Nostalgia in reverse

by Belén Gallardo (Germany)

Making a local connection Ecuador

" [...] all that was from the Galicians who had returned from America and were now feeling nostalgia in reverse." (Eduardo Galeano, El libro de los abrazos, 1989) We emigrated to Ecuador when I was twelve years old. To get to Cuenca from Guayaquil, we had to cross by road the national park Cajas, in the Andes. That first journey on the Cajas was one of those trips where you don't know what to look because everything is unknown and you want to retain every detail. I wanted to learn every name of the places we passed by and every expression I heard from that new accent that sounded so strange. Meanwhile, I was trying to find a meaning for those new words that constantly came up in the conversation with Franco, the buseta driver: ñaño, cholo, chendo, mote, guagua... He spoke as if to himself and was amused by how I was amazed by everything. He told me how he lived in Spain for many years and how he missed it. He told me how his children had grown up there and how he felt that land was more his own than the one he was going through now. It took me years to understand those words but I’ve come to understand them better than anything else. I was amazed because we were supposed to speak the same language, but there were a thousand words I didn't understand. But the assumptions were shattered at every bend we took, and that was only the beginning of that journey where I would learn to stop assuming and start discovering. The journey takes four hours, reaching 4000 m a.s.l. It only took me a few seconds to realize I had arrived in another world. Here I learned how memory is inherited and how borders can be scars. Here nature rules and people live where nature leaves them, in its folds. I’m fascinated by how these people are aware that the place where they live doesn’t belong to them. A wild, imposing and free nature dazzles you, giving you so much truth that you don’t know what to do with it. In this country, where distances are measured in time instead of kilometres, the earth trembles and the walls speak. And the people, who have two names and learn to dance before than walk, sleep among volcanoes. Today, on the way back six years later, the Cajas, now against the light, looks like a cardboard set. The mountains are huge in this small country, but where everything is superlative, the ground is as infinite as memory, and every second is lived as if it were the last. We descend through the mountains and the fog blurs the peaks, blurring the line between the earth and the sky. It’s impossible to differentiate anything beyond one meter from the road that continues. At this point we’re surprised by the rain. That rain so changeable and characteristic of this region of the world that at noon falls with rage and at night with stealth, as sleeply. As we approach the coast it gets dark and the palm trees dominate the landscape. Next to the road appear banana and cocoa plantations. The vegetation looks like it’s going to eat up the road, defying the limits imposed by those who cannot impose anything. Some little houses hidden in the undergrowth turn their lights on. It’s a quarter to seven in the evening and it’s already night. There’s little left to reach Guayaquil. The air becomes denser and gives off a characteristic smell of saltpetre. Everything gives way to the land conquered by the sea. Mountains of coconuts are piled up by the roadside and spontaneous huts with sheet metal roofs and hanging clothes appear. The heat invades the atmosphere. We cross a village whose width is equal to that of the road and its flanks. In the distance some guaguas run and play. Now I know that guagua means child. It’s then, when I’m assaulted by that reverse nostalgia that Galeano describes, when I imagine I‘m back in that buseta listening to Franco's stories. But it's already night. There’s little left to reach Guayaquil. The first stars begin to appear.