Ignoring the grocery store

by Ben Jones (United States of America)

Making a local connection Ecuador

Making a local connection Small towns and villages have a habit of being largely unknown to the outside world, despite being beautiful and unique in their own way. I was living in Ecuador with my girlfriend in a small suburb of Quito. The small town was just a sleeper town and largely filled with middle class homes, that is, homes surrounded by concrete walls topped with broken glass bottles for security. It had it’s restaurants and a grocery store which we used in case we were in a bind. Our main shopping area was a small village named Sangolqui, a fifteen minute bus ride from our home for the three months we lived in country. Instead of a grocery store, they have an open market at least once a week. Not only would you get better prices for items than at a grocery store, you’d also get more selection of fresher food items and get to mingle with the locals. I knew very little Spanish when I arrived in Ecuador, so mingling with the locals, though seemingly terrifying, was a great way of learning more of the language and culture of bargaining. Set up and down the small cobbled streets of the village were people selling everything from Chilean grapes to avocados and crabs (delivered 10 hours by truck from the Seacoast) to Tommy Hilfiger labels to sew onto your jeans to impress your friends. There were two ways that you could approach buying at the market: one is to wander around and individually bargain with each vendor and another would be to plant yourself somewhere and let children (as middlemen) approach you with items. Both were a delight to the senses. Interacting with adults got you slightly cheaper prices while buying from the children delighted us by seeing what budding salesmen they were learning to be. We ended up dividing both our time and money between the two methods, simply for the entertainment value. Besides the open market, Sangolqui is also known for its cooked hogs. These immense animals are gutted and roasted on six foot long trays and sold by the older women of the village. A hungry customer would approach a vendor, offer their money, then watch as the elder fixed a plate of meat and crispy skin of the seemingly whole pig, laid out onto the tray in the sun. As a passerby, I soon learned not to look to long at the goods. Once, one of the little women noticed my gaze and grabbed my hand, gesturing to come look at the pig more closely. The act scared my non-Spanish speaking brain into shock, rendering my 6 foot one inch frame helpless against a woman no larger than 4’ 10”. Her kind eyes and friendly demeanor made me quickly get over the encounter, not to mention my girlfriend coming to my rescue with her fluent tongue. The experience left me humbled and grateful that I was able to experience a seemingly small connection. A connection that has stuck with me so vividly for over twenty years. It’s a story that I retell to anyone that is thinking about getting out there and traveling the world, no matter the location. It’s the small human connections and the details that make a place, a trip, a moment so magical and lasting in your heart.