Peter and the Chancho Express

I’m quite positive I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s something worth repeating: One of the absolutely greatest parts about Ecuador is the food. Variety is a matter separate from taste, but this country has them both. A plate loaded with chancho (pork) from Cuenca immediately entered the top five things I’ve eaten since coming here. (I know how good food is by how well it’s advertised in Salinas. Because a bunch of the restaurants lining the main road into the city all proclaim Cuencan-style food, I know there’s got to be something to it.) I ate my chancho on the lawn of a wide median between a major road separating east and westbound traffic, which was—fortunately—closed for the festivals and packed with Ecuadorian revelers instead of cars and interprovincial buses.
A single plate of food cost me two dollars. An indigenous woman was stationed beneath a tent, a very cooked, very shiny golden brown pig lay motionless between us, exuding an odor that was at first offensive, but became increasingly delicious as I stood in it. I “waited in line,” which was really more like a shouting contest against my Ecuadorian neighbors, until I was able to weasel my way into a position where the woman controlling the pig meat distribution could no longer hope to see forward without seeing a part of my chest. This was the position from I told her I wanted two plates, por favor, and no skimping on the hardened piece of cooked skin you could have heard her cracking with her fingers fifty feet away and through a crowd (this turned out to be the only part of the dish I couldn’t stomach).
First, the indigenous woman packed down a layer of mote, which is a species of corn with huge white kernels (I simply call it super-corn). She used her bare hands to rip off a hunk of the pig’s back, and threw this deliciousness into a deep layer of oil in a small pan to heat it up. When it was hot, she stacked the shredded meat on top of the mote. Two yapingachos—basically, you pack mashed potatoes into the form of a hamburger and deep-fry the potato patty—were placed along the perimeter of either plate. Then strips of carrots, lettuce and red onion were placed on top like a spoonful of whipped cream. I carried the two plates to our dirty little table where Rob and Josh were patiently waiting. After loading mine with ají, better than hot sauce but the same general idea, it was time to dig in. What a terrific caloric investment.
The main draw to Cuenca two weekends ago was to check out its festivals. I’d heard the Cuencan Indepedence Day (from the Spanish, of course) meant good times, and good times are always worth checking out at least once. What meant more was that nearly twenty of my fellow volunteers were all planning on arriving in the mountainous city at some point throughout the weekend, and I thought it’d be nice to see them again after a month apart since the end of orientation in Quito. Really, these people are the closest people I have to a physical family during my stay south of the equator (in the super-south).
Half of the battle was getting there. I had off from school on Friday due to a national holiday, Day of the Dead, so I’d planned an early start to Cuenca with all intentions of beating the crowds. A very early start. The bus company that takes me to Guayaquil begins running buses at 4:00 A.M. (they advertise they begin at 3:00 A.M., but I’m not willing to trust that sign), but I didn’t get to bed until midnight, so was up at 4:00 and on my way by about 5:00. That put me into Guayaquil by 7:00 and—get this—on my way to Cuenca at noon! What? Yeah, five hours in the Guayaquileño bus stop.
Why the disjunct? Easy. Because it’s Ecuador!
Don’t begin to think that I was alone. Immediately after getting off the bus to Guayaquil, I got into a long line to buy two bus tickets to Cuenca. I called up Sarah, one of the volunteers living and working in the big city, and told her to get her butt up and down to the bus stop, I’d have the tickets by the time she’d arrive. The tickets had printed that our bus was leaving at 10:30. I asked a man, who Sarah and I have named Oscar for reasons I’ll explain in a little while, who’d been waiting in line in front of me, if that time was serious. He assured me that it wasn’t. Certainly we wouldn’t have to wait three hours for a bus to Cuenca. Oscar was right, of course. 10:30 was the incorrect departure time. Oh, how wrong I was to think that our bus would be arriving before then.
