The Gringo: A Memoir

by J. Grigsby Crawford

  When I decided things weren’t going anywhere with Raúl, I went into the municipality and introduced myself to the new mayor and told him why I was there. He brought me to the environmental department’s head, a small round man with thick glasses named Benito, who then introduced me to the rest of the department.

  Benito told me I could help them with a watershed project near Zumbi. They were planning to clean up one of the river systems that started up in the hills to the east and fed down to Zumbi and the Rio Zamora. The project included working with the communities along the river to plant trees and build fences to help reduce the pollution runoff. When I told Winkler about it over the phone, he practically squealed with joy.

  After many days and weeks of being told to come back tomorrow, I finally went with two engineers from the Department of Environment to the community where they wanted to start the watershed project. We hitched a ride in a dump truck and wound up the tiny dirt roads for forty-five minutes. I didn’t do much talking at the meeting other than to introduce myself as a Peace Corps volunteer and say that I’d be assisting with this project. About fifty people from the community arrived and crammed into one room of the local schoolhouse.

  The municipal workers explained the project and invited audience members to talk about goods and services their community lacked. People raised their hands to cite everything from a soccer field to a health clinic.

  Then a man with one ear filibustered for the rest of the meeting. Standing at the back of the room, he talked without pausing or really even making a point. People started to leave. He went on for another half an hour and the meeting ended with a whimper. The municipal workers and I hitched a ride back to Zumbi.

  MIDWAY THROUGH NOVEMBER, WINKLER CAME down to visit my site. We met with Benito and he told Winkler all about the watershed project. Afterward, Winkler seemed happy. He told me he thought Peace Corps volunteers who worked in offices every day were the only ones who mattered.

  A week later, I went back to the municipality and found out Benito was no longer working there. The watershed project had been canceled, someone told me. I turned around and walked home.

  CHAPTER 31

  In those days I walked the streets feeling like a shell of a human. The sweltering, dusty streets were chipping away at my soul, little by little. I woke up every morning glued to the mattress—unable to wake up at a reasonable hour and too lethargic to roll out of bed. Sometimes I embraced the loneliness, like somehow it was making me tougher or, in more masochistic moments, like it was making me stronger because the lonelier you are the more you know what dying feels like. But mostly it was just dull, hot loneliness. I was too tired to do anything and too depressed to even jerk off (a phenomenon I’d only experienced once or twice before in my life). My lungs were full of lead.

  I thought I was losing my mind—literally. I’d be walking around or eating or—worse—just lying there thinking and my mind would start racing so fast that I wasn’t sure I could ever get it to slow down again. And this was happening more and more every day.

  One night, too tired to cook, I walked a hundred yards down to one of the roadside restaurants and ordered another plate of tasteless carbohydrates. I looked at the table and it didn’t feel right. I looked at the people around me, and their shiny faces were smacking on food and talking but I couldn’t hear the sounds. I looked at my hands and they trembled. My heart now pumped so hard I was afraid it would tire out and stop, leaving me on the floor dying while other patrons assumed I was another drunk just taking his time crawling out the door. And this time my mind really raced until I thought I’d spend the rest of my sad life muttering incoherently to myself, unable to keep pace with the million racing thoughts.

  I stood up to go to the sink in the corner and splash water over my face. I ended up getting my whole head wet. I returned to my table, where I sat down and realized I couldn’t breathe. I looked down at the food and up at the wall—I thought there was something significant about that spot on the wall: fading yellow paint to the left of the TV that blared home video–quality telenovelas while the other eaters chomped away at chicken bones with their bare hands and mouths wide open. The spot on the wall led to another million thoughts at once. Now my heart really wanted to lurch out of my chest and onto the plate in front of me.

  I got up from my untouched chicken and rice and made it out to the street where I felt like I could finally take full breaths. I turned the corner and made it down to the dark abandoned streets away from the center of town. I looked side to side and up at the blank sky to make sure I was alone. No one was near me. Finally, I felt my heart winding down like a giant machine being shut off after revving at full throttle. The beats were slower but each hit hard like a big drum. My mind came back down from above and reentered my skull. I thought I’d be all right. I decided people were the problem.

