Cuenca of hands and people
The night
Water started to fall from the ceiling through an improvised
shower. Waves of pleasure electrified the crowd that danced
frenetic to the sounds of the beat. The music - the gathering link. The
night - the time for freedom. It always surprises me to realise
how music unites people.
Three hours before that was just a dark space with Art Pop, Manga
paintings on the walls and holes on the wooden floor. The pure
enjoyment of music was the reason why people went there and that was
just another night were people went to share their joy of music. Pop
is a place that toasts to life, friendships, music, dance, and
there an unlike group of people gathered to dance and above all to
share the newly formed friendships communicating in a language that we
all understood - the language of dance and music!
Roy, a man with an eternal smile and the spirit of the modern
renaissance, his passion for languages, culture, human beings,
travels, Latin America, his country Ecuador, and the city where he
lives - Cuenca. I enjoyed his fantastic sense of humour, his stories,
his friendship and his company during the 4 days that became 3 weeks,
and on that night, I also enjoyed his energy and Latin sense of
rhythm. If our dream becomes true we´ll meet again in 2009 to cycle in
Tibet!
Cláudia, my long and dark haired friend with eyes that shone like two
suns. Our walks , our conversations, our laughter and that night where
we danced together with soaking clothes, proving that the Latin feel
of the two continents is expressed in the same way: passion for music
and dance. Her dreams to travel in Europe this summer will certainly
come true, and I hope we meet again in British lands. One day this
woman will be fixing the Ecuadorean people´s teeth, but in the next
few months she will have to study hard to keep the promess to her
dad to pass all her exams to get her air ticket to the Old
Continent!
Gael a ciclotourist who with his travel buddy Yves, cycled South
America during two years doing an exchange of french games for
children with south American games, visiting schools and orphanages.
His Robson's Crusoe´s hair style and the unshaven beard are distinct
marks of the male tribe of ciclonauts. That night his
muscles moved to the sound of the music. Gael has now returned to
France and I try to imagine how is is life now that he has to adapt
himself to his old reality and adjust to the fact that he no longer
wakes up in the Andean Mountains?
Geoff, an unlikely traveller, shy and reserved, 24 years old. It is
hard to imagine that he is traveling South America on his motorbike
spending the savings that he had to open a business and going against
his parents disapproval, who were quite worried about him specially
after he disappeared in his crossing
between Colombia and Panama. But he left out his inhibitions that night
and danced surrounded by the crowd and sharing his
smile.
Magda, a Colombian student, was visiting Ecuador and the neighbouring
countries, was heading to Machu Pichu in Peru. She opted to become
a vegetarian in defense of the animals rights. She is from the capital
of salsa - Cali, but there, in Pop, she danced regardless of music
styles, spreading her happiness and sharing her travel
experiences.
Jeff, a Canadian cyclist, also traveling the American continent by
bicycle, he is a heavy metal fan who also joined the group and
danced shaking the dust from the many kilometres of the roads already
cycled and is now our travel buddy.
When we left Pop, our clothes were soaking and our chests full of
happiness. Some of us will never see each other again, but that night
had bee such a special moment that it will be marked in our memories
like a mural standing the passage of time and making us understand
that the real reason to travel is for friendship and unique encounters
like this one.
The wait
After cycling the mountains inside what it felt like a constant cloud
and not being able to see anything around us or to enjoy the rewards
of the hard climbs, we arrived in Cuenca. Cuenca the city that
reflected the sun in its colourful walls of past coloniality. The city
is a world heritage site by UNESCO and it is an "oasis" of urbanity in
the middle of the Andean mountains. It is a very touristic place, full
of gringos (what we tourist are called by the locals). Many are just
visiting, but they fall in love with the city charms and end up
staying forever.
Cuenca was marked in our travel map as a place to recover strenghts,
wait for my bank cards, and to plan the next moves towards Peru, but
my three weeks in Cuenca became days where I ended up getting so
involved with the city and its people that when was time to leave I
felt an invisible string anchoring me to that land of crossing
rivers.
My bank cards never arrived and Nuno who had been cycling for over a
week in the jungle, had arrived in Loja a city 200 kilometers south of
Cuenca and was waiting for me.
Life can be amazingly surprising when we let things happen: on the
first days that I was in Cuenca alone I felt bored and was wondering
what I was going to do with all that time of wait until one day when I
decided to leave the door to my room in the hostel where I was
staying, opened, that act, although symbolic initiated a process where
I started to meet all sorts of different people. That afternoon was
spent eating cherries with Tomoki, a very beautiful and eccentric
Japanese guy, on a sunny end of afternoon we shared our travel
experiences, our lives lived in London, our photos, he had an amazing
eye to see the bizarre in ordinary things. Later that night we went
out to POP with Kaido, a traveller from Estonia, a tall strong men
with piercing blue eyes, also a great photographer, he wrote traveling
articles for a women´s magazine in his country. We had a great time
dancing on a empty dance floor. When one travels one has the feeling
that each moment is unique, that there is no space for inibithions. We
knew that we would not see each other maybe ever again and in that
brief encounter we made the most of it and enjoyed the moment. Tomoki
went south to Peru to meet his sister and Kaido went to the coast of
Ecuador the following days.
Like the pieces of a domino that I place in line closely behind each
other to observe them as they fall to the touch of my finger, the fact
that I left Cuenca reveal itself allowed strangers to become friends
and a series of events took place in a way or another and I could
reveal the human side of Cuenca, the side that surpasses any other
side of any city.
