Good Souls and Machetes

“What are you doing?” asks Carmen, after I answer her call.

“I’m at home, watching a movie.”

“Let’s go to the cemetery. I’ll come by and pick you up.”

I’d been wanting to go to the cemetery to take photos for a book that I’ve been working on about daily life in Mompiche but, thus far, hadn’t managed to get there. The afternoon is bright and sunny. Perfect for photos. It’s a good time for me to get out of the house. I’ve been holed up in my cave for weeks, feeling flat, not so keen to face the world beyond the gate. Hostilities fueled by Mayor’s incarceration have escalated. It doesn’t feel good to walk down the street. Whenever I do, it’s just for a few minutes, usually to pick up groceries. I walk slowly with a self-conscious effort to appear calm; head up, shoulders back, the personification of quiet dignity. In truth, I haven’t done anything wrong. A man from the village has been sent to prison for violently attacking me at my home, but I am the one being treated like a criminal. Women hurl insults from open windows. Men put their heads together in groups and snicker as I pass. Children sometimes throw things. It’s easier to hide at home in my safe place.

“Okay,” I agree, switching off the computer. It will do me good to get out.

As I am pulling on jeans, the phone rings again.

“Where have you been?” asks Fabiola. “I haven’t seen you for ages. Are you okay?”

“I’m okay. I’ve just been very busy,” I lie, unwilling to admit that I’ve been swallowed by darkness and have been temporarily paralyzed from the neck up.

I’m supposed to be writing a book, but have been gazing blankly at a clean screen for weeks. I feel like Virginia Woolf in her darkest moment. As we chat, I lie on my bed, feeling swamped by lethargy once again. It’s like some kind of gravitational pull sucking out my life force and dragging all my emotions down to ground level. I don’t feel depressed in the clinical sense of depression, but I certainly am not happy. In fact, I don’t really feel anything at all, just numb from head to toe. It takes all of my will-power not to call myself hurtful names in the mirror each day.

“Come and see me soon, okay?” she closes, heading off to feed her animals.

Carmen arrives in a whirl of giggles, chattering and greeting my weekend house guests as she makes her way to my room.

“C’mon, lazypants. Get up. Let’s go. Oh, and bring a machete.”

“Why do we need … ?”

“Snakes,” responds Carmen. “We might run into snakes at the cemetery.”

Even if we do see any snakes, I’d be the last person on earth to swipe at them with a machete. Live and let live. If I spot any serpenty-types, I won’t tell her. I’m not a killer. However, I obey her orders without further questions. In Mompiche, you never know when a machete might come in handy. Choosing the smallest, sharpest blade from my machete collection of two, I slide the solid handle neatly in to my palm and follow Carmen out the door.

“Why do you wanna go to the cemetery now?” I ask.

“Something to do. There’s not much going on.”

We walk down the main street, through town and along the beach toward Fabiola’s place, on the other side of the rock wall. Still in a mind-fog, I don’t really notice who is around, apart from a few men repairing fishing nets on the beach.

“We have to stop here,” I tell Carmen. Absent for so long, I owe Fabiola a visit.

She is delighted to see us, instantly pulling fresh green coconuts from a branch for us to drink. As Carmen takes a seat, she nods down the beach.

“Look who’s on their way down here.”

We all turn to see Mayor’s wife, her sister and two other women walking along the wet sand. One of them is carrying a machete.

“That’s trouble if I ever saw it,” says Carmen.

Fabiola sets the coconuts aside and gestures for us to follow her. My two best friends lead me to the back of the property where we discuss the receding mangrove forest, the possibility of finding clams in the mud, and the ducks’ fondness for swimming there every morning. After several minutes of inane conversation, the coast is finally declared clear. The women have passed by, and are now ascending the path to the cemetery.

“We don’t need that kind of nonsense,” states Carmen, settling back into a chair with her opened coconut. “We’ll just wait for a bit and see if they come down. We should avoid any trouble.”

Fabiola opens more coconuts and we sit side by side, sipping the refreshing juice and admiring the beauty of her little paradise on the point.

Fabiola is Mompiche’s answer to Doctor Dolittle, and takes in all kind of stray and abandoned animals. On the day Carmen and I are visiting, she has sixteen dogs, fifteen cats, three ducks, two geese, eighteen chickens, two cows and seventeen horses in residence. Her dream is to open an animal refuge with full amenities and then put much of the menagerie up for adoption to kind people who will take good care of them. Lacking funds and resources, Fabiola spends almost all of her own money on feeding animals that people dump on the beach, often during their vacations, because they grew out of puppyhood. Many of the dogs are older. Most of the cats are unwanted kittens. The calves were abandoned by their mothers. Fabi names each new arrival and hand-feeds all the babies until they are able to feed themselves from the bowls she sets out.

Countless times, I have been down there in time for calf-feeding; we’d fill beer bottles with warm formula and add a teat so Anabel or Abel could suckle. We’d have to fill six bottles and quickly switch the teat as each bottle was emptied. I lost count of the number of times Anabel head-butted my thigh while changing teats. Some days, I went home covered in bruises from her budding horns. Other days, we are bitten, scratched, kicked, and even pecked by angry geese as we care for the unruly crowd. None of that matters, it’s more important that the animals are all fed and housed comfortably. The critters are Fabiola’s world.

“They’re still up there,” I remark after a long while, wondering out loud at the intent of the women on the hill. Snakes, indeed ….

“It’s not an accident,” responds Carmen. “When I called you, they were minding their own business, cleaning the fishing nets. Now, all of a sudden, they’re here. They knew you would be down here.”

“How would they know that?”

“I guess they overheard me talking to you on the phone. They were right there when I called.”

“You are not to go up there, Roni,” pipes in Fabiola, sternly. “It’s too dangerous.”

Carmen nods agreement. “She’s right.”

Our trip to the cemetery aborted on the grounds of potential assassination, I sip my coconut quietly. There are so many unanswered questions whirling in my mind. Would they really hurt me? Could anyone be that stupid? Her husband is serving time for doing exactly that, why would she follow in his footsteps? They’d have to kill both of us to get away with it, would they go that far?

“Do you think they would actually … ?”

Carmen’s look silences me. Fabiola shakes her head in dismay. She can’t believe it either.

Armed with a finely sharpened machete, I still wouldn’t be a match against four angry women. Without doubt, I know Carmen would back me up, but it isn’t worth the risk to either of us. Flinching at the thought of such violence, I feel rattled by this terrible plot. As an author, I couldn’t even make up this much bizarreness. For the time being, Carmen and I stay put, chatting with Fabiola until we are certain the murderous foursome are not coming down the path any time soon. If they do come down, our plan is to slip up there quietly and take the photos I want.

At least the view from our beachfront table is spectacular. That is something for which to be grateful. Fabiola’s sprawling place is the last one on the end of the beach, before the landscape rises sharply up the hill. A rocky path takes surfers out to the point break, a popular surf spot during the season. Just around the corner, a colony of blue-footed boobies resides on the cliff face. Pelicans, frigate birds and great blue herons take shelter on the hilltop. The lush tropical jungle covering the small peninsula is interrupted only by the smattering of brilliant white headstones lined up neatly in the cemetery. Once a year, just before All Soul’s Day, a group of locals visit and clean out the overgrowth, pull weeds and plant flowers to make it spic and span for the coming commemorative festivities. Afterward, Mompiche’s final resting place is at its prettiest, dotted with colorful bouquets and boasting one of the most magnificent views of the village and its long white beach. From time to time, we glimpse flashes of the group’s red, pink and yellow shirts moving around between the graves. Carmen and Fabiola, two Ecuadorian women who have stood by my side throughout every single ordeal, don’t want me to end up in a cement crypt any sooner than is necessary.

“They followed us down here on purpose,” Carmen whispers to Fabiola. Her tone is sinister.

“What kind of idiots are they?” snaps Fabiola impatiently. “Who do they think they are?”

An involuntary shiver runs down my spine. Five years ago, I came to this beautiful little stretch of white sand to live in peace, to escape an insane war that wouldn’t stop, to immerse myself in nature and become one with the earth, to get my hands dirty in rich fertile soil and plant my own food. Aside from denting the egos of several amorous men, I haven’t hurt anyone. The last few years have been challenging on every single level, but I’ve persisted in following my dream despite all the obstacles. Regardless of what has been tossed my way in this mishmash life I’ve created for myself in a different culture, I’ve remained strong the entire time, putting one foot in front of the other without fail, and I feel like it’s time to relax and celebrate some of my achievements. Now, with a threat against my life, it seems that every speck of my existence is in question.

As the sky darkens, approaching dusk, the women are still up on the hill, lying in wait. Carmen and I bid Fabiola farewell with kisses on her cheeks and warm hugs. We walk slowly back along the beach toward the village, the machete dangling from my hand. Mission unsuccessful.

“We’ll go another time,” she assures me. “Next time, I won’t say it out loud.”

Feeling pensive, I am quiet. In truth, knowing there are people who want to hurt me, I don’t really know what to say.

My friends’ efforts to lift me out of the doldrums is applaudable, I truly appreciate it but, after today, all I want to do is crawl back into my cave and stay there for eternity. Will someone please wake me up when the world outside my gate has come to its senses?

Heaven to the Left, Hell to the Right

Woken from a deep sleep, confused and disorientated, I wonder why people are yelling.

A man in military camouflage shakes my shoulder, shouting gruffly, “Get off the bus!”

Still drowsy, I get up and move outside, as ordered. There are two long queues, one for men, and one for women. I’m roughly pushed into the one for women. I don’t understand what’s going on. One by one, the women in my queue are sent back onto the bus. It’s some kind of checkpoint. Then, it’s my turn.

“Passport!” orders the man facing the queue.

He looks me up and down with a sneer, as if I am solely responsible for keeping him out of bed in the middle of the night. His angry face is black and shiny, with a jagged scar across his cheek that deepens with his intense frown. If he wasn’t wearing a police uniform, I’d be really afraid of him.

“I don’t have it. But I have a photocopy,” I say, handing him the piece of paper.

In fact, I have no idea where my passport is. The last time I used it was to buy the block of land in Mompiche and organize the title deed with the Municipality in Muisne. I haven’t seen it since. I’ve been looking for it for two weeks, in between Quito, Mompiche, and Muisne, but it hasn’t turned up. And now, I’m on my back to way to Quito to figure out how to get a new one, as well as meet a friend and tidy up the loose ends of my old city life. My Spanish is still rudimentary, and I don’t know how to explain all this to the policeman.

“Passport!” he demands again, waving the copy aside with a brush of his hand.

“I don’t know where it is,” I tell him, shrugging.

“It’s not my problem,” says the officer, then orders my arrest.

From the left, someone grabs my arm and forcefully pulls me out of the queue. A policewoman performs a rough body search. My backpack is upturned, the contents strewn on the ground. She kicks at the few items of clothing and my book, indicating I should pick them up. When I turn to protest to the policeman, she drags me away.

“Hey! Where are you taking me?”

Nobody answers.

It is at this point that I feel real danger. Every hair on my body stands on end. My instincts are on high-alert. If an opportunity presents itself to high-tail it out of there, I’ll be on it. The policewoman won’t let me take a step sideways without an escort.

“I need a bathroom,” I whisper.

She takes me into a small room. I’m not allowed to shut the door. She stands with her back to me. I take my time, looking for open windows, or any other escape route. There are none. Then, she takes me to a police car and shoves me inside. She slams the door and walks away, leaving two burly policemen to take care of the car. The door has kid-locks.

What now? I’m wondering when I turn to see who else is in the car. Before that, I had sensed other people on the bench seat, but didn’t look. To my surprise, Daniel Facchin, the owner of La Facha in Mompiche is there too.

“What are you doing here?” I ask. “What’s going on?”

“My passport is in Quito,” he says. “You’re not supposed to travel without it.”

“What if it’s been lost or stolen? How are you supposed to get a new one? Where are they taking us? What will they do with us? What will happen now?”

He doesn’t have the answers to any of my questions. We are trapped in the car for half an hour before the police get in and drive us to a hospital in Esmeraldas.

“Why are we here?” I ask.

“So they can certify that you were healthy when they threw you in prison,” says Facchin.

Prison?

We are taken to CDP in Esmeraldas; the Provisional Detention Center. I take one look at the prison and freak out. It smells like a toilet.

“No!”

