FACE TO FACE WITH MY PARENTS

Forty five minutes later the train’s loud whistling announced our arrival to the town of Duran, the end of the road, from which all people in the train as well as all cargo would be transferred to an old but well performing boat, “the Galapagos”, which would ferry us across the wide dark and slow moving (with the tides) river, to the city of our destination, Guayaquil. The transfer from the train to the boat took about twenty minutes, and then, another twenty minutes to cross the river.



The Cerro Santana (the site where in 1537 the city of Guayaquil was founded by the Spanish Captain Francisco de Orellana) could be seen with all its charm from the boat ferrying the train passengers coming from Riobamba

The lights of the city with all their splendor could also be seen from the boat , ever clearer as we approached the other side of the river in our East to South West short water journey. During the twenty minute ride to get across the river, a couple of the vessel’s stevedores sitting on the floor of the lower deck of the boat, and oblivious to the crowd around them, decided to have their own show and began to sing old songs which they said they used to hear on Radio Zenith, over twenty five years ago in (in the 30's). They did it in a nostalgic way, “those were the sounds of our dearest old Guayaquil” one of them said, and the other answered, “yes, those were the old good times which will never come back”. “Guayaquil is just not the romantic and quiet city we used to know any more”, said the first one, the other nodded approvingly



This is how Guayaquil looked in the mid 50's


As the boat docked in Guayaquil, my parents were waiting for me at pier number 5. They were very effusive, very loving, very tender and very welcoming. My father helped me with my luggage and the pineapples, while my mother continued to hug and kiss me as we entered the taxi which would take us to my final destination, Letty’s House in downtown Guayaquil.

At home, dinner fixed by Letty, who was a great cook, was waiting, I could smell the dear and much missed smell of home food, the familiar smell of cooked beans and rice, the fried bananas, and, of course, the dearest smell of my mom´s made bread. Once we all sat around the table, and had thank god for the food we were about to eat, in a ceremonious way dad said, “Let´s all pray and give thanks to our Lord for our son´s return from school after a long time away from us, and for the destiny HE has chosen for him.” After prayer he added, “Let’s eat, since our little priest must be hungry, aren’t you my little son?” His words, which for sure my father really meant, sounded kind of sarcastic to me, especially “our little priest”.
After over fourteen hours without food, I was so hungry I could have eaten a barbequed elephant by myself. “Yes dad, I’m hungry and very tired,” I said in a trembling voice. “I just feel like eating and going to bed right after.” In a way, I was hoping for some kind of a miracle that would get me off the hook. My fear must have been obvious, so obvious that my mother, whom I always though, and still think, could read my mind, soon came to my rescue after I fast ate the main course. She played awhile with her hands over my head and took me off the dining room an into the wash room where I brushed my teeth and then went to bed. I pretended to be very sleepy and asked mom for her blessing before I got in bed. As usual, she made the Holy Cross’ signal with her hands touching my forehead and said, “God bless you always my dear little son, and have a good sleep.” This was the night I was first introduced to the notion of insomnia. Oh Lord, I just wished I could board a flying train and go far, far away, where I could hide my shame from mom and dad, so I would not have to see them face to face and tell them the bad news. It must have been at least three AM when I finally fell asleep and even then, I have nightmares which woke me up at least three times..

At about seven thirty in the morning, mom came to my bed and sat near me, she woke me up with a kiss in my forehead and then she started scrubbing my head as if trying to put order in my always indomitable hair. She repeatedly kissed me all over my head and face, then, she embraced me, made me sit down and said, “Tell me my dearest son, what is happening to you? I know there must be something seriously wrong which you didn’t want to tell us last night, but here I am to listen, and you are going to tell me. Whatever it is, I need to know it, so please, trust me and tell me, I love you much, you can be sure of that”

