Introducing Ecuador, My New Home

Today I didn’t call anyone since the electronic voice declared me short of tarjeta or “air time”. Instead I spent the day catching up on tasks that were long overdue, although I somehow couldn’t put in more than an hour to improve my seriously deficient Spanish. It has been an uneventful day, unlike the week, or indeed the past month since I made the move to Ecuador [for reasons that I’ll be getting into later]. For now, let me introduce you to this place that I hope to make my home for some time.

Yesterday in a routine conversation with a friend, I learnt that when she hired her new domestic help, the woman wanted to know where “her special utensils” were and in what room she was expected to eat her lunch, since with her previous employers she was not allowed to share these. Later, I went to a meeting in one of Quito’s “most secure neighbourhoods” where my friends had their car broken into, in broad daylight. During the same meeting, an acquaintance used a popular quote to warn me of road dangers here. Apparently, "Ecuadorian cemeteries are filled with people who had the right of way".

The day before, an acquaintance showed up for a meeting 40 minutes late and as he took his seat, all he said to us was, “buenas tardes”. No apology or regret. As with Kenya’s “hakuna matata”, things in Ecuador get done, in their own time, “Manana, Manana, sin falta”. As if that was not enough for the day, a driver in front of us held the traffic for about 5 minutes because he decided to buy lottery tickets from a street vendor.

Last weekend 11 USDs gave me four bags full of fresh, juicy, tropical and exotic fruit. I attended mass at an altitude so high my ears popped, and had supper in a room overlooking the magnificent Cotopaxi Mountain.


Map of Ecuador Courtesy of Fundacion Bolivar Education.

Three weeks ago, I straddled the globe as I stood at “la mitad del mundo” or the middle of the world and toured Cuenca, a charming and bustling city, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, also home to Ingapirca the most significant archaeological site in Ecuador.

From chilly Andean slopes to a humid amazon basin, and majestic snow-capped peaks that descend into beautiful beaches, Ecuador’s climatic and geographic diversity is simply astounding.

Come journey with me through Ecuador, a dazzling country of extraordinary contradictions. As I live and discover my new home, I hope you allow me the honour of taking you along with me. Although I have been coming here since 2008, this time round, I hope that I can get beyond the tourist eye and simple journalistic curiosity to reach a place where I can call this land, “my home away from home”.