Eight Months, Twelve Hours

Reading: Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner

Sobralia rosea

Many of us who join Peace Corps immediately after graduating from college can quickly point out the similarities of the life style of a PCV and college student. There is a close-knit community between PCVs, much like students on a college campus. More so, we have a lingering sense of the fleeting nature of our time here as we are shuffled in and out of our host country in omnibuses that bear resemblance to graduating classes. And like every good college student, when PCVs find themselves in the final lap of their service, they are faced with the overwhelming feelings of “senioritis” juxtaposed with wistfulness.

After successfully sending Mary Rae off to the states, I was able to spend the afternoon with another PCV friend of mine. We leisurely chatted about the only topics we know how to talk about while in the Peace Corps: things we miss from the states, frustrations with our community, and PC gossip. Somewhere in the conversation, it really started to hit me – I only have eight months in this country. Granted, eight months sounds like a really long time. However, it is very little compared to the 27 months with which I started. Even more, it is a whole four months less then the year that I have been repeatedly telling everyone that I have left here in Ecuador. And, it is one month away from the ¾ mark of my service. Meaning: Omnibus 105, we have officially made it to our “senior year.”

I can assume that I will probably spend the next eight months of this blog lamenting over the very thought of ending my Peace Corps service, much like I did my senior year of college (both with little regard to any previous contemptuous feelings I held for either.) So, I will try to spare you all my preemptive melodrama for now. But it is safe to say that I spent the whole bus ride back to El Oro wrapped up in my own thoughts of all the things I loved in Ecuador, how much more I still wanted to do, what I wanted to do with my life after Peace Corps, etc. All of which were quickly interrupted when I walked into the bathroom a bus terminal.

The bathroom attendant was a squat, grey hair man who looked like he was 45 going on 62. As I washed my hands and began to bush my teeth, he started rapid firing me with the usually questions: Where are you from? / Why are you here? / How long are you here? / Do you like it? / Are you single? / Can you gift me your blue eyes?

It’s horrible, I know, but I usually go on autopilot after then second word. The conversations tend to be benign and nothing more than one’s general curiosity about the tall, blue eyed, blonde haired girl wandering around rural Ecuador.

But every once and a while my autopilot is crudely interrupted, that is to say, the converser turns our innocent conversation into a proposition that I have absolutely no interest. Granted, I understand (or try to) that a single, unaccompanied, 24 year old girl is a strange concept in this country. But to think that I would take up with a random man that I met in a public bathroom, much less one that is a whole head shorter than me and old enough to be my father, is ludicrous.

So I quickly finish brushing my teeth, politely excuse myself and his offer, vowing to myself to avoid that particular public bathroom in the future. I then found my favorite, secluded corner of the terminal where the light is perfect for reading and there is a decent view of the incoming buses. Ten minutes into Faulkner (that is two say, three pages or five sentences), I looked up to see a man staring as intently at me as I was intently reading. “You like to read a lot?” he asked as he got up to reposition himself next to me. “Yes,” I replied, once again trying to bury myself in the book.

Once again, the question came in rapid succession. Where are you from? / Why are you here? / How long are you here? / Do you like it? / Are you single? / Do you like to dance?

Still miffed from the encounter in the bathroom, I must have come off as particularly cold at this point, as my potential suitor began lecturing me on how I was not enjoying my life enough and I needed to give love a chance. He continued to bombard me with propositions, desperately trying to find something to interest me while I continued to try to read my book. (Faulker, you are a wonderful writer, but not at all useful when it comes to trying to distract oneself from a very machista, latino man.) I could feel his frustration building as I continually shot him down with curt, one word answers. In a final desperate attempt he asked me if I even wanted to be talking with him.

Usually, I try to be as civil as possible when dealing with strangers, mostly because you never know when they might show up at a town’s fiesta and end up being a family cousin or something. But this day, I seemed to have lost my poised, Midwestern politeness. Perhaps it was due to the fact that I felt like I had just been hit with a double whammy of annoying males. Or maybe it was because they two of them had violently ripped me away from my meditative love of this country.

Either way, I doubt that he was expecting the deliberate “no” as a response to his question. Nor was the woman sitting across the aisle from us, who had been watching the scene play out like one of her afternoon novelas. He looked at me for a moment in silence and then began a winded rant about how badly it hurt him to see such an icy, unfeeling, distant woman. He then got up, telling me would be back in a moment; he just needed to check his bus time.

As he did, I promptly excused myself from the terminal, literally ran across the street to the restaurant that I frequent and mumbled a pleading request to the owner in unintelligible Spanish. He must of saw my look of desperation when I walked into the full restaurant and graciously pointed me to the basement seating area before handing me a cup of coffee. “Sit down there and read as long as you like,” he said.

Alone in the basement, I collapsed in one of the tables, lost in the moment. It wasn’t that either of the incidents were new to me or even that horrific. I have seen and heard of much worse in this country. But for some reason, I could not shake myself from the exposed and violated feeling that I was left with. Just twelve hours earlier, I had been laughing over a milk shake with another volunteer, joking about our worries of returning to the states. We both agreed that we would never be able to be functional members of society there after spending so much time in Ecuador.

Now I was alone in the basement of a street corner restaurant, after having run away from man in a bus terminal. Thousands of miles away from my friends and family, eight months suddenly felt like an eternity. I was still an hour away from the closest thing I had to a home and even that hour was completely out of my control, left to the mercy of the public bus system. Sitting there, I desperately tried to reshuffle my thoughts. If I could just compartmentalize these bad feelings, label them, record them, and box them away in the depth of my mind reserved for Ecuador, I could get pass this. I just needed to shuffle them aside long enough to leave the basement and catch my bus.

Perhaps, if I could do so, I would revive the thoughts that had captivated me only twelve hours prior. The evenings spent with my host family, the orchids that accented the vivid green country side, the smiling child giggling with his parents in the seat behind you, the fruits of a project that you never thought would come to completion. Twelve hours ago, I could not imagine leaving this country in only eight months. At this moment, sitting in a bare metal chair, I could not wish myself away fast enough.