Misteries of the Coast

His name is Arquímedes and he´s a magician, an art collector, a story teller, a huaquero. I met him during a field trip through the Ecuadorian North Coast. My classmates and I were looking for the characters and towns mentioned in Living Poor, the book that we were translating. Africa was the name of one of these towns. To get there, it took a two-hour drive from the center Esmeraldas City until arriving to a lonely beach at the end of the road. I thought Africa a town destroyed by time, a place that only appears in old maps. But the horizon proved me wrong: in the far distance, in the middle of nowhere, a huge ad -written with coconuts on the top of a hill- said MUSEUM.

Getting to the museum is a real pilgrimage: we walked under a punitive sun that purified our desires as it made us think in the museum as a paradise, with the sound of the sea hitting the sand and our naked feet as a sensorial mantra. When we arrived at the bottom of the hill, we discovered a small and faded sign that said Africa. There were no house or person there: it´s a silent, a peaceful, a ghostly place. The hill is right in front of us, but the museum -as every other paradise- is unattainable at the very top of it, and is more beautiful than before as we can´t see it because of the jungle foliage that increased the mystery, but so our desire to solve it. Our pilgrimage continued: we climb the hill with ropes; we fall down and suffer, but it´s worth it.

The museum is a small and rustic hut made of bamboo, where a precious Pre-Columbian art collection is on exhibit, displayed in a dozen of cabinets, just in front of four beds. It´s Arquímedes´ home-museum. Arquímedes is an old and dark skinned man, he´s tall and has deep black eyes. His handshake is firm; his voice is powerful and clear. Arquímedes´ stories are enjoyable and a little insane: while he shows us his artworks, he explains their origin: he was a huaquero, he used to sack archeological sites. Arquímedes has his own apocalyptic prophecy -written in a paper that hangs in front of the cabinets- and his own religion. We actually met his devotees. He´s also an alchemist: he believes that someday he will find the formula to produce gold. Arquímedes tells us the story of his life, of his house, of his beloved wife. Arquímedes laughs as I look into his eyes, as I loose myself in his fantasies and house, as I smile and think that anything is possible, that anyone and anywhere are possible.