A Day in the Life of the Gringa from Tabuga

‘Ahhhhhhhhh’ I scream out loud. It’s 6:30am, it’s a Monday morning and I swear there is a chicken in my room. The dim morning light shins artistically through the spaces between the boards that make my walls. There is no chicken, well not in the room. Just underneath. You can see them if you look through the cracks between the floorboards. Another deep breasted howl from the compensating- for- something male rooster brings me back to my reality, away from the dream I was having about using a washing machine and dryer. ‘Sizzle, Sizzle, pop, pop’. I wake up to it every morning. If the rooster doesn’t do it first, the hot oil frying the plantains does it. Plantains have absolutely no nutritional value but make up 40% of the diets of my fellow Tabugans, oil probably 5%. I don’t really have anything to do at 6:30 in the morning so I lay in my bed. I listen to the morning sounds of my family. My oldest brother has just left for work and my younger brother doesn’t want to go to school. My mom is making him practice reading before school today because he has a test. He’s six; he can’t read, hardly knows his numbers and doesn’t know his colors. My mom spanks him hard, he begins to cry and my teeth cringe. He repeats ‘po, pa, pu, pe, pi’ between his innocent sobs. It used to make tears swell in my eyes... but you get used to these things. The sizzling oil continues.

I get out of bed and put on my bathroom flip fops. They don’t match. The left one is pink and plastic; the right one has a fabric rainbow strap. I walk out back to the bathroom. Every morning I feel lucky to have this toilet. There is a small hole in the door I look through while I relieve myself; it looks under the house, at the chickens. I flush, grateful not to have to flush with a bucket of water like at the majority of people’s homes... it just makes such a splash. I feel the need to exercise. I lace up my beautiful new Saconys that my real mom sent me. I walk to the highway. It’s only 100 meters away from the house but the tar manicured road makes it feel like a different world. I start to run. I hate running. I start to cough. I have had a cough for over three months. First they said I had pneumonia, I took antibiotics. Then they said I had allergies, I’ve never had allergies but I’ll try anything. The medicine didn’t work because I have never actually had allergies. The next step was a cough suppressant with codeine. As much as I enjoy painkillers (after 5 knee surgeries) the codeine just made me tired and I still have the cough.

At minute 5 I slow down as I pass the dry tropical forest reserve I work at. We are currently building an environmental interpretation center. It’s going to be beautiful. The building is oval and the roof is a traditional thatched roof. My Tabuga Dad helped make it. ‘honk, honk’ a bus passes me and the black fumes fill my lungs, I cough and tears fill my eyes. The helper who collects money and helps people get on and off the bus hangs out the window whistling and waving at me. I look at my beautiful blue and white sneakers, just keep running, I hate running. I am coming up on the Hacienda of Lalo Loor. He is the owner of the land the reserve is on. He is brilliant, kind and progressive. I sigh as I pass his yogurt stand. Without him life wouldn’t be the same, not for me or anyone in Tabuga. He worked hard to bring the town water and continues to work with the municipal government to better the lives of the poor. The feeling of being grateful boasts me to a higher speed. I pass a huge concrete complex they’re building along the highway. It’s ugly and I hate it. I run pass the entrance to Camerones, another small town lodged 3km down a dirt road in the dry tropical forest. I love it there and am currently soliciting for a Peace Corps Volunteer to go there. Whoever ends up there will be really lucky, the life is hard but the people are beautiful and kind and the land breathes tranquil there. As I cross a small bridge a red truck pulls up beside me. I recognize these two men but don’t really know them. ‘Andreita, what are you doing?’ they ask in surprise checking me up and down. ‘Just running’ I respond and they look at me with undressing eyes and in unison chant a coastal ‘see you later’. To the right is the Hacienda of Lalo’s nephew. It’s a massive farm of beans, corn and cabbage. The workers stop to watch me run past. I know many of them and wave in their general direction. I get to the big red door. Everyone knows the big red door. I stop and stretch, from here I can see the ocean. The Hacienda owner has cabins on the beach. It’s beautiful but I heard a rumor that he is involved in human trafficking.