While she was talking, I felt a mix of despair and hope. She seemed so loving and caring while sitting next to me, yet I knew she was not soft when dealing with her children´s misdoings. Finally, feeling that I had no way out and had to say what I feared to say, I brought up some strength deep from within and said while sobbing, “Mom, I don’t deserve your love any more. I’ve failed you, I’m no good for the family, I’m sorry but that’s how I feel”. She took a couple of minutes before reacting to my words and then she asked: “why are you saying that son?, why are you so severe with yourself?, you have to tell me what happens inside of you, why so much anxiety”. Still sobbing and talking with half words I was able to articulate “I’ve been told at school that I can’t be a priest, that I wouldn’t make a good priest that I can’t go back to school next October”. I stopped for a moment and then said “Mom, I thought I could be a priest, a real good one, but now I can’t return to the Seminar”, and then added with tears in my eyes, “I’m done mom, I’m finished, the dream of having a priest in the family is now over and I have no one to blame but myself, I swear I would have liked to be a priest to make you happy, mom” and continued, “mom, there is nothing I would rationally do to make you unhappy. You know that, don’t you?”, she was listening very carefully but her eyes began to shine like she was about to shed some tears too. Throughout this entire dialog, my mom was calm, amazingly, unbelievably calm, and almost absurdly calm for what I have been expecting. I couldn’t understand it, but, deep in my heart I knew a door leading to hope was slightly being opened. “Oh God, there seems to be a way out of this without farther suffering”, I thought.

After several minutes of silent hugging, kissing, sobbing and crying, my mom resumed our dialog and said, “No, my son, I didn’t want you to be a priest to make ME happy, I have always wanted you to be happy” and added “It would have made me very unhappy had you become a bad priest”, and then continued, “calm down my dear son, it’s OK, I understand; let’s get ourselves prepared to talk to your dad and hope he too, somehow will understand all this. It’s a good thing we are now two to do the talking”. By the way, she said, “how did you do academically? I’m sure you did well, didn’t you? “Yes”, I said, and digging into my old wooden luggage case, I showed her my academic awards. She showed a broad smile, a beautiful smile, a smile comparable to no one’s since her.

Dad wasn’t home that morning, which made things easier for me, and I believe also for my mom. Dad was a man to be feared, a man sometimes I hated to love, but I had now my mom in my side, I felt no longer alone, I felt somewhat relieved.

In my next chapter: FACING JUDGEMENT

THE TRAIN RIDE

The train stopped a few minutes in every single little station in its way to the coast, the first four stations were minuscule towns ever higher in the mountains, mostly inhabited by mountain Indians wearing multicolor dressings almost always including red or blue ponchos, dirty dark brown hats made of sheep´s wool that once had been bone white, and dirty brown sandals made of a cactus-like fiber which grows in the high dunes, or simply bear footed.

The people from each town had their own distinguishing characteristics mostly noticeable trough the color of their clothing. As soon as the train stopped, Indian women and children entered the train’s passengers’ cars loudly voicing what they had to offer, going from roasted pork with hot potatoes on a slightly spicy hot salsa with lots of onions and cooked old bread, hot coffee, salty and steaming hot green beans called “habas” a hot and sweet alcohol beverage made with sugar cane alcohol, cinnamon, sugar and lemon, called “canelazo”, which adult passengers happily drank “for the cold”. They also offered whatever little other things they could offer, which would help their ends meet. This day, however, they had nothing I would be interested in, nor would I be able to buy, as I was immersed in my own world of fear and anxiety, thinking about what would happen as I arrive in Guayaquil, besides, I had no money. I ignored as nonexistent the loud voicing of the vendors as they passed by me

The four to five minutes the train stopped in each little town, was the “window of opportunity” for this people to try to make a living. Of course, there was another “window” in the afternoon, when the train from the coast was coming up to Riobamba. After the fourth station located up high in the mountains, we arrived at a twenty five house Indian village in the middle of a desert, called Palmira, where temperatures are either cold, colder or coldest, and the wind owls like wolfs in heat, throwing dusty sand on everybody’s face. The train soon arrived to the highest point in the route and started its journey down the cliffs with intermittent thrilling twists and turns, offering spectacular views of the surrounding mountains till it arrived to the “Devil's Nose”, a 45-degree gradient where the railroad actually descends about two thousand five hundred feet and advancing almost no distance as it goes zig zagging in forward and reverse down the mountain until it reaches the Chan Chan river level at the bottom of the canyon, where the village of Tixan is located.

