Fear

When everything around you is suddenly unrecognizable, different, new and sometimes strange, fear is usually the first reaction. Fear of the unknown is often inevitable; When I arrived to the City of Guayaquil in Ecuador, I was scared out of my mind for three reasons: 

1.     I was by myself. My partner Lindsay, can't join me in Ecuador for a full month after my arrival. 

2.     The length of this trip (6 months) exceeds any trip I’ve eve  taken in my whole life.

3.     It was real now, after all of the training and preperation, it was time to dive into ecaudor and see if I will sink or swim. 

To help with my jitters my nose was stuck in my book "The Alchemist". I left from Toronto airport around 3pm, stopped at Bogota Columbia, where I had a 2 hour layover. I decided to scan through a few stores in the airport and found the Spanish version of the book I was reading "El Alquimista" I took it as an opportunity to improve my Spanish, and bought it immediately. Every line is practically a quotable; it's a fantastic traveler’s book with many lessons within its thin layers. 

"The key to change is to let go of fear" 

Paulo Cuello - El Alquimista 

Sonja Janousek was my in country host. Her job was to help me settle into the city, find and apartment and provide any other help that I may need. She is a former CIDA intern from College of the Rockies, British Columbia, Canada. Her first question was "¿cómo es tu español?" I instantly smiled and replied in Spanish, and her positive feedback gave me confidence that I would be okay in the language department.

The first week I met up with Sonja every day. During the first 3 days she taught me everything about the bad, the worst, and the very dangerous things to avoid doing such as: going to ATMs without friends (high theft rate at ATMs) , hailing just any taxi (high taxi fraud/kidnapping rate) and eating just anywhere (different sanitary standards than Canada). Being told about a long list of dangers in the city I planned to live in for the next 6 months was not very comforting and made me quiet nervous.

The list seemed to go on and on and on “don’t take pictures in public, don’t walk outside past 7pm by yourself, avoid these streets if you can, don’t text in public, or carry lots of money on you, or look at a map in public which indicates you are lost and vulnerable . . . etc. etc etc.”  Though the point of telling me was for my safety, I couldn't help but feel very unsafe. Being an honest person, I asked Sonja “What CAN I do? Is it really that bad? I’m feeling very scared now.” She quickly made me feel better by assuring me that she will make sure that I will live in a safe part of town, where I won’t have much to worry about, and everything I need would be in close proximity.

This relaxed me a little bit, but I have to admit, the fear I felt didn't seem to be leaving any time soon. What next? What about this? What about that?" I was asking myself questions that I didn't have answers to yet, and this made me a bit nervous. But Sonja was most definitely a great help, she went above and beyond to make me laugh and feel more comfortable. We even did things together and talked about past experiences. I learned that the internship I was beginning was the one she had already completed. She took that as a great opportunity to share her research with me, and asked if we could work on some things together, because she has a great connection with the Pro-Bosque foundation and the Puerto Hondo community. I instantly agreed, and a little fear escaped my spirit…Just a little bit though. Deep down, I knew I’d be fine and just really needed some sleep.