Author Archives: judyblankenship

Another Year in Cañar

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Dear Friends: The truth is I rarely think about our life in Cañar while we’re in Portland. Then, as we get closer to leaving, I’m preoccupied with renting the house, remembering and organizing what we’re to bring (two 8″ chimney brushes; exhibit materials for the Costa Rica trip, airpods for Paiwa), and preparing for travel. (At least no Covid restrictions this time.) On December 1 we’re off, with excess baggage ($168), four busy airports (bad food $$$), and three cramped flights (no food). Twenty-four hours later we land in Guayaquil, where the temperature is 82 F. We check into our usual silly Wyndham Garden hotel with endless Christmas carols in the lobby, two big beds, hot showers, cold beers. Ahhhhh. Sheer luxury to relax with nothing to do but relax after the past busy weeks.

Tulio, the man at the hotel who helped us with our bags, turns out to drive a taxi on off-hours, so even before we’ve settled into our room we’ve arranged a ride to Cañar the next day. He’ll take us after he finishes his shift at 3:00. We have a late lunch called a Tex-Mex bowl in the hotel’s dreary dining room, long rests with skipped dinner, and good sleeps. Next day for lunch we try the Magnolia Room on the 8th floor. World Cup games blasting everywhere, of course; I was briefly hopeful for Costa Rica. Terrible lunch, but I hardly noticed so distracted was I by the view outside and the decor inside. As long as Michael has a beer and his KenKen puzzles (printed out in Portland), he notices nothing but the tasteless fried seafood. The next day, with Tulio in his taxi, we take a familiar route out of chaotic Guayaquil, across the long coastal plain through the scrappy towns of Troncal and El Triumfo, with mile after mile of fruit stands on the side of the road. “Mango season,” Tulio says tersely. I’m grateful he’s a driver who doesn’t chatter; I like to read, Michael does his puzzles. Suddenly the road climbs and we begin the long ascent into the mountains. Distant clouds obscure the view, then clear to a blue sky, then lower to the ground for 50 feet visibility. Then repeat. We climb to up over 12,000 feet into the sierra of the Andes. As we reach the highest point, I avert my eyes from the bright red “love motel” that some idiot built here a couple of years ago, the sole eyesore in this magnificent landscape (also the turn off to Sangay National Park.) Past that, approaching four hours, I watch for signs of the inter-Andean valley where our town lies (big red dot on the map). Although the map barely captures what I’m describing, you can see the lighter areas where the Andes bifucate to create highland valleys. As we descend, I shoot a bunch of photos from the car on my phone. And there it is – the neighboring town of Tambo, looking celestial in the afternoon light. Only now do I start thinking  about our life in Cañar – how will we find the house and garden?  Will I remember people’s names? How are the scholarship women doing? I dig out my keys for the gate as we pull onto our road. We unload the bags, invite Tulio in for a beer (declined; he’s going straight back to Guayaquil), but we show him around the house. It’s dark from the closed shutters, furniture is covered with sheets, with a thick coating of dust everywhere, but otherwise pretty much as we left it six months ago. It’s too late for a fire, so Michael puts together a quick dinner with the groceries he bought in Guayaquil while I find a lamp, tablecloth and napkins to set us up in my office. Not only do we have a first dinner “in style” but the Internet is working so we watch the new Netflix film, Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Talk about culture shock!  The next day we open the shutters and take stock. The layer of thick dust everywhere comes from constant traffic these past eight months on our dirt road due to a  construction/sewer detour that brings everything from buses to cattle trucks by our house. In the patio, we find two little fuzzballs hidden deep in the macho aloe. We see nests nearly every year, but this is the first time we’ve seen nestlings. In the following days we hear them chirping, and get occasionally sightings of them and their mother as she flies in under the roof to feed them. Then one day they are gone, flown away. For my birding friend, Annie Tucker: these are rufous-collared sparrows, (Zonotrichia capensis). “Widespread, common and familiar in shrubby and grassy areas throughout highlands, often around houses. Distinctive, with rufous collar, puffy-crested look. Streaky juveniles are often seen.” (The Birds of Ecuador Field Guide.)

