House and garden

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Dear Friends. I’d planned to write about Carnival, or Lalay Raymi as it’s called here, but for the first time since 2005 I skipped the event. Past years I’ve documented the hours-long parade as it winds through the villages and into town before gathering in a local field for more hours of eating, dancing and music. I’d always make a stop at home to download hundreds of photos, have a quick bite, then rush back out to take hundreds more, until the end the day when, totally exhausted, I’d come home. Despite being the best photo op of the year, after so many times and thousands of photos, my Lalay Raymi images are beginning to look much the same. Also, I had a mild cold this year that just wouldn’t go away and Michael convinced me to stay home. (Below, 2016, 2012, 2014.).

Instead, I thought I’d write about house and garden. So come on in… you’ll note that although the house looks much the same, the trees are growing tall, the lawn is established and there’s a line of flowers I faithfully attend while we’re here.

This month marks the twelfth year in our Cañar house, and it’s fitting that our talented architect, Lourdes Abad, is spending a few days with us as she presents a workshop in Cañar on construction and restoration of earthen buildings (e.g. adobe). On the last day she is bringing the participants to see our house and sample Michael’s canelaso (hot alcoholic tea).

    So, a look back to March 2007: after two years of construction drama, we moved into our house with an traditional Cañari housewarming, or wasipichana, that included a night-time vigil, procession, blessing, southern cross placed on the roof, a roasted pig to feed about 100 guests, live music, dancing, and finally, fiery paper balloons called globos launched to float over the countryside. A wonderful day and a great relief when it was over. Since then, we have become la casa de los gringos.

    In 2013, after I’d published a book about building the house and living half-years in Canar, (https://amzn.to/2ueNcvm), I sent an email to a journalist at the New York Times in the then Home and Garden section (I miss it still!) and in an act of shameless self-promotion, I suggested an article and attached some photos. Within a week or so, an editor had assigned a writer and photographer to come to Cañar. That’s how we met Tony Cenicola, this great photographer who spent a week with us and took the best photos of the house we’ll ever have by climbing a ladder in the garden to get the photo of the house lit up, and climbing a tree across the road to get the photo from the front, showing the rooflines. (And, despite having his rental car and some equipment impounded by the police in Cuenca for the entire week, he still came back a couple of years ago for another story!)

    I was a bit disappointed, however, when the full-page article with a 23-image slideshow came out, to see that his editor had chosen many photos of sedums and other plain plants in the patio, and nasturtiums in the kitchen garden, rather than shots of the Cañari people, or the countryside, or examples of traditional adobe houses. And after I’d arranged for the writer to spend a half day with architect Lourdes, there was no mention of the importance of maintaining traditional architecture in Cañar. Here’s the article, “Up in the Clouds,” from June 2013: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/garden/a-second-home-in-the-andes-worth-the-4300-mile-trek.htm

    And now to the garden. Our interior glass-covered patio garden has gone through several stages, from being the dusty dance floor and blessing site during the housewarming (see above), to early experiments with Andean crops (we came back one year to find our compadres had planted corn and peas), my endless flowers that dried up in the solar heat, a lemon tree that got whitefly, to gifts or purchases and exotic epiphytes picked up on walks and plopped down in an alien environment.

    But plants know what they like best, so twelve years later we have a garden with monster aloeveras reaching for the sky, huge jade plants, aggressive creeping oregano that we keeping digging out, spiky things such as cacti, succulents and other desert-like plants without names (known to me) that tend to be slow-growing and do not require much care for the six months we’re gone. Then there’s that large spiking beauty from our friend Eduardo’s Vega’s yard in Cuenca that has gone crazy and neighbors keep asking for hijuelos – offspring- to take away for their own garden (photo: bottom center).

