6 guys 1 cup

South America just celebrated Carnaval, a Mardi Gras that, for me, completely enhances any definitions of the word “party.” I’ve never really celebrated Fat Tuesday back home, and while New Orleans is supposedly the best, I can’t imagine anybody going harder than the Ecuadorians. To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, Carnaval isn’t just a one-day fiesta; it’s a whole week.

Maybe about a month before, everybody kept talking about how excited they were for the festivities to begin. And people were asking me the same question: was I going to play? I had never even heard of Carnaval before, so I had no idea what anyone was talking about. Play what? I’d find out soon enough.

“Playing Carnaval” can mean many different things. One of the most common methods of play involves water balloons. You’ll just be walking down the street and … WHACK! … water balloon to the face. Everyone’s dying with laughter and you’re standing there, soaking wet. So that’s how it’s going to be, huh? Plotting revenge can prove difficult seeing as how Ecuadorians have mastered the technique of stealth bombing. A split second after you get nailed, you’ll turn around and see either nobody there (frustrating,) a really old person that you know had nothing to do with it (really frustrating,) or a huge group of people with the perpetrator lost in the crowd (infuriating.) Revenge, well personal revenge anyway, is basically an impossibility.

I’d like to point out a key difference right now between people from the US and Ecuadorians. I don’t care how great a party might be back at home, if somebody hit me in the face with a water balloon, there would be a fight. I mean, haha, now I’m soaked. What am I supposed to go and get changed now? What about all the stuff in my pockets, cell phone, credit cards, etc? Here I’ve seen men in their fifties take two the chest in the middle of the day and immediately start to laugh it off with the rest of the crowd. They are just unbelievably easygoing.

I hope I didn’t seem uptight, but there was definitely a split second after every time I got soaked where I wanted to blow up in some sort of berserker rage. Luckily, I’d quickly find my center and remember that I’m supposed to be smiling, avoiding any international incidents. Unluckily, water balloons would turn out to be the least of my problems.

Water balloons were just the warm-up. Well, water balloons filled with water were the warm-up. Pretty soon I’d see people covered in dust. Apparently it’s OK to not only soak somebody, but also to then throw a fistful of flour at them. Or even better, let’s mix flour and water and then fill it up in a water balloon. Or eggs. Or let’s just skip the whole water balloon part and let’s hide on the roof with a bucket and wait for somebody to pass by.

And this was just the really sneaky stuff. Some of the more overt attacks involved people running up to you and smearing this – I still don’t even know what to call it – stuff all over your face. The stuff was thick and oily, and usually a dark blue, red, or green. Someone told me it was margarine mixed with food coloring, but really, who knows?

What if they run out of stuff? Well it just happens to be the rainy season here, and it turns out that mud can make a pretty good on-the-spot replacement. In fact, let’s you, me, and three other guys take that guy over there and just throw him in the mud. If he puts up a fight, too bad, he’s totally overpowered. Sure it might turn into a sort of weird mud wrestling match, but come on it’ll be hilarious. So what if we’ve all been drinking all day long, I’m sure nothing bad will happen.

After a few days I felt like a rat. Whenever I left my apartment, I’d go really fast, running right up against the walls whenever possible, and constantly looking around in all directions. I got pretty good at avoiding the surprise ambushes, but sometimes I wasn’t so lucky. Sometimes I saw it coming, and I knew that there was nothing I could do. Like whenever I rode around in the back of a pickup truck, for example, I knew I’d be toast. They’d be waiting on the side of the roads with buckets and hoses; it was like shooting gringos in a barrel. On any given day, I usually only had to change my clothes two or three times, something I’d consider a success.

Like I mentioned before, the drinking was constant. Beer during the day and whiskey at night. Groups of men would be sitting around stacks of “jabas,” (pronounced haba) a case of twelve 22oz. beers. Drinking here is tricky business. Back home, ninety percent of the time I’m a pretty good judge of knowing how much alcohol is in my system. Based on this knowledge, I can either choose to speed up the process or slow it down a notch. In Ecuador, this just isn’t possible.

When drinking, I’m used to everybody not only drinking what they want to drink, but having their own drink and drinking at their own pace. The way it works here is sitting in a circle, usually just men, with one small cup. One person is in charge of serving. This person fills up the one cup with beer (or whiskey, or moonshine) and, one at a time, you pound the glass of beer. When everybody has been served, the person serving drinks a glass for himself and the circle starts all over again.

You are completely at a loss of control; the glass just keeps coming and coming, so it’s only a matter of time before you’ve had too much. Plus, since you’re not serving, you have no choice what you’re drinking. I mean it’s not like there is anything other than beer, but sometimes if the beer is warm they’ll just add an ice cube, or some cold coke. Definitely not my favorite way to drink, but you’re just part of the circle and everybody’s doing the same thing.

So the days are spent drinking beer, playing volleyball, and throwing water balloons. On Sunday night there was a huge dance for the whole community. These dances are pretty fun, but they have their own formulas and routines. The dancing itself is pretty straightforward; if you’re like me and absolutely can’t dance, you kind of just shuffle back and forth. As long as you can keep the rhythm, then there’s no problem. The way it goes is this: everybody dances, then everybody stops and drinks about ten or fifteen minutes before the next song.

