Lost Causes

I know I tend to have a reputation for….misplacing things.  I try not to talk about it at work because nobody really wants a CFO who loses important things.  But most of my friends know this about me because they spend a not-insignificant portion of our friendship rescuing me from leaving items behind me.  

That tendency is exacerbated when I’m out of my routine.  And “out-of-your-routine” is actually the tagline of the mission trip to Ecuador.  There is nothing routine about taking off with 27 of your closest friends people you see at church, to an equatorial country for a week of camping and crafts.  So I knew I was bound to lose something.  I did NOT expect it to be during the plane ride from Nashville, before we even made our first connection.  But true to form…..that damn airplane seat-back pocket got the better of me.  When they make the movie of my life, my arch-enemy is going to be the seat-back pocket of an airplane.  I don’t know why I bother putting anything in there, given how often I forget it's there.  I might as well just throw it in the trash when I get on the plane and save myself the anxiety of trying to recover my pocket offering.  This time it was my water bottle.  That seems like something I’m going to need ON THE EQUATOR.  [sigh]  Luckily, I was able to play the missionary card and beat my way back on the plane to recover the single most important thing I packed.

Then I proceeded to spend about 60% of my entire trip rummaging through my luggage looking for something I had misplaced or couldn’t remember if I packed.  Seriously, like half the photos of me on this trip are me with an arm stuck in my backpack frantically trying to make physical contact with my passport.  In true McC fashion, despite occupying a total of 80 s.f. of accommodations, over the course of the first two days I managed to misplace the following items (in order of importance):

• My ballcap (that’s right, you think water is important – but not seeing my barely-washed hair in 100% humidity is even more important)
• Aforementioned water bottle
• Sunglasses
• Every ounce of sunscreen I had brought
• And for just a few minutes….the only pair of sandals I brought (before realizing they were on my feet even though I had just gotten out of bed)

Most of it turned up eventually, but usually right after I needed it.  Like....I inevitably found the sunscreen at 9 o’clock at night and then generally managed to lose it again before lunch the next day.  It’s a talent.

Funny story about the sunglasses though.  I was trying to be super careful about keeping an eye on them – because…..sunburn of the corneas and all that.  So in my version of extreme care, I left them sitting out on the table so I would always have an eye on them…..until I didn’t.  I mean…I have lost a cell phone I was talking on before…so I guess misplacing sunglasses that I thought were in my room wasn’t toooooo unexpected.  

After turning my room upside down for about an hour, I gave up on it and just figured I had made another offering to the patron saint of lost items (who should really be sending me Christmas cards by now).  Luckily I had a backup pair because…well….Maeve.  

Then later that day, I saw Frannie rocking a pair of sunglasses that looked an awful lot like mine.  Frannie is one of the Episcopalion priests that was on the trip with us (does that make her “Father Frannie”?  This non-catholic priest thing is so confusing). Now….I’m not sure…but I think accusing a priest of stealing your sunglasses is bad karma. Rather than coming right out with the accusation….I decided to drop by the dormitory to just ask around. Once I got everyone’s attention, I was able to ask my question:  “Has anyone seen a pair of sunglasses?” .... [McC picks up the sunglasses sitting on top of Frannie’s hat]....”that look EXACTLY like these?  No, no….I mean EXACTLY like these.”  To which Frannie earnestly replied….”do you wear Warby Parkers too?”  And I said….”nooooo…mine are Nike….like THESE.”   I will say….they did look exactly like Frannie’s sunglasses.  So aside from having twice as many sunglasses as she arrived with, I could see why she made that mistake.  And they were only missing for like a day, so don’t worry Father Frannie - I’m sure that sun blindness couldn’t possibly be permanent. 

They tell you to watch your stuff while you’re in the cities.  I say watch out for sticky-fingered clergy. 

The art of the craft

In addition to providing health treatment to hundreds of local San Eduardoans during this trip, the St A’s team also keeps the kids entertained while they’re waiting to see the doctors by providing arts and crafts.  And the arts and crafts room is where you would obviously find me. I mean....obviously.

On the first day, the team organized a craft that included a photo of each child that then went into a photo frame they had decorated themselves. So I would first off like to point out that the St A’s team in Ecuador is not fucking around with their arts and crafts. I mean....we can’t figure out how to eat vegetables, but here we are in the middle of a jungle taking and printing color photos of kids in the equivalent of a M*A*S*H-like Glamour Shots studio.  Judging by the expression on the kids’ faces in their pictures, they also thought “what the fuck?”

