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Catagory: Anthropology (creative nonfiction)

This essay, written by Steve Angelique was published by Japan Traveler magazine in 1989 and by UMass Annual Literary Review in 2003  Its introduction about Juan Ponce de Leon is not included.

FRIED GREEN BANANAS

The old woman spoke slowly and fried bananas she called plantanos. She laughed away most of my questions; they were irrelevant to her. Kipling's famous "twain shall never meet" observation could just as well be applied here. She cared not that I was a student, that I was a foreigner, that I had come so far. Perhaps it was only for my weak grasp of Spanish or the Quechua slang I failed to sprinkle in. But when I mentioned "El Agua"  (special water), she stopped stirring the bananas, the gaiety of her face drained away, and her wrinkles contorted as if she'd seen a ghost.

She rushed to pick up a string of beads and mumbled prayers in her own language. Finally, she took the iron pan off the fire and looked me in the eyes. Reverting to Spanish, she paused, then began slowly to tell a long history of her ancestors.

An old medicine man and philosopher had brought water plucked from Lake Titakaka by a young Inca god-prince. For her people's hospitality and care of his unspecified injury, he poured the sacred water into the mouth of a looming volcano.

"You too shall have the gift of long life as do I," he stated, then traveled on.

Legends have long been the seed of fascination about Central and northern South America. And many proved true. Cuzco indeed was a golden city. Machu Picchu indeed sat above the clouds. Tikal indeed was an earth-covered city of pyramids.

Not far from here, Francisco de Orellana followed Chotan rains as they became 4,000 miles of rushing river. Along his journey he occassioned an encounter with a fierce clan of woman warriors who so paralleled Greek myth (Thesius had abducted an Amazon woman warrior to be his concubine) that he named them Las Amazonas.

We've yet to find any of these Amazon warriors or the golden city of El Dorado for which Orellana searched. Yet with so many spectacular discoveries shaking imaginations in the 1500s, we can suppose Ponce de Leon's belief in a fountain of youth.

The old woman announced that she's stopped counting her years at 100. I was pointless, she insisted, to count them further. I knew my grandmother until she left us at 93, so I was only mildly surprised by this woman's long years. What came next, however, really took my notice.

The sound of someone walking entered our ears. The old Indio woman muttered something and left the room. She returned with another old woman wearing what reminded me of a burlap sack, and together we ate rice and fried green bananas.

"Please meet my grandmother, Naha," she said in Spanish. "She has just come from where El Agua falls out of the mountain."

It took much persuasion and a wrist, one watch lighter, but I was invited to return the next morning. I suppose she really liked me. I was to be permitted to view the water from a distance.

We walked through a mosquito-filled forest area following a path over a rugged hill. We stopped at a cliff accross from a canyon reaching up to a quiet volcano. Water slowly leaked out of the rocks and fell silently into a shimmering pool. The pool overflowed and a small steam dissapeared into the rocks far below. In the distance we could see three women filling a jar from the pool.

How old must have been this old woman's grandmother! Here in easternmost Ecuador, where the Andes meet the Amazon jungle, rumors about magical water have circulated for centuries. Might this land of people known as Los Colorados (the red-faced people) be the land for which Ponce longed--and died?

His quest took him west from San Juan along the southern leg of the Bermuda Triangle. Had he ventured farther south, he might have encountered the Amazons River or even this place. It is well known that the Indians traded across great distances. Perhaps the Caribbean Indians, upon whom Ponce relied, may have repeated rumors from South American sea traders

.

Unfortunately the mystery's truths are lost to the mists of time and perhaps the secrets of Los Colorados. Or maybe the key to longevety isn't the water at all--but the fried green bananas.

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