Freedom From La Libertad

"Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatsoever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy – that’s the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.”

- John Steinbeck
East of Eden

After 21 months in La Libertad it is finally time for a change. This quote may be a pretty depressing way to start out my last blog about life in La Libertad, but when I look back on my time there, it does seems that only yesterday I got off the bus for the first time. The days flew by, but all the important events, births, deaths, pregnancies, anniversaries, etc. that affected my life over the last two years, all of them happened in the US. Was this because I never really “Integrated” into Ecuadorian society, or maybe I always knew that I’d soon be leaving, and didn’t want to make any connections. Or was it that everything is so different down here that the whole experience gets all rolled up in my head, and there are no specific “posts” to hang my time on because this will end up being the biggest life-changing time of my life. Either way, like I said after a year in site, I don’t know how to process the time I spent in La Libertad yet. I’m sure that six months after I return to the US, I’ll have a different perspective.

“In all times and places, the outsider [is] disproportionately disposed to comment on life.”

- Richard Brookhiser

As a stranger in a strange land, you develop a critical mind. Things that confused, humored, or plain pissed me off here probably wouldn’t have caused such an effect on me in Missouri, Illinois, or California. Because I was and always will be a Gringo to Ecuadorians, I was forced to be an outsider (being a foot taller than everyone in town also hurts assimilation). I became a lot more self-critical as well. Seeing the stupidity in others made me try to keep the dumbness in myself down to a minimum. It is going to be hard to come back to the US and just be a normal person and not get stared at everywhere I go, but hopefully this self-observation won’t end when I get on the flight home.

“There should be no unnecessary talk or chatter, but only talk of the matter in hand. Moreover, if someone begins to speak, another shall not interrupt, but shall allow him to finish, behaving like orderly people and not like market women.”

- Tsar Peter the Great (1672-1725)
Instructions to the newly formed Russian Senate

How do you try to get a group to work together when it consists of nothing but “Market Women”? My biggest disappointment of my time in La Libertad was that I was unable to get the Women’s Group that I worked with to organize themselves better. If they continue to fight amongst and against each other, they will never be as strong as they could be.

“Early one morning Byron left me at the bus station…he was a good kid, but he was enveloped in the sadness that brooded over that dark country.”

- Moritz Thompsen
Living Poor - On leaving a Peace Corps Volunteer’s site in Sierran Ecuador

The “Dark Country” was especially dark for my last two weeks there. It rained everyday and because one of my neighbors cut down the trees that lined the road to town and didn’t clean up the branches and leaves that then blocked up the drainage ditches, the road was nothing more than a muddy swamp. To get out of my house we had to walk through a 100 yard morass. Since I didn’t have my boots on the last day, and didn’t want to arrive in Quito covered in mud, I put some plastic bags (double bagged for extra security) over my shoes. I looked a little ridiculous walking to the bus, but I arrived clean. As I was taking my last steps before hopping on the bus to Machachi, the bags came loose and my final gift to La Libertad was four plastic bags stuck in the mud. A fitting end.