"CCC" Part II

Day Two

I woke up at the ass-crack of dawn, because I had heard a rumor that the milk truck makes a stop in San Antonio during its morning route. However, once I reached the street I discovered I was too late. 

"Oh mi hija, the truck left over an hour ago," a local told me while giggling a bit. My notion of -ass-crack of dawn translated to sleeping-in for most of the parish. 

I sat in the village square with my book until the telephone port opened up. I figured Ned would be reachable now. But, as farmer's a rarely attached to their phones, I soon realized I'd have to hitch another ride to nowhere land. 

I searched for some caloric energy, but all I could find was a corner tienda with Ritz crackers and water bottles, so I settled. Luckily, the fresh-faced store clerk was extremely helpful.

"There'll be a truck leaving with the school kids in the afternoon," he said, "Around one o' clock. He could tell I was a bit hesitant, I had about 70 found worth of luggage with me, but I didn't want to take it off my back.

"This isn't the city," he laughed. "There are no robbers here, you are safe." I was still a bit wary, but the clerk watched my things, and even convinced his brother to help me load them onto the truck. 

At the hour, I hopped onto the truck, the students screaming "Gringa! Gringa! What's your name?" With each stop through the mountainside the children all filed out, some hanging off the rear of the truck until we reached their parish. "San Antonio is the last stop!" They'd yell. "Be patient!" Once I was the only one left in the back of the truck, we reached my stop. 

"You'll have to walk about 30-60 minutes up this path," my driver said. A girl in the front seat had told me minutes ago that she was going to San Antonio as well. 

"Will she come with me?" I slyly pointed in her direction. 

The girl hopped out from the passenger side, and motioned me to walk with her. 

"Great," I thought. "I'm pretty much putting my life in the hands of an 11-year-old girl." Turns out, though, that this girl has probably put in more hours of work in her life than I have. So she assisted me the whole way, repeatedly asking me if I needed to rest, but I never admitted to that need, even when I wanted to. In the meantime, she told me her name was Carla. 

Before we reached her house, Carla told me I could wait with her while we called Ned/Eduardo together. "Eduardo es my vecino," she said. I'd learn soon enough that in this place, everyone is a neighbor. 

But Ned didn't answer. I sat outside wondering what the hell I was doing, how I could put this girl in such a situation, when she came outside and told me to come sit in the kitchen. She wanted to make me food. I hesitatingly sat down, asking if she needed help, but she wouldn't let me stand up. "You need rest," she said. Within minutes, she served me a heaping bowl of white-rice and french fries, as well as one for herself. 

"Do you get lunch at school?" I asked her. 

"No, we don't have lunch. I eat in the morning and when I get home," she said. 

My appetite began to wilt, and I struggled to swallow each bite. Once I had finally finished, she smiled at me, grabbed my hand and led me into her parents' room where her little sister was watching television through a fuzzy signal. 

"Where are your parents? I asked. 

"Oh. They are working in the fields," she replied. "They'll be home in a couple of hours."

"And they won't mind that I'm here, in their bed?" I had heard about the good nature of the people in this area, but this situation had gotten me a little concerned.

"Not at all!" She said through a smile. So I tried to relax, but instead stared blankly at the T.V. until the parents showed home.

Her father's head popped in, and his face began to glow as soon as he caught sight of me. 

"Tara is going to be a volunteer here!" Carla jumped with excitement. 

"Hello! Hello! Welcome!" He said. The mother's face mimicked the father's. 

While the parents were cooking dinner, I asked Carla if I could take a nap, and she led me to her bedroom. I needed a second to collect myself, though instead, once I was able to distance myself from the others, I tucked my head into my knees and began to cry. I quickly forced myself to regain composure. "Just make it through the night, Tara, everything will be sorted out in the morning," I wrapped my arms around myself in hopes of comfort. Just then, the phone rang. Eduardo called in the nick-of-time. 

Carla came into her room. "Tara, Eduardo wants to know if you want him to come get you, or if you want to wait for morning." Her sister came in, and collectively they kneeled on the bedside floor, as if they were about to pray, and pleaded to me with their eyes; ones I couldn't say no to. 

Relieved that he at least called, I gave them what felt like a puzzled look and said, "I'll stay." The girls began jumping up and down, and ran and told their parents, who were delighted at the news. I shook my head in utter confusion. Me, an anonymous foreigner who randomly landed at their house one day, was seen as a blessing. I walked into the main house, and gave them my full attention. 

While sitting on the bed, one-by-one, the mother and the two girls laid down notebooks, and asked me to open them. English lessons. "Will you help us with pronunciation?" 

"Of course," I said. I felt it was the least I could do to repay this family. So we sat for an hour or so, sifting through pages of vocabulary, playing flash card games and editing homework. 

"When you come work in the fields," Samuel (the father) mentioned, you can teach me the English words for all the tools. 

