Tropical Dutch: Part 2

Suriname is in South America. But it’s one of those countries that many people couldn't locate. Ecuadorians often point out that although many Europeans don’t know where Ecuador is, it’s not as bad as it is for Suriname, where even people on the continent aren't sure where it is.

Suriname is on the East coast of South America, bordering the ‘the Guyanas’, Brazil and the Atlantic Ocean. It’s only 1,660 miles from Quito to Paramaribo, the Surinamese capital, fairly close in continental terms. However, culturally the countries are very different. Ecuador is Latino, Suriname is Caribbean. Different food, different music, different history.

Suriname is a former Dutch colony, as such the main language spoken is Dutch. However, due to the various waves of transatlantic slavery and immigration to work the Dutch plantations, there are now several distinct cultures present in this verdant, jungle-country.

This includes a large Black population, including villages set up by escaped slaves. Also of course, Native American groups, the original inhabitants of the continent. But there is also an easily identifiable Indonesian population, as well as Indian and Chinese communities. These diverse groups have kept their cultural identities, and fit together to make a generally harmonious Suriname.

A mosque in Paramaribo

I spent a week in Paramaribo attending a conference. I’m now on my way home to Quito, writing this blog in the airport of one of the other former Dutch colonies, Curacao. 

Roti, Indian based food is very popular in and very good in Suriname

Otavalo

Otavalo is a mainly indigenous American city in the sierra of Ecuador, a few hours north of Quito. Due to a public holiday we had an extended weekend and decided to visit. We have been before, but it is a charming city, and worth repeat visits, and also it is the best place in Ecuador, and probably in South America, to shop for handmade textiles. Many of the villages around Otavalo have their own styles of woven bags, clothing, blankets etc. Literally cottage industries, the wares are sold on the daily markets in the city. Because you buy direct from the manufacturers, the prices are both fair and low.

Otavalo's main market on Plaza de Ponchos, covered in plastic to keep the rain out

However, we hadn’t banked on the start of the rainy season. Otavalo sits in the shadow of some major volcanoes. One of them Imbabura, has great significance in the local Quechua religion and is personified as ‘papa’. It is said that when it rains, it’s papa urinating. If so, he urinated on us, and everybody else in Otavalo, for most of the weekend. 

An Otavalito reading Condorito. This is the traditional clothing for males in Otavalo.

Two symbols of colonial resistance in Otavalo, Rumiñawi the Inca general who bravely but unsuccessfully fought the Spanish conquistadors, and Simon Bolivar who eventually beat them nearly three hundred years later. 

Plaza Bolivar, Otavalo, when the sun eventually came out, an hour before we left. 

Quito Earthquake

Within ten minutes of my plane  touching down at Quito´s Mariscal Sucre airport, it was closed. There was a pretty big earthquake nearby. It only lasted about 5-10 seconds, followed by another about 20 seconds later. It was enough to nearly bring the screens down in the airport, well severely shake them anyway, severely shake everything in fact. In addition the power was cut for a few seconds, plunging us into darkness and resetting all the computer systems. Apparently the new multimillion dollar airport doesn't have uninterruptible power supplies.

I was waiting in line in passport control when it happened, at about 3pm local time. The tourists in the que didn't seem very surprised, perhaps they were expecting strange things to happen in a foreign land. But the airport staff were visibly shocked.

It was a quite a powerful quake, I´ve felt a few, in fact every three weeks or so when living in Tokyo, but this was the strongest. Apparently it was only a 5.1 on the Richter scale, with an epicenter in Calderon, Northern Quito. That´s probably why it felt to strong to me, Calderon is only only about 5 kilometers from where I was. I took a taxi from the airport to my office at the university. Listening to the radio en route, they are reporting damage to roads and houses, particularly around the epicenter and one of the main routes into the city, the Guasamin tunnel is closed.

