From Intag Valley we head deeper into the cloud forest

From Intag Valley we head deeper into the cloud forest. After several hours the bus stops in a mountain town where everyone gets off. Suddenly we have the bus to ourselves and June moves to the row ahead of me so I can manspread. Then school kids in white-shirted uniforms start piling in, filling every available seat.

Their teenage banter is muted and respectful. Ecuadorians seem wonderfully introverted, and I’m often surprised by how quiet the whole country is. But they’re still teenagers, and the kids in front of us start ramping up. Finally, a precocious girl turns around and asks June a question in broken English.

June answers and the students in the rows ahead become magnetized. The boys behind me take their cue and start peppering me with questions as well. Like the dummy I am, I see this as an opportunity to practice my crap Spanish and they quickly lose interest.

I realize they want to practice THEIR English, and once I switch we have a halting conversation about the US, school, music, and their lives in Ecuador. Like lots of boys in Latin America, they want to know about work and money in the U.S. I tell them what I’ve heard of young men who take on enormous debt to come to the U.S., get worked to the bone, and return home in even more debt. “Stay home,” I say. “You have your families, your friends, your language, your culture — everything you need to be happy.”

It’s easy for a privileged guy like me to say shit like this, but I believe every word. I’ve seen how full of joy the kids here are, the laughter and deep connectedness between people. I know their lives are hard but from the outside their lives also seem very sweet and free of alienation.

When the bus stops for us I don’t want to get off. The students already feel like family, such is the openness and warmth of the people here — even a bus full of teenagers. A part of me wants to go home with them, meet their families, sleep under tin roofs, walk miles back to the road, and ride this bus again, surrounded by their friends and future promise.

But all I can do is wave goodbye and say “hasta luego” and feel grateful for the life I am living.

#ecuador #travel

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Imagine a bus from the late 2000s

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I wake up in the fourth bed this week and go through the usual process of figuring out where I am and why.