    All identifying information welcome! One of my pleasures during a work day is to step out to the patio and take a short break to water pots or pull weeds and oregano, or watch the birds that come in and make themselves at home – even building nests when we’re gone. And my other pleasure is taking a longer afternoon break (between work and wine) to fiddle around in the kitchen garden. There, my talents are limited but not my enthusiasm for weeding, turning the soil – still finding construction nails and pieces of roof tiles – and planting seedlings (broccoli, chard, parsley purple cabbage, cilantro). It doesn’t matter if we’re not here to harvest the crop. Our compadres (who planted the corn in the patio and always plant vegetables in kitchen garden before we come) will be here to enjoy.

    Well, dear friends, I’ve taken up enough of your time, and we’ll have to forego the book club this blog, but I promise another one soon once I emerge from my visa/vortex/ HELL that has kept me traveling a couple of days a week to Cuenca or Azogues to solve the unimaginably, endless, problems around having my permanent resident visa transferred from my old passport to a new. I’m now in the second year of tramites – red tape – and my only advice is to not stay in Ecuador beyond your 10-year passport expiration. (Just kidding.)

    But I do want to end with an important announcement. This week, AILLA – Archive of Indigenous Languages of Latin America at University of Texas, Austin, launched the first archives from Cañar – the Peace Corps Collection.

    AILLA’s newest public collection is the Cañar Peace Corps Collection, which features more than 400 photographs taken in the 1960s and 1970s by US Peace Corps Volunteers working in Ecuador with the Kichwa-speaking Cañari people on projects related to agrarian reform, forestry, and traditional handcrafts. Many photographs (some in color, others in black and white) are portraits of Cañari people or panoramas of the dramatic landscape of southern Ecuador.

    I couldn’t be more pleased that we begin the first phase of this NEH-supported, three-year project with the work of these (then) young and idealistic men (and one woman) who came to Cañar in the 1960’s with cameras, typewriters and tape recorders, and once home, managed to keep their negatives, photos, cassette tapes and documents safe in attics and basements and boxes for 50 years until they reached retirement. Then, recalling this unforgettable time of their life, they scanned, copied, e-mailed and packed up boxes of documents to be a part of the Archivo Cultural de Cañar.

    Participants in Peace Corps leadership training course, circa 1968.

    I’ll end with Alan Adams’ introduction to the collection:

    A bit about the Peace Corps in Cañar by Alan Adams: In the period of Ecuadorian agrarian reform from 1965 to 1970, we Peace Corps Volunteers arrived in Cañar tasked with supporting the peasant population’s formation of agricultural cooperatives. Young and idealistic, we walked among the indigenous Cañari and we were astonished. We conversed with them. We listened to them. We desperately tried to help them. And if we provided a word of encouragement, fantastic. What we learned was invaluable. We volunteers participated on many occasions and in many ways, and some of us had the idea to take pictures. Mine were lost. Some thought to keep their photos, and now they are available as part of a historic visual archive of agrarian reform, a decisive period in the history of the Cañari people. It was not a reform that happened to the Cañari, but rather a movement that the people themselves took over, shaped, and created to turn the course of their history. We hope that these photos help communicate the admiration and reverence that we felt as we watched the agrarian reform unfold.

    Mil gracias! Hasta la proxima. Judy




    Migration is not a crime

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    I’ve had migration much on my mind these days – up close personally, through the media with the Trumpian wall hysteria, watching the crisis in neighboring Venezuela sending many migrants to Ecuador, and with two excellent fiction books I’ve just finished, Go Went Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck, about African migrants in Germany (and so much more). And Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, which begins in an unknown country in the Middle East.

    For the up-close and personal, I want to tell a Cañar migration story, (with names changed).

    At 4:00 AM on a October morning we received a call in Portland from an acquaintance here in Cañar, Alejandro, an older man who had worked on our house construction and who became a “compadre de la casa, which means we are considered near-family. He called to say his son – I’ll call him Rafael – had left Cañar in September with his wife, Mariana. Both were picked up crossing the border and were recently found held at the Eloy Detention Center near Phoenix, Arizona. His son wanted to be in touch with us. Could we help?

