THE FEELING OF POWER AND INDEPENDENCE

Editorial Gonzalez Porto (that was the name of my new employer), with headquarters in Barcelona, Spain and Mexico City, Mexico, was to be managed in Guayaquil by a young man from the Highlands (a Serrano as known to the people from Guayaquil), with little or no knowledge of the city of Guayaquil and he had been looking for a person to be in charge of collecting notes arising from credit sales. Hernan Daza was the name of the book store’s manager; he was a friend of my sister Letty husband’ family and was very happy to accept me as one of the “collectors” of the business he was going to manage. My knowledge of the city and its people came handy to him and I was now going to have a salary of 150 Sucres a month, plus a 5% commission on all amounts collected.


By the end of the first quarter, I was making a nice income of over six hundred Sucres a month, a salary which in those days was enough for an adult person with a family of two to keep his family modestly going. By now, I had income far in excess of what I needed to self support. I talked to my older brothers, Pepe and Pancho and suggested that we join efforts and invite mom to come to Guayaquil with my younger brother Guido so she could take care of all of us four boys. While the older three would be in charge of supplying the resources we needed to become a united family again. The bad side of this was that Dad was going to have to remain in Pallatanga, all by himself, separated from the rest of the family, but he had his crops to mind and his small income as the Sheriff of Pallatanga, would allow him to self support. My mom would stop working at her bakery shop, while my dad wouldn’t have to worry about us

The matter was discussed extensively with our three older sisters, who also offered to help, which they did. At the end of that year, mom came to live with us in Guayaquil. We rented a nice three bedroom apartment in an old but well kept house in the downtown area, and, picking from here and there some old given away pieces of furniture, we were now ready to become a family again, with mom at the helmet.

A new era of my life was about to start. The rollercoaster was going to make a new thrilling turn. I had now, at the early age of 16, have not only become self sufficient, but was going to be at least partially responsible for keeping a home running. I feel now, as I felt then, that I wasn’t doing anything extraordinary, in fact, I find very strange and totally inexcusable that many people think these days that teenagers should not work, because “work takes away their opportunities to get a proper education”. I do not feel I was deprived of “proper education”, I feel that I was blessed by the opportunity to work and study at the same time at such an early age. I know it made me a more responsible individual, it made my character much stronger and if I had to choose between solidarity and wealth, I would, no doubt for a minute, choose the first. If I had to do it again, I would gladly and surely do it blindfolded. I liked this part of the ride, what a ride it was!

In September 1958 I was working in my new job. Since the company already had a receivables’ portfolio from their earlier operations handled from Quito, I was given a number of Notes to collect. Hugo Larrea, a fine 18 year old young man from a humble background was the other “collector” In the company; he was given another portion of the Receivables’ portfolio to collect. Since the number of Notes to collect on a daily basis was not high, he and I used to walk the streets of Guayaquil together. Each one of us had a small purse like bag where we kept the notes and the cash or the checks we had collected. Guayaquil was not a very dangerous city in those days, not that it was a Franciscan Town, but by very far, it was not as terribly dangerous as it has become in the last three or four years when crime has literally taken over the city. Hugo and I thought that walking together actually made the two of us much safer. We felt that we were body guarding each other.

One of the changes that was more welcome with my new job was my sleeping schedule, I was no longer awaken by the “Rafico Ya”, command from Lolo, but I was able to sleep until 7:00 AM every morning, and on Saturdays and Sundays I was able to sleep much longer, in fact, I was awakened every working day by the lovely sound of my mom’s voice singing in my ears “breakfast´ ready sweetheart”. What a change it was! There was another important change though, instead of continuing to study at the Eloy Alfaro Night Time Schedule School, I requested, and obtained, a special waiver from the Ministry of Education, to register at the Borja Lavayen Municipal High School, a school for young adults where by regulation, no one younger than 18, was allowed to register, unless waivered by a special permit. This was also a good change for me, because the school was only one block away from home and only about four blocks away from my job.

