Ecuador: Learning to Belong
I remember the first time I felt the fear. Cruising at 10,000 feet, I had contentedly frittered away the last 10 hours with a mix of sleep, chocolate brazil nuts and a Spanish phrase book. I felt as if I were going on holiday. Then the announcement came. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said the captain in a confident home counties accent, ‘we will shortly be arriving in Quito...’ My stomach did an involuntary twirl as I took in the words. Quito – my home for the foreseeable future.
Two months ago I had come across a job advertisement for an editor to set up and edit a new online travel guide to Ecuador, based in Quito. I had been happy in my job as the deputy editor of a travel magazine in London, where I had worked since graduating two years before. But it was time for a change, and this looked enticing. I emailed the company director my CV, and he called me straight back and asked me to come into the office for an interview. I explained that I was in London. We talked for a while longer. “Listen”, he said, “I can’t offer you a job over the phone. It’s a tough project and we all need to be sure that the four of us can work together as a team. But from what I’ve heard so far I think you’ve got a good chance.” So here I was, hurtling at 500mph towards a city where I had no job, no home, no friends and no language skills. Or to put a more positive spin on it, a year of extreme challenges and opportunities.
I looked out of the window as we descended bumpily through thick cloud which shook the plane and lashed the windows with rain. As we snaked through the mountains, the city came gradually into view; mile upon mile of grey and white blocks lining the bottom of a deep mountainous valley, some scattered on the hillsides as though they were trying to crawl out. It looked hostile.
The next morning, I woke up in my hostel dormitory, picked my way through my slumbering compatriots, backpacks and piles of clothes, and got ready for the interview. The office was a square unpainted concrete building in the financial district of town from which the company name flapped half-heartedly from a flagpole. A well dressed Ecuadorian woman answered the door, and I trotted out my rehearsed phrase-book greeting, to which she replied in perfect English, and ushered me upstairs.
The staff comprised mainly Ecuadorians, so my introduction was conducted entirely in Spanish. I smiled, trying hard to look friendly, clever and humble at the same time, as Jason, the company director, told them a bit about me. An interview with the editorial team followed, at the end of which they told me I’d got the job. I was ecstatic and didn’t hesitate to sign the minimum 1-year contract. But I was also very well aware that it was the first hurdle of hundreds.
For weeks I hardly thought about home as I threw myself into Spanish classes, a 9-5 job and house-hunting. Everything was thrilling. I walked around the city, struck by the beauty of the colonial architecture, the vibrant markets, the torrential storms which were so sudden and frequent that the police wore uniform ponchos. I tried roast guinea-pig, drank cocktails and even introduced my two left feet to salsa dancing, with interesting consequences.
I loved the job too, though the Ecuadorian work ethic took some getting used to. Socialising came first, coffee second and work third. Every time someone arrived or left the office for the day they would do the rounds of all their colleagues, a kiss on both cheeks, a ‘como estás?’ and a bit of banter. This made the first few weeks mentally exhausting, as my patient Ecuadorian colleagues tried to engage me in conversation and I put every ounce of effort into trying to understand. The first time I could laugh at one of their jokes, rather looking sheepish and confused, was like finding a diamond.
Then there were the 2-hour lunch breaks, the hourly coffee breaks which seriously tested my love of coffee, the postponement of all possible tasks until tomorrow (mañana). There was no point turning up to work on time as there would be no one to let you in. Having adapted though, I wondered if I’d ever be able to change back.
Still, the job was by no means a doddle and I was quickly given responsibility far above my station. The organisation developed and managed websites for external companies and on one occasion I was asked to help out on designing a proposal for a travel company. When the owners turned up on time to hear our pitch, my colleague was still polishing off a grilled guinea-pig and refried beans at the local. This left me, with shaking hands and a limited knowledge of Spanish and web design, to explain how the site would work, and why our company was far superior to the one two doors down. After that, I thought, I’ll never worry about a work or university presentation again.