Next day is Sunday, market day, and Michael has a yen for hornado or roasted pig. We trudge into town, stopping to catch our breath along the way, and greet acquaintances in the streets. “How do we know them?” we murmur to one another as we walk on. “What is his/her name?” But many know Michael by name – “Miquito” the taxi drivers yell as they drive by. And in the market, the pineapple man from the coast greets him with Señor Miko and the perfect fruit to eat today.

In the days that follow, we each make forays into town for groceries and supplies and to check out the state of this place, where dogs run free (I counted seven in front of our house one day)… 

Road/sewer construction never stops, which to go into town means running a guantlet of open sewer access inlets, fresh concrete (with dog prints), fresh asphalt (black footprints), and entire streets shut off with hoardings.

But that’s all part of life in Cañar, this homely town working to bring itself into the 21th century with potable water and sewer systems, paved roads (not ours), rabies vaccines for dogs, pink Himalayan salt found in our tiny MegaMarket (!), and nice people everywhere. We are happy to be back.

Cañar Book Club

Oh, how I’ve missed the Cañar Book Club, and I’m so depending on you, dear readers, to bring me out of my literary doldrums. I’m overwhelmed by all the “best of 2022 books” flooding my in-box, and although I’ve put several on hold in my library, when they come I’ll probably have no memory of why I got interested. I will mention one book I read in transit: The Wall, by Marlen Haushofer, and again, no memory why I choose this book. Published in 1963 it was recently reissued, so I might have read this review. But I was fascinated by the story of a women who finds herself cut off from the rest of humanity by a transparent wall, and has to create new skills to survive, accompanied by a dog, cow and cat. For some reason, I really enjoyed the repetitive mundane details of her life.

As for the books I’ve brought, it was a mixed bag (so to speak) of a couple of books I’d ordered (About Grace, Anthony Doerr, Butcher’s Crossing, John Williams), some taken from my shelves (Greene, Bryson, McPhee, Kidder), two that I’ve published this year (Ana Magarita’s story, Tell Mother I’m in Paradise), and another in Norwegian by my good friend Liv that I’ll be editing in the English edition (more on that next time). A paltry pile, so I’m depending on Kindle books from my Portland library to keep me happy these six months. And I’d also love to hear your recommendations for the next Cañar Book Club meeting in the new year, January 2023.

Until then, please stay in touch. I love hearing from you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2022 Cañari Women’s Education Foundation Update

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Dear Friends:

I never tire of seeing the faces of our graduates, and I thought you also would enjoy being reminded of (some) of the results of your generosity.  Thank you!

I wish I were writing this letter from Cañar–we don’t leave until December 1–so I could describe what the “new normal” looks like. This fall our scholarship women returned to in-person classes after two years at home, struggling to carry on with their courses despite unstable Internet, cranky cell phones, and isolation from fellow students. Still, they did well. In 2022 we had three new graduates, bringing our number to twenty-eight, along with four graduates with master’s degrees, one in a PhD program in Mexico, and our first potential Fulbright scholar for a master’s in the U.S.

 Our latest graduates are (l-r) Paiwa Acero (2021, civil engineering); Sarita Duy (2022, economics), and Nube Sumba (2022, economics).

As for our new scholarship women, I want to tell a story related to Nube (above, right). She showed up at our house with her mother about five years ago, coming from a poor farming region more than an hour from Cañar. Nube was timid and hardly spoke. With a gift of fresh cheese, her mother explained that although illiterate, she was determined that her two daughters get educated beyond high school. We did give Nube a scholarship, and on the first day of every month – when the scholarship is paid in cash – her mother showed up at our house with fresh cheese or eggs. Meanwhile, Nube charged straight through university in Riobamba, with excellent grades, to graduate this year with a degree in economics. Her sister is now studying at the same university (but without our scholarship, as we award only one per family). Still, that’s multiplication! And Nube’s mother has achieved her goal of having two daughters educated as professionals. On their last visit, Nube and her mother brought their neighbors, Kuya Killa and her mother, who is sole support of her four children, one with a serious medical condition. Kuya (who also barely spoke) graduated high school three years ago and passed the university entrance exam with high marks, but the family could not afford to send her to university. After our talk, with her mother’s encouragement, Kuya completed all the paperwork to renew her test scores and was accepted by the university in Riobamba. She is now enrolled in our program, and in the next five years I look forward to watching Kuya bloom, as did Nube, into a confident young woman. These two young women would never have known even the possibility of a university education without word of mouth of our graduates and friends, and without your support. Thank you!