The book business started to grow, and it grew much, due to the quality of the sales crew, among which there were a group of four Spaniard guys who had left Spain fleeing the repressive Franco regime, and these guys were either good salesmen, or they just took advantage of the fascination of the locals with the stories they heard from the “Mother Land” (as locals used to call Spain). As a result, I was given more notes to collect, which I liked, but, I needed to walk much more and I was no longer able to walk together with Hugo my first six months partner. The additional work made it necessary for me to buy a bike which I did. I paid 1540 Sucres for it, 100 down and 12 notes of 120 each including interest. I felt so happy about it that I decided to make a trip to Daule (25 miles away), all by myself, to warm up my bike. Being able to ride my bike around the city made me feel great!. I had this feeling of power, of independence, and I felt like I owned the world. It’s incredible how improving your mobility can change your life, my bike did it!

Everything was going fine, I was able to do my job faster and more efficiently, which in turn resulted in more money from commissions, but it all was too good to be true, or too good to last, anyway. One month to the day, after I bought my bike it was stolen from me, right at the bottom of the Citibank building on Pichincha Street. It all happened in less than thirty seconds. I went upstairs to the first floor to see Licenciado Rigail, to collect from him a 100 Sucre note, I chain locked my bike to the handrail at the bottom of the stairs, then it took 20 seconds to go to the first floor and ring Rigail office´s bell, which I did it for three times having no answer, then I turned and looked down towards the bottom of the stairs and my bike was gone!

In my next posting: GETTING TO KNOW IMPORTANT PEOPLES’ VIRTUES AND VICES

AUSTRALIA UN MUNDO DE PROSPERIDAD

Frente a la famosa Opera de Sydney en Australia


Hoy estoy en Sydney, Australia, es domingo 28 de marzo, son las once de la noche y estoy escribiendo desde un cafe de Internet. Solo quiero decir a mis lectores que a pesar de mis viajes no los he olvidado y que voy a seguir poniendo mis postings al ritmo de uno por semana.
Australia es un pais muy joven, fue colonizado por los ingleses por la mitad del siglo dieciocho. Hoy, con solo 22 millones de habitantes y un ingreso promedio por habitante de sesenta mil dolares, es un pais que hace mucho tiempo entro en el "primer mundo", un pais donde la gente tiene libertad de trabajar, donde todos tienen libertad de hablar y de expresarse sin limitaciones, un pais muy grande en extension territorial, que hace mucho tiempo que se dedico a trabajar en libertad y a producir y que ha logrado dar bienestar a su poblacion, que en gran parte es inmigrante de todas partes del mundo. Que grato es encontrar un pais que trabaja en liberatad y que mira el futuro con fe y esperanza, que grato es ver como el gobierno se dedica a brindar justicia, educacion, seguridad social y salud a su poblacion, sin interferir con la iniciativa individual que es la verdadera creadora de trabajo y por tanto de riqueza.
Suenio con el dia en que en nuestro pais se den las mismas condiciones.

FALLING IN LOVE FOR THE FIRST TIME

FALLING IN LOVE FOR THE FIRST TIME


Meanwhile, I attended night school Monday to Friday from 7 to 11 PM and did very well academically, my afternoon nap allowed me enough sleeping so as to be able to endure the four hour night classes and wake up at 3:45 AM, work eight full hours during the morning and still be good at school, so much so that, at the end of that school year, I was among the awarded students in the third level of the School

It was at about mid year in 1958, at the age of 16, while I was the bread delivery man at the bakery shop that I fell in love for the first time in my life, or I thought so, anyway... It did not happen all of a sudden. Slowly, but consistently I started to feel this strange need to be close to this nice looking, black haired, 5’ 5”, round faced brilliantly white teeth, small, perfectly shaped nose 18 year old brunette girl, whom I interrelated daily with, because she was the cashier at the bakery. She was the cashier of the shop and I had hand to her the money I collected from my daily deliveries. Her name was Rosita, and she was the daughter of my brother in law, Lolo, and a woman in Pallatanga he had a short lived love affair with when he was still a single and handsome young man with a reputation of a lover, much before he married my sister Lilia.