The first part of this activity is taking the child’s picture. I don’t know who decided Tara would be our team photographer, but I feel your qualifications should include more than having seen pictures before. It turns out Tara had a seemingly compulsive need to cut off the top of each child’s head in their photo. Like….is she trying to avenge a bad part in her hair from her kindergarten picture or something?   I could understand if she were trying to photograph....say...my 5’12” frame and therefore ended up with the pate shaved off.  But shit, these little munchkins barely took up the frame as it was. One kid’s shoes are squarely in the photo but not his eyebrows. You would think she would have gotten the hang of it after a few dozen photos, but nooo.  What she did decide to do about thirty kids in was to start posing the children in the photos, which I’m pretty sure is not what their parents were expecting when they sent them in for church camp. 

First, the boys started showing up with fonzi-like thumbs-up signs. Then another boy was smiling handsomely while holding a soccer ball that came from who knows where.  Then the girls started showing up with a side ponytail here, an over-the-shoulder-smile there. It was when one girl took her hair bun down to reveal about 4 feet of hair that I was sure we were going to end up on the wrong side of someone’s abuela. Tara claimed the new poses were to make the photos look less like a mug shot. Which I have to tell you, when a gaggle of slightly older ladies grab you, nudge you against a wall and start giving you indecipherable directions, your expression does tend to go full mugshot. 

But the real fun was in decorating the picture frames, which included various little stickers or sequins of whatnot that were either stickers or could be glued to the frame. Maybe we didn’t explain the objective very well, but for the most part, it seemed like the kids’ strategy was to stick as much shit as possible on your mini picture frame. Death by bedazzling. Also, it might have been the fact that a meeting with el doctoro was on the other side of that arts and crafts visit, but some kids aged out of arts and crafts eligibility before they finished their frames. Como se dice “don’t make a career out of it, kid, let’s keep it moving”. In my continued (much appreciated, I’m sure) efforts to be helpful, I just walked around a lot saying “andale, andale”.  You are welcome,  Ecuador, you are welcome. 

Bringing glue guns to Ecuador continues to be a marvel to me. Like it’s 1000 degrees in this country.  Do we think we need to bring artificial means of melting glue?  Half my makeup bag is now a gluelike substance, can’t we just use that?  But after spending an hour dabbing glue on the backs of an endless stream of googly eyes, I must confess - your visiting missionaries started getting a little bored. We finally decided the kids were better at that glue gun business than we were and turned them loose on the glue guns. I second guessed our decision when I looked up to see a five year old gluing a gum wrapper to her frame, but....art, right? I did have to intervene, however, when one little boy at the end of the table was reaching over his little four-year-old sister to grab the gun, dab the glue on his sequin and pull it back to where he was sitting. After watching this for a few minutes, I realized that glue gun was leaving a trail of thin little “glue strings” when he pulled those beads back to his work station.  And as a consequence, when I finally checked on his sister for the first time in ten minutes, the top of her head was practically encased in a cocoon of these trailing glue strings.  I don’t want to lay claim to being missionary of the year or anything, but I challenge any of you to pull a head full of strings out of a four-year-old’s hair without her noticing.

So that was the first morning. 

Accommodations

San Eduardo is a town of about 400 people in southern Ecuador. Which probably sounds quaint. But think less ....early colonial and more....post-modern cinderblock. The Escuela Ann Stevens school/church compound is about six or seven mostly cinderblock square rooms around a concrete plaza. To get the proper feel of the place, think of your brother’s college roommate who decided to make a tv stand out of cinder block.  And then rather than outgrowing his infatuation with cheap furniture, he decided to play Sim City with it and build San Eduardo. 

So when our group of 27 arrives, everyone has to decide which of the concrete-on-concrete classrooms they’re going to camp in. Several of the classrooms comfortably accommodate like 10 bug huts, which is about 9 more than my comfort zone. So for a few of us, there is always an awkward dance of trying to find a place to sleep other than the group dormitories. In fact, on this particular trip, there is a trio of slightly older ladies who are passionate about serving others and dressing in private. 

The good news is there is one “finished” room in the compound that we have access to that usually houses the women seamstresses, but that we were able to finagle our way into. 

I thought the room had air conditioning but that turned out just to be windows consisting of missing cinder blocks. But the room DID, however, have its own bathroom.....with a shower. Which is the equivalent of being platinum in terms of missionary upgrades. It wasn’t that others on the trip couldn’t use this bathroom, but no matter who used it we managed to keep it fancy by stocking things like ....soap. 