From here, the railroad continues descending the mountains for another 30 miles, going sometimes parallel and sometimes crisscrossing the river base, en route to the tropical lowlands where the small town of Bucay lies at only 200 feet above sea level. From here the railroad takes an almost straight line to Guayaquil, another 60 miles down the road, on the other side of the Mighty Guayas River, and only 40 miles away from the Pacific Ocean.



At about one O’clock in the afternoon, the train arrived in Bucay, the first station in the lowlands, where in a matter of thirty minutes, the train changes locomotive and crew, both to better suit the tropical lowlands and the normally higher temperatures and humidity of the tropics.

After a series of stops in small villages in the middle of nowhere, at about four O’clock in the afternoon, we stopped in Milagro, the fourth largest city in Ecuador, a town whose economy evolved around two large sugar mills giving employment to more than five thousand peasants who, machete at hand, were in charge of cultivating and harvesting the sugar cane which would then be taken to the mills in small privately owned and operated railroads. The sugar cane would then be loaded to mammoth milling machinery, to be squeezed dry and conveying the sugar cane juice to be cooked at high temperatures, then mixed with small volumes of sulfur, passed through a vacuum system for “whitening” and then deposited in large bulk sugar silo type compartments to be bagged and shipped to the train station for further shipment to the markets.

Milagro-The Pinaples´kingdom

These were manual, labor intensive mills providing employment directly or indirectly to about 80% of the population of Milagro. Besides sugar, Milagro has always been known as one of the finest pineapples’ producing towns in the world. In fact, it still is. These pineapples are the sweetest most delicious pineapples that one can think of. They are large fruits (averaging four pounds each) and one of them can be the most delicious desert for an entire family of five. As soon as the train stopped in Milagro, an invasion of serrano ladies offering with their unique accent “a pair of pineapples” was happening in the train’s passengers’ cars. Their loud voices offering their merchandize could not be ignored by anyone, not even by me, so much so, that I spent the last five Sucres I had in my pocket to buy a pair of these pineapples to bring them as my present to my big sister Letty, whose house in Guayaquil my parents were expecting me at. With that, I exhausted my cash reserves. At the time of this story, mom and dad were visiting Letty in Guayaquil.

When my sister Letty got married, in 1942, the year I was born, she moved there from our village, and lived in an old three story wooden apartment house in downtown Guayaquil which was owned by her mother in law. My sister, who lived in the first floor, allowed us to use one of the rooms in her apartment whenever we were visiting, which happened once or twice a year and for only about two weeks each time.

Letty was a beautiful, 5’6” brunette, 120 Lbs, big brown eyes with long nicely curled eyelashes, 33 year old girl, whose husband of 13 years, an uneducated, unmannered and lazy as a snail, taxi driver, had repeatedly cheated on her because “she could not give him a child”, in spite of which, she not only continued to be faithful to him, but she adopted the child girl he had procreated with another woman. She cared for this child with the same love as if she had been her own daughter. Years later her husband repeated the doze by bringing home for Letty to up bring, a baby boy whose mother, “did not have class, and was not willing to raise the kid” as the unfaithful husband put it to my sister. Not only Letty did not throw away father and son, but she again adopted this second child and cared for him with the same love as a real and caring mother would have.

I believe what was behind all this, is the fact that Letty may have felt psychologically guilty for not being able to bear a child in her own womb, therefore, she saw the upbringing of her husband’s children as a kind of compensation as she was able to do it with all that monumental mother’s instinct and love she had inside her own self.

In spite of all her husband’s misdoings during almost fifty years of marriage, my sister Letty, while in her dying bed in 1993, asked me to look after her old husband when she passed away. God forgive me, but I did not feel like saying no to her at that moment, but, I did not feel like looking after this bastard afterwards, and I didn’t, but what’s more, I don’t feel a bit of guilt for not having done so. I just repeatedly ask my dead sister to forgive me. Her cheating husband passed away only a couple of years after my sister died, in the mid nineties.

