[Ecuador]
Moritz Thomsen is one of the couple writers who has spoken most deeply to me. In 1965, when he was 45 or so, he gave up pig farming in California and joined the Peace Corps. He ended up staying the rest of his life in Ecuador, buying a farm and living among the poorest of the poor Afro-Ecuadorian people on the coast. His books can be almost unbearable in their melancholy and sensitivity to the details of lives in poverty. He was a fabulous writer.
I wanted to see Rio Verde, the town where he first worked. I’d read his first book – “Living Poor” – bunches of times, and the town and a couple of its characters had become permanently alive for me.
Through serendipity, my trip with CARE had us going through the town, and I spent about an hour sitting in the central “plaza”. It was overcast, the town was empty, the place nothing but concrete. But I had very odd sensations, knowing of the very specific events that took place years ago right here. The ghosts of those people were present.