Soup of the Day

Welcome once again to another exciting entry of my blog... I'm sure you are all thrilled. Today was super cool. We all skipped Kichua class and took a two hour bus ride into a town called Puyo, which is in the next state over (Pastaza). While there we were able to visit the homes of some of the informants that have come to the field school over the past two weeks. One of them is Estella Doua; she is an expert potter, and has pieces in Ecuador museums and has even been to the U.S. to give seminars and classes on native amazonian pottery. She has been teaching us how to make Mukahas, which are the Kichwa drinking bowls used to drink aswa. I'll come back to aswa in a sec. Anyway, we were able to see her studio in Puyo and meet some of her family. She makes some really amazing pots and figures and the cool thing is how they are made. She mines her own clay, fortifies it herself, forms it into the pot with the coil pot technique, makes a paint brush from her own hair, meticulously paints intricate designs all over the pot with this ridiculously thin brush, fires it herself, and then apples the natural sap that they use for a glaze, then she sells them to make a living. She taught us how to make them too, though mine isn't nearly as cool as hers. The second lady whose house we visited is Luisa Cadena; she was/is our professors principle consultant and friend here in Ecuador. She took us to her chagra, which is a plot of land that she uses to cultivate crops. She took us to two of the ones that she works. At the first, we harvested manioc, which is what is used to make aswa (again, more on that later). Its a tuber plant that grows about six feet tall and you basically just chop down the plant and pull out the tubers. At the second chagra we harvested sugar cane with machetes! What are my two new favorite things? Sugar cane and machetes! If you have never tried real sugar cane, you are missing out. When we got back to the house, she cut it up and gave it to us to chew and I could seriously chew on that stuff all day. Thankfully, she sent us home with all the cane that we had harvested! Now, the moment you have all been waiting for, what the huh is aswa? I'll tell you; it is a drink that is a staple in all Kichwa homes. To make it traditionally a woman would harvest manioc (think stringy potato), peel it, cook it, and then masticate it. Once it was good and masticated they would expectorate it into a jar, cover the jar with a leaf, bury the jar and let it ferment a bit before giving it to guests and family. You serve it by putting water in a mukaha, taking a scoop of the aswa paste/muck in your hand and squeezing the juice into the water. This beverage has a very very low alcohol content (less than cough syrup) and so we were authorized by our professor to try it. Its vile. Simply vile. It tastes like pureed manioc (again, think potato) mixed with plain yogurt, mixed with yeast, mixed with vinegar. It is sick nasty. Fortunately, I sampled the non traditional aswa, which is not chewed, but rather sugar is added to jumpstart the fermentation process. (I had you worried, didn't I?)  All in all, it was an awesome day, with awesome food and great fun. A note on pictures: we have somewhat limited internet access, so pictures will be somewhat sparse for now, but I will try to put some more up.