6 Missionary Couture

I didn't know my travelmates before I took this trip. So the first time many of them saw me for any length of time was in a village on the equator.  I can't decide if a tropical jungle look is the best baseline/frame of reference. On one hand - these people will ALWAYS be pleasantly surprised in future meetings when I don't smell like BO (I mean that's the plan, anyway).  On the other hand, I not sure these folks appreciate that in civilian life, I’m not actually a janitor. 

One issue with my San Eduardo wardrobe was that it was a little.....repetitive.  See....when I hear 92 degrees with 100% humidity.....I think shorts - NOT how can I make my knees sweat even more by wearing pants.  But it turns out women don't really wear shorts in the village. Considered inappropriate. G-reat. I am horribly mispacked with shorts and not pants.  Right outta the gate on this mission trip and I already need a loves-and-britches miracle. Which makes me really, really, really wish I hadn't removed those extra pair of Kuhl pants that Rita had packed so I could make room for my spandex shorts. 

So that left me with 1 pair of jeans, 1 pair of legit camping pants and one pair of pants that you could unzip the legs off to make.....shorts. They were seriously unattractive. The only reason I brought them was 1) because Rita told me to and 2) in case I needed another pair of shorts.  Turned out all the guys had the same pants. Nice. (Missionary Barbie, I was not.)

The second issue emerged on Day 1 when I went to clean the bathrooms.  That's right, you heard me, clean the bathrooms. Apparently, the motto of my church group is "from each according to her abilities...." and I know how to clean toilets in Spanish. ANYWAY, day 1 cleaning activities included my co-worker splashing the entire left leg of the only legit camping pants I had with bleach.  So now I can't even pretend I'm wearing similar but new pants on days 3, 5 and 7 because they are now distinctively bespectacled with the evidence that I don't know how to clean a bathroom.  

Whoever said "the less you pack, the happier you'll be" was a boy.  I wished I had a judgment-inducing massive suitcase and pants that didn't walk on their own. 

By the time we got back to Quito and I showered and put on the new jeans I had bought, I looked like extreme missionary makeover. And again, for most of my travel-mates, this is the first they have seen me in civilian clothes (clearly, I need to improve my church attendance).  One person exclaimed "you're so clean!"  There is no hiding the fact that the unspoken end to that last phrase is "compared to usual".  Someone else incredulously asked "are you wearing makeup??"  Me: I often wear makeup after my janitorial shift is over. 

Finally, when someone said "Your hair is soooo blonde after being in the sun for four days", I wasn't about to own up to the fact it's always that color when its clean. 

All that to say, laundry day in Nashville is going to be quite an event.  I hope Rita can help me get that bleach stain out.

5 Uno

By the middle of Day 2, I seriously needed a break from the intensity that was Arts and Crafts. Someone was headed into town and I asked to tag along.

A few salient facts missing from the brochure for this particular errand:

First, we ride in the back of an open fruit truck.  Ecuadorians stand up in the back and lean against the iron bar surrounding the bed of the truck when they ride in the truck.  Ecuadorians also have a much lower center of gravity that isn't susceptible to the first deep pothole. Furthermore, Ecuadorians have bit more resistance to a colossal sunburn. My fellow passengers must have thought I was massively carsick lying flat on the bed of the truck when I was just trying to stay on the right side of the wheel wells and in the shadow of my fellow passengers.

Second, the "store run" ended up including an errand to deliver some medicine to a patient who had come in the day before. Only problem, we didn't know where she lived. I mean, it's not like you can just google map your way to the "1st street past the house with four windows on the side."  So our strategy seemed to be to offer rides to enough people that someone would eventually know her. And by "offer rides", I mean - don't push anyone off the flatbed when they jump on it, uninvited. There was no discussion, no introductions, just two new women or three new men on the back of the truck whenever you seemed to be headed the same direction as they needed.  At one point, the flat bed census includes 7 folks from the village, my fellow missionary (who spoke fluent Spanish and therefore looked like he might belong there) and an increasingly sunburned tall Irish girl trying to remember the last time she rode somewhere without her seat belt on.  Eventually, a 65 yr old wrinkled little woman told us where the patient lived and stayed on the truck to direct us there - with a few passenger departures and arrivals along the way.  Having completed our mission, we gave our direction-giver a ride home and offered to buy her a drink.  Coca-cola Senora?  "Cerveza!" She replied. And here I was afraid I wasn't fitting in. 

The last fact someone forgot to mention was that the driver on our errands only had one leg.  (I couldn't help wondering if he lost his leg in a car accident?). My fellow missionary later said "we call him Uno".  Wait - does HE know we call him Uno?????     And while I've been known to embellish before, I have hand on the Bible when I tell you.....the truck is a stick shift. Go ahead, you do the math on that one.  I think one of his crutches was somehow involved, but decided the less I knew about this operation, the better.  I eventually started getting comfortable with his driving, but then I saw him send a text in between gear shifts and decided it was time to just cover my eyes and work on the prayer for the evening's reflection. 

I never left Arts and Crafts again. 

4 Vacation Bible Bootcamp Day 2

Turns out day 1 of Arts and Crafts ("A&C") was just amateur hour for Day 2 when the kids got their picture taken, bedazzled the shit out of a picture frame and then got their printed picture put in it at the end. That's right, Rita has me packed for the apocalypse and here St. A's is operating a photo booth that any over-the-top wedding reception would be proud to include.

I was an official glue gun operator in these highly organized proceedings (those damn frames don't bedazzle themselves, by god.) My assignment is ironic because I thought we were here to resolve injuries, not cause them.  Apparently word has yet to travel to Ecuador that not every lesbian knows how to use power tools....

And we can call it arts and crafts, but to these kids it is Life. And. Death.  They have a PLAN and it often involves me being WAY too slow on the glue gun. Honestly, I spent 20 whole minutes being a 7-year-old's BITCH while she pointed and I glued. Don't let that little smile fool you, toughest boss I've ever had>

And the bedazzling is nothing compared to the picture posing. There seems to be some confusion about whether we are a church group or Latina Vogue. More than one sassy-pants threw a look over her dipped shoulder that took us quite a few minutes to adequately crop out of the final picture.

The only mishap seemed to occur when the morning snack delivery came around. I told you those empanadas were good. And a certain glue gun operator MAY have left her post so as not to miss the first or second pass of the empanadas. And a six-year-old MAY have glued his shoes together while my glue gun was otherwise unattended. 

And THAT is how I keep getting busted to latrine duty.