Humans wear clothes. Some wear more, some less. Some are expensive, glamorous with designer touches straight from the runway, some are little better than rags.
This morning, in the Rio Tomebamba River, a family washes their clothes and bedding.
Two women, wearing yellow rubber boots, stand in the river, soak fabric in water, pound clothes on rocks to remove dirt like ancient Inca people. They have detergent in plastic buckets that they work into the material and suds run into the river and are taken away downstream.
This wash will take most of the day to complete with the longest time needed for the sun to dry blankets before they can be folded, carefully placed in hand woven cloth bags, and carried home.
This family started early and already has washed clothes and draped blankets over a concrete wall that separates the river from the road.
We are not as distant from poverty as we want to believe.
There are many in this world who don’t have a washing machine, or the electricity to power it, and come down to the river early when the birds shake themselves awake and try out a few of their sweetest melodies with sunbeams as musical staffs.
Cartegena, Columbia is a spirit place even if I hate its heat, humidity, street vendors, and dirty streets.
There are spirits in that Old City behind huge locked doors, in notches cut into stone walls that held big guns aimed at pirate ships coming for treasure. Spirits sit on the steps of the Museo of the Inquisition where great battles for souls played out in the fifteen and sixteen hundreds.
Cuenca is also a spirit place. On any day, even if you take the same route you did yesterday, there are surprises.
There are troubled clouds that mass over the New Cathedral like demons trying to break down iron doors. There are muscled figures out of science fiction movies, chained to a balcony, who look down at you with a scowl. There is a mixture of old world and new world, and, turning any corner, you can not be sure what might spill in front of you, whether you are ready to catch it, or not.
Paper figures hang on a wire fence by the Rio Tomebamba and are so fragile they are twisted and torn by forces outside their control.
Some say we are paper too, holding tightly to our conventions, with all our strength, so we are not blown into the river and drowned.
Forces for good, and evil, are always blowing us here and there with big gusts of their breath, like we are small sailboats on a big ocean..
By the New Cathedral, on a cloudy afternoon, these performers stand motionless.
Then, they move and beckon to a little girl to pose for a photo with them with her mom. After the photo, they blow them a parting kiss and return to their rigid pose. They work for tips, depending on generosity to fill the bowl on the ground at their feet.
What is unseen is that this little girl, twice earlier, walked to the bowl, bent down to take a ten dollar bill until her mother called her back.
I should have left coins.
Temptation, especially for kids, is never far away, and succumbing is all too human.
Ronald doesn’t mind getting photographed. Just five minutes ago, two kids sat next to the icon eating fries and sipping Coca Cola.
How is it that a clown can become the most famous person in the world?
Ronald’s only resume is red hair, crazy colored clothes, clown shoes, and a continual smile.
In a city like this with hundreds of bronze statues of military men, conquerors,artists, writers, and churchmen, how can Ronald be so comfortable with himself?
It seems time to run Ronald for President in 2016.
We have puppets in office, but electing a puppet, who doesn’t pretend to be something he isn’t, would be the most honest thing we have done in years.
Ecuador has a new changing young generation.
A still small number of its children have adopted the music, talk, style of other big city children around the world. There is graffiti in Cuenca. You see some tattoos, some ear piercings and dyed hair, torn levi’s with holes in them, a liking to turn raucous rap way way up.
At a Gazebo in Parque Calderone, where adult protesters recently yelled against government tyranny, these kids are peacefully practicing dance moves. Each individual on the stage has his own routine, his own steps, his own personality.
Ecuador is a country where you watch young people taking the arm of mom or grand mom as they walk down a bumpy sidewalk. It is a country where older men, and women, still wear traditional attire of their village, bright skirts, black hats, braided hair, stoic looks.
This new generation moves us into new times with a few bumps and grinds..
There are, however, worse things these kids could be doing than dancing in the park on a Monday night.
If only all generational change were this easy.
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