I decide to take it a step further today. I turn and run under the big red door towards the ocean. There are cows in the path and I have to cautiously walk by them, afraid to scare them and scatter them. Cows may be lazy but they are big animals and scare easy. I get to the beach. I take off my shirt and shoes and start to run down the beach. It’s hard to run on the beach. I give up and walk. No one else is on the beach, it’s just mine. I come across a beautiful shell. It’s the color of Ali P’s prom dress, a deep coral color that looks so nice on olive skin but would make someone like me just look red. I put it in my sports bra and make a mental note to ask the Artesian shop to put a hole in it for me.

I laugh to myself. I really do because I realize that the constant commentary in my head is really funny and I should try to remember it to write it in an email. I really wish someone had invented a brain recording device. It would make sharing my stories a lot easier and they would be a lot funnier. I argue with myself if my friends and family will think I am a nut but then I decide I should share my humorous thoughts with the people who care about me. An internal conversation about whether or not I should share my internal conversations. I think of the movie Sin City and my thoughts change to the tone of voice of the main character that is really ugly and his voice-overs play constantly throughout the movie. Often my life here feels like a movie, the soundtrack constantly changing between latin music, Sarah McLaughlin and the random mix of my iPod. Thanks to my little brother I don’t know half of the music on my iPod which makes it seem like I am learning new music every time it is on random shuffle.

I have been gone for awhile now. My Tabuga mom will be worried about me. I walk into the water and awkwardly trip where there is a dip in the sandbar. Be careful I tell myself, mom would be crazy if she knew you were swimming in the ocean in the middle of no where by yourself. I laugh because this is a generic ‘mom’. All of my mom’s, including Tootie (she is my second mom from my childhood) would be worried about me frolicking around the ocean in the morning alone. Don’t worry moms, I made it safely home to share with you that your advice is always with me and I know you all worry so I am careful, almost always, careful.
I turn to walk back, I like the walk back, it’s peaceful between the passing of the buses and cars. I stop at Lalo’s on the way to chat and get some free fresh delicious yogurt. I get back to my room, do a little yoga, some sit-ups and stretch it out.

The cold water of the shower rushes over my face. I am grateful to have a showerhead. It’s so much nicer than a bucket shower where you are continuously pouring buckets of water over your head and never really get the shampoo out of your hair. In my towel I pull some fresh bananas off the branch stumps my dad brought from their land. I put on my Hello Kitty night gown and make some eggs. I like to set up my table as if I am eating a formal meal. I have my jar of JIF ready to eat with my banana and my cup of tea is accompanied by a matching saucer and small spoon. I take out a papaya that’s bigger than my head. My neighbors gave it to me from their tree in their front yard. I love living in a world where fresh fruits are in abundance and free. I take out the jug of fresh passion fruit juice I made the night before. I put a Julieta Venegas CD on. I eat my breakfast and sing along.

I am reading A Clockwork Orange and waiting for the bus. On Monday’s and Thursday’s I go to Jama to teach environmental education classes at a private school there. They are learning about Eco-Tourism and need an understanding of humans and the environment. I am dressed in my polyester teachers’ uniform. On Mondays all the kids wear these hideous plaid uniforms. The yellow shirt I am wearing matches the yellow in the plaid of their skirts. I check my email quickly and respond to the Peace Corps emails. I am part of a committee that’s just held a teenage girl leadership camp. It was by far the most beautiful experience I have had here in Ecuador. We had 15 girls from all over Ecuador come together to learn about small business, leadership, sex ed, self esteem and more. We had a closing ceremony and everyone cried. A group of the girls wrote a song about us as a group and us volunteers as leaders and role models. My fellow volunteer and good friend here, Rachel, and I made pink cups that had the girl’s names on them and the name of the camp with candy and quotes and everything. Neither of us are sorority girls but we were sure acting like it. This is also exemplified in the picture to the left where Rachel and I are demonstrating how to use condoms by putting one on a banana, I can imagine soroity girls doing something like that, right? The camp is called camp ALMA. ALMA is an acronym for things like leadership etc but actually means soul in Spanish. There is no religious affiliation but all of us volunteers bought shirts of the place we had the event because it was this Baptist camp facility. It was gorgeous and an amazing facility built completely by Baptist volunteers. A completely non-religious group holds a Soul Camp at an EXTREMELY religious facility and wears around Baptist t-shirts but trust us we are not religious… okay so that commentary was way funnier just in my head. I check my voicemails. Some messages from my volunteer friends and a few from random Ecuadorian admirers.