    This was the beginning of many collect calls from Eloy, and many letters on my part for Rafael: one saying we knew him as an honorable man who would not be a threat if released, another to a judge at Eloy, another to the lawyer who was “helping,” saying we would provide some support to the couple in getting settled if released (I don’t think Rafael ever realized we were in Portland, Oregon, not New York or New Jersey.) Meanwhile, I took an online tour of Eloy Detention Center by a local Fox10 TV station in Phoenix, showing a modern clinic, an exercise yard and a in-facility courtroom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHsM2XADlSQ But make no mistake: this is a prison, a private prison owned and operated by CoreCivic, under contract with ICE.

    Some quick facts on Eloy: 1,500 men and women are presently being held for various immigration violations, and after the Trump administration’s controversial zero-tolerance policy in 2018, the facility housed roughly 300 mothers separated from their children. People die here, primarily through suicides but also for lack of timely medical attention; since 2003, Eloy alone represented 9% of the total inmate deaths in all 250 detention facilities in the United States.

    In our calls, with urgency on Rafael’s part, asking for yet another letter addressed to yet another official at Eloy, we didn’t talk much about his personal situation. But I learned later from his father (once we were back in Cañar) that he is an engineer by training, and that he and Mariana left four children with Alejandro and his wife, Leonor. Grandparents in their 70’s who thought they were done with child rearing, grandparents who surely sacrificed to send their son to university, grandparents who are really very poor, left raising four children, two of them still in primary school? I found this hard to comprehend, but asked no further questions the one time Alejandro came to visit – tired and worried – so as not to reveal my true feeling: How on earth could his son and wife leave their four children, knowing it will be years before they see, or care for them, again?

    Fast forward to last week, when I ran into Rafael’s sister, Clemencia. As we walked down the road together, I asked if there was news of her brother and sister-in-law. “They were released last week!” she said. I asked if they had to pay bail (thinking of the letter to the lawyer)? “Oh yes,” she said, “they had to pay $15,000 for Rafael, and $20,000 for Mariana.” And on top of that, I thought, add the cost of paying coyotes to get them from Cañar to the U.S.: right now up to $12,000, probably more for a couple. “They are both in New York and working,” Clemencia said, “and They have a court date in three months.” (Or not, I thought. It’s common enough for migrants from Cañar to sacrifice the bail, be no-shows at court, and continue an existence as illegales, working for years to pay their debts.) A quick calculation on my part puts Rafael and Mariana’s debt, with bail, at about $50,000. I didn’t ask what their work was, but it is most likely construction and hotel cleaning. How many years will it take?

    MIGRATION IS NOT A CRIME. The crime is a system of coyotes, money lenders, ICE, private prisons, lawyers, courts, bail bondsmen, draconian laws that will mean years before Rafael and Mariana see their children, and years that Alejandro and Leonor, grandparents too old for parenting, will be caring for young children.

    OK, on to less fraught, domestic, news: We took a long hike a week or so ago that was the first serious walking test of Michael’s new hip. We hired a taxi to take us to the top of a mountain that looms over Cañar, called Tayta Bueran, then we walked down – about 3 hours. The tough part was wading through the paramo grass that grows above tree line – dense, knee-level, grabby and clinging, full of hidden holes,. But once through that – about 45 minutes – it was (sortof) smooth sailing, with picnic lunch and slipping and sliding on steep gravel road to the Pan American highway.

    So far so good, so then yesterday, we tried it again, but on another mountain (taxi to top, walk downhill) and with our goddaughter, Paiwa, on vacation and spending a few days with us.

