Of love and parasites in a Guayaquil winter
My dreams have been strong recently. I don’t usually remember them, but I wake in the mornings full of emotion. One morning it was self-criticism, I woke with a list of what I’ve done wrong and what I could do better running through my mind. You’re not making a damn difference here, my mind told me. Sometimes it’s a nameless hunger, craving for something I cannot identify. Last night I dreamt of my cousins and I woke slowly with a smile, feeling love and the comfort of my family hovering around me, soft as the cotton sarong under which I sleep. For a while I lay silently as the fan’s air as pushed through my mosquito net and cooled my face, thoughts and morning prayers mingling lazily in my mind.

In the Guayaquil winter the heat builds and builds, unseen pressure in a beaker, until you cannot stand it, and then the bubble bursts, and the rain comes pouring down. This has been a mild winter, most days it has been possible to hop from rock to rock strategically placed in the puddles that filled the streets after each downpour. Aside from the days I’ve slipped off the rocks and splashed into the mud, there was only one day I actually had to wade through the dirty water. Looking down to get off the bus that brought me back to Guasmo from town center, I saw not the road but water. There was no alternative; I had to get off the bus. The water was mid-calf. I am a wimp. I yelled, “gross!” the entire walk home through the rain, and jumped in the shower as soon I got there, throwing my shoes and socks into a bucket of bleach water. In past years it has been waist high for weeks.

Internally I resemble the Guayaquil winter. Things quietly build and build in me until one day I burst, and the tears pour down my cheeks. The past few weeks have been full; emotions from my nights and days pile up under my surface.

Ceci’s sister Maribel found out she was pregnant just when he husband lost his job, so sometimes they don’t eat because there is no money. Ceci tries to help, but she has had no salary, and her husband Manuel only gives her $3 a day for food, not always enough for her own family. I woke one morning distraught about her unborn child, and feeling helpless at the days of unemployment that lie waiting for that small family. I counted out some vitamins for myself, then sent my bottle of multiple vitamins to Maribel, and recommended a comedor (soup kitchen) at my friend Fr. Eduardo’s church.

And then there are the already-born children. School just started for the year, and so many people have come to me, wanting scholarships for their children, they just want their kids to study. $60 here, $100 there. Ricky’s mother needed $20 for a stomach operation, Cindy needed $12 for a blood test. I give what I have, friends at home have been generous, so I can help some. Julio Cesar, Isaac, Ana, Daniel, Angelica, and Tyrone are in school this year thanks to friends at home.

And then there is the abuse. One evening on my way home I saw Joanna, one of my animadores’ sisters, arguing with a man outside her house. As I got closer, he hit her across the face. I walked up to where they were, watching closely. She raised her hand to her face, started crying. I moved to her side, put my arm silently around her shoulder. The argument continued. He took a step closer. “Don’t touch her,” I said, angry.

“I’m not going to,” he said, still yelling at her. Finally he left.

“Who was that?” I asked, hugging her.

“The father of my baby,” she answered, obviously embarrassed by my presence. I left her with her sisters, and continued to my house, thoughts whirling.

There is death. One of my close friends recently lost her mother, my own mother has lost 3 uncles, a child at the church I attend was killed in a gang dispute.

There is the corruption. I went to a popular “assembly” shortly following the president’s overthrow. There were about 200 people in the room, mostly men, mostly from social organizations, who got together to talk about the changes Ecuador needs. Speeches were made from the head table; we were instructed to divide into groups to formulate concrete ideas about how to restructure Ecuador’s government. The structure of the meeting was contested by a group of yelling men in collared shirts, then we moved into groups to talk.

I sat at the Economic Change table, turned red with anger when I was elected secretary because I am a woman. I told the group of mostly men I refused to be their secretary and explained how angry that made me. They looked down, cleared their throats, and one of the men picked up his pen and notebook.

I loved talking about monetary and fiscal policy, the free trade agreement currently being negotiated, dollarization and foreign debt, but in the end deflated as I realized how no changes would be effective if the current corruption continues. And how do you change that way of thinking? It almost seems to be part of the culture, inextricable as the language. That can´t possibly be true, but it is everwhere.

There is the disillusionment. Attending a few of Mi Cometa’s meetings called to recover their radio station I began wondering if the “democracy” the organization claims is nothing more than a word, and I wonder at the “empowerment” Mi Cometa claims to be giving its members. Cesar makes the decisions, and no-one will disagree with him for fear of being kicked out of Mi Cometa, or because they want to “back him up.” He calls meetings, suggests action plans, cuts people off quickly when they try to speak, then wants approval for his ideas. He gets it. The organization is mostly made of women, and they bring him coffee during meetings. When I ask about the unfairness of things, their lack of voice, they tell me with a smile, “Cesar’s just a man, you have to excuse him.” Sexism is a slippery, ugly thing.

