Ecuador Security

One thing in particular that has interested me is the security in Ecuador. The crime rate is quite high due to the economic situation here. The average wage is about $200 per month, but the average rent is about $180 per month. This makes living very difficult and in order to survive some people have to resort to crime to supplement their income. Also, if you lose your job, there is no assistance from the government, so you have to do what ever you can to survive, including resorting to crime. This isn't to say that the people in Ecuador are bad people, in actuality they are fabulous people, it's just that they seem to have no other choice.

Due to this economic hardship, robberies are quite common. Of the students in the school, two have been robbed, and one other has come to school with stories about her host brothers and sisters getting robbed on at least three occasions. At the Cámara de Comercio de Quito concert, the president spoke about how 4 out of 10 businesses that belong to that organization have been robed. Due to the high incidence of theft, security guards are ever so present. Almost every store, restaurant and shopping mall has security guards. Some are even armed with military level weapons (especially at banks). You even have some security guards in the more affluent communities (like Susy's) to help deter theft.

One of the best examples of the security is Susy's house. She lives in a quiet and relatively safe neighbourhood, but it's more secure than Fort Knox. When I get off the bus I first walk past the security guard before unlocking the gate to Susy's house. On both sides of the gate are walls about 6' high with broken glass on top of the wall. Once through the gate I head to the door where I have two deadbolts, a sliding bar and a lock in the doorknob that need to be unlocked. Once you get inside you have to relock the two deadbolts, doorknob and slide another bar into the locked position and add the padlock. Then you have to go up the stairs and unlock another deadbolt which needs to be relocked on the other side along with a second sliding bar with a padlock. All of this for an apartment. You can only imagine what it's like at a bank.

All that being said, the security guards and locks are there to deter theft and the thieves are not violent. Most often they will swarm you to take your bag, or pick your pocket. If you hand it over, there are no problems. As long as you're smart you will be fine. For example, if someone looks suspicious, cross the street, and at all times avoid the areas that are known for robberies. In those places known for robberies (like the bus station) just pay extra attention to your stuff.

Feb. 15 - ¡Feliz Cumpleaños!

I was very happy to spend my birthday in the city among friends, instead of in the woods where I have no idea what I would have done. It was a great day. I started off having breakfast with Susy where she had a cake for me (with a candle) and a present. At school they had organized a lunch for all of us to celebrate my birthday (thanks Meredith) that included another cake with a ? candle since they didn't know how old I was. And then later that evening my friends here got me another cake (thanks Kat and Lee). Three cakes in one day...how could it get any better!

To celebrate we headed to the Coffee Tree (where else would we go) before heading to an Italian restaurant. It was great to spend the evening with all my new friends here, and they were incredibly generous with a bottle of champagne (which I drank in the street and took into the restaurant .... very lax liquor laws here) a great cake (Lee and Kat had been doing some investigating over the past couple of days asking which cake I thought looked best in the window of various shops) and a toque that I wore all night .... hey it's my birthday so I can do what I want.

After dinner we headed to a great Irish bar...Finn McCools. It wasn't the same as the one in Toronto where I spent many nights with ACLC, including my past three birthdays, but according to Lee and Tony (a Brit and Irishman) this bar was as authentic as you could get. The bartenders didn't speak Spanish. It included a British guy who none of us could understand .... he kind of sounded like a pirate. All in all it was a fabulous day. (thanks to everyone who was there for a great time....it made me feel right at home)

Feb. 11 - 14 - Back in School

Now that I'm back in school, I'm heading back to a regular routine. The days start off the same way every day. I'm up at 5:30 to turn on the water heater, back in bed by 5:31, then up again at 6:30 to shower and head off to school. One nice thing about this week is that the weather is beautiful, not even a hint of rain. The morning classes are pretty much the same, although I have a great teacher this week who has taught me the past tense....which means I now have been given a past. My teachers finally know a bit about me, and as usual, I'm not taking anything in my classes too seriously. I hope they do realize that I'm making up half the stuff about me, because if they don't I'm going to have a hard time explaining why my wife Angelina Jolie can't come visit the school next week.

The afternoons proceeded this week in much the same fashion as the first week of classes. Along with my teacher, we headed out on the town the first couple of days to two museums that focused on the history of the indigenous people of Ecuador, Banco Central del Ecuador and Mindalae Museo. My teacher this week, Peidad, had spent a lot of time over the years learning about the different indigenous cultures in Ecuador and was very excited to explain the different components to me. Of everything she told me, I was particularly fascinated with the interconnectedness of the different tribes. Not only did they communicate among each other, but there were places in the Andes where tribes from the three regions (coast, sierra, and Amazon) would meet to trade goods. It wasn't uncommon to find products from the coast in the Amazon and vice versa. The most common thing traded were conch shells, which were used as money by the indigenous people hundreds of years before the rise of the Incas. (I should mention now that even though the Incas are the most widely known tribe, they ruled in Ecuador for only 70 years.) Even though I learned some very interesting things at these museums (did you know that the colour of your poncho indicates what tribe you belong to...much like the Scottish tartans), I wasn't able to expand my Spanish vocabulary in the right direction. After visiting those museums I knew the spanish word for "Shrunken Head" but didn't know how to direct the cab driver to my house. (Another side note, did you know the shrunken head was created from the skin of an enemy as a victory trophy and the lips were sown shut so their spirit could not escape. This I could understand in Spanish, but the number 10 I still don't know...I keep saying it in French.)

