The Difference Between Being Rich and Having Money

Every morning, as the sun is rising, I take a moment to count my blessings. I’m thankful for so many things in my life. I have a beautiful house, custom-built from my own blood, sweat and tears. Over the years, as resources trickled in, it gradually became a comfortable home. Even though it’s still a work in progress with quite a long way to go until it’s “finished” as a construction project, I’m extremely grateful to have my own space, designed specifically to suit my lifestyle.

The fruit trees in the garden surrounding the house are also a source of immense gratitude. From the beginning, each tree was planted from seed and nurtured to bear delicious fruit. They’re still carefully cultivated, fertilized with the residue of the organic waste generated in the kitchen, and treated with natural pesticides made from a selection of medicinal plants growing in the garden to protect them from aphids and mealy worm.

My five cats are a constant source of gratitude, keeping me sane and grounded in a world that often doesn’t seem real. Every day, our kitty time matters to all of us as we roll on the floor and fling around home-made toys, or lounge on the sofa snuggle into each other as we enjoy a moment of peace. My gratitude list is endless. It includes family, friends, health, food, clothing, shoes, sand, sea and sanity. Since I began this particular part of my journey, I have considered myself rich.

While it sounds ideal, there’s another side to this life that all those Facebook friends, Instagram and Twitter followers don’t ever see. It’s the reality of a harsher side of life that is never talked about; the severe lack of money. The slow death of tourism in Mompiche means that particular stream of income has all but dried up. There have been no paid reservations at Secret Garden for months. No one comes for the magnificent $5 breakfast that is advertised all over town. No one turns up to learn how to cook traditional foods, to make coconut oil, or to learn how locally grown chocolate is made.

One or two horrific incidents on the border between Colombia and Ecuador, over 300 kilometers from our tranquil fishing village, got national and international press several months ago. Mompiche suffered for being in the same province. More recently, a couple of criminal incidents in nearby towns were reported by national news outlets as taking place in Mompiche, even though they didn’t. People have stayed away in droves. Domestic and international tourists are avoiding our village. People in other towns around the country are warning them not to come, saying it’s dangerous, but it isn’t. Mompiche is safe for tourists, and there is much to do. But our hotels and restaurants are empty. Family businesses are closing. The entire village is suffering. Those of us who once survived on tourism are now wondering how to make a living. Everyone is broke.

Despite all that, we are all quite rich. We live by the sea, on a clean beach. The weather is amazing, with comfortable temperatures all year round. We have adequate water, reasonably constant electricity, and the internet service isn’t that bad—when it’s working. We have access to several food sources that are inexpensive, or even free; fresh seafood from the fishing boats each day, fresh fruit from the trees along the river, as well as red-claw and land crabs, and bananas in abundance. Most people eat a lot of rice—known across more than half of the globe as a staple belly-filler, even though it contains very few nutrients—and there’s no one in our village who goes hungry. When cash is low, the lack of variety in our daily meals may be a source of frustration, but no one is starving to death. Isn’t that the very essence of wealth?

When it comes to the types of food I’m eating, I prefer to keep it simple; mostly vegetarian, and almost always cooked at home. As the money dries up, and hard-won income comes in drips and drabs, eating out becomes a rare luxury. These days, even the $3 lunch menu is beyond reach, but the $1 dinner (two corviches or empanadas from a street vendor) is still doable from time to time.

Even then, regardless of where it comes from, food that is too hot or too cold is impossible to eat. Extreme food temperatures hurt my teeth. My gums are sensitive. The cavities are slowly growing. It’s been years since I stepped into a dentist’s office. While dental care is “super cheap” here compared to other countries, when you’re constantly counting pennies and having to choose between one necessity and another, the dentist is the very last thing on the list, if it’s on there at all. My entire mouth desperately needs attention, but it cannot be a priority. Between eating soft warm foods and stuffing whole cloves between my teeth when they hurt, this is what coping looks like when there’s no money.

Whenever we play the “if I won the lottery” game, I always say I’d fix my teeth first. It’s not just teeth. My glasses were recently repaired for the third time this year with a couple more dabs of superglue to hold them together. Now there is probably more glue than actual frame around the lenses. On the plus side, I can still see through them. As for any kind of health insurance, forget about it. Also, I haven’t paid the land taxes on my property for several years because there is no extra cash lying around. That debt is accumulating and won’t go away, but there’s nothing to be done for it right now. I’m also owed some money, but that debt hasn’t been paid either. There’s no point in pressuring someone to pay up when they don’t have any money. That just makes the situation more stressful. If the debt is paid, the money is already spent; teeth and taxes. It hurts my soul to think of myself as “poor” but the reality is that when someone can’t afford all the basic necessities of life, regardless of whatever riches they do have, they’re still “cash poor” and struggling to get by from day to day in a world where having at least some money is essential.

Every time I make $20 selling cookies on a weekend, it’s reason to celebrate, and it’s something significant for which to be super grateful. It certainly keeps the wolf from the door in a hand to mouth existence. There is enough to buy food for the week, and I always stash enough to buy ingredients for a fresh batch of cookies. However, there will be no visits to the dentist or the optometrist, or any shopping trips to purchase shorts acceptable for public appearances during the summer.

Being cash-poor may mean having to make difficult choices about where money goes, but the riches flood in when I’m out there on the street with my cookie jar, making connections with people, stopping to say hi to friends, and meeting new ones, whether they buy a cookie or not. This is the difference between being rich and having money. Every day, I tell myself it will be okay. I remind myself not to feel stressed or depressed. I take deep breaths and remember my gratitude list. How important is it? I ask myself. After all, it’s only money. Right? I have many other riches besides money.

Even so, there are still times I struggle to avoid the vision of myself as a toothless old hag dressed in rags with broken glasses perched on the top of my nose. It’s extremely difficult to ask people for help, but I do. With swallowed pride I put out my hand and beg on the streets of the internet. Some generous people have chosen to give me a hand. It’s not much money, but it does make a tiny difference each month. It gives me great pleasure to post stories just for them, and also provides motivation to keep working, to keep trying, to keep pushing on. To continue to have hope for a better future is a treasure worthy of gratitude.

Recently, I traveled with a friend to his farm in Puerto Quito, about 4hrs drive from Mompiche. We spent time cutting banana branches, picking fruit, discussing the variety of trees, planting, fertilization, and future crops while walking around the property. Later, we went into town for a delicious lunch of steamed tilapia. (He was buying.) While in the bathroom of the restaurant, I noticed in the mirror that my “good” shirt was full of holes. I hadn’t seen the holes when it put it on half-asleep at 4am. Horrified at my ragged appearance, I resolved to go through my wardrobe and see what else had holes in it.

I’d worn a summer dress out in public all weekend before I realized it had not just one hole, but several poke-a-finger-through-sized holes on the front and back. In my wardrobe, there were holes, stains, broken zippers, frayed edges, fabric threadbare from wear. Some of my clothes I’ve had for years, and a lot of things were still good. However, more than half of it was only fit for rags, perfect attire for shipwreck survivors. Whatever couldn’t be repaired or renovated from the pile was designated for recycling into dog and cat toys, bathmats, shopping bags, fabric beads, and some will be incorporated into recycled art projects. Some of it became designated as “work only” clothing. It doesn’t matter if that stuff gets ripped or stained, or if the zips are broken. It won’t take long before they’re covered in paint, tiling cement and wood glue as I use up materials I already have to keep working on projects for the house and in the art gallery.

It’s been at least a year since I bought an item of clothing, new or used. There’s no room for luxuries with such an austere budget. While I’m thankful to have clothes on my back, and I’m fully aware there are people subsisting with much less, I noted that one of the first things to go whenever cash became scarce was new (or used) clothing. I own four pairs of shoes: sneakers, crocs, gumboots and flipflops that have been repaired several times. Considering I spend most of my time barefoot, and fully connected to Mother Nature, I’m okay with that. New shoes aren’t even on my wish list. The upside about being this rich is that I will never be a slave to the latest fashions. It’s also a blessing that I stopped using shampoo, conditioner, and skin-care products years ago.

A new blender is on my wish list. Mine is ten years old and could die any day. It’s been repaired a couple of times and is showing signs of fading out. There are currently no resources to repair it again, so I take really good care of it, making sure not to burn out the motor with each use. I can’t imagine life without my trusty blender, mixing up my fresh juices and soups and sauces, but when it does finally die, I will find out what that’s like too. Sadly, there will be no more hot sauce to sell.

Also on this wish list is a washing machine. Imagine! I don’t have—or need—a fridge, freezer or any other appliances apart from my blender. A washing machine would change my life. Not just for clothes, also for washing the hammocks, the bathmats and hand-towels, and all the sheets and towels when I have guests and volunteers. I could also use it for some of my recycling projects; washing all the paper-making screens, for example. From this vantage point, a washing machine feels like an unattainable dream. Mostly, I just try not to think about it too much. I try to focus on all the riches I already possess, like fresh unpolluted rainwater and a large tub for hand-washing clothes.

Every day, I work hard doing a variety of activities all designed to generate income. From promoting tourism activities to advertising my books online, flogging cookies and chili sauce in the streets, writing stories, and creating recycled art for sale at home, I’m quite busy most of the time. It’s possible I have my fingers in too many pies. People often tell me I work too much. Friends try to encourage me to take days off and go to the beach. Struggling to get the bills paid, it feels like I don’t have that luxury.

A few days ago, I had to make a tough decision between paying the internet bill or buying fresh food for the week. I thought about it all morning before I paid the bill with my last cash. The internet is a potential source of income, so it matters. There is fruit on my trees and a few veges left from last week. There are lentils and beans in the cupboard. I still have a few eggs. The fishing boats still come in every day. I’ll get by on what I have. I’m a creative cook and will make it work. The undiscovered riches inside my cupboards will find their way to my plate.

A long time ago, I learned it was worth having more than one source of income so that if one stream dried up the others could fill the void. But what happens when they all run dry? That part wasn’t in the instruction manual. I keep hearing mantras like, “If you work hard, the rewards will come.” So I keep on working. Daily, I tell myself that someone will want a bottle of the best hot sauce this side of the equator, a well-written book or a good travel story, a comfortable bed in an eco-house, a fantastic breakfast, a traditional cooking class or a recycling workshop. They don’t. No one does. They haven’t for a long time. At best, they might like a really good chocolate-chip cookie for fifty cents. You might be surprised at how many people don’t want one, or how many do but can’t afford one. These are tough times.

I could choose to feel despair, and there are moments when I do feel like crying, but that won’t solve anything and it certainly won’t pay the bills; internet, electricity, gas for cooking, food. Instead, I put one foot in front of the other and keep going. I choose optimism. I choose not to worry and to believe I’m strong enough to survive this struggle. I choose to use whatever resources I have available to keep producing whatever I can, and to keep hoping that something somehow somewhere will bring in a decent pay day. Every day, sometimes every hour on the roughest days, I remember to be thankful for what I have and I tell myself that it will be okay. I’m sure that it will be. Won’t it? After all, I’m already pretty rich when you think about it.

 

Life without a fridge

When I first moved to Mompiche, the tiny cabin I rented was pretty basic. It was a small 4m x 4m grass-roofed hut with a tiny balcony, and it had a bed in it. Soon after I moved in, I bought a new mattress to replace the lumpy old one. Then, I built a table on the balcony and put a stove on it. That became the kitchen. Many wonderful meals were cooked on that stove. Over the two years I lived in the “Love Shack” (named so by a previous resident), I grew fruit and vegetables in a garden I built at the side of the cabin, and set up a small covered dining area between my cabin and the next one. During the entire time, I didn’t own a fridge. It didn’t even occur to me to buy one.

Every day, I would go to the beach and get fresh fish for myself and my cat. Actually, the cat went and helped himself to fish sometimes, fleeing the scene with a disgruntled fisherman on his tail. Mascara always escaped with his fish. I’d bring fish home, clean it and cook it immediately. There were never any left overs because I only got what I needed for one meal and there was never a reason to store food. The fridge wasn’t necessary.

Fruit and vegetables were stored in baskets I made from a coconut palm leaf. Eggs were kept in there too. I didn’t need to buy a ton of food in advance while I was shopping daily, and I avoided buying food in packets, jars, or tins, except for things like lentils and quinoa. Everything I ate was natural and made from scratch.

