When it became time for registration to begin admitting patients, I walked Julio over to the line and stood with him a while to make sure no one asked any questions. He was line jumping after all, which was the plan. I knew he needed reading glasses as much if not more than everyone else, and after days of watching patients concoct stories and work scams to get places in line they had not waited for, treatment they were not documented to receive, free medicines they didn’t need and behaving like a pack of unscrupulous weasels, I didn’t at all feel bad that Julio did not have to wait in line behind any such people. I finally left him when I saw the first patients arriving over at general medicine, telling him to stop over when he gets his glasses and maybe he can watch the proceedings for a while.

         I popped my head out of general medicine after each patient to check Julio’s progress in the line outside of ophthalmology. He and numerous others were sitting on benches lined up against the building. He looked like a little boy waiting outside the principal’s office and was still behaving sheepishly because he never gets out of Tambo and was weirded out to see so much action. When he got his glasses, he came to the door of general medicine to say he was taking off. I asked if his glasses were good. He pulled them out of his shirt pocket and began complaining that they were so large. I cut him off. That was the same complaint everyone had and they all ought to just be happy they can see again and at no cost to themselves. These other weasels, yeah, I expect them to complain, but I was surprised Julio would complain. He hadn’t even waited in Line.

         Today’s patients had nothing but fake ass complaints all day. We were pissed off at first, but then bored and demoralized. The day sucked. It was nothing but one obvious lie after another and it soon stopped being entertaining to trip up the patients in their own contradictions. We just handed them their free medicines without a word of diagnosis and sent them packing. For unknown reason, there were almost no real sick people all day.

         We finished the workday fairly early and went back to the hotel in Playas. Later on, we went into town to eat at a pizza place. We were told it would be 30 minutes before the pizzas could even be ready to go into the oven, so after ordering, I walked over to internet. Finally a communication came from Ela. She had gotten sick and had been staying at the nurse’s house in Quito. I tried to make a call to Julio to find out his glasses prescription so I could look for a better pair for him, but the lines were still down. I returned to the pizza place just as the pizzas were coming out of the oven.

         At 4pm, Blackmon, Ed, another doctor and I went into Playas from our hotel to pick up a bunch of different 2 liters of cola and our huge pizza order. We returned to the hotel with everything but plastic cups, which another doctor and I walked a few blocks up the road to buy. Then the mass consumption of pizza commenced. The Ecuadorian guards showed up ½ hour late. Someone said they had been told by the guards that it would be considered rude show up to the party on time. I have no idea if that’s true or not, but just the same, everyone in this country is always late for everything so why in the hell not make that the polite thing to do. I remembered just before the EcuaGuards’ arrival that most Ecuadorians do not like pizza. I have not yet encountered one that does. The EcuaGuards all took a piece of pizza upon making their high profile entrance together, but I did not see anyone go back for a second piece.

         One doctor had a slideshow of several different people’s digital photos cycling on his laptop throughout the party. Word has it that the doctors will get their pictures assembled and burned onto a single CD once they get back to the States. That CD will be copied and sent out along with a t-shirt they are having made up for everyone, including translators and guards. Gringos are kinda funny. If this approach to sentimentality is normal among us Northamericans, I guess I had forgotten.

         We all boarded our military transport bus one last time and set off for Guayaquil. One of the Ecuadorians got a call on her cell phone telling of a bombing attack on commuter trains in Madrid. I don’t know how the rest of the world reacted to this, but over the coming days it would be all Ecuadorians talked about. Since my arrival here in February 2003, the only other news events I had heard Ecuadorians so preoccupied with were 9/11 and the controversy before the 2nd Iraq war. Spain is sort of considered the epicenter for Spanish speaking countries in the new world. Just as many or more people here have relatives that have emigrated to and are phoning/sending money from Spain, as they have in the US.

         When the bus got to Progresso, it was time for Lonne, Sally and I to get out and head home in the opposite direction the bus would now turn towards Guayaquil. The doctors roared long and loudly with cheering and applause as we took our bows, thanked everyone, made grandiose gestures and descended the bus steps. Barely visible through the reflections on the bus windows as it pulled away and turned towards Guayaquil, were dozens of fluttering hands and smiles. And thus ended one of the most profound experiences of my life.

         Lonne, Sally and I got right on a bus bound for Santa Elena and left Progresso immediately. I jumped out in Santa Elena but Lonne and Sally continued on to the mall in Libertad. As I had not really gotten to address my emails thoroughly during the entire 12 days I was tied up with the medical exercise, I spent a few hours in Santa Elena reading and responding to a grand accumulation of such. Then I went home to Tambo.