If the first few months went by in a blur, the next few were a jolt back down to earth. At the beginning, this job, this life, had been something to aspire to, something that would be easy once I’d learned the ropes. It had taken stamina and energy in abundance but I knew what was required. Now I could communicate well enough, I had a job, a shared flat, friends, great colleagues. But there was something missing.
I can’t pinpoint when it happened, but somehow everyday existence replaced excitement. The striking Andean peaks outside my window no longer warranted a second glance, the tropical downpours became an annoyance rather than a wonder. Life sometimes felt transient, monotonous, lonely. I don’t think anybody would have guessed I felt that way, and I didn’t tell them because I felt guilty that I wasn’t relishing every moment. It was exacerbated by the tacit expectations of family and friends back home, who cut phonecalls short because they didn’t want to use up my phone credits or keep me from whatever exciting activity they imagined I might otherwise be engaged in.
It was as though there was a thin layer of film between me and Ecuador that all the boisterous determinism I had applied to the other tasks couldn’t pierce. A Canadian teacher I met summed it up perfectly when he said ‘there’s a big difference between being accepted and belonging’. You can be accepted straight away, but you might never belong.
If it were not for my own stubbornness and the company of the family I lived with – flamboyant parents in their 60s with two girls my age, Eli and Vilma – I might not have stayed until the end. They got me into basketball, which they played with their cousins at weekends, and invited me on their crazy daytrips to the ‘country’, 12 of us packed into an open-backed trucks for the four hour drive each way. But more than that, they trusted me with their secrets. Vilma and I used to lie on my bed and chat for hours about everything and nothing, and when Eli had an argument with her boyfriend, of whom no one in the family approved, it was me who she would come to.
They probably don’t know it, but they helped me develop a sense of belonging in Ecuador that made it possible to experience my other pursuits much more fully. Coming back to the house at the end of a weekend away, or a long day at work was something to look forward to. People cared what was going on in my life, and I theirs. My enthusiasm for the country started to come back, but this time it was much richer, more meaningful.
When I returned home, my accounts were full of the things I’d learned and experienced – a new language, the travel, the festivals, the work, the cultural peculiarities, the kindness of people, the history and the politics, all valuable CV fodder. But looking back now, the most valuable things I learned were those I had not expected to.
In particular, the profound need for belonging surprised me and required a depth of patience and self-reflection that I’d never really exercised before. I’ve always thought I was quite independent, but without family and friends around me, I realised how much their support really meant. I have a greater affinity with my own country now too; English soil may not be exciting, but it will always be home – even the drizzle and the tube delays put a smile on my face for a while. Complaining is endemic in England – I think it’s part humour, part habit, but I do it less now. Like many returning travellers, I appreciate the NHS, the police force, the fact that we have a functioning democracy.
Intellectually, too, my experience got me thinking about cultures in general, and particularly the experiences of others in my own country. Immigration and integration are hot topics for policy makers at the moment, but what do they really mean to the people experiencing them? Roots are hard to put down and they can be even harder to dig up. What is it like arriving in a new country, knowing you will never go home? I started thinking about all the reasons why people emigrate, when they have a choice, and what would make it easier or harder. I wondered how many of them felt disillusioned as I did, and whether that feeling ever disappears completely.
The most unexpected thing about my year abroad was that it set me on a new career path as a social researcher, and I am currently studying for the MSc in Social Research Methods at Surrey. This too, has been challenging at times, but I have been able to draw on my Ecuador experiences. Statistics can be like learning another language; once you get to grips with the vocabulary, it starts to make sense. And how scary can it be to give a presentation to a class of students and lecturers when you’ve already done it in another language on a subject you are unfamiliar with? Well, pretty scary actually, but you know deep down that it will probably turn out ok in the end.
In its most literal sense, immersion is a very accurate metaphor for my experience. Like jumping off a high rock into a tropical ocean for the first time, it’s exciting, risky. You take a deep breath and plunge in, letting the water invigorate you as it washes over every pore. The coral is strikingly intricate, the sealife diverse and colourful. But once you start needing to come up for air, none of that matters much. So I’ll be forever indebted to the two girls who handed me a snorkel.
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