When Cesar asked Nana, Julia and me to write a letter to Ecuador’s powerful and go to the press as international witnesses, the three of us talked at length and decided we were not comfortable with that proposal. We don’t understand the laws and culture of Ecuador well enough to understand Mi Cometa’s reasoning for intentionally breaking the law, but our gut instinct is that they should have tried to work within the laws first. We are disturbed by the lack of participation in the decision-making regarding this project, and the way Cesar leads. In one of the meetings he gave a speech in which he said there was no room for disagreement within the organization regarding the radio, and he dismissed the spoken dissent of Julia, Nana and I as coming from foreigners. Being sick has given me an excuse to stay away from meetings and cool down until I am ready to talk to Cesar.

The fight for the radio has continued to be in the press, it is now a national fight for community radio stations, for the human right to form communication media. A group of 130 people from Guasmo Sur traveled to Quito yesterday to demonstrate in the streets, and today they have an audience with the Superintendent of Telecommunications and the country’s new president. Nana, Julia and I look wide-eyed at each other, shaking our heads at how differently this would have played out in our countries.

Today I built fort, like I did as a kid. I have stayed in bed most of the day, under my mosquito net with books, newspapers, music, art supplies, stuffed animals, and my computer. I’ve retreated into my mind where things feel familiar. I am writing – my therapy. Then I get up and this reality settles in. I feel dizzy and my head aches; I can’t tell if it’s the “bugs in my belly” or the medicine that’s killing them.

I open my window and the outside sounds come in my apartment: vendedors shouting as they walk the streets trying to sell things, voices of children playing marbles in the mud, the loudspeakers of the church next door blaring a sermon that makes me cringe. There is the smell of chemicals as the city sends trucks spraying pesticide through the neighborhood in an attempt to stop the dengue outbreak. I close my window again and get back in bed under the mosquito net. I need a break today.

I am reading a book on international humanitarian workers, working in conflict zones around the world, and I realize how easy my life is compared to refugee camps and battle zones. I read my friend Bryan’s blog, about the people he works with in the Congo, and I realize my friends are rich in comparison. How can the majority of the world live in conditions that make my mind beat against the inside of my skull, wanting out? I know I was born in a bubble, but I also believe it is where everyone should be born, surrounded by love, healthy food and water, health care, quality education, opportunities to discover and develop talents. Some days I feel so hopeless in the face of the world’s realities. A couple days ago tears filled my eyes as I was talking to Julia and Nana about all of this. Nana’s host mother looked at me from where she was drying dishes in the kitchen, and gave me a neutral smile. “Life is hard, Dana. You just keep going.”

The world is just different from this hemisphere. The Southern Cross is in the sky rather than the Big Dipper if you somewhere where the stars’ light can reach your eyes. People throw trash on the floor of their houses for Mami to sweep up later. Dirt comes out of the faucets with the water. You have to ask children how old they are; malnourishment makes a 15-year-old look seven. There is no work. People I know either work 12 hour days, 6 days a week to be paid irregularly less than $200 a month, or they can’t find work at all. The employment situation never ceases to jar my senses.

Visas are denied. My friend Jose Luis was invited by the brothers of Taizé to spend this summer in the beautiful monastery where I spent 9 life-changing months. After months of paperwork and bureaucracy, investing time, money, and hope, we turned in everything to the French Consulate last week, and the visa was denied. Why? Probably because José is 20 and makes $145 a month, and they think he will stay in France. His dedication to the people here and his honesty means he would not stay there, but I have to say I empathize with those people who would. Why wouldn’t you want to move somewhere where there is work, and even at minimum wage you earn more in a week than you would in a month here?

So José is denied an opportunity, an unborn baby and mother denied proper nutrition, and countless children denied education. Life isn’t fair.

But this is life. The stories, the facts of people’s lives are usually told me in a conversational tone, although tears other than my own are plentiful in my life. There is a sense of helplessness regarding money; it silently permeates people’s lives. You do what you can, spend money when you have it, borrow it when desperate, laugh when something is funny, cry when the reality of how hard life is hits you.

When I finally got my lab results back after a week of being sick and hours in on the plastic chairs in the clinic’s waiting room, the doctor told me I have fungus in my intestines (can you think of anything more disgusting?), parasites, possibly amoebas, and that my blood test shows I should have a raging typhoid fever (which I don’t). As soon as she found out I was sick Ceci appeared at my door with chicken soup and chamomile tea, flower petals floating in its soothing warmth. The worry on her face matched the tone of my own mother’s voice when we talked on the phone. I think it’s harder to be the mother than the sick daughter.

The parasites’ timing was impeccable, I must say. The day I got back to Guayaquil after traveling with my parents I was at Mi Cometa, and every time someone I hadn’t yet greeted came in, they ran over to me warmly welcoming me back. And each one of them said to me, smiling joyfully, “You’re so fat!”

After about the 10th person in the span of an hour I turned to José, sitting next to me, and said, “This is a difficult cultural moment. I wish I were as happy as everyone else about it, but it’s hard for me to be told so many times how fat I am.” He smiled at me.

Recounting the story to Julia later in the day, I said, “Well, it must be time to fall in love again. The beginning and end of relationships usually make me loose weight.” She said she wouldn’t mind falling in love herself, and then we doubled over laughing at the improbability of finding true love in Guasmo Sur. Little did I know there was a different type of weight loss program awaiting me. But now perhaps I understand the excitement over a few extra pounds.
- posted by little monk @ 12:45 PM