I had known Rosita since our childhood in Pallatanga, and we were good friends, we used to play innocent games together when we were younger, but, as time passed and she started to show her beauty as a young woman and I began to grow as a teenager, I knew my feelings were changing, I was not seeing her as a friend to play games with anymore, instead, as my growing boy’s hormones started to boil, I started to see her as a girl I wish to have as a girl friend.

I felt this compelling need to approach her, embrace her and talk about my inner feelings, I just needed to say I loved her, that I was having constant dreams about us being in love to each other. My problem was I didn’t know how to tell her, or worse than that, I knew what to say, but was terribly afraid of saying it. In many occasions I was just about to tell her, but at the last second I backed off and started to talk to her about anything but what I badly wanted to say. I must have looked like an idiot to her. I felt I was a dumb coward, and many times I said it to myself, “Come on Rafico, don’t be a coward, tell her, she’s probably expecting you to say it”, but I did not find the guts to do it, it was just as frustrating as it can possibly be. At least three excruciating months passed before one day I was able to gather the strength I needed to do it. It was a day only she and I were at the front side of the bakery shop, there were no customers in the shop to mind for, she was working with her morning cash numbers, reconciling actual cash received, with her morning bank deposit, or something like that. I was trembling, my legs were barely holding me standing up, I thought it for a while, and finally I decided to take and hold her right hand with my sweating right hand. I looked at her right in the eyes, I just mumbled and said, “Rosita, I want you to know I have fallen in love with you and hope you would consider giving me a chance”. I must have looked like begging to her, which I certainly was. She looked at me right back in the eyes and said, “Rafico, there must be a mistake, we are friends from childhood, aren’t we?, and added, “I’m sorry to say it, but you must be terribly confused, what you feel for me can’t be love, it just can’t be, please think about it and you will finally agree”. I cannot accept you as a boy friend, we are just friends, and that can’t change all of a sudden, you understand? “I´m just too old for you, or putting it in a different way, Rafico, you are too young for me, you are just a child”. What a disappointment, I wanted to die, here’s this girl telling me I was just a child while in real life I was already a man, doing things just a grown up man can do for a living. I felt terrible!

Even though she was very polite, she was firm, she left me no room for expectations, and it was clear she just did not, much to my regret, have a bit of a girl’s feeling of love for me. It was hard to accept it, very hard. There were a series of nights I lost my sleep thinking of how I could drop this deep love feeling for her; it seemed that it was going to be impossible; I used to think of her as the love of my life, the love for a life time. I tried insisting one day but the answer was as polite and firm as it could ever be, it was clear to me that she knew how to say no, and get her point across. It took several weeks; perhaps even several months for me to accept it, there was simply no way, Jose!

My life continued uneventfully for a few months afterwards, with intermittent but dimming flashes of desire to try it again with Rosita that I was able to control through hard work and intense studying. Finally I was able to overcome that terrible feeling of anxiety, of defeat, of frustration as I submerged myself deeper in my job and my night time classes.

I had seen Rosita only a very few times after I left the Bakery shop, the last time I saw her, she was not a shadow of what she was back then, she had become a great grandmother of three, a grand mother of three and a mother of four children. Her skin was wrinkled, her eyes were sad looking, her hair was totally grey, she was missing several teeth, she seemed to have serious difficulties to see and hear, and had been living in almost abject poverty for the last forty five years. I felt terribly sorry for her and wondered about how different our lives had turned out to be, in spite of our identical origins.

I kept my job as the tricycle driver and bread delivery man for the “Panaderia La Delicia” (The Delicious One Bakery) for about a year and a half. One day, however, the man who had the job before me approached my brother in law, Lolo and asked him to if he could return to his old job. El Mono (the monkey) as he was called this man, was a 5’5” man who had a wife and four kids and badly needed the job back, my brother in law gave it back to him as soon as he requested it. I did not have any objection to this change since by the same time, I had applied and was in the final steps of being hired for a new job at a Spanish book store which was soon going to be opened in town. I felt happy for El Mono whom I also knew from my childhood in Pallatanga. He was about six years older than me and was a very smart man. Years later he became a free lancing photographer and I used his services several times in our business as much as in some of our family’s social activities. El Mono passed away a few years ago as a result of a massively invading cancer in the stomach. Another childhood friend was gone.

