A writing from Sergio

Sergio, the "viejo chile," our filmmaker, asked me a while ago to let him post something on the blog - I of course accepted immediately. He has become very much a part of OA. We all get along with him incredibly well and could not be more pleased with the work he has been doing, filming and helping us where he can. He has been an assest to Project Ecuador, and I will always be happy to accomadate his wishes.

Asthmatic eyes

My lungs are very stubborn at high altitude, they are tighter in my chest and take their own time to wake up.

At this altitude, every breath seems like a prayer, a poor beggar, a regretting, a surrendering, every step a hallucination. Climbing up hill I can hear a hammer inside my head that, with each intake of oxygen thunders the imaginations of my soul. So, in every step, in front of my asthmatic eyes, there is a water stallion, a little canoe carrying my solitary destiny.

Everything that fits into a vicious circle exists in this land, there is rice, grass, bread, boiled eggs, fresh cheese, sour coffee. A hunger that bites my mind, that makes it slimmer than air, that make it change.

Here, there is the native (el Indio), the Ecuadorian, the Ecuadorian Native. Black eyes, dark skin, long or short hair. Hands of men and women, and sometimes the hands of a blind old man.

They get dressed, they do their hair, milk the cows, eat, and begin everyday life. But here the “Indio” lives to survive the day, having a dream is a luxury, an exuberant radicalism.

There is only time for work, for the cow, the sheep, the alcohol to pass time, the sons, the memories, the tourist, the business.

The native is just a native, they look like a native, but inside them there is a mirror in which I can see my asthmatic eyes and my white skin, with white intentions and a dark glance.

The native inside me rises, stretches like a plant, makes beehive noises, drinks the water of monotony and reality. The native of my mind cooks, drinks the milk, eats the bread and egg, wash the dishes, fixes his hair, wears his messiah hat to change the world and the other natives he has created. The Indio that didn’t know it was an ignorant and poor Indio, until this miserable and white Indio that I am told him: “Your name is “Indigena” and you are poor, I am the white man you can be.”

In that first contact, the natives, the white and the other, got confused, the white one thought that he could transform life, the other one thought that he needed to be transformed.

“Where are you going brother, so far, so lone, so blind?” Change is a plant behind our eyes. The light of truth will make it grow.

Mol ich