After two years in the “Love Shack” I moved into my own house at the back of the village. At that point, it had no doors or windows, there was no kitchen or bathroom, and my bed was a mattress on the floor. Apart from being unaffordable on my extremely skinny budget, buying a fridge was definitely not on my list of priorities. I’d already learned how to live without one. I weaved a new set of baskets with palm leaves and that became the “fridge” at Secret Garden. While I camped out in my new home, building the kitchen and bathroom, planting the garden, having doors and windows built, the thought of buying a fridge never entered my mind. It didn’t even occur to me that my lifestyle might be odd until someone came to visit.

“Where’s the fridge?” she asked, holding two bottles of beer. Maybe if I drank beer, a fridge would have been higher up in the list of priorities. In the end, we borrowed a tiny space in a nearby friend’s fridge to store beer during her stay. Next time I was in town, I bought a large cooler. One large block of ice lasts for at least 24 hours. I rarely used the cooler myself, but always suggested that guests could buy their own ice (for $0.50) if they needed to keep things cool; it was mostly beer.

On 1 October 2018, I will have been living in my own home for seven years. There is still no fridge, nor even the thought of buying one. I don’t need it. The same—albeit slightly battered—cooler still sits in its spot between the living room and the kitchen. It gets moved downstairs for BBQs or parties. I still buy vegetables and harvest fresh fruit daily, making my meals from scratch, and visit the boats on the beach to get fish from the fishermen. Sadly, Mascara is gone, but now I have other cats who eat fresh fish every day.

Life without a fridge isn’t that complicated. In fact, it’s simpler. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Two Onions and a Handful of Hope

Two onions. That’s the only food in the house. The usual stash of lentils, chickpeas, dried beans and popcorn has trickled away, handful by meager handful as I stretch out the rations. Times are lean. With little to no income, my belt no longer has enough holes to tighten it any further. Once again, I scan the eco-fridge, looking for food that I know is not there. The woven palm-leaf baskets are empty, except for those two onions and a few scraps of dried garlic skin. Despondent, I peel both onions, then thickly slice them. This will be dinner. I have no idea what’s for breakfast. I can’t think about that right now. As I cut the onions, a spectacular yellow moon rises over the mangrove, as round and textured as a ripe country cheese. I stop slicing for a moment to breathe and take in its beauty. For a second or two, I forget about food, until the pungent onion rings bring me back to earth.

Behind me, on the spice rack, most of the jars are empty. There is still some cumin, a sprinkle of nutmeg, some dried herbs and a trickle of chili sauce. On the top shelf, sits the remains of the last jar of Glang Chutney. There is no oil. I dribble some rain water into the chili sauce bottle and shake it up before pouring it all into the chutney jar. Into the jar go the last of the spices, some cumin, nutmeg, a pinch of salt. I pour this concoction over the onion rings and steam them in the sauce. It’s good, hot and spicy, if not very filling. In the hammock, I eat my chili onions unusually slowly, uber-conscious that once it’s gone, there is nothing else to eat.

I try not to think about the future, about tomorrow. Three people owe me money. There is just enough credit left on my phone to send a few messages.

“Please send me the money you owe. I really need it now.”

Two replies arrive within the hour. “I don’t have your money. Maybe next week.”

“Just give me half now, and the rest later. I need some money now.” I reply, on the verge of tears, trying not to sound desperate.

“Sorry. Can’t do it.”

The third person doesn’t bother to respond. I’ll bet my shoelaces none of them are eating steamed onions for dinner, or wondering where their next meal is coming from. What they owe me between them could fill the pantry and sustain me for three months. Fortunately, the cats are easy to feed. Each day, the fishermen catch enough small fish in their nets to ensure my cats are a lot better fed than I am. On the lucky days, I bring home a pan-sized fish for lunch. Today isn’t my lucky day. Sleep is sporadic and fitful as I lay in bed trying to ignore my rumbling stomach and shut down the gazillion thoughts going ballistic in my mind; most of my macabre musings end with me starving to death. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. I try to feel positive. I struggle to feel optimistic.

First thing in the morning, I go downstairs to see if the garden has anything to offer. While it looks verdant and prolific, almost everything is still unripe. Despite this, I pick a small green papaya, about the size of my fist. Around the back, the fence line is littered with passionfruits, the first of the crop. At last. I fill three buckets with the fat yellow-green orbs. Upstairs, three passionfruits go into the blender with a thin sliver from the rapidly disappearing knob of panela. I add some fresh water to dilute it and my hunger pangs are soothed for the moment. I peel and grate the papaya, sprinkling some salt over it, and scraping out the last of the cumin with my finger, I rub it into the flesh. It isn’t bad; refreshing and light. It would be nicer with a chili vinaigrette, and some grated carrots, but I’m grateful to have something in my belly.

I wash up and go to the beach carrying a bucket of passionfruit to trade for freshly caught fish. After an hour, I return home with a full bucket of small fish for the cats, a pan-sized snook and some sand crabs.

“Do you have any more passionfruit?” asks Dali, the storekeeper, as I pass.

“Yes, I have some more at home.”

“Bring them over. I’ll buy them,” Dali says, smiling. “I’ll take all you have.”

She pays one dollar per bucket – a dozen or so large passionfruits in each. It’s a lifeline. With two dollars, I buy six eggs, four tomatoes, six green plantain bananas, and four more onions. Combined with the fish and crabs, there is now enough food for four or five meals. It’s a mini-victory, and I feel like I’ve won yet another Mompiche Survivor Challenge.

Every morning, at least one bucket of passionfruits is sold to the store. Dali always asks me to bring more. Sometimes, a restaurant owner comes over to buy a handful of fresh herbs: mint, basil, chillangua (wild cilantro), or oregano. Every dollar, every fifty cents, every quarter goes into the cupboard. The garden is finally paying off after all the work I’ve put in. In time, I sell a few badeas (giant granadillas), some papayas, pumpkins and cucumbers. They’re also traded for fish and prawns. Later, there are enough tomatoes and loofahs to sell. There are still no tourists on the beach. The season is very slow this year. No one wants cakes.

My best week brings in twenty-five dollars when someone buys a dozen soursop saplings. To show my gratitude, I gift them two rambutan saplings and a small badea vine. With my earnings, I fill the eco-fridge with fresh fruit and vegetables, and stock up on oil, lentils, beans, chickpeas and popcorn. Once, I splurge and buy a jar of olives. For many weeks, my garden provides at least half of each meal. Finally, a little money comes in from one of the debtors. Again, all the canisters are full and the baskets are almost over-flowing with fresh food, and now I can afford to take a day off. In the middle of the week, I go to the beach to relax with a book and read leisurely for the first time in months. Pure bliss.

Day by day, I’m grateful to have a roof over my head and food in my belly. I’m grateful my cats are well fed and that I have clothes to wear – even if I do resemble a shipwreck survivor. I’m filled with gratitude to have all my limbs, and my health. That the house construction has ground to a complete standstill doesn’t bother me so much, although occasionally I dream about life with a real toilet seat and real plumbing with real running water. On the bright side, hauling buckets of rain water up the stairs every morning is good exercise. Each day, I work in my garden, harvesting my bounty to eat, sell, trade, and share with friends. Diligent, I pull weeds from the ground, add mulch to the plants, and mix natural fertilizers of cow dung and vegetable waste to spread over the roots. I plant whatever seeds come my way, growing whatever will produce food. I’m thankful for the daily harvest of fresh fruits and vegetables, and also for the nightly rain. Sometimes, I stop mid-task to pick tiny ripe berries from the black nightshade bushes, tossing a handful or two of the juicy purple fruits into my mouth and savoring their sweetness, eyes closed, totally focused on the taste of the berries. This tiny pleasure makes the hard labor worth every drop of perspiration.

Some days are better than others, and I often sell everything in my buckets. When sales are good, for thirty-five cents I can buy a pint of fresh milk from the motorbike milkman to give to the cats. Soon, however, things start to wind down in the garden. The tomatoes are almost finished. There are no more badeas or pumpkins to sell. It’s coming into the dry season, and planting is on hold for now. Fortunately, the passionfruit vine is growing rampant along the fence and still providing a small income. A good harvest of chili peppers is quickly converted into cash from home-made hot sauce.

One morning, I take a bucket of ripe passionfruit to a fisherman who’d requested some the previous day. In return, he gives me a large fresh sea-bass. Faviola provides coconuts and a few fresh duck eggs in exchange for a bag of chillangua leaves and the small pumpkin I’ve saved for her. I have enough onions, peppers and tomatoes to make my favorite dish: Encocado, Fish in Coconut Sauce. Downstairs, I husk the coconut, readying it to split for the juice and meat. As I’m cleaning the fish, I notice the passionfruit vine on the back fence looks odd. There are green fruits all over the ground, enough to fill over ten buckets, but they’re too green and will never ripen. On closer inspection, I see the vine has been slashed from the other side of the fence, ripped out and stripped of leaves. My tiny home-grown income has been uprooted by the neighbor. Through the bamboo slats, I see her sitting on the porch, smirking, as if waiting for me to explode. I say nothing, denying Maria the satisfaction of a victory. She frequently takes great delight in finding ways to cause me damage. I never react.

“I can’t believe I have such malicious neighbors,” I tell Tito, who is half Italian and lives in Portete, the next village to the south.

“I have the same problem. They stole my beautiful chicken! Those bastards! But I got them back!” He gesticulates with profound emotion, conveying both his sadness and his rage. His furry gray eyebrows bounce on his sun-wrinkled forehead as he relates his sad story.

Tito’s chicken was hand raised and followed him all over his garden, going wherever he went. Polla was mottled brown with a little yellow fringe covering her head. He lovingly nicknamed her his blonde eggshell. Tito never intended to eat Polla. She was a house pet, if slightly unconventional. If he was lucky, she might give him some eggs one day. He was looking forward to sampling an omelet that Polla had created. She was about ten months old, and he suspected that day was quite near. One afternoon, planning to transplant some Neem trees, Tito went inside to get the spade, and when he returned, his chicken was gone. He searched all over the garden, but Polla had vanished. She never came home.

“Have you seen my chicken?” he asks his neighbor.

“Chicken? You have a chicken?” the skinny man responds, bending to pick up the bucket of water he will bathe himself in, concealed behind a thin woven grass screen at the side of his little wooden house.

Later in the day, Tito asks the neighbor on the other side, “Did you see my chicken?”

“No,” says the rotund man, picking his teeth with a wishbone as he leans against the back door, “I didn’t see your chicken.”

“Really? You didna see my chicken?” Tito immediately suspects fowl play.

“Nope!” The neighbor turns his back and goes inside his creaking bamboo shanty.

The next morning, Tito spreads out a fishing net under his kitchen window. He ties long pieces of fishing line to each corner, and knots the loose ends together. Then, he throws a handful of corn into the center of the net. On the stove, a large pot of water simmers. He sits in the kitchen window with a freshly brewed Italian roast espresso, waiting patiently. Soon, one of the neighbors’ chickens trots across the yard to inspect the bounty. The moment the plump brown chicken steps into the middle of the net, Tito springs the trap and hauls the shocked bird through his window, quickly snapping its neck before it starts squawking and alerts its owners. He has it plucked and cleaned before his coffee has gone cold.

“They wanna steal my beautiful chicken, huh? My Polla. That’s gonna be one very expensive chicken for them! I already ate about fifty of their chickens! Those bastards!” He smiles with grim satisfaction at his painstakingly extracted revenge.

Whenever his neighbors ask if he has seen their missing chickens, he smiles widely, sucks his teeth and responds, “Chickens? Nah. I didna see your chickens!”

I haven’t yet thought up a suitable revenge for the slashed passionfruit vine, but for the time being, once again my entire focus is on feeding myself. So far, stealing Maria’s scrawny half-starved chickens isn’t part of the plan.

A History of Soup

Gardening rule #5056; never go plant-hunting without checking the phase of the moon. When it comes to any activity involving plants, the correct lunar phase is vital. Cut down a length of bamboo on a full moon and just watch as it gradually dissolves into dust. True story. I’ve seen this happen with my own eyes. Therefore, when I arrive at a friend’s farm hoping to score at least a dozen banana palms, with no idea of the lunar phase, I’m a little disappointed when I ask one of the workers to help me.

“It’s luna (full moon), we can’t cut them. They’ll rot. Next week is menguante (new moon). We’ll do it then.”

Seeing the devastated look on my face at this terrible news – after waiting over six months for him to bring me banana plants from his own farm, Pichi relents.

“Look, we’ll cut two now and I’ll cut the rest next week on the new moon. But don’t blame me if they fall on their faces like drunk fishermen.”

