navigated—that she used to take the drug; she just hadn’t told them she was now back on it. She divulged this offhand during the same type of meet-and-greet that I’d had with Nurse Nancy. When the medical staff found out about it, my friend was sent home less than forty-eight hours later.
I lived in fear just thinking about all the things in my medical past that the Peace Corps didn’t know about. I was in a serious car accident when I was five years old that resulted in temporary paralysis, brain surgery, a skin graft, a broken jaw, and broken collarbones—among other bumps and bruises—but I hadn’t listed any of this stuff for the Peace Corps since all their questions asked for recent history. I felt nervous that something would come up, or that they’d spot one of my scars, and it was only a matter of time before I, too, was out of there.
CHAPTER 10
T raining ended and our swearing-in ceremony took place at the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Quito. The ambassador, country director, and the training manager all gave speeches. We raised our right hands and swore an oath. Then, a fellow volunteer from our training group—Inner Peace Mark—walked to the podium and spoke. The theme of his speech was “heroes.” He said we volunteers were all heroes. As he said the word “heroes,” he paused, lifted his head, and scanned the room, looking at each one of us and nodding.
Heroes.
That night, we threw a party at a bar in a trendy Quito neighborhood and everyone got stumbling drunk. Several volunteers who’d been in the country for a while came into town just for the party. One of them walked around the dance floor selling pot out of a fanny pack. Later on, a married woman said she’d had dreams about having sex with me and asked me to make out with her. She tried to crawl on top of me while I lay in a beanbag chair in a room full of neon lights. I said no, thank you. Her husband was sitting five feet away smoking a cigarette and rolling his eyes like it wasn’t the first time it had happened.
In the morning I peeled myself out of bed and took a taxi to the south Quito bus station. The long dark corridor of ticket windows was filled with men screaming names of cities so intensely that you’d think they were trying to talk you out of your intended destination and into going to theirs instead.
I was on my bus for less than an hour when I got a call from my program manager.
“Hi, uh, this is Winkler. What are you doing?” he said.
“I’m on the bus out to my site.”
“Do you, uh, have a minute?”
“Yes.” We were weaving back down the same treacherous road that I’d been heading up when I had my intestinal explosion.
He began reading from a script illustrating the horrors of the swine flu virus and then rattled off a bunch of ways to avoid too much contact and germs. Keep a week’s worth of food stockpiled at your home, he said. And don’t tell anybody in your community that you have the bird flu vaccine in your medical kit.
“You got all that?” he said.
“Yes, thank you.”
“Goodbye.”
When we were an hour outside Chone, the bus driver tried to pass by a tiny white coupe brimming with six or seven people where the road made a blind curve leftward around a small hill. When he thought he’d gone past, he let the bus swing back wide to the right, crashing into the coupe and tossing it against the road barrier. The jolt came from right outside my window. I looked down and saw broken glass and mirrors and mangled doors hanging open.
Our driver kept on going. He didn’t even slow down. Minutes later, the banged-up coupe came roaring after us with pieces of metal dragging on the road, kicking up a wake of sparks behind it. When we reached a straightaway, the coupe pulled in front of the bus and slowed down to a stop, forcing us to pull over behind it.
The driver of the white coupe jumped out of his car, ran up to the bus, and started banging his fist on the door. All the passengers
I lived in fear just thinking about all the things in my medical past that the Peace Corps didn’t know about. I was in a serious car accident when I was five years old that resulted in temporary paralysis, brain surgery, a skin graft, a broken jaw, and broken collarbones—among other bumps and bruises—but I hadn’t listed any of this stuff for the Peace Corps since all their questions asked for recent history. I felt nervous that something would come up, or that they’d spot one of my scars, and it was only a matter of time before I, too, was out of there.
CHAPTER 10
T raining ended and our swearing-in ceremony took place at the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Quito. The ambassador, country director, and the training manager all gave speeches. We raised our right hands and swore an oath. Then, a fellow volunteer from our training group—Inner Peace Mark—walked to the podium and spoke. The theme of his speech was “heroes.” He said we volunteers were all heroes. As he said the word “heroes,” he paused, lifted his head, and scanned the room, looking at each one of us and nodding.
Heroes.
That night, we threw a party at a bar in a trendy Quito neighborhood and everyone got stumbling drunk. Several volunteers who’d been in the country for a while came into town just for the party. One of them walked around the dance floor selling pot out of a fanny pack. Later on, a married woman said she’d had dreams about having sex with me and asked me to make out with her. She tried to crawl on top of me while I lay in a beanbag chair in a room full of neon lights. I said no, thank you. Her husband was sitting five feet away smoking a cigarette and rolling his eyes like it wasn’t the first time it had happened.
In the morning I peeled myself out of bed and took a taxi to the south Quito bus station. The long dark corridor of ticket windows was filled with men screaming names of cities so intensely that you’d think they were trying to talk you out of your intended destination and into going to theirs instead.
I was on my bus for less than an hour when I got a call from my program manager.
“Hi, uh, this is Winkler. What are you doing?” he said.
“I’m on the bus out to my site.”
“Do you, uh, have a minute?”
“Yes.” We were weaving back down the same treacherous road that I’d been heading up when I had my intestinal explosion.
He began reading from a script illustrating the horrors of the swine flu virus and then rattled off a bunch of ways to avoid too much contact and germs. Keep a week’s worth of food stockpiled at your home, he said. And don’t tell anybody in your community that you have the bird flu vaccine in your medical kit.
“You got all that?” he said.
“Yes, thank you.”
“Goodbye.”
When we were an hour outside Chone, the bus driver tried to pass by a tiny white coupe brimming with six or seven people where the road made a blind curve leftward around a small hill. When he thought he’d gone past, he let the bus swing back wide to the right, crashing into the coupe and tossing it against the road barrier. The jolt came from right outside my window. I looked down and saw broken glass and mirrors and mangled doors hanging open.
Our driver kept on going. He didn’t even slow down. Minutes later, the banged-up coupe came roaring after us with pieces of metal dragging on the road, kicking up a wake of sparks behind it. When we reached a straightaway, the coupe pulled in front of the bus and slowed down to a stop, forcing us to pull over behind it.
The driver of the white coupe jumped out of his car, ran up to the bus, and started banging his fist on the door. All the passengers
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