    CANAR BOOK CLUB

    Lots of great book suggestions came in from my last blog, and I was interested to see how many relate to migration in one way or another. – maybe it’s on all our minds. I’ve already revealed my recent reads, but I have to mention The Past, by Tessa Hadley, which I’m presently loving. And I’ll include another reader’s mention of Go Went Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck because Susan G. of Portland makes such a good summary: “Takes place in Berlin and portrays a retired professor’s encounter with the illegal immigrants there. Sounds like nothing but grimness, but it shows the transformative effect of empathy, and much more, and left me with a positive feeling.” She also liked Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan and The Paris Wife by Paula McClain, two titles I’ve put on my wish list.

    My sister Sher in Santa Fe is reading Tana French’s new book The Witch Elm – “love her writing!” (Tana French can do no wrong.) Carole from Portland is reading Leavers by Lisa Ko – “hard read for me but thought provoking.” Suzanne from Cuenca suggests Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue, “a fictional story that embodies so many aspects of the modern immigrant story. And of course Becoming by Micelle Obama. Such a personal look at her life from childhood through the White House. I have even greater regard for this woman and her family, and she takes on the issue of race that is strangling this country.”

    Pat from Bend is reading Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver, “a novel about two families living in the same shelter (a brick house) in two different centuries.”

    Son Scott in San Francisco suggests Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, which Michael is presently reading and liking very much. Also, by same author: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.

    Janice in New Jersey writes that she loved Charming Billy by Alice McDermott (in response to my reading of The Ninth Hour, her new book).

    Judy in Batavia, New York is reading Rules of Civility, by Amor Towles (of A Gentleman in Moscow fame) and When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. (One of the saddest books I’ve ever read.)

    Finally, Rick – great reader and writer from Portland – recommends Valeria Luiselli, “born in Mexico, raised in South Africa, lives in NYC, writes in English and Spanish, worked as a translator for the juvenile courts for migrant kids and now teaches at Hofstra. The English book, Tell Me How It Ends, is an essay about the plight of migrants, what they overcome by leaving Central America,and their difficulties getting into the US.  It’s short, and so powerful that I bought a dozen copies for our political group. The Story of My Teeth, originally published about three years ago, got terrific reviews. It’s hilarious, and great fun to read.”

    This virtual Cañar Book Club might be one of the best ideas I’ve ever had! I love all my fellow club members, and please keep your reading suggestions coming for the March blog!


    Sleepless in Cañar

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    Dear Friends – sorry for the long pause between blog posts. Events since our arrival in Cañar on January 5 have kept me awake with worry (for some hours through some nights). For example, in my first week I worried if I would I be able to gather enough of the scholarship women to Cañar for a meeting with two important donors from the Women’s Circle of Giving in Bend, Oregon. They had long planned a visit here after their trip to the Galapagos. The problem: twelve current students are scattered in universities all around the country; twenty-two graduates, some working as nurses and a doctor and in emergency call centers with turnos – shifts – that wouldn’t allow them to come. To begin, I emailed or texted everyone…to almost no response. I left voice messages, using the terms “urgente” and “obligatorio.” I installed WhatsApp and called or texted again. Slowly, a few responses, some yes, some not able to come, some asked if they could send their mother or sister (yes!). Then it was the Sunday morning of the meeting, and I could only hope. How many will come? Did the Bend guests Helen and Laurel (with husbands Oscar and Owen) arrive OK in Cuenca from Galapagos and Guayaquil? Will their driver be able to find our place? And what will the weather be?

    I should not have worried. The turnout was spectacular, the weather was beautiful, the women spoke eloquently of their experiences and the communal lunch pampamesa was an abundant success.

    Helen and Laurel were very pleased with it all, including their new red bead necklaces made by a member of our committee, Maria Esthela, for all the women of the Bend Circle of Giving.