A few updates on our graduates.

Dr. Luisa Duchi reports that she is now clinic director in the community of Huayrapungo, where 90% of her patients are Quichua-only speakers. This community, site of an old hacienda about an hour from Cañar, is famous for not allowing visitors into their territory. Michael and I ventured walking there once, and quickly left. Luisa is our first physician, but we have another one close to graduation at University of Cuenca.

Carmen Loja (far left), (economics, 2011) has made a success of her a community-based tourism program, Kinti Wasi, in her village of MilMil. Along with her cousin and another partner, Carmen hosts high school and gap-year groups to learn the Andean worldview in “agroecology, gastronomy, architecture, ancestral medicine and spirituality”. And I see by the website that Kinti Wasi is an Amigos de las Americas partner for 2022. Congratulations Carmen!  (She also welcomes individuals and small groups if any of you are contemplating a trip to Ecuador.)

Pacha Pichisaca, our only ondontóloga graduate so far, has expanded her dental practice, on the main shopping street in Cañar, by adding a second chair. She was one of our early graduates, and with CWEF support she continued with specialist courses in oral surgery and orthodontics. Each time I walk by, I glance up at her windows. After giving up on my dentist in Portland, I’m getting up my nerve to make an appointment with Pacha.

Finally, a dispatch from our first PhD graduate, Juana Chuma, who is at UNAM in Mexico, where she did her master’s (with help from CWEF). Earlier this year, she did a residency at University of Georgia, where she writes that her biggest challenge was understanding the southern English. She’s now back in Mexico working on her thesis, “optimizing the genetic selection of milk producing bovines in Chile,” (where she did a previous internship).

As you know, our foundation is managed in Portland, Oregon with a treasured treasurer, Charlotte Rubin, who takes care of contributions and banking. In Cañar, we are a busy committee who meets a few times a year to monitor the scholarship women’s progress, review new applications, and manage finances. But this year we had an additional agenda item: to complete our application for NGO status in Ecuador. This has been a multi-year project with lost documents, a change of presidents, a new ministry handling our application, and more. After a couple of marathon meetings in 2022, with the help of our lawyer in Cañar (Mercedes, far right, one of our first graduates) and our “man in Quito”– Segundo, husband of another first graduate (Alexandra, 3rd from right), we have shepherded our application through the byzantine process of becoming a legal non-profit foundation in Ecuador.

Here we are after a 5-hour meeting in May. The main benefit of our new status will be that it clears the way for Michael and I to leave our house and property to the program for an endowment. We made a proper will in Cañar years ago, which required six witnesses, several days, a lawyer, accountant, and $500. But no transfer of property for the benefit of an organization can be done without a government NGO designation. Flash: Today, I talked to lawyer Mercedes Guamán (far right) and she said she’d just received the final certification from the government.  Hurrah!

To conclude: Cañari Women’s Education Foundation (CWEF) is an official 501(c) 3 nonprofit, which means your contributions are tax deductible, and every dollar goes directly to the women. Here you can donate through PayPal by using the DONATE button below. Many thanks for your continuing support and please stay in touch.  I love hearing from you all. (You should see a new reply field below).     Judy Blankenship

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The Time Has Come to Talk

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Well, the time has come, as they say, to talk. Last week, on a late afternoon walk in the countryside near our house, enjoying the cold air on my face and the good feeling of simply moving after a day spent at the desk, a neighbor called out,”…y  Señor Michael?” He leaned on the entrance to his earthen patio, watching me. I didn’t recognize him, but called back, “Michael’s at home, by the fire. He doesn’t like to walk as much as I do.”

