We were blessed to have our first visitors from the states come to visit us in Shell this week. Brian and Hollie Lindner, and their 18 month old son Dalton, made the trip from Nampa, Idaho to share some wonderful memories with us, encourage our work here, and to have some cultural experiences that were new to all of us.
As we don't have a car yet we were planning on making the five hour bus ride to Quito to pick up our friends. I loaded the kids on the bus the day before our scheduled departure to head to the town next to us (Puyo) to pick up the tickets we'd need. We headed back again the next day, but on arrival discovered that the roads were closed due to mudslides. We headed back to Shell to wait for several hours and returned to Puyo where we were told we could take the "back" way to Quito through Tena on a seven hour ride. We wanted to greet our friends so we loaded up on the bus and drove 2 hours (plus the 1/2 hour wait while the driver ate his lunch). Upon arriving at Tena we were told the rode to Quito was indeed open but only through Puyo,the way we had come. We returned through Puyo planning to continue our already 5 hour trip with two hours of backtracking and then five more to Quito. As we passed through Shell, we decided our kids weren't going to make it very well and jumped off the bus at the last minute. Thankfully we had friends "caught" on the Quito side who picked up Brian and Hollie and delivered them to us safe and sound.
Another "cultural" experiences we had occurred on one of our day outings. Upon getting off the bus Jael fell and bumped her head. A women selling candy from her stand rushed to our side and spying our bottled water cried, "Prestame su agua!" (Lend me your water!) We obliged, and then watched as she took a large mouthful, swished it around for several seconds, and blew it directly into Jael's face. We all stood there in shock while the lady said something about not needing to thank her for her help. After quieting our upset baby once again and drying the water off Jael's face (and all of us around that had received some of the "blessing") we took off to enjoy our day. Upon questioning some of our Ecuadorian friends we were told it is the belief that if a baby is startled by a fall it can cause death right then and there. To counteract it water is spit in the child's face to "restartle" them and "wake them up". I don't think this is a custom we'll soon be adopting, but I guess we better have some water handy all the time just in case.
Children from the Quichua village we visited.
Chief of the Quichua village
No comments:
Post a Comment