Journal Contest Entry

As promised, here is my entry to my volunteer organization´s journaling contest. I´ll try to include one more normal post sometime next week before I take off for home. Can´t wait!

The Come-and-Go Boys

Nowhere is it written in stone, but the tacit rule is that every bus employs two men. The first, by the very nature of the machine, is the driver. The second, as must be determined by the terrifically limited range of his vocabulary, is almost invariably a younger male whom I call the come-and-go boy. He’s the one yelling at me now. Rather, he’s yelling in my general direction, casting his incessant barrage of commands down this dusty city road, irrigated in a seemingly synthetic moonlight from the line of orange streetlamps stretching away from me—¡Venga, venga, Salinas, venga! If this man were a gun, than this word would be his limitless source of ammunition.
Santiago ahead of me, I sidle past the man and step onto the bus. I might claim McDonald’s had some inspiration in the exterior paintjob—those overly-joyous shades of red and yellow only candy factories are willing to achieve—if I wasn’t aware the empire’s closest satellite was nearly two hours to the east in Guayaquil, and, here on the peninsula, ceviche made faster food than any hamburger joint.
The wide-eyed stares that await me on the bus make me believe I’ve discovered something I shouldn’t have. For the men, I count to two before their gazes turn away. This must be the time required to categorize me a gringo, and thusly remove me from scrutiny. The women’s eyes, however, remain only so long to make me self-conscious. I’m suddenly glad I’m not a blond; this makes it much worse, I’ve heard. All the seats are full, so Santiago invites me to sit on the raised outcropping that isolates the driver from the aisle.
“That’s not the only difference between the costeños and the Sierrans,” Santiago starts up again. “Have you tried verde yet?”
Verde is an immature variety of banana, which is—unexpectedly enough—amazingly versatile. I list all the verde-containing foods I’ve had since arriving just yesterday.
“Don’t worry. There are lots of other foods they make with it.”
The come-and-go boy hustles an elderly man down the aisle. The man wheels around and reaches for the bar above his head that I will surely crack my head against upon exiting.
For every come-and-go boy I’ve come across, there are only two speeds at which he operates: slow and hyper-speed. Determining which of the two is more advantageous is a brainless calculation: empty seats must be filled. But, since this responsibility largely lies outside a come-and-go boy’s area of expertise and relies instead upon the consumer, while the bus fills is the come-and-go boy’s time of relative rest. The stunning reversal comes when all available seats are occupied, at which point a burning immediacy of life is impressed upon him. The come-and-go boy’s influence is translated upon the driver, who is always as emotionally expressive as a tortoise even as new time records are established in the sprint from here to the UPSE.
Seeing that we’ve exceeded capacity is enough to flip the come-and-go boy’s command. The bus’ inner workings scream into motion beneath his voice—¡Vaya, vaya! Santiago’s voice struggles to find its place between the temperamental beat of the engine and the reggaeton pumping over us. “People here are much different than people elsewhere in the country.”
“How’s that?”
“They’ll ask you anything—politics, religion, sex.”
Santiago was the only student to arrive on my first day of class today. My director assured me first days were sometimes like that. Making the most of the situation, Santiago and I have been talking for the last two hours and, even though there are a million more experiences we could exchange, we’re both exhausted and the cordiality between us is becoming strained. To see the desert-like landscape streaking by in the background, and Santiago blink hard enough to crush a mosquito in the fore, turns the world into a stark contrast between opposites.
The come-and-go boy hangs recklessly out the door as the bus jerks to a stop just beyond a white bridge spanning the road. Once the bus slows to the pace of a fast run, the come-and-go boy releases his grip and stomps in long strides alongside the braking bus. His command switches again like snapping a fresh clip into a pistol—¡Venga, venga! Almost half of the passengers on the bus trade positions with the crowd milling about beneath us.The engines rev and I’m stupid enough to believe we’ve accidentally left the come-and-go boy behind when I hear a metallic compression at the base of the stairs. Even the come-and-go boy’s intelligence is all-or-nothing as he goes mute in the process of collecting the passengers’ quarter fare. How did he memorize who paid and who didn’t when he was hanging in the wind like a dog’s tongue?