Gobsmacked and disgusted beyond belief, I’m not keen to step into a cell, terrified they’ll clang the door shut behind me and lock it—maybe forever, since I don’t have a passport. Fleetingly, I imagine having to spend Christmas in an Ecuadorian prison. The scene is too dismal to picture. But Christmas is only a couple of days away. My heart feels like a boulder of granite. After a lifetime of adventure peppered with illicit activities all over the world, until this moment, I have never been locked up. This definitely is one “first” I can live without. Tears leap into my eyes, and my heart sinks even deeper. In three decades of global travel, this is the most horrible place I have ever been. The level of filthiness in each cell is inhumane.

My usual bullheadedness in the face of conflict has vanished. Ecuador has delivered a king-hit to the solar plexus of my morale. Instead, my spirit deflated, I stand frozen in the hallway unable to move. A man in the drunk-driver cell beckons me from the door. Others stare. Others call out. I’m in shock. I do not want to be there.

“Hey honey, come here to daddy. Come give daddy a kiss.”

All the men in the cell laugh. They clamor at the bars, their faces pressed against the metal to get a better look. I let the policeman coax me into “El cielo” (Heaven: the women’s cell) which is opposite “El infierno” (Hell) but won’t let him shut the door. On either side of the wide hall “El purgatorio” and “El confesionario” are filled with dark, leering faces. No doubt, the cell names are someone’s idea of a joke. My usual sense of humor escapes me. There is not one funny thing about this.

“Please don’t shut the door,” I beg, terror washing over me as I take in the bug-infested, filthy dungeon-type cell. Mold grows out of the walls. Water drips from the ceiling in one corner, leaving a mossy green streak all the way to the floor. Cigarette butts line the edges of the floor, kicked into the walls by hundreds of previous inmates, never swept up. Three paper-thin foam mats are strewn around, riddled with holes and all the corners ragged from being picked off. There is no toilet.

Men hang out the bars of the opposite cells and watch, catcalling and teasing.

“Come get in here with us, baby! We’ll take good care of you!” The other prisoners jeer and laugh.

With my back turned, I let tears wash down my cheeks, but not a sound escapes my mouth. It usually takes some doing, but this time, my world has been rocked. I’m aghast. Lost and terrified.

After half an hour of catcalls and wolf-whistles from the men crowded into Purgatory, the policeman finally puts me into a smaller unnamed cell near the entrance with Faccin and a Chinese man who’d faked his cedula (identity card) and doesn’t speak a word of Spanish or English. The gatekeeper drags a thin rat-chewed mattress across the floor and gestures towards it.

“This is our five-star accommodation for princesses,” he says. “Now, go to sleep.”

By now, it’s 3.00am. Reluctantly, I sit on the least dirty corner of the mattress; the only corner that is not blackened with the despair of past detainees. By now, I’m physically and emotionally exhausted. Looking around, I notice phone chargers plugged into power points. Mine is added to the collection and I send the same disjointed text message to everyone on my contact list.

In prison. Esmeraldas CDP. Lost my passport. Police took me from bus. Need help ASAP.

The friend I’m supposed to meet in Quito the following day will never know what happened. The kids at school will break for Christmas without me, and not ever know why. I’ll miss the appointment with my ex-roommate to return the key to the house. Finally, clutching my backpack as a pillow, cellphone in my hand so it won’t be stolen, I fall asleep from pure fatigue.

After a restless night, my hip sore from sleeping on the cement floor, with only my head and shoulders on my backpack, I shake myself awake. My first thought: how to get out of here. My second thought: I’m hungry.

There is a soup stand opposite the prison gate. Yelling through the bars, Faccin orders three encebollados from the lady across the street. It’s not as good as Alicia’s, but it’s hot and filling. Dipping the plastic spoon into the takeout container, I close my stinging over-tired eyes and wonder if anyone will respond to my text message.

Keystone Cops Investigate Bikini Tops

The police commissioner in Atacames doesn’t want to know.

“We don’t deal with Mompiche,” he says flatly, refusing to look up from his papers, behaving more like a stuffy bureaucrat than a policeman.

“But they told me to come here,” I plead, hurting from the long bus trip; badly bruised and battered the day after the machete attack.

“No. We’re not interested.” He turns his back and waves me away, as if I am nothing more than an insect bothering him unnecessarily. The police logo on his desk says “To Serve and Protect”.

Angry and frustrated, I leave. He’s the second policeman I’ve encountered in two days who could care less if Mayor had chopped me into human sushi. The first being Jimmy who, normally round and jolly, suddenly transformed into stone. At this point, I wonder if Ecuador actually has any laws regarding machete attacks. Are women, whatever their age, race, creed or color, not protected against violence, domestic or otherwise? Apparently not.

Exhausted and sore, I return to Mompiche and spend a couple of days in bed, recovering from my injuries; physical and psychological, and thinking about my next move. At some point, I have photos taken of my wounds.

The Police Commissioner in Muisne is only slightly more helpful.

“We will issue a restraining order and then request that he come in and talk to us,” reassures the enormous dark policeman. He reeks of onions. I shy away from his foul breath.

“Talk to you?” I ask, incredulous. “Is that it?”

The commissioner shrugs effeminately. Whatever happened to putting criminals in handcuffs and putting them behind bars? Is that not done here? Clearly, unless some form of remuneration is passed under the table, his soft, un-calloused hands are tied. One lunatic almost murdered me and this corrupt creep expects me to pay him to uphold the law? He disgusts and dismays me. Restraining order in hand, I take the next bus to Esmeraldas. My body aches in protest at the long distances I have to travel to get anything done.

The Provincial Chief of Police is happy to receive me, if only I could wait a few minutes. Of course. Hands throbbing, head aching, eyes red from stress and exhaustion, I sit in a waiting room for almost an hour while Colonel Ponce concludes his meetings.

“He what?!” Colonel Ponce asks, his jaw dropping after I describe the crime in detail and then Jimmy’s subsequent reaction. I go on to outline the other meetings with the commissioners in Atacames and Muisne.

Nodding and frowning as I relate the events of the previous few days, grey-haired Ponce is clearly disturbed. His thin face, deeply lined with the responsibilities of his province, twitches as he absorbs the information.

“This is unacceptable,” he states, picking up the phone. “We’re going to do something about this immediately.”

A few minutes later, another commissioner shows up. “Come with me ma’am. We’re going to take your statement downstairs.”

A grueling half-hour with Constable Solis Mina Wellington in the interview room reveals mostly that this lean crew-cut policeman has never learned to type, much less read or spell. And he doesn’t know the first thing about listening. The statement is incomplete, and filled with errors. I try to explain that there is more, that we’re not even half done. He’s not interested. It’s the end of his shift. Wellington wants to go home.

“You have to come back tomorrow to verify your signature and get a medical examination,” he says, printing the document. He doesn’t even give me a chance to read it before he signs it, hands me a copy, and vanishes out the door. At the front desk, the clerk insists I sign the papers because Constable Wellington has already signed both the office copies. Reluctantly, I sign my name at the bottom of each page.

This half-assed statement in hand; typos, names and dates incorrect, spelling errors and all, I head back to the bus station only to learn I’ve missed the last bus back to Mompiche. The last bus to Chamanga is leaving in ten minutes. I doze most of the way to Tres Vias.

Dropped off at the turn-off, I discover there is no phone signal, and begin walking. I cover almost the entire seven kilometers to the village in the dark before Miguel comes along and gives me a ride the last bit of the way home on his motorbike. A few minutes later, when I go to deliver a copy of the restraining order to the police station, I learn that Jimmy has been transferred out of Mompiche; replaced by Constable Ricardo Sanchez. It’s loathe at first sight. In another place, another time, he might have been profiled as the perfect Gestapo recruit. He’s also a friend of Mayor’s.

At dawn the next morning, I head back to Esmeraldas to verify my signature and get a medical examination. CTW, my eye witness, comes along. She was with me in the house when Mayor showed up and she witnessed the whole gory incident. She’s agreed to make a police statement. We are misinformed that we will have to wait until 3pm. After whiling the time away in internet cafes and wandering around the streets of the city, we finally arrive at the provincial District Attorney’s office. There, we’re made for wait for over an hour until they decide what to do with us. Finally, just before 5pm, we’re taken upstairs. A hurried secretary leads CTW into an interview room and I’m taken down the the doctor’s office to make an injury report that, in the end, never makes it to the District Attorney’s office in Atacames. CTW’s statement is also incomplete and riddled with mistakes.

Once again, the last bus to Mompiche is long gone by the time we arrive at the bus terminal. We board the last bus to Chamanga. Tonight, by prearrangement, Galo Intriago picks us up at the entrance. Barely able to keep my eyes open, I can’t even be bothered to eat before I hit the sack.

CTW stays for a couple more weeks, enjoying Mompiche and helping to cook, clean and wash my hair; activities I am unable to do with badly injured hands. After helping me move into the half-constructed house, she leaves for the USA.

“So why did you fire the builder?” asks the DA’s secretary, Luis Castillo.

“I got tired of the sexual harassment, the verbal abuse and the general lack of respect, the poor quality building methods, and being robbed every time I turned around, amongst other things,” I tell him, describing a few specific incidents of the sexual harassment.

For a long moment, Luis Castillo sits at his desk with his mouth open, appalled. It seems there are laws in Ecuador regarding sexual harassment.

“You have to make a separate statement for the sexual harassment,” he informs me. “Then you need to go and see the detectives so they can investigate the crime scene. I’ll also send you to the doctor for a legal examination because the last report never arrived.”

I spend another hour with another man who can’t type, making another statement, incomplete and full of errors, regarding the sexual harassment I was subjected to while Mayor was building my house.

“Why didn’t you fire him sooner?” Luis inquires.

“Because I thought I’d get hung up by the thumbs by the labor council.”

A friend had recently been done over by a worker he’d fired for theft. The labor council made him pay the worker over three thousand dollars – a year’s salary – for breaking the employment contract. I didn’t want to end up in the same predicament.

“Sexual harassment is hard to prove,” he states, painstakingly punching out one letter at a time with his index fingers.

Tell me about it.

Next, he sends me to the Atacames Police to organize the investigation. Detective Alejandro Paredes could have fallen off the set of a very bad detective film. He has greasy unkempt hair, the beginnings of a paunch and Marty Feldman-ish goggle eyes. He closely inspects the neckline of my tank top, as if that’s precisely where he’s planning to launch his investigation. During our interview, his eyes shy away from meeting mine.

“You’ll have to pay for the gasoline so I can come to Mompiche and do an investigation,” he says, staring at his chipped fingernails.

He’s kidding, right? Apparently, he’s not kidding. I’m down to my last hundred bucks in the whole world and this joker who is paid by the state expects me to pay his gas.

“Why don’t you come in a police car?”

His look shows that he knows I know. I look straight through his eyes. He looks away.

“Okay. I can probably find a police car in the next week.”

“What will you do exactly?”

“Investigate the crime scene. Take photos. Look around.”

A week later, Detective Alejandro Paredes shows up in a police car, with a male friend and two girls in shorts and bikini tops in tow. Very professional. Not. He spends half an hour in my house, touching everything, asking irrelevant questions, peering into my bedroom. At every step he takes, my hackles rise higher. I say nothing. He takes photos. He asks me to pose. I prefer not to. Photos of my physical injuries have already been submitted to the DA’s office. Paredes doesn’t need photos of me, just of the damage to the wooden door and all the blood stains. My unwillingness to cooperate makes him antsy.

“We need these photos for evidence.”

“These bloodstains on the floor are the evidence.”

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to…”

“You’ll figure it out. See you tomorrow.”

I’m relieved to see the back of him. Sleazy is not a nasty enough word for him. The next day, when I go to the police station, he can’t figure out how to download the photos from the camera to the computer. I have to show him. He makes me slide past his chair and lean over his back to transfer the files. I ask him to save them to my USB drive so I can print them. He accidentally deletes every file I have saved. I spend fifteen minutes retrieving them, then he yanks my USB out of the computer. Finally, with his USB in hand, I get the photos printed then return to the police station so he can spend three hours typing descriptions of each photo and then pasting them onto white sheets of paper. We then go to deliver the photos to the public prosecutor. On the way back from the DA’s office, we pass an ice cream shop famous for its tasty handmade ice creams.

“Let’s get ice cream,” he suggests.

I consider the limited funds in my pocket. We missed lunch. I can spring for an ice cream cone each and still have bus fare home. Once inside, he orders a fancy fruit salad bowl with four scoops and whipped cream, nuts, cherries, all the trimmings. Wipes out my wallet. While slurps his ice cream, loudly sucking on pieces of watermelon and papaya, he licks his lips and greedily ogles every girl that walks past, checking them out in the mirror as they turn the corner.

