I stepped off the bus in Quito at 6am and glowered darkly at all the seemingly well-rested people bustling around the TransEsmereldas bus station. I hoisted my backpack, shuffled out into the street and selected a direction at random in which to wander. I was familiar with all the street names around me but could not get my head clear enough to orient myself amongst them and ascertain the direction of the trolley system, which would then get me to the Peace Corps office. Deluded at every intersection with the sudden certainty that I was now totally headed in the right direction, I walked giant circles around the area in utter stupefaction as I repeatedly passed the same landmarks. I refused to hail a cab as I was not only operating on a dangerously scant budget, but also had no reason to be in a big hurry to reach my destination at such an early hour. My determination to figure out what should already have been clear to me entrenched. I eventually found the trolley disgusting close to the TransEsmereldas bus station, but in the opposite direction that I had originally headed in. I plunked down my 25 cents in the trolley turnstile and was swept away through the city. I walked into the Peace Corps computer lab around 7:15am and worked through a massive backlog of unanswered emails until about 11am, at which time I snatched 3 books from the library and then left to do damage at a nearby fast food restaurant I had been eagerly anticipating. I made phone calls both to Iveth’s brother Oswaldo in Cumbaya at the outskirts of Quito, and Ela 3 hours away in Baeza. Oswaldo, who I had been trying to contact for days, knew distressingly little about when Iveth was expected to return from the Galapagos or how I was supposed to fit into their plans. Ela, by contrast, confirmed the accuracy of a report she had relayed a few days earlier about the volunteer who lives near her in Chaco. Apparently the volunteer had been en route to the Baeza/Chaco area via bus on the single strip of winding, frequently perilous two lane road connecting the area to Quito through the precipitous mountains betwixt them. Some kind of oil spill on the road sent the volunteer’s bus careening out of control and it smashed into the mountainside. The next bus to come racing along moments later had a lot more than the oil spill to contend with and ended up sailing off the cliff in the resulting melee. Ela couldn’t contact the other volunteer by phone to ask her about this, but reported having seen pieces of wreckage being hoisted up the cliff by a work crew in the days afterward.
At 1pm, for lack of anything else to do and any other way to connect with Iveth, I grabbed a cab to the airport to find out what time the day’s Galapagos flight was expected. It was due in at 2:45pm- less than two hours in the future- so I pulled up a chair and waited. When Iveth came walking out of the airport doors, she was first intercepted by a tiny old woman (her mom) and a friend. She greeted them both and then seamlessly moved on to greet me, unaware for the moment that the 3 of us had not come to the airport together nor had we yet met nor even known who each other was before that very moment. We all exchanged greetings and then climbed into an older SUV and left the airport.
The last time I had seen Iveth, I could understand nary a word she spoke when she used Spanish. Now, I could understand everything with exceptional clarity. It was not so much weird that I was abruptly able to understand her familiar prattle- it was weird that a time existed in which I couldn’t. It was an explicit indication of how far my Spanish had come along. I was further surprised that her distinctive inflections, which I had always attributed to English being her second language, are present when she speaks Spanish as well. That’s just how she speaks. Iveth’s friend, Maria, speaks English much easier than I speak Spanish. Thus, between Iveth, Maria and I, there were 2 people wholly fluent in English, 2 people wholly fluent in Spanish and 2 people quite capable of conversing in the other language. I have always wondered how people, fluent in more than one language and gathered together, decide which language to break out a given sentiment in. Well, I still have no idea how such things are decided, but I have stopped wondering. The language selection is pretty much automatic. There’s no real concrete explanation. At times, things can be more pithily stated in one language over the other, some sentiments are slightly more typical of one culture over the other, but for the most part, the language selection is fairly arbitrary. The conversation drifted in and out of the 2 languages without any confusion. Indeed, many a sentence was a soup of both languages. Spanglish, it felt, was the tongue we had always spoken.
We stopped by Maria’s office briefly so Iveth could take care of a few things by email and then went to a mall so she could buy jewelry. Then we proceeded to Iveth’s mom’s house in Cumbaya to drop off mom and switch out the clothes in Iveth’s suitcase. Oswaldo, who I had spoken to by phone, was on hand and stood in stark contrast to how I had pictured him based on our phone conversation. Oswaldo looks a lot like Ché Guevarra did at the height of his Planet of the Apes look, except Oswaldo has the eyes of a serial murderer. His mannerisms are slow and easy but unmistakably bold, and I would venture to say vaguely menacing. However, when he speaks, he speaks almost exclusively of quaint things and in a child-like habit, as he is, in reality, an extraordinarily gentle being. Placid and unflappable, but rugged in the extreme, Oswaldo is the likely product of an alien lab, using genetic material stolen 40,000 years ago. He is a Gentlemanly Pirate. A Zen Revolucionario.
Maria, Iveth and I left Cumbaya and for Maria’s apartment in Quito. When we finally arrived at Maria’s apartment, Maria showed us the facilities and then immediately turned around and left again for about an hour. I don’t know why. While she was out we took showers. When she returned, we decimated a pot of coffee and then headed out to a discotech in Mariscol. It was horrible. I always forget and am revolted anew by the utter baseness of discotechs and their legions of superficial people trumpeting inflated self-images at each other. I was miserable and wanted to step outside and leave the room to stew in delusion without me, but I was trying not to ruin everyone’s night. Eventually I reached my limit and did end up stepping out. Iveth insisted on coming with me and not long after that, we were all on our way back to Maria’s apartment. "