So the waiting began. Sarah and I had tucked ourselves in amongst the massive crowd waiting for the plethora of buses that went to God-knows-where, Ecuador. A small girl was seated on a suitcase a short distance from me, aggressively petting a complacent white bunny with healthy pink eyes. At first, I was impatient. After waiting an hour and a half, my mind began to race and I started wishing the bus would come more and more. We hung near Oscar. He had the same ticket as us and seemed to know what the hell was going on, even as a competing member in a scene of commotion. A couple of hours in, Oscar approached the backdoor of the ticket booth where I’d purchased our tickets and began screaming in Spanish at the attendants inside. He was not happy his bus wasn’t showing up. Oscar is pleasantly named after that adored green puppet, living in a highly mobile trashcan anywhere on Sesame Street.
Sarah and I talked about any and everything to pass the time. The crowds thickened. No buses headed to Cuenca were appearing anywhere down the line. Mark was getting frustrated. Mark’s brain was beginning to hurt him.
But, after a certain point, the frustration simply vanished. I put myself at the mercy of this country and just thought, if I wait all day in this bus station and the bus never arrives, at least I’ll have another story to tell. Noon came quickly after that. Passing life well requires a well-chosen frame of mind.
A man in a purple shirt announced our bus number and Sarah and I cheered until we realized how obnoxious we were. He began shouting out names as a sort of role call. I saw him mouthing one name written on the clipboard he held. This was him practicing the German name Kaeppler. It came out more like Kibble. I couldn’t have been happier. I held my ticket high in the air and smiled like the dope that I am. Sarah and I were two shamelessly happy gringos in a wily Ecuadorian sea. Somewhere on an island, I saw a fellow gringo. She had bent her face into an expression of utter annoyance. I considered approaching her and confidently telling her in English, “You’d do much better to chill out and buy a newspaper,” but something written in her expression told me she needed to learn this little lesson on her own.
Standing with these fellow passengers who had similarly possessed the magic tickets, I realized then why we weren’t seeing any buses headed to Cuenca. The man in the purple shirt began to lead us out of the bus terminal. Oscar was ahead of us and I continually told Sarah, “Don’t let him out of your site! Whatever you do, keep Oscar in clear view.” Amidst the throngs of people banked against the platform, my hand slid into my pocket and pinched the ticket. I wouldn’t dare lose it now! The man in the purple shirt took us to the main highway adjacent to the bus terminal where we waited a short while for our bright pink Super Taxi Cuenca bus to pull up. Oscar nodded to us gravely after the five-hour super-wait, we hopped on the bus, and four hours later, we arrived in Cuenca. Getting from the bus terminal there to our friends’ home where we were staying the weekend felt like a real letdown compared to what we’d been through earlier in the day. A primal illusion suggested I’d have I’d have pin a jungle creature to earn our rights to a cab ride.
The success of Sarah and my journey was emphasized when we appeared in the doorway of the Colombian restaurant where all of the volunteers were getting dinner. We ordered a gigantic plate of food, guacamole and what we thought was two regionally flavored drinks. They turned out to be two shots of caña, a potent liquor distilled from sugarcane. Like I said, good times.
Other than all the catching up and story-swapping I did in Cuenca, I spent this last weekend in Puerto Viejo, a smaller city located five hours by bus up the coast. The city itself, however, is about half an hour inland, and it’s damn hot. I went there to visit BobbiLe, who I haven’t seen since my weekend in Guayaquil two weeks ago. I guess Puerto Viejo isn’t the greatest place to go in Ecuador because the people there tend to be pretty rude. It’s not uncommon for someone to push you out of the way without so much as saying excuse me, in which case it’s acceptable to simply push them right back (not a practice I’m willing to try myself). For my part, I didn’t really see this rude side of the people there, but that didn’t stop us from trying to sum the city up with an analogy. BobbiLe, Josh and I decided that Puerto Viejo is like that weird friend you have that you don’t really like to admit that you like. He’s kind of dirty and really quite smelly and you don’t like the way he acts in public because he’s too forthcoming and a little obscene; but, despite an appearance’s best attempt, he’s a good guy at heart and there’s a certain charm about him that keeps you coming back, if only infrequently.