WHY WAS I SO MUCH AFRAID OF MEETING MY PARENTS

The train at the "Devil's Nose"



The builders completed their work in ten years and the railroad was fully operational for the next sixty, until highways substituted trains as the main means of transportation between the mountains and the coast and the choo choo trains became all but pieces of a museum of history. Today, more than one hundred years after its completion, this rail road is still considered a jewel of mountain railroad engineering, and tourists can still travel certain segments of the railway in small railcars (most tourists actually ride atop the train), wondering and admiring how this catwalk trail like railway was built more than a century ago.

Not even the train’s loud whistling (which would normally sound like music to my ears and was always present in my childhood dreams of world traveling) was catching my attention this time. I couldn´t eat. I just couldn’t think of anything but the way I was going to convey the bad news to my parents—I knew they would be terribly disappointed and would hold me responsible, in their own terms, for whatever they thought my fault was. I couldn´t help but think of anything else but my father´s thick cowhide belt around his waist, an “educational tool” commonly used in those days and which my father used more often that we would have desired, when dealing with his children

My father, Timo (short for Temistocles, the name of the famous Greek general, victor in the battle of Marathon), who at the time of my story was 55, was a rather short 5’6” and 130 Lbs man, wide shouldered, always wearing a Pancho Villa type mustache, he was loved and respected, but also feared by his children, due to his frequent use of his cowhide belt to discipline us. He was a very strong man in spite of his size; he could lift a hundredweight bag of grain and put it on a horse or mule back in no time. The son of a peasant woman and a peasant himself, he grew up under the strict tutelage of his uncle Juan Celio, whose basic philosophy was—the tougher you treat a child, the stronger he or she will become at adulthood. Juan Celio was not just my father´s father in many ways but his mentor as well.

The identity of my father’s biological dad, Manuel, was kept (from us) as a family secret for two generations, and it was only after my father passed away in 1991, that we, his children, learned that he was born out of wed lock as a result of an extramarital affair Manuel had with his sister in law, my grandmother Amable Romero. As a result, as it was legal in those days, my father did not bear his biological father’s last name, but, rather his mother’s. My father had learned (the hard way) from his mentor Juan Celio Romero, his mothers’ big brother, that the cow hide belt was to be used, not only to hold his pants up, as one might think today, but that it could, and more often, should, be used by parents (tutors and teachers as well) to get their point across when dealing with children or wives as well. Uncle Juan Celio’s use and abuse of his belt was the worst kept secret in the family.

My mother was 5’8”, she was white, brown eyed, black haired, a beautiful woman, descending from a well to do family of Spanish ancestry on one side and large and wealthy landowners of Basque and Columbian ancestry on the other. Yellow fever and malaria made her an orphan at the age of seven and was raised by her grandparents. At age 15, she ran away from home and married my father, a peasant from a “lower class”, for which her grandparents disowned her forever. She was a tough woman with a heart as big as a cathedral; she took upon herself the responsibility of raising her seven children without them feeling the hardships of poverty. Still very young, she became the baker in the village (which she had learned from her grandmother), her bread was second to none, the smell of which as it was coming out from her firewood oven, could he felt hundreds of yards away, and, at the same time she did the household choirs inherent to the mother of seven children, such as childcare, cooking, laundry, sewing, gardening, knitting, embroidering, etc., and still she had time to read us stories at night and teach us the catechism, as she was deeply religious. I don´t remember, as a child, to have worn anything but clothes sewn or knitted by my mother, many times from materials coming from old dad´s or older brother´s clothes. But, she was also tough when disciplining her children, she did not use a cowhide belt, but she had a cowhide lash hanging from a wall nearby the dining table, for the same purpose. She was severe but she did not ever let her temper get in the way of fairness; she used her lash when it was really needed, never as a result of a moment of bad temper.

Those were the parents I was going to see face to face this faithful day of July, 1956, and that was why I was so concerned, that is why I was so worried, and that is why I was so fearful during the whole twelve hours of my journey to Guayaquil. It just seemed ironic to me at the moment, that the rest of the world around me seemed so normal, so oblivious to what was happening inside me, and about what was going to happen to me in a few hours.