Armed with just one common garden variety guineo and a healthy chilena, I hitch a ride back to town and go home to console myself with a steaming bowl of vegetable soup.
One of my favorite Ecuadorian customs is the ubiquitous bowl of soup for lunch. It’s usually thick and filled with vegetables; most commonly yucca and carrot, and often features fish, shrimp, chicken or some meat bones. Leaning towards vegetarianism, I tend to stick with the legume and seafood versions.

Upholding the culinary tradition of my extensive worldwide travels, I learn how to make a few Ecuadorian soups, and many other traditional dishes. For this soup, take a small red onion and, after peeling it, halve it. Then, cut it into quarters, and slice it thickly. This goes straight into the pot with a head of garlic; leave the peeled cloves whole. Roughly dice a carrot, two tomatoes and half a pound of yucca. Peel and wash the yucca, and cut all the cubes chunky. Save three or four of the yucca cubes. You’ll need them later.

Yucca is a staple food on the coast and is the main ingredient in many wonderful dishes

Yucca is a staple food on the coast. It’s in just about everything in one form or another. Yucca bread is one of my favorite snack foods when traveling on the buses. It’s also used to make llapingachos, yucca chips, yucca cake, and to thicken soups and sauces. Just after the move to Mompiche, I recall visiting Johnny when he was working on Jade’s house in Bolivar.

We prepare the fish for the barbecue and we’re starting on the vegetables when Johnny snaps impatiently, “Don’t you know anything about peeling yucca?”

“Actually, no, I don’t, but if you teach me I’ll learn,” I reply calmly.

Until that day, I’d never seen a yucca in my life. I watch while Johnny slides the tip of the knife under the skin and eases the thick peel away from the flesh. Since then, the odd yucca that makes it to my kitchen has been expertly peeled.

Throw a handful of precooked lentils into the soup pot – just enough for a sprinkling; we’re making a vegetable soup with a few added lentils, as opposed to a lentil soup – and fill the pot with water. I use fresh rainwater for this recipe, but that’s just me bragging. Any clean water will do. Set the pot to boil and toss in a teaspoon of sea salt.

Out in the boondocks, unlike most “civilized” places on earth, I’ve learned to put plenty of salt in my food. It is an excruciating revelation and I quickly adapt. In an environment where sodium-packed processed foods are rare because my food comes directly from plants instead of the supermarket, where my diet consists of 94.5% fresh organic fruits and vegetables and 5% wild seafood, plus some free-range eggs, a bit of organic farm cheese and the very occasional family-sized block of very dark chocolate, “added salt” is not a health issue. In fact, I found the opposite applied. On days when I don’t consume sufficient salt to meet my body’s requirements I suffer agonizing leg cramps – usually in the middle of the night. My inner thigh seizes up more than once leaving me doubled over in pain and almost in tears. Punching the muscle for half an hour to loosen the knot usually works. Avoiding the problem makes more sense. At the end of each day I do a quick salt assessment. One teaspoon a day keeps me in good shape. If I’m lacking a little, I can’t think of a better excuse to nibble on some freshly popped corn or a plate of sliced tomatoes and cucumbers before bed, accompanied by a large glass of water.

The soup should be bubbling by now. When the yucca pieces are soft, blend the reserved cubes of yucca and a tablespoon of freshly ground peanut butter in a little water until they are completely liquidized. One thought that frequently creeps to mind is how everyone made this kind of soup before electricity was invented. I’ve yet to find anyone who can tell me, but imagine it involved vigorously smashing things together with a rounded river rock. I have one of those in my kitchen. It’s great for crushing herbs and garlic into paste.
Pour the yucca-peanut mixture into the soup and bring it back to a rolling boil. While it’s cooking, duck out to the garden and pick four large leaves of wild oregano. The oregano plants in the full sun part of my garden have big meaty leaves that crunch when they break off and it always feels like I’m chopping a vegetable instead of a herb. Dice it finely and toss it into the soup. Make sure the soup isn’t sticking to the bottom of the pot. If it is, turn the heat right down – we still have a way to go before it’s finished.

Some of my friends joke about the availability of food products in Mompiche, or lack thereof. One guy who lives in Quito but visits regularly never shows up without a jar of smooth peanut butter.

“You can get that here,” I tell him one day, pointing out the “65% peanuts” listed on the label. “And it’s organic and 100% peanuts.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he laughs. “You want some of this Brie?”

Touché. Brie doesn’t exist in Mompiche. It’s true. Neither does Camembert, Gouda or Stilton, or any other notable cheese. But we do have two kinds of fresh organic farm cheese; hard and salty, and smooth and creamy. The cheese I buy is, more often than not, made the same morning on either the Zambrano or the Intriago farm.

If you want something done properly, do it yourself. This is me making cheese.

Both farms are within walking distance from my house. If I’m there at six-thirty in the morning, Julio Zambrano will pour a liter of fresh-squeezed cow juice into my bottle and once in a while lets me help him make the cheese. Sometimes I end up being a cowgirl, coaxing each calf out of the pen so it can find its mother. The calf is then tied while the cow is milked, leaving some for her baby too. The men squat in the ankle-deep mud with their milking buckets, slapping and cursing restless cows and unruly calves. The cute round milking stools of fairy tales are non-existent.

The milk is strained through a piece of gauze stretched over a large plastic tub. The quaje – an aromatic liquid made from fermented cow intestines – is poured into the milk right there in the milking pens, amongst the mud and the cow poop, with the restless animals shuffling around waiting to be let out into the paddock. Health Department officials in my country would have heart failure at the sight of it, but it’s probably one of the reasons none of the locals in Mompiche ever gets sick. I’ve never been adversely affected by this cheese.

Once the solids have separated, the curds have to be pressed. The flattened palms of both hands gently press down, gradually compressing the solids into a large sphere (see photo above). This takes time and patience, adding great significance to the term “slow food”. The whey is poured off and saved to feed the pigs, dogs, and cats, while the curd ball is broken up. This is when the rock salt is added. At this point, if I plan ahead, I can scoop out a handful of curds and mix in some fresh chopped herbs from my garden; oregano, basil, wild cilantro. Abel Zambrano is astounded when I first show him. No one in his family has ever thought of it, but they are all delighted by the result.

The cheese is placed into a square wooden mold, then covered and left to harden while the farmers sit down to breakfast; a grilled plantain, a boiled egg, and a thick slice of yesterdays’ cheese washed down with milky coffee or organic hot chocolate.

The taste and texture of the cheese often depends on who makes it and the mood they are in when they press the curds. It’s hit and miss shopping; you may or may not end up with what you want. When such versatile cheese costs just two dollars a pound, I never complain, and usually buy half a pound at a time. For this soup, the hard and salty variety is best. It’s also great sliced thickly and grilled with fresh garden herbs and for grating onto pizza; you’d never know that delicious stringy melted cheese on your margarita isn’t mozzarella (as many local pizzerias falsely claim). The smooth and creamy cheese is better in green salads and sandwiches. One of the best things about farm cheese is that it doesn’t need refrigeration. If I don’t use up all the half pound, I can leave it on the bench overnight – out of the cats’ reach – and give it a quick rinse before grating it into the breakfast omelet. Every so often, the cats still find a way to reach it and steal the cheese, little rats!

So, by now you have a quarter pound of fresh organic farm cheese – if you haven’t dropped dead from starvation waiting for the last part of the recipe. If it’s too salty, soak it in fresh water for half an hour. Cut the cheese into smallish cubes and throw it into the soup. Just a few minutes more and the soup is ready. Instead of melting, the cheese will just soften slightly until the texture is a bit like chewing gum. Some people squeeze half a lime into the bowl. This changes the flavor completely but it comes down to personal taste. However it’s served, this is a delicious hearty soup for those chilly rainy June days!

“Cold in June?” You ask, “but aren’t you in the northern hemisphere?”

Yes. By just thirty minutes. But the weather is the same as the southern hemisphere while the names of the seasons are the same as the north. Hot winters, cool summers. Confused? Despite Quito’s freezing December days, Mompiche enjoys one of the hottest winter seasons in Latin America but summer nights can sometimes get a little nippy. Regardless of the weather, soup is the mainstay of the lunch hour all year round. One exception is Encebollado – the famous Ecuadorian breakfast soup made from albacore, yucca and, of course, thinly sliced red onions, served with Chifles.

Day Four on the Bathroom Floor

The pain shrieks through my innards like an amoebic rampage, each infected cell with its own machete violently hacking at the walls of my tender intestines until it reaches such an intensity that I can no longer breathe. My mind is no longer capable of processing thought. My spirit is considering passing into another world to escape the agony. The degradation of uncontrollable diarrhea is soul-crushing. Finally, the cramp subsides. Tears drip from my face to be absorbed into the hard cement floor, where I am lying, to become a living part of the house. The unfinished bathroom floor is not the most comfortable place to spend five days. Right now, in this wretched state, it’s the most convenient.

Someone was with me when I became ill. I’d invited him to dinner that night. The grilled fish was done, the salad ready, the juice made. Feeling queasy, I decided I wouldn’t eat, even though my favorite fish, robarlo a.k.a snook, was on the menu. Not long after that decision, I found myself heaving violently into a bucket. A fever rushed over me. Cramps began. Within an hour, I could barely move. My supposed friend – a whacky, emotionally unstable type who claims to be one of those specially targeted individuals of special interest to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and who harbors all kinds of outlandish conspiracy theories – ate my fish without blinking. Then, fully aware that I was very unwell, and not even bothering to wash the dishes, he vanished for a week.

Robarlo / Snook

The first two horrible days I wallow in bed, barely conscious. Whatever vicious amoeba has attacked me this time has me laid out for cremation like an undertaker, knowing I am ready to die. At one point, realizing I could dehydrate, I drag a five gallon bottle of water to my bedside, with a jug and a glass. The last thing I want to do is put anything into my convulsing stomach. That my stomach is empty doesn’t seem to matter to whatever it is that is purging me volcanically from every orifice until I have run out of clean clothes to change into. So slick with rioting bacteria are my insides that even water doesn’t stick.

Another futile inspection of my pre-paid cellphone reveals once again that I have no minutes; not even the three cents required to send a message to save my own life.

“Please help me,” I call weakly from the bathroom floor on the third afternoon after a particularly harrowing few hours of severe cramps.

No one answers. I have shed all my clothes, shoving them into a stinking filthy pile to be washed at some point when I’m able. A thin towel protects me from the cool cement of the floor. A rolled up sweater serves as a pillow. In this state, I’m too weak to get one from the bed. Drifting in and out of consciousness, time passes. I try to drink water. The longest it stays inside my body is thirty seconds. I keep trying to drink. Exhausted, I sleep again.

The cats hover nearby, meowing occasionally for food. I can’t feed them. Boss wraps herself around my head, massaging my hair. I cry at my inability to care for my pets, and myself. Tears drip onto Boss’s fur. She licks them off energetically, the only sustenance she’s had in several days. Fortunately there is a small container of rainwater for them to drink. They hunt insects during the night.

“Please help me,” I croak again sometime during the next day. No one responds.
All those lectures from Doña Sara about being unacceptably single come to mind. If I wasn’t single, I wouldn’t be dying, naked and alone – the same way I was born – on my own bathroom floor. Maybe there is something to be said for having a partner after all. To amuse myself during a lull in pain and sleep, I try to imagine how one of these local intellectually-challenged Neanderthals would handle this situation. He wouldn’t. He would send his mother to whip me with branches of wild herbs picked from the jungle and rub whole eggs all over my body to cleanse me of disease.

To chase away the fever, every inch of my skin would be doused in lime juice, including my hair. My skin would be pinched and pummeled until bruises appeared. Incense would be burned to smoke out the devils. And those nasty little amoebas would remain undetected and continue to grow until they finally killed me, and everyone would say how sad that the devils had claimed me in the end and that I must have had that evil inside me all along. They would hold a night-long drumming vigil, chanting and singing to chase the demons from the village and then bury me on The Point the following day, incorrectly spelling my name when it came time to engrave the brass plaque for my hurriedly slapped together cement block grave.

Fast forward to the next day when I realize no one is going to help me. Judging by the evil witchcraft messages they put in my yard, most of my neighbors have long wished me dead. Most people in town would feel joyous at my demise, however gruesome. Because of the distance from the beach front, and the slick muddy street, few friends ever stop by the house. I’m barely conscious at this moment. I can feel the life draining from my body. My stomach feels like a million scorpions have nested inside it, all competing for the job of top sting. The pain is relentless. Water goes in one end and out the other immediately. Dehydrated and starving, I drift into unconsciousness again.

Towards evening, the Canadian shows up, all smiles and cheer. So full of himself and his latest conspiracies, he barely notices I am naked and trembling on a thin towel on the cement bathroom floor.

