“Yeah, I stitched up a few of my mates like that back home,” he elaborated, as we sat on the kerb outside the hairdresser’s with our beers. “They always say ‘Don’t stitch me up, right?’, so I persuade them it’ll look great.”
I couldn’t stop running my hand over the back of my head. At least in a couple of weeks, I thought, I would be able to clean my nails this way.
“They must think you’re an asshole,” I diplomatically remarked, careful to keep myself out of the equation.
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“Well, I don’t care,” I lied.
“It’s easier in the mornings! And easier to wash shit out of!” he reminded me.
“Yeah. True.” I wasn’t actually planning on rubbing my head in much shit regardless of the length of my hair. Toby himself seemed to have managed to avoid the problem of a head covered in crusty shit despite having hair infinitely longer than mine was now.
The hair on my arse also never seemed to suffer from this particular problem, despite it too now being considerably longer than that on my head. I was clearly thinking way too much about this situation. But at least it was taking my mind off the shape of my skull.
We returned our empty beer bottles and set off back through the town. His hair stirring gracefully in the wind, me staggering jerkily along behind him in a state of shock. Letting out an occasional anguished moan. Two feet taller than anyone else around, with a pallid bald head the shape of a dented light bulb. I wondered if any of the locals had ever seen Frankenstein.
Arrival of Ashley
It was a typically beautiful afternoon when the monstrous 4x4 taxi rolled down the driveway (though as usual it had rained briefly and intensely in the morning – this seemed to be the standard weather pattern for the area). The sky smelled of growing things, and vaguely of poo since Danielo had recently driven the cattle back up the drive to pasture. It was the perfect day to welcome our first new volunteer to the centre.
Ashley had a cheeky face and a cheeky manner to go with it. She was very Canadian. She looked Canadian – funky short hair framed twinkling eyes and a mischievous smile. She was small, but lively and energetic, a barely-contained bundle of enthusiasm and fun. Don’t try to sleep with her, I told myself, at least not yet. It’ll only complicate things…
I did try to befriend her however, and it wasn’t too hard. She was talkative and likeable, and her accent made her sound like she was on TV. And perhaps due to the continent she was from, where in my opinion people give themselves a lot more credit just for being themselves, she didn’t have quite the same sense of awe that I had. I wasn’t afraid of Johnny as such, and certainly not of Toby, but I held them both on a kind of mental pedestal. They were creatures of a higher order than me, bosses and bearers of responsibility. They were to be appeased, joked with perhaps, but never taken for granted, never challenged.
Ashley was rather more sensible about things.
“Jeez it’s kinda boring here,” she pointed out on her first night in the house. “Whadda you guys do for fun?”
I leapt to Toby’s defence. “We play chess!”
“Right.” Ashley wasn’t impressed.
“There’s a TV,” Toby said, “and I’ve got Johnny’s old DVD player in my room.”
“Oh! You get any TV up here?”
“Uh… not really. It’s mostly just good for DVDs.”
“Y’got any DVDs?”
“Well… no.”
“Great. So you play a lot of chess then.”
“We learn Spanish too,” I interjected. Which was almost the truth. I’d redoubled my efforts after my near-blinding – but only for about two hours.
Toby had a better answer though. “You can get DVDs real cheap at the Sunday market in Machachi,” he explained.
This was totally new information to me. “WHAT?” I demanded. “There’s a market? In ‘Machachi’? What’s it like?”
“Oh, massive mate. Fucking huge! You should go.”
He was only telling me this now? Then another thought occurred. “Is there food?”
“Oh yeah mate, everything. Meat, weird barbecue shit, cheese fritters. Definitely worth a look. You just take the bus from the bottom of the mountain, opposite direction to Quito. Takes about fifteen minutes.”
Sudden excitement gripped me. No more cabin fever weekends. No more boredom. I could escape to the market, see things and buy things and eat things. Eat meat!
“Wanna go?” Ashley asked me.
I could have kissed her.
Not now! I reminded myself. Bad Tony! Maybe on Sunday.
Room Service
There comes a time in every man’s life when he says to himself “Jesus Christ! I’m about to get eaten by a bear!” For me it came only moments after I sallied nervously into Osita’s enclosure for the first time. There was silence. Then there was a thundering noise – the sound of a heavy body crashing through the undergrowth at high velocity.
The bear charged from the bushes towards me, enormous, unstoppable, an unmistakable glint of malice in her eyes. Then she caught sight of Johnny, skidded hastily to a halt, turned around and legged it back the way she’d come. He helped her on her way with a carefully timed rubber welly-boot up the bum.
