We got off the bus in Manglaralto, which is located on the beach and took a camionetta up a branch off the main road heading inland. We had been told by the Peace Corps the seminar was in Dos Mangas, so we did not bother to ask anyone right off the bat if they were familiar with “Fundacion FIAT” (where the seminar was taking place) as we assumed we would just get off in Dos Mangas before worrying about all the details. After a long while of traveling, Julio became suspicious and inquired. We were told we had driven past Fundacion FIAT long ago. It wasn't at all near Dos Mangas, though perhaps technically part of the town. We paid the camionetta driver 2 bucks to turn the truck around and take us back to Fundacion FIAT.

     We jumped off the camionetta in the dark and entered the Fundacion FIAT compound rather uneasily. Everything was blacked out and there were no cars. For all we could tell, there was some kind of massive screw up about to become evident, like the conference dates had been changed and I had somehow missed the communiqué. We wandered around inside for a while before we found a lit doorway on the second floor of a building and got a guy having dinner inside to show us where everything was taking place. He led us to the back of the building, where we found several undistinguished silhouettes loitering in the almost total blackness. One or more of the silhouettes greeted me enthusiastically in English, but did not approach. I returned the greeting with no idea who I was talking to.

     The man handed us over to a Swiss woman with a clipboard who showed us to where we would be staying. En route, I came across a newly arrived Melissa Fleishman, who was glad to see me and I her likewise because we had both signed up for this seminar having no idea if we would be trapping ourselves in our own private hell with a bunch of cliquey Peace Corps pinheads capable of spinning great clouds of annoyance around themselves. At least now we would have each other to report that everything sucks to. This was a relief indeed.

     After throwing my stuff in my room, Julio and I wandered down to the area where I had been given greetings by silhouettes. There I discovered Joelle Joachim, who, if not a fellow despiser of event dampening cliques, was at least not prone to such herself. I also found Adam Scheinkman, who, like Melissa and I, was immensely relieved that a small contingent of chill people was present at the Seminar. Soon, we were all called to eat. In the light of the dining room, I could see that the Seminar was almost 100% stocked with the kinds of people that do not stamp and mangle my very last nerve.

     My boss, Susanna Ricaurte took a chair next to me. I turned on the charm full-steam and worked her over with the twisted pleasure that she is the enemy and I was pumping her full of illusion for potential favoritism in the future. Ha. I decided a few months back that if one does not create and sell their boss (in bureaucratically overdriven types of work where there is a steady stream of blind pressure coming down the chain of command) a favorable illusion, they will automatically assume the opposite, irrespective of who you may really be. Bosses do not have the time nor inclination to get to know the real you. They are under pressure to keep everything in-line beneath them and they just want to be assured there are no egregiously out of whack happenings within their jurisdiction. This makes them extremely prone to snap judgements about any face not sporting a plastic grin. To paraphrase his holiness, Mike Lake: ‘the plain facts frustrate bosses; they want to be lied to’. I had seen how far “keeping it real” had gotten me in training, so now the gloves are off. If I have to spin illusions to keep justice in my airspace, then brace yourself for David flippin Copperfield.

     True to the Peace Corps’ formulaic approach to manipulating hearts and minds, we endured a post dinner icebreaker, which did little to disrupt the high spirits we were all already in. Then we spilled outside in various directions for a long overdue hanging out in English.

     After the official activities were all finished for the day, Melissa, Adam, Matt Smith and I stood around in the drizzle, falling out of the black night, gabbing. We moved to the lounge area of the building I was staying in. Adam and I sat in chairs talking for a while, but Melissa and Mateo immediately sniffed the party going on in room 3. Later Adam also joined said gathering when the absence of Melissa and Mateo aroused our suspicions. Crystal Seco was circulating. I belted the final remnants hard. The room turned to telling jokes, but for some reason, everyone bombed horribly. I was greatly amused that Michael Kettering, 2nd highest person in Peace Corps Ecuador, a refined but rather gushing intellectual who tries to be the common man’s man, was on hand for some truly obscene jokes.

     Later on that night, Jason Jones and I took Eric Steiner out to the front porch to taunt him about his female Ecuadorian counterpart who was strolling around in post-shower clothing designed to draw much attention to herself. Then Jason, Adam and I staggered out in search of drinking water. We arrived at the building where the meetings had been held earlier where water was known to exist, but found it locked up. We opted for the amazingly bad idea of breaking into the building, but found it a very secure edifice. With a few last ditch kicks to the front door from an unnamed member of our search party, a nun emerged from another building and asked if we needed something. We told her we wanted water. Without a word, she came over and unlocked the building and returned to her room.

