 |
Ecuador: The Aymes of Tingo
The 4-year-old, Alvarito, “is the most troublesome,” she says, “but he can’t be left behind without an argument.” It’s difficult to imagine anyone arguing with the authoritarian Ermelinda—until we meet Alvarito.
With eight children to raise—including the baby riding in a sling on her back—plus doing field work, tending a flock of sheep, cooking, doing the laundry and the marketing, as well as practicing midwifery and medicinal healing, Ermelinda doesn’t have much time to indulge the children. Her husband, Orlando Ayme, who also goes to market, turns out to be the go-to guy for parental largesse—usually Alvarito gets to go shopping. Even without the patter of little feet, the Aymes’ food forays aren’t easy. There are no shops or markets in Tingo—only neighbors and family to borrow from and share with. The hike down the mountain from Tingo to Simiatug is three miles long; then there’s the vertical walk back.
Although Ecuador is situated on the equator and the growing season is long, the Ayme family’s fields are 11,000 feet up in the mountains, far removed from the rich tropical lowlands. “Our land is dry, and the wind is harsh,” says Orlando, “so it’s not that good for planting. The land farther down is much more fertile, but it’s too expensive.” Despite the difficult climate, they manage to live through most of the year on what they grow in their fields: potatoes, oca (a root vegetable), corn, wheat, broad beans, and onions. The only animal protein they eat is guinea pig and chicken, and that only a few times a year. They have a milk cow that produces about one quart a day.
Food security comes in the form of their other enterprise—their flock of 50 sheep, which the Aymes own jointly with their extended family. They raise the animals not for food, but to sell in the market—to tide them over during the dry season, when there’s little or nothing to harvest. In addition, Orlando is the Tingo representative to Pachakutik, a national political party named after a legendary Inca emperor. He makes $50 a month for the work, but $15 of that pays the rent on the small room in Simiatug where he stays when he’s doing community business. The remaining $35 helps, but it doesn’t go very far with a family of ten. Money has been especially tight since the year 2000, when Ecuador, trying to hold back exploding inflation, adopted the U.S. dollar as the national currency. The move slowed inflation, but prices escalated as vendors took advantage of the switch—and the ensuing confusion—to round off prices to the nearest dollar. Suddenly, many small purchases cost at least $1—not a trifling amount considering that more than four out of ten Ecuadorians live on less than $2 a day.
The Aymes spend most of their time in Tingo, farming and raising the children. They lead a physically demanding life—Ermelinda more so than her husband, as Orlando himself admits. In addition to farming, she is the village healer, gathering nettles, corn silk, horsetail, mint, chamomile, plantain seeds, and paico (a relative of goosefoot) to make tonics and healthful teas. “It’s difficult to keep all these children healthy,” she says. “We have no money for doctors and medicine.” But Orlando thinks she’s selling her efforts short. “We are pobre pero sana,” he says—poor but healthy.
During our September visit, the last of the potatoes—their staple crop—have been eaten and there’s nothing else growing. They’re selling two sheep this week to buy food—some for this week and some for later. Orlando thinks he can get $40 for the two at the Simiatug market, if middlemen from the bigger town of Ambato come to the market with their pickup trucks to buy animals.
 |
The animal market—really just a clearing—is below the schoolhouse, on the edge of town. The Aymes stop here first, to sell their sheep. Many of their fellow villagers are doing the same, except that, in addition to selling sheep, they are selling alpacas, llamas, cows, bulls, and piglets. There are no hogs for sale—“People buy piglets and keep them until they’re big enough to eat,” Orlando says. “No one sells a hog.” The animal market is a social gathering spot—mostly for the men, who catch up on the week’s events while hoping to sell their animals. An ice cream vendor walks among them, hawking cones, and another man stands around waiting to collect sales tax for the local government.