“Tell me about the sexual harassment,” he says, looking me up and down.

“It’s in the statement.”

“What did he say to you? What did he do? Did he touch you?”

“Read the statement.”

“I want you to tell me.”

“I’m sure you do.”

When I get on the bus, penniless, I tell the conductor that I have no money because I was robbed in Atacames. It’s kind of true. The conductor tells me not to worry, he’ll get me safely to Mompiche and I can pay him next time. He will never know how eternally grateful I am to meet a sincere man with a gentle heart right at that moment. It’s those kind souls who restore my battered faith in the human race. The first time since being attacked, I shed a tear.

Steal My Bananas If You’re Hungry, But Keep Your Clam-Diggin’ Hands Off My Computer!

Freddy is dragged kicking and screaming into the back of the pickup truck. Three burly policemen shove him over the tailgate and go around to get in the cab. As soon as the car doors close, Freddy sees a chance and takes it. He leaps over the side and takes off, running down the main street. Chubby and unfit, he’s surprisingly swift. At the president’s barked orders, the uniformed policemen give chase. They tackle Freddy to the ground and wrestle him back into the truck. It’s a violent struggle. Spittle flies from Freddy’s lips. The police grunt and pant with the effort. Mompicheros line both sides of the street to witness the impromptu tragi-comedy being played out in the village. The president keeps an eagle eye on the players.

Freddy screams, “Let me go! Let me go! Let me go! Let me go! Please, let me go!”

Shirtless and shoeless, he writhes on his back on the filthy flatbed of the truck, held down by two policemen. The third jumps in the driver’s seat and starts the motor. Maruka, Freddy’s older brother, climbs up the side and subdues him.

“You’re my brother! How can you do this to me?” wails Freddy, his hands now firmly tied behind his back.

Freddy has a little habit.

Tears streak his dust-covered face. His dark features contort with rage and fear. His matted hair stands straight up. Maruka stands over his brother, ignoring the gathering onlookers. He mutters a curse under his breath and kicks at Freddy’s feet. The police jump into the cab once more, ready to go. The self-appointed President of Mompiche climbs into the front passenger seat and the car starts down the road.

“Nooooooooo!” shrieks Freddy, kicking at his brother. “Let me goooooooooo!”

“Shut up, you idiot!” shouts the president with all the class and style of a charwoman, leaning out the window of the cab. “It’s your own stupid fault, not ours!”

The car speeds away towards the forested hills, transporting Freddy to Esmeraldas, where his mother, the president, will force him into the rehabilitation center to detox from base; a nasty derivative of cocaine. Maruka stands stiffly in the back, his face frozen. His expression says it all; he’s already buried one younger brother in the local cemetery for his addiction to basuco, and he’s not prepared to carry the coffin of another.

Jonathon is the basuco dealer. He’s the youngest son of one of the corrupt Mompiche Directive’s members, Margarita. She owns a seafood restaurant on the main street. Her oldest son, Arnold, is a fisherman who supplies the restaurant with freshly caught seafood. Jonathon doesn’t do much of anything, his activities mostly reserved for the wee hours when the addicts are looking to score. The whole town knows what Jonathon does for money. The police, the Directive, the storekeepers, everyone in the Restaurants’ Association and the Fishermen’s Cooperative. No one does anything. There’s a strong demand for hard drugs; base, crack, cocaine, acid. Base is the cheapest. Most of the users are men aged between 20 and 30. Jonathon is the main supplier. The addicts are in deep. They’re all penniless and strung out. No one will give them work. That’s why we’re all having problems.

It’s easy to trace a stolen laptop

First, David’s laptop computer vanishes from his car. The thief forgets to take the power cord. Step by step, following the trail and paying for information along the way, David tracks his computer to Manta. He buys it back from the hot goods buyer; no questions asked. He’s happy to have all his files and photos back. No police report is ever made.

“It’s not worth it. They take so long and don’t do anything,” says David, shrugging.

He’s right. The Ecuadorian police force is a shambles.

Tito, La Facha’s owner, is drunk the night his computer walks off the premises; taken by someone who has access to his room key. While there is a list of possible suspects, he has no idea where to start looking. He never reports the crime. He has enough money to buy another computer.

The same night, Christian’s computer is stolen from inside his house while his aged father is sleeping. Christian goes to the police. He makes a report. After a month, nothing has happened. In the village, he hears about two guys trying to sell a hot laptop. There are no secrets in Mompiche.

“A month ago, they were both working for me,” he says.

Mona and Guanchaca are base addicts. They take Christian’s computer to Portete to see if they can offload it there. The programs are in English. There’s a password. They can’t get in. The guy in Portete doesn’t want it; too hard to sell. Guanchaca tries to sell it to a local storekeeper. The storekeeper calls Christian. Between them, they make a vain attempt to buy it back. Guanchaca gets antsy and reneges on the deal. Then, he vanishes. The story going around town is that his family has called him home.

Stolen goods = more drugs

Lying on the floor in the dark, playing with one of my cats, I overhear the conversation between Guanchaca’s wife and her father who live across the street.

“Why would he steal a computer?”

“For the money!”

“It can’t stay here.”

“What should we do?”

“Get it out of here.”

Packed off to his family, with a hot computer in his bag, Guanchaca is exiled. We presume that will be the last we hear about the computer. Christian gets on with his life, makes his insurance claim and begins planting spiky citrus trees around the borders of his property.

A couple of months later, Guanchaca makes a brief appearance in town for a few days and disappears again. A couple of days later, we hear the base dealer has the computer.

“I saw it with my own eyes,” claims Beto. “The idiot couldn’t even use it!”

Word is, Jonathon’s place is loaded with hot goods, stolen and passed to him in exchange for drugs. Later on, they’re taken to Atacames and sold. Christian goes back to the police.

“We know who has it. We know who stole it. We know where it is. Can you get it?”

“Well…” says a policeman, looking Christian up and down, “…it will take us about a month to get a search warrant.”

This is why Mompicheros don’t bother reporting anything stolen. Christian loses hope. Meanwhile, Marco’s laptop is stolen during the night. The next night, Morongo goes to retrieve it. He pays the dealer $70USD to buy it back; the amount the addict-thief received for the pilfered machine. The day after, Marco, a north American biologist in Mompiche on a volunteer reforesting program, goes to Atacames and makes a police report.

By this time, I’m so mad about all the robberies, the protected thieves running around apparently unstoppable, the unwillingness of witnesses to speak up, and the impotence of the police, that I’m ready to go to Jonathon’s house with a baseball bat and kick down the door. My normally non-violent soul is ready to cave in his skull, as well as those of the thieves. I have a laptop too – even if it’s old, decrepit and barely usable – it’s the only way I can make a decent living and I cannot afford to replace it if one of these soulless creeps gets his mollyfogging mitts on it.

It’s not even worth stealing, but the addicts don’t care.

“But, wait a second,” I tell Christian, putting aside my vision of Jonathon’s cell-less brains splattered all over the stolen goods stacked against his walls. “Call this number and see what happens.”

He punches the telephone number of the Provincial Chief of Police into his phone. Right at that moment, there’s no satellite signal. Of course! Ha!

“Six years ago, there were no drug addicts in Mompiche,” Christian says before going home to scrape out the dirt from between his floorboards, getting ready to sand and varnish them, and wait for the police to act.

Enraged, I make the brownies Jana ordered and bake Carmen’s peanut cookies. It passes the time, and takes my mind off the worsening problem of thieving base-addicted Mompicheros. When I go out to make my deliveries, my computer is concealed under a tangle of sheets and pillows on my bed. The power cord is hidden in a plastic bag under my desk and the external hard-drive is in the secret pocket of my handbag. I don’t know if my security measures are adequate. In the current climate of rampant thievery, maybe I should be considering a stainless steel underground vault.

With alarming frequency, I-pods, MP3 players, mobile telephones, cameras and laptops are vanishing from hotel rooms and private residences, tents, restaurant tables and even beach towels.

Locked in your hotel room, it’s still not safe.

“It’s not my fault,” states a beach-front hotel owner. “People should look after their stuff.”

This seems an inappropriate attitude for a concerned citizen with a business based in tourism. Nevertheless, the majority of business owners in Mompiche have the same idea; it’s our fault. We’re all filthy rich foreigners. Too bad if we lose something. We can afford to get another one. It’s not their problem. The non-response of the police and the dawdling corrupt justice system don’t help.

Christian calls me in the afternoon.

“That phone number you gave me is gold. The head honcho kicked butt all over the province. They’re planning to search and arrest the dealer on Friday.”

We hold our breath for two days, hoping Jonathon doesn’t catch wind of what’s going down and offload Christian’s computer. The idea is that he’ll squeal on the thieves hoping for a lesser sentence and they’ll all end up cooling their heels in prison for a while. My computer will be safe again. At least until the next addict runs out of money.

Jonathon’s life takes a turn for the worse when a truck-load of police turn up on his doorstep Friday night. Inside the house when they show up, Serrano bolts into the mangroves to escape, leaving the dealer to cop the rap. Uniformed police empty Jonathon’s house of stolen goods; televisions, blenders, computers, phones, a fridge, and anything else you might care to name, along with a hefty stash of powdery white narcotics. Neighbors look on with interest. Jonathon hides in the roof, but it’s a temporary nest; lasting only until the police figure out how to get him down. The story spreads faster than a bush fire. According to the gossip, Morongo is to blame: it’s his fault the police came sniffing around after he recovered his friend’s computer and they made a police report. Christian and I say nothing. The gold telephone number and the butt-kicking head honcho in Esmeraldas remain a secret. Better to let Morongo shoulder the heat. Apparently there’s more than one way to swing the proverbial baseball bat…

The stolen goods are stolen again – by the police.

But none of it is worth the effort. When Tito and Christian go to inspect the stash of stolen goods to identify their computers, most of the items have already been stolen by the police. Jonathon spends a total of four days locked up. His mother bails him out. There is never a court case against him. He struts around town for three days showing everyone he is free. Not long afterwards, it starts all over again. A telephone here, an i-pod there, a backpack, someone’s passport. Sirena’s laptop was stolen just a few days ago in broad daylight from the fourth floor of her bamboo palace. Of course, like always, no one saw anything. We all know who the thieves are, where they live, and where they sell the stolen goods. The locals don’t care; we’re easy targets. The best I can do is to keep concealing my broken down old laptop every single time I leave my house and hope for the best. If it does go missing, the police will be called to clean up the corpses . . .

Mompiche needs help.

The Palace of Justice

The building is dark and drab; it reminds me of 1960s communist-style architecture. A large gold sign with white lettering announces I have arrived at “The Palace of Justice”. The recently deconstructed street is a mess of mud, water, deep holes, yellow machinery, piles of gravel and bags of cement. Orange witches’ hats at either end announce its closure to traffic. The attending police allow only especially privileged cars to enter. At the front of the building, air-conditioner pipes stick out of the walls and drip chilled water onto the tiled pavement below, making slippery puddles. Uniformed policemen hang around at the door, gossiping about last night’s television show. Behind them, a hand-cuffed man leans against the wall, waiting for the police car that will take him to the next scene in his self-made B-grade movie. I enter a narrow reception area with a line of glass windows fronting small cubicles, each labeled with its specific function: document submission, appointment desk, fines and penalties. The staircase is on the right. As I ascend the first of six flights of stairs, a cascade of water steams down.

Ecuadorian Justice = an excruciating oxymoron where the victim is forced to suffer endlessly and often gives up in disgust long before any semblance of justice is achieved.

“Watch your step! Don’t slip over! Be careful!” yell coveralled men with mops on each floor.

A water pipe has burst on the second floor. The First Criminal Court of Esmeraldas is on the third floor. I arrive first thing in the morning. The trial begins in the afternoon. Before we start, I’d like to speak to the judge. Judge Luis Schaffry admits me to his office.

“I have some concerns about the behavior of the district attorney,” I tell the judge, aware that we are not supposed to talk about the case itself.

During a brief interview, I relate my grievances: that the charges have been lessened, that my main witness has never been contacted, that my evidence has been ignored, and the overall level of disrespectful behavior the district attorney has shown toward me.

“I wasn’t there, so I can’t testify that it’s true, but the general conduct of the district attorney and the way in which he treats me has led me to suspect that he may have accepted a bribe from the other party,” I say, looking the judge in the eye.