“Don’t take any shit from this bear,” Toby translated the accompanying explanation.
In fact Osita was in a playful mood, owing to it being a long time since she’d had so many visitors. With three volunteers now, Johnny felt he had the manpower for a long overdue clean-up operation. So we’d gathered a stack of tools and one by one squeezed through the open gate into the bear enclosure. I felt a shiver of excitement run down my spine as I crossed the threshold. This is why I was here! We were explorers, young and unprepared, and about to embark on a mission deep into uncharted territory. The jungle surrounded us, vibrant and alive. Anything could happen!
“Watch out for that big turd, mate.” Toby was timely with the warning. “Ugh! It’s a runny one. Too much fruit,” he added.
I could have done without that knowledge.
Osita’s enclosure was our finest. Huge steel posts carrying a powerful electrified fence surrounded well over an acre of untamed wilderness. As with all the larger enclosures at Santa Martha it stretched right down the side of the mountain, giving the territory a dramatic gradient. To stand at the top was to be roughly level with the tree tops halfway down; to reach the gate from the bottom was more akin to climbing than walking.
There was a row of substantial trees running along the top edge, separated from the regular snap! snap! of the electric fence by a narrow path. Osita loved to climb these trees, but as she was getting bigger so were they. Between them they presented a worrying escape option. If the bear tried jumping over the fence from a branch she’d either electrocute herself and land on her head, or escape to roam the mountainside until she got shot by an overprotective farmer. Neither were cheery prospects.
After a quick conference with the boss Jimmy and Danielo each climbed a tree and unleashed their fury. They were hacking off the thick, gnarled branches about ten feet from the ground, pruning the great trees like they were bonsai. It took a lot of work.
While Ashley set to cleaning the enclosure, I aimed a hosepipe into the deep concrete bowl on the slope below me and began to turn it back into a pond. Toby was controlling the water from a tap near the gate.
“Spray her!” he shouted at me.
“Eh?” I turned around to find Osita standing a few feet away, contemplating me. She approached another few steps and swatted at my leg with a paw.
“Aw! Are you trying to say hello?” I asked her. She swatted me again, but with a little more force. So I turned the hose on her. Just for a second – but she soon shifted her fat ass! It was great to watch the way she seemed to roll as she ran, galloping like a chubby pony away from the spray. It was, I discovered, one of her favourite games. Which was why no matter how ingenious a device Toby fashioned to use as a plug, the bear always managed to remove it and drain the pond. Sh
e just loved having us come back to refill it.
It took forever. By the time it was half full I’d fended off numerous incursions from Osita, occasionally letting her come close enough to snuffle at me, but once the batting game began I’d always chase her off with a blast of water.
The Ecuadorians had decimated the trees by this point. Ashley had been gathering dead-fall from all over the enclosure and looked knackered, struggling uphill with an armful of branches. I felt almost guilty that I’d been stood there relaxing, playing with the bear and daydreaming about us roaming the jungle together as man and bear.
“We’ve just got to do one more tree, down at the bottom,” Toby called to me.
I suddenly wanted very badly to feel like I was of use around here.
“I’ll do it!” I shouted.
There were slyly exchanged looks between the real men as I scrambled enthusiastically into the tree.
“NOT this bit,” Johnny explained, indicating where a branch extended over the fence. I could see that simply lopping that bit off would flatten the fence completely, quite an expensive mistake for me to make so soon after arriving.
“Cut HERE,” I was instructed. Holy shit! They wanted me to take the whole top of the tree off, at an angle that would encourage it to fall inwards instead of out. Well, too late to back out now.
I settled myself on a branch and chopped away at the only point I could reach – a spot just below my dangling legs. I could see Toby cringe every time the machete rebounded from the solid wood. “Don’t worry, I’m fine!” I told him. Liar. My hands were killing me, and much faster than they were killing the tree. Each chop split blisters left over from my last encounter with a machete and sent the now familiar vibrations shooting up my arm. I changed hands, which involved a rather trapeze-like draping of myself across the branch I was trying to remove. The plastic handle of the machete was slick with sweat, almost impossible to hold onto. “Sorry!” I told Toby as he handed it back up to me for the third time. “Good job you weren’t underneath me, eh?”
And then, when I had almost given up, there came an ominous groan from the wood beneath me. I tensed ready to spring – but nothing happened. My heart beat faster as the machete bit home with a satisfying thwack! I was getting much better at this!
“I think it’s coming mate!” Toby shouted up.