In my next posting: THE FEELING OF POWER AND INDEPENDENCE

NEW ZEALAND- OUT OF THIS WORLD

Photo taken in Queensland, NZ on March 18, 2010

Today is the 21st of March, 2010. I'm writing this posting from an Internet Cafe in downtown Queenstown, a beautiful resort town in South West New Zealand ("NZ").
This country is just about the same size as Ecuador (270,000 square kilometers). With a population of only 4 million people, it is made mainly of two large islands in the South West Pacific and has only 4 million people. It was first inhabited by the Maori people whose origins go back to about 1000 AD. It was first sighted by the Dutch navigator Tasman who never intended to colonize it, but in 1769, the great UK navigator James Cook spotted the islands and actually landed and establish the first colony, incorporating these beautiful islands to the mighty UK. To this day, NZ is a part of the British Commonwealth of Nations.

Considered now one of the most developed countries in the world, NZ has now a GDP of approximately 120 billion dollars and an income per capita of 30,000 dollars, that is seven times as much as the income per capita of Ecuadorians. NZ has made of an open invitation to foreingn capitals one of its strongests development tools.

Visiting this country and Australia is part of a "dream come true" for me.

A LIFETIME REAL FRIEND

The city of Guayaquil sits by the mighty Guayas river which is the eternal withness of its history, a history of people who, the need may come, would shed their blood in the legitimate defense of their rights. Photo taken in 1956

My job was basically to deliver the morning’s bread while collecting the previous day’s delivery money. At the beginning I had some difficulties pedaling the heavy tricycle, but not long after, I found this job not only interesting, but challenging as well, I got to know many people, plain people owning their small grocery stores who had been in the same place for ten, twenty, thirty and even forty and more years, some even for two and three generations. These people were basically honest, hard working people, with little or no education, who found amazing the fact that, being so young and small, I was working so early in the mornings and then going to school in the evenings. I found not one of these men and women who would try to discourage me from what I was doing; on the contrary, they encouraged me to go ahead, to try harder to be able to sow a better living. At about eleven O’clock in the morning I had my second and last delivery for the day.

The work was hard, but it was fun. One of the grocery stores I use to deliver bread to, was located at the intersection of Chile St and Portete Ave, it was owned by a solitary man, Don Pedro Quevedo, a widower who had never had any children, a soccer fan whose store was located only about two blocks from “El Astillero” (the old shipbuilding yard), a neighborhood where the two most popular soccer (and arch rival) teams in Guayaquil, Emelec and Barcelona had their headquarters. Don Pedro more than a soccer fan was an ultra fan of Emelec. He was always talking to his customers about his team and how great players were “el flaco Raffo (Raffo the skinny one): “el loco Balseca” (Balseca the crazy one); el “chino Yu Lee” (Yu Lee, “the Chinese” goalie), and other

Don Pedro was always debating about either the last game, or about the coming one, and wondering what was going to be the score and who the scoring players. His life always rotated around his grocery store, soccer and Emelec. He was always heatedly debating with the Barcelona fans. By that time, even though I liked soccer very much, I had not decided which team I was going to be a fan of, Don Pedro knew this and he started to talk to me about becoming an Emelec fan. A game confronting the two rival teams was approaching, and Don Pedro thought the time was ripe to enroll me as an Emelec fan. As I delivered his bag of bread on a Friday, he handed me, together with the money to pay for the previous day delivery, a ticket to attend the game at the George Capwell Soccer Stadium, located only a few blocks away from his grocery store. He asked me to meet him at six PM on Sunday, so we could go together to watch the game.

