Savaged, Bossed and Seeing Red

Red gets up and stretches, then topples backwards off the cooler she’s been sleeping on. She falls three meters to the ground, hitting the makeshift rainwater collection tube on the way down. The cooler tumbles down after her. Vahşi and Boss race to the edge and look over while I bolt downstairs to see if she’s hurt. Red gets up and shakes herself. Slightly dazed she steps around the cooler and lets me pick her up. I run my hands over her, looking for sore spots; bruising or broken bones. None are obvious, although she displays a little stiffness later in the day, and has a sensitive back for quite a long time afterwards.

Vahşi and Boss are at my feet now, looking up expectantly. I put Red down and they sniff her, apparently conversing in indistinguishable cat-speak to see if she’s alright. It’s not the first time she’s fallen off the house. Goofy and sweet, Red is the clumsiest animal I’ve ever seen, always slipping off things and tripping over her feet. Ironically, she’s also the best hunter in the neighborhood. After the commotion settles, all three cats follow me upstairs and begin howling for breakfast.

“Red” for her blue eyes, red fur, and her passion for belly rubs and squeezy cuddles.

“Okay! Okay! I’m going!”

When I arrive at the beach with my yellow bucket, the fishing boats are just coming in. Efren’s black launch roars towards the beach then pulls up just short of the sand. Nerih swings the boat around, bow pointing seaward. Efren rolls a balsa log down the beach and two men nearby run to help him put the roller under the stern, using the breakers as leverage. The four men push the boat further up the beach. Patricio, Efren’s eldest son rolls the second log towards the boat. It’s also dragged under the outboard motor and placed under the stern. Another man joins the team and all six men grunt with the effort of pushing. The first log, now under the bow, is dragged out, pulled back to the stern and shoved underneath. This Flintstones-style maneuvering continues until the boat rests on dry sand. The rollers under the fishing boat are chocked with large rocks and the men begin sliding the nets over the sides of the launch to pick them clean. Two men work on each of the three nets, flinging prawns, fish, crabs and the odd lobster into the bottom of the boat.

“Can I take some fish?” I ask Efren.

“Grab them,” he says gruffly, short-tempered from tiredness and hunger.

He wakes at three every morning to go out to sea in the pitch dark and set his nets so people like me can swan down to the beach at a more respectable hour and sponge free seafood from him. I lean into the boat and scoop out a heap of finger-length fish for the cats. A few small catfish go into the bucket. A couple of plate-sized fish slip in on top and I’m done.

“Thanks, Efren!” I always say. “Have a great day!”

He grunts in response as I vanish with my stash to feed the starving menagerie at home. Next time, I bring him a bucket of ripe passionfruits from my garden, or a juicy ripe badea. It’s a daily routine. The fishermen are used to me begging small fish every morning. Usually I only take the ones they throw back. If there’s an edible fish or crab on offer I never turn it down. Sometimes, after a particularly bountiful catch, they’ll give me a handful of king prawns or some calamari. If I can afford it, I occasionally buy a legal-sized lobster when they’re in season.

“Vahsi” (pronounced vah-she) [Turkish for savage] The first time I touched this tiny kitten, she bit, scratched, hissed and howled and turned into a savage rage of fluff-ball.

When I arrive home, Vahşi, Boss and Red are waiting on the balcony. On seeing me with the bucket, they race downstairs and climb out their small door to rub against my legs and demand food. Slowly, I walk up the spiral staircase, careful not to stumble with three hungry cats wrapped around my ankles. The catfish lose their tails, which are tossed on the carton-lined wood floor and promptly pounced upon. The fish heads go into the vegetable patch. This gives me time to rinse off the smaller fish and put them in a pot with a handful of rice and some rainwater. While the cat food is cooking, I clean my fish and prepare breakfast; today it’s a small sea bass and a baby barracuda with grilled onion rings, sliced tomatoes and a halved maduro (ripe plantain banana). The blender whizzes bananas and passionfruit pulp into delicious juice. While I sit in a hammock and enjoy the catch of the day, unmolested by the cats who are still busy gnawing on catfish tails, I can roughly plan the rest of my day; usually gardening, sometimes writing, occasionally working to earn my broccoli with an English class for Miguel and Darwin, or baking a batch of oatmeal cookies or a chocolate cake to sell on the beach.

