Bizarre Week
My visa expired Tuesday. In true Ecuadorian style went to Immigration bright and early Monday morning, passport in my under-clothes fanny pack, newspapers in my backpack for the anticipated wait. I walked up to the second floor, asked the uniformed man behind the desk what to do. “Oh, we can’t do that here; you have to go to Quito.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Is the office even open?” I asked. “What if I go to Peru? Will that work?”

He hesitated.

“What if I just don’t do anything? Does it matter?”

“They could take you to jail.” He lowered his voice. “Just go to Peru. Huaquillas is closer.”

I sneezed as I left the shade of the building and stepped into the sun, into the oppressive heat of the never-ending Guayaquil winter. The bus terminal was across the street, my house an hour across town, and the second half of my week would be busy. I crossed the street and bought a bus ticket, got on the bus and pulled out my newspaper. An hour into the four-and-a-half hour journey my mom called my cell phone. “What’s that noise; where are you?”

“That’s the wind coming in the window. I’m on a bus to Peru.” Pause. We burst out laughing.

I got off the bus in Huaquillas, the Ecuadorian town that borders Peru. The immigration official stamped my passport, “Salida: Huaquillas – El Oro.”

I got back on the bus, got off the bus 5 minutes later in Huaquillas, and went to the office of the Federacion Democratica de Mujeres, where I had taken pictures in February for the Inter-American Foundation.

My friend Rebecca was working. She jumped out of her chair and hugged me. “Dana! Come, sit down!” I explained whey I was there.

“So you’re going to Peru now?” she asked.

“No,” I said, “I think I just needed this stamp and then tomorrow when I go back into Ecuador, they’ll stamp my passport again and I’ll have a new visa.”

Rebecca invited me to her house for dinner and to sleep, and I spent the evening being entertained by her bright-eyed 2-year-old nephew Fernando, who ran around excitedly, bit me, his grandmother, and the dog, and was later fixated by the sight of me in the shower, dumping buckets of water over my head. I’m sure he’d never seen such a white naked person. There was no door to any of the rooms in the house, no running water, and there was little of the delicious food in my dinner bowl. Rebecca, an engineer by training and president of FDM, now lives with her sister Maria, a teacher, and Maria’s 2 children. Both women have steady jobs, but work long hours and barely getting by economically.

The next morning I was up early and on the 5:30AM bus to Guayaquil. When I got off at Immigration just outside of Huaquillas and handed the official my passport, he handed it back to me. “You need an entrance and exit stamp from Peru.”

I tried talking him into just stamping my passport, then the bus driver tried, but two minutes later I was standing on the other side of the street, looking for a ride back into the city. A policeman asked a couple men in a pickup truck if they’d take me, and I climbed into the bed of the truck and went back to town, where I walked down the street that connects Ecuador and Peru.

As I approached the boarder money-changers walked up to me, and I realized not only was I unsure of this passport business, but I didn’t even know the exchange rate between US dollars (Ecuador’s currency) and Peruvian Solis. I asked how many solis it cost to take a taxi to the immigration office in Peru. They said 35, I asked how many dollars that would be.

“Sixteen.”

“No.” I said. “Thank you.” I put my backpack on my front, and kept walking to the border. Two more men approached me, asked where I was going. I explained my situation.

The older man in a blue checkered shirt said, “I’ll help you. I’ve helped lots of foreigners. By law, you have to be in Peru for 48 hours. To get both stamps on the same day you have to bribe the officials $100. But the immigration officials’ shift ends at 8:00am, so we can go through immigration now, you can say you’re going to Tumbes (nearby Peruvian town). We’ll go there, eat something, go back to the office after they’ve changed people and since they won’t recognize you, you won’t have to bribe them.”

I asked his price in dollars, his name, and as I weaved through people following him to his car, I thought how strange it was to be choosing who to trust between complete strangers. And without foreknowledge of fair prices, how to get my visa renewed, etc. I felt almost stripped of my intellect. I felt small.

