Bus from Santo Domingo to Chone, Ecuador January 2, 2012
I always do my best not look confused in South American bus stations: minimal neck-craning over the crowd, no English reading material poking out of my backpack, definitely no guidebooks in hand. Eyes straight ahead and elbow through the crowd until I have my ticket (no one knows how to wait in line here). Sometimes all my silent bravado is for naught- someone spots me and my gringo-ness and decides to be my guide. They always come smiling and speaking English and I do my best to shirk them:
“Hey bro, lemme see your ticket for a sec.”
He’s about my age and height, shaved head, Latino features, slight pudge. His white T-Shirt says Agriculture 152 across the front. I don’t think I’ve done anything to project confusion and rather than feeling grateful for help I’m irritated at being singled out. Lately I’ve developed the pretentious habit of being irked when people are too excited to use their English on me. Maybe I would be less annoyed with everyone’s earnest efforts if I were Norwegian, or for that matter if I were in Norway. As it is I am in Ecuador and am working hard to master Spanish and I can do without this obsequious clinger asking to see my bus ticket.
I hand him the ticket, which he studies professionally for a moment.
“Hey bro, you’re on the same bus as me. You headed to the beach?” I narrow my eyes and say in Spanish that I am. “That’s cool,” he says in English. “Our bus is gonna be right over there in about twenty minutes,” as he points to the departure curb. “Make sure you get there like ten minutes early and all the usual stuff.” I thank him and say we’ll see each other later.
On the bus I take the second seat back from the front and spread my reading material and snacks around to discourage anyone from sitting next to me. Bro and his family make their way past, he gives me a knowing nod to which I raise my eyebrows in false solidarity. A minute later he’s back.
“Hey bro, lemme see your ticket again,” and again he studies it. “Your seat’s back here a couple aisles, number sixteen. Right next to where I’m at.”
My hackles raise- since when do people pay attention to bus seat assignments? Is he going to try and offer me a valium-laced brownie and rob me in my sleep? I’ve heard stories. I begrudgingly gather my belongings and take the seat across the aisle from Bro.
As the bus lurches out of town and we converse the basics of who-what-why, I give up on Spanish pretty quick- which is atypical of me in these situations. His name is Marcos. When I explain what paragliding is he says he’s never heard of it but it sounds pretty cool. His English doesn’t have the typical forced quality of a second language and is sprinkled with the Dudes and Likes that I use when speaking among friends back home. Which makes sense because I learn soon enough that although he was born in Ecuador he grew up in New York, where his parents brought him when he was four years old. He had lived in New York and Connecticut all his life until about three months ago, when he was suddenly and swiftly deported back to Ecuador. I asked him what happened.
“I was hanging out with the wrong crowd,” he said. “They told me I can never come back, not even to visit.”
He dove into his rabbit-hole tale of being deported. After the arrest (I didn’t ask), he spent several months in limbo in holding facilities Seattle, Phoenix, and Newark. “They sent me all over man, you meet people with some crazy stories in those INS joints. There was this Chineese dude in the INS facility in Seattle locked up with me. I say Chineese ‘cause he looked Chineese and his parents were from China, but he came to the U.S. when he was like a week old. Never got his papers. Apparently INS started cracking down on cases like his a while back, so there he was locked up with an asshole like me about to get sent back to China. He didn’t speak damn word of Chineese, didn’t know anyone over there. Didn’t do anything wrong ‘cept be born in China. He was like a graphic artist or something. Last time I saw him he was bawling, hunched up in a corner.”
As we spoke, Marcos seemed desperate to connect with a fellow American- which happened to be me even though we had little else in common. His identity was still amid a turbulent transition between two worlds. Apropos of nothing he asked me if I like Country music:
“I’m really into like Taylor Swift and Sugarland and Brooks & Dunn. I got some music on my phone, we can share headphones if you want.”
Tonight he was traveling with his family from Guayaquil to go visit an Aunt who lives on the North coast. Since returning to Ecuador he’d been shuttled around like this to go visit close relatives he doesn’t remember or never met. “They all are like showing me baby pictures of me and stuff and I’m like, ‘Do I know you?’ I guess family’s family but I just don’t know man. It just don’t feel like home yet, you know?”
I know, I say- I don’t though. "It must be like just waking up one morning to find out that you’ve left your life behind on the other side of the world," I say.
