In Mashpi, it’s common for the whole day to be shrouded in a mist so thick that you’re soaked after a few hours outside. After visiting a cocoa farm to do some volunteer work, I go to eat in this tiny village, invisible on Google Maps, that seems to have more chickens than people. A house high up on the dirt road looks like a place where I might get some food. I think I’m the only customer at lunchtime, and I rouse an old woman and a little boy from their torpor. But yes, it is possible to make me something to eat. In Ecuador, the most common dish is chicken and rice, so it comes as no surprise that she offers me chicken and rice. But this time I think I’m finally going to eat some real free-range chicken, which just a few hours ago was frolicking in front of her house. Unfortunately, no… the chicken never ran. But it has had other adventures: a few hours of transport in the heat, then months in the freezer, interspersed with a few power cuts… the woman tells me that chicken from here is far too expensive, sir! For this one, we book a trip in the opposite direction to send it to the capital’s fancy restaurants.
When the grown-ups are upside down, there are still little boys who look out the window of the world and offer us a moment of poetry.