Judge Schaffry listens attentively, nodding and frowning as I speak. Then, he makes a phone call. He quickly outlines my story.

“She thinks Ortiz might have been paid off,” he tells the listener.

The Ecuadorian Justice System is plagued by rampant corruption from top to bottom, and the District Attorney of Atacames is no exception.

The way he says it makes me think that I’m not the first person to have problems with Ortiz.

After a half-hour wait outside the courtroom, where the judge is hearing another case, three men turn up. In t-shirts, jeans and sneakers, they look like a bunch of guys off the street. The secretary points them in my direction.

“Which office do you come from?” I ask, wanting to know who I’m talking to.

They’re reluctant to say. They won’t say their names either. I press them. They don’t want to tell me.

“Let’s go downstairs and talk privately, okay?” says the leader of the group, heading down the stairs. The other two follow after me. Their demeanor is peaceful; instinctively, I feel nothing to fear.

On the street, without hesitation, I get into a car with three guys I’ve never seen before in my life.

“We’re secret police. We’re investigating corruption in the justice system,” says Matias, finally introducing himself and his two colleagues, Antonio and Diego.

He asks me to describe the events of the previous year. He takes notes as I speak. Antonio and Diego interject occasionally with questions. Matias notes my answers. At the end of our interview, he requests copies of some of the documents from my files.

“We will attend the hearing this afternoon. We want to observe how Ortiz behaves. In court, we’re just your friends, okay? You greet us as though we’re old friends.”

The Secret Police arrive to interview me about the District Attorney’s behavior.

They drop me off outside the court building and disappear.

Guilt-ridden photocopying consumes the next hour. As I fill my dossier with more and more pages of evidence, making extra copies for the secret police, I consider the number of trees that have been sacrificed so that I might pursue justice. I wish for another way in the future, but the justice system is traditionally a purveyor of guilt . . . right? Suppressing pangs of contrition for my part in senseless environmental destruction – it’s me or the trees – I put the thick folder of evidence in my bag and head off to take care of the shopping list: marshmallows, chocolate, fruit gums (ingredients for Rocky Road) and an emergency supply of cat food.

At the dot of the appointed hour, I am on the third floor of the Palace of Justice. Alone. There is no one there. It’s a moment of peace. I sit on the wooden bench and breathe. I’m ready. I have a mountain of evidence against my attacker. I meditate on a positive outcome.

Soon, people arrive at the top of the stairs, panting and out of breath. Prosecuting Attorney Ortiz breezes up, bursting with self-importance. Ortiz arrives literally jangling. It’s strangely appropriate for Boxing Day. A large ring of keys and miscellaneous metal objects clank rhythmically against his thigh with every step. Mayor arrives with his lawyer. They whisper, smirking arrogantly and pointing at me. Mayor’s three witnesses arrive, each gasping for air. The medical examiners arrive, followed by the regional ombudsman who is there to make sure my rights are defended properly. Finally, Judge Schaffry turns up. Except for my newest friends, all the players are present. The show is about to begin.

The courtroom is large, with a long carved wooden bench at the front. Four people take their places here; there are three judges and a court stenographer. The witness stand is on the right, a small laminated table with a plastic chair facing the far wall. Two solid wooden tables, one for the prosecuting attorney and one for the defense attorney sit at the front, opposite the bench. Behind them, several rows of plush red fold-down theater seats, a wide aisle slashed through the middle, fill the rest of the room. The heavy white and gold swag and jabot curtains are flung carelessly over the rail above, letting in more light.

Mayor has never been questioned, never been arrested, never been detained regarding the violent attack that left me maimed.

There is no clerk. Without warning, the judges stand. Everyone present leaps to their feet as the court is called into session, then sits again as the judges take their seats. All of the witnesses are sent outside. The defense attorney rises and loudly declares Mayor innocent. He makes a short speech describing how his client has been deceived and wrongly accused by a vindictive foreign woman whose only intention is to smear his impeccable reputation. Immediately afterwards, Ortiz, the public prosecutor makes his speech, quickly outlining the violent attack, declaring his intent to prove that it did, in fact, take place. In my opinion, it’s weak. Ortiz can do better. I focus on the judge, his face, his expressions. The lists of witnesses scheduled to testify for both sides are presented. Ortiz pouts and gesticulates. He puts on quite a show as he explains that two of my witnesses will not present today: Paredes, the investigating police officer, and Claire.

“In that case,” states Judge Schaffry, “we will hear the testimonies of the plaintiff and the defendant, and the witnesses present until we get to that point. The court will then be adjourned until the other witnesses can testify.”

Ortiz is playing with me again. Watching him pretend he cares about this, I decide that “Plan B” needs to go into action. At some point during the opening addresses, Matias, Antonio and Diego have slunk silently into the courtroom and taken random seats apart from each other. Turning, I wink at each of them in greeting. Mayor sees me winking. He can’t see my “friends” behind him. Then, because legal doctors are always busy and have to rush off to other cases, the first witness is called; the medical examiner from Atacames, Dr Maria Guanizo. The second witness, Dr Simon Macias Olives, is the medical examiner in Esmeraldas. We all rise as each new witness is introduced. In turn, they both describe their one week-apart examinations of my injuries; the trauma to the left hand was severe. It was lacerated, badly bruised and swollen. The defense intimates the damage was caused by something else, a drunken fall perhaps. Both doctors assure him that those types of injuries are caused by the forceful impact of a blunt instrument. The same goes for the cuts and bruising on my right hand. Indicating the photos of the wounds, they reiterate that the cut to my upper arm was clearly caused by a fine sharp blade. The bruise and lump on my head was caused by a hard impact by something undefinable. The defense lawyer ineffectively tries to maneuver them into saying otherwise. Patiently, they each explain the medical meanings of “trauma” and “laceration” once again, as if to a child. Both testimonies are strong. Overweight and slobbish, the defense lawyer appears bumbling and incompetent. During Dr Simon’s testimony, Ortiz asks me to stand. He turns my back to the judge while he points out the scar clearly visible on my upper arm. The judges inspect it from the bench. Then, Dr Simon is also dismissed. I could have kissed both doctors. Ever-optimistic, I begin to feel the first twinge of real confidence.

He barged into my house, began destroying property, then slammed my hand with the back of the hatchet.

My testimony is next. After handing a photocopy of my passport to the judge, I sit at the small table. My right thumb has a piece of skin missing where I’ve been nervously picking at the side of the nail. It’s on the verge of bleeding. I haven’t noticed the slight throb of pain until this moment. Judge Schaffry asks me a series of standard questions: name, address, age, religion, nationality, occupation. Some of them I don’t understand at first. Politely, I ask him to speak slowly and clearly. His questions are then answered. After that, in clear but slightly imperfect Spanish, I describe the events of that day, and leading up to that day. I’m nervous, a little traumatized, very stressed. I maintain eye contact with Schaffry and Ortiz, ignoring the defense attorney and Mayor. My throbbing thumb is forgotten.

“Then, he bashed the axe against the back of my left hand. Blood spurted out. My hand went numb straight away. I wasn’t expecting it. I had no time to defend myself.”

Tears threaten as I recount the attack. I stop several times and take deep breaths.

“He raised the machete above his head. I thought he was going to kill me.”

He raises the machete above his head, I shut my eyes, thinking I am about to die. Then, I wonder if there will be enough pieces of me left for someone to identify my mangled body.

Emphasized with hand gestures and body movement, my testimony is articulate and detailed. Even so, I forget to mention several things. I don’t know if my omissions will affect a successful outcome.

The district attorney asks some of the questions I forgot to raise in my testimony. Silently, I thank Ortiz. Answering his questions, my voice is strong and true. I don’t falter. After a few minutes he hands me to the lions.

The defense attorney suggests I was so drunk that day that I don’t remember how I injured my hands. As expected, he suggests I’m lying. I look him directly in the eye, right through to the back of his skull, and assure him that I am not lying, because I don’t drink alcohol. For the rest of his questioning, he can’t look directly at me again. Finally, slain with truths, he concedes that he has no more questions. Lions? Pussies, really.

Next, Mayor testifies, contradicting himself several times.

“She hurt her hands when she was drunk.”

“She owes me $6,500!”

As he lies his heart out, I look him right in the eye. He knows I owe him nothing; that’s the spineless excuse he uses to justify violently attacking a woman. After a quick glance, he can’t meet my eyes. Again, I maintain eye contact with Judge Luis. During his testimony, Mayor backtracks several times, then lies again. He even denies the testimonies of the medical professionals.

“It was around lunchtime. She cut her arm on the jagged edge of a piece of bamboo.”

His perjury is obvious. His own lawyer can’t back him up. The public prosecutor flays him to the bone with his own words. I hand Ortiz the relevant papers as he painstakingly fillets the defendant.

“Your written testimony last October states she hurt her hand on the door-jamb.”

“You also stated then that she owed you $6000. Are you adding interest?”

Ortiz points out several more discrepancies. By the time he is dismissed, Mayor’s balloon of arrogance has deflated somewhat.

Like a determined dog digging up an old bone, Ortiz unearths several discrepancies.

One by one, Mayor’s witnesses are called to testify. I present documents that prove each one is a distant relative by marriage to the defendant. They’re all cousins to Mayor’s wife, albeit twice or thrice removed. The astonished looks on their faces as the public prosecutor reveals this secretly-gathered information is priceless. I can almost hear them wondering how I found out. Over the last few months, my surreptitious investigations of all the available evidence have been extremely thorough. Even Ortiz is surprised.

“You are not obligated to testify,” Judge Schaffry tells each witness.

Oh, but how they want to! Hatred and resentment are so thick in their throats they’re all in danger of choking. They can’t wait to see me roasted in the halls of justice. It couldn’t be more entertaining. Each witness has an entirely different account of what took place that day. From the time of day to the weapon they claim I used to assault Mayor, and everything that took place in between. They’re all completely contradictory. In fifteen months, they appear not to have colluded to get their story straight.

Jessica: “It was 11.00am. She hit him with a shovel! She called him a dog! I swear that’s the truth. I saw it with my own eyes!”

Diana: “It was 2.00pm. She hit him with a broomstick! She never cut her arm. She called him a monkey! I swear that’s the truth. I saw her attack him with my own eyes!”

Geronimo: “It was 8.00am. She hit him with a post-hole digger! She cut her arm on a piece of barbed wire. I swear that’s the truth. I was right there! I saw the whole thing with my own eyes!”

By the time the last clown has completed the circus circuit, even Judge Schaffry is laughing.

Each witness glares angrily as they perjure themselves in front of the four judges.

Ortiz dissects each testimony into bite-sized lies. The witnesses become agitated. Their tongues twist around more untruths. Soon, the entire testimony of each one becomes mincemeat for perjury pie.

“Are you lying?” asks the public prosecutor.

“No! I’m telling the truth! I swear!”

“Is the defendant lying, then?”

“No! He’s not a liar!”

“Well, someone is lying! Your story is very different to his story. Who is it?”

“It isn’t me!”

“Is it him then?” Ortiz points at Mayor.

Diana becomes angry and calls me crazy. Immediately, she’s admonished. Geronimo also spits insults. He’s sternly warned that he will be thrown out of the courtroom and his testimony struck from the record if he does it again. Jessica tries angrily staring me down, but can’t hold her perfidious gaze very long; my calm observation of her spewing fallacies proves too much.

Expertly filleted and then finely minced, the last witness is dismissed. But we can’t proceed further without my other witnesses, Paredes and Claire. Court is adjourned to a date yet to be specified. We all rise as the judges and court stenographer leave the room. Smiling, I gather my papers and walk out of the courtroom with Ortiz, the ombudsman and my three new friends.

Even a blind justice statue can see that true justice is as likely as eating ice cream in hell.

In the street, Mayor and his witnesses huddle, enraged. They’re now aware that they’ve botched it badly. Obviously, it’s all my fault. They toss incoherent insults in my direction. Laughing as I cross the street to catch the bus to the terminal, I feel better than I have in months. If all forms of corruption are put aside, there is no way I can lose. Still, there is (at least) one more session to get through first; let’s see what happens . . .

Day Four on the Bathroom Floor

The pain shrieks through my innards like an amoebic rampage, each infected cell with its own machete violently hacking at the walls of my tender intestines until it reaches such an intensity that I can no longer breathe. My mind is no longer capable of processing thought. My spirit is considering passing into another world to escape the agony. The degradation of uncontrollable diarrhea is soul-crushing. Finally, the cramp subsides. Tears drip from my face to be absorbed into the hard cement floor, where I am lying, to become a living part of the house. The unfinished bathroom floor is not the most comfortable place to spend five days. Right now, in this wretched state, it’s the most convenient.