I am pretty over teaching my classes. The Ecuadorian educational system is flat out stupid. There is no room for teacher creativity which in turns leads to no need for the students to be creative or think outside of the box (Carmen, that’s for you). The teachers dictate passages from books, the kids copy it quickly and later rewrite it in a clean notebook and then later, regurgitate the same information on the tests. I am trying to help my students branch out a little but at the same time I have to follow the system or otherwise they won’t learn because they aren’t accustomed to learning in fun ways. I kick Pedro out of class, Pedro is 16 but seems a lot older. At a dance once he was really messed up. I thought he was just drunk. It turns out he had also smoked Polvo. Polvo means powder and refers to a crack powder that is popular in the poor parts Ecuador. I live in the poorest province in Ecuador with the highest illiteracy rate too. Polvo ruins people and in turn, their lives.

After class I catch a bus back to Tabuga. In the afternoons I teach in Tabuga. I teach environmental education once a week and English the other days. I stop by my house and hope that my mom will offer me lunch. I already ran out of money from traveling before that leadership camp. A bunch of volunteers went to Cuenca for Halloween so in addition to this I took advantage of needing to travel 14 hours to get there to pass by some other volunteer’s sites. Cuenca is a beautiful city that feels like Europe. A huge incredible cathedral marks the center of town; there are a lot of cute boutiques, cafes and art. There are parks and a clean river. When I got there I was convinced I had somehow been drugged and dropped off in Europe. But, let’s get back to Tabuga, the dirty, poor town I call home.

My mom feeds me a bowl of soup and a plate of rice. I pile the rice in the soup. My family eats pretty well compared to the rest of Tabuga and I have never gotten sick from there food. To top it off my mom has made a banana bread, I am teaching her how to make sweets and so far she can do the banana bread and the upside down pineapple cake. We’re currently working on peanut butter cookies.

I go to my class in Tabuga. There is no actual highschool building in Tabuga so we hold our classes in the afternoons in the elementary school. It is the only building in Tabuga, well actually, there kind of is a church, just kind of.

After classes I make my rounds around this side of town. I visit with Lorena and her family. Lorena is an overweight woman who sometimes makes me feel like I am going to throw up. But, she is also my best female friend in town. Today she is wearing a night gown with huge holes in it and mixing something together in a bowl that is resting on her gut. She adds more sugar and keeps stirring and tries to give me a bite. He daughter Gabby comes by and dips her finger deep in the mixture and sucks on it while she talks to me. The mom does the same. I see a bit of spit fly into the mixing bowl. She’s making plantain balls, explains the daughter Gabby really excitedly. This daughter is also really overweight. Everyone in town calls her la gorda, or the fatty. When I first got here this type of name-calling made me furious and often, self conscious. I have learned that there is an incredible innocence in what we in the US would consider name calling. Here what they observe they say. No one is trying to tell you to change what they observe or even what they observe is bad, it’s just an observation. Unfortunately for most young white girls (okay so perhaps I am a woman but I still feel like a child a lot) telling them that they are fattening up or that they have a new zit can make us a little self conscious. You will all have to remember this and excuse me when I come back in 2009 and call someone the little dark one, I am not being racist, I am just observing without any PC limitations that we are all accustomed to in the US.

