TEFL in Ecuador

PART I

My friends have stopped calling me as much as they used to because they know I will be leaving soon.

“It’s hard for me to see you when I know you are going to be leaving so soon. I don’t like to think about it, because you have been very good for me and I feel that maybe when you leave, I will have lost a friend.”

It seems to take Jesi all the courage she can muster just to do all these mundane things with me. But I keep finding ways to be with her. Perhaps it’s because she always leaves me feeling depressed, which is the easiest way for me to feel human.
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“I wouldn’t mind getting out of Riobamba for a while.”

Whenever my companiero Josh says he wouldn’t mind something, that means he really wants it. “Sounds good to me.”

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It is morning in the coastal town of Salinas, Ecuador, but we have no sense of time, banging our palms, fists, on the metal door of the second-floor apartment, calling the phone for the fourth time or so, listening to it ring inside. We are standing on the ledge, literally and figuratively, like purgatory, like waiting at a stop light in the middle of nowhere.

The party kept us up all night, and one of us has a bad case of chuchaki, or hangover. It is he who raps on the door loudest, with his angry female knock. Finally, from inside, the little one, “la fuerte”, opens the door and wordlessly clambers back to bed.

The three of us say nothing, collect our things, say goodbye to the host, and return to saying nothing as we walk to the bus station. The warm sun on our backs, the golden sunrise and the fresh sea air add to the somnolence, dull our irritation.

I can think of nothing but how strange it is that I would be here, making a game of dodging the bottle caps stamped into the dirt road, the only gringo, the only heterosexual male, in the aftermath of an Ecuadorian gay party, walking down a dirt road to who knows where.
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So I’ve had an Ecuadorian girlfriend for almost three months now. My little pequeñita. She is like a bloodhound puppy, charitable and loyal.
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Unfortunately, my first mugging story didn’t turn out to be as cool as I had hoped. Even still, I feel unsure how to categorize this experience.

It was a bright sunny day like any other, and I was on the walk back home from work on the busy road from Riobamba to Guano. Not far from the university, I notice a tall skinny man in a leather jacket notice me, turn around and stand in my path 20 feet ahead of me with one hand concealed in his jacket pocket. It is obvious to me this individual intends to have an exchange with me, at the very least a few words. However, for whatever reason, I cannot seem to categorize this situation as a threat in my catalogue of possible outcomes. Maybe it is the big, glazed eyes that seem to be unable to follow my movements, the haphazard way he stands on the curb, or the fear I read in his eyes. I quickly judge that I can outrun, out-shove, and outthink this person, allowing for a reasonable margin of error. I half expect him to hand me a pamphlet.
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“Only painted,” is the term most often used to describe my bicycle. I have had this bicycle for over a month, and if you are wondering why you haven’t heard more about it, it is because I have not gotten much use out of it. It has aided me in no more than two, non-sequential one-way trips to the university.
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It is Sunday, which means it is time to go to “the bulls,” and in preparation, many of the townspeople have become quite “borracho,” or drunk. To some degree, for this kind of thing, alcohol is requisite. Anyone can participate, but most people are content to watch. “It’s funny, but dangerous,” Sandro says over my shoulder, checking to see that I am having a good time. “Dangerous, but a lot of fun.” Sandro is the desk clerk at the hotel I live in, and he has invited me from the capital of the province to see how the country people have fun. I am in a rickety middle-ages-style wooden construct surrounding a square arena of sparse grass and mud in the pueblo San Andres, in Ecuador. I am familiar with games country people will play when they get really bored, but this is completely new.
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I have never felt so much a member of this culture as now, cheering for the home soccer team at Riobamba’s Olympic Stadium. Black, brown, and white cease to be a dividing factor. The only colors that matter right now are blue and yellow, but this being my first soccer game in Riobamba, and being that I came alone, I decided to play it safe by arriving in neutral gang colors. I am wearing brown.
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Gringos don’t seem to mix well with locals here. They move around in herds or small groups. Their backpacks all look the same, their light hair pokes through the ceiling of the crowd like flashing red signals, and their body hair is clearly visible on the fair skin over their skinny, bare calves. Often, there is a pair of them at the internet café, a group sitting together around the table at San Valentin Café, or a raucous herd in the discothèques dancing very conspicuously around a table with a bottle of rum or vodka in the center. I look at them as complete foreigners, and they look at me the same, but I’m not exactly native either.
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The fact that my friend Yesi is such a poor representation of her own people may be why I allow myself to hang around her. Being with her is like being a part of some comically mismatched duo. My skin is darker than hers, I am infinitely more passionate, more romantic, much more relaxed, and in other words more of everything she should be as a Latin woman. This is what is going through my head while I sit at the kitchen table of her friend’s house, bored out of my mind, listening to them whine and babble about relationships, staring at her eyelashes thinking about how much they bother me.
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