National Curfew in Ecuador

We are not allowed to leave our flat today; the entire country is in lock-down. Only a select few are allowed outdoors. It’s not another coup attempt or other national emergency. Far more mundane, it’s census day in Ecuador.

To make sure that everybody is included, everybody has to stay at home and wait for the knock on the door. Considering how carefully the census organisers are being to ensure everybody is surveyed, it is strange that the actual data collection is entrusted to school children. That’s right, today every single household is being visited by school children. Anybody found outdoors today, not in either a police or school uniform is likely to be arrested or fined. To show that we have participated, we get a sticker on our front door. Presumably lacking this sticker also gets you in trouble.

Even stranger, to make sure nobody is drunk when surveyed, there is a complete nationwide ban on the consumption of alcohol. The prohibition period is much longer than the actual census period and has been in force since midnight on Friday 26th and lasts until midday on Monday 29th. So I have been in all day, and even if I went out all public transport is suspended and all shops are closed.

Being under house arrest has at least given me the opportunity to catch some Ecuadorian daytime TV, and take this photo. Bumble bee man isn’t just a character in the Simpsons. There really is such a person on Latin American TV.

This TV show is popular is shown across Latin America and always features this insectoid character

Working for the Yankee Dollar

Ecuador doesn’t really have a national currency anymore.  Since the year 2000 the US dollar has been the official currency. This has apparently brought economic stability, but presumably eroded cultural identity somewhat. The bank notes are identical to US dollar bills and they also use the one dollar coin extensively here, unlike in the USA itself. The coins of less than a dollar are minted specifically for Ecuador, and the minor unit is the centavos, not the cent.  Though they are the same size as US cent coins and are interchangeable here.


The main one dollar coin that is in circulation is a year 2000 mint bearing the image of an indigenous woman with child. This gives the coin an Ecuadorian feel. However, it is in fact still a USA coin and displays the words ‘In God We Trust’. The indigenous women pictured is Sacagawea  a North American Shoshone Indian guide who aided explorers in 1804.

The adoption of the US dollar has served to attract many estadounidenses* to live in Ecuador. Particularly, retirees who find that there US pension goes a long way here. The city of Cuenca is particularly popular with retirees from the USA.


At the time of writing one USA/Ecuador dollar is worth about 63pence in British money.  The cost of living is very low compared to Britain. Intercity bus travel costs about $1 per hour. A dollar will also buy you a taxi ride equivalent to a 25 minute walk, or a dozen oranges from a street vendor. You can easily rent a good apartment in the capital, as we did, for under $500 per month. In general things cost only about a half  to a third of what they would cost in Britain. Though some imported goods as just as expensive, brand name sports shoes for example still cost a minimum of $60 a pair.


Pay for teaching English varies tremendously, but the minimum is usually about $7 per hour. One job I had recently paid around $20 per hour. In addition, the tax rate is low. I pay only 8% and even this I can apparently claim back as a non-resident. This is a breath of financial fresh air. I was paying 40% of my pay as tax while working in the UK.
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* estadounidense is a Spanish word for somebody or something from the United States of America. English doesn’t have a word specifically for this, so most English speakers just say American. However, this grates with the majority of people who live on the American continent but are not from the USA. 

Day of the Dead

The day of the dead is a festival celebrated across Latin America. It isn’t as spooky as it sounds, at least not in Ecuador. The main activity of the day is visiting the cemetery to spend time at the graves of dead family members, but this is not just a flying visit to drop off some flowers as it might be in the UK. The whole family comes along, and they spend much of the day at the grave. They bring food and have a sort of picnic, they tend to the grave and add ornamental crosses or flowers. Of course as everybody in town is doing this on the same day, the graveyard becomes quite crowded. In addition, there may be market traders around (or in) the cemetery, supplying the crowds with food and religious wares. Overall, the festivities transform the graveyards into something you would rarely ever see in the UK. There may even be entertainment laid on.

Andean rock band Cocha Marka playing ive at Otavalo cemetery

The day of the dead is celebrated on November 2nd, which this year was a Tuesday, in Ecuador November 3rd is an Independence day. This year the government gave Monday as ‘bridge’ public holiday which means most people have had a five day weekend.  Consequently, everybody in Ecuador has gone away somewhere. We took the opportunity to come to Otavalo in the northern highlands. This town is famous for its indigenous textiles and its markets, but is also a good place to observe the customs of day of the dead.

