Culture: Respecting spirit of mountains and sun

Paccha Lema dressed in Ecuadorian traditional clothing, her top known as an anaco and the over top as a camisa. PHOTO/RUTH KEBER

At the age of 11 Paccha Lema's father wanted something different for his daughter.

He took her to Europe where they would sell different Ecuadorian crafts made by members of their families.

There they met a woman from South Africa who adopted her and brought her to New Zealand when she was 15.

The now 36-year-old Ecuadorian expat has been living in the Bay since then.

With 11 other brothers and sisters, Mrs Lema grew up in a small village, Peguche, circled by mountains in a region called Otavalo in northern Ecuador.

"In the front was our father (sun), behind was the mother (mountains), the children and the lover (mountains).

"My dad said it was important to always say good morning to them."

Her family are indigenous and descendants of the Inca believe everything had a spirit and must be respected.

"The sun is our father and the land is our mother, you must respect these two. Everything for us has a spirit. You must respect everything, the trees and the plants, everything.

"June 24 is our New Year. We dance for our sun, the mother earth, to tell them we are here.

"Then we would search for a river or waterfall to cleanse ourselves, to take all the bad energy that we carry around so we come into a new life," she said.

Her family's home was surrounded by either corn, peas or potatoes depending on the season. As a child she remembers having her pet guinea pigs running throughout her family home, which was made of mud.

Her grandmother would collect corn from the fields, cook it on an open fire for the children and gather them around for stories.

Mrs Lema said their staple diet consisted of a lot of soup and vegetables.

"Quinoa, corn, lots of vegetables and once a week we would have meat.

"In some ways we were kind of farmers because we needed to look after our land, so the food we ate also made us stronger, to be able to go the whole day without eating again.

"When we went to school my mother would just give us a piece of bread and tea."

Mrs Lema's family and village were known for their weaving techniques and produced traditional cloth to make shoes, bags, blankets and clothing.

There were no paved roads in their village but a short walk through the mountains and you were on a main highway where you could catch a bus or taxi to larger towns.

The family shared one tap with all the other families in the village as a water source.

"We used to fight for water. We used to wait with big tanks to fill them up. My mother used to go but she couldn't get it so I would go and push through everybody.

"I would wait in the big line like you would wait for milk but then we would have to carry the water 20 minutes back home.

"We would wash in another river very close to my house but you couldn't drink that water, it was polluted from everybody washing and having a shower there."

Despite having lived in the Bay for 20 years now Mrs Lema said she still missed home.

"I miss everything. I think about my family a lot, and the food.

"I think about my language. I miss my mountains. I miss the air. Everything. But now it has been many years. I have lived most of my life here now. I feel like a foreigner when I go back now as so much as changed."

Mrs Lema lives with her husband, Julio Cesar Ramirez and her two children, Alymayu and Pachakamac, in Gate Pa.

She sells traditional Ecuadorian products in a pop-up shop, Alymayu, in Bayfair.