My round purple entrance stamp to Peru was easy, and as we sped by the vivid green of rice fields between El Oro and Tumbes Gustavo and I talked about our families, politics, life, and we arrived in Tumbes quickly. Over our café con leche and cheese sandwiches, he told me the official might notice the date on my stamp and give me a hard time for being in Peru only a day. My friend Kristin’s advice came back to me. “That’s when you have to play dumb, flirt, or bribe,” she had said.

Gustavo had another plan. To lie. “Just say you were here visiting your friend the Consul, say you’re working together on a project for children.”

We went to the park after breakfast and he pointed out the Consul’s house, and asked his name. It was 7:45. Back to the taxi. “Pedro Morgatio Izquierda,” I rehearsed the name silently in the car on the way back to the immigration office. I smiled brightly at all officers and they stamped my passport and wished me a good day. I exhaled as I walked quickly from the office, and smiled at Gustavo. “Thank you so much!”

As we approached the border to Huaquillas again, Gustavo asked me for a tip that almost doubled our agreed-upon price, wheedling that he needed to make a profit and that his knowledge had saved me money. The small feeling returned, and I argued with him for a few minutes, finally giving him a smaller tip. As I walked back into Ecuador and found my way to the bus station I felt weary from ignorantly trying to defend myself from being taken advantage of and still be fair, and for the first time in all my solo travels, I wished I hadn’t been alone.

My Ecuadorian entry stamp and visa extension were then easy and back on the bus I took off my shoes, opened my window and my notebook and went to work on things for PAIC.

At the Guayaquil bus station I got on a city bus to Guasmo Sur, sat in a bench 3 rows behind the driver’s seat. Near 9 de Octubre, Guayaquil’s main street, a blind man was helped onto the bus. In one hand he gripped the broomstick serving as his cane, with the other he held onto the silver bar at the entrance to the bus, which lurched forward as he reached into his pocket for his 25 cents. He teetered. Everyone sat in their seats. I jumped up, put my hand on his shoulder.

“Can I help you to your seat?” I yelled above the regatón music and the wind. I didn’t hear his answer, but as I guided him to the seat just behind him, the bus driver slammed on his breaks, and the little man and I stumbled forward then backwards. He half fell into the seat behind him; I regained my balance and laughed in disbelief as the bus weaved through traffic.

Ten minutes later he yelled, “Where are we?” and the other people on the bus yelled back street names, and helped him off the bus; I craned my neck to watch him walk slowly down the sidewalk. I opened my newspaper and as I looked down to read it, noted my formerly-white shirt was brown from two dusty traveling days. A few minutes later the other passengers and I laughed at each other in disbelief, bouncing out of our seats the bus driver drove over the median to change lanes. A few minutes later, a stream of dirty water flew through the bus window and hit me in the face. I looked back to see men working on a water line by the highway, and wondered if my life could get any more bizarre.

The answer was yes. On Wednesday the president of the country was overthrown, and when I talked to my Mom she told me my new credit card she mailed me was stolen in the mail, and someone tried to charge over $2,000 on it. On Thursday morning a group of police and government officials surrounded Mi Cometa, breaking down the door I stood on the other side of with my colleagues, trying to reason with the armed men. By later in the day Mi Cometa’s story was all over the news.

Friday after a bout of diarrhea, a broken refrigerator and a fall into one of the disgusting mud pools that comprise Guasmo’s streets this time of year, I joined the rest of Mi Cometa for a demonstration in front of the Public Ministry and the Office of Telecommunications in Guayaquil.

By yesterday evening letters were pouring into Mi Cometa from other organizations expressing their support for our plight, and plans are currently underway to mobilize 200 people from Guasmo Sur to go to Quito to dialogue inside and protest outside the offices of the Superintendent of Telecommunications and the new President of Ecuador.
- posted by little monk @ 7:28 PM