19 May

The sink


The sink

You thought I was lying about the black sink, didn’t you? Well here’s the proof.

The Plaza internet is not working properly, so I can’t get to wiscostorm. But I can get to flickr, so here you go. Eileen and I are off to Banos for the WorldTeach “end service” meeting. We will be there today, Friday, and Saturday, returning Sat. night, I think. Tim has been busy working on two new websites, which he hopes to launch soon. Rowoars.com and ryegoose.com. You can check them out and see the rough drafts. If you know any rowers who might submit a good rowing story, please tell them to go the rowoars site and submit.

Ok. That’s all for now. Communication over the next few days will be a little “spotty,” as the Brits say. We’ll try to get to internet in Banos, but we don’t really know our schedule. Some people are leaving the country in a few weeks. Crazy. Tim’s got two months remaining as of tomorrow. Even that’s crazy.

Anyhow, now you know. The kicked-in door now complements the rest of the SECAP surroundings. It was all true.

17 May

I kicked in my first door today.

You’ve gotta understand a few things. First of all, SECAP has been in this ongoing strike since May 3rd or 4th. Since then, I have arrived at class about 9 or 10 times to find the building shut down completely. No way to enter. Then, after we were allowed to enter the building the next problem was finding staff to open the locked classrooms. Some days, such people didn’t come to SECAP; seldom did they come before 8:30 or so. Last week, Westra was having her classes in the CEC, so I could use the classroom that doesn’t have a door. This week, however, Westra’s 7:00 class beats me to that room. I’ve arrived at SECAP probably about 12 times only to find the classroom door locked and with no way to get in. We talked with Jess, the WorldTeach director, and she called up the SECAP idiots-that-be and they promised to turn over a new leaf.

Well, the new leaf turned out to be no better than the old one. Last Friday, after a half an hour of waiting, I had to search for a different room in the other SECAP building. On Monday, again after half an hour of waiting, we went to the office of one of my students. Finally, yesterday, the director gave me a key to the classroom. So when I came to SECAP this morning, I figured, “okay, nothing can stand in my way now.”

When I got to my office, however, I discovered that the door knob wouldn’t turn. I unlocked the two padlocks and tried to see if I could somehow get the knob to turn. No luck.

Ok, then. The second thing you need to understand is what I saw in the brief 15 seconds wherein I looked around myself in hopes of getting inspired by some sort of MacGyveresque plan. Instead, I saw the men’s room, with its unflushable toilet full of brown water, its black sink which hasn’t been cleaned in years, and a broken window over looking the courtyard. Kicking the door in and possibly breaking something would just be one more paint swab on a painter’s smock.

It took two kicks.

After the first one, I reconsidered. Then the sum total of SECAP’s idiocy flooded over me and kicked the door one more time. Once in the office, I learned that the knob was just plain broken. There was no unlocking it from the other side. Nothing.

16 May

Sorry. Here it is.

Ok. Let me begin by saying I had every intention of posting the “rest of the story” on Saturday, but the internet here at the Plaza was not fully functioning. So I couldn’t get to wiscostorm at all. Let me also preface this by saying that as I have related it below, I haven’t succeeded in really capturing the full effect of what this experience did to me last Thursday. It really threw me for a loop, as they say. It really took me a full day and a half before I could admit to myself that I was dealing with some real mental illness or something. Anyhow, sorry for the long wait. Here it is:

After class on Thursday, a student of mine approached me and said she needed to tell me something. She has always struck me as pretty intelligent and rational; she’s a lawyer who has worked on some pretty big cases, and she’s also somewhat envolved in left-wing activism, but she’s told me she worries about Ecuador becoming ultra-left, like Cuba or Venezuela. (The president that just got ousted was right-wing, and his replacement is proving to be right-wing also).

Anyhow, after everyone else left, she started explaining to me how there are signs. I can’t do her whiteboard-aided lecture justice, but here’s some of it. The holy trinity is represented by a triangle, the pinnacle of which is God, right? Well, look at the most dangerous leaders in Latina America. Who are they? Chavez in Venezuela, Castro in Cuba, and Lula in Brasil. You connect the dots, and it’s an upside-down triangle, the pinnacle of which is Lula, who is the most dangerous. In addition, take the first letters of each of their names and what do you get? Ch-C-L, or Chacal, which means demon in Spanish. In the Bible, prophecies of the end times talk about “soldiers of fire” and a “dragon.” Who are these soldiers of fire? Who is the dragon? It’s China. The Chinese have been slowly inundating Ecuador with their businesses. Soon, they will attempt to gain more power and when they do, Ecuador is finished. It will become a communist country with neither God nor law.

She wanted me to go to the US Embassy to explain to them that they need to help Ecuador. The only thing that will keep the communists out is a strong US presence. She explained that I shouldn’t mention her name, that she feared for her life and her children, and that she is clairvoyant. She sees the future. In fact, back in 2001, three days before 9/11, she saw the World Trade Center towers up in smoke. She called the Embassy, but they brushed her off. On the 11th, however, they came to talk to her.

She told me I needed to act fast. She sees a meeting of Chinese business men at the Swisshotel. This is how the inundation will proceed. Additionally, due to her cold, she had some foggy areas in her “sight.” But there was some vague badness near where this religious sect called “enkankar” does their stuff.

She told me I shouldn’t tell anyone, except important people. And she explained that she couldn’t talk with me about any of this stuff over the phone because she lives between the electric company and the potable water plant, thus putting her smack-dab in the middle of potential bugging. If Palacios, the current president, accepts an invitation to China, they will implant a chip in him and control him.

I took notes, and I spent most of the lecture trying to decide if she was crazy or if she was actually legit. Here, it sounds like she’s definitely nuts, maybe schizophrenia, but if you talk to her in person, you wouldn’t think that.

Anyhow, this is all recorded now, so in case Venezuela, Cuba, and Brazil all end up being a triumvirate of evil someday, or in case Ecuador falls to Chinese commies, you heard it first on wiscostorm.net.