The songs are long … like sometimes half an hour long. And rarely do Joannah and I get to dance with each other. As soon as a song starts, there are maybe ten guys racing to me to ask my permission to dance this song with Joannah. So then somebody finds a partner for me and we start dancing. Unless you’re dating or married, you never look the person you are dancing with in the face. Or talk to them. You basically just dance, or at least try to keep the rhythm, for half an hour. After the dance everybody pounds some whiskey before it’s time to do it all over again.

These dances usually last until at least 6 am, but Jo and I usually run out of gas much earlier. Everyday I’d wake up and see everybody right back at it with the circles of beer. I seriously don’t know how I could possibly keep up with them.

This lasted for a whole week. I’m telling you, I’ve never seen anybody party like this.

Running late

I read in The New Yorker a month or two ago that the people of Peru lose a collective nine billion hours each year to tardiness. It must be a regional thing, because – my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers, you know what I’m talking about – Ecuadorians are constantly running late. Hours late. They call it “la hora ecuatoriana” which translates to “the Ecuadorian hour.”

To be fair, or to be more culturally sensitive, I guess I shouldn’t start off a blog entry by saying “Ecuadorians are always late.” It is, maybe, all a matter of perspective. So the whole country has a different method of keeping track of and perceiving time, who am I to judge? All I know is that this, like pretty much everything else, definitely took some getting used to. Or I should say that it’s been a process of ongoing adjustment.

The thing is, I don’t think this Ecuadorian hour is something that you can adjust to. It’s not an exact science; it’s something you have to just kind of know. Let me explain. When we first arrived at our site, we would naturally show up to meetings and whatnot when people told us to. Huge mistake. We would have something at, say, 8:00am. At 8:00am, we would be there, ready to go. We’d be lucky if the first person showed up before 9:30.

You know what they say, fool me ten times, shame on me, right? So I’d start fixing my arrival times. I’d start showing up fifteen minutes, half an hour, and even an hour late. Still, I can never seem to get it right. I think Ecuadorian time really means let’s making the gringos wait around for a while.

One of the first town socials since our arrival was this huge dance for All Saints Day. All the signs around town said that the party started at 8:00. We showed up at around 8:30pm and stood there by ourselves for about an hour and a half until people started trickling in. So the next time there was a dance – it was maybe a few weeks before Christmas – Jo and I made sure not to show up until at least 10:00. They must have been on to us, because, again, we were waiting by our lonesome for another hour or so.

The problem is that I’m even bothering to look at the time in the first place. My idea that I can time my arrival an hour or so late – and therefore be “on time” – is doomed to failure specifically because I’m not actually adjusting to the lax time standards; rather, I’m just setting my watch back. I’m convinced that the people here don’t have any clue what time it is when they decide to get going. They can just feel that it’s time to go.

And nobody’s shy about being late – really late – either. In fact, it’s almost publicized. A big custom here is that, upon entering a room or meeting a group of people, one must greet everybody individually, that is, handshakes all around and kisses on the cheek for all the women. You might think that if a meeting is already well under way, than this process could be skipped, as you would try to discreetly slip in so as to not disturb events already in progress. Again, wrong.

When you’re involved in any group function here, people will walk in whenever they feel like it and make a gigantic entrance. First will be a general greeting, “buenas tardes!” really loud to let everyone know to stop everything for a second. After the speaker or whatever business being conducted comes to a halt, the latecomer will then go around and say his or her hellos to every single person in sight. Then the speaker or whoever will start up again, only to be interrupted probably about ten minutes later.

This rant of mine may seem like a huge complain, but actually, I’ve grown rather fond of the Ecuadorian hour. In fact, I feel like this is the system of time that I was naturally meant to follow. I’ve never much been a fan of letting calendars or schedules dictate the layout of my day. Now I don’t have to. Our town is so small that I can just kind of see when everybody is gathering, and I’ll go and join them. Nobody’s ever sitting me down for discussions about how my tardiness is affecting my performance. On the contrary, people here are always telling me to loosen up.

I feel absolutely great showing up two hours late for a meeting. And if it has already begun? Well, I’ve always loved grand entrances and stealing the spotlight anyway, so everything just feels right. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m meeting someone two hours ago and I really should go take a shower and get ready.

Bugs ... everywhere

And I thought the rats were bad.

Well, they were, and thankfully we haven’t seen any in our new place. I’m pretty sure it has a lot to do with the fact that we keep our kitchen as close to immaculate as humanely possible. All it would take is one stray morsel of food to fall in that space between the counter and the oven. As it would begin to rot, a rat undoubtedly would be drawn to the smell, and, after making short work of our scraps, he would run back to tell his buddies about all of the great food we have hidden in cheap tupperware and in between layers of flimsy plastic wrap. We would have to move. I’m rambling already.

Let’s hope it never comes to that. But while we have so far kept the rats a bay, there’s another problem that all of the cleaning products in Ecuador and even our meticulously cleaned kitchen have failed to prevent: bugs. Goddam subtropical climate, they are everywhere. From the microscopic to the so-big-I’ve-nearly-crapped-my-pants, we have them all.

