I live in a neighborhood of middle to lower class residents with cobblestone streets and exposed cinder blocks. Lots of friends who have come over to my apartment express concern for me because of the neighborhood in which I live. If they come visit me in a car and park outside on the street, many constantly look down from my third floor window fearing that someone will break into their vehicle. When I tell them that sometimes I arrive home on my bike after dark, they fear for me. Their worries are understandable, things can happen without a doubt. But I continue to live here and enjoy it. I try to be careful and very aware of my surroundings. However, nothing has ever happened to me in or around my house. Rather, I've been robbed on a bus, in a internet cafe, and twice on busy streets during broad daylight (once in a more wealthy neighborhood and once in a more marginal neighborhood). What that means, you be the judge. I find it an interesting thing to reflect upon.
So onto the alley beside my house. I live on the third and top floor of an apartment building which overlooks an alley opposite the street entrance to my apartment. For a long time now, I've been observing the activities that happen in the alley beside my house from the small porch outside my apartment door where I come and go everyday and lie in my hammock. I have found it to be a surprisingly community-oriented, yet violent and precarious environment, and this is both fascinating and puzzling to observe. During the day, adults and children play soccer, volleyball and joke around. Every now and then, a dump truck filled with junk material shows up and people come out of their houses and work together to recycle and sort the material. I've been woken up by the sound of break glass early in the morning only to find that the "vecinos" (a common, informal term in Ecuador to refer not just to neighbors but to almost everyone) are breaking bottles together and sorting them into sacks. Sometimes I wake up to the sound of live music and look down into the alley at 7am or 8am and find a brass band of adults playing music together. Other times I can't sleep because the alley holds parties that last all night (and sometimes all day). One such time, they began a party at around 11am in the morning. By 1:30pm, they had stopped the music briefly in order to let an ambulance take away an injured man on a stretcher. After the ambulance left, the music started up again and didn't stop until the next day. Every evening and late into the night (and sometimes during the day), a group of men gather by a light pole in the alley to use and sell drugs. A few times the police have come through the alley and made arrests which sparks the residents of the alley to come out of their houses and deliberate about what to do. A few months back, I arrived at my house in the evening and looked down into the alley to find a man physically abusing a woman while others looked on with a relaxed attitude. I decided to bike down to the police station and tell them about it. The police strolled up in their pickup truck, talked to the man briefly and after he reassured them that she was a family member and that everything was under control, they headed off and the abuse continued for a few more minutes. Most recently on a Sunday afternoon while eating lunch with Eliana and Kaleth, we heard yelling and an argument in the alley. We went to the door to find that there were about 10 men, woman, and children in a heated discussion. Two of the men pulled out pistols and starting threatening to shoot each other. At that point, we went inside and shut my apartment door hoping not to hear gun shots. After a few more minutes, the scene calmed down and shortly thereafter, kids starting playing soccer again in the alley.
It's a puzzling and peculiar environment. Sometimes I'm not sure what to make of it or what my role is or should be in some of the situations. The alley is right beside my house, but at the same time I don't feel very connected to it, because I have another street entrance to my apartment that opens onto a street with a different environment. Sometimes I feel like a spy looking onto a secret sub-cultural that I have a special window into, since it's a fairly secluded alley where only it's residents and some close friends enter (although from my apt you would have to put earplugs and a blindfold on not to notice everything that happens). And I find it interesting to weigh the positives and the negatives of what I observe. Sometimes I feel that I observe positive community building practices in the alley that we could learn from at our churches, while at the same time and among the same people, I observe destructive behaviors that upset me and should have no part in our lives.
Maybe the stark differences that I observe in the alley reflect in an obvious way the contrasts and contradictions that each one us as individuals, communities and societies carry with us. How different are we?
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| 7:30am: Can you see the brass band dressed in black? |
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| This is a huge paper miche doll that they made to light on fire for New Year's (an Ecuadorian tradition) |
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| The looong party in it's early stages |