I did so. Even though we arrived forty five minutes before the scheduled time, the fifteen thousand seat stadium was packed; there was no room for a standing pin in the whole place, the game started at seven PM. I was thrilled, I felt like I was transported to another world as this was the first time I attended a night game in what then appeared to me a mammoth stadium. The noise, the cheering and the drum banging from such a big crowd could be heard miles away, the crowd was split about half and half, most of Barcelona fans were wearing gold-yellow shirts and waved yellow banners, while the Emelec fans displayed light blue banners and light blue shirts, the color of the team’s own shirts . After the first half of the game, Barcelona was winning one to nothing, Don Pedro was sitting right next to me and spend most of the fifteen minutes break between halves, arguing about the fact that the Barcelona goal as he said, “should have been nullified, because in his opinion, the player who scored was in a clear off-side position. “Don’t you think so Rafael?”, he kept asking. I was not in a position to say yes or no, because it all occurred so fast I was unable to judge. He must have been wrong, because the newspapers did not even mention this fact the following day and neither did the radio commentators.

The second half of the game started and the cheering intensified, the crowds were going nuts. Ten minutes after the game restarted, Emelec scored after a beautiful combination between El Loco Balseca and el Flaco Raffo. It was a masterpiece of the unparalleled Balseca dribbling, which left the defense player on the ground, then “the crazy one” made a perfect pass to Raffo who, with no custody in sight, shut the ball to the other side of the goal leaving the goalie lying on the floor, biting the dust and banging his hands on the floor.
The game was all square now. Don Pedro was jumping from his seat in ecstasies, “you see Rafael, I have told you” he kept saying, “Nobody, but nobody can stop these two guys when they decide to play good”. The minutes went bye and the stadium seemed like a madhouse. One minute before the end of the game, a fault was committed against El Flaco Raffo inside the eleven yard “fire zone” right before he was ready to shoot with an open goal in front of him. The referee blew his whistle and Barcelona was punished with a penalty kick which el Flaco Raffo himself shot and scored, leaving no chance for the Barcelona goalie to catch the ball.
Three minutes afterwards the game was over. Two to one was the final score, Emelec won.

In three minutes all the yellow shirts were gone from the stadium, only blue shirted people remained in the tribunes, the blue ones stayed for about almost half an hour afterwards, loudly singing, chanting, cheering and making fun of the losers. I had never seen Don Pedro as happy as he was this night. That was the day when I became an Emelec fan and so I told Don Pedro. He was extremely happy and offered to buy tickets for me for any future games between the two classic rival teams. “You are going to be my buddy going to these classic games”, he said and I was happy to oblige

I learned a great lesson and gained a lifetime friend. Don Pedro was a solitary soul who had found refuge from his solitude in the love for soccer and EMELEC, the team i'm sure he would have given his own life for. He never had any children and desperately needed to have a real friend. Emelec was his reason to live and I became his only real friend. Many years later, the day when I graduated with honors as an Economist at the University of Guayaquil, I invited him to be my guest, and, though he was already seriously ill, he attended the ceremony and was sobbing with pride as he embraced me after the big ceremony. He said he felt as proud of me as he would have felt for a son if he ever had one. He died in a public hospital only a couple of months after my graduation and I attended his burial ceremony to which only eleven people, most of them neighbors attended. That was the first time I felt I had lost a real friend.

VISITING THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD

It is Thursday the 18 of March in Queenstown, New Zealand, where I am right now, but it is only Wednesday the 17, for most of you in the "western world". I'm far away from my own world, but I'm visiting places I used to dream of visiting since I was 5.

I used to be awakened by the roosters' singing, at 5 AM in the morning every day when I was a child, and invariably I would start my sessions of "day dreaming" which would transport me to very distant places in the world, the places my mother told me once I would someday visit if I worked hard for it.

I had no idea then of what a plane would look like, I didn't even know that planes existed, instead, I used to dream of travelling in long, red car, fast trains flying in the air, whistling as they passed above the mountains by my little hometown of Pallatanga.

"Mom", I said one day, "it doesn't seem possible for me to ever be able to get to the places I dream of", and she answered, as she hugged me and tried to comb my rebel and sweatty black hair, "my little son, the dreams that do not come true, are only those that you do not believe in", and added "I have no doubt that you will see some day the places you have dreamed of, and many, many more".

As always, she was right!