The hands of Cuenca
When I saw those small leather boots in the middle of the disorganised
workshop I felt an irresistible urge to know the story behind the
hands who had shaped those two pieces of leather and transforming them
in beautiful tiny boots, that reminded me of past times, times where
things were made to measure, times where objects had an extended life
beyond the first fault.
I returned to the cobbler the following day with the wish to meet the
hands who had brought to life the used shoes of Cuenca. In Cuenca the
objects have a extended life because the city still lives of the
resurrection of things more than of the blind consumerism that we
experience in the western world. And this process enables several
workshops to be kept alive recovering and bringing new life to old
and used objects. An old leather jacket could be easily recovered,
dresses could be done and redone, a blouse could be embroidered with
unique patterns, a guitar could be made and fixed to the wishes of the
musician, a hat could be shaped to the more traditional to the more
eccentric shapes. It is a real pleasure to find things to fix and
watch as they come to life through the skillful hands of these
artisans.
Mr Luiz David Billa spent the last two years of his life in a dark and
untidy room with shelves full of repaired and old shoes. That room
opens to the street and to the noisy sounds of the cars, footsteps and
voices of people walking outside. Sometimes there are costumers coming
in or neighbours who pop in to say hello. Mr Luiz learned to repair
shoes when he was 10 years old but he also tried his luck doing other
jobs in the hope of earning more money. He
worked as a bricklayer but he gave up after he fell from the
scaffolding breaking his hipbone. He then tried his luck in the
sugarcane plantations but he used to cut himself frequently and gave
up. He married, had two children, got divorced. Just one of his
children is alive. He doesn´t keep any contact with his family, he
lives on his own. His life is sad. His life is dark. Seated there next
to him I started to realise his difficulty to repair the trainers that
he had on his hands. He has cataracts and his small economies will be
used in the hope that an operation will bring more light to his life
or at least enough light to allow him to see better so he can provide
for himself. It maybe that not much light is getting through his eyes,
but his smile is full of it! I felt that he was very glad to have
someone there to keep him company and to listen to his stories. He
showed me the typical shoes that he does with leather and the small
leather boots that fascinated me the day before. They were for a
little girl who had a disability and she needed the boots to be made
to measure to fit her. Later, one of his few friends joined us, he
helps Mr Luis on the more complicated jobs. After 4 hours talking with
Mr Luiz, I left. I felt sad because we can also feel the
loneliness that others feel. So many people pass through our life but
in reality only a little of their life passes through us.
On another of my wanderings through Cuenca I foind other hands, the
hands of a very friendly lady who embroidered dresses and blouses with
the traditional embroidery from Cuenca. Beatriz Peralta had a little
workshop on a colonial building where the municipality created a space
for artisans to display and create their work. They only pay a very
small rent, as the rents on the high streets would be to expensive.
Its central location attracts many visitors thus keeping¨possible the
preservation of the traditions the arts and crafts of the region.
Beatriz is single and lives with three more women: hers sister and
her nieces. Her sister designs the patterns that are later embroidered
on the beautiful dresses, blouses, ponchos and waistcoats. There are
not many people buying this type of work and specially since the cheap
Chinese shops invaded the country. People seem to prefer to buy
globalized fashion to handmade and bespoke. One day there wont be
anyone to do this works. Things will just be trown in the bin as soon
as they present the first fault and we will all dress the same clothes
presented to us by global companies.
Cuenca has half million inhabitants but after three weeks one can feel
the village atmosphere felt in most of the neighbourhoods, We start
greeting the familiar faces, start going to smae palces for food, the
owner of the hostel gets worried if you get late home. Strangers star
to be known people and you start to get habits and create a sort of
routine. Everyone is asking if my parcel has arrived and
congratulating me that it hasn't because that way I stay longer in
Cuenca. I start to feel the same.
And in my search for Cuencas hands I found the hands of Felipe who
worked on the Internet cafe during the day and was the DJ in POP at
night. He was an engineering student and his life is lived intensely,
between the Internet cafe, his school and his work at night, he seems
to enjoy that pace. His 22 years of life are full of hope, full of
dreams and his latinity is expressed not only in the way he DJ but
also in the way he flirts with the opposite sex. He hopes to travel
one day the old continent when he finishes his degree, but until then
he will just cheer the peoples of Cuenca with his electro Latin music!
Rafael, an art student, told me about his project for his graduation
where he intends to recover the corpses that are not reclaimed in the
morgue and search for its histories and tattoo them on their lifeless
bodies. This way he wishes to give voice to a life that would pass
without being noticed as if in reality it had never happened. Through
these silence voices Rafael intends to show how much we ignore those
that surround us, mostly those that live on the margins of society.
With death, the history of a person is gone, mostly if that person was
never acknowledge or died alone. Its not an easy project for many
reasons, but most of all because it deals with taboos such as death,
bodie and society all in one. I suppose that since art is now more
than a collection of strict rules and canones, its important that we
question things. In a society growing more and more indifferent to
others and more prone to sensationalism maybe that is an effective way
to get the message across. We wait for the results.
Stay or leave
The parcel wasn't giving any signs that was going to arrive soon and
Nuno was waiting for me for over a week, I had to decide: moving
towrds south and keep my bike adventure or stay in Cuenca and embrace
a new project. I decided to go south, the call was stronger. I didn't
say goodbye to many of my new friends because I hate goodbyes and
because I wait that one day I will return to Cuenca.
On the following days I returned to the Andean Mountain. My
adventures heading to Peru will follow!
PS - Sorry I could not put better fotos on my website, my camera
got lost and those were some of my fotos from Cuenca that I managed
to recover.
