Kichwa

The residents of the community are mostly Kichwa, one of the native "tribes" (for lack of a better word) in Ecuador. They have done a good job of maintain many of their traditions. Many of the people still wear the traditional garments, which for me consist of a white shirt and trousers covered by long, solid black poncho with white stitching around the collar and across the shoulder. The poncho goes down to about the knees.

The children at the school sometimes wear contemporary clothes (like Wamari) while others like Luis come dressed in the traditional Kichwa garb

For women the traditional dress is a white blouse with embroidery around the collar, a black skirt held up by a cloth sash wrapped around the waist. On top they wear a shawl (usually crimson or green) that goes down to about the elbow.

Girls dance in traditional Kichwa clothes (minus the shawls) at the Kulya Raymi festival marking the vernal equinox, which in Ecuador marks the beginning of the summer.

The Kichwa language, which is taught in our school, is spoken as commonly as Spanish. It would be harder to find someone who doesn't speak Kichwa than someone who doesn't speak Spanish, though most speak Spanish at least as well as I do. On a side note, I was informed by one of the young men I am tutoring in the evening that there are three fluent speakers of English in the area and one of them works in the United Nations (the student said was Ecuador's ambassador to the U.N. but I have not been able to confirm that).

Kichwa (also spelled Quichua) is part of the Quechuan language family of languages spoken throughout Ecuador, Peru and Columbia. It has only been written in recent years (not sure how long) and so words are still being changed and it is not uncommon to find multiple spellings of the same word. Salasaca is often spelled Salasaka, for example.

Signs at the school are often posted in three languages.

 The people have a dark, weathered look that may owe more to lives of hard work than genetics. As best I can tell, the most distinguishing feature is they are quite short and have flat noses and roundish faces.