Tommorrow, March 19 2010 will be St Joseph's day, the day my father used to celebrate his birthday, and it will be 19 years after he passed away to join my mom in heaven. Happy BD papa, please say hello to my mom, and to my brother Guido and my Sisters Letty and Lilia who have also joined you up there. You make a nice bunch and I'm sure you all look after us down here.
Rafico

A FULL TIME WORKER AT 14

This is the oldest photo of our family. It was shot in 1931. From left to right: Letty (5), Mom (24) and Lilita (2)


Mom and Letty sat quietly looking at each other and glancing toward me, without knowing what to say or what to do. I got up from between them and walked straight to my dad; I embraced him, and as I did so, I started to cry out loud as well. He embraced me strongly while he kept kissing on my head and on my ears, then he sat down in his chair and he sat me on his lap, just as he used to do when he wanted to feed me from his plate when I was about 5. We both cried for several minutes, then, he let me loose and said, his voice still mumbling, “son, I don’t know what we are going to do with you, I don’t know what’s ahead, but I want you to know I love you for what you are, not for what you could have been”, and continued: “we’ll have to see, we need to discuss this within the family and come up with a decision that is good for you”. Now, please show me those awards you’ve gotten from the school. C’mon son, go get them, I want to see them, I really need to see them!.

A decision about my future had to be taken very soon as my parents had soon to go back to Pallatanga and resume their villagers life. It was clear for all of us, my parents had no means to enroll me in a comparable school, but even worse than that, there were no comparable schools in Guayaquil, not even in the rest of the country, so, there was no way I could attend a school as good as the Seminary, but, it was clear for all in the family that I was going to continue my high school education. I just had this compelling idea imbued by my mother, that “the only way to walk up the ladder of society was through a good education”, and, of course, as to be expected, my mother was fully behind me. There were moments when my father had suggested I should go back to Pallatanga and become a farmer entering the agricultural trade, after all, his reasoning was, “we we are farmers, our forefathers and their forefathers have been farmers just as almost everybody in our place”. Besides, he reasoned, “I’ll be always behind him, not only parenting, but also tutoring him; he can surely be a great farmer”.

My mother was radically opposed to the idea of having me return to Pallatanga and become a farmer. For her, going back to Pallatanga was like going back to the “middle ages” after having lived in modern times. In a matter of days, my parents and I, with my three sisters and brother Pepe as counselors, discussed the alternatives, then evaluated the ideas until we got to a consensus. I would have to look for a job as soon as possible, a full time day job which would allow me to go to school at night. It was not going to be easy, simply because jobs were not abundant in those days (they are even scarcer today), but, not only that, it would have to be a job in which I, as a young teenager could perform well, could make enough money to be self sustaining, and which would allow me time to be a full time night student as well.

It took about two days to figure it all out. My sister Lilia and her husband Lolo, who had been married for about six years and were the parents of four children, owned a bakery shop in downtown Guayaquil, not very far from the old main building of the University Of Guayaquil on Colon Ave, almost at the corner with Chimborazo St.
Lilita (that’s how we called my sister Lilia), volunteered to talk to her husband Lolo to find out if he could employ me full time in his bakery shop. We found out soon, that, coincidentally, he had been looking for a person to do the menial work of sweeping and mopping the floor, cleaning the shelves, arranging the exhibition of the fresh, warm bread coming out of the wood fueled oven into the glass protected shelves, and then be ready to mind the customers business as they hurriedly came to buy milk and warm bread for their morning breakfast. All this had to be done very early in the mornings, as at 5:45 AM the doors of the bakery had to be open for customers to do their morning pre-breakfast shopping. The job fitted like a glove for me. My day would start a 4:00 AM, I would work until 12:00 noon, would have time for napping for about two hours before having lunch afterwards, then I would have time to do my school homework, and, at seven O’clock in the evening I would attend night school with classes until eleven in the evening. Bingo! I had it.

My salary was going to be $150 Sucres a month, an amount which would allow me to be self-sufficient and pay for my school ($50/month), as my salary included three meals a day and a place to sleep at my sister Lilia’s apartment, just about two blocks from the bakery shop. I didn’t feel like I had the best job in the world, but I felt very happy that I would be able to continue my education, even if it meant my childhood was suddenly cut short for good, and adulthood suddenly came over me with all kinds of responsibilities other people didn’t get until they were well over twenty.