“Please, I need medical attention,” I groan. “Please find the doctor.”

Under normal circumstances, I have to be gagged and hog-tied to be dragged into a doctor’s office. Literally at death’s door, I am afraid, and now believe the only thing that can save me is medical intervention. There is a public health clinic in town, attended two or three days a week by a medic. Kelsie, the bubbly nurse, is usually always there during the week. She has saved my life before and I’d have called her days ago if my phone had credit. I beg the Canadian to go find the doctor, or the nurse. Anyone. At this point, the gardener at the clinic will do.

There is a container of dry cat food in the kitchen. It’s a long way from the usual diet of fresh fish. The Canadian throws some granules on the floor. Before he leaves, he fills the bowl with fresh water. At my bidding, he leaves the gate unlocked and the front door open so that the doctor can come in. The cats hungrily pounce on the meager offering. When they’re sated, they come to lay next to me, warming me with their fur as I shiver in and out of fever. Red continually licks my forehead. She ignores my weak protests. At times, her sandpaper tongue feels like a cheese grater ripping across my skin, but sometimes it helps to cool me down. On second thought, she may be so hungry that she’s test-tasting to see if I’m edible.

Another day lopes slowly by. No one comes. I’m so dehydrated I can’t even cry. I desperately need a bath. Medication. Food. Water. Help.

At some point, I hear the women passing my house to go and do their laundry in the river. I don’t have to see them to know that Sonja carries her huge pink tub on her head, overloaded with the family’s washing. Marie’s tub is blue. Carmen’s is green. Francisca has two, a red one and a blue one. She closes one over the other and balances it carefully on her head as she makes her way out of town. Others join them, escaping the tedium of their rough outdoor kitchens and taking all the kids to cool off in the river for the rest of the day. Piled high with the week’s clothing and all the bed linen, they’ll spend the afternoon on the riverbank, washing and gossiping under the bridge, pounding their husband’s jeans and their daughter’s school socks on the rocks until they’re spotless.

“Please help me.”

My lips are dry. My throat is sore from dry-retching. My voice is barely a whisper. There is a dirty sarong hanging over the unfinished window frame. Stretching out full length, I still can’t reach it with my feet. The effort sends shooting pains through my stomach and makes my head spin. I break into a hot-cold fever. Shivering uncontrollably, I maneuver my body around on the floor, inch by inch, grazing my hip while sliding over the uneven cement, until I can reach the sarong. The effort makes me dizzy and nauseous. The slant of sunlight tells me there is still an hour or so of daylight. The women are gradually returning from the river. Roughly wrapping the sarong around my torso, I crawl on hands and knees to the balcony. Progress is slow. Pain explodes inside me like fireworks. My skin is so sensitive that the wooden floorboards feel like needles digging into my hands and knees. Vahşi accompanies me to the edge as I wade through a mortuary of uneaten cat-kills; cockroaches, frogs, geckos, butterflies and cicadas. As the sun dips lower over The Point, I gasp and groan, finally reaching the edge of my balcony. Once there, I lean against a post and wait. After a few minutes, a local woman passes. I try to call out.

“Please help me.”

She doesn’t even look up. My voice is weak. I need to shout, but can’t. Another woman comes by. I call out again. She doesn’t hear me. I can feel consciousness slipping away. Vahşi crawls into my lap. The warmth and movement wakes me up a little. Just then, a neighbor comes out to her balcony to water her plants.

“Hey! Are you okay?” she calls, seeing me slumped against the post.

I can barely speak. I shake my head. “No.”

“Wait, I’ll be right there.”

From somewhere deep inside my body, tears appear and roll down my pale sunken cheeks. I collapse into a sobbing heap on the floor. Not long afterwards, a gaggle of chattering local women appear in my house. At first, most of them are more curious to explore the open-plan house than to take care of me. They take advantage of the opportunity to participate in a spontaneous open-house. I don’t care, and I don’t care that they don’t really care about me. Finally, someone is there, and they don’t care that I’m naked and resemble a plucked chicken with my pallid face, pasty white skin and trembling bony body.

One of the kids is sent to find Kelsie. The nurse shows up with a medical kit and immediately pumps an injection into my butt. The pile of soiled clothes is taken downstairs and put into tubs to soak. The sheets on my bed are changed and the dirty linen whisked away. After a rough dousing in painfully cold water, two women help me pull an old t-shirt over my head and slide between the clean sheets. Someone is cleaning the kitchen. Another woman sweeps the floor. Giggles erupt from the balcony. Kelsie wipes my forehead with a cool damp cloth.

“Why didn’t you call me?” she chides as she inserts a thermometer under my arm.
Exhausted, I have no words left. I can’t tell her that I did call her, many many times, and that somewhere between my house and the clinic the telepathic signals were intercepted. I can’t explain why the Canadian left me on the bathroom floor to die and didn’t go for help as he’d promised. My relief is so great that I drift into sleep. I’m not sure for how long. Kelsie wakes me gently. My bed is surrounded by curious faces.

“You have to eat something. What do you want?”

Potatoes. Maybe it’s my Irish ancestry, or maybe because they’re starchy and seem to absorb belly-devils really well, I don’t know, but whenever I suffer a bout of diarrhea, I feel the need to eat potatoes. When I’m healthy, a common garden variety potato won’t even make it past the gate at my place. I hate them. A kid is dispatched to buy potatoes. I ask him to buy some eggs, milk and bread to feed my starving felines. Soon, a bowl piled high with steaming plain mashed potatoes appears, accompanied by a jug of suero – home-made rehydration fluid flavored with fresh limes. This meal is supervised by some giggling ladies who make themselves at home on my bed, while others go home to tend to their families. Another mash of bread, eggs and milk is mixed for the hungry critters. Barely making a dent in the mountain of mash, I’m stuffed to bursting after eating a couple of spoonfuls. The rest of the cooked potatoes are stored to be reheated for the next meal. Kelsie orders me to drink the fluid, as much of it as possible.

Over the next eighteen days, still struggling with diarrhea for most of that time, I gradually recover from the near-lethal bacterial infection. By day three of eating pure mash, I am over potatoes. Even though I have no appetite, I eat something every day, feeding my amoebas like little internal pets. As soon as I can get out of bed and move around the house, the cats are joyous. When I can walk down the street without getting dizzy, I stop by the clinic every few days to be weighed and checked out. Occasionally someone stops by the house with a bucket of fresh fish, in exchange for the ripening passionfruits, badea (giant granadilla) and chilies in my garden. The cats are delighted.

Daily, my health improves, but I’m still weak, and very thin and drawn, with my clothes hanging off my skeletal frame. Finally, after several weeks, I begin to gain weight again and come back to my normal chunky self, with a big round butt and robust cheeks.

“You’re fat!” says Nerih happily when I go to the boats to get fish for the cats.

“Thank you,” I reply, understanding that it’s a complement.

After three months, I’m ready to take on the world again, just as long as there are no more microscopic amoeba ninjas lurking in the wings to take me out.

The F@#$+%g Birthday Cake!

One afternoon, Figu, the local surfboard-shaper, stops by my cabin after his surfing session on The Point. We hang out for a while, shooting the breeze as I trim pumpkin flowers and chop onions and tomatoes for a sauce. Then, he drops the real reason for his visit.

“It’s Pablo’s birthday today. Can you make him a cake?” he asks.

“Sure.”

I happily agree to make his brother a birthday cake, without a single clue of the pending nightmare about to descend and darken my life. We discuss the flavor, I give him a very fair “friends” price, he pays and then leaves. Not long after, Amber, Pablo’s girlfriend shows up.

“Can you make it a heart-shape?” she asks.

“No problem.”

I take the heart-shaped cake mold from the bench and show it to her. Satisfied that I can complete the mission to her specifications, she leaves, grinning from ear to ear, content that her boyfriend will be happily surprised later that day. Not as surprised as me, I’ll bet. Not wasting any time, I get to work. First, I have to find an oven. Since my thriving café business was abruptly shut down at the beginning of the year, I haven’t baked anything for a long time, and don’t have an oven handy.

“We’re going out, but it’s okay. You can use the oven here,” agrees Cecilia, who is renting Didi’s house at the other end of town.

The oven is at the back of the house, behind the kitchen. This will be logistically interesting, but whatever it takes, right? I go back to my cabin and, while the tomato sauce simmers on the stove, I prepare the cake batter, creaming butter and sugar, adding eggs and fresh passionfruit pulp, sifting in the flour. Piece of cake! I’m out of baking paper to line the cake tin, so I scrub the gathered dust out of the mold and grease and flour it well. Batter poured into the tin, I walk back to the other side of the village, to Didi’s house, and light the gas oven. Setting the cake in the center of the top shelf, I ask it not to burn, and return home to finish preparing the stuffed pumpkin flowers for dinner.

I stir-fry cooked wholegrain rice with chopped onion, garlic, pepper, raisins, and a sprinkle of cumin. Then, I add nutmeg, soy sauce and a dribble of natural achiote for color before stuffing spoonfuls of spiced rice into the delicate yellow flowers. Meanwhile, the fresh tomato sauce is simmering, rich with onions, garlic, tomatoes, and fresh oregano. I gently place the flowers into the sauce. They’ll cook slowly in the covered pan. Fifteen minutes in to the cake’s journey, I return to Didi’s house to check on it, only to discover the gas has gone out.

Oh no! Then, patting my pants, I realize I’ve just changed my clothes and no longer have a box of matches in my pocket. Damn! I quickly return to my cabin to retrieve the matches, add some water to the divine-smelling pumpkin flowers, and run the one hundred and fifty meters back. I light the oven again. No gas. The tank is empty. Aarrgghh!

Leaving the the uncooked cake in the still warm oven, I set off to search for another oven. On my way back across the village, I run into Amber on the street. Rearranging my frown into a smile, I wave a friendly greeting, hoping to whizz past quickly. But no, she wants to stop and chat!

“Hi! How’s it going?” she asks cheerily.

What can I tell her? It isn’t going that well so far.

“Um. All good,” I respond, almost jumping out of my skin with alarmed urgency. “The cake is great. But I really have to go and find some stuff right now. Talk later!” Without further ado, I run in the opposite direction.

All over town, I search for another oven. Most of the restaurants don’t even have ovens. Who knew! Those who do are using them and do not have space for a cake, thank you very much. Knitted disapproving raised eyebrows dismiss me. As I run from place to place, desperation creases my brow. How am I going to cook this damned cake? At the crossroads in the center of town, as I’m wondering where I’m going to find an available oven, Figu appears. There is one oven left unexplored.

“Help me!” I explain the problem so far. “I need you to go and talk to Leo about borrowing Morongo’s oven to cook this cake for your brother.”

Morongo has a bar across the street from my cabin. He has a strict policy about not lending anyone things from his bar, including his oven, and having already used it a few times this week, I can’t stretch the friendship any further. An outright “NO” from Morongo will destroy my chances of ever cooking the cake. But . . . he’s leaving town today, leaving Leo in charge. Figu runs away to find Leo, who is renting the bar in Morongo’s absence.

“Can it wait until after Morongo leaves later today?” asks Leo when he sees me.

“Sure, why not.” I don’t really have a choice, do I?

I leave the raw cake in Didi’s cooling oven and go home to twiddle my thumbs. Meanwhile, the stuffed pumpkin flowers, which have been slowly simmering away in their herbed tomato sauce on the stove at my cabin, are ready. I turn it off and sit back in the hammock to twiddle my thumbs some more.

Finally, after about half an hour, Morongo and his wife, Amy, leave for Manta. As soon as their 4WD is out of sight, I bolt across town to Didi’s house and pick up the now cold cake batter, wondering how much damage this false-start has done. Racing back across town to Morongo’s bar, I put the cake in his pizza oven and light it, with the box of matches now back in my pants pocket. The cake is now in the hottest oven in town. The temperature control is not good, and “low” is not vocabulary it understands. Knowing this could get tricky, I watch it like a hawk. Every five minutes, I peek in the door and rotate the tin. Even with all my attention on it, as I hover over it like an expectant father, the cake burns. It’s charred black on top, and only just cooked underneath. Great! Aarrgghh!

By now, I’m beginning to feel slightly stressed out by this cake. I cover the passionfruit charcoal, still in its tin, with a cotton cloth and leave it on the stove at my cabin to cool, then go to work on the cardboard box in which I plan to deliver what I have now decided is my last ever order for any kind of cake. The preparation of the cardboard box includes going out to find a box, which also means a flying visit to Sara’s house to hand over the dollar I still owe for yesterday’s muchin, and having to sit patiently and silently through yet another well-meaning but excruciating lecture on why it’s unnatural and unhealthy to be the only single woman in Mompiche.

