, echoing, arched hall reaches far to a domed ceiling that forcefully spans above a raised platform that is decorated in statues and elaborately carved wooden tables and stone structures. Colorful bouquets filled the empty spaces changing gray, black and brown to yellow, orange and red. Patrons kneeled and prayed with devotional faith so deep it saturated the thick stone and, in my eyes, lifted the veil of delusion, showing the core of all devotion, love. The energy of the space, and of most churches here, has a lot of different feelings. I still have a hard time letting go of my judgments around Christianity and within that these spaces have a stagnant feeling of oppression but when I recognize that for what it is, a judgment, the spaces open to another level where they feel safe and devotional...sacred.
Our room had two beds but under the mattress of the smaller one a 2x4 was going across it so we found ourselves sharing the less uncomfortable of the two. Ivan doesn’t snore but I guess I do. The bed might as well have been filled with hay as it was lumpy and thin and, although it was temporary, I was glad when the rooster on the roof crowed as I thought it was morning. As I got up and found my clock I was bummed to see it read 1AM. The rooster continued to crow for the next fifteen minuets and every hour and a half after that he seemed to want to let us know that, yes, we really were sleeping. By 5:30 I decided the little bugger was breakfast, but fortunately for him my dreams were the only place I could find a knife.
We got up at 6 and headed up into the mountains a ways to a hacienda where a Nino (a small doll that represents baby Jesus) is kept. It is said, as it is said about a lot of Nino’s, that it was found in a haystack on the property about 200 years ago. Kept in a small 10x 8 building dedicated solely to it, the Nino lives his days on a satin cushion with a velvet pillow in a small locked glass box. The walls of the room are filled with layers of hope in the form of very serious portraits of every size and plaques for the Nino - from soccer teams to army platoons – hang next to bouquet after bouquet of fresh flowers. As we entered the room a man was weeping as he prayed to the Nino, blessing himself by tenderly squeezing his hand between the iron bars that protect the Nino’s space to touch the glass case. As he did so he made all the pictures on the walls bow their heads and his tears of devotion flooded the floor and poured out the door behind him as he walked into the sunlight.
With the thunderous clap of a bottle rocket the candy colored children from the local school filed into the courtyard of the hacienda to parade the Nino back down threw town for a mass. Proud parents surrounded the short crowd shooting pictures and video to later remind the kids of how fun it all was; a modern way of passing on traditions. The Nino, lying stiffly in its glass case, requested song and shade both of which were provided by his devotees who, carrying a gaudy red umbrella, sang as they carried him. As we walked the music of a band and three singers, passing in and out like the evening sunlight in a redwood forest, brought a blurty and yet, somewhat mournful sound to the now orderly chaotic march. Perched on stout little horses kids dressed as the Mamma Negara, El Caption, King Moor and an angle rode in the parade holding the space for symbolism that I have to yet completely understand. The Mamma Negara, who on the most basic level symbolizes the slaves brought here by the Spaniards (El Capitan?), flailed, in one hand, a baby bottle filled with milk sending it spurting over the heads of all who’s direction she venture towards, and from her other hand she poured box wine into tiny paper cups for the delight of onlookers. Although the kids weren’t drinking, one could project that the seed of habit was being planted only to latter be watered by the strain of poverty and modern tradition, for in this age of modernism alcohol seems to be king and poverty seems to be ramped. We slipped conspicuously in and out of the people as they flowed towards town and, feeling like an ocean fish in a fresh water stream, I marveled at the beautiful, soulful celebration of community, color, faith and tradition that is silently missing from the USA. In that moment it hit me that we were gringos swimming within a fiesta of Latin proportions.
Humbled and exhausted we headed back to Latacunga to find a pair of sleepable beds and prepare for the next stage of the mission – first to Salasacca and than to Zumbagwa.
Salasacca is a small town on the way to the heavily visited Banos. Our interest there is the upcoming festival(Feb. 7th) of Carnival, a celebration of excess before deprivation(lent), it is also a celebration of birth and life, and the indigenous believe there is a man, Carnival, who comes down from the volcano to collect food that is left out by the people in return for good luck with crops. If food is not left out for him crops will fail and food will be scarce. The bus slowed just enough for us to jump off and than, in a hurry to wait, sped off to its next destination. In these small towns, with their lack of a major cross street or a large group of buildings, stepping off the bus onto the side of the road always bewilders my western mind with its search for descriptions and definitions and it feels like one has stopped on the side of a freeway in the middle of a long straightaway where a few houses and trees are sparsely scattered among agricultural fields. Two large volcanoes, Chimborazo, with his brad snow capped peak and Tungurahua with her extreme cone shape and smoking peak, forcefully sit in the near distance creating their vision of the land like a king and a queen ruling from their throne; humbling, for lack of a better word. In search of information and general beauty we walked into a store selling Ecuadorian art, as with the whole country, textiles filled most of the space. The owner, a heavy little indigenous woman, showed us some ponchos while Ivan picked her brain for information which she gladly divulged. With a few more pages of his notebook filled we headed to a local office where we were told we might find more details on the upcoming festivals. Passing the office, for it was closed for a midday siesta, a man a little older than us, named Carlos, stopped with us for an exchange of conversation and soon we were meeting his mom, cousin, nieces, parrot, chickens and monkey. He told us of the local customs and traditions, about flutes and farming and explained the differences between different fabrics and different weaves, he shared his afternoon with us and allowed us a glimpse into his reality, one that looks simple but feels to have complexities that I may never know. His eyes were bright and his intentions felt clear and warm; I look forward to seeing him again.
Evening was approaching and the haze that had hung over the mountains was clearing when we left Carlos and his beautiful family, heading off to find the preostes (the man and family that sponsors the fiesta and its party) house. Following the sound of guitar music and some basic directions, we found our way to the front door of a simple home where a couple of teenage boys poked their heads out of a window. They didn’t seem to have much information and told us to return when their father, the preoste, came home from work. Turning to go, another door opened and a sleepy young woman with her baby came out to see who we were and to question our motives. Ivan soon had her deep into the details of the fiesta and a since of pride exuded from her as she spoke of what was in the works for the big day. Families save for years to be the sponsor, or preoste, and center, of a fiesta, profound amounts of honor and pride are associated with this role in community and it is long remembered. Narciza, handing her baby to her brother, offered to take us to the oven where they are going to bake a lot of bread (we couldn’t seem to get the exact amount but it was in the kilos and she seemed to be expressing that it was a lot). The clay oven was very large and looked as though it took skill to run; complexity within simplicity. She than offered to take us to the local cemetery, a sacred site, where the whole fiesta and a hundred horses are going to congregate to give thanks to the rulers of the land. We ended up at an 8 ft. tall cross on the side of a road outside the white wall of a half tightly packed and half empty cemetery. Narciza told us of the way her people pass, or don’t pass, into the after world when they die. Although things get lost in translation I believe it works something like this: At this spot, where we were with the cross, a person, after they die, meets a man who has, what must be a very large book with all the names of the people who are dead and who are going to die. He searches threw the book to see if your name appears, if it does you pass this point and go up to Tungurahua, the smoking volcano, where you rejoin all your loved ones, family and community that have died and had made it into the book. If your name is not in the book you stay in this realm and walk as a trapped spirit among the graveyuard (my interpretation). Narciza expressed her dislike of the cemetery but not, as I originally assumed, because she is scared of death but because of her fear of the spirits that linger there. We talked and she told us of her travels to the US and Germany, a rare thing for an indigenous girl in a small town in the Andes, and of her baby and the loss of his dad and of her passion for Ecuadorian folk music; we were sad and joyous as we walked the dirt back streets dodging tractors and trapped spirits into the evenings darkness. Exhaustion, once again, set in as the bus slowed to a fast roll for us to jump on; The bus – a moment of reflection and anticipation moving us from one experience to another – a time warp within a time warp.Zumbagwa was our next destination. We awoke packed our bags, wished the care taker a good day and headed to the bus station.