I registered myself at the “Eloy Alfaro” Night School. My school was good, above all, my math teacher, Professor Nicolas Escandon was one of the best in town, and he helped me excelling in this subject which had always been one of my favorites.

As for my job, it was tough, especially because of the early waking up. Children of my age would normally sleep at least until 6:30 AM before being helped to get up from their beds by their mothers. Not me. My brother in law, Lolo would come at 3:45 AM knocking on my door to say only once: “Rafico, ya!”, and I was supposed to be ready in fifteen minutes to walk the two blocks to the bakery with him, every single morning from Monday to Saturday. There were times I felt like I hated his voice! “Rafico, ya!” began to sound like “wake up you lazy one, we are late for work”, or something like that. Any way, it hasn’t passed as one of my favorite phrases, but it reminded me of the old saying “early birds get the warms”, which in those days, I sometimes felt like changing it to “early warms get eaten by the birds”

It didn’t take too long for me to learn my job. In a matter of four weeks I was doing everything I was told to do in about half the time I was assigned to do it. By this time, the tricycle man who used to do the bread delivering to the grocery stores down Chile St. to Portete Ave., and back on Chimborazo St., got sick and quit his job. Lolo though that in spite of my short legs and lack of a full grown man’s strength, I could do the job as long as the tricycle’s seat was lowered a bit and the “young man” (meaning me) put some extra effort pushing the pedals. I didn’t hesitate to accept the job (not that I had a choice, anyway). Suddenly I found myself in the streets, riding the tricycle loaded with a big basket full of paper bags filled with bread for deliver to the small grocery stores in the route previously assigned to the man who just had quit.



The old U of G building at Chile St. in 1930. This was the point of start of my route to deliver bread in my tricycle when I was 14


This is how I started my “career as a street smart kit”. The job required many things, but more than anything, I had to be good at dealing with adults many times my age, I had to be good at numbers, I had to be patient, I had to be punctual (bread delivered late was not accepted). Sometimes I had to smile at a bad joke, or had to digest a bad word addressed to me for my insistence in collections. This is perhaps when I started to learn the "real language" of people in the streets of Guayaquil, this was, no doubt, my "University of Life", at its best.

The people I used to deal with were good, honest, hard working, most of them Serrano people who had migrated from the Highlands and have come to Guayaquil to fulfill their dreams and raise their families in the metropolis. For them, having a grocery store in any corner of the big city of Guayaquil was the fulfillment of a dream, their children will be born in Guayaquil, and they could aspire to a better life than their forefathers’ who had been peasants for generations. I learned from them many enduring lessons, the most important of which was their love and loyalty to the place they were originally from, which did not prevent them from loving and caring for Guayaquil, the city they had migrated to, and the city they never intended to leave. They were Serrano by birth but Guayaquileno by heart. In many ways I was a replica of these people, except that I never wanted to be a grocery store owner, I always wanted to go much farther, I always dreamed of being a part of a much wider world with the sky as a limit, and I knew that getting there would only be possible with hard work and education, that, I had it in my blood, that was seeded in my blood by my mother!

IN FRONT OF A JUDGE

The family in 1947. In the back row, Aunt Elisa, Lilita, Dad and Mom. In the front row the four boys, Pepe, Me, Guido (+) and Pancho (+)

We were a family of seven children, three girls and four boys, the girls were born before all the boys. My father loved his children beyond any doubt, but I have no recollection of him being very tender affectionate with the boys, on the other hand, he was always very tender with the girls. Most likely because of his upbringing and the influence his uncle Juan Celio had on him, he must have thought that tenderness with the boys could be easily interpreted as weakness, and “weakness was inherent to women”. “Boys had to be raised tough”, and, tough kids we were all raised.