  Thus began a period of instability in which I was sure that being in the presence of more than one person at a time would cripple my ability to function on any level. I feared getting on buses because if I had another attack of anxiety, I’d have nowhere to go. If I did leave the relative comfort of my bedroom, I’d view any group of people as a gang of bloodthirsty killers. I was too tired to talk to anyone. I was too angry and upset to spend much time outside my room. My nuts and prostate were once again flaring up regularly into debilitating and gut-clenching lightning bolts of pain.

  After a couple more weeks of this, I called the Peace Corps medical office. The person I actually spoke with was a temporary doctor from another Peace Corps country who was filling in while our doctors were in D.C. for a conference. I told her all about it. She told me the usual doctors would be in contact with me when they got back in town.

  I never heard from anyone.

  ON DECEMBER 1, AFTER FIVE months with Graciela and Consuela and a total of nine months living with Ecuadorian host families, I was finally able to move into my own place. I’d found a bungalow apartment just off the square in the center of the town. On one of my last days at the house, I said hello, as usual, to Consuela’s handicapped sister, who’d never acknowledged me and usually stared at the ground whenever I passed. But this time, out of the blue, she looked up, stared me right in the eyes, and said with a lucid smile, “Buenos días, ¿cómo estás?” I stared back in disbelief because first, I was too shocked to even respond, and second, it was exactly like the scene out of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest when the big Indian who everyone thought was mute all of a sudden says thank you to the Jack Nicholson character, who of course can’t believe his ears. The next time I saw Consuela’s sister, I said hello again and she went back to ignoring me and scavenging for rocks in the yard.

  Consuela’s kids—especially her youngest, whom I got along with—were sad to see me go. Consuela told me, with a wink, to make sure I stopped by and visited as much as I could. I took four trips carrying my belongings three blocks to the other side of town and came back for the last time to drop off my old set of keys. Graciela waddled out into the yard and snarled, “Did you leave the sheets?”

  “Yes, I washed and dried them—they’re on the mattress,” I said.

  I thanked her for sharing her house with me these last months. I told her to take care and enjoy the holidays. She stood there silently and stuck out her hand for the keys.

  CHAPTER 32

  Christmas was coming. And it was close to a full year since I’d seen my brother. He was midway through his final year of law school, and four months before, he bought tickets to come visit over the New Year. We planned to spend a couple of days at my site—more than enough time for him to get the gist of how I lived—then fly to Cartagena, Colombia, for a week on the beach with another friend of ours. I was looking forward to showing him what my life here was like, but I was much more eager for Colombia, which would finally be a vacation for the both of us.

  As if it weren’t depressing enough being alone and far from family on Christmas, the sights and sounds in Zumbi didn’t make it easier. De
spite being highly Catholic, the Ecuadorians didn’t think much of Christmas. Fair enough. After all, the American brand of Christmas is not really a religious one. There was something about the alternating heat and downpours and the few weak attempts at decorations—a fake tree lit up here, some pathetic tinsel there—that made this extra depressing.

  One day, Steven, the twelve-year-old who lived across a courtyard from my new apartment, asked if Santa was real.

  “Of course,” I said.

  “And he makes all the toys on Christmas?” he asked.

  “Well, actually he has a bunch of little helper people,” I said, a direct translation for “elves” not coming to mind, “and he just delivers the toys on Christmas Eve.”

  Steven nodded as if it made perfect sense. “And he goes to all the homes where you’re from?”

  I nodded.

  “Then why doesn’t he come to Ecuador?” he asked.

  “Well, sure he does, he goes everywhere,” I assured him.

  His mother walked out their front door to chime in. “No, he’s never come here,” she said matter-of-factly. She wanted to know why. I assumed she was playing along, just like me.