     Once inside, we found that whomever had closed up the building for the night, had also shut all the doors in the infinite hallway of doors, off of which was the room in which we had earlier been in meetings. We knew that most of the doors in the hallway led to individual living quarters, though we did not know if they were occupied, and only 2 went to the room with bottled water. We found a candle at the far end of the hall, lit it and used it to find a light switch. Rather than proceed with caution, we simply made an educated guess as to which was the correct door and then blundered through it. Our first selected door was a living quarters, though we are fairly certain it was unoccupied. The second door we picked was the water room where we had had our meetings. A large intestinal parasite that Susanna Ricaurte had drawn on a big piece of paper earlier was still hanging in the front of the room. I drew eyes and a happy smile on its head. Jason drew a word balloon next to it in which the worm greeted the room and reported itself to live “in Trent’s ass”. I then drew the outfit Steiner’s counterpart had been wearing earlier on the worm and Jason wrote “Steiner’s counterpart” next to it. I disguised the words “Steiner’s counterpart” so that it was improbable that idle eyes could read it, but I could still point it out and tell people what it said if the paper sheet was still hanging there during tomorrow’s round of meetings. Then we blew out and replaced the candle at the end of the hall. We poked at a number of light switches down the length of the hall, but none of them turned out the hall lights. When we left the building, the window at the end of the hall still floated fully illuminated in the night, but when we had reached a good distance away from the building, saw the light go out. That proved that at least some of the rooms in the building held people and we had awoken someone.

      Later that night around 9pm, Jason Jones was planning to walk Jennifer Sterling (a volunteer living in nearby Manglaralto who single-handedly organized this event) the 45 odd minutes down the road to her house. They were looking for any and all interested parties to accompany them. On my way to do just that, I ran into Julio. Julio wanted to come too, but was supposed to meet with another Ecuadorian, which he ran off to invite as well. By the time the hike got underway, it was we 3 gringos plus about 8 Ecuadorians. The Ecuadorians were being only somewhat loud and annoying until 3 more Ecuadorians (total of 11) caught up to the group and turned everything into hoots and hollers of “lets dance!” and “wooooo!” all the way down the darkened road. We three gringos picked up the pace and put space between the conversation we were having and then din of stupidity behind us.

     When we reached Manglaralto, Jennifer, Jason, Julio and I dropped the noisy bunch off at an open-air bar and cut over to Jennifer’s house so Julio could call home. Jason and I waited outside. When Jen returned, she carried a bottle of Espiritu in her hand.

     I commandeered the bottle and handed it to Julio when he came outside after he finished with the phone. He was excited and tried a sip. “Es rico!” he reported, passing the bottle back to me. I hit it hard and passed it back to him. And he to I, etc.

     When we arrived back to the area where we had dropped off the rowdy bunch of Ecuas, Jason and I proceeded straight to the beach. Julio and Jen followed us down because it was a better option than staying with the rowdy Ecuas. A few belts of Espiritu later found Jason and I storming into the ocean at full speed in our respective underwears. The waves were huge. We had been talking trash the whole way to the Manglaralto about all the stupid stunts we were going to pull in the waves upon our arrival, so the waves at that time were subjected to an astounding outpouring of, shall we say, high-spiritedness. We battled the thundering waves that lunged out of the blackness and flopped to our butts many a time violently depantsed. The action escalated until I saw Jason attempt to jump a massive 8 or 9 foot breaker that way trying to fall right on top of him. The last thing I saw was Jason’s large frame being flipped upside down before the wall of water swallowed him. 20 feet later, the same wave bowled over me. The whole time the wave tumbled me across the sea floor, I was trying to scramble to my feet to make sure Jason had surfaced. Not only had he surfaced, but he had already moved further out up to his neck and was still screaming back to me with a maniacal ear to ear grin about how we had to move out into even deeper water. No sir, my sagging underwear and I had had it. That was the first time that I noticed my feet had been well gouged up by sharp rocks and also that the rest of the Ecuadorians had come to the beach and were hunting stones. Julio and 3 other Ecuas had moved into the waves and were being almost as stupid as Jason and I had been. When I got out of the water, it started a trend and soon everyone was out and dried off.

     The Ecuas were trying to rally the group to go EquaDancing in the ever-too-loud EcuaMusic blasting from the open-air bar. Jason and I wanted to walk back to Fundacion FIAT and go to bed. Even though the EcuaConsensus appeared to be for staying and dancing, we could not get them to actually do so as Jason and I started to leave. The group followed us. Even worse, they had acquired a big bottle of cane liquor. Jason, 2 female counterparts and I walked briskly and put the drinking Ecuas at an ever-increasing distance behind us. At one point, just to annoy the female counterparts with us, Jason demanded we jog. I backed him and we jogged until one of the female counterparts fell behind and had to start walking again. When we reached the Fundacion FIAT gates, we found them closed and locked. We scaled the 12-foot gate. When the Ecuas in pursuit arrived at the gate, they went under, got filthy and angrily asked us why we had shut the gates and locked them out.

      Jason and his roommate found they had locked themselves out of their room. We tried for a long time to pick the lock or break into the room through other means, but short of kicking the door in, it was hopeless. Jason stayed that night in one of my 2 empty beds. His roommate slept in one of Adam’s extra beds.