    Only two days later came the visit of Allison Adrian, the ethnomusicologist from St. Catherine’s University in Minneapolis who, two years ago, spent six months working in Cañar, and was now returning to present her videos on Música Cañari, and to thank all those who collaborated on the project. My job was to coordinate the event at the cultural center here in Cañar, and help promote another event two nights later in Cuenca. For this, at least for the local event, calls and texts and emails won’t do. Only walking into town, or into the country, for several face-to-face encounters. First, present the idea, then clarify the event, then follow up, then take care of snafus, then send or call with reminders. The day comes and I hope for the best. Will Allison arrive from Guayaquil on time? She only flew in last night and is driving in a rented car, which always worries me. Won’t she be exhausted coming up to 10,000 feet and presenting a program within the hour? What will the weather be?

    I shouldn’t have worried. Allison with her son Sevi (11+ years), pulled into the gate at 2:00. We got to the cultural center at 2:45, where a few chairs had been set up, along with an old-fashioned screen and projector. The main lobby of the cultural center is entirely a curved glass wall; the weather was brilliant and the room flooded with light. Allison and I immediately saw the problem – the videos would not be visible on the screen. (For once I would have appreciated dark clouds.) The small audience – only Cañaris, no townsfolk – politely sat through 30 minutes with occasional faint flickering images, and with tinny sound from the projector because the cultural center guy couldn’t find the cable to the speaker. Still, the audience was attentive, and after the videos several spoke, both about the importance of Allison’s work, and the fact that for the first time the town cultural center was welcoming the indigenous community. For that alone I felt the event was a great success.

    Juan Carlos Solano, Allison’s co-presenter at Casa de la Cultura.

    (Two days later we had another, video-perfect, well-received, presentation at Museo Pumapungo in Cuenca. With the approval of the Cañari community Allison has made the videos public on YouTube (with English subs – take a look here!):

    The third event that had me worrying is nearing its end. Every year I manage the three-day visit to Cañar of students from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, doing a semester in Cuenca. After years of going the easy route – putting the students up in a nearby hotel, taking them to see Mama Michi and Ingapirca, arranging a fun dance and musical evening at our house (with beer) and finishing with a quick visit to the Sunday market, I wanted to plan something much more “authentic.” After all, the purpose of the three days is to learn about the Cañari culture. So I decided to use a Cañari community tourist center up the mountain in a small village about 30 minutes from here. Built and run by the community of Sisíd Añejo, one of six community tourism sites developed with the help of the government about ten years ago, this is the only one that’s made it work. A charming but rustic “lodge” sits alongside a historic church (circa 1605), which I had a chance to draw while local kids kept me company. Then they brought out their own works, a delightful moment.

    I’d arranged for the Lewis & Clark students to spend two nights at the lodge, with day trips to Ingapirca and to Lake Culebrillas. Problem was, I didn’t want to spend two nights in the dorm-like setting of chilly lodge; I also didn’t want to keep up with 20-year olds on the breathless walk around Lake Culebrilllas, where I’ve been many times. (At 12,000 feet I worried obsessively about the weather; when rainy and windy and cold it is a miserable experience).

    I shouldn’t have worried. A young(er) Spanish teacher and guide who works with the students at Fundación Amauta agreed to accompany them for the nights, leaving me free to go home to sleep with Michael. My job was to show up for dinner and evening programs, manage the budget, and join the students at Ingapirca on Sunday. The weather yesterday for Culebrillas was good, and the misting rain today at Ingapirca – where I duly made the full hike – hardly noticed. I’ve also put Fundación Amauta on notice that this is my last year. The community tourism center is an efficiently-run place that can manage next year’s group without me. Or someone such as Gabriel can take on my job. But I will miss the students who this year, as always, are wonderful and open to new experiences, such as volunteering for a limpieza (cleansing/healing) with Mama Michi that included some alarming moments.

    Or dressing in Cañari clothing for the noche cultural at the community tourism center.

    So this brings me to February and freedom. I plan to finish sending out the thank-yous to contributors to the scholarship fund, clear the weeds from the vegetable garden our compadres so kindly planted before we got here, prepare for my visa hearing next week, and finally get to the work of the archive. More on those last two items in next chronicle.As for Michael and domestic news, he played chess with a little nine-year old with lots of nervous tics, a national champion – and lost two out of three games. Michael was philosophical: “the kid’s a genius.”