Apart from Red falling off the house, this is how we usually start the day. After breakfast there’s some tumbling, chasing and playful wrestling until they settle into their favorite corners for a long nap. Living with cats has been an eye-opener. Actually, I’m allergic to cats. At the time of writing, there are seven cats in the house. Now, at forty-six, I’m having my first ever kitten experience. As a kid, cats were banned from our house. But I digress slightly. Let’s go back and discover how I happen to be living with a pride of tame house-trained tigerettes.

My first feline incident is Mascara, Roberto’s cat. Dumped when the Italian surfer returns to his homeland for the second half of the year, Mascara decides to come and live with me. I don’t want him. He’s persistent. In the end he wins me over with charm and good looks; his super-cat mask and cape are hard to resist. He purrs like a Harley Davidson and loves peanut butter. He hunts rats and keeps the cockroach population down. As long as he stays outside, all is well. Mascara is popular. He’s quite a character. After teasing a dog into a fight which he inevitably wins, he goes to Morongo’s bar Punto de Encuentro in the evenings and sits in girl’s laps purring and preening. They adore him. In the mornings, he steals fish from the boats.

Mascara (The Mask) “Give me peanut butter now or I’ll do psycho-cat!”

“Does he kill rats?” growls Efren one morning after Mascara makes off with a small bream.

“Sure does,” I reassure him.

“Alright then. If he’s paying his way he won’t be killed for thievery,” he jokes, half serious.

We’re lounging in a hammock one afternoon, Mascara and I, when a friend stops by with a couple of tourists in tow. They want information about Mompiche; where to go, what to do.

We’re chatting when one of them asks, “What do you do in Mompiche?”

My friend Marie laughs and says, “She sits here in her hammock scratching her hot throbbing pussy!” She leans over and rubs Mascara’s ear. The laughing tourists can hear him purring from the other end of the balcony.

When I’m asked to work in the Galapagos Islands for a month, the people supposedly caring for Mascara poison him with rat pellets because he searches for me everywhere and cries every day. By the time I return he’s maggot fodder.

“He really missed you,” whispers Nerih, trying to console me.

Heavy-hearted, I miss Mascara too. “I’ll just have to get another cat.”

That afternoon I’m sitting on the balcony when a small black cat appears. She rubs her head against my feet, purring and sniffing my skin. Abandoned by her previous owners, she needs a home.

“How did you know?” I ask her. “You must be a witch.”

Bruja lives with me in the cabin for most of the year, keeping the rat count manageable. When I move to the newly built house she refuses to stay. Obeying Efren’s wife’s orders to retrieve my cat, I bring Bruja to the new house ten times. She leaves each time, and returns to the cabin. Her two month old kitten stays. That’s Vahşi, so named because the first time I touch her she gives my finger a nasty bite and scratches my hand to ribbons. Vahşi [pronounced vah-she] is Turkish for “savage”. She’s still not particularly friendly; only occasionally when she feels like a scratch.

A few weeks after we move, the neighbor’s cat becomes Vahşi’s best friend. She comes over every day to play, steal Vahşi’s food and sleep on her pillow. Several times I chase her away. She’s undeterred. Eventually, she refuses to go home. The lack of food and affection from the alcoholic neighbors drives her out. Red, for her rusty fur color and blue eyes, is super-affectionate and loves nothing more than a vigorous belly rub and a back scratch.

