WHO WE ARE

This is a space dedicated to us, to tell you a bit about what we are, not what we do - of that we talk at the earliest opportunities - another time, another space...

PAOLO CATELAN I was born in the Venetian countryside. My family lived, as far as I know, for eight hundred years in a small beach carved by the meanders of Tesina, a river flowing down the Alps, which swells to scaring volumes during the rainy months of November and December.

Puruhá Jatun Pampa, Sangay NP. © Patricio Rivas

They fished, so unusual in the deep countryside, and cultivated the land and digged pebbles and stones upriver, where the water was shallower. People in my family are tall - the tallest persons I ever knew - so in the village they were the ablest in digging the river bed, and they were called ``Tesenati'' - which literally means The People Who Were Born in the Tesina River. There were woods then. The males were trained to swim the river in flood, during the winter, to catch the big trees dragged by the current, then, hugging them, to swim back to the bank. So they were sure to have enough to burn during the cold winter nights. This is how my mother told me. As a boy, I was part of the last generation going fishing with the nets my family made and the long boats they cut and carved out of the woods, following a centuries-old tradition. Fish and woods now are gone and there are no more nets and boats. But the deep greenish waters of Tesina nearby Palú are still within me. I came to Sangay Park for the first time in 1989. I never actually left. I came back to this place because I had to. It puts order to the movement of my thoughts and the discipline of my body. Probably there I find the woods and the rivers of my childhood, though so different and so distant from my homeland, but I don't really know to which extent that is true. It doesn't matter either way. What I know for sure is that I want to devote what remains of my life to protect it. Not that this is easy, at all. When I walk Sangay, sometime I sit down, as if I could not walk any more. Where am I going, I ask. The only answer I can find is that I now belong to this place, I cannot go anywhere else any longer.

ROBERTO CAZ QUILLAY I belong to the Puruhá nation of the Alao village, nearby Sangay. My native tongue is Quichua. Since millennia we live in the basin cloistered by the altiplanos raised around Chimborazo volcano: the Cordillera Real to the east, the Cordillera Negra to the west, the Nudo de Igualata to the north, and Azuay to the south. Puruhá is a word both quichua and aymará. It means, ``páramo, wild and inhospitable place'' (the aymarás call ``purunjaques'' or ``purunrunas'' the men of the Puna; and we call ``purumines'' the scrublands and all grasses growing in the intact páramos) - tourists from outside coming to visit Sangay say wilderness, they told me so. Then, we the Puruháes are the People Living in the Páramos, or also the People Living in the Wilderness. We have not an integrated knowledge about the form or the dimensions of the Universe, not even of the Earth. Most important to us is Nature, we call her Pacha Mama, it is like a vital force, and it is everywhere in Nature. She is benevolent, she is a maternal bosom, and she provides us everything we need. Everything that exists in nature has its own name, and quichua is the language of nature. Mayu is the river, and urcu is the mountain; huayco is the spring and cocha the lagoon; huayra is the wind and acapana is the storm; huichi is the rainbow, coillur is the star; payacucha is the bat; quinde is the hummingbird; ucumari is the bear; there is the puma and there is the condor; anga is the hawk; runas are the men, and huarmis are the women. All of us wander the mountains, like our elders did, our ancestors. That is how I know Sangay, I haven't gone to school. All that about the Foundation is an idea of Paolo, who is like one of us. It is very difficult to explain to people all that about conservation of nature, but our land, ńuca allpa, is beautiful. Our land is our richness, without land we are nothing. Ńuca cani Alao allpa manta. Caipimi canchi. Ńuca rimarini. Caimi canchi: I am from the land of Alao. From there we are. I speak so. I am so.

ELISABETH REGULA GIRARDIER I was born in Zürich, in the year 1935. I spent all my youth in Switzerland, and after my academic studies I did not devote my life to science, I rather decided to travel for a time, to see the world, to ``expand my horizon,'' as my parents were used to say. My love for nature comes from my father, who taught me to appreciate, observe and listen to the misteries and the wonders of nature. He was who taught me to draw and paint, to use paintbrushes and colors. From my mother I inheritated the love for reading, the discipline required by studying and the will to understand different ideas and lifestyles, other cultures and languages. What since ever and especially fascinated me were the woods, anywhere in the world. I spend lot of my leisure time outdoors, roaming the woods, reflecting, dreaming or painting. What convinced me to join Sangay Foundation occurred during a night I spent at the foot of the big Sangay volcano, majestic in its grandeur. A sweet rain was falling, and the night was dark and silent. Suddenly..., a flash of lightning!..., the clouds brightened, Sangay erupted... and it seemed as if its thunder was calling me... That night I didn't sleep much, I was listening to the volcano, and ancient memories invaded the present...

....once upon a time, there was a little Swiss girl, dreaming about dwarves she pretended to have seen in the mountain woods of her country, jumping from a blueberry bush to another one...; many years later, that girl was a grown woman, travelling around Ecuador, visiting plains, deserts and beaches, the Amazon, along the Andean paths and clouded forests of Sangay: the mistery of the landscape, the lichens, mosses and lianas suddenly reminded her her childhood dreams, and there she decided to write and paint a book for her grandchildren in Switzerland....