The day that it is celebrated on is actually all souls day in the Catholic religion, and the day of the dead is likely an indigenous adaptation of this European religious custom. Christianity is big over here, and has been since the Spanish arrived with Columbus. However, it tends to be integrated with traditional local customs, particularly by the indigenous groups. An example of this is the Ecuadorian custom of eating guaguas de pan- little dolls made of bread, with colada morada-  a think fruity drink that looks like blood and guts. The combination is reminiscent of the Catholic bread and wine – body and blood symbolism. This is likely an example of syncretism, the merging of religious belief systems to avoid conflict. It isn’t at all uncommon, and is for example why Easter in the UK is celebrated with eggs and bunny rabbits; these native customs were syncretised with Christianity when Pagan Europeans adopted that Middle Eastern religion.

Guaguas de pan, these are from a supermarket, better ones are sold by street vendors

Guagua and colada morada

I visited the cemetery in Otavalo on the day of the dead, and it was a struggle to get through the crowds to get there. The last few hundred yards of the route were lined with traders selling guaguas, fruit and other food. When I arrived the cemetery was packed and there was a stage set up for an Andean rock band to play. I bought a CD. There was a balloon seller and hundreds of families spending time at the family graves. It is quite a scene, but I coudn’t stay long as it felt something of an invasion of privacy, and being the only gringo there, I stood out as a gawky tourist. Nevertheless, I wasn’t the only one there who took photographs. Locals were doing that too, and I didn’t encounter any hostility.

At what temperature does water boil?

It boils at about 90c in my apartment, and the vegetables never quite soften up. This is a consequence of living in one of the highest altitude cities in the world. Denver in the USA is know as the mile high city, but is pretty low altitude in comparison to Quito. The height above sea level here varies because the city sprawls across a valley. The Altitude is said to be about 9300 feet (2850 metres) in the central area, but go up to the suburbs on the valley sides and you will be closer to 10,000 feet up. If you were piloting a light aircraft at that height you would be required to use oxygen tanks for safety. You can go even higher. A main tourist attraction here is the Teleférico, a cable car ride up the side of Volcan Pichincha, to over 4,000 feet. Up there the air really is scarce. I felt sick and had to return to the city, but that was only a week after I arrived here, so I may not have fully acclimatised.

When you first arrive it can be a bit of a shock, your fitness drops considerably and a stroll to the shops can leave you feeling woozy and out of breath. You get used to it, somewhat. The body makes lots of changes to adapt, such as increasing your red blood cell count. For this reason, high altitude living is popular with some athletes, as it is thought that these physiological changes give a competitive advantage when competing back at low altitude. However, it is my impression that the body can’t fully adapt to the lack of air up here. I’ve started some fairly intensive batto-jutsu (Japanese sword training) classes. Although I expect to feel tired afterwards, the fatigue is much longer than anything I’ve experienced at ground level.

At least I'll be fit when I return to the UK at Christmas, thanks to all those extra blood cells.

Busy

This teaching lark is really easy to get stuck with. I have 26 hours of teaching this week, with preparation and travel, this is more than UK full time work. I don't need to work so much, but I keep getting asked to teach, and it pays quite well. In addition, my six month visa is more than half way through, so I need to find somebody to help with that, the more I work the more likely that is.

Hopefully things will settle down and I'll be able to get back to doing things I want to do. There'll be a better blog post soon.

Crime in Quito

The whole business with the coup seems to have blown over pretty quickly, though there is technically still a state of emergency and apparently there are tanks driving around the city. President Correa held firm, until the day after the coup and then made some concessions to the revolting coppers. I now know that the ‘fireworks’ I heard last week were not people celebrating the end of the coup, it was actually the gunfire between the army and the police. A police officer on the side of the state was shot and killed by one of the revolting ones. Loco. One of my students went to work the next day and found a bullet in the wall of their office. The police had little respect here before and virtually none now.