From the taxi windows, visibility was low, it´s the dry season at the moment so everything is dusty. The earthquake threw the dust into the air creating a false fog effect. You can even taste the dust in the air now. Sitting in my office, my normally good view of the Andes mountains is just a grey dust cloud.

Tropical Dutch (part 1): Curaçao

The island of Curaçao, a former colony of the Netherlands and nowadays part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, is a long way by canal barge from central Amsterdam. Apart from being Dutch, Curacao is also part of the Caribbean, and geologically part of South America. In fact, it's only about 40 miles away from the northern coast of Venezuela. Conveniently for me it's Dutch heritage means it has direct flights to Schiphol airport in the Netherlands, thus providing one route for getting to Europe from South America. Which is what I'm doing. In this case there is a layover, of two weeks, on a Caribbean island. Damn.

It's pronounced cur-a-sow, the bit under neath the second 'c' in Curaçao  makes it an 's' sound.

Being so close to Venezuela, there is a strong Latin American influence on top of the already strong Dutch influence. The local language, Papiamento is a creole containing bits of Spanish and Dutch but based oddly on Portuguese, perhaps as a consequence of the slave industry based here which fed the huge demand for slaves from Brazil.

Many of the large colonial buildings that remain in the main city Willemstad are a consequence of the slave trade in the Caribbean. In fact there is a very good black history museum in Willemstad that focuses on the slave trade, it's located at Kura Hulanda, the site of a former slave yard and merchant's house.

Rather dutch looking buildings in Willemstad, Curacao

There are also some excellent deco style buildings in Curacao. 

And pink flamingos

Nice beach, shame about the leviathan. A huge cable laying ship at Caracas Bay, Curacao. Closer to shore there are families swimming and sunbathing. 

Caribbean Dutch (part 2) will be from Suriname, when I go there in November.

Back in Ecuador

So I´m back in Ecuador. In fact I've been here since late January. I rushed over from Japan where I had been teaching for two years at Chuo University in Tokyo (I had two blogs then, one in English about my experiences, the other in Japanese, about my research).

I´m now a professor of psychology at Universidad San Francisco de Quito, the highest ranked university in the country. Although that may say more about the standard of the competition than the achievements of the university per se. Ecuadorian universities barely feature in the list of the best in Latin America. When it comes to the best in the World, the best of Latin America barely feature.

The academic years overlap between Tokyo and Quito, so even flying over here, I arrived nearly a month late. In fact, I arrived on a Thursday evening and began semi-coherent jett-lagged teaching the next morning, already 4 weeks into the semester.

On arrival I found out that despite my super-human efforts to get here, nobody had arranged an office for me. In fact my arrival seemed almost a surprise. Eventually, after four weeks of complaining, I got somewhere to work, in fact quite a nice office. I share it with two others, a historian called Anna and a pot plant called Allan. We all get on fine, though Allan is a little needy at times.

And we've bought an apartment. By ´we´ I mean Helen, my wife and I, not Allan and I. It´s best to keep work and home life separate. It's a small flat with a big view over Quito.

Quito from our apartment

I've been working almost continuously since I got back, nevertheless there have been a few opportunities to explore the country at weekends. Probably the most interesting event in Quito since I arrived back was Easter week, as in many Latin American countries this is marked with various catholic parades. In Quito many people carry large crucifixes around the city. Some demonstrate their faith in other ways.

Cacti crucifixes during the Easter parades in Quito

I also had an opportunity to visit Ingapirca, the best preserved Inca ruins in Ecuador. These are not well known in comparison to the globally famous Machu Pichu in Peru. We visited during the Inti Raymi festival, an Inca celebration to the Sun God.

Inca ruins at Ingapica

Indigenous American music and dance at the the Inti Raymi festival in Ingapirca

It´s good to be back in Ecuador, it´s an interesting place. But I do miss Tokyo a little. That's a great place too. This is the problem with travelling around the world, you end up being nostalgic for so many different places. 