The room even offered enough privacy to house an afternoon “salon” where several of us reflected on our week of service (“salon” being mission-speak for “wine bar”.  That’s right people, I said wine bar.  I mean, give back...but host parties while you’re doing it.)

And I did say it had its own shower. But I swear, no matter what time I showered, some bitch had used all the hot water.  Seriously, I don’t know how the water gets so cold there. The beers never get that cold, that’s for sure. Apparently, we should take the beer bottles out of the “fridge” and put them in the water reservoir.   And yet, Ecuador is the only place you can take an ice cold shower and still be sweating right in the middle of it. 

Here’s the only problem with this idyllic Facts of Life dormitory (why yes, I WAS Jo, why do you ask)....the larger group was going to meet in that same space during the day.  That means we had to break down our tents and mattresses each morning.  Now look....I am nothing if not a woman who knows her limits.  I mean....every one of you bitches reading this can’t believe I set up a tent once in a row. The odds of me successfully putting up a tent four days in a row were folly.  So rather than trying to tempt the fate of a broken bug hut, one of my roommates and I decided to sleep out on the room’s balcony where we could leave our stuff up.  It was a fine line between the room and the balcony anyway. No....like....literally....a fine dirt line and not much else between the “room” and the balcony.  

But the one feature the balcony did offer was a sidecar-like proximity to the one and only street lamp in the compound. I’m pretty sure you could change that 4,000 watt light bulb from my bed, that’s how close it was. I’m not one to let a little light (or much else) bother me while I sleep, but this may have been more than a little light. I only say that because on the first night, i kept dreaming of being a Big Mac under a McDonald’s heat lamp. On the second night, I got wise and draped my towel over my bug hut, which works like a dream. Funny thing, however....turns out that things that block light also block air flow...  

None of that blocks sound, however.  Which is an interesting story for the following nights Carnivale celebration.  But that’s another story. 

S.S. San Eduardo

Before leaving for our trip to San Eduardo, the group discussed extensively the potential for “digestive distress”. Apparently when you mix 600 sick patients, suspect dedication to hygiene and a single public bathroom, bad things happen. In fact, these are conditions that seem like a ridiculous exaggeration of a public service announcement.  Like.....who the hell is going to invite hundreds of sick patients to a compound where someone keeps stealing the soap from the only bathroom and then invite them all to share the sign of peace in mass later that night. Our American-based alter egos would tell us we were asking to shit ourselves. In fact, we should quit being surprised that people got sick and instead get incredibly suspicious of people like me who didn’t get sick (Apparently staying in your room while pretending to count pills reduces your risk substantially). 

And it wasn’t the first person who went down that worried you, it was the dirge-like three-day roll call of the afflicted that started to get to you. By the morning of our third day it became entirely acceptable to stand on my balcony and shout out an update on my roommate to the group below “she doesn’t have the vomits, just the diarrhea”. This behavior back home would have ended our friendship. 

As the week progressed, person after person went down and you had nowhere to go to try to preserve your digestive tract, nevermind your dignity. It was the tropical equivalent of the “poop cruise”: trapped in unairconditioned accommodations, unreliable plumbing and a group-wide shitfest.  The S.S. San Eduardo. 

But worse than getting sick on day two in San Eduardo was getting sick the night before boarding the bus for the interminable bus ride out of San Eduardo. I don’t remember all my literature studies, but I’m pretty sure when the arrival at a roadside Ecuadorian "bathroom" is the pinnacle of your hopes and dreams, you’ve entered one of Dante’s circles of hell.  And while I know the front seat accommodations were intended to reduce carsickness for our patients, I don’t know if it was helpful to have 25 fellow bus riders shuffle past you after each rest spot with 22 offers of crackers and a few dozen head pats. I don’t know what makes us think a grown adult wants a head pat, but speaking as a patter, it’s practically reflexive. 

Unfortunately, the viral (s)hit parade didn’t end with our departure from San Eduardo. This particular pageant of the Norovirus was like a slow boil through the group even when we got back to civilization. Someone would complain of “rumblings of discontent” and the next thing you know their roommate is asking about zofran suppositories. And it’s not like the hotel we stayed at in Cuenca offered any privacy for you to work through your illness. “La Inca Real Hotel” was 17th century quaint, which is a euphemism for sound-enhancing piazzas.  During the night Thursday, we all heard something that sounded like death paying a visit.   Assuming it was a human making those sounds, we knew someone else had gone down, we just didn’t know who.  Friday morning reflection was a silent vigil as we waited to see who didn’t appear for breakfast so we could send the zofran and the head pats.