Immediately, I put both cats in a flour sack and wheelbarrow them down to Fabiola at Casablanca to be vaccinated against worms and pregnancy. The injections last six months. Meanwhile, the Canadian who’s building a house and struggling to take care of himself, begs me to take care of the tiny kitten he’s prematurely adopted. Apparently, its mother ran off, or was poisoned.

“She’ll die here by herself all day. It’s just until I’m set up,” he promises, overwhelmed with cleaning up cat poop and vomit every night after a full day on the construction site. “Just for a few weeks.”

Feeding the baby cat is beyond him. At this point, living in a house with no running water and sporadic electricity, the Canadian still finds feeding himself a daily challenge.

“What’s her name?”

“I don’t know.” He pets the four week old kitty in his palm.

We toss a few names back and forth.

“Boss,” I say.

“Why?”

“She’s ruling your world.”

“I like it.”

“Boss” rules! Get in her hammock and she will throw you out!

Red takes one look at baby Boss and falls in love.

“Oh, look! A kitty! Can I keep her, please! Please! Please! Please!”

Now pregnant, Vahşi hates the kitten on sight.

“What is that?! Get it away from me!”

Red takes care of Boss just like a mother; all but the suckling. Now I have a smitten kitten, a pretty kitty and a fatty catty. We don’t see much of Vahşi for the gestation period. She stays upstairs on the unfinished third floor – in her own private penthouse – only descending the ladder to demand food. She hisses and spits when either Red or Boss approach. The rest of the time we are all ignored. I have to find a new bowl and put it at a distance from the other cats’ feed bowl or Vahşi won’t eat. Who knew pregnant cats have raging hormones? A revelation to me.

With the house full of hunters, all new incoming beneficial creatures are duly warned:

“You’re welcome here. Live long and multiply. Just don’t let the cats see you.”

Spiders, lizards, iguanas, geckos, frogs, butterflies, birds, grasshoppers and beetles take their chances inside the fence line along with everything else. Red is sick for two days after trying to eat a cane toad. I’m not sure how the toad fared. Sometimes I save a frog from the rainwater cistern only to watch in dismay as all three cats hunt it to death. The last time, I wait until they’re sleeping then sneak downstairs to save the drowning frog; a species I haven’t seen in the garden before. I hope it survives. I’m constantly snatching hapless tree frogs from their mouths and leaving them on the windowsill to escape into the mandarin tree right outside. However, when an opossum shows up to steal the cats’ food, it is left alone for several weeks until Boss becomes indignant and scares it away. Sunning itself in the mandarin tree, it seems the granadilla snake has never been spotted.

On the big night, Vahşi gives birth to four kittens. She hides them in the darkest corner of the storeroom downstairs. I wrap them in an old t-shirt and bring them upstairs. Under the kitchen bench, in a large cardboard box lined with a mat, the t-shirt and a “Te Amo” pillow that Miguel gave me, they spend the first three and a half weeks of their lives. Naming them is dangerous, but after four weeks I do anyway. The yellow female with fine stripes becomes Tigga. Tickles won’t leave my feet alone. Then we have Buddy, as in Holly because he’s very quiet. Finally, there’s Burke, the mottled one, named after the explorer that kept getting lost in the wild northern Australian savannah

“How can I live with seven?” I sometimes wonder, teary eyed and sneezing my way through the morning.

All the cats have dark tiger stripes and leopard spots with background colors ranging from dark brown through rusty red, creamy and white. Cute as they are, they’re banned from my bedroom. They have hundreds of places to sleep – though I think Red may have crossed the cooler off her list – and I have only one. Bed equals dead; or at least a spanking and sent out scolded. The current cat arrangement is temporary. The four kittens are to be adopted out after the veterinarian has sterilized them. Vahşi, Red and Boss will also go under the knife. Seven times four equals twenty-eight more kittens, three times a year – or more. Not if I can help it!