         The moment I walked into the room where Julio’s family was loafing, a few things happened. One is that my Spanish instantly fell 20 notches. If you have never spent time in a country where you had shaky language skills, you will not understand how someone else speaking vaguely and unintelligibly can foul up your own ability to speak the language. Another thing that happened was that I was instantly sorry to be home. I had been so long surrounded by action and chaos and active gringos on something resembling a vacation with the money and desire to make interesting things happen, that I had forgotten how impossibly sluggish life in the campo is. In between statements, everyone just sat there, silent and motionless, not looking at anything in particular, apparently thinking about nothing in particular, as if someone had pressed a pause button on the room for interminable periods of time. It was horrible. It sucked ass. I don’t know how it is possible for people to stay alive with so little brain activity. At the speed their conversation moved, I could have kept up a different conversation with each of the 3 people in the room simultaneously and still have been bored.

         I went outside to admire my plants- a simple activity that has preserved my sanity here on a number of occasions. I found there had been lots of damage to my plants because someone had tried to water them with the direct blast of a hose, which Julio had figured out how to hook up illegally to the water lines while I was away. Someone had also taken cuttings from one of my plants and stuck it somewhere that directly conflicted with stuff I had already planted in that space. Oh yeah! I had forgotten that people here attach themselves to your business and then steer it directly off course. I had to resign myself to the fact that the Gringo Garden- my super cool arrangements of slowly accumulated plants from around the country- will never be allowed to develop into their full glory which I had planned for from the moment I planted them in the soil, because some ass backwards stupidity was always going to see something damaged or destroyed.

         And what’s more, someone had taken my 2 pots full of cucumber seedlings (which had been sown into pots because it makes no sense to water 27 newly sprouted seedlings in 27 locations when they could water 2 small, protected pots and be done with it) and planted my garden solid with them. I had not intended to have a garden of just cucumbers. I wasn’t even going to transplant all of the seedlings- just a few around the edges that could climb the fences. The rest I would give away. Of course, they could not know this unless without my telling them, but I had not told them because I had not imagined anyone would commandeer 2 of my dozen or so pots and replant them in my garden.

         I retired to my room to drink lots of coffee, unpack and study some vocabulary for the rest of the night

         Around 9:30 am, I arrived at the post office in Santa Elena. The postal worker in the office was not the young, nice guy it has been for the past year. Rather it was some salty older chump who takes himself way too seriously. What he pulled out of the El Tambo box was normal mail- my usual 2 manila envelopes from the Peace Corps and a birthday card. The man grumbled on and on about something unintelligibly. I made no attempt to pay attention because he was making an obvious effort to be unfriendly. Plus, as I had just spent the past 2 weeks understanding about 100% of the Mexican and Spanish (as in from Spain) doctor’s Spanish and had almost no trouble understanding the locals (as long as they weren’t euphemising in circles about their vaginas), I had been feeling little need to try to understand whatever crap language it is that people are speaking in the Peninsula. I had been struck upon my return once again by how unintelligible the Spanish is that people here speak. Sometimes whole paragraphs pass where I do not understand a single word. I cant figure out what it is they are doing differently here. The only thing I can guess is that poorly articulated words and poorly (or perhaps oddly) articulated sentiments are to blame. Words are not spoken, they are expelled. They are given irregular force throughout their pronunciation. A person often does not simply communicate what they’ve been thinking- they think nothing, and then blurt out an idea as it hits them. It’s a little like the Cajun pronunciation of English. And like Cajun English, I think it does not rely on literal communication. Imagine if you will, a Louisiana Cajun telling a Japanese hitchhiker to climb into the bed of his pick up truck by saying “Git on up in the back.” 4 prepositions were used in a 6 word sentence and at least one of the 2 remaining words were poorly pronounced. It was confusing to tell the Japanese to get on, get up and get in something vaguely referred to as “the back”. In a literal sense, the sentence says nothing. But none of that matters when you are deliberately tuning out a postal worker because he is petty turd trying to lord over his insignificant domain of sorted mail.