I had no idea where I'd be stationed, but didn't want to address those logistics, so instead I just nodded and smiled. 

"Let's. Eat. Dinner!" the mother said in her slightly improved English. 

Over our dinner of soup and steaming cherry juice, each family member was disrupting the other in telling me stories about their lives. "It's better we have electricity now. Life was hard five years ago. Now we have T.V." My heart sunk a bit. "AND we have all the running water in the world. We can leave every faucet on for the entire night and nothing would happen! Our other volunteer had a computer, and we could play computer games, he even left it for us when he went out of town!" I just sat motionless and soaked it all in like a sponge. 

"Please let me do the dishes," I firmly stated. The girls sat by the sink and watched the cold water hit my hands while I cleaned. During this time, their mother began to tidy up the room I'd be sleeping in. After I laid the last dish to dry, the girls grabbed my arms and led my into my temporary room. 

I began preparing for bed, but the girls lingered. 

"...Do you have a computer? With movies?" Carla questioned. 

I didn't feel comfortable flaunting my electronics, but reluctantly I told them yes, I had one movie with me. Unfortunately, there were no Spanish subtitles. 

The girls, showing no sign of caring, immediately climbed into bed, one on each side, and cuddled up to me until their bed time. 

How I felt that night, going to sleep in the foreign bed of a strange family in an unknown place, could be an entire post on its own. But I'll leave that to the imagination. 

Coming in Contact with the Coordinator: Part I

"I guess you may not pick up this message in time, but just in case, you may like to chat to Christina Chaya in Cuellaje,  Christina runs a volunteer project in this parish too, and there's no reason why you shouldn't work with her too.

Otherwise, I'll wait for your call, and come down with a pony to meet you. -Ned"

Ned was right. I didn't receive his e-mail message in time. I arrived in Cuellaje, a small town that serves as a meeting ground for the seven parishes nearby, amidst the crowd of church-goers and vendors. The sun was already sinking behind the mountains.

"I guess I'll lay my bags down here for the night," I thought. I paid for my $6 hotel room, and walked to the village square to see if I could find a landline to call Ned and ask if he could meet me in the morning so we could travel together back to his house in San Antonio, wherever that was. But he had also said in earlier e-mails to feel confident with arriving in San Antonio on my own, so at this point I wasn't the least bit worried.

Momentarily I was distracted by a shirt vs. skin volleyball game in which the players were using a flattened basketball, and I became a spectator while I munched down my street-side papas fritas (french fries). 

But Ned didn't answer. Instead I thought I'd engage in this networking game, so I tried to find Christina. After asking locals, I found her house, and yelled her name from the street (an Ecuadorian custom), but she never appeared. "Ah well, I guess I'll walk around and become more familiar with this place."

As I was walking, I ran into a Danish man who had come here to work as a forest ranger with the National Park Service. This man was all mouth and no ears, but he had some interesting things to tell me. From our conversation I gathered that slash-and-burn is unacceptable, eco-tourism will be established here within a few years, stricter property rights and land allocation need to be written into law, the government needs to take an invested interest in compensating farmers economically for not cutting down their forest, cities are for satanists, and the town of Cuellaje is ghostly and boring. (I will expand on these issues in later posts.)

"You know, I don't usually talk to foreigners. So consider yourself lucky. If you ever want to come say hi, I live in that house over there," he said as he pointed his wavy finger at some general direction. 

"Alright, thanks," I replied, knowing fully well that I'd probably not see him again. 

I retreated back to my hotel room and tried to read before I fell asleep, but my mind was speaking too loudly. The transition into isolation from the outside world had begun. 

Quito: Land of the Free (and Cheap)

No other city I’ve lived in or flew to looks or feels much like Quito. A city where smoking restrictions are still nonexistent- you can light up before you leave the place where you purchased your pack and no one will squint an eye. It’s a city where Payless costs more and you won’t be able to walk down a street or load onto a bus without spotting at least a dozen fashionable city-dwellers sporting a fake pair of ray-bands they probably picked up at a corner tienda.

At the center of “gringolandia” lies Plaza Foch, a colorful ensemble of expensive bars, cafes and restaurants where well-to-do Quiteños and their foreign counterparts enjoy a leisurely afternoon happy hour before nightfall, when the center offers some real fun.

Wednesday night is lady’s night. There’s a subsection of bars in “gringolandia” where girls can get in free until 11, bouncing from one bar to another with their friends getting as plastered as possible free of charge. After 11 the boys are howling (literally) to be let in and roam freely to scope out the fresh meat. The disappointing part is, a lot of the girls enjoy this- they season themselves through the attentive stares of men.