Finally, I get back to my cabin with the cardboard box and quickly turn it into a cake-box with some scissors and tape. I cut another circle, guessing the size since the cake tin is still busy, and wrap it in foil to make a portable disposable cake plate. By now, the cake has cooled enough to be decorated.

To add to the general stress of baking, apart from the intense equatorial heat, there are no work benches and no sinks, not to mention no electricity and no running water. My cache of kitchen tools is extremely limited. Having a heart-shaped mold to bake this cake in at all is a miracle. By now, I wish I’d said no. However, I still have a cake to deliver, and time is running out on me. The only flat workspaces I have are the top of the stove, or the wonky wooden floor. There is more space on the floor. The broom flicks the dust around, and some newspapers are laid out so I can get to work.

Sitting on the floor, I flip the tin upside to tap the cake out onto a ceramic plate, so I can then flip it straight over onto the foil cake plate, and it will end up sitting top-side-up. The cake won’t come out. It’s stuck in the bottom. Aarrgghh! Maneuvering carefully around the edges, I dig it out with an egg-flip. It ends up in crumbs. Delicious, charred crumbs that now barely resemble a heart… Dammit!

With a bread knife, I slice off the charred top and throw out the black bits. It’s a bit messy, but I figure I can tidy it up a bit with the frosting. I mix cream cheese, icing sugar, and chopped fresh pineapple to make a filling. I slice the cake in half, juggling with all the bits as they fall off when I remove the top half, inventing an entire trilingual vocabulary of brand new curse words as I work, and then spread half of the pineapple cream over the base. Just like a jigsaw puzzle, I put it all back together, trying to gather some shreds of serenity and patience, which is now in very short supply.

Hot and sticky, and fed up with this damned cake, I take a break. I’m a bit over the massive effort it’s taken so far to create a simple cake. A drink of water restores me a little. I go to the rainwater tank and splash cool water over my face and neck. As I turn back to my tiny workspace, I see Mascara (The Mask), my cat, with his face gleefully buried in the frosting bowl. Aarrgghh! Anything remotely resembling rejuvenated mood and restored patience flies over the balcony with the cat, who is instantly evicted with a thump and a roar. Spinning back to the cake, I stand on the metal cutting edge of the aluminium foil box and roar again, violently flinging the box far away. Unbalanced, I accidentally put my hand into the pan with the pumpkin flowers, squashing three of them flat. The third roar is tigerish, a wild angry growl. My wide-eyed neighbor silently scarpers inside her cabin, not even daring to ask. Now, I’m totally over this freaking birthday cake!

“I cannot work in these conditions!” I cry in despair, washing tomato sauce from my hand.

I stop all movement and sit cross-legged on the floor. Meditation. Close eyes. Count to ten. Breathe. My heart pounds in my ears from pent-up frustration I am not able to release completely just yet. Count to twenty. Thirty. Fifty. Trying to clear mind. Passionfruit cake aroma distracts me. After a long painful minute, I spread the rest of the cat-licked pineapple cream over the top of the cake, hiding the worst of the damage, and maintaining a rough heart shape. Once it’s ready, I try to get the cake in the box. The foil plate doesn’t fit. It’s too wide. Aarrgghh!

Finally, I fold over the edges of the foil plate and squish and squeeze the cake into the box, trying not to touch it as the sticky cheese frosting drips over the sides in the clammy humidity. Using tweezers “Happy Birthday Pablo” is drawn carefully with sliced bits of fresh pineapple over the top of the cake. Glad my ordeal is finally over, I close and seal the box and go to put the cake in Cristhian’s fridge. Locked. He’s not home. Aarrgghh!

Switching to Plan B, I get permission to put the cake in Carlos’ fridge next door instead. I go home to take a well-deserved nap in the hammock. A few hours later, Amber comes by to collect her cake. We go to the fridge to retrieve it. Someone has put a heavy bucket on top of the cake box and squished the cardboard down into the middle of the cake. It’s a complete mess. I’m totally devastated and would like nothing more than to scream. Aarrgghh!

“It’s okay, it’s not your fault,” she says, smiling and shrugging. “It will still taste good.”

As she walks away with her squished birthday offering, I swear on my Irish ancestors that this culinary abomination is the last birthday cake I will ever bake in Mompiche. As it turns out, that isn’t quite true, but it’s a very long time – and in someone else’s well-equipped kitchen – before I make another attempt at baking another one! At least the stuffed pumpkin flowers in herbed tomato sauce are delicious.

Going Bananas

Boiled green bananas. Fried green bananas. Mashed green bananas. Baked green bananas. Barbequed green bananas. Grilled green bananas. Chipped green bananas. Grated green bananas. Dried green bananas. Then, when they ripen, there are a million other ways to prepare the humble banana. And we haven’t even started on the vast varieties of bananas available; such as bromiches, dominiques, garrabanetes, chilenas, moradas. After years of rampant banana consumption, I could write a whole book about how to prepare, cook and eat bananas. I’d call it Going Bananas! Seriously.

Some days, I feel like a monkey. Or maybe I’m descended from monkeys . . . (Sorry, Dad!) Actually they say humans are descended from monkeys. But what monkey ever completely stripped his natural habitat of perfectly sustainable resources then raided and destroyed the habitats of others to fill the resulting deficit? If I were a monkey I’d be ashamed of the connection, and very afraid of the impending disaster; a starving planet. In response, I shy away from this global crisis to live in my own self-sustainable world where the monkey business of feeding myself is much simpler. And where bananas play a major role in my diet.

So far today I’ve eaten fourteen bananas. As soon as I get up, I eat two ripe bananas then have three boiled green bananas for breakfast, with a boiled egg and a sliced tomato. At lunch; a glass of juice made with a ripe banana blended with a passionfruit. Today, there are two green bananas in the lentil soup and another two fried to make banana chips to go with the grilled fish. Fish and chips – Mompiche style. Two ripe bananas dipped in home-made granola (which also includes dried bananas) with a drizzle of organic raw honey become a tasty mid-afternoon snack. For dinner I double-fry two green bananas for the patacones; the traditional accompaniment for delicious shrimp ceviche. Now I’m considering what to have for dessert. And the branch of ripening bananas hanging from its hook in the kitchen never fails to tempt me.

My record for one day is twenty-eight bananas. That’s a one-off. Craving something sweet that I can eat without suffering any allergic reactions, I make a banana pie with twenty-five mashed ripe bananas, a splash of sunflower oil, a sprinkle of crushed star of anise, a handful of chopped raisins and some plantain flour – three green bananas grated and dried.

This is how plantain flour is made . . .

Bake it for an hour and leave it overnight to get cold. The pie is so good, I eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner and have a few more slices between meals for snacks. By bedtime, the whole pie is gone. Big mistake. The night’s sultry air is filled with rich banana farts; round and bubbly, sonorous and pungent, true panty-flappers. The following day, I’m terrified to fart, sneeze, cough or giggle in case I poop my pants. After that rather humbling experience, I limit banana consumption to less than fifteen per day. Well, most days . . .

One day I’m eating muchin at Doña Sara’s house when her brother Fernando shows up.

“Marry me,” he says. “I’ll make you happy.”

“You’ll make me happy if you bring me bananas,” I laugh.

It’s the beginning of a beautiful marriage; a monkey and her bananas. Every week, I buy a branch of bananas from Fernando, gently turning down his proposal each time.

There are usually around one hundred and fifty small bananas on a branch. Each one is about the length of my hand. They grow wild in the jungle, so they’re organic and taste like real bananas. Fernando brings them in on horseback from his farm in the hills and I buy one branch a week for a dollar.

Heaving the branch over my shoulder, I carry them home and hang them from the rafters, tying a string around the top of the branch to hold it in place. The small organic bananas are still green at that point but, after being covered with a nylon rice sack to protect them from birds and fruit bats, they gradually ripen over the week. They’re eaten green and also as they become yellow. Bananas are my favorite fast-food; grab one, peel and eat. Sometimes I dip ripe bananas in crushed Manabi peanuts, or take alternate bites with a chunk of one-hundred percent dark organic chocolate. Bliss! Clearly I’m not suffering a lack of potassium . . .

One time, I make the mistake of buying a whole branch of ripe bananas. Insanity! I insist on having bananas. He says there are only ripe bananas.

“Okay. Give me ripe bananas. I can’t live without bananas.”

I laugh out loud now at the memory; the look on Fernando’s face, his head shaking as he watches me carry the branch down the street, ripe bananas dropping onto the road and a trail of local kids running around behind me picking them up, laughing and squealing with delight each time another banana hits the deck. There are maybe thirty bananas left on the branch by the time I finally get it home. Fernando must think I’m mad.

That mistake is never repeated. The next time I get ripe bananas – only because Fernando won’t have any green ones until he finds his missing horse – he gives me a hand of twelve that barely make the trip home in one piece. The skins split, the insides mash. The next day they are so ripe I use most of them to make banana bread (without walnuts, in honor of my sister who hates them!) with Doña Elsa’s home-made butter, Fabiola’s organic eggs and plantain flour. (See the recipe in Going Bananas! Haha!)

Sometimes, Miguel Saldarriaga, one of my English students, brings me moradas (purple bananas) and bromiches (small bananas) from his farm, along with a bounty of other treasures from his organic garden; green peppers, grapefruits, sweetsops, soursops, avocados, watermelons, pumpkin seeds and hava beans.

Bananas are a staple food in Mompiche; as essential as rice in Asia or bread in the Middle East. A local farmer’s breakfast consists of three or four boiled or barbecued green bananas, a large chunk of fresh farm cheese and several mugs of strong black coffee. Every weekday Fernando mounts his horse and takes his machete and heads for the plantation in the hills to search for bananas. He’ll bring back five or six branches at a time; a few for sale, and some for the family. Every week, he brings several branches of chilenas (small sweet lady-finger bananas) for Doña Sara to make her muchin; a typical coastal dessert baked in bijao leaves over hot coals. Melted farm cheese on the inside with a hint of anise, it’s divine! Sara sells muchin every weekend to passersby.

That’s how I meet Sara. My interest in traditional cuisine leads me straight to her house to try muchin.

At fifty cents a pop, I always buy two. Sitting at the enormous wooden table on her balcony, I eat one straight away, then bring the other one home for dessert after dinner. It’s so good, it usually doesn’t last the whole afternoon before it’s gone. There are other women in Mompiche who make and sell muchin, but none is as good as Sara’s. Jasmin puts grated coconut in hers, La Viejita adds way too much flour and it comes out like hard cake, and Bertha uses ripe plantains instead of chilenas – it’s just not the same!

It takes almost a year to wheedle the recipe out of Sara. I sit at her table, close my eyes and smell the muchin as I slowly unwrap it from the leaf. Then I taste it. Roll it around in my mouth, savoring the flavors.

“It has anise in it,” I state one day, watching her closely.

The trace of a smile on Sara’s lips tells me I’m right. Chilenas, butter, anise, cinnamon, farm cheese . . . what else? Bit by bit, the secret of muchin unfolds.

One day, I wake at dawn and hike up the road in gumboots, my machete resting on my shoulder, to collect bijao leaves from the hills and then spend the entire morning mashing and grating three varieties of bananas to prepare muchin; chilenas, bromiches and dominiques. I season it with anise and added a little nutmeg; my favorite spice.

In the afternoon I present Sara with muchin baked over the coal fire at home. She is impressed. Even the bijao leaves are folded correctly. Small pieces are cut off and passed around for everyone to sample. Melted cheese drips from the center.

“It’s pretty good,” compliments Ruth, Sara’s youngest daughter.

“My mother used to make it just like this, with green plantain bananas instead of wheat flour,” Sara whispers, revealing yet another well-kept secret about her muchin.

In time I also learn that Sara’s mother used lard instead of butter.

Sorry . . . I can’t resist the branch of bananas any longer. I have to have dessert before I can write any more; two ripe bananas, sliced, with a sprinkle of peanuts and a dizzle of raw jungle honey. Oh yeah! Okay, where was I?

When I first move to Mompiche, the daily hunt for bananas is a challenge. It seems there are never any bananas. If I get lucky, I can buy five bananas for twenty-five cents from Margarita’s, a seafood restaurant on the main street. Sometimes Mayor has a branch and sells me a few. The juice kiosks sometimes sell them too. Chapilillo, Mompiche’s version of Don Quixote, frequently promises me a branch of bananas but never delivers. The Friday fruit lady says she’ll bring bananas whenever she can but doesn’t.