To be a Brit in Ecuador again

This blog will be active again in a few months. I'm going to return to living in Ecuador after two years away in Japan. I will be teaching Psychology at an Ecuadorian university.

Japan is OK, everything works, there is virtually no crime, it's clean. Ecuador is the cultural antipodean point: nothing works quite how it should, crime is ubiquitous and it's frequently a bit dirty.

But somehow it has so much more to offer. 

So it will become my home again in 2014. 

The city of Quito, seen from afar

The city of Manta, seen through blue

Otavalo Animal Market, a bird's eye view

Last day as a Brit in Ecuador, last blog

I came to Ecuador 20 months ago, to the day. Now it is time to leave. I have a flight to Tokyo tonight. Well actually flying to Tokyo from Quito is quite a complicated trip, and even though I leave tonight, a Monday evening, I won't arrive until Thursday morning.

I came to Ecuador for the adventure, to free us some time for writing and to get some teaching experience. I arrived without a job or even a place to live. But it all came together somehow. I'm leaving with a store of memories, university level teaching experience and I've managed to get six manuscripts accepted for publication (1,2,3,4,5,6). I've even got a research project started.

If you want to continue to read about a Brit in Ecuador, luckily somebody else has started doing it. He lives in Quito too, and bizarrely he is even using the same blog title: (the other) A Brit in Ecuador.

Or to follow my exploits in Japan, I'll be writing for a new blog, Gringo to Gaijin

Hasta Luego, Pet
Graham

To Lima, via the Inca sites

From Nasca we took a bus to Arequipa, the second largest city in Peru. Just at the right altitude, it has a near perfect climate of sunny weather every day. It is surrounded by snow-capped volcanoes. Snow-white volcanic rock was used to construct many of the colonial era buildings.

Next we flew to Cusco and immediately took a taxi to Ollantaytambo, an Inca town still in use. Indeed most of the town was built by the Incas. You can hike up the surrounding hills for excellent views and to see the ruins of several Inca store houses. These ruins on the hills are free to enter and don't attract many tourists. Most tourists come (briefly) to look at the easier access Temple and agricultural terrace structures on Cerro Bandolista which also overlooks the town.

Of course, the big daddy of Inca sites is Maccu Pichu, and the is where we headed next. We went by train  to the nearby town of Aguas Calientes. From there you can take buses to the ruins. We took the first of the day at 5:30. Going early means you beat the hoards, but in our case it was rainy and foggy when we arrived, negating that advantage.

I went up Huayna Picchu, the mountain that overlooks Maccu Pichu. It only takes about 90 minutes, but it is a tough hike. The reward is magnificent views over the Inca city.

Back in our hotel in Aguas Calientes, we found several Dawson Flies. This one on a lamp was about  4 or 5 inches long.

There are lots of other Inca sites in the region. These are the circular terraces at Moray. Such terraces were commonly used by the Incas to cultivate crops on otherwise hilly and mountainous terrain. It is hypothesized that the site at Moray was an agricultural laboratory, were the Incas tested which crops grow best in various conditions. 

The Incas also harvested salt. Spring water with a high salt content was used to fill  hundreds of pools which are then left for the water to evaporate. These in Salinas are still in use today.

Finally, we have returned to the capital city. Lima is hot and humid and crowded and polluted.  There is a  permanent smog that hides the sun during the day and produces a curiously pink sunset. But I like it. Tomorrow I return to Quito for what will be my last day as a Brit in Ecuador. 

La Paz (Bolivia) to Nasca (Peru)

We took a bus  from La Paz to Copacabana. This is the main town on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca. Apart from being on the lake, it also has a rather nice basilica.

Lake Titicaca is huge, and the was at the heart of the Inca Empire, many of the Inca creation legends involve the lake. It is at a similar elevation to  La Paz and so can be quite cool, despite having blazing sun that can quickly burn you. Well it did me anyway. We left Copacabana for Puno, which is also on the banks of the Lake, but on the Peruvian side. 