In our apartments in New York, Joannah and I were always pretty lucky when it came to insects. The few times – usually during the changing of the seasons – when a cockroach would find its way into our bathroom, both of us would follow a pretty strict game plan: freak the hell out, panic, then get into a huge fight over who would have to kill it. After one of us smushed it, we would then get into another huge fight over whose turn it was to clean up the mess. Situations like these could last all night, if we had our act together.

The roaches here must be what New York roaches have evolved from centuries ago. Much like regular roaches, these things can crawl around at near lightning speeds. You’ll turn on the bathroom lights at night and you’ll know that you saw something crawl behind the garbage can, but you’ll rarely get a really good look at one while it’s trying to escape. Unlike regular roaches, for some sick reason these seemingly prehistoric creatures are equipped with the ability to fly. Unfortunately, they don’t fly very well. I’ll explain in a sec.

At least in our community, screening simply doesn’t exist. We have these giant windows in our apartment that, due to the climate, must be left open at all times, even when we’re not there (when we went back to New York for Christmas, we closed the place up tight, and when we came back a week later, the walls were covered in mold.) There’s not even a spot on the windows where screens would go if we had them. So the insects have free range to come and go – although it’s usually just come and then stay – as they please.

Which brings me back to the flying cockroaches. We’ll be relaxing in our apartment when one of these bad boys will fly into through a window. I’ve mentioned that they don’t fly well. It’s not that they don’t fly fast, or high, it’s just that they appear to have no sense of direction or orientation. As soon as one flies in, it flies right into the nearest wall … and again, and again until it knocks itself to the floor, upside down. Now is the time for action; there’s usually a ten to fifteen second gap while it struggles to get back on its feet before it either starts flying aimlessly again or crawls off to hide in some corner.

I really wish that Joannah and I still had the luxury of freaking out and fighting for a few hours, but we really don’t want something that disgusting starting a family somewhere in our house. It usually works like this: as soon as the bug flies in, we’ll both spring to our feet and grab the nearest flip-flop or shoe. Since there’s no predicting where this thing is going to fly, we’ll start waving our weapons around our bodies. The point is not to try to knock it out of the air. We are simply doing our best to minimize the chances that it would fly onto say, my shirt or Joannah’s hair. Once it’s down, we go for the kill immediately. Something like this doesn’t happen every day, but it’s definitely a weekly situation.

Nobody likes roaches, but for some strange reason, everybody thinks the six to eight inch long grasshoppers here are just adorable. Kids are always running around, grabbing them by their wings, sticking them on my back when I’m not paying attention, telling me that there’s one on my back, and then laughing hysterically while I lurch into a fit trying to get it off.

In all seriousness, these guys aren’t so terrible. Roaches are constantly moving and squirming and twisting their giant antennae around, but the grasshoppers just sit still. And they’re not that easily provoked either. Obviously, grabbing one by the wings is going to get it upset, but even if you try to brush one away with a broom, it might not even budge. They may be peaceful, gentle beings that don’t bite and won’t really bother you, but they are still f’n huge, so them being in our apartment is kind of an issue.

It’s really embarrassing making such a scene out of a bug that three year olds will toss back and forth to each other, but Joannah and I have not yet mustered up the courage to leave them alone. We actually haven’t seen one in a week or two, but there is usually at least one somewhere in our room when we wake up in the morning. And because they are so still, finding it is always an unpleasant surprise. I’ll be on the computer for a while, and realize that it’s been sitting two inches from my hand the whole time.

One time Joannah paid this really little kid a candy bar to get one out of the house, which turned out to be a huge mistake. All of the neighborhood kids, crazy for our candy, started basically throwing them at us, threatening more if we didn’t deliver the sweets.

Big bugs suck, but the little ones can be equally annoying. Every time we step foot out of the house, we get eaten alive by these tiny mosquito like bugs. Only, whereas mosquitoes have the decency to numb your skin before they bite, these things hurt. It’s like getting pricked with a needle. The itch afterwards is terrible. For some reason the locals don’t get targeted as much as we do. Lucky us.

At night the bugs are everywhere. There are beetles, mosquitoes, giant moths … you name it. Some nights are worse than others, but our house always has at least a few unwanted guests. Thankfully, we have a nice net surrounding our bed, which on those really buggy nights gives us something close to a sanctuary from the outside world. The one thing the net didn’t protect us from was scabies: microscopic bugs that live in your bed sheets. Apparently, scabies will burrow under your skin to lay their eggs. You know you have them by the pencil dot marks you find all over your body. That was definitely a first for us.

Nighttime is definitely when the bugs are at their worst, and usually while the sun is up, things are relatively quiet. Still, there are bound to be a few surprises during the daytime hours.

Just a few hours ago, Joannah brought down a load of laundry that had been drying outside all day. And then she sets up the ironing table. I’m definitely not trying to come off as complaining, but since when do my t-shirts and jeans need to be ironed? Apparently Joannah’s mom gave her a tip to iron all the clothes in case any stowaways have tried to make your clothes their home while they were outside drying.