“It’s like I don’t know what country I’m from, don’t know where home even is anymore. I look like I’m from here so people don’t give me a second glance, but then when I open my mouth I got this funny accent and they’re all like, Where you from dawg?”
I console him with a metric some friends of mine from India once described to me: you can count on about one month of rough readjustment back in your own country for each year you’ve lived abroad before things feel normal again.
“Is that right,” he says pensively, seeming to take some comfort in the idea. At twenty-two years in the U.S. he had one year and ten months to go. “I miss America man,” he laments. “That’s still home for me. Dude, like my first memory is going to Central Park with my parents. I ran off chasing a squirrel and got lost and started yelling for my mom. A cop came up to me and started talking but I didn’t understand any English, so he went and got this other Puerto Rican lady cop and she helped me find my parents.”
In America he had been working as a landscaper and making eighteen dollars an hour. Since being back in Ecuador he says he’s lucky to have his job working as a bus ticket-taker/baggage handler (thus his earlier professional study of my ticket) where he makes about fifteen dollars a day. “I’m lucky to have the job, but man it sucks when I had it so much better, with the money at least.”
“America’s home,” he said again, the idea of never returning not sunk into his vocabulary yet, “but man it’s got its rough spots for people like me that ain’t got papers, even when you ain’t getting deported,” he leans in. “And for people that look like me in general, if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time. Couple months before I got kicked out I had a buddy get the shit beat out him by some racist gang or some shitheads. Just for being Hispanic.” I offer that sometimes America isn’t really the melting-pot people talk about, is it. “Fuck no, dude,” he answers.
“But it can be rough here too bro,” he squints at me, “for people that look like you. Couple weeks ago we pulled over at a bus stop and there was this guy and this girl like our age, I think they were like Polish or something- completely naked. I’m talking like they didn’t have nothing more than what they was born with... butt naked just waiting there. They’d got lost from their group and were way out in the ‘hood, you know, and got robbed. They were like still shaking and scared, I had to really talk calm to ‘em at first so I could show them where they can get clothes and stuff. They didn’t speak much English or Spanish but we got ‘em some clothes and I went with ‘em on the bus back to where their people was, all waiting and worried. They were so happy to get back, everyone like hugging me and hugging everyone. They insisted on giving me a hundred dollars before I went home.”
I ask him what he likes about being back in Ecuador. “I got my family here man. This is my little sister next to me here,” he indicates for her to wave at me and she does, “that’s my mom and dad up in the next seat. Here, if you ain’t got family you got nothin’. It’s like, in the States if you got nothin’ you can at least still go find a shelter or apply for welfare or some shit like that. Here, if you lose your job you’re just hosed if you ain’t got family.”
I ask him if he thinks he’ll keep working as a bus attendant, or if he had some other plan in mind. “I just really don’t know man. I guess I’m still in a kind of shock or something.” He drifts off for a minute. It’s dark outside the window now, the humidity finally less oppressive for me in the cool night. “I been thinking about trying to go back. You know, like get in to Canada somehow and then down to New York later,” he whispers. “Or, well, what’s the border with Alaska like?”
I tell him I’ve never really thought about it from that perspective, but the Alaskan border is a pretty empty place.
“Aw shit man I can’t believe I’m asking stuff like that. I don’t want to be a freakin’ wetback or nothing, just wanna get back some place that feels like home. I guess this is home now, gotta get used to it. You know what they say man, ‘The sky’s the limit.’”
I ask him if there’s a good Spanish equivalent of ‘The Sky’s The Limit’. “Huh. I dunno, lemme ask my sister,” he says. He leans over to hermanita in the seat next to him and they speak for several minutes in Spanish. There is some waving of hands. After a while he leans back towards me. “Naw, dude. There’s nothing like that in Spanish. I mean like you can translate it- el cielo es el limite- but nothin’ like that where people use it all the time. Better said: Life’s a bitch.”
We are silent for a while, the landscape of infinite banana plantations out the window rolls past in the dark. A few minutes later his parents indicate it’s time to get off the bus.
“It was real cool meeting you dude. I’ll check out your website sometime,” and he is gone.
Drop me a line if you ever do check it out, my friend.