    Then he went up on the roof to clean the chimney with a wire brush, and help of a assistant.

    Cañar Book Club

    It’s only been a month in Cañar but my reading time has increased exponentially. Book buddy Lynn Hischkind, in Cuenca, loaned me Quicksand, by Henning Mankell, in return for all the Henning Mankell books on my shelves. Reading the last journal-like musings as he was dying of lung cancer at age 67, I mourned again the death of this great humanist, theater director and playwright, author of the great Kurt Wallander mystery series and many other books. Allison brought me two books: Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera (“best translated book award winner 2016”) and The Ninth Hour by one of my favorite authors, Alice McDermott. I was puzzled by Signs, and at barely 100 pages I’ve made a vow to read it in Spanish. The Ninth Hour I’m loving because it adds to my view of the unknown world that all of McDermott’s books so precisely circumscribe: immigrant Catholic Brooklyn, early 20th century, a young woman finding her way in the new world.

    I’m happy to have heard from a few members. From Maggie in Toronto: A Disappearance in Damascus by Deborah Campbell, and All We Leave Behind : A Reporter’s Journey Into The Lives Of Others by Carol Off. “Both give rather frightening insight into & analysis of the terrible conflicts that made refugees of the protagonists & their families.” From Patty in Portland: A Terrible Country by Keith Gessen, ” It’s placed in present day Putin-time so very interesting, amusing and instructional.” Next up is Prague Spring by Simon Mawer. From Claire in London: “I’m half way through the amazing A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles. Her further explanation of the 100-page test (don’t give up before 100 pages) has convinced me I need to go back and again try reading this book.

    Finally, from prolific reader Joanne in Mexico: I adored The Friend by Sigrid Nunez, really liked A Life of My Own by Claire Tomalin, Intrigued by Chalk (about Cy Twombly) and partway into Ninth Street Women by Mary Gabriel.

    I love hearing from you all, so please respond in the field below or to my email: judyblanken@gmail.com.


    Back to Cañar 2019

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    Hello Friends: 

    Three days, delayed flights, missed connections, two hotel nights, $12 food vouchers for 24 hours in Miami airport, a taxi from Guayaquil and we are finally here in Cañar, on January 5. Below is Michael blowing his $12 voucher on a Cuban sandwich and guava cheese pastry in Miami Airport at La Carreta, one of our favorite layover stops.

    If I count right, this is our 25th year of knowing this chilly, homely, lovely place; our fourteenth year living here half-years, and twelve years in our house. Which, amazingly, stays safe and sound for the time we’re gone. Perhaps because this guy was guarding it?

    At least he was on duty the day we arrived, cropping and fertilizing the grass. It’s obvious from the droppings all around the house that our compadres José Maria and Narcisa and family and animals have been an effective security presence around the property during the eight months we have been gone. Inside, some dust and spiderwebs but otherwise dry and ready to settle in. It takes a couple of days (with altitude headaches, me) to open the shutters, uncover the furniture, unpack the sheets, towels, pillows and such, before the house begins to look like home. We uncover San Antonio in his nicho and take a look at the plants

    Michael finally agrees that we have to do something about the massive macho aloe that is taking over the interior garden; in a couple of years it will reach the glass ceiling. From the time we moved in I have tended my (low) side of the patio, and Michael his. Many of the flowers I planted early on died during our times away (although volunteer geraniums are thriving along with a variety of sedums). But slowly, M. has invaded my side by planting cacti and jade and that big spiky blue-green creature a friend gave us years ago that keeps producing hijuelos. We’ll wait to see how things get resolved on the pruning issue.