It seemed a little obsessive, but whatever, we did already have scabies. I was busy hammering some nails into the wall for a would-be shelf, when Joannah let out a scream so loud, and so terrified, that the hammer flew out of my hand and smashed into the opposite wall. A scream like that can only mean one thing: bug. I instinctively ran into the kitchen while asking what happened. It could have been a snake, she screamed so loud, but it could also have been a ladybug that had just gotten to close.

Joannah had been ironing my jeans when a giant spider had crawled out. I’m talking like five inches giant. It had hair on its legs and two visible claws popping out of its head. For the moment it was crawling around on one of our plastic chairs, but Jo and I were both basically too paralyzed with fear to know how to get this monster out of our house.

Before coming to Ecuador, I had basically expected to find spiders bigger than I had ever seen before. And there are tons. One time I even saw a tarantula in our backyard. But on one of our first nights here, I was taking a shower and saw a nickel-sized spider in the shower. I went to kill it, but instead I decided to cut it a deal. For the next two years, I told it, I wouldn’t kill any spiders as long as they kept their distance. Obviously I was bound to see them, even in my apartment, but so long as they stayed in the corners and other out of the way spaces, I would give them a pass. I figured they weren’t technically bugs anyway, and they were too busy killing actual nuisances to spend their time terrorizing me.

This giant spider climbing out of my pants and holding fort on one of our chairs totally threw a wrench in our agreement. But maybe this was a test. Could the spider be provoking me to see if I would attack? Even if I could somehow kill this beast, would the deal be off therefore inviting all of his friends to make my life a nightmare? I decided that I wouldn’t kill it unless I absolutely couldn’t get it out of the house without touching it. Luckily, it was still on the chair. I bravely told Joannah to open the door and then valiantly threw the whole chair outside. The spider landed just outside our doorway.

I had to be sure it wouldn’t come back, I mean, it was only a few inches outside and was staring straight back in, so I tried to shoo it away. With a nearby broom, I went to give it a little push, but before I could make contact this thing moved maybe two feet in less than half a second. It was obviously holding back; it could have been running laps around us if it wanted to. Next I tried moving the broom really close to it, without touching, just to scare it back a little further, but now it stood its ground. It was as if it knew precisely when I was faking it and when I actually meant to touch it. I didn’t want to see it move that fast any more, but I kept touching it little by little until it was about eight feet away, backed up into some corner.

I walked back inside and through a window I could see it where I had left it. It was just sitting there, but definitely facing right back at me, almost like it was still looking at me. This staring contest went on for at least ten minutes; I just felt like as long as I knew where it was, there was no chance of it surprising me again in the not so distant future. Finally, I turned my back, but only for a second. And when I looked to see if it was still there, it had vanished.

Who knows where it is right now? I’m going out of my mind. Is the deal still on? I mean, I didn’t try to kill it or anything. But maybe he perceived me throwing the chair outside and poking it multiple times with a broom as an assassination attempt. I just wish that I knew where it was so I could at least try and explain myself.

I’ve attached a quick video of the spider on our chair so you can see for yourself how big it is and that my ensuing craziness isn’t completely irrational.

Oh yea and we had ants in our kitchen for a while, and we couldn’t get rid of them, but then my mom bought these poison bait station and that problem cleared right up.

Lost in translation (yet another cliche title ...)

Here’s a funny little story about me not being able to speak Spanish and the chaos that follows when I try to act like I know what I’m talking about.

So Joannah and I were giving a nutrition class to a women’s group at a small community about 20 minutes away from our site. The goal is that, eventually, Peace Corps wants us to convince each family here to build and maintain a small organic garden. At this class, we were trying to sell the group on the benefits of home gardening. I told them that it was much cheaper to grow your own vegetables, that it’s not that difficult, and the produce that you collect should generally be a lot healthier.

One part of my argument was that homegrown vegetables don’t have any preservatives, or chemicals. So I kept saying the word “preservativo” which, I thought, translated to “preservative” in Spanish. I started to get some funny looks from the women, but I stammered on. By the end of the class, I knew that I had messed up something, but I couldn’t pinpoint where I had gone wrong.

Anyway, cutting to the chase here, I later found out that the word “preservativo” in Spanish translates to “condom.” It’s no wonder there was confusion in the crowd that day as I tried to preach the benefits of condom-less organic vegetables.

Joannah has a similar tale of embarrassment and miscommunication. Although, to be fair, whereas my story was a result of not knowing how to speak Spanish, Joannah sort of had reason to believe that what happened to her was the fault of her Spanish teachers back in high school.

You see, when Joannah and I were learning basic Spanish in our respective high schools, we were both taught that the word “bolsa” meant “bag.” One day Jo was helping to administer an English test to the local students and found out that in Ecuador, the translation was slightly different. During the test, Joannah spotted a student constantly reaching for something in his backpack. Calling out the cheater, she asked him, “What do you have in your bolsa? Give me your bolsa.” The whole classroom immediately burst into laughter.