“His health is good?” he asked. Yes! I called back. “Gracias a dios!” he said, making a subtle prayer gesture. Walking on, I thought about this exchange. He was not the first neighbor to ask about Michael when they see me on the road, or Michael about me as he walks into town. People are watching and wondering about us, still the only two extranjeras in Cañar, living alone in that big house. No car, no obvious family. “Do you have children?” they often ask. Then, “Do they come to visit?” Then, maybe, the bolder ones: “How old are you?” The subtext is always, What’s going to happen to your property when….?

I know they are especially interested in Michael – watching him over the years as he grows more stooped, his pace slower as he trudges into town daily with his Orvis shopping bag. He usually takes a taxi or truck back, so all the drivers know him and with affection will ask me the next time I grab a ride: “Where’s Michael? What’s he doing?”

“At home, fixing dinner,” I love saying.

We’ve lived in our little comuna of Chaglaban for 15 years now, and longer than that in the town. I know that our neighbors are watching us grow older, and are thinking – how much longer will they keep coming to Cañar? That’s a question I ask myself sometimes, but mostly we – Michael and I – simply carry on with the assumption that we’ll keep living indefinitely in our “house in the clouds.” Witness our running list of items to bring next December, when we expect to return: larger chimney brush, arugula and cardamom seeds, yeast for popcorn, Earl Gray tea, 1 ceramic knife.

Besalú, Catalonia, May 2019

No question, however, that we gave a nod to age this year when we canceled our trip to Spain. Once we really talked about it, after we’d let our plans float for a few weeks, Michael said he just didn’t feel up to lugging around his bags on buses and trains for a month, (our modus operandi after we stopped driving in Spain), changing hotels every few days. Then there’s getting through airports, Covid tests, and the 10+ hour flight from Guayaquil to Madrid. Last time we were in Spain was 2019. The following year, we’d already paid for tickets, made reservations, and then…. well, you all know what happened. 2021 was also a bust. So, as I regretfully cancelled the hotel reservations I’d made this year, I felt a moment’s sadness thinking this might mark the end of our serious traveling days.

But then….Michael suggested we take a mini-vacation in Ecuador, as long as we could travel slowly by bus a few hours a day. So I started planning again, made hotel reservations for two nights between Cañar and Mindo, and three nights in Mindo, a bird/butterfly reserve/resort northwest of Quito. Smooth, yes? Well, not so much. I hadn’t remembered that the buses blast non-stop movies with sound so loud that those at the back won’t miss a single shot, scream, or car chase. Imagine passing through this magnificent landscape with sounds of an explosion or machine gun in your ears.

I wondered what the nuns thought, though Michael hardly seemed to notice. But by the time we got to Mindo after 12 hours on three buses, (broken up with two overnights in hotels), slogging through one interminable bus station and waiting in a tiny one at opposite ends of Quito, plus two long taxi rides, I was already planning to convince Michael we had to return by plane.

 

Mindo itself was a sort of mixed-up-mishaps-mess, but in the end it seemed the more setbacks we had the more cheerful Michael got. A small resort town mostly aimed at younger travelers with tours for night bicycling, “canyoning” the rivers, rappelling waterfalls, zip lines, and 6:00 AM treks for bird watching. We stayed near town in an “eco-lodge” made entirely of concrete, including the bed, side tables, floors and benches, with bamboo details. It was hot, and rained torrents every afternoon, so we stuck with one activity a day, walking into town for meals. The food was not good, Michael complained.We did enjoy the butterfly garden…

   

and watching birds  from the bird watching tower…

 