From Puno we took the train to Cuzco. The trains here run through town centers. In the  town of Juliaca it runs right through the middle of a market. Vendors move their stalls when the train comes, and some leave their stock between the tracks. I took this photo from the back of the train as we passed through.

Cuzco was the capital city of the Inca Empire. Today it still contains many Inca features, and  a huge amount of well preserved colonial architecture. Unfortunately it is also heavily touristed. The main plaza has a McDonalds, a Starbucks and a KFC, an unusual level of North American cultural encroachment for a Latin American city. 

We left Cuzco for a 12 hour bus journey to Nasca, but Pacha Mama had other plans. This is the flooded road that our bus was supposed to take. The bus journey ended up taking 26 hours. 

Floods were not the only threat. There were literally hundreds of rock falls and land slides on the road. Often the rocks were the size of  cars. Somehow the bus driver managed to negotiate all of them. 

Nasca is a really nice little Peruvian town, but people don't come just for that. They come to see the line patterns in the desert, made by a pre-columbian culture. The patterns can only be seen from aircraft. We took an over flight to see several of them, but they don't photograph well. Tomorrow we leave for Arequipa, which is the second largest city in Peru.

La Paz, Bolivia

My time in Ecuador is almost complete, so before I leave South America for Asia, I've come to Bolivia for a bit of tourism. My plan had always been to have some backpacking time after I finished work in Ecuador. As this panned out, I only have three weeks before I need to get to Japan to start my next job. So three weeks isn't much time for backpacking, but hopefully I can take in a bit of Bolivia and southern Peru, before returning to Quito for one night to collect bags and set off for Tokyo.

The main thing about La Paz is its altitude. It is around 3,650 meters (11,975 ft) above sea level, which means oxygen is scarce. In fact, it is not recommended that anybody fly here direct from low altitude. I came direct from 19 months living in Quito, another high altitude city, but still the thin air got to me. It is difficult to walk up stairs or hills at high altitude, and La Paz is all hills. You adapt with time, but until then any exercise results in a racing pulse, headache and a general feeling of knackerdness. Though it is a nice place, with plenty or quirks. One of which is llama products. Llama meat is sold in the restaurants and dried llama fetuses are sold on market stalls for good-luck symbols. It also has a very large indigenous population. Below are a few of my photos (and a graph).

Height above sea level in meters

Plaza Murilllo, La Paz

La Paz: A city in the clouds

In the roads around government buildings there are permanent military road blocks.

Indigenous women protesting crime and corruption

Dried llama fetuses, and dried baby llamas for sale in la Paz, along with other nik naks

The Research Project: Cognitive Function of Socioeconomically Deprived Adolescents (Funciones Cognitivas de Adolescentes Socioeconómicamente Desfavorecidos)

This is a research project that I’ve been working on for about a year, in fact it has taken up a lot of my time. The idea is to look at cognitive function, e.g. IQ, reasoning and social-cognition in a sample of youths that would be described as ‘street children’. It is a progression from my research in the UK into cognitive function in homeless adults, e.g. this and this. I’m using the term street children cautiously, as it is a little out of vogue these days to refer to them as such, when in reality they are characterised by a huge spectrum of different social and economic problems. Nevertheless, UNICEF has a definition of street child, and this is what we have used:

“any girl or boy who has not reached adulthood, for whom the street (in the broadest sense of the word, including unoccupied dwellings, wasteland, etc.) has become her or his habitual abode and/or sources of livelihood, and who is inadequately protected, supervised or directed by responsible adults”.

In fact, the problem of poor children living in the streets is very typical of developing countries, including Ecuador. It is estimated that tens of millions of children live in the streets worldwide, about 7 million of whom are in Latin America. A distinction is often made between children of the street and children in the street. The former are literally homeless and the latter have a place to live but make their living in the urban public environment. The situation in Ecuador is mainly of children in the street, and they are not as conspicuously poor as the roofless and homeless children of the street seen in other Latin American countries.  In many countries they are seen as vermin and are frequently victims of violence. Sometimes killed by vigilantes or even rogue police officers. Though things are not so extreme here in Ecuador.