HOW WILL I CONVEY THE BAD NEWS TO MY PARENTS

I left father Gonzalez’ office deeply confused, perhaps more than that, worried, even worse, I was terribly afraid, even though at the moment I did not quite see all the implications which this conversation was going to have for the rest of my life. I was too young to understand that, but it was clear to me that I was walking my last steps in this school that I loved so much, and that my life was entering a turning point. I knew I was out of the Seminary for good, and that there was no way to change that, I also knew my parents could not possibly pay for a comparable school anywhere. It never occurred to me that I was not “pious enough”, perhaps I was too young to understand the very concept of “piety”, or “free thinking”, or “thinking within boundaries”, while on the other hand, I really liked my school, I loved it, I liked and enjoyed almost everything we had there: the languages’ classes, playing soccer (atop of everything else), basketball and volleyball, the excellent food, the weekend field trips, the daily reading of The Grim Brothers’ at dining time, etc. I just wasn’t prepared to accept the fact that all that was not going to be a part of my life any more. I felt like blindfolded sliding fast down a quasi vertical rollercoaster with no one in the controls.

When I got to the bed room, I started questioning myself: Did I ever have a vocation to become a priest?; what is a vocation any way?, I just did not have honest answers to these questions, and worst than anything, if being a good student did not qualify me, and being happy in the school was not enough, if having kept an impeccable record of good conduct did not suffice?, what, for heaven’s sake was enough? I just did not have an argument to debate father Gonzalez with, so my not returning to the school was something I had to accept as an order from above which I had no recourse against.

All I knew was that my life was going to change dramatically. My family just did not have the financial means to send me to a comparable school, and most likely I was going to have to settle for a public school of sorts. Public schools were then, as they are now, the place where parents sent their children for education when they have no alternative. Nowadays is even worse in Ecuador, because a radically communist teachers’ union controls public education and refuses to accept any level of performance evaluations from the government or from the parents. No government over the last fifty years has been able to take away the control of the education from this militant union. Any attempt from at least the last ten governments to disrupt the teachers’ unions control of education has failed; the result has been a deeper and deeper hole in the quality of education of young Ecuadorians.

But the question that most tormented me was how on earth was I going to convey the Rector’s message to my parents? Would they understand? Would they be mad at me? Would they keep me responsible for not making it possible for them to have their dream of having a priest in the family come true? The whole 12 hour train ride to Guayaquil, which used to be the best part of the school year, was going to be full of these tormenting series of thoughts.

Riobamba, 9000 ft high near the Chimborazo, one of the tallest mountains in The Andes

I went to bed that night with a series of contradicting feelings. Yes, I was going on vacations, but no, I will not return to this school where I have lived for over a year and a half and have enjoyed the happiest years of my life as a student. I packed my clothes in my wooden suitcase for my trip to Guayaquil where my mother and father would be waiting for me at the end of the day, the day after. A child after all, I went to sleep at about nine in the evening and was awakened at five in the morning to get ready to take the seven o’ clock train to Guayaquil the morning after. After good wishes and farewells from the other children a taxi took me and other four children to the train station. The weather was colder and more windy than usual, and by six thirty, in our way to the train station, we could see that many children on holidays had already started to fly their kites in the mostly dusty, desolated and windy streets of this small city.

The train leaving Riobamba

The train took off at the scheduled time and off we went up the mountains to about almost twelve thousand feet were temperatures dropped to between the forties and fifties inside the train, before reaching the breaking point and starting to descend to sea level through some of the most rouged mountains of the Ecuadorian Andes.

As the train slowly ascended through the mountains, my thoughts were in some other place; I couldn’t help but think about what was going to happen after I arrive. I could only see through the train’s windows, the telegraph wire poles going fast backwards as the train picked up speed. Once in a while I could see, and appreciate the view of the green, cultivated almost to their top, mountains as we were climbing them in our way to the coastal plains were the city of my destination was, Guayaquil.






A masterpiece of Sierra country railroad engineering, this railroad was designed and built by the "The Guayaquil and Quito Railway Company", an American - British consortium using the most advanced railroad construction techniques available at the beginning of the twentieth century. Most of the hard labor workers were African Jamaican who had been hired at the end of the nineteenth century and remained in the country until the railroad reached Riobamba in 1905 and Quito in 1912. Many of those workers never returned home as they died from tuberculosis, malaria, yellow fever and other tropical diseases endemic to the Ecuadorian tropics, while working in the construction of this mammoth snaking iron way to the Andes.


