Uncertainty's Dance

My friend Natalia and I were talking recently about the world economic crisis, how it might impact Ecuadorians like her, and how it might impact foreigners like me with work-based visas from U.S. non-profit organizations that are already starting to brace themselves. “For us, we live with uncertainty everyday, so we’re used to it. But for you guys,” she sympathized, “it must be really hard.”

Just to put it in perspective, in the last 18 months, the price of 40 kilos of chicken feed—corn—in Ecuador has gone from $10.50 to $24, an increase that is part of the story of the global food shortage. A lot of chicken farmers here feel the squeeze, as do corn growers in the region where I live, who have not gotten significantly more for their crops. Prices for basics like rice, sugar, and eggs, have shot up 30% according to government statistics, a difficult burden for families who make on average about $250-$400 per month. And if you make $70, as thousands of families in the Amazon do, it’s just about insurmountable.

From what I’ve read and heard, food prices are a perennial campaign issue in this country with its small middle class, weak educational system, and few large industries, though the government has been subsidizing staples for the last several months. As with many other issues, the uncertainty of whether the average family will put enough food on the table, (I mean food like a plate of rice and some plaintains, forget about vegetables or dairy or protein) is one people learn to live with. When my friends here who read about the chaos in the U.S. and world stock markets ask me if it’s really as bad as it sounds, the expression on their faces falls somewhere between stunned and vaguely concerned, whereas I know my face shows something more akin to dread. But I think that’s because I have not yet dropped that particularly seductive American viewpoint that we have total control over our destiny.

So what else to do but learn how to dance with uncertainty, a process I started before I left the U.S. and one that perhaps subconsciously drew me to this place that could make one a master at it.

A couple of things I've been doing to improve my dancing skills . . .

1. Take a cheap vacation to a mini-utopia.

This is Salinas, a small town in Guaranda province that over the last 30 years transformed itself from a hamlet of straw and mud huts to a town of more than 20 locally run cooperatives that make everything from cheese and chocolates to essential oils.

People don’t live high on the hog here, and the system is far from perfect, but unlike many places in Ecuador, most people have jobs and the young people come back to live after they finish their education. My short trip to this center of micro-economy helped me forget nettlesome macro-economic problems.


2. Watch the sunset. Something that is both predictable and beautiful always brings me a sense of calm. And attention is all I have to pay.