Story:

I was born here, but my dad is from Ecuador and my mum is from Romania.

Sergio migrated to Ecuador with his family in 2014. His parents came back to Greece in 2016 but he stayed there with his grandmother. He came back two years later. He tells us that when he went to Ecuador he knew very little Spanish, but he learned as the time passed and, later, made some friends as well.

I brought the poncho from Ecuador. We bought it in 2015, when my mum and dad were still there, when I was 8 years old. We got it from a city called Otavalo, it’s a touristic city in Ecuador. In Ecuador, the poncho is a cultural element and those who worked with the land used to wear it. To me, it carries emotional value, because it symbolises the years that I stayed there, but it also carries cultural significance. In the past, they all wore it daily, but not anymore. It is more traditional. For example, my grandmother’s grandparents that had a big farm, “hacienda”, were farmers and wore a poncho. The poncho is made of wool, so they would wear it to be warm.

He explains that his family had land there, but, after the dictatorship and the new agricultural laws, they were obligated to sell it.

I don’t wear it often, but I will wear it at a celebration.