Not a Perfect Paradise

I have been keeping these encounters under the table since arriving in South America just so that anyone reading can know that I am still safely in one piece, but now that you are aware of my safety, I wanted to share some of my quick and intermittent confrontations with the darker side of Cuenca. Going back to the last night that Katie was here in Cuenca, last Tuesday, our group had our first experience with thievery. We were having a fantastic dinner at a Columbian restaurant that I think I previously mentioned. We were all pretty absorbed in our own conversations but with a little bit of examination of our atmosphere I spotted two pretty sketchy characters. They appeared not to be devoted to a dinner in this restaurant, and one of the two men seemed to concentrate his attention on our group. It was really our own fault for he even had an appearance that should provoke some cautious behavior. But at any rate when we left the restaurant one of our group members had their backpack stolen during the time we had dinner. The group came to the conclusion that it must have been the wiry-haired man who left prematurely from the restaurant. Wednesday, was caulk full of encounters. Over the noon hours, I decided to skip lunch back home and make an effort to get things done around the city. I went to the post office which is stationed only four blocks from school in order to drop of some letters I had accumulated. After exiting the post office, having felt successful of my transaction, I had an encounter with a quite physical beggar. This man spotted me from across the street as I left the post office and took the effort to hassle me for money. He stepped in front of me and gave the motions of every beggar pulling his had out of his pocket, palm up. But this was different than the other encounters because he impeded my travel. The sidewalk, first of all, was narrow, sandwiched between a high wall and the busy traffic of the street. My directions of escape were simply straight forward or backward, and I wanted to give him no opportunity for him to steal anything from my backpack, so I made a motion to the mute beggar that I was not going to give him any money, and went for my first option of walking by him. But he pushed me back and up against the wall, and again indicated his intentions only this time more aggressively desiring my donation. Again I tried to walk by but he blocked my passage. I just took that to mean I can do the same so I pushed him aside and walked by. That was it, but it makes me a little more wary of even the dangers on the same block as the post office and now I understand the absurd security measures they've taken at the post office. Then further on in the day I saw the same wiry-haired criminal from the night before in front of me on my walk home from school. We stared each other down and I kept my eyes trained on him even as I passed, and he tried to break the aggressive tension with an "Hola." It is common, now that I have found myself in some predicaments and taken a more aggressive stance when confronting others, that these characters do not like to maintain that aggression and try to break it by becoming friendly. But the look on his face conveyed to me that he was clearly the thief from the prior night. And then my last little scare came last night. For the past two nights, I have been testing the waters of curfew, and walking closer and closer to 8pm. It gets dark here around 715, and significantly dark on the last half of my walk from school. But I have always been wary of this and kept vigilant while walking by the hospital and the dark abyss that is the park during the day. But last night, gave me more reason to be concerned about the night walks. I approached the front gate of the hospital which marks roughly the halfway mark on my walk home, and there was a man standing at the gate peering in, which is not entirely uncommon, as many people look to be more suspicious than they are, but as I approached he turned towards me and I got a clear look into his face. He said to me, "Ayudame! Ayudame!" ("help me! help me!). His nose was broken and flowing from was fresh blood that you could clearly seen in the faint light from the bridge lights I had already past. It appeared that he had had a tussle with someone and was punched squarely in the nose. Of course I wanted nothing to do with him, so I passed him by, but the night life on the last half of my walk can be clearly represented by him. I've been much more wary of the cars here as well, mainly because of "bombas de agua" which can fly when you least expect it. Those are water balloons that everyone throws as a game primarily during Carnival, but not limited to it. Eggs, buckets of water, and balloons filled with pig's blood are apparently added to the weaponry during Carnival, when no one is spared. I don't really look forward to that, but I guess it is all in the wild anarchy of that week.

Anyway, I just wanted to relay some of the stories that clearly make this experience much more interesting. On a lighter note, I am going to be going to the beach this weekend with my host mom and her boyfriend (another awkward date that I will be a part of, but I couldn't resist a free trip to the beach). I have also decided on my plans for Carnival, which is now in two weeks. I am going with three others to Esmeraldas and other coastal towns further north than the huge city of Guayaquil. I'll keep you posted on the events of the coming weeks, but Carnival is where my attention is being spent. I expect a well-rounded trip with Afro-American music, the Pacific Ocean, the Equatorial Sun, and the dirty city of Esmeraldas.