The coolest part about Puerto Viejo was BobbiLe’s host family. Upon entering their home on Saturday afternoon, I was greeted by BobbiLe’s host mother and a room filled with a bunch of giggling teenage girls, two of which were BobbiLe’s host sisters. They were making cakes for a school fundraiser scheduled for Sunday. Furthermore, they agreed the gringo that had just walked through the door was kind of cute, or at least worth laughing at (I’d bet on the later). Later on, I met Joselito, riding around his brakeless tricycle outside. This is BobbiLe’s three-year-old host brother. He went from an emotional high on Saturday when Josh, the other Puerto Viejo volunteer from our group (the same one who ate chancho with me the Saturday before), showed him the Mentos in a 2-Liter bottle of Diet Coke trick, to an emotional low on Sunday when I left and he started crying. Joselito really, really likes having other males around to play with. His father is a lawyer who deals with the type of guys who are caught with enough bricks of cocaine or marijuana to construct a small home, and you can imagine it’s a somewhat time consuming profession. Joselo was along long enough to eat a meal with me on Saturday night, which was just enough time for him to describe to me that food from the Manabi province, land lying along the coast, is the best food in Ecuador. His face was as hard as a rock when he told me this, and I didn’t have the guts to tell him my family from the Sierra would argue otherwise. This was Joselo’s way of explaining to my why, in Salinas, besides the Cuencan-style barbeque restaurants, all the other ones proclaim comida Manabita (Manabi-style cuisine). I’ll go to great lengths to describe all the wonderful foods made of verde (green bananas) in another post. The post will be extensive.
Highlights from Puerto Viejo included catching an inning of the national women’s sub-20-years-old softball championship in a stadium near BobbiLe’s house—Ecuador versus Brazil. Brazil was crushing them. What made it that much worse was that the Brazilian team had about a million different cheers, and they were allowed to stand right next to the actual field, so it was as if they were mocking you—in Portuguese—while they hit shot after shot into deep right field. As a Brazilian player, even if you’re sitting the bench, you’re as much of a player as the girls on the field. With no rules against this sort of excess, I shudder to think what a man like Terrell Owens would invent in a country like this.
Another highlight was going to the Catholic school’s fundraiser on Sunday. I bought some of the cake that BobbiLe’s host sisters and their friends had been making from the day before as well as a mandingo. A mandingo is a hotdog on steroids. It had three different sauces on it and so much other crap—none of which I have very little idea about the actual ingredients—that I don’t even want to try to explain it. Suffice to say it’s delicious. The fundraiser also involved an obstacle course on the school’s basketball court. Things became fairly amusing when four of the schoolgirls’ fathers were asked to complete the course. They’re all a bunch of cheaters. All in all, I felt like more of a draw than most of the booths set up to raise money for the school. I don’t think a lot of gringos come through Puerto Viejo.
The last highlight was Pila. Pila is a small town about twenty minutes outside of Puerto Viejo that I’d come through on the way there. I’m not willing to say what I saw there out of fear of ruining the Christmas surprise for three very lucky individuals, but let’s just say that it was worth going to Pila. It was two o’clock and the three of us hopped in a cab that dropped us off at the bus terminal (it’s a little strange, but all cab rides, no matter the distance, cost only a dollar in Puerto Viejo). We waited on one of the buses for forty-five minutes before it was full enough for the bus driver to decide it was worth taking off. Half an hour later and I had what I needed in hand.
The plan was to flag down a bus going back into Puerto Viejo so I could make it back to the peninsula where I live at a reasonable hour. We succeeded in getting one bus to stop, but had barely taken the road out of Pila when the bus driver’s attendant kicked us off the bus.
“There aren’t enough seats,” he said.
“It’s all right if we stand,” we responded.
He kept telling us we had to get off.
We kept asking why.
Eventually, the bus attendant won. Josh was furious. I was eating a tub of cookies I’d bought in Pila, which did a lot to diffuse any negative emotions I was experiencing at the time. Cookies will do that.
We walked back into town and bought a round of waters. We’d just sat down outside a little bodega, a kind of general store that are about as common here as the freckles on my arm (yes, I am looking at my arm) and had just started the debate of how next to proceed when the solution presented itself to us. Besides the owner of the bodega, a man was seated at the table beside us.
“That van parked there is going to Puerto Viejo,” he said.
“When?”
“Soon. We’re waiting for a woman coming on a bus from Guayaquil.”