Someone was with me when I became ill. I’d invited him to dinner that night. The grilled fish was done, the salad ready, the juice made. Feeling queasy, I decided I wouldn’t eat, even though my favorite fish, robarlo a.k.a snook, was on the menu. Not long after that decision, I found myself heaving violently into a bucket. A fever rushed over me. Cramps began. Within an hour, I could barely move. My supposed friend – a whacky, emotionally unstable type who claims to be one of those specially targeted individuals of special interest to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and who harbors all kinds of outlandish conspiracy theories – ate my fish without blinking. Then, fully aware that I was very unwell, and not even bothering to wash the dishes, he vanished for a week.

Robarlo / Snook

The first two horrible days I wallow in bed, barely conscious. Whatever vicious amoeba has attacked me this time has me laid out for cremation like an undertaker, knowing I am ready to die. At one point, realizing I could dehydrate, I drag a five gallon bottle of water to my bedside, with a jug and a glass. The last thing I want to do is put anything into my convulsing stomach. That my stomach is empty doesn’t seem to matter to whatever it is that is purging me volcanically from every orifice until I have run out of clean clothes to change into. So slick with rioting bacteria are my insides that even water doesn’t stick.

Another futile inspection of my pre-paid cellphone reveals once again that I have no minutes; not even the three cents required to send a message to save my own life.

“Please help me,” I call weakly from the bathroom floor on the third afternoon after a particularly harrowing few hours of severe cramps.

No one answers. I have shed all my clothes, shoving them into a stinking filthy pile to be washed at some point when I’m able. A thin towel protects me from the cool cement of the floor. A rolled up sweater serves as a pillow. In this state, I’m too weak to get one from the bed. Drifting in and out of consciousness, time passes. I try to drink water. The longest it stays inside my body is thirty seconds. I keep trying to drink. Exhausted, I sleep again.

The cats hover nearby, meowing occasionally for food. I can’t feed them. Boss wraps herself around my head, massaging my hair. I cry at my inability to care for my pets, and myself. Tears drip onto Boss’s fur. She licks them off energetically, the only sustenance she’s had in several days. Fortunately there is a small container of rainwater for them to drink. They hunt insects during the night.

“Please help me,” I croak again sometime during the next day. No one responds.
All those lectures from Doña Sara about being unacceptably single come to mind. If I wasn’t single, I wouldn’t be dying, naked and alone – the same way I was born – on my own bathroom floor. Maybe there is something to be said for having a partner after all. To amuse myself during a lull in pain and sleep, I try to imagine how one of these local intellectually-challenged Neanderthals would handle this situation. He wouldn’t. He would send his mother to whip me with branches of wild herbs picked from the jungle and rub whole eggs all over my body to cleanse me of disease.

To chase away the fever, every inch of my skin would be doused in lime juice, including my hair. My skin would be pinched and pummeled until bruises appeared. Incense would be burned to smoke out the devils. And those nasty little amoebas would remain undetected and continue to grow until they finally killed me, and everyone would say how sad that the devils had claimed me in the end and that I must have had that evil inside me all along. They would hold a night-long drumming vigil, chanting and singing to chase the demons from the village and then bury me on The Point the following day, incorrectly spelling my name when it came time to engrave the brass plaque for my hurriedly slapped together cement block grave.

Fast forward to the next day when I realize no one is going to help me. Judging by the evil witchcraft messages they put in my yard, most of my neighbors have long wished me dead. Most people in town would feel joyous at my demise, however gruesome. Because of the distance from the beach front, and the slick muddy street, few friends ever stop by the house. I’m barely conscious at this moment. I can feel the life draining from my body. My stomach feels like a million scorpions have nested inside it, all competing for the job of top sting. The pain is relentless. Water goes in one end and out the other immediately. Dehydrated and starving, I drift into unconsciousness again.

Towards evening, the Canadian shows up, all smiles and cheer. So full of himself and his latest conspiracies, he barely notices I am naked and trembling on a thin towel on the cement bathroom floor.

“Please, I need medical attention,” I groan. “Please find the doctor.”

Under normal circumstances, I have to be gagged and hog-tied to be dragged into a doctor’s office. Literally at death’s door, I am afraid, and now believe the only thing that can save me is medical intervention. There is a public health clinic in town, attended two or three days a week by a medic. Kelsie, the bubbly nurse, is usually always there during the week. She has saved my life before and I’d have called her days ago if my phone had credit. I beg the Canadian to go find the doctor, or the nurse. Anyone. At this point, the gardener at the clinic will do.

There is a container of dry cat food in the kitchen. It’s a long way from the usual diet of fresh fish. The Canadian throws some granules on the floor. Before he leaves, he fills the bowl with fresh water. At my bidding, he leaves the gate unlocked and the front door open so that the doctor can come in. The cats hungrily pounce on the meager offering. When they’re sated, they come to lay next to me, warming me with their fur as I shiver in and out of fever. Red continually licks my forehead. She ignores my weak protests. At times, her sandpaper tongue feels like a cheese grater ripping across my skin, but sometimes it helps to cool me down. On second thought, she may be so hungry that she’s test-tasting to see if I’m edible.

Another day lopes slowly by. No one comes. I’m so dehydrated I can’t even cry. I desperately need a bath. Medication. Food. Water. Help.

At some point, I hear the women passing my house to go and do their laundry in the river. I don’t have to see them to know that Sonja carries her huge pink tub on her head, overloaded with the family’s washing. Marie’s tub is blue. Carmen’s is green. Francisca has two, a red one and a blue one. She closes one over the other and balances it carefully on her head as she makes her way out of town. Others join them, escaping the tedium of their rough outdoor kitchens and taking all the kids to cool off in the river for the rest of the day. Piled high with the week’s clothing and all the bed linen, they’ll spend the afternoon on the riverbank, washing and gossiping under the bridge, pounding their husband’s jeans and their daughter’s school socks on the rocks until they’re spotless.

“Please help me.”

My lips are dry. My throat is sore from dry-retching. My voice is barely a whisper. There is a dirty sarong hanging over the unfinished window frame. Stretching out full length, I still can’t reach it with my feet. The effort sends shooting pains through my stomach and makes my head spin. I break into a hot-cold fever. Shivering uncontrollably, I maneuver my body around on the floor, inch by inch, grazing my hip while sliding over the uneven cement, until I can reach the sarong. The effort makes me dizzy and nauseous. The slant of sunlight tells me there is still an hour or so of daylight. The women are gradually returning from the river. Roughly wrapping the sarong around my torso, I crawl on hands and knees to the balcony. Progress is slow. Pain explodes inside me like fireworks. My skin is so sensitive that the wooden floorboards feel like needles digging into my hands and knees. Vahşi accompanies me to the edge as I wade through a mortuary of uneaten cat-kills; cockroaches, frogs, geckos, butterflies and cicadas. As the sun dips lower over The Point, I gasp and groan, finally reaching the edge of my balcony. Once there, I lean against a post and wait. After a few minutes, a local woman passes. I try to call out.

“Please help me.”

She doesn’t even look up. My voice is weak. I need to shout, but can’t. Another woman comes by. I call out again. She doesn’t hear me. I can feel consciousness slipping away. Vahşi crawls into my lap. The warmth and movement wakes me up a little. Just then, a neighbor comes out to her balcony to water her plants.

“Hey! Are you okay?” she calls, seeing me slumped against the post.

I can barely speak. I shake my head. “No.”

“Wait, I’ll be right there.”

From somewhere deep inside my body, tears appear and roll down my pale sunken cheeks. I collapse into a sobbing heap on the floor. Not long afterwards, a gaggle of chattering local women appear in my house. At first, most of them are more curious to explore the open-plan house than to take care of me. They take advantage of the opportunity to participate in a spontaneous open-house. I don’t care, and I don’t care that they don’t really care about me. Finally, someone is there, and they don’t care that I’m naked and resemble a plucked chicken with my pallid face, pasty white skin and trembling bony body.

One of the kids is sent to find Kelsie. The nurse shows up with a medical kit and immediately pumps an injection into my butt. The pile of soiled clothes is taken downstairs and put into tubs to soak. The sheets on my bed are changed and the dirty linen whisked away. After a rough dousing in painfully cold water, two women help me pull an old t-shirt over my head and slide between the clean sheets. Someone is cleaning the kitchen. Another woman sweeps the floor. Giggles erupt from the balcony. Kelsie wipes my forehead with a cool damp cloth.

“Why didn’t you call me?” she chides as she inserts a thermometer under my arm.
Exhausted, I have no words left. I can’t tell her that I did call her, many many times, and that somewhere between my house and the clinic the telepathic signals were intercepted. I can’t explain why the Canadian left me on the bathroom floor to die and didn’t go for help as he’d promised. My relief is so great that I drift into sleep. I’m not sure for how long. Kelsie wakes me gently. My bed is surrounded by curious faces.

“You have to eat something. What do you want?”

Potatoes. Maybe it’s my Irish ancestry, or maybe because they’re starchy and seem to absorb belly-devils really well, I don’t know, but whenever I suffer a bout of diarrhea, I feel the need to eat potatoes. When I’m healthy, a common garden variety potato won’t even make it past the gate at my place. I hate them. A kid is dispatched to buy potatoes. I ask him to buy some eggs, milk and bread to feed my starving felines. Soon, a bowl piled high with steaming plain mashed potatoes appears, accompanied by a jug of suero – home-made rehydration fluid flavored with fresh limes. This meal is supervised by some giggling ladies who make themselves at home on my bed, while others go home to tend to their families. Another mash of bread, eggs and milk is mixed for the hungry critters. Barely making a dent in the mountain of mash, I’m stuffed to bursting after eating a couple of spoonfuls. The rest of the cooked potatoes are stored to be reheated for the next meal. Kelsie orders me to drink the fluid, as much of it as possible.

Over the next eighteen days, still struggling with diarrhea for most of that time, I gradually recover from the near-lethal bacterial infection. By day three of eating pure mash, I am over potatoes. Even though I have no appetite, I eat something every day, feeding my amoebas like little internal pets. As soon as I can get out of bed and move around the house, the cats are joyous. When I can walk down the street without getting dizzy, I stop by the clinic every few days to be weighed and checked out. Occasionally someone stops by the house with a bucket of fresh fish, in exchange for the ripening passionfruits, badea (giant granadilla) and chilies in my garden. The cats are delighted.

Daily, my health improves, but I’m still weak, and very thin and drawn, with my clothes hanging off my skeletal frame. Finally, after several weeks, I begin to gain weight again and come back to my normal chunky self, with a big round butt and robust cheeks.

“You’re fat!” says Nerih happily when I go to the boats to get fish for the cats.

“Thank you,” I reply, understanding that it’s a complement.

After three months, I’m ready to take on the world again, just as long as there are no more microscopic amoeba ninjas lurking in the wings to take me out.

Wet Dreams…

I’m naked, standing under a waterfall. Lush tropical foliage surrounds the small lagoon. I raise my face to the sun, letting cool fresh water splash my cheeks. A trickle of cold water runs into my ear. I open my eyes, confused for a moment before I realize it’s just a dream and the water is coming from a hole in the grass roof. I’m in bed and I’m getting wet.

Rainwater cascades into the room; a natural water feature I hadn’t noticed when I’d rented the cabin a week earlier for $60/mth on a warm sunny day. Now, a stream races down the rotting floorboards, past my mattress on the floor, and surges underneath the protective plastic sheet. It trickles down the rope fastening my mosquito net to the roof beam. Mold attaches itself to my damp possessions. After the storm, in the pre-dawn silence, I can almost hear another microscopic mushroom sprouting from my Italian wool greatcoat. First thing in the morning, I puddle-skip across the yard to tell Efren Garcia, the owner, that I have a water emergency.

“There are cascades and rivers inside my cabin.”

“Okay,” he says, his wrinkled pirate-like face still sagged with sleep. “I’ll come and look. Ya mismo.”

At the sound of those two words, I am disheartened. “Ya mismo” means anytime in the near or distant future, or possibly never. There is nothing I can do.

