Bullfight

I wrote this blog entry a while ago, but it was saved on my flash drive and I lost it. It’s still an interesting topic, so I’m just gonna post it anyways.

Holy week is a bigger deal here than in the US, but in Riobamba this year it coincided with the annual independence celebration of the city, so there was stuff going on every day. I don’t actually live in Riobamba, but it is my closest city, so I made sure to attend some of the events. One of the most interesting was the bullfight. There were actually 2 nights of bullfighting, each with 3 matadors from various countries and 6 bulls which each weighed 500 kilos minimum. The matadors all had really interesting clothes – very intricate detailed jackets and capris with pink socks and a Princess Lea-esque hat. They didn’t come out till later though. When they first let the bull out, there were about 5 or 6 of the matadors helpers waving pink capes at the bull, and then running behind this protective wood thing. I think that was mostly to tire the bull out, and maybe to let these guys practice because they kind of seemed like matador apprentices. After a few minutes of this, 2 guys on horses came out with long spears. They make the bull ram the horse while the guy riding it stabs the bull in between the shoulder blades. Apparently in the past, the horse usually died too, but now they wear protective armour. This would make the bull start bleeding from his back, and you could tell he was getting weaker. Next two more helper guys came out with these long sticks covered in colorful crate paper with one pointed end. They did a little scorpion jump move and stabbed them into the bull’s back. Finally the matador came out and waved around his little cape, trying to make the bull charge him and stuff. After a while, he got out a sword which he used to stab the bull in the upper back to get right to the heart. Sometimes the bull just layed down and died, and sometimes this other guy with a smaller knife came out and stabbed the bull right in the brain and it died right away. The matador then walked around the ring with some helpers as people threw him flowers. Some people threw their hats or scarves and he threw it back to them, and some people threw flasks for him to take a drink of. During this, they brought out 2 horses hooked up to a little metal bar to pull the dead bull out of the ring. These particular horses did not want to pull the bull and some men ended up having to pull it off. One guy always grabbed the tail which was entertaining. Sometimes before they took the bull away though, a guy in a hat with a huge white feather would come out and cut the ears off. There were some judges and if they said the matador did a good job, he got to keep the ear as a trophy. One guy got to keep 2 ears he did such a good job. One of the other guys didn’t kill his bull – he stabbed it but not in the heart, I think just in the muscle because as the bull was running around the sword kind of came back out. They eventually sent the bull back where he came out of, and I don’t know what happened to him back there. Overall the whole culture surrounding the bullfighting was really interesting, and we had so many questions the whole time. For example – what do they do with the dead bull carcasses? What is the scoring system to decide if they get the ear or not? How does one train to be a matador? I guess we’ll never know. There is an upcoming election, and outlawing bullfighting is one of the ballot issues, so this might have been the last bull fight ever in Riobamba.

Another weekend that I spent out of my site was in the southern province of Loja in a town called Vilcabamba. I met some other volunteers there for a GAD meeting (Gender and Development). It is a little town that is known for its residents living over 100 years old, but now its kindof been taken over by hippies. There are also a number of retired gringos, and some Ecuadorians, but tons of Dreadlocked hippies from all over the world. It was pretty much the best place for people watching I have been ever. We had a productive meeting, but also just sat there for a few hours one afternoon talking to a random American guy we met and watching the people in the park.

Things in Cebadas are going well – pretty much done with the toothbrush project, and now I’ve been working a lot with my youth group project. We did an activity in our last meeting where they had to say if they could go to any country in the world where would they go? Some said either Peru, the US, or Spain, but mostly they said other places in Ecuador that they had never been to. It makes me want to take them on a trip so they can see Quito or somewhere else that is only actually a few hours away in car. They’re still not very talkative overall, but some really do participate. I picked who I think were the 6 most participative, and I want to send them to get more training on sex-ed and then they are going to teach the other kids, and I can help them. They seemed really excited when I explained this to them, so hopefully everything will work out. In a week or so some kids from Alausí who do that same thing are coming to Cebadas to talk to my kids about it. They are also sponsored by World Vision, where another volunteer works.