         I could tell postal maggot was asking a question, but I made no effort to clarify said question nor reply until he made some effort to show that his question was worth answering by facing me, speaking clearly and directly. He wanted to know why I hadn’t picked up my mail in 2 weeks. I was incensed that he thought he deserved an explanation and I condescendingly told him that I was working on a joint medical mission between the US and Ecuadorian military while he was sitting in his windowless hole in the wall staring at a shelf of mail and getting pissed off that the El Tambo box of mail was approaching 50% full. He wanted 50 cents reimbursement for having to call my house twice. He shouldn’t have called at all and I doubted it had really been twice. I pulled out a 20 dollar bill to be antagonistic, knowing he wouldn’t have the change and that his knowing that I knew this would cause emasculation if he actually went out in search of the change. He said I would owe him 50 cents next time. Guess who will have another 20 dollar bill next time.

         Then I walked over to the “Tia” supermarket in Santa Elena to buy a few things and then I killed a few hours in internet. I went home for lunch and did a little socializing in the center of town with Lorena’s sisters, the people in the new day care in the Casa Comunal and Merci’s tienda. Lorena’s sisters, though among the very few actual friendships I have in this country, reminded me what an unfulfilling chore conversation in the campo can be. When you live in a town where nothing happens and have not even the vaguest comprehension of the world outside of your tiny fish bowl nor a speck of curiosity about it, you simply will have absolutely nothing to talk about ever. ‘Where I had been for 2 weeks’ was given 30 seconds consideration max, ‘what they had been up to for the past 2 weeks’ was answered with a single word: “nothing”. We talked about the family’s baby chicks being inside the house (because someone had spotted a hawk) for 10 seconds and the fact that the sister’s cousin was getting married for 20 seconds. The rest of my 10 minute visit was spent in long campo pauses in the conversation.

         The new daycare had provided a little more entertainment. Toddlers are incredibly odd creatures. Any room containing a number of toddlers is a spectacle. There were toddlers laying dead asleep amid the chaos of other toddlers noisily acting out the various mandates of their imaginations. A few toddlers were sitting in a random scatter of plastic chairs staring blankly in front of them. There were those that cried when put down and those that made bizarre assertions while refusing to put their shoes back on. It is amusing for me to watch adults adrift and disoriented in the toddlers world. The adults fancy themselves the masters of the day care operation, but all day long they are being taken for a ride across the incomprehensible landscapes of the toddler’s minds. They are not the firmly planted oaks they fancy themselves. They are like ‘double stars’ that have drifted too close together in space and have formed a rotational axis around where their combined centers of gravity exist, somewhere in the cold vacuum between them, which neither is particularly in control of.

         Back at the house, I sat down in a chair for 10 seconds and then realized that I was bored out of my skull. After 12 days of pure action from 6am to 8pm, I was suffering the full brunt of my reentry into Tambo’s camposphere. I tried to read without much success and then I finally got up and announced that I was going to Libertad without a clue as to what I was going to do there and that I would not be home for dinner.

         I decided on the bus ride to Libertad that I would stop by Lorena’s work to say hi and then continue on to the movie theater in the mall to see anything playing. I had the vague suspicion that if I stopped in to see Lorena at the dawning of the weekend, that she would create an activity for us to do outside of Tambo during the weekend. If I waited until the weekend itself to run into her, she would be complacent in Tambo and not even think to leave town in search of entertainment. I was right. She grafted us on to a gathering going on Saturday night for which I will be meeting her in Libertad when she is done working for the week.

         The family Lorena works for was not at home, which meant the insufferable hellions she nannies were not bouncing around making noise and trying to get my goat. For this reason I stayed put at the house rather than continue on to the movies. Unlike 95% of the country, Lorena is always brimming with conversation and activity. She had recently bought 5 baby chicks for 10 cents each from a man going door to door on a vendor’s tricycle. I got plenty of mileage out of that. I laughed that she had been charmed by the giant basket of chicks and demanded to know if she had paid with 5 dimes or 2 quarters (it had been a 50 cent piece). A temporarily worried expression swept her face when I accused her of buying “hot” chicks off the black market because eggs alone cost about 8 cents and no one could hatch any amount of broiler chicks economically for 10 cents apiece. When she told me the puny chicks were already 2 weeks old, I concluded that they were probably just from the reject bin rather than stolen.

         I left for Tambo about 7:30 pm as the family she nannies for was preparing to eat. It was too late to catch a movie and I knew I would probably fall asleep straight away once I got to my room. I was right.