I always do my best not look confused in South American bus stations: minimal neck-craning over the crowd, no English reading material poking out of my backpack, definitely no guidebooks in hand. Eyes straight ahead and elbow through the crowd until I have my ticket (no one knows how to wait in line here). Sometimes all my silent bravado is for naught- someone spots me and my gringo-ness and decides to be my guide. They always come smiling and speaking English and I do my best to shirk them:
“Hey bro, lemme see your ticket for a sec.”
He’s about my age and height, shaved head, Latino features, slight pudge. His white T-Shirt says Agriculture 152 across the front. I don’t think I’ve done anything to project confusion and rather than feeling grateful for help I’m irritated at being singled out. Lately I’ve developed the pretentious habit of being irked when people are too excited to use their English on me. Maybe I would be less annoyed with everyone’s earnest efforts if I were Norwegian, or for that matter if I were in Norway. As it is I am in Ecuador and am working hard to master Spanish and I can do without this obsequious clinger asking to see my bus ticket.
I hand him the ticket, which he studies professionally for a moment.
“Hey bro, you’re on the same bus as me. You headed to the beach?” I narrow my eyes and say in Spanish that I am. “That’s cool,” he says in English. “Our bus is gonna be right over there in about twenty minutes,” as he points to the departure curb. “Make sure you get there like ten minutes early and all the usual stuff.” I thank him and say we’ll see each other later.
On the bus I take the second seat back from the front and spread my reading material and snacks around to discourage anyone from sitting next to me. Bro and his family make their way past, he gives me a knowing nod to which I raise my eyebrows in false solidarity. A minute later he’s back.
“Hey bro, lemme see your ticket again,” and again he studies it. “Your seat’s back here a couple aisles, number sixteen. Right next to where I’m at.”
My hackles raise- since when do people pay attention to bus seat assignments? Is he going to try and offer me a valium-laced brownie and rob me in my sleep? I’ve heard stories. I begrudgingly gather my belongings and take the seat across the aisle from Bro.
As the bus lurches out of town and we converse the basics of who-what-why, I give up on Spanish pretty quick- which is atypical of me in these situations. His name is Marcos. When I explain what paragliding is he says he’s never heard of it but it sounds pretty cool. His English doesn’t have the typical forced quality of a second language and is sprinkled with the Dudes and Likes that I use when speaking among friends back home. Which makes sense because I learn soon enough that although he was born in Ecuador he grew up in New York, where his parents brought him when he was four years old. He had lived in New York and Connecticut all his life until about three months ago, when he was suddenly and swiftly deported back to Ecuador. I asked him what happened.
“I was hanging out with the wrong crowd,” he said. “They told me I can never come back, not even to visit.”
He dove into his rabbit-hole tale of being deported. After the arrest (I didn’t ask), he spent several months in limbo in holding facilities Seattle, Phoenix, and Newark. “They sent me all over man, you meet people with some crazy stories in those INS joints. There was this Chineese dude in the INS facility in Seattle locked up with me. I say Chineese ‘cause he looked Chineese and his parents were from China, but he came to the U.S. when he was like a week old. Never got his papers. Apparently INS started cracking down on cases like his a while back, so there he was locked up with an asshole like me about to get sent back to China. He didn’t speak damn word of Chineese, didn’t know anyone over there. Didn’t do anything wrong ‘cept be born in China. He was like a graphic artist or something. Last time I saw him he was bawling, hunched up in a corner.”
After several months in INS limbo Marcos was finally “processed” and had his court hearing. He described to the judge that he never asked his parents to bring him to the U.S., but they put him in this position where if he were to try and make things right and apply for citizenship- maybe he would be denied and deported. As it turned out, hanging out with the wrong crowd would bring resolution to his situation for him.
As we spoke, Marcos seemed desperate to connect with a fellow American- which happened to be me even though we had little else in common. His identity was still amid a turbulent transition between two worlds. Apropos of nothing he asked me if I like Country music:
“I’m really into like Taylor Swift and Sugarland and Brooks & Dunn. I got some music on my phone, we can share headphones if you want.”
Tonight he was traveling with his family from Guayaquil to go visit an Aunt who lives on the North coast. Since returning to Ecuador he’d been shuttled around like this to go visit close relatives he doesn’t remember or never met. “They all are like showing me baby pictures of me and stuff and I’m like, ‘Do I know you?’ I guess family’s family but I just don’t know man. It just don’t feel like home yet, you know?”
I know, I say- I don’t though. "It must be like just waking up one morning to find out that you’ve left your life behind on the other side of the world," I say.