  “Well, maybe it’s because he doesn’t speak Spanish,” I said.

  The look in Steven’s eyes told me that this made perfect sense. But the look in his mother’s eyes revealed the mistake I’d made. She, too, thought that Santa Claus really delivered toys to Americans on Christmas. This thirty-two-year-old mother and her young son couldn’t understand why Ecuador wasn’t as lucky to be graced by his jolly presence. I’d flippantly given them an answer to a major question in their lives.

  Over the following year, as Steven became a teenager, I attempted to compensate for this conversation by giving some straight talk whenever I got the opportunity. When he asked if Superman and Spiderman were real and living in the States, I said no. He responded by informing me that I was full of shit and of course they existed.

  MY BROTHER, ANDREW, WAS FLYING into Guayaquil on the twenty-seventh. I decided it would be too disheartening to actually stay at my site on Christmas day, so I got on a bus for several hours and headed to a hostel in Vilcabamba where I could hang out with some backpackers who also found themselves far from home on Christmas. Vilcabamba is one of Ecuador’s few non-beach, non-Galápagos destinations that tourists pass through with any sort of regularity (and even then, due to the fact that it’s fourteen hours south of Quito, ten hours from Guayaquil, and six hours from Cuenca, it’s not exactly a hot spot of tourism). I figured that I’d find at least some English speakers to talk to. On Christmas Eve day, I got on a 5 a.m. bus out of my site.

  The weather in Vilcabamba is nearly always perfect: mild, dry, and sunny. This time it was no different. I relaxed by the pool and met the travelers there. The group was your typical cross-section of globetrotters you’d find anywhere: some Canadians and Australians, a couple of Brits, and some Europeans—usually German or French. They were all friendly.

  I had plenty of opportunities for the same conversation I had every time I ran into other foreigners: I ask them how long they’ve been passing through these parts. They give me a rundown of their journey and time in South America. “And what about you?” they ask. “Oh, I live here,” I say. Sometimes, depending on where I am, I’ll point my finger, “About a five-hour bus trip in that direction.” Then comes the scripted conversation about my Peace Corps experience. And what an experience it must be! Sometimes they’ll ooh and ahh and comment on how difficult that time and distance away probably is. Even the ones who aren’t interested do a magnificent job of pretending. The Americans have all heard of the Peace Corps and most of the foreigners have, too; most are legitimately interested in what my life here is like and why I chose to do it.

  At the hostel, I was having this conversation by the pool with an Australian man my age. He was a hulking sort of guy—the type I imagined being in a brutal Australian surfer gang. After I described what I did and what it was all about, he said loud enough for the others lounging around the pool to hear, “That’s really something! There’s U.S. power at work, doing good around the world. You only ever hear bad things about them yanks—fighting everybody’s wars, being arrogant—but look at this guy here. Ha! That’s incredible!”

  His passion embarrassed me a little. There was a Canadian couple nearby and I could feel them rolling their eyes. I’m not sure if it was because of the Australian’s monologue or because of his manner itself. He was loud, bordering on obnoxious. But I liked talking with him. We talked some more that afternoon. It reminded me how the reputation that Americans have gotten overseas for being loud, rude, and disrespectful—being the “ugly American”—was wrong or at least outdated. In my experience, if anyone has filled that role, it’s the Brits or the Aussies. Perhaps in backlash to knowing this stereotype haunts us, most traveling Americans I see try hard to be reserved, polite, and hyper-aware of local customs. I suppose there are many who would prove me wrong, but then that’s the problem with stereotypes.

  As the sun went down, everyone ate and then migrated to the bar.

  I also met an Australian woman my age who’d been traveling alone in South America for a few months. She was skinny but gorgeous, with curly auburn hair, fair skin, and dark eyes. We drank liquor all night and talked about South America. Somewhere between whisky shots, the clock struck midnight and it was Christmas. With my head spinning, I went to bed in my cabin and she in hers. I remember just wanting to lie down next to her and smell her hair. That would have been nice.