“For goodness sake!” I bemoan, “I’m living in Ecuador, a major global exporter of bananas; the country that produces more bananas per capita than any other country in the world, and some days I can’t find a banana to save my life!”

Dole Inc. grows and exports its perfectly yellow, perfectly straight, sized-to-order, tasteless bananas to half the world; perfectly pesticided and fertilized with any number of unpronounceable toxic chemicals. But I can’t even find one of those to eat!

Fortunately, my luck changes after Fernando’s proposal.

One afternoon, I’m walking home with a heavy branch of bananas when I stop to chat with Doña Sara and rest for a few minutes outside her house. Putting the branch down, I lean it up against the fence and let Sara tease me once again about not having a man around to carry my bananas and keep me warm during the recent spate of chilly nights. As she chides me for being unacceptably single, recounting all the practical reasons I need a boyfriend, I feel something tickle my leg. Looking down, I watch a large brown spider crawl out from the middle of the bananas and run down my bare calf and across my flip-flopped foot. Every hair on my body stands on end. My skin shudders. My face pales. I’d had that branch on my shoulder.

“Oh,” Sara warns, watching the spider retreat under the fence line, “you have to be careful of banana spiders. They give a very nasty bite.”

Good to know! I smack one end of the branch on the ground sharply before hefting it back onto my shoulder for the rest of the walk home.

I’ve Got Crabs…

I’ve got crabs. It’s quite an infestation. There are hundreds of them; tiny alien-like things crawling all over the place. They’re everywhere and they’re driving me crazy. I’ve been scratching my head for months trying to figure out how to get rid of them without using chemicals. Intensive internet research leaves me clueless. Even the best permaculture and organic gardening guides fail to provide the answer.

“Why don’t you just poison them?” asks Alfonso.

“Blast them with some heavy-duty shit,” suggests Jigua.

“Actually, an organic permaculture garden doesn’t really have a place for chemicals and poisons,” I try to explain to the Mompicheros, knowing that the entire concept of organic anything is beyond their guanchaca-soaked imaginations.

“Have you got crab traps?” asks the store owner, Don Julo, being slightly more practical.

I have some traps but I haven’t used them for a long time because the neighbors steal them.

Some of the local kids helped build the traps from scraps of wood and then taught me how to use them to catch land crabs. The same night, the thieving kid next door snuck in and pilfered half the traps. I caught him opening the garden gate when he triggered the makeshift alarm; a tin can and some beer bottle caps attached with fishing line. The other traps scored two medium-sized crabs that I couldn’t bring myself to eat, so I put them in a box and called them George and Lucas (because crabs are too sci-fi for words). Next day, George killed Lucas and buried him in the sand before he escaped. The remaining crab traps have been sitting on the shelf ever since.

Each night for a week, I sneak around my own backyard to work an intensive crab eradication program in secret, setting traps after dark and collecting them before dawn.

Gecarcinus quadratus crabs usually have blue bodies, red legs and white claws and are considered a delicacy on the Ecuadorian coast. While the “legal” size limit to trap and sell land crabs is six centimeters, they can grow up to around twenty centimeters across the back and, in my garden, they have a nasty habit of chewing on my newly sprouted Swiss chard seedlings. The beans, tomatoes, peppers and corn along the side fence are decimated a week after the first shoots appear. They’re partial to young papaya trees too. The latest victims; eight healthy leafy rambutan trees just three weeks old and a brand new macadamia. The crabs have to go. After a week of trapping, I have several undersized crabs scrambling around the bottom of a large yellow bucket and no idea what to do with them.

Each sapling gets a crab guard after it’s been transplanted – a recycled toilet paper roll slipped over the new shoot and pushed into the soil to hold it. Eventually the trees grow thick enough to be safe from crab’s nippers and the biodegradable guards decompose into the soil. Sometimes the crabs figure out how to get in, ripping through soggy cardboard after a heavy rain or pushing over the fragile rolls to sever the plants at ground level. Unprotected, a robust sapling can be defoliated in a few hours. It’s impossible to plant potatoes, beets, carrots, yucca or yams. Underground, the crabs go to work gobbling up every tasty morsel until finally the leafy tops begin to die, alerting me that something more than acidic soil is to blame.

Notice how there are no plants around his home? It’s because he ATE them all!

When the spring tide flooded the garden with seawater, I managed to save several plants by washing them a few times a day with fresh rainwater. One loofah vine struggled to survive for a couple of weeks until finally it was back in good shape and climbing up the fence. The following week, a crab snipped it off. Broke my heart. And enraged my inner gardener.

Trapping the crabs works but it’s labor intensive; baiting each one with a slice of green plantain, digging out a space so the traps fit neatly over the holes, then collecting the traps and trying to pry the buggers out. Some don’t budge for hours no matter how hard I bang the trap on the ground or prod them with a stick – call me chicken but I’m not sticking my hand in there! And, after all that, the crabs are too small to eat.

“Boiling water,” suggests Don Jacho’s wife, Lelia.

The perfect organic solution. Boiling water is easier and more effective. It’s animal cruelty, I know; boiling defenseless creatures alive in their own homes. Somebody call the animal rights people quickly! Don’t tell them I throw salt on the cane toads too (only because I don’t have any golf clubs). The vegetables and the crabs simply aren’t compatible. Leafy greens I can eat, penny-sized crabs I can’t. And, aside from their potential culinary value, I don’t see any other benefits of having them around. A two liter jug of boiling water is enough give two or three crabs a steaming hot bath. If I keep the biggest pot on the go all morning, I can murder thirty or so tiny crabs by lunchtime. Of course, when I find some big enough, they’re invited to lunch.

A fat prickly cucumber from the vine on the front fence, a handful of wild cherry tomatoes from the back, some fresh basil, oregano, mint and wild cilantro, the newest five-color Swiss chard leaves, and a few leaves harvested from a weird wild weed that tastes like spinach make up the garden salad to go with my freshly boiled crabs. To drink, a couple of passionfruits blended with bananas make tangy juice. A few months from now, the accompanying grilled plantains and the lime juice in the salad dressing will also come from the garden.

Vigilance is paramount. An invading crab will happily take up residence in an abandoned hole, so a daily crab inspection and another round of crustacean murder rapidly follows any new discoveries. Square foot by cubic inch, weed-free and crab-proofed, the garden morphs into a verdant jungle filled with delicious, sometimes unusual treats.

It started as a weed infested plot that the neighbors used to dump their garbage with one spindly mandarin tree that hadn’t borne fruit for years.

“You’ll have to chop that down,” warned Chapilillo, the man who sold me the land.

Instead, I dumped two wheelbarrows full of cow manure at its feet, spreading it thickly over the roots, then covered it all in six inches of sawdust and gave the tree a stern warning, smacking the trunk with the flat side of the axe a few times and telling it to produce fat juicy fruit or it would become firewood. To prove I was serious, I trimmed some deadwood from the lower branches and sawed off the large thorny branch I had to duck under every time I passed the tree. A week later, while clearing out a thick weed patch, I found a large rotting log and rolled it under the blossoming mandarin tree, forming the border for a potential herb garden. Every time I finished a branch of bananas, the thick stalk was left to rot beside the tree. Within three months, the first sweet mandarins made their way up to the fruit bowl in the kitchen and the richest soil on my property was ready to plant the first seeds.

Before embarking into a full-scale mini food-forest, it became necessary to learn more about the practicalities of permaculture gardening and growing organic vegetables. Friends lent me books. I used up precious internet time to discover what I could. Much of the time the answers still weren’t forthcoming. I know something about basic composting, and designed the house around this concept with waterless toilets and compost bins. From the books I learned a lot about soils, layers of vegetation and the importance of swales, but seasons and frost? They don’t exist on the coastal equator. There are two seasons; hot and wet, and warm and wet with a short dry spell in between.

With the average temperature swinging between 20º-35º Celsius (68º-95ºF) all year round, Blackheart cherry and Aristocrat pear trees weren’t going to be on the menu anytime soon. Forget about asparagus too! Tomatoes, however, despite being “annuals” would grow all year as long as I kept putting seeds in the ground. Instead of Pink Lady apple trees, I planted jackfruit and borojo. In place of grapevines, in went passionfruit and badea. Grapefruit, orange and lime trees went in beside the maracumbo. With no information available, it was a hit-and-miss experiment.

“If it grows, great. If it doesn’t, it’s compost,” I philosophized, tossing fruit and vegetable seeds out the kitchen window every time I prepared a meal.

The rosemary died after a week of torrential rain, despite being in the driest part of the yard. The avocados in partial shade did better than those in full sun. The sandalwood suffered an ariela attack, but the leaves grew back after a short time. Six mango trees were also completely defoliated by the rampaging army of leaf-cutter ants. A mysterious bug devoured the green beans the day before harvest. A few months in, the garden was full of orange butterflies. Beautiful – until I realized their offspring were devouring the passionfruit and badea vines faster than they could grow. Neem oil to the rescue! Unavailable in Ecuador, I had to make the oil myself from neem leaves, but it was well worth the effort.

Birds moved in; hummingbirds, woodpeckers, finches, robins. Other creatures followed; frogs, lizards, spiders and three more species of butterflies. An iguana came to eat the passionfruit flowers. Two opossums moved in to raid the papaya trees. A non-venemous granadilla snake visits once a month to feast on the growing population of frogs. The ecosystem rapidly began to change. Four micro-climates emerged. Plant communities made sense to me, but in a village off the map, access to Russian olives and comfrey was impossible. By accident, I learned that cacao trees and mangoes grow well together, and sweetsops and soursops like banana trees. The rest, I have to figure out as I go.

Following advice from a source I can’t recall, I planted corn, beans and pumpkins in the same patch. A vaguely remembered hint about putting fish heads under the corn also came into play. Everything got a healthy splash of “cow tea” and was left to do its thing. At my place, cow tea is made from a fresh cow pat soaked in rainwater for several days. Strained through mesh and dribbled onto the dirt around the plants, it gives them a boost. Soon, the sweet corn, fava beans and conch pumpkins sprouted and the garden began its first transformation. Not long after, the young bean plants vanished. Not even a leaf remained. Crabs?

The pumpkin vine took off, climbing all over the house, great big yellow flowers blooming everywhere. Ping-pong sized balls of fruit appeared then perished and fell off. Rain? Eventually, on a part of the vine hanging over the fence, a small pumpkin began to take shape. I managed to harvest one meager serve of baby corns for a Thai style stir-fry before the rest were consumed by small rust-colored bugs. Faced with predators I couldn’t identify, I dug everything into the ground and focused on soil building.

In the end, six small conch pumpkins grew – about the size of large iceberg lettuces – five of which I gifted to friends after removing the seeds. Although now I have to make a confession; I did eat one of the pumpkins. Please don’t tell my mum. I’ve hated pumpkin my whole life, refusing to eat it in any shape or form for over forty years. I’ve turned down pumpkin soups, pumpkin pies, and pumpkin desserts. They tried hiding it in the mashed potatoes, but I wasn’t fooled. I’ve thrown tantrums at the sight of pumpkin on my plate. For years my mother put the odious orange vegetable in front of me hoping I’d eat it. Stubborner than a mule, I never did. Now, the thought of giving away every single hard won vegetable from the vine, that I was experiencing one of those lean times when money was scarce and food was getting harder to come by, that it was one hundred percent organic, that I grew it in my own garden at my own house, and that it was the last and smallest fruit on the vine was enough for me to give it a try.

The shell of a conch pumpkin is dark green with a bumpy white stripe pattern going around it from stem to base and is as hard as a bicycle helmet. Impossible to cut with a kitchen knife, I placed the sharpened blade of the machete in the center and tapped it lightly with the hammer on either side to make an even split. The seeds I scooped out and dried in the sun with all the others I’d harvested, leaving them until they became pale and ready to roast in olive oil and some of my favorite spices. Later, I would dry the shell and use the two halves as bowls to collect seeds to plant. One of those bowls held the ten pumpkin seeds I’d saved to plant. The rest of the pumpkin I boiled in rainwater until the flesh was tender. Like most things in life, including food, I like to employ the KISS philosophy (Keep It Simple Sweetheart) so a sprinkle of salt and black pepper over the top and I was ready to voluntarily consume my first ever pumpkin. To some people this may sound ridiculous.