Joannah wasn’t entirely off the mark here. I mean, the word “bolsa” kind of translates to “bag” … well, “sack” would actually be more like it. In English, this “sack,“ it’s a reference to a part of the male body. Hopefully I’m making myself clear here without being too vulgar.

Yes, we mess up the Spanish pretty often, and thankfully, no, not every screw up has to deal with condoms or scrotums, but overall, the language integration is, for both of us, way more of a challenge than we thought it would be. After over six months living in Ecuador, during everyday conversation, we have gotten used to stammering, sounding like idiots, and looks of confusion from those to whom we are speaking.

Which isn’t to say that we can’t entirely get our points across, nor that we aren’t improving every week. It’s just that instead of a our progress being a straight line going up, it’s more like a stock market graph, with peaks and lows, all hopefully moving in a gradually upward direction. There are some days where I feel like I’m almost fluent; I’ll be talking fast without having to constantly translate everything in my head before it comes out of my mouth. Other days will be the complete opposite, where I can’t understand anybody and vice versa.

Jo and I just came back from a weeklong Peace Corps meeting called “Reconnect,” where all of the volunteers met up with the staff and discussed how our first four months on our own had being going. Part of this meeting was a required 15 minute presentation, in Spanish, about our experiences, our communities, and our plans for future projects.

During my talk, I went through this rehearsed part where I was trying to explain how it’s very easy to be frustrated on a daily basis: people giving us higher prices, people cutting in line, etc. Instead of fighting with everyone when difficult situations occur, I was trying to say, it’s better to exercise a little patience. That’s when the Peace Corps language facilitator cut in and explained that you can’t use the word “fight” in Spanish to convey arguing or disagreement. The word in Spanish literally means to get into a physical fight. So here’s a perfect example of me speaking grammatically correct Spanish, and still not being able to get my ideas across.

And sometimes I’m not sure if I’m learning Spanish as much as I’m learning how life goes on down here and how people operate. For example, the other day I was riding in the back of a pickup truck with about ten other people, and a lady said something to me in Spanish. I immediately banged on the window, signaling the driver to stop so this woman could get off. My reaction was totally natural, almost unconscious. Afterwards, I was trying to remember exactly what she had asked me to do, and either I wasn’t paying attention to what she said, or I hadn’t understood the words. But it didn’t even matter; I didn’t miss a beat in what I was asked to do. You get so used to doing certain things that in some situations language isn’t even necessary, it’s just a formality.

I wonder, if everyone down here spoke English, and I had just arrived in country, and I found myself in that same situation, where someone had asked me, “Hey, bang on the window for me,” or something like that, I probably wouldn’t have understood what was being asked. So, for me anyway, I think that knowing how to conjugate verbs or memorizing vocabulary, while important, will only get me so far in terms of actual communication.

And there are always going to be stupid mistakes. A while ago I was talking to a mother with her one year old daughter, and the daughter would cry hysterically every time I looked at her. I tried to say to the baby, “You don’t like me very much,” but it came out as, “I don’t like you very much.” The mom made a face and I immediately realized and corrected my mistake, no harm done. But I just can’t let myself feel too bad. I mean, I make stupid comments in English all the time. Communication will never be perfect in any language; there will always be awkward misunderstandings.

It’s hard to measure improvement on a daily basis, but we can definitely feel that it´s coming along. Slowly but surely, hopefully over the course of the next year and a half, our Spanish skills will be closer to where we want them to be. Either that or one of these days someone’s just going to punch me in the face.

Constant adjustment

For us, living in Ecuador is all about learning how to do everything all over again. And it’s not just the language or the culture, although that certainly presents its own daily obstacles. I’m talking about the minutiae of everyday life, the stuff you do that you don’t even realize you’re actually doing. I’d thought some things to be universal, that humans held a set of commonalities built into our DNA. As it turns out, you can’t take anything we do, not the smallest detail, for granted. Let me explain.

Waiting in line. I don’t remember the first time I tried to buy something here, but I learned soon enough that something was a little off, at least according to my perspective. I do remember stopping to get a bottle of water one day at a little bread store. The person running the counter was helping somebody else, so I waited behind, as I thought would have been standard practice. A minute later, some guy shows up, walks right up to the front, and just speaks his order like I was invisible or something. Even worse, this guy was served as soon as the counterperson was done helping the previous customer. What the hell? I was pretty annoyed, but I was new in the country, and I figured maybe there might be better ways to represent the US than by getting into a fistfight with the first person that looked at me cockeyed.

When entering a busy place, at home anyway, I’m used to lining up behind the people who are already waiting, letting them have their turn, and then doing what I came to do. After a few weeks in country, I was beginning to think that maybe my experience with the line cutter wasn’t an isolated incident. It would happen everywhere. People just don’t wait in line here. You walk in and go right to the front. Getting customer service anywhere in Ecuador is like trying to get a drink from a really busy bartender; it’s all about jockeying for position, boxing-out the competition, and using your outside voice while shoving your money in whosever face is running the place.

