September 19, 2008

Yesterday was a very… umm, interesting day. The night before Jess invited me and Christy to go with her to the beach. She said that her host mother (who works for INNFA) and the other INNFA employees for her site were going to give a charla at a school on the beach. We all figured that we would hang out on the beach while they gave the charla and then return in the afternoon. That wasn’t what happened.
Par Jess’s instructions, I was at her site by a quarter to 7:00. She told me that her host mother wanted to leave by 7:00. Well, I forgot to take into account Ecuadorian time and we ended up leaving around 7:40. No big deal.

When we arrived at the beach, we were then told that we had to take a boat to the school were the charla was to be given. Since there were only so many lifejackets, the three of us were told that we didn’t need them because we knew how to swim. Fine. Then when the boat to take us arrived, the captain was wearing a bulletproof vest and there was a huge gun in the boat with us. We found this more amusing than troublesome. Chrissy insisted on taking pictures.

Once we got to the island, the beach smelt of cat food and was full of garbage. The three of us figured we had been misled and that the beach idea was never really going to happen. Since it was also cloudy out we decided it wasn’t too much of a loss and began to look forward to listening to the charla.

The ‘school’ was your typical one room classroom with this HUGE black dog that kept wandering into the room and the children spent half their time trying to lead the dog out. Once I discovered that the dog was harmless and was raised around young children, I relaxed and found the dog amusing.

The three INNFA people then began their charla and to my amazement, they didn’t even introduce us. This is when I began to realize that the three of us were only being tolerated and not there to help out/participate. The rest of the day kinda followed with them reluctantly allowing us to tag along and never really speaking to us and us speaking/complaining in English the whole time. They didn’t make us feel welcome, and we weren’t exactly grateful guests. In hindsight, I think both groups acted less than perfect. I really missed my counterpart Guadalupe.

We did get to go to the beach for awhile after the charla the sun actually came out. But after an hour, INNFA decided that it was time to go and we went to catch a boat back. Shockingly, boats weren’t lined up at this very tiny/poor/remote village eager to take us back to civilization! We were informed that the next boat wouldn’t show until 5:00 pm. Our INNFA hosts, in their infinite wisdom, decided we would walk back, convinced it would only take 30 minutes (even though it was a 20 min boat ride). So we walked. It was a pleasant walk along the beach and for awhile, quite enjoyable. We then reached a sort of crossroads where we could cross a small, shallow, but slightly slippery pool of water to continue walking along the water, or continue on the same path and walk through the mangroves. I chose the former and continued walking along the water, but everyone else thought that the pool was slippery and continued straight. As a result, I continued the pleasant walk along the water’s edge, while the rest of the group was knee deep in mud and muck! I got so far out ahead of them that I had to stop and wait for about 45 minutes while they tried to find another place to cross over. When they finally showed up, we continued walking for about another 10 minutes when we realized that the tide had come up so far at one point that we could not possibly cross and were stranded. The INNFA people had to call the coast guard to rescue us while we waited in the middle of nowhere as it the slowly tide rose. Eventually we were rescued and brought back to civilization! Chrissy and I both swore that we would never go anywhere with Jess’s family or that INNFA group again.