         Looking for any kind of entertainment outside of Tambo, I went to internet in Santa Elena at 3 pm. No one had written me, so I continued on to the house where Lorena works. Lorena had invited me to some kind of gathering going on later that night. She had tried to downplay the fact that this “gathering” was really just an EcuaParty that so that I would agree to come. When she tried to gently graft on the previously omitted details about said gathering, I figured out what was up and backed out altogether.

         But just the same, I went with her to look for a gift for the party in a building known as the Comercial Central of Libertad. This is a newly built, 2 floor complex of market stands from which people sell clothes and DVDs, watches, crafts and a million other things. I had walked past the Comercial Central but had never been inside and was impressed to know such a place existed in Libertad. The existence of the Comercial Central may also explain why I could no longer find the sprawling street market the few times in recent months I went hunting for it.

         A few minutes after we left the Comercial Central we ran into Lorena’s sister and mom in the streets of Libertad, also on their way to the party. That’s when I diverged from the group and headed back to Tambo. On the bus ride home, I was unable to escape the growing conviction that I had completely stopped enjoying being in Ecuador. After almost 13 months of being here, I had not gained any appreciation for the endemic styles of conversation and social interaction nor the ubiquitous Cumbias playing everywhere. Even with something of a shared history, the people I meet in the streets of Tambo STILL have nothing at all even remotely interesting to say. Worse, possibly, than that I am starting to not like the people of Tambo, I am fast losing hope that anything I do will ever get them off their asses. I had long given up on helping Tambo for Tambo’s sake, but now it seems it is no longer even fun to scheme for Tambo’s well being in spite of Tambo as a sort of game I play with myself. I am finding that the mixed bag of surprise, gall, confusion, challenge and amusement with which I used to regard the culture of this country, is now just calcifying into annoyance and disdain. I find myself saying the kinds of things that Grace used to say before she finally packed it in and went home. Quite possibly this is just a passing state of mind, triggered by the letdown of returning to EcuaLife after the 12 days of action with the Navy Doctors. Perhaps, despite the present scope of my vision, all will rebound.

         Lorena’s youngest sister came to get me around 10:30am. I had assumed that the venture would include Lorena’s sisters, but I was immensely chagrinned to learn it would also include about 8 boys between about 16-18 years old. I suppose the only reason I didn’t just turn around at that moment and go back home was because I assumed that just because a number of us were heading to the Represa together, didn’t mean that we were to function as a group. Regrettably, that was an incorrect assumption.

         By the time we reached the Represa after about 30 minutes of bike ride, I was already done with the whole venture and everyone involved with it and ready to turn the bike around and go home. I do not like to feel like an add-on to someone else’s plan. Not ever. I don’t think I even owe the world an explanation for why I have no interest in giving a group of 16-18 year old boys the time of day. I told Lorena that this was not the outing I had been led to expect and so without further impingement of the 50 or so years of life I have left, barring suicide, I was going to take my butt out of the raging sun and go back to Tambo. Lorena told me that I could not possibly return alone through the expanse of wasteland between the Represa and El Tambo because anything could happen to me. She offered, by way of an example that someone could jump me and take the bike I was riding. I was highly doubtful that any such thing was likely to happen on a Sunday afternoon in the scorching wasteland surrounding a sparse smattering of sleepy pueblos, but I assumed she would know more than I about what is prone to happen on the trail to the Represa. Regrettably, that too was an incorrect assumption.

         Lorena told me to just sit tight. She said the group was heading over to a house about a half mile away to “see watermelons” and then we would all be leaving. Something about the mood of the group did not seem to jive with her assertion that they were already practically on their way back home. As the group mounted their bikes, I told Lorena that if the group was really just going to “see watermelons” and then return, that I have already seen watermelons and would just wait where I was seated in the shade and catch them on their return trip. As the group rode out of site, she began insisting that we go with them. It didn’t make any sense to me why we should feel compelled to follow a bunch of kids to whatever the hell they were doing that involved watermelons. Even as I mounted my bike, I wasn’t sure whether I would be turning it towards the watermelon house or towards Tambo. I very grudgingly followed Lorena towards the watermelons, due in no small part to my being unsure how to navigate my way back through the network of paths that crisscross the campo from the petroleum exploits of earlier decades.

         What we found at the house was a total absence of watermelons, but we were tipped off that the house “further on” (which was not in sight) had watermelons. I glared at Lorena who instantly began begging me not to be mad and ‘in yet another 5 minutes’, we would be on our way home. She somehow convinced me to put up with “another 5 minutes” all the way through the next 3 watermelonless houses. I was becoming enraged. I had been sunburned yesterday and had not come prepared to do anything outside of the shade trees around the Represa. I knew that I was now adding a severe sunburn to my already nasty one because I had gotten myself into an idiotic situation wherein I am stuck riding around in the raging sun following a bunch of stupid kids.