Most street children in Ecuador are working,
e.g. selling newspapers or fruit to motorists

or traipsing around bars at night selling, e.g. chewing gum

Our aim in the research is to test two hypotheses. Firstly, children in Quito who match the UNICEF definition will report high levels of post traumatic stress disorder, and this will be associated with lower cognitive function, i.e. indicating that trauma may have slowed cognitive development. Secondly, and on a more positive note, we have hypothesised that as they have to survive in a hostile environment, they may have developed better than would be expected skills for social cognition, such as reading emotions in peoples’ faces. This second hypothesis is of particular interest as it may challenge stereotypes. Better than normal skills in such populations are possible. Studies performed with Brazilian youths that work in the streets have demonstrated exceptional mathematical ability, because, despite their lack of formal education, they need maths to trade. 

Yesterday the data collection with the children started. We did 4 interviews, well my students did. My Spanish isn’t good enough so I’m relying on my student volunteers; Vicky, Sofia and Daniel. Most of the children we are interviewing are not currently street children; they would be too difficult to access. Instead we have developed a collaboration with a catholic project in South Quito for poor children considered at risk. The name of the charity is ‘Su Cambio por el Cambio’, and they do fantastic work with about 300 children who would have few options in life otherwise. The project provides all day services; breakfast, lunch, sports classes in the mornings and formal and practical education in the afternoons. The ones we are interviewing over the next few weeks are those that fulfilled the UNICEF definition before coming to ‘Proyecto Social Su Cambio por el Cambio’. They are pretty well-behaved and incredibly friendly; the young ones often come over for hugs. 

We are interviewing 40 of the children, and will also be interviewing 20 not at risk children from a local school, as the comparison group. This type of research takes a long time to plan. That is why after a year we have only just begun data collection. First of all we tried to get funding, unsuccessfully, from the International Neuropsychology Fellowship Fund of the British Psychological Society (I’m sure the projects they chose to fund are much better and deserving). Then we had to gain ethics committee approval. This is never easy and doubly difficult when you wish to research a vulnerable group, as we did. In fact our group are doubly vulnerable, as the committee pointed out, both very poor and children. Funding and ethics applications add months of bureaucracy and paperwork. Though I might add, that Comité de Bioetica de Universidad de San Francisco where the most efficient and helpful that I’ve ever dealt with.  This was something of a godsend as I was struggling to provide the necessary documentation, much of it in Spanish.

So now the project is underway. Academic research is not common in this country, but it is possible. Hopefully much of the data collection can be completed before I leave Ecuador. If not, my students are gaining valuable experience, and will be able to continue after I leave.

Many thanks to ‘Proyecto Social Su Cambio por el Cambio’ who have been extraordinarily cooperative with this, despite having more important things to do.

Teaching English (and Psychology, in English) in Ecuador

I arrived in Ecuador in July 2010, with a somewhat vague idea of working as a teacher. Nineteen months later, I've trained as a teacher, taught at two universities, two language institutes and now stopped teaching. Stopped teaching here in Quito that is. I'm now preparing to move to Tokyo, to take up a lectureship at Chuo University.

Finding work as an English teacher in Ecuador isn’t difficult; there is a constant need for native speakers. But the conditions and pay will vary greatly. Backpackers turning up with little experience may receive as little as $5 per hour working at language institutes. The hours will be long but not too taxing, big employers here are English First and Wall Street. Those with teaching experience, or just the knowhow to find better jobs, could earn up to $20 per hour (e.g. at UDLA). I worked, for a while, at Southern Cross who employ only people with a CELTA qualification, their pay is somewhat better than other language institutes, but still less than the ‘real jobs’ in, e.g., universities and international schools.