  I woke up on Christmas day and got on the Internet while eating breakfast in the hostel’s dining area. I sent an email I’d prewritten to a doctor back home—the father of a fellow volunteer I’d contacted before about my medical difficulties. He said he would try to connect me with a “team of urologists” he worked with in the U.S. The email began with the usual greetings, then continued with a rundown on the entire history of my illness—from the first electric jolt of pain in my testicles to the trials I’d gone through since then, complete with throbbing nuts, an aching prostate, and a rectal sonogram. My hope was that I would have some answers after the New Year. If not, that one-year-in-country mark in February was looking better and better as a time to throw in the towel and take my aching man parts back home with an excuse to leave that no one could ever blame me for.

  While online, I read news websites for the Christmassy stuff and for an update on the world. Most of it focused on the fact that we were getting ready to say goodbye (or, more appropriately, good riddance) to another decade. Everyone was coming out with their top-ten lists for this or that—movies, sports events, political goings-on. It seemed to me it couldn’t have been a worse decade. The “zeroes” or “aughts” essentially began with the September 11 attacks, and then descended into wars, a worsening environment, and, to cap things off, a financial disaster that sent ripples around the world. During this time, we of course got iPods and HDTV, but no solutions to any of the things that mattered. In all, it was a decade so disastrous, it’s probably fitting we could never even agree on what to call it.

  The one glimmer of hope before I left for Ecuador was the election of Obama (like him or not, his election did say something about our country), but lately even that was beginning to feel like a giant letdown. I wasn’t the only person struggling to see what had actually changed about the way we did government.

  Using the fast Internet to catch up on the news wasn’t necessarily a good idea.

  I got away from the computer and went to the pool. I drank rum and smoked Honduran cigars with a guy from Detroit who’d been traveling everywhere south of the United States for the last six months. He was in his thirties and had saved up for almost ten years so he could drop everything and backpack around Latin America. He said he was spending about twenty dollars a day and could afford to go on for another six months.

  That night was more low-key than the previous. I beat a German guy in the championship match of a ping-pon
g tournament and won a fifth of rum to take home with me. I went to bed early and left the next morning as the sun was coming up. I planned to take the bus back to Zumbi and prepare for my brother’s visit before turning around the next day and heading for Loja, where I’d catch a plane to Guayaquil to greet Andrew when he landed.

  CHAPTER 33

  The prop plane I boarded for Guayaquil had room for eighteen passengers. As we ascended out of the valley west of Loja, I saw a beautiful patchwork of sugarcane fields cradled by the dry landscape. The plane immediately banked up to get over the high mountains surrounding the valley, and seconds later, we were in the clouds.

  The trip from Loja to Guayaquil is ten hours by bus, but forty minutes by plane. We landed in the late afternoon, and I killed several hours at the airport until my brother arrived. Seeing a member of my family for the first time in nearly a year was almost too good to be true. We hugged and then hustled to find a taxi.

  We planned to sleep a few hours at a nearby hotel since we had an early flight back to Loja the following morning. At the time, I didn’t want to spend a minute more than we had to in Guayaquil.

  I never liked the city in the first place—big and dirty and filled with people who reminded me too much of my neighbors in La Segua. But also, we’d been receiving crime updates by email lately and many of them occurred in Guayaquil. In addition to emails from Pilar about Peace Corps–related incidents and warnings, we’d gotten several from the Regional Security Officers with the U.S. Embassy. The crimes were increasingly gruesome—and more and more of them were involving the same express kidnappings that the volunteer described to us during training.

  A recent case concerned two American couples and was like most other express kidnappings, except that at the end, the two wives were raped before being dropped off with their husbands in the middle of nowhere. Reading that email turned my stomach. It made me even more cynical about Ecuador’s hopes of tourism becoming the lifeblood of its economy. Who’s going to come here if you can’t safely use a taxi in the country’s richest city? I thought.