This evening is especially sad. I stop by my Grandma’s house. She isn’t actually the grandma of my Tabuga family but she is the oldest woman in town and I spend a lot of time visiting her. I think she’s 85, she had 13 kids and has a handful of beautiful grandchildren. She is a beautiful old woman and cares for anyone who needs it. I often think the people here think I need this caring. I have my own room which here translates to living ‘alone’ in a world where everyone shares a bed with at least two other people. So, the people look out for me; feed me disgusting poorly prepared food and lots of bolos. Bolos are frozen milk with nutmeg and raisins or just water mixed with sugar and a little juice. They make them in the home and put the mixture in little condom shaped bags and freeze them. To eat them you bite of the plastic corner and suck. Bolos are probably 33% of the reason for the abundance of black teeth in the kids. Lollipops and lack of dental hygiene make up the other 66%. Okay, for the sad part. Brilla, a little girl in town is currently living with the cousin of her mother. Her mom is working somewhere else, her dad has long since vanished and her two older sisters are living with her grandma. We can’t figure out why they didn’t take the little 3 year old to go with the grandma. She runs over to me with wide arms yelling ‘Tia, Tia’, which is aunt. I feel special for a second and scoop the girl up into my arms, she calls everyone ‘tia’, she is starving for affection but I still feel special because I give her affection. She is a beautiful little girl but right now has dry buggers under her nose, a big scrape on her forehead and the grossest thing I have seen here yet, a hole in her leg - 1.5 cm diameter and 1 cm deep. The skin around the hole is hard and dry. I ask her if it hurts and she says yes. I bring her over to my grandma and we clean it out and put a disinfectant cream on it. Her little leg twitches with pain but she doesn’t cry. She has learned not to cry. I ask her about her sisters and her mom and dad, she responds to all of them ‘se fue’ or he went, she went. I ask her about her scrape on her forehead, she says she fell. I ask her about living with Pepe and she says it’s okay. I ask if he beats her. She responds ‘he doesn’t hit me’ and then points at the soccer field where a bunch of men are playing and continues ‘never hit women, bad men hit women’. This girl is 3, she used to get beat, no one wants to take care of her but she knows what is right and she knows that beating women is wrong. She says ‘hug me auntie’ and I do and part of me never wants to let go. I make a mental note to share this part of my life with my family and friends. My internal commentary reminds me of how my mom is with beautiful troubled children. I laugh when I imagine my dad’s reaction when my mom shows up with a 3 year old Spanish speaking black child. I tickle my little Brilla until tears of laughter fill her eyes. ‘Hug me again auntie’ she shrieks and I do. She walks with me a little ways towards my house and I tell her to go back to Pepe. She runs and she is laughing and smile and I admire her 3 year old strength.

I get back to my house and my little brother runs to me with big open arms, ‘nana’ he yells and I scoop him up. This is my favorite part of day, my mom is looking out the window acknowledging I have returned home, my little brother is in my arms and I finally can rest. I put my bag in my room and go to hang out with the family. They are watching a Jon Claude Van Dam movie. There is a knock at the door. 4 people need some medical care tonight. My dad is like the medicine man of our town. He puts shoulders back in place, rubs out deep muscle cramps and even straightens broken bones. He has no medical expertise considering he didn’t even finish elementary school but he understands the human body and he is kind and nurturing and extremely well respected. Since I have moved here I help. My dad takes his cousin and some menthol cream and starts to rub out the swelling in the guy’s knee. People believe in menthol like we believe in ibuprofen. I take the little kid with the sprained and scraped ankle. I have l learned from my dad how to rub out the swelling and feel for little bone breaks. This kid is tough, he doesn’t cry. After I clean out the little wound, I put some antibiotic cream on it and give the kid a Band-Aid. Band-Aids are exciting here. The movie has been changed to that one about Will Ferrell and the little kids soccer team. The patients stay and watch a bit. The tranquil way of living here is admirable, people aren’t in a hurry, people are patient and people are so easily entertaining. I laugh out loud at Will Ferrell’s crazy antics and everyone else does too. The movie is in English with Spanish subtitles and the majority of them can’t read but they can tell Will Ferrell is funny.

After eating a small fish with more bones than meat in it and a mountain of rice I excuse myself to my room. I pick up A Clockwork Orange and enter this other world. I wonder if Anthony Burgess knew Spanish because a lot of his skat slang talk resembles Spanish words. He even blatantly calls the moon the luna which is Spanish for moon. I finish the book. I have read a lot of books since I have been here. I love my life here, I am extremely happy and even the challenges are enlightening but I will never underestimate the power of books to bring me to another world. A world where the problems aren’t real and aren’t my own and I can’t help them.
‘Dulces Sueños’ my little brother says to me through the wall as I hear him walk up stairs. ‘Sweet dreams’ I repeat back, using my favorite childhood phrase in my new language.