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.

10/17

Work has been exhausting me so much lately that I haven´t had the energy to blog afterwards. It seems I´ve inserted a much larger lapse between entries than I had intended; sorry. Yesterday the kids had a field trip to the presidential palace. The one day I go to school in my pajamas, we go somewhere important. Figures. Since I had no idea about the trip, I didn´t bring my ID, and because of that, couldn´t get into the tour of the place. Another volunteer, Andre from Austria, was in the same boat as me, so we sat in the Plaza de Indepencia until the kids came out. All the other children from all the other schools were quiet and lined up politely, but our kids came out of the place screaming and running. Andre and I went over to the gate the kids were behind, and they started chanting ¨Tio, tio, tio¨ which is what they call the boy volunteer. Literally it means uncle. Then they started chanting ¨Tia Krystina, tia Krystina¨. That was really cool, and when the guard opened the gate, the kids came flying out and into our arms. There were a lot of tourists around, looking really touristy (with cameras around their necks, and sunglasses and Hawaiian shirts) and the kids pointed at them and shouted ¨Gringo¨ which means ¨whitey¨ essentially. That also made me feel cool because the kids have never called me a gringo, even though I am.

Last weekend was my favorite so far. Sean and I went camping in the rainforest of Mindo. We actually did some really arduous work on a research project (http://www.lifenetnature.org/). We did a lot of hiking through mountainous rainforest in a reserve called Las Tanagaras in the town/forest of Mindo. What a beautiful town! The scenery was breathtaking. The research was pretty cool. We went along with Sean´s frind, Carlos, from school. Carlos is annoyingly rich and also annoyingly in love with birds. He set the whole thing up. We worked with this wonderful guide named Pasqual Torres. The four of us set up fifteen big mist nets in the forest. Birds would, from time to time, fly into these nets and get tangled up. We would untangle them, put them in a bag (I got to hold real, live, wild birds!) and bring them to our main station to record data about them. I now know waaaaay too much about birds. We would put a little metal ring-tag on their leg and let them go. I can now tell if a bird is an adult or juvenile, if it´s pregnant, or has had an ectoparasite. Waaaay too much... Anyway, we caught a few really cool birds. Ecuador is famous for its hummingbirds, and I saw a ton of them around the guide´s cabin. Oh man, every day we had to wake up at 5:00 am, while it was still dark out, and begin our work. Tough stuff. The guide told me that I can put this on my resume as research work, though, which I´m pretty thrilled about. We also hiked about a half hour up a mountain to see this really beautiful bird, called the Cock of the Rock, do it´s mating ritual. There weren´t as many birds there as the guide was hoping, but I still got to see a few of them and I also got an amazing view of the rainforest. On the last day, Sean swam in this amazingly beautiful waterfall. It was a little paradise away from all the other troubles of the world.

About two weeks ago, Sean was robbed of his backpack by old men in suits. While he was on the bus, or right after, someone squirted mustard onto his backpack and pants. Some old guy was trying to help him clean it off, and some other guy offered to get water. Sean took his backpack off and put it in front of him to clean it. Somehow his attention was drawn away from his pack for a second and when he turned around it was gone. The people around him gave him conflicting info about where the thieves ran to. It seems everyone was involved in the thing. Nothing too important was taken, and Sean has his sweaty groin cup from Tae Kwon Do class in his bag, so he was happy that the thieves would be confronted with it. Sean was actually really cool about the whole thing and he said that it made him wiser.

10/3

Elections for twenty assembly people were held last weekend. There were well over 200 people on the ballot, each with a tiny headshot next to their name. I saw a copy of the ballot and it´s a bit confusing. Encouragingly, there were information booths set up around town to inform people of how they can vote. Every citizen has to vote, or they´re fined, like $16, if I remember correctly. That would be a lot of money to an indigenous person. The camp of people the president was endorsing ended up winning about 60% of the votes, followed by the group of people that were just first on the huge list. These assembly positions are really important because President Correa is creating a new constitution for the people and these are the representatives that will be writing the new document.

I had convinced Sean that the Warhol exhibit is the cat´s pajamas, so we went on Saturday. He seemed to like it. We also walked around two cathedrals, one of which I pretty much got kicked out of for taking pictures. It was the Cathedral of St. Augustine and there were some really cool pieces of artwork in it. We also spent an hour at a really great national museum. We could´ve stayed all evening, but they were closing. I can´t wait to go back. The museum is sponsored by a huge bank here. They have a noteworthy collection of gold artifacts and the museum was formed to ensure the people that the bank wouldn´t destroy their culture by melting these artifacts into currency. The museum grew from there to include really great clay and stone pieces which they keep on their anthropology floor. There is also a floor of amazing religious artwork from Ecuador. They seem to be more gruesome in their representations than I am used to. It´s really fantastic stuff. I think I´m going to go back this weekend as Sean´s on his next school outing, to check out the Republican art collection and the Contemporary art.