For me this was a major, possibly life-changing event. Fork in hand, I felt a little trepidation. What if it’s disgusting? It’s a bit like being afraid of the sea your whole life and then wetting your toes at the edge for the first time. Used to diving into turbulent waters, I dug in and put the fork in my mouth. It was delicious. I’m sure the pumpkin of my childhood didn’t taste like this. In fact, I know the papayas and pineapples in my country don’t taste the same. Neither do the tomatoes, broccoli, peas or carrots. Even the garlic is different. In general, the fruit and vegetables I eat now have oodles more flavor. Whenever I go home I experience cravings for fruit and vegetables with real flavor – just like Dad used to grow in his garden. Whatever happened to those gorgeous meaty ox-heart tomatoes we used to eat? Apparently they’ve been replaced by perfectly red, perfectly round tasteless orbs posing as tomatoes. Fortunately at home the trend of farmers markets is booming but the prices are still exorbitant. Rather than live in a country where healthy living is a luxury afforded by the rich, I’ll take my chances in the third world where organic is the norm.

On my new home ground, glorious flavors abound at bargain basement prices. The jungle melons and achochas are flowering, announcing the birth of the strange crispy vegetables soon to come and the native chili bushes give the garden a perpetual Christmassy air with their bright red fingernail sized fruits – chewing just one of these treasures will have you sweating like a sumo wrestler all night. Ginger flowers that resemble dragon heads peep from behind the leaves while the aromatic roots sneak around underground waiting to be brewed into fresh lemongrass tea and spicy ginger cookies. The wild mint trees are out of control and need trimming again. Mandarins and passionfruits wait to be picked. The sweet purple nightshade berries are ready again too. It’s time to get back to work. With Elmer Fudd fastidiousness, toting my hot water gun, I’m off to do the daily crab inspection, sprinkle some salt on the cane toads, and some pepper on the sunflower beds to stop the cats using it as a toilet, and then collect a big bowl of fresh green leaves for tonight’s garden salad.

Mosquito Madness in Muisne

from Ya Mismo: Thirty Seconds North of Zero

“Roni, can you hear me?” The distant voice seeps through the dark fog inside my head.

“Yes, I can hear you,” my brain responds, but I can’t move my lips. My mouth is so dry it’s sealed shut. Every bone screams in agony, as if they’re being crushed. Clothes touching my skin are unbearable. A headache pounds behind my eyes. I can’t open them. When I try, the light sends searing pain through my head.

The first indication is tiredness. I’ve been feeling flat for over a week, but put it down to fatigue. Unable to sleep because the new bar next door blasts the beach with electronic music every night until five a.m., I don’t realize I’m actually sick until the Monday I go shopping in Atacames. It begins like a normal day. I take the six a.m. bus to town to pick up groceries; wholegrain rice, quinoa, honey, dark chocolate. Things you can’t buy in Mompiche. At the bank, a headache rams against my forehead. Usually I never get headaches. I buy more water thinking I might be dehydrated, but the headache rages on. While checking emails, I notice sore muscles in my legs and wonder what I’ve done to cause the stiffness. Accustomed to daily exercise, it seems odd, but I still don’t twig that I’m seriously ill. Eventually I’ve had enough. With a throbbing head and an aching body I’m ready to go home. The bus ride seems endless, the pain increases with each kilometer. Fever sets in. The cool breeze blasting through the window feels like icy needles piercing my skin. By the time the bus arrives in Mompiche I’m barely conscious.

Safely inside my cabin, I leave the door unlatched. Then I drag a branch of bananas and a five gallon bottle of water across the floor to the bedside, before flopping onto the mattress. Alternately burning up and freezing, I slip in and out of consciousness. Unable to walk, I slither out of bed and cross the floor to the bathroom to pee and vomit. Eventually I’m so dehydrated that nothing comes out. Three days pass before anyone comes. It’s Lelelo, looking for the ten dollars I owe him. He takes one look at me shivering uncontrollably under the mosquito net and races to the clinic.

“Roni, can you hear me?” The voice belongs to Doctor Raul, the village medic.
Incapable of answering verbally, I try to move to indicate I can hear him. Excruciating pain shoots through my limbs. Raul puts a thermometer in my armpit. The cool glass burns my sensitive skin. He puts his hand on my forehead. It’s on fire.

“Her temperature is up to forty two. I suspect dengue. Get a saline drip going,” Raul tells Kelsie, his nurse. “I’m going to call an ambulance.”

Dengue fever is a potentially life-threatening viral disease transmitted primarily by the Aedes aegypti mosquito. Worldwide, around 50–100 million people are infected yearly. In Ecuador, around two thousand people contract dengue every month. Each case must be reported to the Ministry of Public Health. Due to its symptoms which include fever, headache, muscle and joint pains, it’s also called “breakbone fever” – romper hueso.

While Raul goes out to look for a stronger phone signal, Kelsie finds a vein in my hand and touches the point of the syringe to my skin. It feels like a thick knitting needle going in. Soon after, I drift into unconsciousness again.

“Roni, how do you feel?” asks a new voice, her fingers gently holding my hand.

“Like I died and went to hell,” says my brain. I struggle to move my lips. The room reeks of strong disinfectant. Hospital smells waft up my nose.

“Water,” I croak weakly. She almost doesn’t hear me. She bends lower to listen. “Water.”
“Do you want some water?” the nurse asks.

My word quota used up, I squeeze her fingers once: yes. She catches on quickly. Then she pours a glass and holds it to my lips, carefully lifting my head so it won’t spill. A few drops wet my tongue. It’s not enough. I want more. A few drips more, then a few more. It’s never enough.

“Thank you,” I murmur before slipping back into unconsciousness.

For another forty eight hours, I hover precariously on the precipice between life and death. Oblivious to the goings on in the women’s ward, I don’t notice frowning doctors extracting blood or concerned nurses replacing the saline solution. During the second night, a nurse swings by bed M4 every fifteen minutes to see if I’m still breathing. The next time I wake, it’s Saturday.

“Welcome back! We thought we were going to lose you. It was touch and go. How do you feel? Are you hungry?” asks a smiling nurse, chatting as she inserts a thermometer under my armpit. “The doctor is on his way.”

My stomach feels as if two large fists are playing tug-o-war. Under the pain lurk sharp pangs of hunger. Aside from a few bananas, I haven’t eaten anything for six days. My whole body aches. My head throbs. I’m nauseous. I want to sleep, but my stomach won’t hear of it.

“I’ll have the chef bring you some soup,” says the nurse, checking the saline drip and making a note on my chart before clopping down the hall towards the kitchen.
The soup arrives a few minutes later. Noodle soup with cheese, potatoes and rice.

“Oh. Do you have anything else?” I ask, disappointed. “I can’t eat wheat or dairy.”

“This isn’t wheat,” replies the chef, indignant. “It’s noodles! It has cheese in it!”

The offended expression on her face tells me there’s no point arguing. Ignorance regarding food and its subsequent allergies is widespread and the small regional hospital in Muisne is no exception. Trying to explain food allergies here is akin to speaking Japanese. Despite lactose intolerance, I can normally get away with eating a bit of cheese every so often, but today my delicate stomach isn’t up to the challenge. The best I can do is be as diplomatic as possible – or risk starvation.

“Okay. Do you have any fruit? I’m super hungry and just soup won’t be enough.”

After hearing I haven’t eaten anything for almost a week, she vanishes and returns shortly with a handful of bananas. Halfway through the third banana, Doctor Byron shows up.

“You’re lucky to be alive,” he tells me. “You have dengue fever and typhoid.”

Dengue fever is common on the coast. Looking around, I note there isn’t a single mosquito net in the twenty-bed hospital. As the doctor speaks, I wonder about the ratio of luck to destiny. There are four strains of dengue. Survival of one strain is awarded with lifelong immunity to that type, and short-term immunity to the other three. Subsequent infection with another strain of dengue increases the risk of severe complications including dengue hemorrhagic fever, or dengue shock syndrome. There is no vaccine. This is my second round with dengue. In both cases, I don’t know which types I’ve contracted.

“We really didn’t think you were going to make it,” continues the doctor.

“I’m not if this is the only food they’re serving,” I joke, indicating the untouched and now cold soup. “It would be a shame to die of malnutrition in hospital,” I laugh, then explain the problem.

“I’ll talk to the chef,” promises the doctor.

While he takes notes, jotting down my answers to his questions, I polish off the other two bananas. After the usual questions; full name, age, nationality, occupation, marital status, religion and ancestry, he asks about my home situation and lifestyle.

“Your organic diet probably saved your life,” he states, tapping his pen on the chart.

Doctor Byron explains that because my body is normally full of natural disease-fighting antibodies and packed with wholesome nutrients, the lack of chemicals and pharmaceuticals in my system allows the powerful drugs they’ve administered to get straight to work. The lucky part is the timing – one more day at home and I’d have been pushing up daisies now.

“You were beyond the usual point of survival when you came in,” he says very seriously. “And the typhoid made it even more complicated and confusing to diagnose and treat. At first, we thought it was a liver infection.”

Typhoid is a bacterial disease transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with fecal matter containing the bacterium Salmonella typhi. Humans with poor hygiene habits and flying insects that feed on feces can spread the disease. In Ecuador, typhoid kills around thirty people annually. Something I ate on the way to Atacames caused the high fever, raging headache and severe abdominal pain typical to the disease, and confused laboratory technicians with an unexpected decrease in white blood cells not typical in dengue.

“Wake up! Time for breakfast!” announces the chef.

She places a crumpled white bread roll and a glass of milk on the table beside the bed. She’s kidding, right? What part of ALLERGIC to wheat and dairy doesn’t she understand? To my body it’s not food, it’s poison. I say nothing. There’s no point. When she returns to collect the tray, she’s surprised.

“Aren’t you hungry?” she asks.

“Yes. I’m very hungry. But this food will make me sick. I can’t eat it.” I smile ruefully and pretend it doesn’t matter.

“But you have to eat something!” she admonishes. “What can you eat?”

Aha! Now we’re getting somewhere. Shortly, a bowl of soggy fruit salad; mostly watermelon and cantaloupe, and a glass of heavily sugared tree tomato juice arrive. Unfortunately, we go through a similar theatrical routine again at lunchtime when Chef Dodo brings me a plate of limp spaghetti.

Later in the day, when Nereyda shows up with a change of clothes and some toiletries, a large bag of fresh tropical fruits, a big block of dark chocolate and a pre-paid card to put credits on my mobile phone, I could kiss her.

“Did you talk to the chef yet?” I ask Doctor Byron when he comes in to check on me late in the afternoon. I already suspect that he hasn’t.

“Oops, no! I forgot. I’m sorry. I’ll go and see her now.”

Dinner arrives soon afterward. A few thin shreds of tired lettuce with a smattering of transparent tomato and lost-looking onion slices are afloat in the bottom of the bowl.

“This is it?” I ask Chef Dodo.

“The doctor said this is all you can eat.”

“Do I look like a rabbit to you?” I ask, extreme hunger overriding diplomacy. “I need food!”
“Doctor’s orders,” she sniffs and then vanishes.

My stomach is ready to go to war. But how do I go into battle when I can’t walk ten steps without passing out? That’s when I spy the wheelchair. I get in, drop the saline bag in my lap and zigzag down the hall. Who knew you need skills to drive a wheelchair? In a back-to-front hospital gown, barely able to control the wheels, and dizzy with the effort, I strap on my fighting gloves. Further down the hall, I bang into a narrow doorway the chair can’t pass through. Undeterred, I rattle the glass door. At that moment Doctor Byron exits his office. I wave him over.

“Yes, my darling? What’s up?”

“I don’t know what you told the chef, but all she gave me for dinner was lettuce.”

“No! Salad!”

“No. Lettuce. A whole spoonful of it. Come and look.”

He pushes me and my rebel wheels back to the women’s ward. I gotta say the ride is much smoother with an experienced driver. When we arrive at bed M4, he peers into the bottom of the bowl searching for any sign of sustenance.

“Oh, no!”

“See?”

“Okay. What do you want to eat?”

“Proteins; fish, eggs, beans. Any kind of fresh fruit, and any kind of fresh vegetables raw or cooked. At this level of starvation, I will even eat odious white rice.”

Fifteen minutes later Chef Dodo turns up with a plate of boiled eggs and a real salad. She also brings some more bananas and a glass of freshly made lemonade. Grateful, I thank her.

The following day a new chef appears on shift and, on alternate days, hospital food becomes surprisingly edible.

“Roni!” whispers a voice. “Wake up!”

I open my eyes to see Cristhian Garcia outside the window, leaning against the vertical security bars.

“Hi!” I’m delighted to see him. “Why don’t you come in?”