But the railroad was completed and for the first time ever, one could travel in only about ten hours from Riobamba to Guayaquil (from the high mountains to the sea level tropics), a trip that at the end of the nineteenth century used to take about a week of horseback riding and lots of endurance to complete it. When completed, this railroad was considered a marvel of engineering which dramatically helped reduce the tremendous gap of mutual knowledge and distrust between Ecuadorians living the mountains (the Serrano, or mountain people) and those living in the Coastal plains (costenos). This railroad, no doubt, was a gigantic advance in the integration of the country. Most of the credit for the completion of this railroad should go to President Alfaro who was tragically assassinated in Quito in 1912. He is now considered the greatest Ecuadorian of all times.


My feelings of fear, anxiety, despair, loneliness and helplessness during my railroad trip could only be compared to the insurmountable odds and mental anguish that some of those unfortunate African Jamaican men must have felt while working for a miserable salary in the construction of this railway, when they saw their fellow workers succumb to incurable diseases caused by the alien environment and subhuman conditions they were working in. The families of hundreds of them never saw or heard from them again, I didn’t know what was going to be my destiny heretofore, I only knew this was going to be a turning point in my life.


In my next posting: WHY WAS I SO MUCH AFRAID OF MEETING MY PARENTS

THE SEMINARY

July 1956


At 14, I had just completed the second year of high school at The Junior Seminary of Our Mother Mary in Riobamba (a small city in the mountains in Ecuador, South America), where carefully chosen high school catholic students were “readied” in six years for the college level Seminary, from which, upon graduation (after six years of intense studying of philosophy and Theology) they would be ordained as Catholic Priests. Our school was the “dream come true” of Bishop Leonidas Proano, a high ranking Catholic bishop whose controversial views of the church’s role in society were in those days seen by many within and without the church, as a threat to the establishment.


Highly influenced by the Brazilian bishop Elder Camara the founder of a so called “Social Doctrine of the Church”, Proano though that the role of the Catholic Church should not be only spiritual and addressed to save souls for heaven, but more proactive in the formation of a new type of individual for society. He thought that the church should take a leading role not only in evangelizing people, but in forming leaders who would eventually help change the profoundly unjust Ecuadorian society into one where there would be more justice, or, to put it in another way, less injustice for the poor, and particularly for the Native Indians.


Proano was especially concerned about the millions of Indians living in sub-human conditions up in the far away, windiest, highest and coldest parts of the Sierra, where the Spanish Conquistadors first, and then the rich Creole land owners had thrown them to live and work to barely survive. Going in this direction, Proano founded and run what he called the “Radiophonic Schools”, whose main purpose was to alphabetize and evangelize those Indians through radio broadcastings, as well as to let them know that they were human beings with social rights, just as any other citizen of the country, and not “working beasts” as they had been treated for centuries. It was with the purpose of forming such leaders that Proano created the Junior Seminary of Our Mother Mary in Riobamba, a school he thought was going to become “the Jewel of The Crown”.


This day, the formal ceremony closing the first academic year of our school was taking place in the ample, well illuminated auditorium where images of our Holy Mother Mary, her cousin St. Elizabeth and the twelve apostles hanged from three of the four large walls. A three foot crucifix hanged from the wall behind the presiding table. The School’s Rector and his academic staff chaired the event. "Good luck", "enjoy your vacations" and "see you soon" speeches had been already heard, and award medals were being delivered to some students for their academic as well as sporting performances.


I was sitting in the second row of the auditorium, almost oblivious to what was happening in this big room, daydreaming and picturing my mother's happy face upon my return from school for a three month holiday, when suddenly, my name was called. Classmates sitting next to me actually awakened me to go to the podium and receive my awards: one for best languages’ student (Latin, Greek, French and English) and one (the big price), for the best student’s academic performance of the year. The audience enthusiastically applauded while the Rector as well as the other five ecclesiastic teachers embraced me and congratulated me. I felt emotionally overwhelmed and happy, but at the same time I was somewhat disappointed that I did not get any of the annual awards for sporting performance. Once again I felt kind of envious of my classmate Ricardo Estrada who got the “best soccer, volley ball and basket ball player of the year” awards. He was just a great athlete and I really admired him for all his achievements. I have never seen Ricardo since.