Volunteer vets from the Animal Protection Foundation visit Mompiche once a year to sterilize one hundred animals. I’m there. After three days working as the volunteer veterinarian’s assistant we have performed eighty-two operations, fifty-five on female dogs and cats. Unfortunately, Red was pregnant. At home she becomes a baby-stealing psycho-cat, depressed and mooning around the house. After some initial concern, Vahşi lets Red take care of her litter so that she can pursue more pleasurable activities. The lucky kittens have two mothers and Boss is the best playmate ever.

“Tickles” feeding from “Red”. “Vahsi” is his mum, but let’s “Red” take care of her brood.

It’s been more than three months now, but maybe one day the Canadian will reclaim the irrepressible Boss. Honestly, I doubt it. It appears she’s been dumped. Aptly named, Boss rules this house too. You definitely know when you’ve been Bossed. Fearless, Boss never gives up trying to play with Vahşi. After motherhood Vahşi calms down and concedes Boss’ lively cuteness. Despite her obvious adoration, Red takes occasional Boss-breaks, retreating to a secret place in the garden for an hour or two of solitude. Every night the four kittens, Vahşi and Red curl up in a hammock to sleep. Fiercely independent, Boss sleeps alone.

Meanwhile, as the newest fluff-balls bounce all over the house until they are independent enough to be adopted out, the fish bucket is filled each morning, the sneezing and itchy eyes come and go, and life purrs along at a gentle pace, until Ginger comes along . . .

Dumped at 3wks old, “Ginger” is a street rescue kitten. “Red” feeds and cares for him.

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!

Booty and the Beasties

“You’re fat!” states Don Iber, beaming as if these are the exact words a woman wants to hear. He leans forward on his motorcycle and looks me up and down with hungry eyes, nodding approval.

“Just like your wife!” I retort with a smile, trying not to feel stung by what I know is meant to be a compliment.

There are women in my culture who would catapult Don Iber head first over his handlebars for such a remark. On the day we speak, I weigh one hundred and fifty pounds (68kg), up from the one hundred and thirty five pounds (62kg) I dropped to when I was gravely ill. Iber’s wife weighs around three hundred pounds (135kg). After a three-month recovery from dengue and typhoid, I’m finally looking less like a walking skeleton and more like a human being. And I’m not gorda!

Skin and bone doesn’t work for me as a look; I have booty. Luckily for me, Latino culture is all about booty. The more the better. Instead of asking, “Do these jeans make my butt look fat?” Latinos manufacture jeans that highlight and enhance large bouncy melon-shaped tushies. So when someone comments that you’re fat, it’s a compliment. Gorda is good. It’s a synonym for desirable, attractive, sexy, gorgeous . . . I think you get it.

“You’re too skinny and you look ten years older,” notes Kenny, Don Talon’s wife, a week after I arrive home from hospital. This is not a compliment.

Still, “fat” is overdoing it a little considering I weighed over two hundred pounds (95kg) when I arrived in Mompiche. This doesn’t deter men from hitting on you, rather the opposite.

“Marry me,” whispers Don Talon every day for months when I go to get fish from the boats.

“Hands off! She’s mine!” announces Nyongo, Talon’s older brother.

“No way!” sneers Chuco, the eldest of the three. “You’re both too ugly! She’s my girl.”

The Castillo brothers compete daily for my affections. It makes no difference to any of them that I’m not interested. All three resemble chocolate-coated Frankenstein creations with enormous hands and feet. None of them has been further afield than Esmeraldas. They can’t read or write. They each think that being a fisherman with a run down bamboo shack is enough incentive for women to fall over themselves for such an irresistible catch. That Nyongo goes on a raging bender lasting three or four days every month isn’t important. That Talon has a wife and a tribe of kids doesn’t matter. That Chuco has a running tab at the brothel is a minor flaw to be overlooked.

“You’ll never have to come to the beach and search for fish again,” they promise.

Thanks but – ahem – I think I’ll pass. Besides, I like being on the beach.