Southern Cross also runs the most exotic CELTA training programme. CELTA is the Certificate in Language Teaching to Adults, awarded by the University of Cambridge. It is an entry level training course, usually over four weeks. The Ecuadorian one is different, it is taught on a pacific beach. All things considered, it is probably cheaper than ones taught in European or North American cities. I did the Southern Cross beach CELTA and they hired me to teach shortly afterwards. I didn’t even ask for a job, I was just asked to pop in and then given a schedule (starting in two hours). But then I never left either. They just stopped giving me schedules. This is the issue with language institutes, they are inherently flaky.

I never really wanted any language institute work anyway. My plan all along was to work in universities, as this is what I’d done all my life in the UK (I'm a research psychologist). I was hired fairly quickly to teach English at Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ). But what you find with the universities in Ecuador is that they don’t like to take people on full-time, so multiple part-time positions are the norm.

Me with psychology students at USFQ

I was also able to get part-time psychology teaching work at USFQ. In fact, they were very friendly and accommodating, and ran two courses especially for me to teach, in English: ‘Health Psychology’ and ‘Depression’. USFQ is possibly the only university in the country with enough English speaking students to make this possible. I could have taught elsewhere easily, if I could have taught in Spanish. People with PhDs here are quite rare and sought after. However, if you don't speak Spanish well, opportunities  are limited, though one other option for English speaking psychologists (or linguists) is teaching on ‘Applied Linguistics’ courses. These are really just training courses for Ecuadorians who want to teach English professionally. They are taught mainly in English. I very nearly took up a part-time position teaching psycholinguistics on one of these courses at PUCE.


However, Christmas eve bought the news that I have a new job in Japan, so I pulled out of the PUCE psycholinguistics job, and cancelled my courses at USFQ. I still have some psychology research going on here. As a psychologist that is another option. More of that in my next blog.

Montañita, Olón and Salinas

So I'm back on the free wifi at Guayaquil airport, as I was about 18 months ago towards the start on my Ecuador visit. Then I was heading towards Montañita to train as an English teacher, now I've finished teaching in Ecuador and returning from a weekend break to Montañita. I only really went to visit somebody there, and to stay nearby. Montañita is the hedonist capital of Ecuador. It is full of Ecuadorians, Argentinians and gringos from various countries. They come for the beach, the bars and the drugs. It is either a tropical paradise or a tourist hell-hole, depending on your perspective. For me it's the latter, but lots of people seem to love it.

Sewage collection truck bearing the message: 'Montañita  Tourist Paradise'

Montañita

We only spent one night there, and most of that was at Playa Kamala, a couple of miles up the coast, the site of the CELTA training course I took back in September 2010.

Next, we stayed one night in Olón. This is the next village along from Montañita, much more sleepy, but still very much a tourist beach resort. Ecuadorians love the beach and flock to them during the public holidays, Olón is one for the Ecuadorians, not a lot of foreign tourists here. Although Olón is somewhat nicer than Montañita, it is still very much a basic-level weekend break resort.

Much more up-market is Salinas, this is the holiday resort for the rich Ecuadorians, known here as 'pelucones', which translates as wig wearers. Salinas is not just a beach, but has lots of high rise hotels and a maritime port, popular thus with yacht owners. We stayed two nights here, but unfortunately on the second night there was a torrential downpour. Cooled the air nicely but flooded the streets and the drainage system. The stench completely destroyed my desire for an ice cream.

Salinas, affluence and effluence

Last Day in Colombia

Today we set off back to Quito, by bus from Popayan. It is going to take ages. At least four buses and a border crossing.

Our last days in Colombia were during Popayan's 'Blancos y Negros' festival. Supposedly a celebration of racial diversity, it is mainly a big fight where people hurl water bombs, throw talc and squirt 'fun foam' at each other. Some people carry pots of paint to smear on the faces of strangers. It's loco. Below are a few photos from the festival.

Pavement skirmish

Foam spray attack from a balcony

I might have got somewhat
involved in the fun

Group mayhem at an open-air concert

A drive-by foaming