    Staying with the patio, a few days after we arrived I was crossing it to the living room with a large 3T hard drive in my hands, when my foot slipped off the brick edge and I went flying. Trying to hang onto the hard drive, I landed nose-first in the garden (hard drive went flying anyway), exactly between a rock and an watering spigot. Either would have done terrible damage, though my face still left a clear impression in the ground. We had no ice yet, but Michael had frozen two pork chops, so those went onto my nose in the first few minutes. After that, things got very ugly with purplish black eye and cheek and scrapes and scratches (no photo please!). During this past week I’ve had to explain over and over why my face is such a mess. Today I’m entering the bluish-green stage with patches of white skin showing through. (In photo below: I landed just to the right of the rock you see at knee-height.)

    On to Michael – who is delighted with the result of his hip replacement in September, which means he can climb the hill into town without pain for his daily shopping. At home: cooking, chopping wood, building the fire, cleaning the chimney, hauling the propane tanks that give us the luxury of hot water. He’s so happy to be back in the land where a pound of large shrimp at the Sunday market costs $5.00. He’s in the kitchen now, cooking them along with camote (sweet potato) for a Peruvian-style ceviche tonight.

    This is a short chronicle because I want to get it out before a busy week begins. But I must end by thanking all of you who contributed to the Cañari Women’s Scholarship Program these past couple of months. (Thank-you letters will be going out soon.) Gracias to our faithful contributors, we had a successful fundraising campaign to continuing support eleven women in universities full-time, two doing their masters, and various applicants waiting in line. Next Sunday will be our first meeting, with special visitors from the Women’s Circle of Giving in Bend, Oregon.

    Cañar Book Club 2019

    Finally, I’m anxious to hear what you all are reading and what books you have on your lists for 2019. For my report, I can say that the three-day trip to get here seriously cut into my stash of books. I finished The Gunrunner’s Daughter by Neil Gordon (fascinating, complex, still haven’t figured out all the twists and turns), The Rules Don’t Apply memoir by Ariel Levy, a New Yorker writer who must be one of the world’s most neurotic but charming journalists. Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett (hmm, no comment; found in a sidewalk library in Portland), and I’ve begun A Place in the Country by W. G. Sebald (a favorite writer but I believe these linked essays were pulled together and translated after his death and I’m not yet engaged), and a book by Paulette Giles, whom I knew as a writer in Canada but turns out she’s an American now living on a ranch near San Antonio, Texas. In News of the World she has written a lovely account set in post-Civil War Texas of an itinerant older man who makes his living riding from town to town to read newspapers aloud to live audiences, and the 10-year old Kiowa captive girl he agrees to return to her family. Reading, I cannot help but think of my mother, a great reader, who would have loved this book. Tomorrow will be her 99th birthday, and I dedicate this meeting of the Cañar Book Club to her memory. I miss her every day.

    Please leave a reply here or email at: judyblanken@gmail.com. I do love hearing from you.

    Cañari Women’s Education Foundation Fundraising Letter 2018

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    Dear Friends: I’m so pleased to report we now have twenty-one Cañari women university graduates, with professional degrees ranging from agronomy to veterinary medicine. Two of our alums have finished master’s and two are currently studying, one in Mexico and one in Ecuador. Our current scholars number twelve, and as they graduate we carefully review our pool of applicants and select new recipients. The scholarship is for five years, the usual time for an undergraduate degree in Ecuador.

    Since 2005 our program has “lost” only two scholars; each suspended her studies for personal reasons. But we have a policy that they are welcome to return if we have a place. In other words, it’s almost impossible to fail in our program. Once a young woman is accepted as a scholarship holder, we make sure she succeeds by accommodating pregnancy and childbirth, childcare, family crises and other problems – a policy that has paid off with our high success rate.This year we had two graduates, Vicenta Pichisaca in gastronomy and Mercedes Chumaina in accounting as a CPA. I add the photo of Mercedes receiving her diploma in her white hat because, as is usually the case, she was the only indigenous woman in her group (and maybe her class).