The wholesalers from Ambato try to press dollars into the sellers’ palms to close the deals, but they bid less than anyone wants to take. Finally, though, someone takes an offer, jump-starting the morning. Orlando accepts $35 for his sheep—not as much as he wanted but enough to go shopping. The wholesalers throw the sheep down and tie their legs together, “to keep them from breaking in the truck,” says Orlando. Money in hand, it’s time to go shopping, and Alvarito is obviously sensing an approaching opportunity.
The Aymes always buy their most important staple foods first, and then they keep spending until the money is gone. Orlando and Ermelinda buy 100 pounds of potatoes for $3 and ten pounds of lentils for $4. Next they buy about 50 pounds of flour—corn flour, white flour, green pea flour, coarse white flour, and ground wheat—at the indigenous food cooperative. “They give us good prices,” says Ermelinda. She also buys what she calls “broken rice,” which is cheaper than whole white rice, though of poorer quality. They can get 50 pounds for about $6—less than half the price of whole white rice. Momentarily, everyone stops to enjoy the show when Alvarito, who has spied a cake in the glass-fronted case at the co-op, causes a commotion when told he can’t have it.
Back on the street, plantains are next—13 pounds for $1.80. An 11-pound wheel of panela—brown sugar—tightly wrapped in cane leaves—is another $1.80. At home, everyone will chip off chunks throughout the week and eat it like candy, or dissolve it in hot water for a sugary drink. The entire cake of sugar will be gone before next market day. Fresh fruits and vegetables, last on the shopping list, are only purchased if there’s extra money. They buy carrots, leeks, tomatoes, and some fruit today, because they sold the sheep. Then the money is gone, so the shopping is over. Orlando lashes as much food as he can onto the horse he borrowed from his father-in-law, and they carry the rest up the mountain themselves. Alvarito carries nothing but disappointment. He wanted a red wool poncho like the ones his brothers and sisters wear, but there wasn’t the money for it. He stomps up the trail.
What's on the World's Menu?
What does your family eat in a week? That’s the question photojournalist Peter Menzel and writer Faith D’Aluisio asked at 30 households in 24 countries. They share the diverse answers in Hungry Planet: What the World Eats (Ten Speed Press, $40). The unique and engaging book shows photo portraits of each family with its seven days of food, in its kitchen—be that kitchen a room full of modern appliances or a patch of sand in the desert with a cooking fire. |
|
 |
FAITH D’ALUISIO: Well, basically, we like food. That was a good start.
SKY: How difficult was it to find participants?
FD’A: It’s interesting, I think, that so many of the families, they were really interested in the process—
SKY: Your process?
FD’A: —yes, and it wasn’t just about them; they were very interested to hear about other families. We have elements in the book such as the recipes: In a lot of places we had to explain what that was, because it’s actually another sort of Western idea, writing down something and passing it around and making books of it and it tells you how to make food. . . . Explaining this to our translator in the refugee camp in Chad took the better part of a half an hour to get him to understand that, yes, indeed, I did want to write down the ingredients. He kept saying, “Well, she doesn’t really know what the things are; she just does it. She learned it from her mother.”
SKY: Peter, I gather you’re a rather adventurous eater.
PETER MENZEL: [For our book] Man Eating Bugs: The Art and Science of Eating Insects, we went to 13 countries around the world and we ate insects with people. After completing that project, anything is tame by comparison—especially when you’re eating live insects and they’re trying to get out of your mouth.
SKY: Did studying other cultures change how you look at American eating habits?
FD’A: I have always paid quite a lot of attention to what’s in people’s shopping carts. Peter says he hates when I go grocery shopping because I never come out. I’m people shopping, I’m not really grocery shopping. I’m mesmerized by people’s grocery carts.
PM: Americans really really need to start looking at what they’re eating, because they’re sort of spoiled by having too many choices. And what they need to look at right now is what they should be eating for their best health and longevity. In this book, we’re not telling people what to eat, we’re showing what other people in other countries eat and letting them draw their own conclusions.
—Britta Waller
