A Visit. Some Pictures. Thoughts on Guasmo.

Mom and Dad came to visit me this month. I’d been preparing during the weeks leading up to their arrival on June 11th: watering plants, organizing bookshelves, sweeping and mopping floors. I went so far as to get down on my hands and knees with bleach and a scrub brush (even though my parents are well aware that on the spectrum of neat to sloppy living habits, I fall markedly on the sloppy side).

And after all the cleaning and hiding random objects in the refrigerator, how did I get repaid for my efforts? On the very first day my parents got here, this dog peed all over my floor:

C’est la vie; Nobody died; Moving on.

We had a cookout, or parrillada, on the terrace. Ronald manned the grill, and Fernando assumed the responsibility of ensuring everyone had access to beer.

Then we took many, many pictures with all possible combinations of the people in attendance. In my experience, Ecuadorians are fastidious about photographing all possible combinations (or is it permutations?) of people in attendance at an event. Here, however, I will spare you.

The best part of their visit was when Mom and Dad got to see where I work and met some of the kids and teachers. They jumped right in helping out with English homework.

It was amazing to see that, despite the language barrier, communication took place. And friendships were made.

A reminder that if one is creative and resourceful and humble enough to find other ways of speaking, and if one is not afraid of looking the fool from time to time, that…well, those are the basic tools you need to talk with someone, not vocabulary and grammar.

When they asked Mom’s age, everyone was invariably stunned at the answer. Responses ranged from astute observation of every move Mom made (e.g., “Look, she’s not eating her rice, that’s why she’s so thin”) to misconceptions about life expectancy in the United States (e.g., “Oh, I see, so if you are 100 years old in the United States, you are still very, very young, right?”).

Mom, thank you for being a testament to the benefits of good nutrition and exercise. You have singlehandedly ensured participation in our upcoming gardening and nutrition classes.

And now I have a confession to make. It is this: I’m unsure of how to represent Guasmo Sur, the barrio where I work, to people who have never been there. Guasmo Sur has a reputation for being the most dangerous area of Guayaquil, a city already infamous for crime. Statistically speaking, perhaps Guayaquil does have more violent crime than other cities in Ecuador; but there are areas of the city that are relatively safe. And I am not convinced by any means that Guasmo Sur merits the superlative of “most dangerous.” Yes, there is great personal and economic insecurity in Guasmo. Yes, gangs and violence continue to be a part of everyday life. Yes, the piling of garbage on the street and lack of access to potable water cause health problems. Yes, many people do not have regular access to a doctor and live with existing health problems.

But apart from all this, there are many smaller, tight-knit communities within Guasmo that work to better the well-being of their friends, families, and children.

In many ways, Guasmo is its own city. It is so big that it is divided into different sectors: Guasmo Norte, Guasmo Central, and Guasmo Sur. Each has a downtown and an outskirts, with different demographics in different locales. Downtown Guasmo Sur has paved roads, businesses, and a market. The further outward you go, the more dire the living conditions: unpaved roads, shanty houses, no sewage systems, let alone potable water. Closer to the river you will find the cangrejeros, men who ply the contaminated waters for crab to sell at market. They are supposed to have a license, enabling them to set up their crab lines only in certain areas. But licenses are expensive, and the areas where crabbing is allowed do not yield much.

The street around the corner from the shoe shop is where many people of Asian descent live; across the main road and further south you will find largely Afro-Ecuadorian families; along the road lining the market are the shops and homes of numerous campesinos, Sierran folk who’ve moved in from the country looking for better business and who still wear their long skirts and long sleeves despite the coastal heat. This is just the small part of Guasmo that I am familiar with—it sprawls outward and outward to reaches that I will most likely never visit. Because I spend most of my time in one corner of Guasmo Sur. It’s in what may be considered “downtown,” with the paved roads and electricity, cement block houses and, usually, plumbing.

One PCV friend came to visit me and was prepared for the worst. When we stepped off the bus, she surveyed her surroundings and observed with a tinge of disappointment in her voice, “This is just like — ,” the small urban center she lived in. This unsettled me. I wanted to impress upon her the dangers and realities of the place. I wanted to scream, “It’s worse than you think!”

And what, pray tell, do I mean by that? It doesn’t do any good to walk around shaking in one’s boots (or flip flops). I can't speak as an Ecuadorian living in Guasmo, but as a gringo, it has something to do with the fact that we stand out. This fact, which used to be at the forefront of my mind when I walked through the barrio, had sunk into my subconscious until a few weeks ago, when I wore jeans and a tank top instead of my usual baggy T-shirt and capris. While I was walking down the block with one of the kids, she suddenly grabbed my arm and whispered in a nervous, urgent tone, “Everyone’s watching you!” This gave me chills, because not only was I not anticipating being observed, but when more eyes than usual were trained on me, I didn’t notice it.

So on the one hand there’s the visitors who come and want to walk around the block by themselves, or take pictures on their iPhones, which makes my shoulders tense and my left eye start to twitch. On the other hand, there’s the people whose anxious questions and visible tension as we walk down the street make me want to impress upon them the fact that hundreds of people go about their daily lives in this community, that make me want to scream, “It’s not as bad as you think!”

And what, pray tell, do I mean by that? I don’t care if you’re an Ecuadorian, a gringo, or from the planet Mars, ’twould be folly to traipse blithely about Guasmo with no thought of safety whatsoever. The thing to remember is that real people and real families live in Guasmo Sur, and they exist in this environment of insecurity. It’s possible to become a part of the community as an outsider, to make contributions and then to benefit in return from personal connections and the protection those connections afford. I am evidence of this.

Of all the crimes that could befall a gringo in Guasmo Sur, robbery is the most likely. No matter how well integrated I am into the community, there remains the very real possibility that I will be robbed at some point over the next year. I try to remind myself of this when I walk down the street. I try to settle into that reality and go about my daily life along with everyone else. In the end, if I’m robbed, it will hopefully be just another story to tell. Most people I know in Guasmo, even in Guayaquil, have a story like this. So I’ll probably get robbed, and I imagine it’s a real nuisance. Something akin to a dog emptying its giant bladder all over the floor you just cleaned. To which the appropriate response would be, C’est la vie; Nobody died; Moving on.