         As with all large groups of people the world over, this group had far more inertia than it had brains. There was only the vaguest sense of who might be leading the group, and there was never anything beyond rumors as to what the hell the group was doing. The group spent half the time spread out over about 1/8 of a mile and half the time either barely within shouting range of each other or dismounted beneath a rare shade tree and engaging itself in chaos. Word had it that we were no longer looking for watermelons but were heading out of the scrub brush wasteland by way of Libertad on the way to Tambo because it was a ‘better’ route than the one by which we had come. This made no sense to me at all and sounded like a very stupid idea. It was even doubtful that whatever was really going on was what I was hearing said.

         We rode and rode in the blazing sun of a cloudless equatorial sky. I was furious because I knew I was already severely burned with no way of escaping an even worse burn because I was a very long way from Tambo. I was furious that I had misplaced my trust in my sole tenuous tie to this group, Lorena, who in spite of my constant needling, failed to ascend above the general din of group brainlessness. After quite a bit of riding, we entered into an even more barren landscape that showed zero signs of habitation for as far as the eye could see. As the group dismounted their bikes so as to cross a rocky spot on the path, I planted my feet down, refused Lorena’s beckoning to follow and in no uncertain terms demanded to know definitively just where in hell’s half acre we were going. She repeated what was obviously just something she had half heard- that we were ‘going to leave the campo by Libertad because the trail is less ugly’. Ugly was the word used but was probably meant to say ‘treacherous and difficult’.

         I refused to assume there was any logic behind that statement. I snarled to Lorena that I did not want to go to Libertad but to Tambo. She tried to ask a few nearby bikers what the plan was but they did not seem to know. In spite of not knowing, they kept yelling, “Lets go! Lets go!” Lorena tried to pacify me with an improvised response but only confirmed in my mind that she was in no way clued into what was going on. I let rip with a hair-raising commentary about this predicament in English, and then felt myself automatically turning my bike around. With yet another expulsion of venom in English, I told the group they could kiss my ass and I was outta there.

         I heard the group whistling and calling out behind me, but I wouldn’t have turned my head to listen for the biggest glass of ice water ever prepared. I had finally put my fate and my actions where they were always meant to be- in MY hands. I didn’t care if the boys really knew what they were talking about or not. I didn’t even care that I was unsure how exactly to get back to Tambo. I felt strong and free and like I might smack down anyone who tried to ride after me. I rode hard and fast to minimize the chances that anyone would try or succeed in following me. That and because it felt good to cut loose under my own direction. I burned and burned and burned down the path.

         It wasn’t until my first wrong turn that I lost the burst of rage that had carried me so far so effortlessly. Luckily my wrong turn was a dead end that came 150 feet from the turn off. As I walked my bike back to the turn off, I noticed my body as though from the outside, rocked from the pounding of the heart and rising and falling of the lungs. I almost could not feel my body. At the turn off, I remounted my bike, but got an unimpressive distance before I slowed almost to a halt and started looking for a shade patch. I lost all sense of time. I have no idea how long the actual bike ride lasted. I had stopped at 3 different shade patches and pushed myself to continue peddling even though I was seriously beginning to worry about such things as heat stroke and fainting. I could think of nothing but the 5 gallon jug of purified water in my room in Tambo. I refused to willingly slow down my pace because the faster I went, the sooner I was out of the sun and in my room drinking water. And how much sweeter it would all be if I could beat the rest of the group back to town.

         Just as I was getting the first inkling that the highway that leads to Tambo was entering into view in the distance, a noise behind me startled me greatly. 3 boys on 2 bikes had caught up to me. One of them said something to me in unintelligible Tambese, which, true to form, still didn’t make any sense even when after several times repeating it I had finally made out every word. They passed me and continued on into the distance.

         As I was approaching the highway, my tire went flat. My brain was too foggy to know if it had gone all the way flat or just annoyingly flatter than it ought to be. I forced the bike down the highway towards Tambo until the flat tire made that impossible. I jumped off the bike and began walking it. I was astounded then when Lorena rolled up alongside me. She was exhausted, clearly, but still laughing. In lieu of sun block, poor people in sunny areas use long sleeves. Not only had Lorena done that whole trek and not died, but she had done it in a time comparable to mine in a long-sleeved hooded sweatshirt! I had actually become quite worried about her fate in the minutes before she had turned up. I had every intention of drinking myself retarded on water at home and then catching a bus back to the dirt trail with water for her. Now that would obviously not be necessary.

