Ecuadorian birthday celebration

I think Julia and Aureliano are lucky to have family and homes in Quito, Ambato and Peterborough, but the downside is that they seem to face a constant wall of bureaucracy that has to be overcome.

Lucy has been trying to sort out Tom’s application for Ecuadorian citizenship. While she was in Quito the week before last, she had gone to the immigration office to find they had no record of the application they’d started. There was an office in Ambato, so the plan was to go together and try to progress the application.

I looked after Aureliano while they went to try to sort things out. It seems Ecuadorian immigration is as inefficient as the UK, although perhaps it’s not a deliberately “unfriendly” policy like ours.

They came back with what might be good news. If they went to Riobamba the next day, they would be able to do it all there. Riobamba is around an hour’s drive away from Ambato, so that was the plan.

Today was the birthday of Sandrita, the hospital cook. They had bought her a huge cake. The Ecuadorian birthday celebration requires the singing of happy birthday and the blowing out of candles. The birthday boy (or girl) also has to have a bite of the cake (before it’s cut) and as you bend down, some mean person pushes your face into the cake.

Sandrita knew what was coming and ended up with a small chocolate moustache. I would have looked like a member of Old Glory.

Later in the afternoon, Tom and I asked Sandrita whether she was having a party that evening. She wasn’t, her birthday had been yesterday. I think she has quite a hard life. She works long hours at the hospital, she has a long bus ride/s to get to work and to get home again and she has a child of about 10 who is looked after (by family?) while she’s at work.