“Okay,” I reply, resigned to wait, albeit just a tad impatiently

Alone, I return to my cabin to assess the damage. Everything is wet. My clothes. My laptop. My camera. The mattress. The floor. The whole place reeks of damp mustiness. This morning I’m supposed to go to Quito one last time to organize my life; pick up the rest of my belongings and hand over my Mariscal house keys, making the move to Mompiche permanent. Postponing the trip for one more day, I decide to stay around to make sure the roof is repaired. One more day doesn’t matter. This trip has already been postponed for two weeks after the horrific fiasco of being arrested and sent to prison.

Nearly an hour after I spoke to him, Efren comes by to inspect the cabin.

“Hmmm,” he says. Nodding thoughtfully. “We’ll have to replace the whole roof.”

That seems extreme, not to mention a little late. We’re in the heart of the wet season. Roof replacements should be done in the dry season.

“Why not try covering the roof with black plastic?” I ask, stating what I think is the most obvious immediate solution to keeping the rain out. Almost every other thatched roof in town has large sheets of plastic stretched over it.

“Well,” he explains, “the roof is very old. It should be replaced.”

One of Efren’s five sons, Morongo, built my hut over ten years ago when he was a teenager. It was famous as a place to create babies and was fondly nicknamed “The Loveshack” by everyone.

It’s a crooked structure now, with wonky walls and a lopsided floor. It’s just one room. The cold-water shower is across the yard, over the mud puddle. The nearest toilet is a bucket which is emptied over the lime and banana trees.

“But a new roof will take time. And my things are already wet.” I try to make Efren see sense. “If we put plastic on it now, we can keep the rain out straight away.”

“We’ll do a new roof fast,” he assures me.

By lunchtime, there is still no sign of activity on my roof. It’s pouring again. I try not to despair, mentally calculating the damage. At this rate, my clothes and the new mattress will be trash by the end of the week. I don’t even want to think about my camera and laptop. Not trusting when “ya mismo” will be, I pile it all in the driest spot in the middle of the room; on an ever decreasing island awash with refreshing indoor rain.

Then, putting the problem out of my head, I go swimming in the rain, letting the waves wash over my body, immersing myself up to my neck in the sea. It doesn’t help. I should be in Quito. I have things to do, people to see, problems to take care of, a chapter to close so the new one can open. I’m feeling stressed. By mid-afternoon, there is still no roof-action.

“Ya mismo,” Efren tells me when I ask what’s going on.

These are not encouraging words.

“But ya mismo can be a long time,” I tell him, smiling, making a joke, trying not to scream in frustration.

He laughs. “Ya mismo. I have to go to the hardware store first.”

Unable to hang out in my damp cabin, I try to find things to do, people to talk to. Pajaro the cow-horn jewelery-maker notices I’m tense, tells me to relax. I wish I could. I don’t tell anyone about my problem. That circle of good friends I can trust are still non-existent. I tell myself it’s out of my hands, that I have no control over it, that I just have to accept it. It’s tough. If they’re destroyed by water and mold, I can’t afford to replace my overly treasured material possessions.

The Love Shack, circa 1998. I lived here 1 Jan 2010 – 1 Oct 2011

Heading back to my cabin towards late afternoon, I find Efren putting a large sheet of black plastic on my balcony.

“Help me cut it,” he orders somewhat gently.

With pleasure! Finally, something useful is about to happen, but first we have to eat the mangoes he bought on his way back. Mangoes are available just three months of the year, only sold in season from January to March.

“Give me your knife,” he says.

I hand over the large kitchen knife and watch him peel a mango. When he’s done, he leaves the knife and the other mango on the table.

“That one is yours,” he tells me, mango juice dripping from his chin.

“Thanks,” I say, bemused at his gentlemanliness, and begin peeling the other mango.

He outlines his plan to cover the roof in black plastic to keep the rain out.

“The whole roof will be replaced in the dry season. It’s easier then,” he explains.

The man is a freaking genius! I wish I’d thought of it!

After we’ve washed sticky mango juice from our hands and faces, Efren runs the scissors down the crease as I stretch out the plastic tube. When it’s cut, we unfold the sheet and Efren measures the cabin with outstretched arms.

“Four meters.”

A rickety old ladder made from bamboo is leaned against the roof slats. Two rungs are missing. They’ve been replaced with synthetic rope. Efren climbs up the creaking ladder emitting a series of grunts and sighs. Without speaking, he descends, then vanishes.

I wait a moment, then realize he won’t be back for a while. Settling in the hammock, I hang out as Efren discusses the pros and cons of larger industrial cement mixers with the tenants across the yard. Nerih, one of Efren’s workers, comes over and assesses the situation. Nodding, he goes to the pile of gravel and picks out four small stones. Placing them on the balcony, he leaves without a word. Who knows what they are for, or when he’ll be back. An hour passes. I hang out in the hammock listening to waves crashing onto the beach. I hear a gecko making a territorial claim. A dog barks. A voice in another cabin. A baby cries. It soon settles back into silence. Only the music of the sea. And my amplified tinnitus.

“Now we’re ready,” Efren announces as he approaches, unraveling pieces of cord.

Nerih shows up and ties cords onto each corner of the plastic, using the small stones inside to secure them. Efren goes back up the protesting ladder. Nerih stays on the ground. He ties a longer rope at one end of the sheet. They stretch the sheet over the roof, tying it down on the corners.

“There! All done!” Efren announces as he comes down the ladder.

“What about the other half of the roof?” I ask.

“Sure! Nerih is going to buy more plastic, ya mismo.”

I’m not convinced. He leaves. Stretching out in the hammock again, I wait.

“Roni!” Efren calls urgently, approaching fast.

I sit up in the hammock. Maybe we’ll get it done after all. Now I’m more optimistic.

“Yo!” I call back. “What’s up? Do you need me to help you?”

“The hardware store is closed. We’ll have to do it tomorrow.”

No shit, Sherlock.

Except that I can’t put my trip off any more. In my heart, I know that I have to stay to make sure it’s done. I also know I have to get to Quito to sort things out.

“I’ll get plastic first thing in the morning and do it straight away,” he promises.

“Please,” I beg. “All my stuff is wet.”

During the night I don’t dream about lush forest and waterfalls. Between listening to the large drips on the floor and the rain splattering my face in the night, I get hardly any sleep at all.

At first light, I take off on a mission to Quito. I’m there and back in twenty-four hours, the least time possible via public transport and a little thumbing. When I get back, my cabin is filled with water from the violent storm the night before.

“You didn’t fix my roof?” I ask Efren, exhausted from yet another sleepless night after a nightmare trip on the bus from Quito. By now, I am on the verge of tears. I’m so upset my face is red hot.

“I couldn’t do it. It was raining hard all day and all night,” he says, laughing at his own joke.

I’m pissed. This is no longer acceptable. It was never acceptable to begin with. I head towards my cabin to check out the moldering ruins of my belongings, and to consider alternative accommodation.

“This is not okay with me,” I say quietly as I walk away.

“Okay. I’ll fix it today. Ya mismo,” he calls out after me, genuinely contrite.

By the end of the day, the whole roof is covered in the black plastic that will keep the rain off me and my belongings for the next year and three-quarters. Let the dry dreams begin!

Hell Hath No Fury…

From a string hammock on Roberto’s terrace, I watch with a group of friends as waves crash into the adjacent buildings, tearing down in minutes the reinforcements it’s taken a dozen men several days to build. A large chunk of driftwood slams into the wooden pylons beneath us, rattling the wood and bamboo house where we jokingly speculate on how long it will take to topple the building into the sea.

“I don’t own land!” wails Roberto, an Italian street sweeper-slash-surfer, as huge breakers bite into the sand beneath his house, eating away the foundations. “I bought a piece of the Pacific Ocean!”

Roberto spends six months of every year doing a mindless job in Geneva so he can live in Mompiche for the other six months. Twelve years have passed in this leisurely way. The locals call him Gallo (Rooster) for his long narrow face and large chicken-beak-shaped nose, and his penchant for surfing.

“I come here to surf,” he states when I first meet him. “If I can’t do that, I’d be better off somewhere else.”

Gathering speed on the crest of a wave, the loose piece of driftwood smashes into the wooden stairs, catching and ripping off the banister; the rounded side of a long sawed-off log. Washed into the sea, the banister begins pounding at the house, its rusted five-inch nails threatening deadly harm to anyone who tries to stop it. Powered by the ocean, the banister and the driftwood rush at the pylons. Somewhere below, wood cracks loudly. The whole balcony shudders.

“Look on the bright side,” consoles Fabio as foam surges over the steps. “We can go fishing right off the terrace!”

Fabio is Roberto’s best friend of twenty-plus years. He looks like a French painter; pointy nose, thin mustache, sparse goatee. A beret and palette would not look out of place. Throwing a pretend line into the water, he reels in an imaginary marlin.

“If the water gets too deep,” quips Johnny, readying his bicycle for the ride to Bolivar, another village southwards down the coast. “You can always build an island.”

After quick farewells, Johnny waits a moment for the receding wave, then carries his bicycle down the wobbly stairs on his shoulder.

“If you can’t be good, call me!” Johnny shouts as he rides away.

An hour later, at the peak of the first of eight massive king tides, surrounded by bubbling seawater, the house becomes a fragile mini-island as water races underneath and across the road, disappearing into the vacant lot on the other side.

Further down the beach, palm trees are ripped out by their roots and hurled onto the sand. Bamboo stilt houses topple into the sea, their foundations standing naked after being stripped of planks and cane. The porcelain toilet in Mustafa’s rental cottage makes a brave stand, staying in place while the rest of the two-story house disintegrates around it. Crashing waves break up the cement walls and the floor caves in.

The remains of Mustafa’s house after two days of high tides smashing the walls.

Uprooted trees litter the sand. Buildings sit askew, torn from their foundations. Upended grass-topped umbrellas are strewn randomly along the shore. Despite tireless efforts to save them, Figu’s wooden stairs stand vertical in the sand.

Is this Mother Nature’s revenge? I wonder. For the needless destruction of the mangroves, for the relentless deforestation, for the super-hotel developments, for the air-pollution, for stealing ton upon ton of sand from the beach, for illegal fishing, for man’s ignorance of nature, for the arrogance with which man has ravaged Mother Nature for so long? Or is it a cyclic weather pattern that we are experiencing, up close and personal, that we have no control over?

From day to day, for weeks, months, the villagers battle nature. Within minutes, a full day’s work is destroyed and buildings are left naked to survive the elements. Everyone stands by and watches, helpless as seawater invades every crevice. News crews flock in to interview the locals. Mompiche will be on the national news by dark. It will be international by morning.

On the water, a handful of surfers take advantage of the unusually large beach break, dropping off before they crash headlong into shore front buildings. Towards The Point, kids on body boards skim out of control over the foam until the fierce waves dump them back onto the beach.

As the water recedes, four men begin to rescue Roberto’s stairs. Heaving them over bare shoulders, they carry the fragile staircase around the house, leaning it against the side of the house. Less than an hour later, a vehicle smashes against the stairs. They’re askew and broken.

“Gonna turn the house into an aquarium,” says Roberto as the sea surges under his house. “Put in a glass floor and go scuba diving off the balcony here.”

Roberto and Didi, a friend from Portugal, mime scuba divers preparing to roll back off the side before they drop into the water.

By mid-afternoon, there is nothing in the bay. The tourists vanish. Cars disappear. The beach is awash. As waves recede, the red fireball of setting sun reflects brightly on clean wet sand.

A dozen fishermen gather to pull their boats back from the waterline, rolling them over thick balsa logs. Shoulders push into bows, neck and arm muscles become rigid, chest muscles pump, as the green and blue fiberglass boats rumble awkwardly backwards up to higher ground.

“Twenty years ago,” muses Pichi, taking in the devastation around him, “this beach was at least one hundred meters wide.”

Now the sea is on his doorstep. The two bottom stairs are buried under sand.

“In twenty-three years in Mompiche, I’ve never seen anything like this,” he says, awed by the force of the Pacific Ocean.

The eight-point-eight earthquake in Chile has rattled everyone. Some believe the higher waves are the result of a tsunami bounce-back from the Humbolt current crossing paths with another current. Others shrug and say that the sea rises a bit more at this time every year.

“When I was born, Mompiche was over there on The Point,” says Doña Sara, indicating the tips of the jagged rocks peaking out from under the breakers. That was sixty-five years ago. The sea has gradually risen every year that she can remember. Twice, the village has been moved back and rebuilt on safer ground.