“I just want to get my hands on that fat juicy butt!” snorts Angel, a seafood trader, thinking I’m still out of earshot as I approach Efren’s boat. The fishermen cleaning the nets laugh. Angel scratches his crotch and spits in the sand, leering as I near. He pulls up his grubby t-shirt and rubs his enormous hairy belly. “I don’t understand why you don’t like me,” he pouts, pushing himself away from the boat.

“Maybe your wife and five kids have something to do with it,” I say diplomatically, stepping wide to avoid his lecherous hands. If I get too close he’ll grope me again, tweaking my backside.

It’s true. I have a big round butt. I’m one of Freddy Mercury’s “fat bottomed girls that make the rocking world go round”, and I’m proud of my wobbly white orbs. That doesn’t mean everyone is invited to touch them. In fact, I’m not ashamed to admit that I have decked men for sexual molestation. Angel is lucky he didn’t end up face down in the sand.

Fernando isn’t so lucky the Saturday night he sneaks up behind me in the discotheque and cups my bottom with both his hands while I’m dancing with Yoyo. Instantly I spin around ninja-turtle style and box his ears then twirl back to my dance partner and continue to salsa without missing a step. Fernando’s freckled gollywog face bounces off the cement column in the center of the room and he staggers out the door shell shocked. Drunk and oblivious, he doesn’t feel the black eye until the following day.

On seeing Fernando’s impressive shiner, everyone asks “What happened to you?”

“Nothing,” he mutters, intently studying his feet.

“Roni clobbered him,” announces Don Julo, the storekeeper, a huge grin splitting his face as he regales the gory details to anyone and everyone.

The news spreads quickly. The story is embellished and improved upon as it’s passed along. By Monday everyone has heard one version or another. After that, no one ever gropes me again.

In a machismo culture sexual harassment is the norm. It’s not perceived as harassment. It’s meant as a come on, to let you know you’re attractive to the ogre who is ogling you.

“Mamacita rica,” men say as you pass in the street. Beautiful mama.

Plain-looking girls with junk-in-the-trunk and low self-esteem could be cured here, frequently listening to these compliments. From the six-packed surfer boys to the town drunk, every day some hopeful Lothario shares his opinion; wanted or not.

“You’re more beautiful every day,” says Don Jata, making puppy eyes at me as he shuffles towards the beach.

That he’s seventy five, can barely walk and has no teeth is irrelevant.

At first it’s good for the ego, hearing how gorgeous I am from every man with eyes in his head. Then I begin to realize they all want a piece of me; or rather, my wallet. You see, I’m filthy rich. I have three houses in my home country, a villa on the Mediterranean coast, a current model BMW at each locale and a limitless bank account. It doesn’t have to be real to be true in Mompiche. And when I try to explain the truth; that I’ve been a struggling artist my whole life, no one believes me. I can’t count how many men who aren’t on speaking terms with me because I refuse to share my endless pots of gold.

“Oh, Miguel, you’re not talking to me? How my heart breaks!” I tease. I couldn’t care less.

“Hello, my love. How are you today?”

On the main street, I turn to see who’s addressing me. The speaker is thirteen or fourteen at most. He’s kidding, right? Actually he isn’t. Every day for several months he greets me this way. In the evenings at the public well, he poses and preens to get my attention, dancing while stripping off to bathe in the unpaved street. I have to turn my back so he can’t see me laughing. Sometimes I hide inside when he passes with his buckets. He’s called Pipo. I don’t know his real name. He’s one of Ocho Mil’s brood; placed somewhere in the middle of fourteen siblings. He thinks it’s cool to be “in love” with the local gringa; at least until the next cool thing comes along.

As my face fills out again, changing from drawn and pallid to robust and healthy, my too loose pants fill up and stop falling off, and people begin commenting on how well I look.

“You’re fat!” says Juan Zambrano in the morning when I buy half a liter of fresh udder-warm milk from him for thirty cents.

“Thanks. I’m getting better,” I reply with a smile before going home to feed my cats.