Las Tunas, Ecuador Post

Last year, I decided to quit my job as a teacher and travel for 11 months with my little sister. We both wanted a break, we both wanted to spend quality time together, and we both wanted to understand how people in different places live their lives. The thing is, when you arrive in a new country, it’s easy to spend all your time at tourist locations surrounded by other people who are just visiting. People who call that place home are often wrapped up in their obligations, unlikely to stop and chat with a stranger who’ll be gone in a matter of days. It’s hard to get past the shiny outer layer that a city displays on social media to draw in customers. My sister and I wanted to be more than customers; we wanted to get a feel for what it was really like to live there, to learn how people thought, and let that way of thinking change us. And the place that changed us most was a small town in Ecuador called Las Tunas.

       We stayed in Las Tunas for 2 months and 8 days. By the end, it felt like we lived there. Why did we stay for so long in a tiny spot with a population of just over a thousand people? Well, it was difficult to leave. There was something that kept us there, something that led us to cancel our nonrefundable flights without being able to explain exactly why. It’s likely that there are many reasons why we wanted to stay, but for me, one of the main ones was the way in which people shared resources.

       The people I spent time around, the ones who were from Las Tunas, shared everything. This may have been cultural, or it may have been because the town we were in was so small that many people were related to one another. I guess it makes sense to be generous if the stranger you’re talking to could be your distant cousin. I was nobody’s cousin, but by the time I left, I felt like I was. Whenever someone opened a beer, they would pass it around, each person taking swig until it was empty. There was no worry about sharing germs, and usually after the first beer was finished, someone else would go and buy another. To sit with your own private beer and not share seemed not just rude, but lonely. Once, after we had just played a giant game on the street, with random kids and adults joining, someone mentioned wanting ice cream. Soon, someone was on their motorcycle with a handful of coins, off to get homemade ice cream from a nearby family member. Some of the kids there didn’t have any money on them, so everyone else pitched in a little bit more. There was the feeling, whenever you had something good, that it would be even better if everyone else could experience with you. The beach, which was over 15 miles long, had no areas that were closed off for private use, no fences, no boundaries of any kind. There were huts, cabanas, and hammocks all along the water’s edge that anybody could use. And most nights, if you wander down the beach, you might find a bonfire with people who’d invite you to sit and enjoy the warmth. Sometimes there is music, and once, these two guys had freshly caught fish they had just grilled over the fire, and it was delicious. Another day, I saw a very large group of people together on the beach, crowded around a net. I asked about it, and apparently it’s common for people in the town to get together, share a boat, go fishing, and the split what they find at the end. Las Tunas is a very poor town, but few people had nothing. And few people cared who had more or who had less. There was a moment to moment kind of living that at times seemed short sighted, and at other times seemed like that they had cracked the code to life. I know that by the time I left, I felt more relaxed and happy than I had in a long time.

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Born in Chicago to Shanghainese parents, Elaine grew up asking the question, where is home? In an attempt to answer that question, she has lived and worked all over the world, finding different versions of herself in each place. After getting a literature degree from Swarthmore, near Philadelphia, she has since taught English in Kentucky, Spain, Ecuador, Morocco, and China. Most recently, she’s been working online as an education consultant while traveling full time, although her plan is to transition into becoming a full time writer. Her hobbies include: board games, reading, and overanalyzing personality tests.