A baby in one hand a machete in the other

There is a baby riding on my left hip. In my right hand I hold a machete. Somehow, this combination of cargo is absolutely unremarkable.

Rewind a day and I am sitting on a low stool by a costal of potatoes, peeling. Next to me, Doña Mari’s hands are like mother birds fussing over their young: circling, circling and then flap; a coherent length of skin falls to a pile on the dirt floor. She throws a shining, raw potato into the water-filled pot with the rest. My own pile looks like toenail shavings. My knife refuses to part skin with ease and with every shaving that flutters to the ground, I feel a gringa. Every moment of the day I am broadcasted as such by my blonde hair, height and blue eyes. And now my identity is betrayed by even a potato. How Andean.

I bob my head and smile knowingly as I listen to the conversation of the women in the kitchen, though I miss whole strings of words. In this part of Ecuador, they say “shhh” in the middle of words like “calle” and “amarillo” instead of using the “y” sound I was taught in school. I practice under my breath: cashey, amarisho.

I have been measuring my time here on a scale of usefulness. My skills with a knife and a potato score me no more than a 2. As a wielder of a machete I am mildly more handy, and I would grant myself a generous 4. The list goes on and the numbers vary (childcare specialist, 7; barbed wire fence-builder, 4; futbolista, 9). But the pull to fit in is ever-present.

Which is how I find myself in this VERY NORMAL (awkward, unwieldy, Child Protective Services-would-be-after-me-in-the-U.S.) situation. Our cattle truck is once again stuck in the muddy ruts of the track leading to the lodge. I try to be helpful by cutting down bamboo with the machete, but I really am no good at it. So Mari hands me the baby while she places bamboo strategically around the truck’s tires. Baby’s father, Don Nelson, hacks away at the thicket by the road, felling a green runway carpet in front of the car. It is a successful tactic, and soon the truck lurches forward. Afraid of losing momentum, Nelson (And Mari, who is back in the front seat) just keep driving on. Without me.

“Grab the machete!” calls Nelson out the window to me as the car disappears around the bend. There in the wreckage of the bamboo carpet I find the machete and take it up in my free hand. As I contemplate the steep hike towards the lodge, I look at baby and she smiles at me a two-tooth smile.

It is a moment of pure acceptance.