“How much?”
“A dollar a person.”
I had to relearn that “soon” is an extremely loose term here in Ecuador. If I were to draw a timeline, “soon” would stretch from the absolute present to infinity. Soon means nothing. Right now means nothing. Action is all that matters.
We’d polished off our waters and the bodega owner was explaining to BobbiLe that, in his spare time, he’s an artesian. Meanwhile, I was trying to figure out how I was going to get home. I wasn’t concerned with catching a bus out of Puerto Viejo. I was concerned that once the bus out of Puerto Viejo arrived in Guayaquil there wouldn’t be a transfer bus that would take me home. In short, I had no idea how long the buses in Guayaquil ran to the peninsula. The bodega owner emerged out of a backroom with a small cylindrical machine and a coconut husk. He plugged the machine into an outlet and began to sand the husk off the coconut. I would find out sooner how to made a bead out of a coconut husk than I would find my way back to Puerto Viejo.
After three successive sandings and a fair amount of time observing this demonstration, I insisted to the bodega owner that we had to go. We’d just failed to flag down another passing bus when the man who’d offered us a ride finally returned. In this case, “soon” meant exactly when we’d refused to wait any longer; this will always serve as the best definition of the word.
Where had he gone? He’d run off to buy some calling time on his cell phone, which was necessary for him to discover that the woman we’d been waiting for from Guayaquil wasn’t coming after all. We hopped into the van and had returned to Puerto Viejo, loot in hand (including a free bracelet from the bodega owner/coco artesian), by 4:30.
After a quick farwell to BobbiLe’s host family and the sunken expression that would give way to a delicate flow of tears on Joselito’s behalf, I got on a bus at 5:00. I’d returned to Guayaquil by 8:45 and—yes! —I on my way back to the coast by 9:00 P.M. Even though I must have looked panicked approaching the ticket booth in Guayaquil, the bus station hadn’t the look of a place on the verge of closing for the night. A few of the ticket booths to some of the exotic locations throughout the country were closed, but, all in all, the place was still bustling with activity, however reduced in sheer volume. I was so glad to step up to my front door by around 11:00 Sunday night. By that point, I’m not sure if I was more relieved that I wasn’t going to have to call up Sarah or Shelby for a surprise slumber party, or if I was more relieved that I wasn’t going to be subjected to another American action film that will forever seem to me like the most fantastic waste of money known to man. Every bus in this country that travels more than twenty minutes between destinations (and some that do) is equipped with a single TV towards the front of the cabin, and the only movies that play over these screens are the ones that bomb out of theatres in less than a week back in the states. Yes, I’ve finally discovered where these movies are watched, even if we can’t call them popular outside of these missiles that shoot me between cities. Never—ever—see The Punisher unless you have another English speaker with you, someone with a sense of humor who appreciates the only-slightly-painful transitions between scenes as much as you do.
Onto more important matters, however. I mentioned at the very end of my last lengthy post that an English man, Peter, is living at the Casa Leon now. Peter is a way cool, super-polite dude, and I couldn’t be more glad that he’s here (and I won’t exaggerate this any more, because I know he’s going to read this at some point). My first impression of him went a little something like this:
I got a call on Thursday, November 1st sometime in the late afternoon.
(Imagine the British accent.) “Hello, Mark, I’m not exactly sure how to get to the house.”
I provided him with as descript instructions as I could.
Sure enough, within half an hour, someone was walking through the door. This was Pedro, my host cousin (Slightly confusing, I know, a Peter and a Pedro. Just remember, British and Ecuadorian, two very distinct nationalities for two very distinct people.) “Peter is here,” he said.
I walked onto the street and there he was, all smiles in the middle of the triangle of things he’d packed along. He’d brought a small piece of luggage with wheels, a midsize backpack and a surfboard. We exchanged greetings and I offered to take the black piece of luggage from his hand.
“Did you bring the surfboard from home?” I asked.
“No. I’ve just been through Montañita. I bought it off a guy this weekend.”
I showed him to his room. I joked about him barely having any luggage, but still finding a way to stow a surfboard onto a bus.
“How did you pack so little?” I asked.
