If you are a history lover, news junkie, or student of political science, government, international studies, international relations, international law, diplomacy, public policy, etc. then this is a blog that will catch your eye!
A little girl sits at a shelter the city of Portoviejo in Ecuador. The recent devastating earthquake has damaged more than 280 schools leaving 120,000 children temporarily without education. UNICEF Ecuador is setting up learning spaces and providing education supplies to get children back to learning. You can support them at: http://support.unicef.org/
From the rim of Ecuador’s Pululahua reserve, it’s at least a forty five minute drive (no, plunge) down a winding, bone-crushing dirt road to the floor of the crater. But it’s well worth it. After all, how often do you get to say you’ve traveled to what’s billed as the world’s only inhabited, cultivated volcano?
I should offer a caveat since volcanoes are very
much in the news here. This one’s
inhabited because it’s dormant. It last erupted
about 2,500 years ago but the soils that were left behind in the collapsed
mountain are rich in minerals and excellent for farming.
Pululahua is loosely translated from Quechua (the
indigenous language) to fog. Almost
every afternoon, clouds shroud the steep mountain walls that circle the crater
in a dense fog that blows in from the coast.
But if you get there early in the morning as we did,
it’s a stunning sight. It’s also a
window into rural Ecuador’s past. We’re just a short distance from the bustling
capitol of Quito, yet this crater – protected as a geobotanical reserve in 1978
and later as a national park – is a peaceful escape.
On its pancake flat floor, there’s only a modest
hostel and a half dozen or so farms run by the descendants of farmworkers – or huasipongos.
(we’re told this area used to be part of a large,
colonial-era “hacienda” system, but that’s the subject of a future post).
A few minutes after arriving, we meet Humberto
Moromenacho.
At 86, he’s one of only about fifteen full-time
residents of the Pululahua crater. He takes a break from work to talk outside a
small shack that serves as an improvised shop. He uses a cut, wooden log as a
stool to sit on. His hands are caked
with dirt from the fields. He’s missing part of his index finger on his right
hand and he’s got cotton stuffed in his ears (he’s hard of hearing).
Through an interpreter, he tells us that his family
has farmed here for more than 300 years. All of his relatives have left though.
In fact, most people still living in this crater are elderly. The last young
families moved away when the small school closed four years ago. There also isn’t a doctor or other basic
services. But aside from that, most of the farms like Moromenacho’s are pretty
well self-sustainable.
He tells us his relatives who live nearby in San Antonio
and the Quito area come back to help to pick his corn and tend to his beef
cows. Most of the organic crops grown
here are sold at markets elsewhere, the remaining is consumed locally. (In addition to corn, beans, sugar cane and a
variety of potato called camoate, among other things, are grown in the fertile crater
with its elevated terraces).
Yet, even after a short visit, we can’t help but get
the sense that this way of life may be going away soon. Moromenacho’s relatives
may sell his small piece of land when he dies if there’s no one willing to keep
farming it. The same dilemma will
probably apply to the other indigenous families here. And a few of the crater’s
newer inhabitants – aside from the hostel owners – have come from other
countries lately to set up more modern organic farms.
We saw a couple of these –and their spiffy, modern
houses with wrap-around porches – as we started climbing back up the windy road
to get back to Quito. But we didn’t have
time to visit. The clouds were rolling
in, and soon the Pululahua crater would be engulfed in fog.
Diplomacy is a career where social drinking makes up a sizable chunk of the job. Cocktail parties, Russian toasting, Chinese “baijiu,” and other situations were social lubrication is part and parcel of the night can suddenly become a problem for many FSOs.
You can read about the history of dealing with alcoholism in the Foreign Service, especially before alcoholism was considered a disease, by following the link.