A moment, a second, a minute, day, week, month and here we are at the end and, as all endings are, at the beginning of a point in a thousand points, a point we refer to as a year. So much and yet, so little happens in one year - beauty, destruction, joy, sorrow, black, white, gray of every shade, fear and love – the significance of which can, like the flip of a switch, turn in a tiny little moment. We live and we die, we open doors and close them and we place one foot in front of the other on our path to our self.
So much love have I opened to in this span of moments and so much love have I been blessed to receive and in turn give. So much of what was always there have I opened to and so much of what is always there have I received. So blessed, so many blessings, so grateful, so much gratitude, so much abundance and so much love, love, love.
Words are inadequate to express the gratitude I feel in me for the beauty I see in you.
And, as it always and forever will, a deep, wide, steady river of love flows for you from me.
May every moment of this, and every year, be all that you desire it to be.

Jonah

Three
The true self or soul, from which our unconditional love flows for all that is and is not. The mind or ego, who hears the true self and wills our desire into manifestation and the physical creator or body who uses will to manifests our physical experience; thus, individually, as the whole, knowing and experiencing the omnipresent love that we are, from which we manifested, from which we create...from which we never left.



The ones, who hear their truth, think their truth and live their truth. The ones, who step forward, accept the responsibility of their power and awaken. The ones, who fight riotously and give unconditionally. The ones who fearlessly peel away the layers to, once again, find their way home, anew. The ones who see love, honor love and live love.
These are the ones whom have my heart and whom my heart desires to walk with. All else is but the path to them – the path to us.