At this point, the three girls in the family had married; Letty had no children of her own but was raising a five year old girl who was her husband’s daughter. Lilita was married and had four children, and Florcita, the youngest of my sisters, had married while I was in the Seminary and had no children yet but was expecting her first child. As to my three brothers, Jose (Pepe), was 18 and was already working as a bookkeeper at a small wholesale grocery store, and he was attending night school, Francisco (Pancho), 16, was also working or in the process of finding a job and attending night school, while my youngest brother, Guido, 10, was still attending grammar school in Pallatanga under the close supervision of my mom.

At Letty’s apartment in Guayaquil, the walls separating one room from the other, were thin wooden walls with newspapers glued as wallpaper; this allowed conversations in one room to be easily heard in the next room. My big sister Letty had heard all the conversation my mom and I had that morning. At breakfast, Letty came to show her understanding and solidarity with my cause and wanted to help in the task of conveying it to dad. Being his first and oldest daughter, Letty was kind of dad’s favorite child, so when she volunteered to help, my reaction was, thank God!, we are now three to do the talking. Mom, Letty and I had agreed that we would wait until dad actually began the questioning before any one of us would talk, at which point Letty would talk first, then mom and I would follow, as needed. That was the “strategy” we decided to use when my dad showed up and started the questioning.

At mid day, coming back from his visit to the market place where he used to sell the cereals he brought from Pallatanga (corn, lentils, beans and peas). Dad was invited to head the table for lunch. After the usual praying and blessings, lunch was served. Contrary to my usual place on the left of my dad, this time, as looking for physical protection or using mom and Letty as human shields, I sat between my mom and my sister. Soon we started to eat lunch. Faithful to his bluntness but without being rude, dad began to talk. “As we eat lunch, let’s resume our interrupted conversation”, he said, looking at me directly in the eyes, and began his interrogation. “What is it that you have to tell us, Rafico? And continued, “I believe you were afraid to talk last night, weren’t you”? Please tell us what you have to say”. As agreed that morning, Letty started to talk. “Dad,” she said, but was abruptly interrupted by dad. “Letty, I’m asking Rafico, not you,” Dad looked like a severe judge in his bench ready to hear the defendant in a criminal case, not his lawyers. His eyes were wide open and looking directly down at me, his chin lifted and his mouth closed, not a shadow of a friendly face. “Rafico let’s not delay this conversation any further, will you?” he said. My heart pounded in my chest like a big stick on a drum, my palms grew clammy and wet, and my jaw locked—I was a mute.

Thank God, mom came to my rescue once again. She brought me a glass of water and said, “Mi’jito, don’t feel afraid to tell your dad what you had explained to me this morning. Your dad loves you, first and foremost, he is reasonable, he is intelligent and caring, and just as I did, he will understand, please go ahead mijo!
It was like mom had just said the magic words. All of a sudden I felt courage coming right up from somewhere in my chest; I breathed deeply and started to think and articulate my answer as I felt my jaws and my tongue were miraculously loosening. “Dad, I’m sorry but you are not going to like what I’m going to say, in fact you are going to feel seriously disappointed, and perhaps even angry at me, but please, please, I beg you to listen carefully to me first before you react”, and continued, “I do not feel like I’ve done anything wrong, nor would I ever do anything consciously wrong to hurt you, my mom or the rest of my family”. I was still scared but kept my cool. I surprised myself—I did not know where my newfound strength and looseness to talk came from, but I went on making full use of them. I conveyed to my dad the message from father Gonzalez (whom he knew very well), and, just hoping that it would help, I did not forget to mention the academic awards I had gotten, as well as the good wishes from the School´s Rector and his whole faculty.

Dad sat in his chair as absolute silence filled the room. Mom, Letty and I were looking at one another as if trying to guess what was next, afraid of the worst but hoping for the best. Finally, dad got up from his chair and started to walk around the rectangular table, he seemed to be utterly confused. He was pale. He seemed to be in a total state of despair as he covered his face with both of his hands and vehemently shook his head. After what seemed like an eternity of silence and tension, he started to cry out loud.
That was the first time I ever saw him shed a tear. It was only thirteen years later, in July 1969, in the cemetery, at my mom’s burial that I saw my father crying again


In my next posting: A FULL TIME WORKER AT 14