Catacocha

Everyday in Ecuador, I woke with the hope that it would not rain, and everyday it did.

The rain came as a thin, grey mist, barely perceptible, tiny droplets, clinging to eyelashes like frozen pearls.

The rain came from dark grey clouds in a dark blue sky; fleetingly, with assured heaviness - a beginning and an end.

The rain came slowly; lightly, but unending in a cold grey day.

The rain came as hail; cold, hard buckets, thrown down from high above, for an hour at a time, and skin was red and stung.

The rain came as the heat became too much, each drop heavy and felt, and the sky full of water, like standing under a million shower heads, the water frozen cold.



I arrived in Catacocha in a downpour of the latter type of rain. Water ran down the steeply sloped streets - fast as a river and ankle deep. Clothes stuck, cold and tight to my skin and I shivered.


The next day the sky was blue, and the streets no longer ran as streams, but cracked under the morning sun.

I met a man named Freddy, and he asked me if I liked Catacocha.

"I like it when it´s sunny, " I answered, and he recited me these lines:

Si algo hermoso Dios creó
en este suelo
y bajo este cielo
eso es mi lindo Catacocha

The lines can be roughly translated thus: If God created something beautiful upon this ground and under this sky, it is my pretty Catacocha.

"That´s very nice, " I said. "Who wrote it?"

"I did," he said.

"Ah, you´re a poet."

"Yes. I just need to write it down, but I´m too busy. No time for walking." Walking, being, of course, what poets do.

"In a couple of years," he continued "I´m going to have lots of money." And I laughed, thinking he was joking. "No, no," he said. "People like to read poems, these writers are very rich."

I asked him who he like to read.

"Lord Byron," he answered. "And this other one, from Guayaquil... ah, I can´t remember his name."

I asked him to write the poem down as a memory of Catacocha, and as he took the piece of paper his phone rang. "You see," he said "Very busy! Hello. No, I´m in Loja."

A young boy, who had sat on some steps behind me, throughout our conversation, looked at me with a shake of the head, expressing his ability to recognise delusion.

It was Friday, and realising as I did so, that I was betraying that undesirable attitude of adults who believe that, for at least five days a week, children should be hidden from view in an institution somewhere, I asked him why he wasn´t at school.

"We don´t have classes until Monday."

"Oh, cool." I said, trying to make up for my first question. "What are you going to do today?"

"I don´t know," he said. "It´s going to rain at 3."

I looked at my watch. It was 9am.

more mountains, Loja province.