Luckily for me, I’m tall, and I tend to stick out down here, so now that I know how the game’s played, I don’t have much trouble getting what I need. But learning the system meant enduring some pretty frustrating experiences. I’ve already written about the post offices here, but the lines at the branch in Quito were out of control. There were benches for waiting and everything. They even told us they would call our names when it was our turn. What it basically came down to was everybody crowding around this little window screaming his or her name every ten to fifteen seconds until somebody responded. Needless to say, we wound up waiting for a while.

Another nightmare scenario was our first trip to the bank. I forget why didn’t just use the ATM, but for whatever reason we needed to speak to somebody. Upon entering the bank, you actually see a bunch of lines, people lined up waiting for service, which is encouraging, but ultimately misleading. There were maybe seven or eight lines all leading to various tellers and desks. Once we figured out which line we were supposed to “wait” in, we noticed how after about twenty minutes or so we hadn’t moved much closer to where we needed to be. Could we have been farther away? It’s very possible. People just kept cutting. A person would walk in and right away cut four people in line. Then those people that just got cut would cut another five people. There were no confrontations or anything; it was all very passive-aggressive. It had all the characteristics of a line – people, waiting, standing single file – but with the constant shuffling it was anything but.

It all came to a head one day while I was waiting to buy something at some random store somewhere. I was waiting and blah blah blah this lady comes in and just orders ahead of me. That’s it, I can’t take it anymore! I turn to her and go, “excuse me, I was waiting here first, you just cut me,” trying to sound just pissed off enough to let her know I was serious without going overboard and sounding like some maniac. Hopefully I could handle this myself, without the police having to get involved. She just looks at me, confused, and says, “Well, you were just standing there.”

And that’s when I realized that I just hadn’t understood the system. Here, you’re expected to just walk in and order. Suddenly a fog lifted; things got immediately better. There were some minor details to iron out, like, I wasn’t sure if you were supposed to let little old ladies order ahead of you. I mean, with my size I didn’t want to be a bully. Unfortunately, any hesitation is a sign of weakness, an invitation for everybody else to cut you right then and there.

Now when I enter a place, I feel like I’m finally getting the respect and attention that I deserve, that I wouldn’t even get in the States. It’s great; I just walk in, walk through everyone right to the front, and demand my order in a loud voice from whoever happens to be serving. And it’s totally acceptable! Out of my way grandma, I’m here, and I need to be taken care of, right now.

Hand signals. Here’s something else that I thought was universal: trying to give someone a very basic message from far away using your hands. For example: hey, come here for a second, or no. Again, nothing should be taken for granted. It started when I’d see people down the street, and they would hold up an arm and wave only their hand, palm facing away and down. Then they would wave just that hand, all the way down and up again. I hope I’m describing it well enough for you to picture it correctly. I guess it would be similar to a person on stage receiving a standing ovation and trying to signal for everybody to please sit down, expect only with one hand, not two … and more wrist action.

Anyway, I just didn’t get it. Was I being made fun of or something? How should I respond? Should I even respond? Being at a complete loss, I figured it was kind of similar to someone waving hi, someone like a two-year-old, but still. So I just started waving back. I didn’t take to long to at least figure out what this hand signal didn’t mean, which was to say hi. For some reason, some reason that I still don’t understand, it’s a signal for you to come over. I’m used to palm facing up, with fingers motioning towards the signaler as the standard means to call someone over, but who said that was universal, right? So picture me for the first few weeks here, and every time somebody tried to get me to come over, I’d just be standing there waving back, smiling like an idiot before I eventually just walked away.

Another hand signal they do is sticking out the pinky down and thumb up, and then shaking this side to side. This is supposed to mean no, but only if you’re asking for something … I think. Like if I’m trying to flag down a ride, and the driver gives me one of those, I know I have to keep looking. If I’m looking for a drink, this sign will mean they’re all out.

There are still more signs that I have yet to figure out. Sometimes I’ll say hi to someone and they’ll just kind of point in the opposite direction. So I’ll just kind of stand there and smile. Once in a while somebody will point up a finger and move it around in a circle. Again, I have no idea. As frustrating as not knowing the very basics of everyday life, thankfully I haven’t lost it enough to test out the universality of one of our most infamous hand signals.

Moving out

Joannah and I have finally moved into our own apartment. We painted, bought appliances, and just about finished unpacking. What a difference it makes to have some personal space. Our host family was really great, but Jo and I were sharing a room where, laying down on the bed, I could easily touch all four walls. Plus, on any given day, our adoptive parents would lock up the house at 7:30 and go to bed, leaving us trapped in our walk-in closet. It’s great not to have to whisper to each other all night long.

The other huge bonus of having our own place is having our own kitchen. I’ve mentioned earlier that our host mom is great cook, but we were both getting a little sick of having rice and potatoes on every plate. Also, pretty much every dish is preceded by a bowl of scalding hot soup. Don’t get me wrong, soup’s great, but I’m used to eating the occasional bowl usually sometime during the winter. The 80-degree temperature just makes the soup seem somehow unappealing.

