It is 2 AM – time to get up for work. I wash my face and carefully descend the white marble staircase to make coffee. Coffee is different here, thick as tar and with a hint of petrol in the aroma.
I contemplate the pitch black night through the kitchen window before turning the lights on. Here, night falls in mere seconds, at 6pm sharp every day, rushing towards the valley like a disoriented animal, turning everything sticky solid until morning.
It is the start of the workday in Europe, several hours ahead. I tick off my work items, and at 6am Ibarra time, when colleagues in France leave for lunch, I put on my running shoes. I also reapply makeup, make sure I have my earrings on and check my reflection in the mirror – running, like every other activity in Ecuador, is an opportunity to socialize with friends and relatives, and people pay attention to how they and their counterparts look and dress.
They call it White City because of the white-painted facades in the colonial-style town center. I love peeking inside the little shops and cafés, nestled in narrow streets, hiding from the sun. At breakfast time, the restaurants burst with early coffee drinkers. But I look at them from a car.
I am told I cannot walk in the streets of Ibarra, not even in the middle of the day. Walking, like running, is a carefully orchestrated activity that is always done in groups. I keep challenging the safety rules, but the locals shake their heads, not saying much, in the typical, no-gossip communication style I have learned to love. They never speak aloud of danger, as if saying it out loud could bring bad luck. ‘It is better in the car’, they say with a smile.
Nothing seems safer to me than this city, especially during the day. There is only one season all year: an eternal breezy summer that makes life seem effortless, as if people were on perpetual holidays. But I get back in the car: one does not make decisions alone here.
For the daily dose of sport, we head to Céntrica, a public park repurposed from what once was an urban airport. The park is built at the foot of the undisturbed, majestic Imbabura mountain. I run towards this mountain every morning, trying to catch up to its immortality.
Or, rather, I should say I throttle slowly, breathing heavily. After two weeks here, my lungs are finally beginning to cope with less oxygen: the city is at 2,200m above sea level. As I advance down the old runway, my whole Ecuadorian family is right behind me, watching my every step and turn. I am half grateful and half annoyed with the constant supervision, especially because at 6am the park is full of early morning runners that I recognize, and because I am taller than most people here and more sunburnt, so kidnapping me would not go unnoticed. But again, I know by now not to question, even though I do crave being alone.
I speak Spanish with the Sierra accent of this city. Community is the center of life, and people have soft ways of speaking with one another, preserving the harmony of relationships that allow them to ask for and offer help. Anger and frustration are not expressed in the way they can be in Europe and interactions are not as polluted by mobile screens. Families and friends spend time together, asking each other to ‘acompáñame’, which means ‘come with me’ – to the supermarket, to drop kids off at school, to visit a relative. People offer the gift of time to each other with friendly patience. In this setting, my need for solitude and my typical work busyness seem ridiculous and out of place.
After the run, we go to drink freshly pressed juice.
I had never before tasted, or even heard of, most of the fruit I discovered in Imbabura province. It is as if God is still amusing himself creating new varieties and sending them here to make people forever perplexed by Mother Nature’s sweet wonders. I know the names only in Spanish, since I have never had an opportunity to hear them in other languages. Fruit is available everywhere in the city: in stores, beside highways, at the market, in people's gardens – heaps of delightful rainbow richness everywhere, making life here seem to outsiders not only like a perpetual holiday, but a sugar-loaded one.
We stop at the coconut stand next to the running tracks and choose fresh coconuts. The man cuts the tops off, puts a straw inside and hands the coconuts to us. Around his stall, several passersby enjoy their juice.
We were to meet a friend this morning at the stall, but we arrived late and she is not there. We wait for her a few minutes, then try calling her on her mobile. Finally, one of my friends asks the people standing around, ‘Have you seen the woman with dark hair here today?’
I look at him. Why would he ask complete strangers and provide so few details? How can they know whom we were supposed to meet?
To my surprise, one of the bystanders, without missing a beat, replies, ‘Yes, she was here this morning. She had her coconut already.’
I choose not to pursue the matter with my friend, only noting that there are still many things for me to learn about life in this community.
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Tomorrow we'll go to pools filled with running hot water from a nearby volcano. We'll drive up the mountain and dip into the pools, laughing and squealing as we get used to the different temperatures of each one. There is no chlorine since the water never stagnates.
I will close my eyes, floating in the water. I’ll be thinking that this is what paradise must be like, with the blue expanse of sky against the sharp canvas of deep green mountains, fog crawling up along the tops and sunset painting gold on water.
I am part of this. This is mi tierra.
