I'm mostly writing this post because I'm just plain bored lying at home with a raised foot and waiting for my spazzy mosquito-ankle to stop being so spazzy. During the day the raised foot position is natural for a hammock but in the evening it's enough of a drag to make me miss even my most annoying English classes. Strange feeling, maybe I do enjoy teaching after all.
It all started so well, with a night out with my students on the Friday for views of the city, crazy amounts of meat for 5 dollars and then a few tobasco-beers afterwards, all paid for by my students who are all either at university or earn less than me here. So yes, that was rather lovely. I also learned plenty of more interesting things about Ecuadorian culture, such as the fact that people inland call those who live on the coast 'monkeys', which is apparently completely acceptable and not racist at all..
After a slightly below-par showing from myself at my Saturday class, it was straight off to Vilcabamba, a major 'gringo town' 45 minutes from Loja, for Saturday's festivities. As an aside, I recently discovered that the word gringo originates from the American occupation of Mexico where the soldiers wore green and thus they wanted that the 'green-go', hence gringo. It's not a friendly term in any case and I always make a point of taking an exception to it. Mostly the offence comes from people mistaking me for an American!
The festivities were a birthday surprise for my English friend Ross organised by his Ecuadorian girlfriend Diana, in a private youth hostel resort type thing with swimming pool, outdoor bar and almost panoramic views of the surrounding mountains. We started drinking around 4 and finally retired well after midnight after sampling the pool and sauna facilities late at night and drinking copious amounts of warm canelazo (water, cinnamon sticks (canela), brown sugar, an acid fruit juice such as naranjilla or lemon and aguardiente (fire water)).
The next day we moved on to the holiday home of the owner of our company and perennial sunglasses-indoors-wearer Diego, for much more of the same. That is, volleyball on his private court, swimming and plenty of beer and salted pork skins for snacks (another delicacy here). It was a great end to a great couple of days but unfortunately I'd forgotten my insect repellent at the other place, and there had been an unseasonal number of the little bitey buggers at the party.
The next day I woke and felt fine apart from a slightly queasy feeling at seeing my feet and legs covered in mankey red dots, and I went about my business in the usual way. During my 5pm lesson my foot started causing me a bit of pain, by 6pm my left foot was pretty much too painful to walk on, and after 20 minutes of my 7pm lesson it was decided that my ankle was far too swollen for the sake of teaching the one student that had turned up, and René and I headed off for the public hospital in town.
Well that was an experience. After negotiating with the people operating the barrier about whether they would let us in, we made our way into a modern, newly built waiting room. Unfortunately, with no one to greet us at a reception and the doctor refusing to open his door to anyone, neither the various families knocking on his door or the police that came to drop off a suspect, a waiting room was all that it was.
Slightly put out by the lack of order or any type of system at the main emergency ward of the whole city, we headed off to the next hospital, which was in fact a private clinic. Here, the porter received us gratefully and wheeled me through (I couldn't walk at all by now) to a nice private room and a bed. There I lay as the odd nurse came through cleaning things, and a good 20 minutes later we managed to catch a doctor to ask her what was going on, only to be batted away and told that she was busy. 10 minutes later we threatened to leave if no one showed any interest in me, to which she said 'well, you can leave if you want' without having even looked at me. So, we left.
René was finding the whole thing very amusing and delighted in telling me horror stories of other such occurrences as I zoned in and out of attentiveness. To the third hospital's credit, they saw me promptly, told me it was just an allergic reaction and gave me an injection and some pills and cream to take home, the whole thing costing a mere 31 dollars. I would just have slightly rather not had to spend 2 hours of my life looking for someone who would spare me the time of day...
The moral of the story: get that insect spray on you because you don't want to fall ill here if you can help it!
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