At about seven in the evening in this ice cold, windy and moonlit night, in this nine thousand feet high Andean city of Riobamba, the school’s year end closing ceremony came to an end, and the hallways were almost empty as most students hurried up to the dining room. I was slowly walking towards the dining room located about a hundred feet away, retaking my daydreaming abruptly interrupted a moment ago to go receive the academic awards. This time, however it was not my classmates but father Gonzalez, the School’s Rector who brought me back to reality.


Gonzalez was in his mid fifties, fair skinned, perfectly shaved, almost red white round faced, with his black hair just beginning to grey above and around his ears while beginning to lose hair in the top of his head. This impressive, 5’10”, 240 Lbs. man had been born in Spain and educated in France, following the most traditional academic and religious indoctrination procedures dictated by the Roman Catholic Church. He held top academic credentials and was never shy to mention it. He had been especially “imported” from Spain to make our Seminary the “best in the country” as commanded by Monsignor Leonidas Proano. Gonzalez was in charge of fulfilling Bishop Proano’s wishes and he was determined to do it.


“Rafael, I need to talk to you, please come to my office right after dinner”, he said as he placed his big hand over my right shoulder for a second or two, and off he went up the stairs to the second floor of the three story building (which was meant to house a total of 200 students, but was now, in its second year, occupied by only 33 students), where the Rector’s office was located. I did not eat much at dinner time, and as requested by father Gonzalez, I went up to his office, thinking that perhaps he was going to follow up on the awards thing, and maybe even give a small amount of money (which I badly needed), as an additional and very welcome prize for my academic performance.


The loud laughter of jubilant thirteen and fourteen year old children feeling free to go home after nine months in boarding school could be heard in the background and throughout the hallways in the entire building as they came out of the dining room in this one night before going home for summer holidays.


The school’s building sat atop a hill in the southern end of the dusty and cold city of Riobamba, not very far from the city’s prison where 14 years back my father had been unjustly incarcerated for almost two years before being fully acquitted and released


Father Gonzalez’ office was a 20 by 20 feet room with wide windows looking toward the city, but this time the curtains were closed and no city lights could be seen. The room was soberly decorated with a five a by five foot picture of Our Mother Mary, the patron of the school hanging behind the rector’s desk and a same size picture of Monsignor Proano the Riobamba bishop and founder of the Seminary, on the right wall, while a picture of Pope Pious the XII, the head of the five hundred million Catholics in the world, hanged from the left wall. Gonzalez had always looked to me as an impressive individual and a great teacher, I had a very special chemistry with him, besides, he was admired by his colleagues in the school's staff, and for all the students for his knowledge and his ability to transmit it to his class, while at the same time he was feared for his explosive hot temper which could literally paralyze the whole school when released.


Father Gonzalez was always wearing his “million button” black cassock outfit, a perfectly ironed white, long sleeve shirt underneath the cassock, a plastic, bone white collar around his neck and ultra shiny black shoes. Hanging from his neck was a silver chain with a three inches long golden crucifix which he often rubbed with his left hand while slowly, but firmly walking in his classes or in the school’s corridors.


“Seat down dear Rafael”, he said after I entered his office and he shut the door locked for no interruptions. “Seat down here, right in front of me”, he said, and he made me seat on a chair so big my legs hanged almost half foot from the floor. I held myself from the two arms of the chair as if I was about to start a rollercoaster ride in the dark.


“I need to talk to you now, I can’t delay this conversation anymore because you are leaving tomorrow” he said, and added, “I didn’t feel like talking to you before this day so as not to negatively affect your performance in the final exams” and continued, “I now beg you to forget about my position in this school, as I want to have a one on one, frank but friendly dialog with you”. “Let’s talk man to man” he added, as he sat in the big chair behind his desk. I began to have the chills as it all started to sound kind of weird, like something very serious was going to be said.