But the day before we were to leave Mindo landslides closed the road to Quito. By then I’d talked Michael into flying and bought tickets, so we hired a truck driver who promised to get us through to the Quito airport. We were there in plenty of time, but as we tried to check in for our afternoon flight, the agent wouldn’t let us pass because our national IDs were not “legitimate.” They were photocopies in plastic; same with our passports, which I had thoughtfully brought. I protested, I begged, and then I pulled out my Oregon driver’s license. The agent grabbed it and said, “Now THERE is a legitimate ID!” But Michael hadn’t brought his so….…back to Quito to the office of a mini-bus we heard about from the taxi driver that serves Quito – Cuenca – Quito, where we made a reservation for the next day. “Let’s check out this Hostal Caribe,” Michael said in surprising good spirits as we walked a couple of blocks into a down-at-the-heels part of the city. That’s how we ended up enjoying a good sleep at a $15/night/per person, flocked wallpaper, leopard-print blanket, master-bedroom of a long-ago elegant mansion on the last night of our misadventure-some mini-vacation. Which gives me real hope that our traveling days are not over yet.

*  *  *  *

C a ñ a r   B o o k   C l u b

Dearest readers:  I’ve thrown caution to the wind lately and started paying for kindle books instead of waiting for the library. Most of these titles hooked me with the “look inside” or “sample” from Amazon, which offers about 20 pages before turning blank. That’s how I ended up with These Precious Days by Ann Patchett, one of my favorite essay writers (her fiction not so much). I’ve read some of these essays before, but still enjoyed sinking into her perfectly constructed sentences. Reminding me of when she appeared at Literary Arts in Portland a few years back, pacing the stage in front of about 3,000 people telling without prompts a complicated anecdotal and meandering story that she brought to a perfect conclusion. I also bought the novel Free Love by Tessa Hadley, a favorite short-story writer I read in The New Yorker. This one set in 1960’s-70’s London, and I know from the acknowledgements that Hadley did a lot of research but I found myself saying, “Did that really happen? Could that character really have made such a radical change in her life?”  My feeling after finishing the novel is that I prefer her short stories.

Found books in English are a special treasure in Ecuador, and whenever I end up in a restaurant or hotel with shelves of books left by travelers, I make a beeline. That’s how I ended up with The Witch Elm by Tana French. I’ve read her before, and was reminded with this one that her set-ups and characters are brilliant. You can’t stop reading (in the beginning). But then I find myself flipping pages as her characters’ conversations go on and on and on, wanting to get back to the action. I can’t say more without a spoiler, as I’ve just loaned the one to a friend, but I think my Tana French days are over.

So, on to suggestions by club members.

Mel in Vermont: This Tender Land, by William Kent Krueger about the odyssey of four young kids who run away from a school for Native Americans and their adventures along the way. It takes place in the time of the Great Depression, and is a thought-provoking read.

Sandy in Portland: “Damon Galgut’s The Promise won the Booker and I think he deserved it. It’s about a South African family during and after apartheid. Beautiful, original writing. (I also read this book and recommend it.)

Portland’s “Everybody Reads: this year is Mira Jacob’s Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations, a graphic novel. She’s an Indian American whose life is crowded with micro-aggressions and whose primary-age, mixed-race son asks hard questions about race, Trump and other related subjects. Eula Biss: Having and Being Had, short essays on trying to live ethically, understand and survive capitalism. Wonderful and LOL funny.
Jia Lynn Yang: One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration – excellent, good writing, interesting subject with great political details, a story I didn’t know and prompting a number of epiphany moments, including how ill prepared, inexperienced and ineffective Kennedy was despite the myth of Camelot.

From Patricia in New York. Francine Prose Sicilian Journey, a delightful essay by this excellent, insightful writer, a novelist as well as essayist. A personal, quirky, insightful and thoroughly enjoyable read for anyone contemplating a trip to Sicily.

Edmund DeWaal’s wonderful tale of The Hare with Amber Eyes, about a collection of Japanese netsuke and their history within his family and their journeys from Odessa  through Vienna, Paris, Tokyo and now London as this hidden inheritance tale unfolds. (I also read this one and loved it.)

That’s all for now, folks. If I missed anyone’s book suggestions please send again. There will be one more Cañar Chronicle before we leave on June 1 for Portland. Until then, I send fond regards and remember that I love to hear from you at: judyblanken@gmail.com.