“It’s like I don’t know what country I’m from, don’t know where home even is anymore. I look like I’m from here so people don’t give me a second glance, but then when I open my mouth I got this funny accent and they’re all like, Where you from dawg?”
I console him with a metric some friends of mine from India once described to me: you can count on about one month of rough readjustment back in your own country for each year you’ve lived abroad before things feel normal again.
“Is that right,” he says pensively, seeming to take some comfort in the idea. At twenty-two years in the U.S. he had one year and ten months to go. “I miss America man,” he laments. “That’s still home for me. Dude, like my first memory is going to Central Park with my parents. I ran off chasing a squirrel and got lost and started yelling for my mom. A cop came up to me and started talking but I didn’t understand any English, so he went and got this other Puerto Rican lady cop and she helped me find my parents.”
In America he had been working as a landscaper and making eighteen dollars an hour. Since being back in Ecuador he says he’s lucky to have his job working as a bus ticket-taker/baggage handler (thus his earlier professional study of my ticket) where he makes about fifteen dollars a day. “I’m lucky to have the job, but man it sucks when I had it so much better, with the money at least.”
“America’s home,” he said again, the idea of never returning not sunk into his vocabulary yet, “but man it’s got its rough spots for people like me that ain’t got papers, even when you ain’t getting deported,” he leans in. “And for people that look like me in general, if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time. Couple months before I got kicked out I had a buddy get the shit beat out him by some racist gang or some shitheads. Just for being Hispanic.” I offer that sometimes America isn’t really the melting-pot people talk about, is it. “Fuck no, dude,” he answers.
“But it can be rough here too bro,” he squints at me, “for people that look like you. Couple weeks ago we pulled over at a bus stop and there was this guy and this girl like our age, I think they were like Polish or something- completely naked. I’m talking like they didn’t have nothing more than what they was born with... butt naked just waiting there. They’d got lost from their group and were way out in the ‘hood, you know, and got robbed. They were like still shaking and scared, I had to really talk calm to ‘em at first so I could show them where they can get clothes and stuff. They didn’t speak much English or Spanish but we got ‘em some clothes and I went with ‘em on the bus back to where their people was, all waiting and worried. They were so happy to get back, everyone like hugging me and hugging everyone. They insisted on giving me a hundred dollars before I went home.”
I ask him what he likes about being back in Ecuador. “I got my family here man. This is my little sister next to me here,” he indicates for her to wave at me and she does, “that’s my mom and dad up in the next seat. Here, if you ain’t got family you got nothin’. It’s like, in the States if you got nothin’ you can at least still go find a shelter or apply for welfare or some shit like that. Here, if you lose your job you’re just hosed if you ain’t got family.”
I ask him if he thinks he’ll keep working as a bus attendant, or if he had some other plan in mind. “I just really don’t know man. I guess I’m still in a kind of shock or something.” He drifts off for a minute. It’s dark outside the window now, the humidity finally less oppressive for me in the cool night. “I been thinking about trying to go back. You know, like get in to Canada somehow and then down to New York later,” he whispers. “Or, well, what’s the border with Alaska like?”
I tell him I’ve never really thought about it from that perspective, but the Alaskan border is a pretty empty place.
“Aw shit man I can’t believe I’m asking stuff like that. I don’t want to be a freakin’ wetback or nothing, just wanna get back some place that feels like home. I guess this is home now, gotta get used to it. You know what they say man, ‘The sky’s the limit.’”
I ask him if there’s a good Spanish equivalent of ‘The Sky’s The Limit’. “Huh. I dunno, lemme ask my sister,” he says. He leans over to hermanita in the seat next to him and they speak for several minutes in Spanish. There is some waving of hands. After a while he leans back towards me. “Naw, dude. There’s nothing like that in Spanish. I mean like you can translate it- el cielo es el limite- but nothin’ like that where people use it all the time. Better said: Life’s a bitch.”
We are silent for a while, the landscape of infinite banana plantations out the window rolls past in the dark. A few minutes later his parents indicate it’s time to get off the bus.
“It was real cool meeting you dude. I’ll check out your website sometime,” and he is gone.
Drop me a line if you ever do check it out, my friend.
3 comments:
Good journalism, man.
Great stuff!
Glad you weren't the one deported...im in manizales, slowly making my way down towards Ecuador.
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