the principles of principal

so this weekend, we decided to go with a couple of friends to a place called principal. principal is a place just two hours from cuenca, although i suspect that if the road was paved even half of the way, it would only be about a 30 minute busride. principal is the closest peace corps spot to cuenca, and there is a working relationship between the peace corps and cedei. this working relationship goes as follows: the one peace corps volunteer has asked that cedei donate a few teachers each weekend - perhaps particular teachers each weekend - as volunteers to teach english. in return, the cedei teachers would not have to pay the $5.50 that it costs to stay in the only hostel in town. for the teachers, this is good because they get to stay for free in a tiny rural village and enjoy the scenery and tranquility while helping out the people in the way that they can. this is good for principal because the one peace corps volunteer who does live in principal has made it his mission to help the town by boosting its tourism industry.

we went as tourists - that is - we paid the $5.50 and sat around and did hikes. other people from cedei were slated to come by to teach for free, so good for them. when we first got there, it was plainly evident that we had not been to a place like this yet in our south american travels. the streets were unpaved and being that we are suddenly in the rainy season - or shall i say that it just rains all the time here in ecuador - so the streets were composed mainly of mud and the most effectively stylish footwear were rubber boots that come up to your knees. principal is a town of 1200 and most of the people farm for themselves. for this reason, roosters populate the streets, blackberry and tree tomoto trees decorate each backyard, and the mountains around the town are left green, lush, and uncultivated. all larger places that are surrounded by mountains use the mountains as a means of urban sprawl, thus rendering the mountians interesting to look at at night what with all the lights rising into the air, but not as naturally beautiful during the day. the other industry was panama hat making. any woman you may have seen walking down the street, or sitting on her front porch-like area, would be madly weaving panama hats out of straw. whether she was on her leisure time, or she was carying a ton of wood on her back, if her hands were free, she would be weaving a panama hat. we ran into a couple of friendly ladies, weaving hats while walking down the street. they explained that since there used to be a lot of gold mining taking place in the nearby river that once fully mined was no longer a viable source of income, most of the men in the village had left for the united states to find work. she joked that the united states was made of silver. she wore the traditional dress of the village: a neon pink and colorful wool skirt, a knit sweater, two long braids, and her teeth rimmed with gold. she weaved while carrying a blackberry vine on her back that she would plant in her back yard. this, as with most villages in ecuador, is a vilage composed mainly of old men, women and children - the men in their prime having migrated to the u.s. the villagers survive on money sent back, and on the money they make from weaving panama hats. the woman we talked to lamented that she would only make $2 per hat, and that it would take 2 days to make one hat. also, that when she did sell the hat, it would be to an intermediary who would then sell the hat in the larger markets nearby for triple the price, at least. part of matts (mat being the peace corps volunteer) motivation for bringing tourism to principal was so that tourists could buy the hats directly from the women of the town. the lady asked if we knew matt, and then began to recited the names of the other peace corps volunteers who had been in town for the past 10 years or so. there was also megan, jeremy and david. we said that we had once met matt, but didnt really know him.

we walked on to other parts of the town - which did not take long - and passed by a school where children were playing soccer in the yard. as we walked by, they ran to the fence and began saing, 'hello', counting to ten, and any other english words they knew. they asked if we knew matt and if i could get their soccer ball down for them. somebody had kicked it onto a nearby patio. i jumped and got it down and the kids all cheered. then they invited us to play soccer with them. they all played in their rubber boots and i played goalie so as not to exert too much energy. they were very excited about it all and shreiked the whole time.

to eat, we had to, hours before, ask one particular woman in town to cook us something. there is no restaurant in town and this woman needs at least 5 hours of worning before she can serve anything. so, we sat down at her table at around 7, joined by matt and the two cedei teachers who had made it to principal to teach. the other three had bailed at the last moment. we ate and i remarked to matt that he must be doing a good job here because everyone knew him and seemed to like him a lot. he said that he had been trying to boost the tourism of the town and that he really wanted it to be written up in lonely planet. there is another town called jima which is equidistant from cuenca (though you only have to take one bus there), where another peace corps volunteer works, that was written up in the new version of lonely planet. in my humble estimation, i felt that if principal were written up in lonely planet, then perhaps the resulting onslaught of people into the town would be too much for the town to handle. for example, there are no restaurants. there is much hiking to do, but only one guide. only one hostel. soon, everyone might be offering up their services. other people would be offering up their homes as restaurants. other people would be offering up their homes as hostels, and other people would be offering up their services as guides - qualified or not. these people would make disproportionate amounts of money (dinner costed $2.50 - there were 7 of us, =$17.50. the hat weavers make $1 per day) and everyone would want a piece. how long would it be until this nice village where everyone says hello to the tourists, welcomes them to the town, and makes panama hats becomes a place like huacachina in peru, where you walk around feeling like a huge money bag and the locals literally climb over each other and push each other out of the way in order to run up to a tourist to shove a menu full of mediocre food options under their nose. of course im not saying that the people of principal dont deserve to make money if they want, but im just saying that as is, people were not laying in the streets starving - each family had a plot of organic fruits and veggies and a good sized rooster patroling the grounds. their income might not have been much, but they were surviving. is tourism sustainable? is touism a thing that would actually increase the standard of living for the people there? or would it create an upper class of tourists and people in the tourism industry that would occupy the good land of the town, pushing the rest of people to the outskirts where they would no longer have any means of income because their land would not yield as much, the property value would rise exponentially, and they would be left to then become the lower class who were laying in the streets starving... i dont know.

the dinner started out with a blackberry juice and popcorn with ají. then moved on to chicken with mashed potatoes, broccoli and carrots - all taken from the ladies back yard. she used to work as a cook in a restaurant in quito, and was therefore qualified to run this 'restaurant'. the food was delicious and we had her pack us lunches for the hike the next day. the lunches costed $16 for 4 of us. expensive, but she made us 4 chicken sanwiches each and a huge bag of popcorn. she also made us breakfast and it costed $2 per plate. the guide made $12 off of 4 of us for the 9hour hike we did in the rain and mud. interesting, but i wont go into it. beautiful, but i will eventually put pictures of it up on the yahoo page. also, anna got roped into teaching for free in principal, but i wont go into that either. we drank illicit rum, but dont tell the new president: here in ecuador, not only is voting compulsory, but drinking is banned during the weekend of the election (oh, also, election day is on sunday and is treated as a holiday so that people can vote - unlike certain places where voting is during the middle of the week while people are working so that people who need to work and cant take off to go vote are thus discouraged to vote) so that people can make clear-headed decisions. but since we werent voting, we figured that nobody would mind if we foreigners snuck some rum into our hostel room...
all in all it was a great experience to be there and made me think of the tourism industry and what it does to places...