July 03, 2008

There are some stories that you tell so many times you never want to hear them again. It's like being a band on tour and refusing to play your annoying hit single. I woke up to an armed robbery in Ecuador, oh so many months ago, and retelling the story has always put me in an off mood, so I do my best to stay away from the much requested recant. Alas, not blogging it out has left me to do nothing but scribble my thoughts safely away in a notebook instead of putting it out there and moving on to more interesting posts. Here it is.

It may be because I fall deep into dreams, or that I couchsurf so often, but when I wake up, I have a moment of "what?". For two seconds, I look around and take stock of my location. I'm in Wisconsin... Milwaukee... Jessie's house. It's a really quick process and it happens every morning whether I take notice of it or not. One night, in mid-October, I fell asleep in Ecuador on my bed, next to Sean, in our hostel room. When I woke up, those first few seconds of realization were, There's a man turning on our light. Must be the wrong room. Another man. Silver handle - a kitchen knife. Two men rushing towards me. Yelling in Spanish. A woman enters the room. Within ten seconds of waking up, my head was wrapped in a blanket, a man was pushing himself on top of me, and two others were tying together my wrists and ankles. "I'm going to be raped," I thought. Sean thought. Anybody would've thought. I kept my body calm and relaxed every muscle from my neck to my knees. I repeated that I didn't understand Spanish. No entiendo, no entiendo. They were flushed with adrenaline; you could feel the thickness of the chemical in the room. As Sean tried to reiterate my incompetence in understanding, the man on top of me rapped him on the head with a pistol. Sean and I became silent. Both of our heads were now wrapped up, and our wrists and ankles tied excruciatingly tight. The woman, who was around my age, gagged. She must have been sick to her stomach from nerves. That gagging -the fact that something bothered her enough to make her want to vomit- made me think that they were going to kill us.

Sean did all the communicating. I listened with my eyes wide open under the hot darkness of a navy blue blanket. I couldn't interpret their intentions by their words, since I mistranslated or couldn't even translate what was said. I became as quiet and invisible as I could, hoping that in my silence the men would find the common ground of humanity between us. They rummaged through everything, pulling out dresser drawers and throwing what they didn't want at our heads. Sean explained where his money was, a paltry $250, and they became hostile at the small amount. They thought we were lying. What a terrible feeling - for robbers to expect more from you than you own.

The two men left our room to rummage through the other unoccupied rooms, leaving the woman to watch over us. My hands had been tied for about half an hour at this point and were throbbing with pain at the lack of circulation. It frightened me enough to speak up, now that it was just the girl. "Ayuda me" I pleaded for her help. She seemed afraid to help. She brought back one of the men. He grabbed my hands and told her they weren't purple, then dropped them and left the room again. I told her to look at the pictures on the wall. I had posted drawings the children drew for me, up on my wall. I told her I was a volunteer for a school. Second grade. I told her I was poor also. I tried to make myself as human as possible, thinking she would have an influence on how the rest of the events played out. Ayuda me, I pleaded again, mira mis manos. Tengo mucho delor. She took my hands and pulled at the knot. The cords dug deeper into my wrists. She shook at the strings, making an attempt to loosen it, but they rubbed painfully against the tender skin. She waved some fresh air under the blanket for me to breath, and she worked at the knot again. She finally loosened it and retied it in a loose half-bow. She moved to Sean then, and did the same for him, telling us to not tell the men. A few minutes later, she left the room and we heard a car take off. Sean jumped up to untie us, then he had me lock myself in the room as he checked around. He found the owner, that old Italian bird, face down on her living room floor, her shirt pulled over her head and hog-tied at her wrists and ankles. She said the man with the kitchen knife punched her in the ribs.

A congregation of people amassed outside of our hostel even before the police came. They had heard people making noise at our gates. There were two suspicious cars outside without license plates on. On woman, on her way home, saw the cars and turned around on our dead end road and drove around until the cars were gone. Nobody called the police. Two sets of police officers, a man from our security service and I think an insurance man, all came. Nobody paid attention to me, and not being able to speak enough Spanish, I couldn't describe the situation anyway. I went into the kitchen and washed dishes to calm down. I think the house finally cleared out around two in the morning. There was no getting back to sleep. Our room was trashed and I cleaned it as best as I could. It was only then that I started to add up the things that were taken. Our laptop computers, my luggage with everything that was in it- clothes, toys for the Remar kids, contacts, medicine, books... - our cameras and money. I'd realize something had been stolen only after I needed it and realized it wasn't there - my hair straightener, my shoes. They left our IDs, credit cards and passports. They left us with only enough to leave the country with. Clever.

To get to our room, these people cut through a weak part of an iron gate. After that, they picked another lock. Inside, they cut the wires to our security system (not that it was activated that night anyway). On the owner's side of the lot, they cut the wires to her fax and phone. They seemed to have it all figured out. In addition to the three people in our room, neighbors said there was an additional person in one of the cars. The classic lookout, I suppose.

I didn't want to be alone after this. I stopped going to my volunteering job. I stuck by Sean's side and went to school with him everyday. I only took showers in the daylight and I had Sean stand outside the bathroom doorway to reassure me that no one was breaking in. I lost my appetite, as happens when I stress, and only got down a few bites of food on Sean's insistence. I couldn't sleep at night. I stared at our ceiling with my ears perked. Any strange noise I heard, I woke Seanie up for. He was going through mid-terms at this time and I'm sure it must have been hard for him to be waken up so often. He played it cool, though, and focused on making sure I was okay. I was getting sick, though. I was losing weight. What I did eat went straight through me. I was nauseous all the time. I was on edge all the time and didn't feel comfortable enough to walk around the house after dark. When my sickness became so bad it scared us, we both agreed it was time for me to buy a plane ticket home and recoup there. I cried for days before I left. I sobbed at the ticket counter at the airport. I cried in airport lobbies. I cried for weeks after. I was exhausted. People would constantly remark of how happy I must be to be home. I wasn't. I felt like I had failed at a life test. I felt like a cop-out for returning home instead of toughing it out. The feeling faded after a few months, once I started to build up new routines on the homefront. Sean stayed for another semester of school in Ecuador, and the months apart, I'm sure in addition to other things, led to Sean and I to turn our relationship into a friendship. It's been eight months since my return from Ecuador and I'm getting the traveling itch again. I have three desired destinations: first would be an internship with the Grameen Foundation in Africa, which would allow me to be involved in real grassroots change in an African community. Second would be a three year stint in the UK, at the University of Leeds, to get a PhD in Asian Studies. Third, which is the least developed, is the thought of me wearing a linen skirt in a tiny, dusty town in Mexico. Time will tell.