Now, the village is under threat of being swamped once again. Torrential thunderstorms and exceptional high tides over several weeks leave Mompiche inundated. At high tide, the rocks on The Point disappear, the occasional spout is the only indication that they exist. Fallen trees and broken fences line the shore. Debris from the rivers at each end of the village litter the beach. Palings and driftwood line the edge of the surf, threatening to break the ankles of tourists strolling along the waterline. Optimistic swimmers find their bikinis and speedos filled to bursting with sea-blackened wood chips. A newcomer to the scene could be forgiven for thinking the village has been hit by a hurricane.

“Help me!” demands a man, handing me a shovel.

He steps out of the hole he’s begun and gestures towards the growing pile of sandbags. His effort is futile, but I can’t refuse. We are all in this together. Taking the shovel, I begin filling sandbags. A man wearing an orange Civil Defense t-shirt holds the sacks open while I spill in the sand.

“Do you speak English?” Civil Defense asks, keen to impress by counting out eighteen sandbags in English.

On the beach, twenty men work at filling sandbags, pouring more lost time, more lost money, more lost hope into each white sack. Every day, they take hours to build their barriers, and every day, twice a day, the sea tears them down in less time than it takes to fill one sand bag. The king tides hit morning and evening. Carefully hammered planks are torn asunder, bamboo poles ripped from the sand, the sand-filler washed out, sandbags flung around the beach. Large blocks of cement are strewn into the sand as if they weigh nothing. Each morning, the villagers gather the debris and spend the day putting a semblance of safety back together, preparing for the evening tide.

Out in the bay, several boatloads of people cruise by on the high tide to watch what happens to Mompiche as huge waves crash over the shore. Disaster tourism; a whole new economical angle for Ecuador.

Six men strain to move a fallen coconut tree after seawater washes it over the sandbagged bank. First, it has to be pulled from the ruins of the previous day’s reinforcements. Broken planks and poles are pulled from around the tree, still swinging with the current. A rope is tied around the middle. Two men pull from the water. Four push the root end of the tree. They shove their shoulders in, plant their feet in the sand and push. Nothing happens. Grunting loudly, they try again. Nothing happens. Another man joins in and they slowly turn the tree over. Over twenty-five feet long, swaying wildly under the waves, the trunk threatens to bash the pylons holding up the house. It’s like a missile in turbulent water. After a huge effort, seven men successfully float it into the water. They push it into the waves and let it go. By the time the waterline recedes, the trunk is back on the beach in front of someone else’s house.

The next day, waves froth over the sandbagged bank, thick with foam the color of cappuccino. The air around Roberto’s house becomes foul with a strange stench. Fabio screws up his nose.

“It smells like crap,” he states. “It’s probably leaking from someone’s septic tank.”

We gape at the foamy water, horrified. The contents of every septic tank along the beach front is floating in the water all around us.

“Typhoid shot, anyone?”

Suddenly, one of the steps from Morongo’s bar, a thick trunk about three-feet long crashes against the pylons right below where we are standing. The house cracks loudly and shudders. Fabio pulls me back towards the kitchen, as if we’ll be safer there when the house falls down. I go back to the railing in time to see the same log careening straight through the center of the two pylons at the front of the house. A lethal projectile that misses its target.

While the rest of us are at the rail, our attention focused on the unstoppable force of nature, Roberto sits in his hammock and strums his guitar.

“When the tide starts going down, the surf will be really good!” he says, resigned to whatever fate destiny has in store for him and his house.

A motorboat, stuck out in the bay during the rising tide, catches a wave and rides in on the crest, letting the water carry it to shore. The driver pulls up the motor and lets momentum take the launch into a perfect parking spot on high ground. The neighbors cheer as the vessel speeds past the side of the house.

“I’m gonna replace the house with an old boat,” muses Roberto. “When the water comes up, we’ll float. We could have a party here while the other houses fall down around us.”

Roberto’s sarcastic optimism makes me laugh out loud. Going in search of food, I clamber down the rickety stairs, which are now at the back of his house, on the street side. They’re crooked, sloping scarily upwards, and I have to hang on with my toes to get down safely.

As the sun sets brilliant red on one end of the bay, ominous black rainclouds gather on the other. Battle-weary residents straggle to the shore front to survey the damage before retiring for the night, gazing along the beach littered with the detritus of human desperation; rocks, planks, bamboo poles, busted sandbags. After a silent survey, they go home to rest, to get ready to start over again in the morning.

The F@#$+%g Birthday Cake!

One afternoon, Figu, the local surfboard-shaper, stops by my cabin after his surfing session on The Point. We hang out for a while, shooting the breeze as I trim pumpkin flowers and chop onions and tomatoes for a sauce. Then, he drops the real reason for his visit.

“It’s Pablo’s birthday today. Can you make him a cake?” he asks.

“Sure.”

I happily agree to make his brother a birthday cake, without a single clue of the pending nightmare about to descend and darken my life. We discuss the flavor, I give him a very fair “friends” price, he pays and then leaves. Not long after, Amber, Pablo’s girlfriend shows up.

“Can you make it a heart-shape?” she asks.

“No problem.”

I take the heart-shaped cake mold from the bench and show it to her. Satisfied that I can complete the mission to her specifications, she leaves, grinning from ear to ear, content that her boyfriend will be happily surprised later that day. Not as surprised as me, I’ll bet. Not wasting any time, I get to work. First, I have to find an oven. Since my thriving café business was abruptly shut down at the beginning of the year, I haven’t baked anything for a long time, and don’t have an oven handy.

“We’re going out, but it’s okay. You can use the oven here,” agrees Cecilia, who is renting Didi’s house at the other end of town.

The oven is at the back of the house, behind the kitchen. This will be logistically interesting, but whatever it takes, right? I go back to my cabin and, while the tomato sauce simmers on the stove, I prepare the cake batter, creaming butter and sugar, adding eggs and fresh passionfruit pulp, sifting in the flour. Piece of cake! I’m out of baking paper to line the cake tin, so I scrub the gathered dust out of the mold and grease and flour it well. Batter poured into the tin, I walk back to the other side of the village, to Didi’s house, and light the gas oven. Setting the cake in the center of the top shelf, I ask it not to burn, and return home to finish preparing the stuffed pumpkin flowers for dinner.

I stir-fry cooked wholegrain rice with chopped onion, garlic, pepper, raisins, and a sprinkle of cumin. Then, I add nutmeg, soy sauce and a dribble of natural achiote for color before stuffing spoonfuls of spiced rice into the delicate yellow flowers. Meanwhile, the fresh tomato sauce is simmering, rich with onions, garlic, tomatoes, and fresh oregano. I gently place the flowers into the sauce. They’ll cook slowly in the covered pan. Fifteen minutes in to the cake’s journey, I return to Didi’s house to check on it, only to discover the gas has gone out.

Oh no! Then, patting my pants, I realize I’ve just changed my clothes and no longer have a box of matches in my pocket. Damn! I quickly return to my cabin to retrieve the matches, add some water to the divine-smelling pumpkin flowers, and run the one hundred and fifty meters back. I light the oven again. No gas. The tank is empty. Aarrgghh!

Leaving the the uncooked cake in the still warm oven, I set off to search for another oven. On my way back across the village, I run into Amber on the street. Rearranging my frown into a smile, I wave a friendly greeting, hoping to whizz past quickly. But no, she wants to stop and chat!

“Hi! How’s it going?” she asks cheerily.

What can I tell her? It isn’t going that well so far.

“Um. All good,” I respond, almost jumping out of my skin with alarmed urgency. “The cake is great. But I really have to go and find some stuff right now. Talk later!” Without further ado, I run in the opposite direction.

All over town, I search for another oven. Most of the restaurants don’t even have ovens. Who knew! Those who do are using them and do not have space for a cake, thank you very much. Knitted disapproving raised eyebrows dismiss me. As I run from place to place, desperation creases my brow. How am I going to cook this damned cake? At the crossroads in the center of town, as I’m wondering where I’m going to find an available oven, Figu appears. There is one oven left unexplored.

“Help me!” I explain the problem so far. “I need you to go and talk to Leo about borrowing Morongo’s oven to cook this cake for your brother.”

Morongo has a bar across the street from my cabin. He has a strict policy about not lending anyone things from his bar, including his oven, and having already used it a few times this week, I can’t stretch the friendship any further. An outright “NO” from Morongo will destroy my chances of ever cooking the cake. But . . . he’s leaving town today, leaving Leo in charge. Figu runs away to find Leo, who is renting the bar in Morongo’s absence.

“Can it wait until after Morongo leaves later today?” asks Leo when he sees me.

“Sure, why not.” I don’t really have a choice, do I?

I leave the raw cake in Didi’s cooling oven and go home to twiddle my thumbs. Meanwhile, the stuffed pumpkin flowers, which have been slowly simmering away in their herbed tomato sauce on the stove at my cabin, are ready. I turn it off and sit back in the hammock to twiddle my thumbs some more.

Finally, after about half an hour, Morongo and his wife, Amy, leave for Manta. As soon as their 4WD is out of sight, I bolt across town to Didi’s house and pick up the now cold cake batter, wondering how much damage this false-start has done. Racing back across town to Morongo’s bar, I put the cake in his pizza oven and light it, with the box of matches now back in my pants pocket. The cake is now in the hottest oven in town. The temperature control is not good, and “low” is not vocabulary it understands. Knowing this could get tricky, I watch it like a hawk. Every five minutes, I peek in the door and rotate the tin. Even with all my attention on it, as I hover over it like an expectant father, the cake burns. It’s charred black on top, and only just cooked underneath. Great! Aarrgghh!

By now, I’m beginning to feel slightly stressed out by this cake. I cover the passionfruit charcoal, still in its tin, with a cotton cloth and leave it on the stove at my cabin to cool, then go to work on the cardboard box in which I plan to deliver what I have now decided is my last ever order for any kind of cake. The preparation of the cardboard box includes going out to find a box, which also means a flying visit to Sara’s house to hand over the dollar I still owe for yesterday’s muchin, and having to sit patiently and silently through yet another well-meaning but excruciating lecture on why it’s unnatural and unhealthy to be the only single woman in Mompiche.

Finally, I get back to my cabin with the cardboard box and quickly turn it into a cake-box with some scissors and tape. I cut another circle, guessing the size since the cake tin is still busy, and wrap it in foil to make a portable disposable cake plate. By now, the cake has cooled enough to be decorated.

To add to the general stress of baking, apart from the intense equatorial heat, there are no work benches and no sinks, not to mention no electricity and no running water. My cache of kitchen tools is extremely limited. Having a heart-shaped mold to bake this cake in at all is a miracle. By now, I wish I’d said no. However, I still have a cake to deliver, and time is running out on me. The only flat workspaces I have are the top of the stove, or the wonky wooden floor. There is more space on the floor. The broom flicks the dust around, and some newspapers are laid out so I can get to work.

Sitting on the floor, I flip the tin upside to tap the cake out onto a ceramic plate, so I can then flip it straight over onto the foil cake plate, and it will end up sitting top-side-up. The cake won’t come out. It’s stuck in the bottom. Aarrgghh! Maneuvering carefully around the edges, I dig it out with an egg-flip. It ends up in crumbs. Delicious, charred crumbs that now barely resemble a heart… Dammit!

With a bread knife, I slice off the charred top and throw out the black bits. It’s a bit messy, but I figure I can tidy it up a bit with the frosting. I mix cream cheese, icing sugar, and chopped fresh pineapple to make a filling. I slice the cake in half, juggling with all the bits as they fall off when I remove the top half, inventing an entire trilingual vocabulary of brand new curse words as I work, and then spread half of the pineapple cream over the base. Just like a jigsaw puzzle, I put it all back together, trying to gather some shreds of serenity and patience, which is now in very short supply.

Hot and sticky, and fed up with this damned cake, I take a break. I’m a bit over the massive effort it’s taken so far to create a simple cake. A drink of water restores me a little. I go to the rainwater tank and splash cool water over my face and neck. As I turn back to my tiny workspace, I see Mascara (The Mask), my cat, with his face gleefully buried in the frosting bowl. Aarrgghh! Anything remotely resembling rejuvenated mood and restored patience flies over the balcony with the cat, who is instantly evicted with a thump and a roar. Spinning back to the cake, I stand on the metal cutting edge of the aluminium foil box and roar again, violently flinging the box far away. Unbalanced, I accidentally put my hand into the pan with the pumpkin flowers, squashing three of them flat. The third roar is tigerish, a wild angry growl. My wide-eyed neighbor silently scarpers inside her cabin, not even daring to ask. Now, I’m totally over this freaking birthday cake!

“I cannot work in these conditions!” I cry in despair, washing tomato sauce from my hand.

