On a bus

Existential concerns

I made the following observations while on a bus in Ecuador ten years ago. It was a comfortable bus, and the roads in Ecuador are often in better condition than the roads in the United States, so the ride was smooth. This was during the middle of a study abroad trip that I was leading: we were Norteamericanos come to learn about tropical nature and human history. Our mobility demonstrated our relative wealth.

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We stop at a toll booth, the glass dark with exhaust. The toll taker is a short and wide young woman. When she opens the window to take our toll, fumes billow in to her tiny space. She wears a large pink respirator.

What a life, trapped in nearly every way possible, and yet it is not technically a prison. What did she do to deserve such a fate? She was born in Ecuador, not into wealth, and not in Quito; therefore her options are limited. And what comes next for her, what comes ever for her? Perhaps she has her eye on a boy, a young man, and so has spun fantasies of a better life, together with him? Perhaps she has experienced lust and physical pleasure, and knows that there is respite, at least, in that? Perhaps she is already married, with a child or two, and realizes the different monotony of domestic work, especially when paired with a job that is endless, repetitive, and literally toxic. Every day she breathes in the fumes of people who are going somewhere else. If she is already a mother, did those early days of motherhood wash away brittle reality, and allow hope to surge again? If so, did that hope again settle under her endless daily tasks?

Does the pink on her respirator bring her any joy? Did she choose it to raise her spirits, or because it was the only one available, or just the cheapest?

An hour later, still on the road towards Otavalo, we stop at another tollbooth, which has another young woman in a pink respirator. In the adjacent booth, there is a pretty young woman with no respirator, but ample decoration—eyeliner, shadow, mascara. Looking for love, it seems, imagining that that will free her chains. Do drivers at tollbooths ever fall in love with the toll takers? If so, do those men have any chance of lifting a young woman out? What would that even mean, to be lifted out? A woman old enough to work, who works at a tollbooth—what would freedom look like, both in her imagination, and in actuality? In her imagination: a princely man with wealth and good looks, gentle but strong, unto whom she would bear children, with whom she would go to galas and dinners, looking good in impractical gowns. In actuality: besides the fact that the girly fantasy never happens, it would not satisfy. It too would become tedious, on endless repeat. And the best case scenario that might actually arise from a meeting at a tollbooth, it too would bring more drudgery, endless tasks that need redoing every day. But maybe, maybe, it would also bring freedom from the booth.

On the side of the road, a woman in traditional Andean dress scrubs laundry in a sink, her shoulders and upper arms visibly strong from years, decades, of such work. Is this her family's laundry, or is she employed to clean others' wash? Nearby, men tend a smoldering trash fire, stirring and picking out bits quickly, their hands hot. Women walk proudly along road cuts, carrying their loads, as if they've been going forever and will continue to do so. Wooden pallets stack to the sky. Young men with wire racks full of bags of corn chips and popped kernels run to cars when the traffic stops, hoping for a sale. In a schoolyard, identically dressed schoolchildren play soccer, screaming with glee. Their future holds little but endless tasks, repeatedly and without thought, for to think is to realize, and to realize may mean to refuse, but upon recognizing that refusal is not an option, they would sink into grey horror. Better, perhaps, not to think. We pass another school, with more identically and well-dressed children, now heading back into the buildings, falling in to orderly lines.

Three entertainers, a man and two women, stop traffic to juggle and wave colorful flags, hoping for tips. Two Otavaleno women, dressed all in black, sit at the side of the road and watch traffic. What are we all doing it for? The dogs wander just as aimlessly, but they do not need to earn a living, so can watch each other, or us, all day if they please. What do they make of it? Little, I think. We humans can make something of it, but it’s not clear that we will.

Little girl enchanted by a phone, working her mother’s stall at the Otavalo market, two years after my observations from a bus, on a later study abroad trip. Photo by Bret Weinstein (2016).