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REFLECTIONS FROM THE FIELD

GIFTS FROM THE ECUADORIAN HIGHLANDS OF CALIATA

By: Emily Kuhn

Children ran laughing through a terraced forest garden, lush with corn and sunflowers against the mountainous urban backdrop. This is where my stewardship journey began, at a community intercultural bilingual school in Quito, Ecuador. I became a student of the chakra during my brief time as a volunteer at Yachay Wasi School in 2020, and returned to tend the seeds that were planted there in 2022 for a Fulbright Research grant dedicated to Kichwa Agroecology.

Chakra is the traditional Kichwa subsistence agroforest in which food, medicines, and cultural rituals have been reproduced for millenia. I learned about this ancestral classroom guided by conversations with Kichwa campesino elders from across the ecologically and culturally diverse landscapes of Ecuador. Along the journey, I met the Caranquis, a Kichwa Puruah family from the volcanic green highlands of the Chimborazo province. They generously welcomed me into their home for a month to practice Kichwa, and in doing so, forever affirmed my commitment to ecological stewardship. 

A brilliant smile lights up the face of a young girl in her traditional broad-brimmed hat as she strips the leaves from an ear of corn to reveal its gleaming red-orange kernels. Sumaize is one of a handful of the youth generation that remains to help her grandparents with the summer harvest in Caliata, Chimborazo. In a few short weeks, she will wake up at four in the morning each day to catch a bus into the city of Riobamba, where she goes to school. Today, however, we are learning together in a different kind of classroom – one that is integral to the reproduction of Kichwa cultural knowledge .

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