Perhaps this is one reason that there is such a crime problem here in Quito. You can’t really walk around outdoors after dark, and being on the equator, the sun sets at about 6:30pm every day, all year round. If you do venture out there is a very real chance you will held-up at gun point. Some areas are safer, but only relatively so. My apartment block, like most here has 24-hour armed guards. So you are safe while you are home, but you need to take taxis for most journeys, if you can afford it. However, much of the crime here doesn’t involve any actual violence. The murder and serious assault rate is apparently only about one third of that in large cities in the USA. But the petty crime rate is astronomical.

Since the last blog I have started a new job and consequently become of those victims of petty crime here in Quito. Out of the blue I received a call on my mobile on Tuesday AM, asking me to an interview at a university. I had dropped a CV into the reception a few weeks ago, but had heard nothing up until now. They interviewed me Tuesday afternoon and I started on Wednesday, teaching an intensive English course. The university is considered the best in Ecuador by many; certainly it is the most research active. However, it is located outside the city and so I would have to take the Ecovia, the rapid public transit system.
The Ecovia is well known for petty crime, pickpocketing mainly, as it is so crowded. I’ve taken it before and had to keep moving to avoid pickpockets, sometimes other passengers notice them and warn you, sometimes you notice them yourself as they stand just too close to you, and sometimes they get lucky and nobody notices them. On a crowded bus it is impossible to fully protect yourself from pickpockets. There are so many hands and so many people brushing against you, every second of the journey. Any one of them could be your money leaving you.

Knowing how common pickpocketing was and how difficult it is to detect, I took as many precautions as possible when going to work at the university. I kept nothing in my pockets and my work bag was securely around my neck and at my front where I could see it. Still I was targeted as soon as I got on the Ecovia. She stood too close and when I moved she was standing next to me again. She wore business clothes but her left hand was covered in scares, this wasn’t right. I moved again and still somehow she is pressed against me. I kept checking my bag, my pockets; I couldn’t fathom what she was up to. Then the bus stops and she rushes off, followed by the tough guy accomplice, who I hadn’t noticed was with her until now.

With the door open I had room to check myself properly. There was a large gash in one side of my work bag, she had cut it with a scalpel. They had given up and left before taking anything, but in that confusing minute my bag had been badly damaged. Further inspection revealed another small cut in the opposite side of the bag. Presumably her first attempt before I tried to move away from her. At least it was just bag damage, of the six people from my training course who stayed in Ecuador, two have been robbed at gun-point so far.
So what else can I do? I had the bag in my sight and was watching her and still she cut it, twice. Even if I had noticed exactly what she was doing and challenged her, she was six inches away from me and had a scalpel in her hand. This week I’ve obtained two things, the university teaching job I came to find and the realisation that living in Quito is going to be more challenging than I anticipated.

Que será.

Ooh, a coup

Something political happened today in Ecuador, but it isn’t clear quite what. The army has taken control of Quito airport which is in the middle of the city. But whether that is part of a coup, or to protect infrastructure for the government isn’t obvious. The head of the army has apparently sworn his allegiance to President Correa. But the police force is rebelling. My work was cancelled today due to the potential danger of travelling in the city, but otherwise where I am based, nothing seems any different, and that is only maybe four miles from Quito airport. There were rumours that the supermarket next door to my flat was being looted, but when I went to investigate, it was still open and trading cat food to old women as usual.

The issue seems to be mainly with the police force which is protesting against austerity cuts. At a demonstration the president challenged the rebels to try and kill him ´si me quieren matar, mátenme´. They didn’t kill him, but he did have tear gas fired at him by his own police officers. One Ecuadorian friend said that it is about the police loosing things like their free turkey at Christmas, presumably there is more to it than that. The main problem seems to be now that with the police force rebelling, the country is unprotected from crime. It is dangerous after dark as it is, a friend was held up with a gun thrust in his chest two days ago. It seems that if you walk around the streets after dark a weapon will be pulled against you. It is just getting dark now, so the night might bring some chaos. The police aren’t going to get much sympathy from the public. They are widely considered to be corrupt and self serving.

The politics here are similar to the rest of the southern continent, so people aren’t particularly surprised by a possible coup being underway. Ecuador is part of the ´marea rosa latinoamericana´, the pink tide of Latin American countries shifting to leftish politics. Indeed, several of Correa´s equivalents have seen similar coups in recent years. President Chavez in Venezuela held on to power after his, President Zelaya in Honduras was dumped out of the country still in his pyjamas.