“Oh, the backpack doesn’t contain my things either. You ever been kiteboarding, mate?”
I noticed then the backpack wasn’t exactly normal. It was covered in flashy designs and it was stitched together in an unusual way and there were bundles of string packed into mesh pockets on its exterior.
“So you bring a kite instead of the things you need to live?”
“Yeah, mate.”
So I haven’t been kiteboarding with Peter yet, but I’m sure we’ll make it out soon. It’s difficult to find a day when the winds are just right. It’s going to be sweet.
Peter’s been absolutely phenomenal since he’s arrived. He’s twenty-two as well, is extremely adventuresome and is one of the most considerate people I’ve ever met. We’re constantly laughing at the expressions either one of us uses: It’s a kind of game between us. He likes to use the word “proper” a lot (for example, “my plate of chancho was a proper meal”) and a day has yet to pass when he hasn’t called me “mate.” I prefer to stick to “dude” or “man,” which is half the fun, isn’t it?
Peter’s teaching schedule is more rigorous than mine, which is good for him because he’s actually getting paid to teach. Much of his time this week has been devoted to lesson planning, but we’re going to try to take a salsa lesson tomorrow (that reminds me, I need to make a phone call). He teaches two hours each night at the same technical school that I’m teaching at in addition to two other classes. Fortunately, he’s managed to free up his weekends, which means I’ll have a new traveling buddy from time to time. He speaks Spanish better than I do too, which is a definite plus considering that I’d first heard his Spanish was next to zero. It’s nice having Peter around because thinking in Spanish all the time (although it helps me improve) is quite exhausting, so it’s nice to have a break. Plus we get along really well. Between my college neurobiology professor, Tom and now Peter, I’m getting an absolutely stellar impression of Brits. Peter keeps assuring me what I’ve seen isn’t always the case, but, being the hopeless optimist that I am, I’m choosing to go on believing it’s an island full of friendly, courteous and engaging people until I’m given a reason to believe otherwise.
Other news. Kane, my program director, came out here on a site visit last week. Kane and Therese are our two in-country field directors, and it’s their jobs to travel all over the place this time of year to make sure that, after a month of living and working abroad, everything is going all right with all their fledging slightly bird-like volunteers. I was nervous for the site visit not because I have a lot of complaints about my site (I had, in fact, next to none), but because Kane was going to be observing me while I taught one of my classes. I wanted to impress him.
Of course, I’d worked myself up for no reason. With Kane in the room, my students were more quiet and well-behaved than I’ve ever seen them. Because most of my students are teenagers, I struggle with all of the things that teenagers try to get away with during class: falling asleep, texting their significant others, drawing on the desks and—worst of all—insisting on speaking in Spanish! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve breathed the word “English” into my students’ faces in the attempts to impress on them the importance of speaking the language they’re trying to learn (yes, I’ve tried the lecture strategy too, not to much avail). I’m going to start to enforce consequences for speaking Spanish beginning with the next module I’m teaching, which kicks off this Thursday. Kane’s presence, however, had some sort of transforming grace, and turned my students into the angel-like examples I once had in Quito. He laughed when I told him they’ve never acted like that before. (Kane is not an intimidating person, so I’m left wondering what he did that I haven’t been doing.) To be honest, I prefer the challenge of making my students pay attention to English. My students in Quito felt unreal to me. These kids on the coast are what I imagine most students in the public education system back in the states are like. Well, from what I’ve heard, I think my students are a bit more manageable than that.
The rest of the site visit went well. We actually had enough time to go surfing last Friday afternoon before Kane had to take off for Guayaquil to catch his flight. That was my second time at Punta Carneo (my surfing birthplace so to speak) and the first time I’ve ever used a short board. I prefer a short board to a long one. It’s so much easier to get around and duck under waves. After an hour and a half, Kane emerged out of the water with a sliced toe and a big bruise beside his shinbone. This was when he taught me the Spanish equivalent of to get one’s ass kicked, as used in the expression directed to our surfing instructors, “The ocean kicked my ass.” Thank you, Kane. Your teachings have already come in handy.
