The town of Cuenca is the second to last stop on our way out of Ecuador. We decide that Cuenca is the perfect setting to learn Spanish. It is small, affordable, quaint, and a notch in a long series of Spanish speaking cities that lie ahead of us. After some research and a referral from Avi, our hostel neighbor and friend, we enroll in Simon Bolivar Spanish School at less than $5 per person per hour.
The perk of joining Simon Bolivar Spanish School is that it offers free cultural courses every evening to students. One can learn how to dance the salsa or merengue, cook Ecuadorian cuisine, or mix cocktails. Deenaree and Ben take an evening to learn how to salsa and spend the next few days nursing their sore legs. Apparently, salsa is also an exercise routine.
In addition to evening courses, Simon Bolivar also schedules ¨field trips¨or outings that students are welcome to. One such outing involves going to the top of a hill overlooking town and visiting the ceramic studio of a well-known Cuencan artist, Eduardo Vega. Although from Cuenca, he is recognized all around the world for his ceramic murals. We were pretty captivated by all the detailed pottery in his studio and wished we could take some home.
A second school outing involves eating cuy or guinea pig at a local restaurant in town. Ben is game for this, but Deenaree relents only when she finds out that the restaurant will be serving other food. When push comes to shove, however, Deenaree does give in to trying cuy and finds that it´s not as bad as it looks.
The Spanish courses themselves are very good. We are pleased to find that our teacher, Fausto, is the director of the school. He exercises an incredible amount of patience as we struggle through verb conjugations and sentence structures. We spend a week’s worth of afternoons plugging away at ser, gustar, tener, estar, and irregular verbs. Not only do we learn vocabulary and structures, but also we learn about Ecuador.
For one such class, we are reading a cultural note in Spanish about curanderos or “shamans” and discussing herbal medicine. Fausto asks us if we know about the curanderos that come to Cuenca on Fridays. We tell him, “No”, and he suggests that we go. ”Ok,” we say, assuming that he means after class. But he says, “Ahora (now)”. We are confused, but we follow him anyway.
Several blocks away from the school, tucked behind a market, we see a dozen older indigenous women meeting with their “patients”. Fausto explains that these curanderos come to Cuenca every Friday to heal the sick members of the community for only two dollars. Many of the patients are children and it is believed that the curanderos can heal them of their childhood ills, night terrors, etc. In fact, when Fausto was young, his parents took him to these shamans, too.
As part of a process unknown to us, the children are swatted with bouquets of aromatic herbs. Then, an egg is rubbed all around their bodies to “pick up the bad spirits”. The egg is cracked into a plastic bag and “read”. The amount of problem the recipient had is determined by how unclear the egg white is in the bag. As a final gesture, the herbalists take a swig from a plastic bottle and spit the liquid a few times on their patients. The reactions of the little ones are mixed. Some cry and squirm while others smile and giggle. Deenaree’s reaction is of shock at the spitting, but fascination at the readings.
We observe this healing ritual being performed a few times more before heading back to the school. It has been an educational afternoon and we are aware that this experience, along with all of the other ones, has made our choice to attend Simon Bolivar a very worthwhile one.