On Wednesday, Peidad and I went to the Fundacion Guaysamin, home to the largest collection by Ecuador's most famous artist, Oswaldo Guaysamin. Guayasamin's work was very similar to Pacaso's art, but his main focus was on the hands. He believed that a man's hands held most of his emotion as the hands are able to do everything from create to destroy. His most powerful work of art is a series of about 11 pictures which uses hands to display 11 of man's most basic human emotions. As much of his work is very sad and emotional (including quite a few focused on ousting Chilian President Augusto Pinochet, or as one of the paintings referred to him, "Piece of Shit"). When he felt he was getting too emotional, he would start painting flowers until he felt in control of his emotions enough to start painting again.

Wednesday evening would have to be the highlight of my week. On Sunday, once she figured out I was going to be around for the rest of the week, Susy invited me to be her "son" for an event on Wednesday. All week I understood that I would be going to a cocktail party as Susy's date and needless to say I was kind of worried as I had no idea how I would communicate with the other people at the party. Thankfully it didn't end up that way.

We went to a concert put on by a business organization Suzy belongs to, Cámara de Comercio de Quito. They were not going to be outdone by anyone. While standing in line (for about 30 minutes) we were approached by over 20 people selling various food and drinks as we headed towards the door. This is where my adventure for the evening started. The door was surrounded by about 10 security guards and police officers who where there to keep order and protect one man, the president of Cámara de Comercio, who was there to shake every person's hand as they headed into the concert. After we shook his hand (Suzy felt like she knew him very well and thought it only fitting that he invite her to this evening) we passed through a hallway lined with 20 of Ecuador's most beautiful models handing out flowers to the women and candles to the men while welcoming them to the concert.

Once past this corridor I realized that this intimate gathering Suzy described was actually a concert of about 10 bands in a hall that held maybe 4,000 people. Even though we arrived early for the show (probably the first time Susy has done that in a while) in true Ecuadorian fashion it started an hour late....after all the president of the organization had over 4,000 hands to shake. After the president gave a 40 minute speech about what has been happening at the organization, the concert started.

I couldn't stop laughing at the first act. A man came out and started singing without a band. That's right a karaoke singer. But it doesn't end there.... He was wearing tight leather pants, a puffy shirt, red suede jacket and he had a lovely perm.....he was the Latin Tom Jones. The women were swooning all over him, throwing the flowers they got earlier on the stage, and for those luckily few, they managed to walk up, give him their flowers and receive a kiss in gratitude. But it doesn't end there.... They also had the giant screens so the people in the back could see what was happening. The camera work was really bad, over exposed, grainy and combined with Latin Tom Jones who stepped right out of the 70's, it felt like I was watching an actual recording of a Tom Jones concert from the 70's. I always wanted to go to a Tom Jones concert, and now I have thanks to Susy, who was also swooning all over him. The women liked him so much that he came back for three encores.

The next two bands were also quite popular. The first was a mariachi band that you couldn't help but dance to. The problem is that I was at least a foot taller than everyone around me. I have never felt like a giant before and I think the people were yelling at me for being so tall they couldn't see. This band fit with the stereotype I have for a mariachi band, right down to the oversized guitar...which I now believe to actually be a regular guitar, held by a small person. The final band we saw before leaving (at 11pm when there were still 7 bands to go) was really bad and convinced us that it was time to head home.

Thursday was Valentine's Day, and it's celebrated in pretty much the same way as the rest of the world, lots of chocolate and flowers. But in Ecuador it's not just celebrated between lovers, everyone gets a flower. The streets a lined with flower stands, and all the people who try to sell you candy, cigarettes and food on the bus were selling flowers today (for the lowest price ever ... a dozen for $2 at some places). In celebration of Valentine's day the school gave all the students a flower and Peidad took me to the botanical garden and reptile museum for the afternoon (where I got to actually touch a boa constrictor .... there was no way I was going to actually wear it for a picture). I must say that I was very happy to have Peidad for a guide at the garden as I was more than happy to stop and smell all the flowers only to have her tell me that it probably isn't a good idea since half of them are hallucinogenics and no one wants to spend Valentine's day high as a kite.

Feb. 10 - A Sunday stroll in the park

I'm starting to get the impression that my friends in Quito need a lot of sleep. Today's activities were not going to start until 3:00 in the afternoon. So it was a very relaxing morning with Susy. I managed to sit on the patio and read/study/listen to music for most of the morning while Susy told me who knows what (one of these days I'll manage to convince her to talk slowly). After lunch with her I headed down to meet my new friends only to learn that the only route I know to our meeting place was closed. Once a month the city closes Ave Amazonas in one direction for bike traffic only (or if you are under 5, electric cars, but only under parental supervision), and it just happened they closed the direction I needed to travel. I started walking in the direction I had to go and managed to find a bus that would take me there.

We had fully intended on heading to a park in the south of the city, but once we all arrived we decided to go to Parke La Carolina instead (it was right beside our meeting place). First off we went to the grocery store to find things to nibble on, in particular exotic fruit that we had never had before. So armed with our exotic fruit (granadilla was the only one I knew....I think one was pineapple though) we headed off to the park to relax for the afternoon. My friends made fun of me for having such an eclectic selection of things in my backpack - knife, hand cleaner, camera, frisbee, roll of toilet paper, latex gloves, water purification tablets, sweater, guide books and Spanish vocabulary list. Never the less, they were glad to be able to throw the frisbee among all the newly planted trees. Ecuadorian children are probably still wondering why we were playing with a plate instead of a soccer ball. All in all it was a very relaxing afternoon in the park, and we got a lot of amusement out of watching the children throw the frisbee back to us....not as easy as a soccer ball!