Gonzalez must have noticed I was getting nervous as he made his introductory speech, so he tried to calm me down by standing up and walking around his desk while putting his hand over my shoulders as he passed by, then he handed me a delicious Swiss chocolate candy, one of those he always kept hiding somewhere in his desk and never shared with anyone. Suddenly, after he took a deep breathing, he started out asking me if I was pleased the school year was over and for having been awarded the best student diplomas, "which you very much deserved", he said. “Yes, of course I am pleased, father Gonzalez”, I said, and added, “My parents are going to be very proud of me, just as I am proud of them”. “In this three month vacation from school I intend to do many things in Pallatanga, my home town, but more than anything, help my mother in her bakery "I love doing that", I said; "I will help my father harvesting his corn crops and enjoy horse riding with my brothers, cousins and friends; and, of course I will visit and play with my friends and relatives, you know?” I was trying to sound serene, but I really wasn’t, something smelled bad around all of this, I could smell it, I could feel it and I was just about to hear it too.


“Of course” he said, and added “Rafael, you know how much we appreciate your academic performance, there is no doubt you are our best student, but” and he stopped for awhile, “the reason I want to talk to you tonight is that, although you far exceed the academic requirements of this school, I deeply regret to inform you that we have decided to ask you NOT to come back to our school next year”. He was not looking to me in the eyes; he was obviously disturbed and felt he was doing something he would rather not do. He stopped for at least a minute and added “you know, Rafael, this is a Seminary, a school to form future priests, disciplined ministers of the church who will lead people’s souls and hearts under strict boundaries of obedience and piety”, and he went on “I know you will be good at anything you decide to do in your life Rafael, I have no question about it”, what’s more, Rafael, I’m sure you will be a successful man and will have a happy family”, and then he added, “but we surely know you are not going to be a good priest, a humble shepherd of souls, so, please tell your parents that the scholarship we gave you is over, and they should find you another school for the next school year”.


Suddenly I felt like a high fever was invading all my body, I felt like hundreds of little ants were walking all over my head and started to invade my whole body. I felt like the school building was collapsing over me and I could not move, I didn’t know what to say, and yet I was able to articulate two words coming right out of my stomach: “but why?” The priest was obviously feeling very uncomfortable as he fulfilled his duty and answered in a calmed and ceremonious way, “we are sure Rafael that you are not going to fully understand me now, neither did most of our faculty, but we are sure you eventually will, and when you do, we are pretty sure you will agree, and maybe even thank us for what we are doing with you tonight”.


Gonzalez stopped for a moment and then continued, “Rafael, you are just too much of a free thinker, quite frequently you tend to make comments and ask questions that fall far out of the boundaries of what is acceptable in our deeply religious school, and we are afraid your kind of free thinking might spread to other students and destroy the very concept of blind obedience we are trying to teach our pupils here”. “More than anything, Rafael, I believe (this was the first time he spoke in first person), you are not pious enough to become a priest”, in sum, he added, “neither the Bishop, nor me, believe you have a vocation to be a priest and you know this is a school where we educate young people to become priests, to later go out and preach the Divine Gospel to the people, a gospel of humility, of blind obedience to the mandates of God and His Church”.


Once he had said what he had to say, Gonzalez seemed to feel relieved, but he was very sad and didn’t want to prolong what must have been a mentally torturous moment for him. He stood up from his chair and approached me very tenderly and said “God The Almighty and His Mother Mary, our patron, bless you and bless whatever you do in your life” and, almost whispering in my ear he added “Good luck my dear Rafael, I’ll miss you very much, my whole faculty will miss you, your class mates will miss you” His final words were “I wish you the best in your life Rafael, good bye and may God the Almighty bless you always.


In my next posting: HOW WILLI CONVEY THE MESSAGE TO MY PARENTS?

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It looks like I have been able to do it!.
Hurray for me. I'm thrilled, I have taken the firts step to walk through the blogosphere where over one hundred million people are already having their ideas spread throughout the world. I will be now able to make my written ideas available to every one out there. Now that I have the vehicle, I need to load it with what is my first and foremost project, which is writing my memoirs for my children, my grand children, my extended family and my friends and have them all join me in the rollercoaster of my life as I remember it.
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