February 6: Quito


Rain Falls on King and Knave Alike

"It would be good for these people to have a winter."
-- Edward Whymper's French Guide and Companion


It's the rainy season in Ecuador, and the usually mild-mannered and tolerant Ecuadorianos are nervous and apologetic. "It is such a shame," they say, "the weather. Quito is so beautiful except now. This is very unusual, last year it was so dry. But this will change -- soon, soon, it will change." We try to downplay this minor irritant, we TerraQuesters Two, but as working photographers with a deep interest in the out-of -doors, drizzle means more than inconvenience. It's bad for the light, for one thing, beneath the glowering crying clouds, stuck in a city, traipsing from edificio to edificio, up one piso to the next, into one wrong officina or another. Sometimes we hit pay dirt, or a rewarding contact is made.

Rocco's job, as a photographer for 24 Hours in Cyberspace, is to track down ways in which the Internet has changed people's lives, or altered the way they've done their work. And shoot it for a Web site, CD ROM, book and, who knows, feature-length film. ("Rick Smolen Presents..." FADE IN on a keyboard CLACKING as a camera shutter CLICKS on the soundtrack....) The concept is intriguing, but the project editor Karen Mullarkey has but one stipulation : DON'T PHOTOGRAPH PEOPLE SITTING IN FRONT OF MONITORS. Editorially, that makes sense. But how do you show someone using the Internet without showing someone using the Internet? Rocco chews her lip over this one, and wonders if the other 999 photographers in the field are having the same problem. Maybe you show the results of connectivity -- boxes of files being thrown into a dumpster? Or a group of rural farmers digging a drainage ditch from plans nabbed off a Web site (http://www.sewage.net). "It's such a cerebral thing," says Sally Burch, soft-spoken founder of a regional network called ALIA, Agencia Latinoamericana de Informacion. "How do you show it?"

Showing it, fortunately, is Rocco's problem, not mine. My own mission is to meet with the individuals and groups who might be providing services for Virtual Galapagos in May, which today includes the South American Explorers Club, an organization with offices in Lima, Quito, and Ithaca New York. (Some people know winter is good for them.) Sheila Corwin, the big-hearted red-headed Quito director, showed us around the house-cum-headquarters filled with books, maps, used climbing and scuba equipment, helpful reports from other travelers, and bulging files of all sorts. Energized by the Odwalla juice Rocco had packed in from California just for her, Sheila is more than ready to take care of the flood of travelers who bang on her door at 9:30 am seeking help.

Since 1977, the South American Explorers Club has been a necessary font of information, moral support and networking for pilgrims on the gringo trail. In the last six months, they've added a Web site http://www.samexplo.org and e-mail services to their membership priviledges. It's proven to be among their most popular features, and Sheila and crew are having difficulty keeping up with demand.

In the meantime, last night's evening downloads to the TerraQuest web site seemed to be sluggardly slow, and we wonder about Ecuanet's bandwidth. It turns out that the tiny, informal organization rides the backbone of El Banco de Pacifico, and for the greater part of the day their e-mail, ftp and web browsing functions take a back seat to international monetary exchange. Perhaps this means staying up until 2am when the money markets in Frankfurt and Tokyo are closed. In the meantime, our schedule is compressing accordion-like (with a bow to the blind bard) into a large number of hectic activities in a very short period of time. An intense twenty-four hours in cyberspace, indeed.

There is one bright spot, literally, in this day after all. About midday, we met with Intercom-Ecuanex, a five year-old organization linking the non-governmental organizations (NGO's) of Ecuador with each other and the outside world, via a country-wide network. For the most part, its members include environmental groups, social activists, organizations of indigenous peoples, and academic institutions. Outside Ecuador it's links are with the Association for Progressive Communications, a global partnership of member networks in about 30 countries from Argentina to Zambia. "Our aim is to provide local internet access to NGOs, environmental and academic groups, to democratize the flow of information," said Intercom-Ecuanex director Karin Delgadillo in a thick Ecuadorian accent. She went on to delineate the distinction between her group and another. "We are not like Ecuanet. They are a bank."

The difference in mission between Ecuanex and Ecuanet changes the very meaning of the prefix. One organization seeks to democratize information, the other to market services. Both functions may be necessary uses of the Internet, but while the latter's more commercial application serves the economic interest of Ecuador, the former seeks to create a network of equals.

Suddenly, at noon, the rooms we are meeting in are flooded with sunlight -- the clouds have parted, and the chance to illustrate her story motivates Rocco. "Everybody outside for a group portrait," she commands. "Up on the roof, quickly!" The men and women, indios and mixtos of Intercom-Ecuanex good-naturedly put aside what they're doing and traipse up the stairs three flights, to gather on the balcony for a group shot. It occurs to me as they link arms and smile with the sonic backdrop of the honking and hustle of the city's streets, that these are the real citizens of the Internet, just as the Quechua are the real citizens of the long valley where commercial Quito now surges. They are still busy creating networks and linkages between villages and between people, burrowing beneath the surface of the Web, building their connections beneath the infrastructure of the information superhighway. And should that highway collapse -- perhaps from an infirm foundation, perhaps overbuilding -- those burrows will still be there.

-- Christian Kallen

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