“They won’t let me in. It’s not visiting hours. Hospital rules.”

It sucks. Every morning friends travel from Mompiche to visit me in hospital and the security guards won’t let them inside. Visiting hours are late in the afternoon, long after most Mompicheros have caught the last bus home. Countless times I have to pull a chair up to the barred window, rearranging the drip stand and trying not to fall on my face from dizziness, so I can spend time with people who care. In the healing process, and because of the absence of my family, this is more important to me than any medication.

Unfortunately, someone has removed the wheelchair from the room hoping to curb any further outbreaks of rebellion. When I’m able, I get out of bed and wobble down the hallway on bare feet, dragging the drip stand along behind me, to protest the insensitivity and unfairness of rigid hospital regulations.

“I need my friends more than I need your drugs!” I tell the hospital staff.

Most of the attending doctors don’t mind bending the rules a little to accommodate my needs and some of the nurses let friends sneak through the ward to spend a few minutes helping me get well just by being there. They all bring big plastic shopping bags bursting with fresh fruit which I consume as if there’s no tomorrow. Some bring dark chocolate. Froilan turns up with a takeout container of delectable shrimp encocado – my favorite – which flusters Chef Dodo so much she actually produces edible vegetable soup for dinner.

My parents and youngest sister call, forbidding me to kick the bucket in Ecuador. They’re worried. Rightly so. I nearly died fifteen thousand kilometers from home, and this is not the first time.

“Even cats only have nine lives,” scolds my father. “How many have you used up now?”

“Don’t worry, Dad. Wild cats have more lives and I have the heart of a tiger.”

The joking soothes their fears, and helps me feel better. In this fragile state of health, I miss my family more than usual. Between regular visits from friends and sporadic calls from family, my recovery is coming along swimmingly . . . until Nurse Naaasty comes on duty and forbids all manner of cheerfulness.

“Take off those pants and put on your hospital gown,” she barks. “And clean that muck off your feet!”

Sure. When they loaded me unconscious into the ambulance, I remembered to pack acetone and cotton balls. I ignore her ridiculous orders and roll onto my side, ready for a nap after a hard morning of defying Nurse Naaasty. The offending pants are comfortable sweats that don’t reveal my naked butt to the whole world and the bright blue polish on my toenails has failed to bother anyone else for the past five days. They both stay.

A while later Nurse Naaasty returns to change the drip. I scream in agony when she rips all the hairs off my wrist while removing the tape. Merciless, she ties a latex glove around my arm so tightly that my fingers turn blue. She sharply smacks another vein, then roughly digs the needle into my the back of my hand like an apprentice seamstress learning to use a pin cushion.

“OUCH! Hey! I’m a person, not a dartboard!” I protest. My hand throbs in pain.

“Shut up. I’m trying to change your drip so the vein doesn’t collapse,” she snarls.

“How about leaving me alive at the end of the procedure?” I shoot back sarcastically. “I didn’t survive dengue just so you could kill me!”

I do not like this nurse. She’s cruel. Her bedside manner resembles that of Little Red Riding Hood‘s wolf. Vinegar is sweet compared to this withered, bitter creature.

One morning Nereyda brings more clean clothes, a bag of citrus fruits and tidbits of news from Mompiche. Nurse Naaasty walks into the ward and sees her sitting on my bed.

“Get out! You have no business here!” she shouts, startling both of us mid-giggle.

Reluctantly, Nereyda collects the bag of dirty laundry from under the side table and leaves.
Nurse Naaasty stresses me out. She isn’t conducive to a speedy recovery. When he visits on his rounds, I complain to Doctor Byron.

“Hang in there, sweetheart. She’ll be gone in a day or two.” He tweaks my nose.

“Let me go home. I can get better care in Mompiche.”

“Sorry. No can do. The typhoid is almost better but we’re still treating you for dengue.”

Eight very long days after I’m admitted to the Carlos Del Pozo Melgar Hospital, I’m finally discharged on the promise that I’ll continue taking the medication for another week. Froilan picks me up from the hospital in a moto-taxi and takes me home in his fishing boat.

Cruising back to Mompiche through the lush mangrove jungle is highly therapeutic. I’m still quite weak and need friends’ help to feed and bathe myself for a few days. Naturally, the prescribed medicine sits on a shelf in my cabin while I immediately embark on an intensive raw food detox to rid my body of unwanted chemicals and drug residue.

Red Hot Chili Chocolate

The UK’s Naked Chef, Jamie Oliver, claims to make the best hot chocolate in the world. Apparently Mr Oliver has never visited Latin America. I don’t claim to make the best hot chocolate in the world, but I’m not shy to tell you that it’s pretty darn good. It’s a bit of a process, starting with picking the ripened cacao pods, so grab your scorpion-proof hiking boots and get ready to take a wander through the jungle.

First, we hike up and down steep hills carrying recycled nylon rice sacks and finely sharpened machetes. A makeshift bamboo hook comes in handy to reach up into the taller trees. Careful where you step. The undergrowth is a maze of concealed rotting logs and hidden ravines; perfect for spraining ankles and grazing shins and knees. The trees are filled with spiders and snakes, the odd scorpion and an iguana or two. The only thing worse than walking face first into a sticky spider web is not knowing where its occupant landed. The resulting dance, while hilarious to your friends, is not so amusing for you.

Keep your eyes open, wave your machete in front of you and also smack it on the ground, and don’t step on any fallen bamboo stalks. The needle-sharp spikes will go straight through the sole of your boot. When you spot a yellow cacao pod, after checking the tree for cobwebs and critters, gently twist it until the pod falls off the branch. Pulling it may damage the rest of the branch and possibly prevent further growth, so always twist. Leave the red and green pods to ripen. The yellow Theobroma pod goes into the sack.

Harvested Cacao Pods

Theobroma means “food of the gods” from the Greek theos (gods), and broma (food). Ironically, broma in Spanish means “joke”.

Professional cacao harvesters split the pods right there, underneath each tree and throw the emptied shells onto the ground where they decompose and become compost for the trees. Just the beans go into the sack for fermenting and processing. My method is slightly different. While the load is a bit heavier, I take the sacks home to open the pods. Now, take off your boots and get comfortable. My seat of choice for this task is a beanbag. I pull each pod out of the sack, split it with a large knife and check the juiciness of the fruit.

Super-juicy beans go straight into my mouth. I suck the gelatinous white fruit from the seeds and them spit them into the sack in front of me – pre-sucked chocolate! Yum! This is one of those super special treats most people never get to experience. Put it at the top of your bucket list; eat juicy cacao fruit fresh from the pod. It’s very sweet and tastes nothing like chocolate. Some of the fruit is slightly drier. Those beans go straight into the sack. When we’re done, the discarded pods go into the green waste pile near the fence. The sacks of cacao beans go upstairs to ferment for five days before being spread out on plastic sheets to dry. Don’t worry, our deliciously rich hot chocolate will still get made today!

Upstairs, there are some dried beans ready for toasting. We bring them downstairs and prepare the toasting pan with a few handfuls of ashes from the barbecue; sifted to get any lumps out. The ash serves to protect the beans from too much heat exposure, helping to dry the outer skins without damaging the precious cacao oils inside and the resulting beans are still considered a raw food.

Doña Sara, one of Mompiche’s icons and a good friend, roasts her beans in large clay pot over a slow coal fire. Countless times we’ve sat chatting as she stirs the beans through the ashes with a large wooden spoon, toasting them just enough so the skins crack and they’re ready to peel. At my house, the beans are toasted in a 45cm (17.5 inch) diameter cast iron pan over the gas stove, but the result is much the same. Peeling the beans is the most time-consuming part of the process. The more hands, the better. I’m hoping yours are not too delicate because the beans are hot. Snap them between your thumb and forefinger and the skin should crack and slip off. The shiny bean goes into the bowl. The peel goes into the bucket; I’ll use this “waste” to mulch the sunflowers. Try to ignore the blisters on your thumbs until we’re done. Taste some of the beans… they’re delicious. And by now you’ve probably forgotten that a while back someone sucked the fruit off them.

Now we’re ready to grind our beans. Nestle, Cadbury’s, Hersheys, Lindt and all those other international chocolate manufacturing companies have entirely different methods for processing their GMO cacao beans that include extracting the cocoa butter, separating the liquor, adding tons of sugar, various other additives and preservatives, refining, tempering and several other steps until zillions of shiny wrappers filled with smooth chocolate spill over the conveyor belt and out into the world. This process requires millions of dollars worth of finely tuned and carefully maintained machinery. My cast iron grinder cost $32, the roasting pan was $28 and the one-hundred percent organic beans are processed by hand. I hope that knowledge disperses any delusions you may have about the end product.

After giving everything a thorough brushing, we fit the pieces of the grinder back together and secure it to the bench top. Handfuls of beans go into the chute and we start grinding. For fitness freaks, this exercise adds bulk to biceps. Add a few shreds of cinnamon bark, a piece of star anise, and whatever other magical spices that tickle your fancy. What comes out of the grinder now depends largely on how long the beans have been fermented, how long they’ve been dried and also the type of cacao bean. Doña Sara’s beans always form a rich thick paste that she molds into oval-shaped patties and leaves overnight to dry. Mine frequently come out in powder form, but sometimes in paste. Either way, the taste is much the same. Now we’re ready to make steaming mugs of delicious hot chocolate.

To draw out the luxuriousness of the afternoon, grab a large saucepan and add one heaped tablespoon of raw chocolate and a slice of panela (raw unrefined organic sugar) per person. Add some finely mashed birdseye chili – more or less depending how much you like chili; I use a third of a chili for one cup – and trickle fresh rainwater into the pan until the chocolate is wet through. I like to add a touch of grated nutmeg at this point, but it’s an individual thing. You could also add ground cinnamon or allspice. Heat the pan, stirring until the chocolate and panela are liquid and beginning to bubble. Add one and a half cups of fresh squeezed cow juice per person and stir it in thoroughly. What? You don’t have any farm-fresh milk? Ah… Fortunately for you, I wake early on those mornings when I fancy starting the day with hot chocolate to visit Juan Zambrano who sells me udderly warm organic milk for $0.50 per liter. This unprocessed, unpasteurized, unultravioleted dairy product has been sitting in the cooler while we were up in the mountains picking cacao. Careful, we might all drop dead immediately after consuming an entirely natural product! Ha!

Bring the chocolate milk to the boil and stir it until the foam settles. Let the foam rise three times but don’t let the milk boil over. After the third time, turn off the heat and grab your mugs. I like to lay in a hammock and watch the bright tropical birds flit overhead while I drink mine. The chili gives it a zing without being too piquant. If chili isn’t your thing, you still can’t beat the rich flavor of pure unadulterated organic hot chocolate.

At the first sip I’m transported centuries earlier to a Spanish galleon, where I imagine an aristocrat trying the brew for the first time. A handful of crushed cacao beans boiled with water. Poured into a pewter mug. His first taste of hot chocolate; very bitter. He screws up his face. The servants don’t like it, each sneaking a taste in the galley, sipping delicately at the wooden spoon. Everyone below decks rejects it as awful. Undeterred, the aristocrat adds sugar. Stirs it into the hot liquid. Brings it once again to his lips. His eyes widen as he realizes his discovery. Closing his eyes, he purses his full round lips and sips again. His taste buds are overwhelmed by a sense of lush pleasure. Almost sinful. The servants nudge each other. Sugar. Of course. He wonders if he should share this culinary gem, then becomes concerned the authorities might not like it. He decides not to tell them about the sugar. Thus, initiating Europe’s historical, revolutionary and, at times controversial, “discovery” of chocolate.

The hot chocolate in my mug is wickedly delicious. A flavor to savor. Richer and fresher than any other chocolate I’ve tasted. Notice the thin film of opaque oil floating on top? Pure cocoa butter. Separated from the water soluble cocoa solids by heat. The historical gourmet genius who decided to separate the fats from the solids and then put them all back together with milk and sugar to create chocolate as we know it today probably discovered this exact same phenomenon purely by accident.

Unfortunately, I’m lactose intolerant, so even though my reaction to local organic milk is not catastrophic, dairy products are not a main feature of my diet. However, I do consume hot chocolate daily. It’s the same recipe, with rainwater instead of milk. Sometimes I add a few fresh mint leaves to the pot. The lack of milk makes it lighter, easier to digest. Healthier. A hint of cinnamon grazes the taste buds. There maybe just a kiss of nutmeg in there too. The mint is subtle, almost over-powered by the sensual chocolate. And whenever I hear anyone say chocolate is bad for you, I laugh. No, it isn’t.