      Diner that night back at Fundacion FIAT was full of all the various chickens and hams we had marinated, little roasted cordonices, hot dogs, etc. Meat, meat and more meat. Hanging out commenced after dinner, but produced nothing worthy of typing up.

     While Jennifer ate breakfast and got her stuff together, I played on the internet she had recently hooked up in her brick shack. I made a brief exit to search in town for a tienda selling ice cream sandwiches but found none and so just went down to the beach to have a look at it in daylight. Quite a comely beach, that. You can look down it all the way to Montañita in one direction and until the vanishing point in the other direction.

     Jen, her EcuaBoyfriend and I took a bus 1.5 hours north to Puerto Lopez in the province of Manabi where Jen was supposed to give the cattleman’s association a lecture on cows, but no one showed. We proceeded then to seek out a ride to Agua Blanca (where Jennifer goes door to door with a big bag of various animal medicines looking for health problems to fix and providing standard maintenance to the people who don’t know better for a few cents per injection). Every camionetta in Puerto Lopez that we asked tried to charge us $5. The going rate is 50 cents. Finally we ran into a guy from the cattleman’s association who gave us a flimsy excuse for not having gone to Jen’s lecture. Then he took us up to see a sick cow, with the promise that afterward he would give us a free lift to Agua Blanca. The cow had recently given birth, but part of the placenta was still stuck inside her and had caused an infection. As the guy ripped out a piece of placenta hanging out behind the cow, she crapped on his hand. Then the cow was lassoed, tied to a tree (after a long struggle) and tripped. Jen ran up and gave it an injection of penicillin for the infection. It kicked and struggled and bent up the needle Jen had stuck in its hide. She charged something like 3 bucks for her services and then we were off to Agua Blanca.

     The interesting thing about Agua Blanca is that it is a small, fairly remote pueblo that sits well within the boundaries of a national park. The national park, Jen hypothesized, was established because it is where 2 microclimates clash, causing there to be a large array of animals living in a small area. The people of Agua Blanca, she further hypothesized, yet remain in their little remote town because they are too stupid to leave. I asked her if she was serious. She said she was and explained that there had been large exoduses in the past and the present inhabitants are dumb as rocks. Why hadn’t they left to somewhere with sufficient water or other resources, which Agua Blanca clearly lacked?

     We took a trail from where the camionetta dropped us off into the scrubby forest. Just after we passed a sulfur hot spring, we arrived at a house made of flattened bamboo and campo sticks. On the property were also little huts made of flattened bamboo, some of which had an outer layer of cow dookie. Jen dropped off a big half-frozen leg of beef with 2 very dumb girls at the main house for them to cook up for our dinner. Then we went out walking on more trails just to kill time because it was too late to begin working, but too early to eat or sleep.

     We returned from our walk tired and hungry. We sat next to my hut and waited to be called to eat. We waited and waited. And waited. We grumbled and waited. It became dark. We waited. I was playing with a lighter and setting fuzz on fire. The fuzz fire soon turned into burning leaves, which ultimately turned into a full-blown campfire. We had not intended to make a campfire. We were bored. And hungry. In the darkness, we could see candles illuminating the many cracks in the flattened bamboo in different areas of the main house. Then the candles were extinguished. We were still waiting to be fed. I was starving and could think of nothing but that big leg o’ beef Jen had handed over. It was approaching 8pm. We had to go see what was going on. The house was just barely illuminated as we approached. But as if they had been waiting for us, the women of the house broke out 3 plates… of a tiny burnt fish and a ridiculously small portion of rice. We had handed over a big hunk of beef to have cooked up for us and we receive an absurdly undersized crappy meal of a burnt fish and rice? Jen blew this off and suggested that perhaps the beef was still too frozen.

     We each had a cup of hot water in a coffee cup in front of us. In Ecuador, this is the normal procedure for meals in which crappy instant coffee is being served: they bring the hot water, you add the instant coffee and sugar. After I had made coffee and Jen had made hot chocolate in the water, we were informed that the water had been lemon tea (clear lemon tea in inadequate lighting, I would add). The very dumb people of the house had no reaction to our mistake. They did not offer to make new lemon tea nor non lemony coffee/hot chocolate water. I picked at my small burnt fish in the near darkness until I grew tired of fighting with it to obtain its tiny reserves of meat. I threw the piece of crap to a dog. I was irate. What had happened to the beef? How frozen could it have been after all day of no refrigeration? We were not asking for a perfectly sliced steak. Just put some hot water on the damn thing and shave something off of it.

     Exhaustion somehow surpassed hunger as my most pressing concern. A man arrived home to the house and started an enthusiastic conversation with Jen and EcuaBoyfriend. I made no attempt to be social. I even pretended not to understand what was being said to stay out of the conversation. We soon traipsed off to our respective huts to sleep. A blurry hut shape bobbed before me in the darkness. I trudged up to it, entered and collapsed beneath its mosquito net. Malnutrition. That’s why these people out here are so stupid.