I stop all movement and sit cross-legged on the floor. Meditation. Close eyes. Count to ten. Breathe. My heart pounds in my ears from pent-up frustration I am not able to release completely just yet. Count to twenty. Thirty. Fifty. Trying to clear mind. Passionfruit cake aroma distracts me. After a long painful minute, I spread the rest of the cat-licked pineapple cream over the top of the cake, hiding the worst of the damage, and maintaining a rough heart shape. Once it’s ready, I try to get the cake in the box. The foil plate doesn’t fit. It’s too wide. Aarrgghh!

Finally, I fold over the edges of the foil plate and squish and squeeze the cake into the box, trying not to touch it as the sticky cheese frosting drips over the sides in the clammy humidity. Using tweezers “Happy Birthday Pablo” is drawn carefully with sliced bits of fresh pineapple over the top of the cake. Glad my ordeal is finally over, I close and seal the box and go to put the cake in Cristhian’s fridge. Locked. He’s not home. Aarrgghh!

Switching to Plan B, I get permission to put the cake in Carlos’ fridge next door instead. I go home to take a well-deserved nap in the hammock. A few hours later, Amber comes by to collect her cake. We go to the fridge to retrieve it. Someone has put a heavy bucket on top of the cake box and squished the cardboard down into the middle of the cake. It’s a complete mess. I’m totally devastated and would like nothing more than to scream. Aarrgghh!

“It’s okay, it’s not your fault,” she says, smiling and shrugging. “It will still taste good.”

As she walks away with her squished birthday offering, I swear on my Irish ancestors that this culinary abomination is the last birthday cake I will ever bake in Mompiche. As it turns out, that isn’t quite true, but it’s a very long time – and in someone else’s well-equipped kitchen – before I make another attempt at baking another one! At least the stuffed pumpkin flowers in herbed tomato sauce are delicious.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks… Pure Bitchery

First thing in the morning, I open the gate, heading out to get some fresh fish for the cats, and maybe score something tasty for lunch if I’m lucky. Right in the middle of the path sits a huge steaming pile of human feces. Had I been looking anywhere but at the ground, I’d have put my flip-flopped foot right into the middle of it.

Right. I’m done with these disgusting, filthy people. I’m tired of being persecuted for the crime of being single. A lone woman living without need of a man! I am the only single female foreigner living permanently in Mompiche. This is an outrage to the locals. It’s not my problem. Cultural difference or not, they will have to get over themselves.

Without a word, I step over the offending turd and go to the beach to get fish. When I return, I go through the gate with great care, and then get on with the business of cleaning fish, feeding cats, having breakfast and getting my day organized. Then, I’m ready to face my first task. Downstairs, I grab the shovel and open the gate again. Carefully, I maneuver the shovel underneath this latest gift from my neighbors; this is not the first, but by the time I’m done, it will be the last. When it’s set just right, in the center of the shovel, I walk it over to the neighbor’s house and dump it on the balcony right outside their front door, making a splat on the rotting wooden planks. Furor breaks out. Seven people begin shouting all at once. I ignore all of them as I wipe off my shovel on the weeds in front of their stairs and go back to my own house as a litany of insults rain down on my head.

“Deal with your own shit!” I retort, closing the gate behind me.

From my kitchen, I can hear them cursing me to hell. The fleas always cry when the dog bites them back. What do they expect? Seriously! After more than a year of robberies, breaking and entering, vandalism, destruction of property, witchcraft, death threats and frequent verbal abuse, how long do they think I will put up with their vile shenanigans? Satisfied that is the end of that, I get on with my day; house cleaning, laundry, dishes.

In the middle of the afternoon, while picking tomatoes, I’m interrupted by a sharp rapping on my wooden front gate.

“Police! Open up!”

Trying not to laugh out loud, I go around the front and open the gate.

“The neighbors say you are crazy!” shouts constable Simisterra, glaring angrily down at me from his immense height.

He’s in khaki uniform; long trousers and cotton shirt with the distinctive “Serve and Protect” badge stitched onto both sleeves. His belt holds a short thick baton and a black automatic pistol secured into a leather holster.

“I don’t give a flying elephant’s trunk what the neighbors say about me,” I reply, glaring straight into his eyes until he looks away. “What do you want?”

“They say you threw poo on their balcony.”

“And did they say where I got it from?” I ask pointedly.

“They say you got it from here.” He points to the ground outside the gate.

“From there, right where you are standing now,” I confirm.

Simisterra looks down at his shiny black shoes, disgust running in circles on his round baby face. Shuddering, he takes a step back as if to avoid being sullied by such filth.

“And who do you suppose put it there?” I ask, looking straight into his dark eyes.

He has no answer, even though he knows my neighbors are notorious thieves and alcoholics. This is not the first time he’s come to my house. The last time I called him was to report a strange witchcraft symbol they’d left at my door while I was out. Now, a crowd gathers outside my fence, everyone talking at once. Insults are exchanged.

“You’re a crazy bitch!” shouts Esmeraldas, the inelegant fishwife-ish president of Mompiche.

“Well, you would know exactly what a crazy bitch is, wouldn’t you?” I retort, smiling, staring her down. My finely honed bitchcraft skills wipe the floor with her. No one can look me in the eye. They’re only brave as a pack; like dogs.

Simisterra senses a riot. He knows I won’t back down. He also knows he will have to protect me if they decide to attack.

“Next time you need to take a dump,” he tells my neighbors, “I’ll lend you my bathroom!”

This gets a laugh from the spectators and diffuses the situation somewhat. I close my gate and go inside. Simisterra rides away on his quad-patrol bike. The gawpers drift away. The neighbors linger outside, hoping to get another bite. I don’t give them the satisfaction.

First thing in the morning, I go downstairs to see if there are any ripe passionfruits on the vine. As I bend to pick up some fallen fruits, a plastic bag whizzes over my head, missing me by inches, and lands on the ground under the banana tree. The thrower vanishes into the house next door. It’s yesterday’s gift; today wrapped in a colorful bread bag. Now I have gift-wrapped shit. Nice. I pick up the corner of the bag and fling it back over the fence, aiming high. Bullseye! It lands on their roof. Chaos breaks out. Seven people run around screaming abuse, threatening death, cursing me and all my ancestors to the eternal flames of hell. It’s as if all of Frankenstein’s monsters have simultaneously gone mad.

I watch, silent, as the drama unfolds in the street. These people, who are determined to bother me with their rancid pranks, are far more bothered than I am right now. In fact, it’s almost entertaining, watching them run around like headless chickens, trying to figure out how to get their own offensive filth off their roof. An audience gathers as they explain their version of what happened.

“That gringa shit on our roof!”

Of course, that is the true and only version, there is no other. Defending myself is pointless, so I don’t bother. I go about my business, making passionfruit juice blended with bananas and let them deal with their problem. Eventually, they send a boy up onto the roof. He scoops up the bag and flings it at my kitchen window, where I’m standing. Fortunately, he’s not a good shot. The bag slides down the wall and lands under the papaya tree. At this point, I could leave it there. I could smack a bunch of holes in the plastic bag with the garden rake and let nature go to work. But I’m done with these people. I have a right to live in peace. Unless I make a stand, they will never leave me alone. But, for the time being, I leave the bag where it is. The neighbors gloat, thinking they’ve beaten me.

“Next time, you won’t be able to throw it back,” I warn them.

Towards the end of the day, I retrieve the colorful bread bag and its foul cargo and put it into the bucket normally used to mix fresh cow pies and rainwater to make cow tea, which I use to fertilize the garden. This time, I fill the bucket with dirty laundry water. With a stick, I mix it up, plastic bag and all. I leave it to ferment for a few hours and get back to work in my garden, planting sweet potatoes and jalapeño chilies in the last rays of sunlight.

After dinner and a hot bucket bath, I relax in the hammock, watching Red, Boss, and Vahşi play with a grasshopper one of them has hunted down in the garden and brought upstairs to share. One by one, the lights go out in my neighborhood as people retire for the night. When the last light goes out, I go downstairs and retrieve my cow-tea bucket. Silent, I go out my gate and walk over to the neighbor’s house. I pour the contents of the bucket over the balcony, right outside the front door and then over the stairs.

Just at that moment, Shrek, one of the other neighbors (Really! Aside from the green skin, the resemblance is quite disturbing!), decides to urinate outside his front door. This is his nightly habit. He always looks to see if I’m in the kitchen and even used to waggle his willy at me, trying to offend. At first, disgusted and horrified, I pretended not to see him. It went on for weeks, then months. One night, I laughed out loud, shrieking with giggles, doubled over, pointing at him and laughing harder. Neighbors opened their doors to find out what was so funny. He never waggled again. But tonight, right at that moment, he stands in the doorway as I pour the last of the neighbor’s odoriferous gift onto their porch. Turning to return to my own yard, I see him watching me. Looking him straight in the eye, I walk home and go through my gate, locking it behind me. He says nothing. He waits. Only when I am upstairs, inside my bedroom, with the lights turned off, he becomes a hero and raises the alarm, waking the neighbor’s and telling them of my terrible deeds.

Despite the late hour, the neighbors gather outside their door to inspect this latest infraction. They mutter and curse, each proclaiming that I am the singularly worst neighbor they’ve ever had to endure. They exchange gossip; how I once ate a live chicken and pretended to know nothing about it; and how they saw the blood dripping from my chin! How I regularly kidnap children and secretly roast them in my barbecue. How I manufacture illicit drugs in my storeroom. How I practice witchcraft, dancing naked on my roof at every full moon. How I paste vulture feathers all over my bare body and secretly fly around at night collecting rotting animal carcasses. How I’m a wanted criminal in my country and how there is a price on my head. There is no end to the wild fantasies they come up with. All completely true. All with one hundred witnesses who will swear on their mother’s graves that they’ve seen these things with their own eyes. It’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry. Instead, I shut my ears and go to sleep.
First thing in the morning, I’m woken by a loud rapping on my front gate.

“Police! Open up!”

Simisterra has his hand on his pistol holster when I open the gate.

“Are you going to shoot me?” I sneer, looking him up and down without a shred of respect. “Because if you are, can I call my mother first?”

If his skin wasn’t blue-black, he’d probably blush pink. He takes his hand away from his holster.

“They are going to report you to the commissioner,” he informs me. “Watch yourself!”

“Oh good! I would like to speak with the commissioner about the endless problems I’ve been having with my troublesome neighbors,” I reply, smiling. “This is good news! Thank you.”

The policeman is perplexed. Apparently, I’m not supposed to be quite so jubilant about this news. I wouldn’t be if I hadn’t already been to Muisne five times to look for the local police commissioner to discuss the problematic neighbors and to see if he can help. Five times in vain; the man is never in his office. This time, he’ll make the appointment and I’ll attend. Simple.

A few days later, I take the magic disco circus bus to Muisne to meet the commissioner. After our two-hour long interview, the neighbors are quite disgruntled to find themselves signing a legally binding contract stating that they will never bother me again. In the afternoon, they are sent to a workshop to learn how to live amicably within the community. The young boy, who they often send over my fence to rob and vandalize, after a private interview with a child protection counselor, is removed from their home and sent to live with his estranged mother and attend school. The commissioner then recommends that they all attend regular Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and go to church on Sundays. They are reminded several times that any failure to comply with these conditions will result in a harsh prison sentence. After being absolved of any heinous crimes, I’m given copies of the contracts and assured that I will be left alone. Once at home, I’m tempted to dance naked on my roof to celebrate.

Within a week, five members of the family are ill. Three are hospitalized, one almost dies during emergency surgery. Two have superficial injuries. I’m declared a witch. I’ve cast evil spells upon them. For a month, all five are in and out of hospitals and doctor’s offices. When they return home, not one of them will even look at me. This suits me perfectly. They spread the word throughout the neighborhood. I’m devil’s spawn; Tasmanian devils actually, but there’s no telling them that! Ha!

“Roni is a witch. We can prove it.”

Their mysteriously simultaneous illnesses are testimony to this fact. I say nothing. When I’m questioned by Mompicheros at the local store, I don’t bother to defend myself.

“Maybe now they will learn not to mess with me,” I say to the storekeeper, winking cheekily.

I know that this statement will confirm with certainty the wild rumors that are currently flying around town on their little broomsticks. I’m not concerned. For security, I don’t need alarms at home, waving my broom and cackling at the neighbors is enough. Now, where are my vulture feathers? I have an inexplicable urge to paint a FOR SALE sign…