On Sunday, Sean and I had a huge lunch at a great place in Mitad Del Mundo. Sean also bought himself a new voice recorder. He calls it his second memory and he carries it around like a safety blanket. After he lost his other voice recorder in a cab, he´s been mentioning how much he wants another one, oh maybe every 2 hours or so. Needless to say, I´m happy for him.

The kids at school finally got their class periods structured. No more ¨perma-art class¨ as Sean called it. I´m scheduled to teach English, with the other class assistant, to the second graders every Tuesday and Thursday for about 45 minutes each day. Yesterday we worked on colors. The ages of the kids ranges from 5 to 11, and none of them can read or write. So, it´s a little weird to pick what to teach this group. The ¨Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes¨song is a big hit. If anyone else has any ideas, especially of kids songs, let me know.

9/23

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9/17

Well, as soon as I got over the stomach sickness, I acquired the head cold Sean was carrying around with him. I´ve been getting a lot of rest and hopefully it will pass soon. I stayed home from school again today. I thought it´d be better of me to stay home and rest rather than expose the kids to a cold. Last night, our housemate gave Sean and I a very insightful winetasting. He worked in a quirky little wine shop back in Oxford, so he just seemed to know everything about the stuff. After a few sips of each of the wines, my head was pounding and I had to go to sleep. I had a headache to begin with, but I didn´t want to be left out. This weekend was a relaxing one and Sean and I stayed in most of the time, made tons of food, and watched movies. We went to play pool on Friday and Sean lost his voice recorder in the cab. He was so sad! Today we are going to go to get our Censo Card, which will be my ID while I´m here. Anyone staying over 90 days in Ecuador needs to get one. We´re supposed to get it within the first 30 of staying here, which expires soon for us. I think we´ll end up going to the office today, we´ll get an appointment and a list of the things we´ll need. That what my volunteer org told me, at least.

9/13

So, I´ve been feeling a bit ill the past three days, so I went home early from school yesterday and took the day off today. Volunteering has gotten easier now that I´m an assistant to the 2nd grade teacher. The kids are so wild that they haven´t learned anything yet! My Spanish vocabulary is now composed of phrases like, ¨Sit down, be quiet, stop, and listen to the teacher¨. I watched a video the other day about the Remar Foundation. It´s an international Christian organization that will take in people who need shelter, education for their children, or drug or alcohol abuse related counceling. So, they will take in these people in return that they work for them. All the money that Remar makes gets distributed throughout the people in their projects on a need basis. It´s very communist. I think it´s cool that I´m an agnostic-atheist-hindu-soto zen buddhist volunteering for an evangelical Christian organization. I´m not sure they would think it funny if they found out, though. Just trying to be well-rounded here. I have a ton of fun with the kids and I´m always exhausted by the end of recess. I went to watch that video Tuesday morning, and I returned to the classroom about two hours later, and a third of the kids put down what they were doing to run up and hug me. They call me ¨tia¨which means ¨aunt¨. It´s how they refer to all of their teachers, and I think it´s really sweet. I try to hug the kids as often as I can because I know that some of them come from really difficult situations. The woman in charge told me that about 75% of Ecaudorians live below the poverty line, and sometimes the parents will make the children go out and beg all day for money. If they don´t come home with money they are sometimes beaten. The woman told me that kids will come to the organization to get away from their family situations and the organization will have to go through a ton of paperwork immediatly to get them in their care, and sometimes the children have to return to their families. Some of these kids are really shy and adorable, and I have to repeat to myself ¨do not adopt one, Krystina¨.

Tuesday was Sean´s birthday. He´s now 22. He says he´s catching up to me. Both of us were too sick to eat birthday cake though, he with a head cold and me with a stomach thing, so there´s a whole birthday cake still siting in our fridge. Hopefully tonight will be the night for that. Tomorrow we have an appointment to look at an apartment. It sounds great, but we´re not sure about where in Quito it is. Sean´s getting tired of his super long commute every morning, understandably so.

