7am: Took Oso for a walk (Oso is our kick ass guard dog) and bought some bread for the house. Thursdays are my prayer days, so I read a little pump up excerpt from Nelson Mandela's Inaguaral Speech. Pretty standard morning so far... I don't usually teach until the afternoon, so I've been working walks with Oso into my daily routine.
8am: Celso and I drive to the airport to meet our in country director, Megan. She's flying out to the States for a vacation, so we need to pick up her car and bring it back to our place. The handoff goes smoothly, Celso takes the van, and I drive the truck back to Durán. On my way back over the bridge (by now it's around 9am), I notice a ton of police officers going the other way (toward Guayaquil), and when I get to the Durán side of the bridge, there's cops setting up a road block and stopping all traffic leaving Durán. "Interesting," I thought, "there must be an important person in town or something." I forget what it was, but there was a great song on radio Disney (mostly trashy american pop/hip hop, but the only tunes I can get in English) at the time, so I was pretty busy rocking out to that to get too concerned with the road block.
9:30am: I get home and Kipp and Christina, two other volunteers from the Arbolito house are in our living room. Christina was just at the local health clinic (right around the corner from our house) getting an IV cuz she was up all night vomitting and couldn't hold any liquid down... yet another case of the parasites (we're all getting hit by them). So they're hanging out until Christina feels better, and I finish grading some homework, get dressed for school, and head out.
10:30am: On my way to the catch the bus to work, I find out from our guard Wellington that the bridge is closed for a police demonstration. "Ohhhhhhhh yeah I think I saw that this morning." So we call Nuevo Mundo and find out classes are cancelled today. I'm pumped! I change out of my work clothes and start to think how I'm going to spend my first snow day in Ecuador! The eternal day off debate... do I get productive on something I've been meaning to do, or do I sit around and watch movies all day...
10:45am: The initial excitement wears off when we start to realize what's really going on. In addition to meaning I don't have to work, "police demonstration" also means that there are no police working in all of Guayaquil. Soon after we find out that means there are no police working in the entire country. That kinda stuff just doesn't happen in the US, so we're starting to get a little scared here. All we know at this point is President Correa tried to pass some law that would have cut police bonuses, so the police all across the country decided to strike. Pretty scary considering the normal dangers of a third world country compounded by the lack of a national police force.
11:30am: Remember poor little Christina who's laying on my couch with an IV? She had to go back to the clinic to get her test results, so I walked her over there (carrying the IV of course). When we get there, though, we find out that the clinic closed early for the day because of all the madness going on. By this time we also found out that all the banks closed across the country since there would be no police to protect them from bank robbers. Schools, medical clinics, banks, internet cafes, corner stores--everything is closed, buses aren't running, the main bridge into Guayaquil (only the largest city in the country at 3+ million people) is closed, and everyone is pretty much locked in their homes glued to the news. Oh and did I mention we have 4 volunteers stranded in Guayaquil and our in country director is on a flight to the US???
I'm already being overly dramatic, so just to be extra annoying I'm gonna put some scary pictures I found on the web and do this...
No comments:
Post a Comment