         As luck would have it, there is an air hose at one of the first houses one comes to on their way into Tambo. Lorena and I went to said air hose house where various family members there were propped up in a window staring out. Lorena asked for the air hose. The response was pure inaction, save for their stupid questions. After several of such stupid questions it became obvious that we were in the midst of a hardcore campo moment and that nothing was going to get accomplished in anything resembling the time and space of people in the 21st century.

         Lorena and I set our bikes down and headed across the street to a tienda. She had suggested we buy cola to drink. Cola wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but at least I would have it immediately and I could soon chase it with my purified water at home. Lorena bought a 3 liter and asked for 2 cups. We sat for 4 minutes with the 3 liter in hand while the shopkeeper slowly rifled around under the counter for the cups. It had been a while since I was fully confronted with the inefficiency and unmitigated campo-ness of Tambo. Irate, I told Lorena to just drink from the bottle. She sat there unmoved and on the verge of death, holding the ice cold 3 liter and waiting for cups. When the cups finally came, we filled and drained them in an instant. Before we could refill them, Lorena’s sister rolled up on a bike with the boy who was driving it. I handed her my cup, knowing she was as thirsty as us and I was willing to wait a mere 5 seconds extra before my next drink. But then a large portion of the total group of bikers and their mindless chaos descended on us and the cups were passed outwards to them. Now we were no longer sitting in a thin strip of shade exposed to the highway wind drinking cold Pepsi, we were sitting amid a messy scattering of bikes and raucous kids who were dallying and horsing around with half drained glasses of Pepsi in their hands. Pure inefficiency seemed to be the theme of the day. I attempted for a brief spell to be tolerant, but alas washed my hands of the mess, stood up and without a word walked home, leaving my bike sitting where it was still not receiving attention at the air hose house.

         At home I drank water until it became physically impossible to drink any more. Julio and Alex stood around asking stupid questions and laughing and acting like they had never seen a wiped out human being drinking a bunch of water before. I hurled myself into the shower, hoping that I would feel better once my body temperature came down. The water that came out of the hose was barely cooler than the hot afternoon air. Then I ate ¾ of my lunch and left for the mall in Libertad, hoping to sit in a comfy movie theater seat in the air-conditioned mall. I would later find out that Lorena had watched me leaving on the bus from the distance because she was still waiting on the air hose for the bike tire.

         The mall movie theater not only had nothing interesting playing, it had nothing at all playing within 2 hours of my arrival. I went to internet to attempt to kill time there. No one had written. In spite of that, I killed about 1.5 hours there in the air-condition before going home.

         In Tambo, I sat on the porch with Julio, and told stories, finally able to laugh about the day. Julio tried feebly to introduce a subject. Recognizing this, I took the bait and asked him what he had going on.

         “I made my own garden today” he said, with a sort of sheepish anticipation. Something about the way he made this announcement left the words scrawled in the air before my eyes in crayon, with backwards R’s and N’s. I peered across the yard in the dusk and saw a giant 3’ x 10’ ditch.

         With a squawk meant to convey sentiments similar to when visitors cart babies to one’s house unexpectedly, I rushed towards the unwieldy ditch. I was greatly pleased that Julio was trying his hand not only at a garden, but at artistic expression as well. In Julio’s garden, in accordance with no one’s aesthetic but his own, he had arranged random snips of plants from my garden as well as the neighbor’s. He had even dug up pieces from the patch of grass that is growing naturally beneath the neighbor’s window from which they brush their teeth. Next to the complex design of my thoroughly planned section of arranged plants, Julio’s random hodgepodge of grass and plant snippets scattered in a ditch looked hysterical. For some reason it reminded me of the Far Side comic where one of the kids in an otherwise attentive school classroom is an Early Man with a small head above a caption reading something about all but one student doing well on his report card. But in any event, I was stoked that Julio had broken free into his own world of plant keeping without having to compromise anything to his mentor’s rigid ideas of what makes sense and what doesn’t.

         At 6:45pm, I received a phone call from the states that I had solicited earlier by email, followed by a call from Lorena checking to see if I was still mad about the bike ride, followed by a call from Ela in Baños.