Emotionally, Mark is holding up well. I’m doing better now than I was a few weeks ago, which isn’t saying all that much because I wasn’t doing too poorly two weeks ago. I guess I just bring that up to say that I’ve been on an upward trend lately; it’s getting easier for me to be living in this country. I’m becoming increasingly more comfortable here.
I had a bit of excitement yesterday. Steadily, the peninsula has been seeing more and more sunshine. During Kane’s site visit, in fact, we saw the sun two days in a row, an occurrence I’d yet to see. Yesterday was exciting because I’d permitted in myself the false hope that temporada had begun.
I was sitting at my computer, typing up lesson plans, when I perceived some sort of change occurring about me. Sure enough, when I turned around, the yellow light bathing the concrete walkway outside my door informed me that the sun had come out. I went outside and turned my head towards heaven. Not a cloud was in the sky and the light was beating down on my like an epiphany. I jogged into the house and hunted down Elsi.
“Is this it? Is this the beginning of temporada?” I asked in as many words.
She said yes.
I hustled through the remainder of my lesson planning and celebrated by going for a run into Salinas. It was hot. It was wonderful. The sun stayed out for the rest of the day. I became convinced that was it, that was the beginning of the Ecuadorian coast’s seasonal eternity of sunshine.
I was wrong. It’s cloudy today. And not the type of cloudy where you can look at the sky and will it to break through by sometime early this afternoon. It’s hopelessly cloudy, those smoky types of clouds that fill up the sky in layer upon layer upon layer, all varying shades of gray, seeping past one another out of hidden reservoirs in the some whatever-sphere.
Oh well. This affords me the joy of witnessing the dawning of la temporada another day. The middle of November is the earliest it can come; the latest is the beginning of December. I’ve reached the two-week mark.
Where classes are concerned, I’ve nearly reached the end of teaching module 6. Yesterday was a review day, today is a review today and tomorrow is the test. From the looks of it, this test is easier than the last, but I could be wrong. Either way, don’t tell my students. I was supposed to get a couple of days off before starting module 7 (I’ll have the same students from module 6, and possibly a few additions), but I’m opting to use those to teach. My main worry lately has been trying to schedule a sufficient amount of time to return home for medical school interviews.
Without saying too much about it to jinx myself, I have interviews scheduled for early in December, which means—obviously enough—I have to book a flight home to make it to them. I’ve tried every bit of begging and negotiation to see if the admissions offices were willing to schedule me on dates closer to Christmas, but imagine trying to convince an office of people to work more in the days leading up to America’s favorite holiday. I think I have things tentatively worked out (I say this now knowing that another school will contact me with an earlier interview date just to spite me) both here and back home, so we’ll just go on hoping for the best. My director here, Humberto, has been really great with helping me through this, as have been my students. I will be putting in just as many hours to accommodate the schedule shift, but packed into a shorter amount of time. This is a very happy compromise for me. These interviews are a huge deal to me. With that said, the changes also mean that I’ll be seeing many of you earlier than I originally thought and for a longer period of time. Cool beans.
Moving on, my volunteer organization is sponsoring a small contest. There are two categories: one for photographs and one for writing—journaling, as they call it. I’ve set my sights on the writing one. The contest is open to all returned and current volunteers. We’re supposed to write a piece about some of our experiences abroad. Top prize is $150. I’m going to win. I already know what I’m going to write about, and it’s going to be fantastic. I’ll make sure to post my submission once I get around to actually writing it. It needs to be in by December 14th, so don’t hold your breath.
I’m going back to Quito this weekend with Peter and Pedro to visit my old host family, the Pazmiños. I called up Vivi, my former host sister, this morning and everything’s all squared away, so I’ll be hopping on a night bus this Friday to arrive in Quito early Saturday morning. I plan on hanging out, catching up with them as much as possible and making an effort to see as many of the Quito volunteers as possible in our old meeting place, the Mariscal. I’m hoping the buses will be slightly less nerve-wracking than last weekend’s excursion to (or should I say from) Puerto Viejo. I’m sure, only by saying that, I’m setting myself up for something bad. Vamos a ver.
I think I’ve written enough for one day. As always, this chewed up significantly more time than I wanted it to. Maybe I need to get a little smarter and schedule more time for this stuff.