9/9

So this was my favorite weekend in Ecuador, but I´ll get to that in a bit. My second day of volunteering was as exhausting as the first. Since everything was so disorganized on Thursday, I thought Friday would be similar and I could just do whatever I wanted. Wrong. After the kids did their morning stretches and song together, the principal led me into the fourth grade room and told me to teach them for 40 minutes. I had no lesson plan, or anything. He just took me to the front of the class and said this is your new English teacher, and the teacher & her assistant gave me the go-ahead to teach. I was dumbfounded. Completely unprepared. So I taught them ¨Good morning teacher¨and I attempted to teach them ¨My name is¨ and I had brought crayons and paper for them to draw ¨My name is...¨ name tag signs. I tried the Alphabet Song, which went well until about ¨Q¨. Then the principal came in, as it must have been 40 minutes later, and brought me into the next room - Second Grade. The teacher told me that they were busy with something and I should come back after the break. So, then the principal guides me to a high schooler that needed help with his English homework. He was creating a little English-Spanish dictionary, so that was fun. I thought I could use this time to page through the English material I had and create some kind of lesson plan for the second graders, but I spent the entire time helping that boy and fending off toddlers that were taking everything out of my backpack and throwing it around the room, and drawing in all of my books with my crayons. So one half of my brain was busy trying to understand what the high schooler was asking me, while the other half of my brain was trying to keep scissors and crayons out of the toddlers mouths. One of the little ones ran off with all of my crayons and I never saw him again. Then, before I knew it the break was finished and I was led into the Second Grade Room again. So, I´m still unprepared and now the principal is watching me. So I make all the kids stretch up with me and then stretch down. Then I had the stand up and then sit down. They were totally reacting to the up/down thing, and I thought that would be a good way to get ¨Sit down¨ into their vocabulary. They could say ¨Good morning teacher¨but then everything good went bad when I got them all in a line to introduce themselves while I gave them stickers. It was the stickers that did it. They were pushing and punching. I didn´t know what to do and the teacher was out the room at that time. So the teacher came back and helped me out. She made them all do their first homework assignment which consisted of them copying a zigzag line over and over again in their notebooks. It got them to settle down, for the most part. So, at the end of the class I told the teacher that it is really difficult for me to teach English when I can´t communicate in Spanish and I asked if I could just be her assistant until I understood the language more. She really seemed to like the idea, since it seems to me that she´s the only teacher without a volunteer assistant. It works out great for both of us because she that I could learn Spanish from her while she learns English from me. I asked if it was necessary for me to speak with the principal, and she made it seem like she was the one in charge and it wasn´t necessary. I guess we´ll wait to see what happens on Monday.

Saturday, Sean and I decided to go to Otavalo. It is a town about two hours away from Quito, with a big market on the weekends. The bus ride there was great; the scenery phenomenal. I spent way too much money. I found a big tapestry that I really fell in love with. The background is hot pink, and the colors really burst out of it. Anyway, the women wanted $65 for it, because it was probably the biggest tapestry they had. I really didn´t want to pay more than $35 for it, but I haggled them down to $40. I think it´s still a deal, as the thing will be hanging on one of my walls someday as a great reminder of this trip. I also bought a few other things, and I could´ve bought more if I hadn´t spent all my money first. I tried a bite of cuy at lunch, which is fried guinea pig. It was so incredible sad and I´ll never do it again. I was fine until I saw that I was holding onto a little claw foot. Oh man, that was a terrible feeling. I also had a giant tilapia fish staring at me from my plate, which I was entirely okay with. It´s weird what we become desensitized to, with food.

While in Otavalo, Sean and I saw the President of Ecuador! I don´t know what he was doing there, but we were only, maybe, two car lengths away from him. That was a big surprise and there was a mixed reaction from the crowd. Elections are being held later this month to choose the people that will be in charge of changing the constitution. There´s propaganda everywhere for the candidates. Every candidate gets to choose a number and so you see ¨vote 25¨or whatever stickers everywhere.

Today, the owner of our hostel took Sean, myself, our British friend and her friend (one of our neighbors) out to lunch for Sean´s birthday. We didn´t even tell her that his birthday is coming up (Sept, 11th), she just remembered from when she took down our passport info the first day we arrived! I wasn´t expecting her to take us out to such a nice place! There was a band there playing Ecuadorian music, and there was a huge buffet with great food. Sean, myself and Chris stuffed ourselves until we felt like we were going to explode. It was like we hadn´t eaten anything for weeks! What a sight. We were so grateful and we had to greatest time.