Ecuador 7 – It’s April Fools Day in Our House

Cuenca

It’s April 1st. The children wake with giggles of excitement and lots of shushing and whispers. It’s April Fools Day, at least in this house in this little pocket of Ecuador. Jemima has been cutting up lots of tiny squares of polystyrene and putting them in the Frosties packet. Meanwhile, Gabriel had been stuffing everyone’s shoes with apples and oranges, which he finds hilarious. When I come home with Millie at lunch time, to a quiet house, a large red blob is being lowered from the bathroom window, into the kitchen, by some dental floss. The plan is that Millie and I will shriek with fright when we see this huge scary red spider, descending it’s web. Mark, Jemima and Gabriel are all hiding in the bathroom upstairs, at the other end of the floss. It’s actually a tree tomato with wooden toothpicks stuck into it. Millie’s is completely un-fooled and tosses it off with “they can’t scare me”!

Jemima is going to be 10 tomorrow and I have finally succumbed. She is having her ears pierced. Mum and daughter set off for a special afternoon together to find a jeweller in the town.  When we do at last find a husband and wife team, in a tiny little shop, they express  surprise that Jemima is having her ears pierced at such a late age. “All little girls in Ecuador have their ears pierced the minute they are born – how else do you know whether it’s a boy or a girl?”  Then I remember when I was born here in Quito, (or rather I remember mum telling me) that the minute a baby girl is born they whisk the baby away to have their ears pierced, though my mum yelled “No! ” The nurses  also wanted to shave my head, so that my hair would grow back good and strong. Again, it was an affirmative “No! ..” I wished they had!

In many ways I want this year to last forever, afraid that soon it will be back to our lives in St Margaret’s and I will lose her to all the influences of our modern lives and the pop culture and the grown up (scary) things that so many of her contemporaries will be getting into as they head into their teens.