Back in the US, Jo and I were used to eating light breakfasts, a bigger lunch, and a decent sized dinner. Here, breakfast is huge. Not like a five-egg omelet huge, but like a mountain of rice with a whole fish huge. I would be struggling to digest my food when I’d look at my watch and realize that it’s lunchtime already. If breakfast here is huge, lunch is huge squared. After the giant soup, you’d get another few pounds of rice, maybe three or four whole potatoes or some other starch, possibly some chicken, meat, or another whole fish, and beans. Really good stuff here, but with little variation, the almuerzos (lunch) sometimes felt like a chore.

The reason that lunches are so big here, I think, is because it’s basically supposed to hold you over until breakfast the next day. Dinner here isn’t really a meal at all. Usually we’d have some coffee and bread, and maybe a little rice. I’m sorry, but by 6 or 7pm I’m out-of-my-mind hungry. A piece of bread and some instant coffee are just not going to cut it. Jo and I would feel really bad sneaking out of our host family’s house afterwards to forage for food, but it was between that and listening to empty stomach while sitting in our tiny room for the rest of the night. I swear, some nights I would look at Joannah and I thought I was seeing a nice roasted chicken asking me why my mouth was watering.

Things weren’t that bad, I mean, we always had the soft-serve guy to hopefully look around for, but right now we are just so much happier. We’ve cooked meals that we hadn’t had in so long: tacos, hamburgers, salads. I think this is probably the first we’ve eaten vegetables since we came to Ecuador.

Which is kind of surprising seeing as how fresh produce is so readily available. Every Thursday in our community, all of the communities from the whole county set up shop to sell their fresh fruits, vegetables, and meats. Not only do they have everything, but they have everything for really cheap. Mangos are around eight to ten for a dollar, avocados the same. We’ll spend at the most, five bucks, and we’ll have more than enough for an entire week’s worth of meals. It’s so much more than just an open market; people come from very far away to sell anything you can imagine. There are really great snacks that aren’t available for the rest of the week. Someone usually roasts a whole pig. There’s this guy who sells hard-boiled quail eggs (which Joannah hates, but I think are great.)

Trucks pull up and unload totally random crap, from baby shampoo to sneakers. These guys will stand on top of their cars with megaphones, trying to convince you to buy their stuff with the same intensity of someone leading a mass protest. They are relentless; I rarely hear them stopping for a breath. Moving from one item to the next, they have such an intimate knowledge of every product. “Buy this baby shampoo! It’s extra soft and extra delicate for your baby’s soft skin!” He’ll open it up, pour some on his hand, smell it. “Ahh! How lovely! Such a wonderful aroma! And everything is 100% natural, absolutely no chemicals!” It’s like watching the late Billy Mays trying to empty out a CVS after a cocaine binge, in Spanish.

What we gained in personal freedom we lost somewhat in privacy. People from all over our community feel inclined to constantly check up on us … making sure we are still eating now that we’re on our own, listening, but not believing us when we tell them that a sandwich (no soup) is enough for lunch, telling us that we missed a spot after sweeping the floor. Plus, a lot of people assume that, because we are health volunteers, we must be doctors. We had this old guy at our door showing us a bunch of medical records and x-rays asking us for a second opinion. Despite the constant visits, we are glad to be getting to know more people from the community.

Everything is great now that we’re on our own. I’d love to stay and chat some more, but there’s someone at the door with a nail protruding from his foot. Joannah, scalpel.

Going postal

The postal service in Ecuador is a lot different than what we’ve been used to in the US. Pretty much any Ecuadorian that I’ve asked has never even received mail, or even known where the nearest post office is. Joannah and I have had stuff sent to us. Our experiences might be indicative as to why the people here don’t even bother.

When we were still trainees back in Cayambe (about one hour outside of Quito, the capital), some packages came for us. The Peace Corps staff gave us a slip of paper instructing us to pick up our mail at some post office in Quito. Easy enough, right?

All throughout training, we were given numerous lectures about how dangerous Quito can be. Don’t walk around with tons of cash, only travel in taxis at night … basic stuff. And they explicitly warned us not to travel to certain areas. If we got robbed in these certain areas, Peace Corps would not reimburse us for any stolen money because, well, they told us not to be there in the first place. It turned out that our post office was right in the middle of one of these restricted areas. (Nothing bad wound up happening in said restricted area; I just thought it added a nice touch of suspense.)

Normally during training, the staff would have most of our mail forwarded to the post office in Cayambe, making hazardous trips like this unnecessary. Who knows why ours didn’t get sent. Maybe our package seemed suspicious. Anyway, we got to Quito and hopped in a cab.

The instructions on our slip of paper were very explicit. The post office is only open to receive packages on weekdays between 12 and 2pm. You must bring your passport as well as two additional copies. Two samples of blood will be collected upon entering the post office. Ok, ok a lot of rules, we get it.

We got there a few minutes early, and didn’t have to wait long in line. The guy behind the counter took our forms, made us pay some money for them holding on to the package, and gave us a receipt. So we took our receipt, and waited for the guy to go and fetch us our package, but he wasn’t even getting up out of his swivel chair. What the hell? The people in the rapidly growing line behind us were getting antsy.

Handing in your papers and paying for your package wound up being only step one in a multi-stepped mail retrieval processing system. After the line we sat in this room with a bunch of hard wooden benches while we waited for our names to be called. Our name was called and some guy took us to a room with tons of packages. He found our package, ripped it open, (it was candy!) took some notes, and taped it back up. I grabbed the package, thanked the guy, and started walking out.

