Back to the city

Returned from the Rio Muchacho farm to Quito by the night bus, then yesterday the class visited a commercial organic farm nearby called Chaupi Molino. Learned a lot this past month, but it was a challenge to go without much free time, privacy or personal space with all of the group activities and close quarters during the course. I also don't care much for being herded around in a group, which is the way it felt some of the time. Now I'm taking some time to reflect on what I learned, ask the Lord for guidance and assess what to do next.

"Gringolandia" in Quito

After the month at the farm, I'm taking more notice of the contrasts between the countryside and the city. Where I've been staying in Quito, I see similar advertising and consumption as in other big cities, and people seem more into themselves and how they look. Can't help but notice the vast difference between the warmth of the culture that first attracted me to Latin America and the rampant materialism that seems to have infected much of life in the big cities as it has in the US. Not much new under the sun. I think about how we could change any of this. Seems like we've had the same struggles more or less from the beginning of human society, only now the destruction of the planet is on a larger scale.

I remember a comment from one of the teachers at the course about how the indigenous people called the Spanish invaders the "children of the wind." When people in the rural areas are separated from their roots - their communities and their land - either willingly by being enticed false promises of the media and consumer culture, or unwillingly through violence or economic oppression, it seems that they lose much of their identity and integrity, and collectively we lose an example and hope of an alternative and better way of living together.

On horseback to a swimming hole

Great live andina music at the Guapulo Arte

Quito, Ecuador