    Mercedes was special in another way. Through a Christian organization in the U.S., Tom and Kathleen Easterday have sponsored her education since primary school. When I heard about Mercedes through her sister, Margarita, one of our scholars, I wrote to to ask the Easterdays if they would be willing to sponsor Mercedes through university. They were, and they did.

    They had hoped to attend her graduation in October, which was not possible, but they sent a generous gift and they are pictured here wearing embroidered shirts from Mercedes in thanks for supporting her education for over 15 years. In the photos below, Mercedes stands with her husband Noe and son on graduation day, and with her proud mother. 

    So with two women graduating we welcome two “newbies.” Sara Duy is studying economy at the University of Chimborazo in Riobamba, and Lourdes Pichasaca in medicine at the University of Cuenca. Both have exceptional stories. Several years ago, Sara’s older sister had the rare chance (in Ecuador) for a kidney transplant after years of dialysis. Sara left her secondary studies to accompany her sister in dialysis and recovery from surgery, and they both lost two or three years of high school. Sara finally graduated this year and passed the exam to be admitted to university.

    Lourdes Pichasaca showed up with her mother at my studio several years ago. She had taken the entrance exam and passed high enough to get in to university, but not in the field she wanted: medicine. She decided to wait to apply for a scholarship and retake the exam. After that, whenever I ran into her mother in town, she would report that Lourdes was preparing to take the exam yet again. After three tries, she scored a place in the school of medicine at the University of Cuenca, one of the best!

    Now for news of some older graduates. Mercedes Guamán was one of our first scholars. She famously became a lawyer and a mother within hours (rushing from the podium with her diploma to the hospital to give birth) and since then has served her Cañari community with legal services and our program as president of the board. Under President Correa she was elected as an alternate to the National Assembly. After six years I think she’s a bit burned out on politics, but one perk was her invitation this year to the United Nations meeting on indigenous peoples in New York. In 2018 Mercedes also received an honorary degree in jurisprudence for her service to the indigenous community.

    Carmen Loja went in another direction. After graduating in economy at University of Cuenca, she had a stellar few years in finance, managing a credit union and ending up as comptroller for her hometown of Suscal. Then she left it all to create an organization promoting Andean culture through native agriculture, architecture, food and ancestral medicine. Kinti Wasi invites groups and individuals for stays long and short. (That’s Carmen- our favorite entrepreneur/ innovator – second from left.) Check out her website at: (https://www.facebook.com/kintiwasi.ec/

    Juana Chuma is our first to pursue a master’s degree outside the country, in Mexico, where she won a scholarship to UNAM in veterinary medicine. (We subsidize master’s studies at $1500/year for two years, or $3000 total). In the photo at left, Juana is in Puerto Montt, Chile with her research group. She writes that her thesis is focused on a cooperative of cattle producers in the south of Chile.

    The Cañari Women’s Education Foundation is an official 501(c)3 nonprofit, which means your contributions are tax deductible. We have zero administrative costs other than this mailing, so every dollar goes to the women’s education. Please make checks to CWEF and send to Charlotte Rubin, 2147 NW Irving St., Portland, OR 97210 (some of you will receive this letter by snail mail with return envelopes), or you can contribute through PayPal with the secure “DONATE” button below.

    A final note on this subject: A couple of weeks ago, CWEF treasurer Charlotte Rubin and I visited the Oregon Community Foundation (OCF) to talk about the idea of an endowment for our program. OCF has a plan for 501(c) 3 foundations such as ours that looks really good. It’s too soon to launch a campaign, but I would appreciate a note or call from any of you interested in discussing, or helping, with “succession planning.”  I’m a novice!

    Heartfelt thanks to all for your ongoing support, and don’t forget that you are invited to visit us in Cañar, any year between January and June. In a couple of months we will welcome two contributors from the Women’s Giving Circle of Bend, Oregon. And earlier this year we had a visit from Portland photographer Rick Rappaport, who took a bunch of beautiful photos during our annual all-scholarship meeting in April.