But he stopped us. That was only step two. A two-step process would have been way too easy. I mean, maybe in some other city’s post office that would fly, but this is Quito, the capital, a major city with a major post office with a major pain-in-the-ass multi-stepped process. You can’t just take your package and go after step two. Back to the benches we were sent.

We were called in to some customs office. Some customs guy told us that because our package contained goods that were foreign in nature, we would have to pay a tax. We looked at each other and cringed. After coming all this way, after waiting for so long, would we have to abandon our precious candy at some customs office in Quito? The customs guy calculated our tax: 37 cents.

Whew! That’s it? Great! Here you go, I’ll just reach into my pocket here … oh look, I’ve got tons of change! All right, 37 cents it is. Now if you’ll just open your hand and take the 37 cents that I’m trying to give to you, we can just take our package and be on our way. So just take the money. Why are you looking at me like that? Wait, what are you telling me? You’re not the one who takes the money? Step four, there’s a step four? Shit!

Step three wound up being having that customs guy add up the bill. The paying would take place during step four. Customs guy printed us out about twelve pieces of paper. All we had to do was take these papers to the bank down the block and pay the 37 cents. The lines at the bank were very, very long. You would think that the ridiculously-small-customs-tax would correspond with an equally ridiculously-small-customs-tax-paying-line, but that wasn’t the case. Pretty much everybody that came in the bank after us tried to cut us in line. I told them they could back-cut, but frontsies were out of the question.

I handed the bank lady our 37 cents. But there was a bank fee. It was seventy-something cents. We were later told that the whole point of step four being off-site at a bank was to prevent customs people at the post office from overcharging and pocketing a profit. So now, instead of having random corrupt postal employees ripping people off and making a few extra dollars, they centralized the corruption, and now a huge bank is raking in significantly more money in the form of many collectivized micropayments. I had steam fuming from my ears as I handed her two bucks.

She smiled, handed me my change, and printed me off another dozen or so pages to bring back to the post office. We waited some more on the benches, handed a giant stack of papers to another postal employee, waited while this employee typed a bunch of stuff in a computer, signed our names, and finally … finally we were given our package. Just short of 2pm, where you know they would’ve locked up for the day had we not gotten back from the bank in time.

On the positive side, the candy was delicious.

When we got our site assignment, Peace Corps told us that there was a post office in a small town about an hour away from us. This is where we would be sent our malaria medicine and whatever else. About a month after we moved, my mom told us that we had two more packages on the way.

Nobody at our site had even heard of a post office nearby. When we got into town, we started asking random people if they knew where it was. Some people told me in Quito, about eight hours away. Finally someone had the information we needed, and directed us to a side street not that far away.

We eventually found the post office; only, it wasn’t really an office as much as it was a table set up in front of an apartment. The lady who ran the table turns out to pretty much be the post office for our site. She’s really nice. She gave us her home phone number and told us to call her whenever we need mail and she’s not outside. She even took our phone numbers too.

And one day she called and told us that we had a big package waiting. I could have sworn that my mom told me that there were two coming, but maybe I couldn’t understand her Spanish. We took the bus into town, gave her a call, and she handed us a package (more candy!) along with another slip of paper informing us that our other package was .1 kg overweight and was therefore detained at a larger postal facility in nearby Latacunga. We were to bring this notice as well as two copies of our passports to blah blah blah godammit!

Due to a nationwide strike, the busses were out of commission for a while, and it was another month before we had an opportunity to catch the six-hour bus to Latacunga. Needless to say, it was a pretty good excuse to get away for the weekend.

This post office also had very explicit hours of operation, and I arrived 9am on a Monday morning by myself (Joannah was off on another errand) ready for anything. Luckily, Latacunga happens to be a much more user-friendly city in terms of mail. Two steps, tops. I paid my fee and was told I just had to have my package examined and I’d be on my way.

Out comes a member of the Ecuadorian military to personally inspect the package. He put down his giant semi-automatic gun and ripped open the top. Why couldn’t this one have just been candy? Out pours the contents of the girliest package anyone has ever been sent. Pumice stones … nail files … makeup … lotions. Staring at all the stuff, he turned and gave me a look of what had to have been a mix of bewilderment and disgust, and then back at the stuff. He picked up a five-pack of Tide To-Go pens and asked me what they were. I tried to tell him as casually as I could – in my very best Spanish – that they were special markers used to rub stains out of your clothes if you made a mess while you were out of the house. I managed to get out of the post office without the nice soldier having to reach for his machine gun.

Seeing as how the mail here can be problematic, I’ve come up with a new system if anyone wants to send us anything else while we’re down here. Just label the package with our names in bold, clear letters. Then, wait for a really strong southern wind. Now, build some sort of hot-air balloon, small enough to reassure anybody that, no, there aren’t any runaway kids aboard, but big enough to keep our package afloat. Thanks in advance, and I’m sure we’ll get it in no time.

Also, the post office in Quito didn’t actually make us give blood samples. I was just kidding.