Life in Far Away Places: Latacunga, Ecuador
After college I spent four years traveling and living in the developing world. A few months ago I returned to Long Island and started working for the Smithtown Messenger. This is the second installment of an occasional column about those four years abroad.
While traveling around Ecuador before my flight back to New York I did some investigating. I walked into a few schools and asked if I could teach English there. I wasn’t really looking for a job, I was just testing the waters to see how easy it would be; and for the most part it seemed like I could work anywhere I wanted. The very last city I visited on my way to the airport had a certain charm that I really liked. It was small enough to feel like a town but the center was as hectic as any city. It was also the only majority indigenous city that I had ever been to, and that intrigued me. It was nothing like Cuenca. There was nothing modern and there wasn’t a single other foreigner that I saw walking around. I loved living in Cuenca but there was a part of me that realized I was living in a bubble there. I thought that if I really wanted to live in Ecuador and really experience it, I must live like an Ecuadorian and not like an American in Ecuador. Cuenca was a great place to live as an American in Ecuador, but Latacunga seemed like a good place to start living like an Ecuadorian; or at least it seemed like a place that wouldn’t give me a choice.
Before leaving for the airport, inspired by the apparent leverage a native speaker had for any teaching job, I boldly walked into the nicest building in the city and asked for a job. An hour later and less than half a year after I graduated university, I was offered a position as a college professor in a field I had never studied. I emailed the school after I had spent a few weeks in New York and they immediately responded; classes start in two weeks but get here early, they said. I guess I wasn’t that clear as to the start date when we last spoke or I had forgotten because the timing came as a surprise. The next week I was on a plane, heading back to Ecuador. This time my ticket was one-way.
I had wanted to really experience life in Ecuador. I knew it would be difficult at times but almost as soon as I landed I was overwhelmed with the situation I had chosen. Latacunga was a short two hour bus ride from Quito (the capital) and the day after my plane landed I walked into the university. When my new boss, Janeth, saw me, she told me to sit down and wait while the generals assembled to meet me. The generals? Who are the Generals? What is she talking about?
She rushed off before I could ask any questions, leaving me to wait with people I did not share a language with. Though they were all locals, Janeth and the rest of the English teachers at the university spoke the language very well but I quickly learned that hardly another soul in the entire city could communicate much with me. A few minutes later Janeth grabbed me and led me to conference room with a half dozen men in full military fatigues. They all stood up, shook my hand and smiled. Another man grabbed the duffel bag I was carrying and Janeth told me to follow him and that he would take me to my new home. I was flabbergasted. I had no idea what was happening. I followed the man with my bag. Two blocks away we entered a military barracks and three uniformed men cleaned the room that would become my new home as I silently watched from the doorway. The university I was now working for was run by the military. I have no idea how this did not come up in my interview, as it seemed like a pretty big fact to omit. I am a pacifist and probably would not have accepted the job if I had known, but in those first few days I really did not know how to react or what I could do. In Cuenca, it was always easy to ask someone at my school or home about a situation I was unfamiliar with. There was always someone close to me who not only had been through it before but who was also ready to help. There was always someone who understood. Soon after I arrived in Latacunga I realized that my situation was completely unique; no one was there to help or explain anything to me. My Spanish was extremely poor, I had not a single friend, and I had somehow ended up living in a military barracks. To make matters worse I had recently become vegetarian, which was an unknown concept and kept me from eating much more than bread while I tried to understand my new environment and language. I felt alone, isolated and even depressed those first days and weeks as I tried to adjust to my new surroundings.
I slowly did make some friends which helped a great deal. A new friend helped me find a nearby room to rent and I moved out of the barracks and into a place with a kitchen and started teaching myself to cook. Another friend introduced me to his family which over the next months and years I would come to view as my own. I spent much of my idle time with new friends, painfully practicing my Spanish with anyone who was willing. On the weekends I traveled a few hours down winding roads to pick flowers with a friend who sold them at her shop. The city was small enough that I could walk most anywhere within it and I bought a used bike at a local market and started exploring the further stretches of the area. I even learned a few key phrases in Quecha, the indigenous language which pre-dates European arrival and is still heard in the countryside and in many markets in Latacunga. Things certainly improved from the first few weeks in Latacunga but I still struggled with cultural differences on a daily basis. Still, throughout it all, the kindness of regular people and the sincerity of everyday life impressed and intrigued me enough to keep away any thoughts of changing my course.
I spent each night at the university teaching English conversation to advanced students and was surprised how much I enjoyed the profession I had only fallen into by chance. The money I was earning easily paid for my modest existence but because of my unusual situation it would be months until I saw a penny of my earnings. The university had never hired a foreigner before and did not know how to process me through pay roll. With my paycheck always just around the corner but never in my hands my boss would request meetings with me and often show up an hour late or sometimes not at all. My students would constantly walk in half way though a lesson as if nothing was wrong. Any plans I made with friends usually involved me sitting around waiting for people who sometimes never came. The concepts of time and reliability that I had grown up with didn’t seem to apply in my new world and it was incredibly frustrating. I would come to learn that I should expect my paycheck to be months late, my projects to go unfinished and that generally nothing was ever on schedule. With time, as I adjusted to a new culture and set of priorities I actually began to like them more than the ones I had grown up with but this would be a process that would take years for me. It would take me a long time to gain a deep enough understanding to truly appreciate the place. As most people do, I was judging a new place by an old standard and it took me awhile to realize that there wasn’t any better or worse, there was just different. The days when I would stop causally to trade polite pleasantries with someone I had only met a few times while I walked down the street to a job or meeting I was already late for were still many months away and for the most part I was just frustrated at first.
At the end of my first semester at the University, after the start of a new class had been delayed for the third time, I sat and waited for my boss who never came. “Tomorrow, don’t worry, we will start tomorrow” said my boss when I finally was able to track her down that afternoon. Tomorrow or not, I had had enough. I quit.
I still liked the city and wanted to continue living there, but I had reached my breaking point with the university. I quickly took a job at the run down public university on the other side of the city; but their semester was still two months away. All my waiting around had made me impatient, so I did what any reasonable person would do; I packed a bag and got on an overnight bus to Colombia.