Walk through this neighborhood and it’s hostel after hostel. No wonder Ecuador has become to loaded with tourists—this place has become geared for the weathered traveler. And with good reason. Not only is it beautiful, it’s quite cheap: Make a stop at the Santa Clara market and you can pick up two full bags of fresh produce and some sort of carbohydrate base for ten dollars.  Promotions at the nightclubs that fall on each night of the week make it hard to resist stopping in for a couple of Pilseners and maybe some Salsa.

The Ecovia and the Trollebus take you through a time warp from the South to the North, jutting out thick, black fumes that stain the streets and make you gasp at the fact that each time you cross from one side to the other you’re actually breathing this all into your lungs.  Really, this smoke is so heavy you can actually feel it entering your insides. Walk down the same street for long enough, your head will scream for the even the tiniest dose of oxygen.

The South, named a UNESCO world heritage site, is, not so ironically, the poorer portion of the city. Head to the North and you’ll find supermalls with Cinnabon and near sky-scraper status buildings with businessmen out front checking out every well-dressed girl in clear sight. Ask me and I’d chose to live in the South any day. But I’m pressed directly between the old and the new, and I can’t say my current placement is half bad.

As culturally rich and beautiful as this city is, I’m leaving it on Saturday—at least for the time being. Saturday I will be hopping a couple of buses and a milk truck to a highly remote FINCA (organic farm) outside of the village of Cuellaje, where nearest town is about two hours out, and it’ll take two days to even make that trip. As much as I enjoy Quito and all the people watching, nothing sounds more appealing right now than being isolated in a forest, where nothing but the sounds of roosters, birds and Spanish speakers will feed my stimulation.

There I’ll be teaching English for a couple hours a day as well as any other subject I may find interest in teaching to the kids. I’ll also be spending the mornings working on the farm: Milking cows, churning cheese, sowing seeds, tending to the beds and harvesting. I am told to not be surprised if one of the local farmers I will be working with hands me a machete and tells me to hack a trail to the rio.  But then again,  granted I stay for long enough, another responsibility of mine will be to stress better conservation of the land on which these people dwell.

How will I learn these things? No idea. I’ll take it day by day and see if being this far out of my comfort zone will be conducive to my mental (and physical) health. At this point I don’t foresee any unmanageable circumstances. This part of Ecuador is unanimously known for the relaxed aura of its people and the regenerative capabilities of its pristine nature.  While I’m scared a bit shitless, I must say the excitement has a better hold on me.

Stay tuned. 

On Quitting my Job

I had my last day of work last Friday.

My boss handed me a folded wad of dough and wished me well, sighing a bit under his breath.

If I tried to explain my reasoning for this, it would take forever. This one-way conversation would end up as an all-night rant about human existence, I'm afraid. Yes, that's how far my mind goes when I'm sitting in front of a computer all day thinking, speaking and writing in English while in a Spanish speaking country.

I guess the question that was constantly harassing me was, "Why am I really doing this?"

It's because of the notion I've had since I was 15 of becoming a Journalist, upon which I told myself, "Don't let anything get in the way of that goal: Anything."

(Un)fortunately, as I've grown a little older, life isn't as black-and-white as I once thought it was. And at this point, I am securely stuck in gray.

If anyone got an insider's view of what the "travel writing" business is really about, they'd probably be a bit surprised too. You mean, most of the writers don't actually visit these places they seem to know so much about? As much as I love writing, a simple "How to get Your Visa Extended" just isn't my style. And yes, in life there are hoops to jump and sacrifices to make, but at this point in life I'd rather sacrifice a hot shower rather than my livelihood by wasting away at a 9-5 desk job, constantly craving that illusion of security I'll reap once I can put this six months on my CV.

I'm no longer in college. I no longer have professors and peers jamming down my throat, "Buy this domain, put that on your resume." I no longer have someone constantly telling me how competitive this profession is, and speaking as if there's some methodological approach to becoming a successful writer. If slaving away at a computer desk, trying to regurgitate thoughts onto paper out of thin air with seemingly no source of inspiration, is the way to become successful; if reading other people's tweets and facebook posts to figure out the market and their views of life rather than cultivating my own, is the only way to reach an audience-well, then, my romantic notion of what the profession could be has dwindled and I may need to pick a new route.

But I'm not to that point yet. I still have hope that somewhere in this line of work there's a dire need for some real voices: A need for authors who are willing to put their lives on the line in order to tell a good story; a need for authors who, instead of typing in a URL for a website where people post their mundane thoughts of the day in 150 characters or less, are sitting in deep contemplation in order to arrive at something a tad bit more original; and a need for authors who still understand that the goal of literature is to alter the minds of its readers--to articulate humanity's many grievances and offer a fresh perspective. And I am going to act on this hope until it runs me dry.
                         

Maybe one day I'll crave that security. Maybe one day I'll accept a 9-5, and my idealist notions of what this life can be will lay to rest. Maybe then will my twitter account see some action. But not today. Today, I have the means to travel exactly how I've always envisioned. So that's what I'm going to do.