I heard the creak at exactly the same moment.
I shrieked and leapt from the tree.
Now, I hadn’t actually put any thought into what to do with the machete whilst leaping for my life, so as I jumped I instinctively cast it aside to avoid landing on it. Unfortunately ‘aside’ quite accurately described the patch of ground where Toby, Jimmy and Johnny had been sniggering at my efforts until a moment previously, at which point they all saw the blade coming, shouted “SHIT!” in a variety of languages and flung themselves into the bushes in all directions.
The tree, however, refused to move at all.
“Oh, well, I guess I’ll have another go then,” I valiantly suggested after picking myself up. I’m not sure everyone was as keen as I was.
When it did fall, it was with a mighty CRASH! I remembered to keep hold of the machete this time, with the result that it buried itself blade-down in the soil mere inches from my feet. What I hadn’t remembered was to jump clear of the gigantic branch which landed on top of me, connecting with that part of my anatomy currently uppermost, which happened to be my ass. It was the first time I’d been spanked by a tree.
Revenge, Toby called it. At least it gave the others something to laugh about as they hauled the crooked log off me.
“How’s your buttocks?” Toby asked.
“Fine.” I said through clenched teeth.
“Wow, that thing properly beat your bum cheeks! You got bitch slapped!”
“I’m okay.”
“Really? Coz it looked…”
“Stop looking at my ass!” I told him.
Only my pride was damaged.
Brenda brought some sandwiches down from the house for a late lunch. I’d ravenously devoured half of them sitting on a pile of dead branches when there was a rustle in the bushes. The sound of something heavy heading this way. Suddenly Osita burst from the undergrowth and barrelled straight towards me! She pulled up right next to me, the tip of her nose positively quivering.
Very slowly, I held the last half of my sandwich up to her and she gently took it off me. CHOMP! CHOMP! GULP! And it was gone. And I had a new best friend. She was snuffling noisily now and pawing at my legs. I had to work hard to resist the urge to pet her head like a dog, in case she wasn’t that friendly. In full sunlight, in the open, I could see that she wasn’t really big – just very, very furry. Darkest brown, almost black, all over except for her golden brown nose. A fuzzy ring of the same colour ran around each eye, the distinguishing mark of an Andean spectacled bear. It also gave the appearance of eyebrows, which made her upturned-snout ‘begging’ look almost impossible to resist. I held up another sandwich and broke it in half. She really was keen on jam!
We collected logs and planks from all over the enclosure to contribute to a new shelter. It was seriously hot work. The enclosure was so steep for us to move around, and terraced either by design or nature. Taking a large chunk of wood from the top all the way to the bottom was a good ten minute mission and incorporated all the major Olympic disciplines – throwing, climbing, jumping, balance – not to mention weightlifting. If the pond had been full we could have added swimming, but Ashley was now aiming the hose into the half-full pool. Damn, it took a long time to fill that thing! As each log arrived at the construction site Toby supervised its assembly to match his grand vision. I was starting to wish I could have grand visions and supervise their assembly while he lugged bloody great lumps of tree halfway down a mountainside. Bloody vegetarians. We’d cut enough off the trees to make a good solid lean-to, with the heavier timber supporting a loose screen of sturdy branches. It wasn’t much to look at, but would give our bear somewhere to rest out of the midday sun and it was built with tender loving care. I only hoped she would appreciate all the effort it had cost us.
At long last Johnny pronounced himself satisfied with our labours. The pond was finally full. Ashley looked thrilled. Standing motionless on one end of a plastic hose for the better part of two hours was looking like being the booby prize as far as jobs went around here. Hopefully this would be the first and last time it needed doing. All of the trees had been reduced to a more containment-friendly size – still big enough to be fun for Osita, but not enough to bring her within bear’s breadth of the fence. She was fed, watered and delighted with the company. She bounded around the enclosure saying an energetic good-bye as we all squeezed back through the gate. I lingered until last, hoping perhaps for a more personal farewell. Perhaps she’d like to thank me for the sandwiches? But no. I think maybe the jam was responsible for the sudden burst of energy which sent her tearing around the enclosure like a fat hairy footballer who just scored a game-winning goal. I ducked through the gate and stretched my aching muscles on the far side as Johnny wrestled with the ancient padlock.
Suddenly Osita found herself on the same level as her new ‘cub-by’ house. What would she make of this strange and exciting new structure? All eyes turned to watch her investigate. But Osita had done curious. All day she’d been following us around, poking her nose in and pawing at her new friends. Now she was in the grip of a sugar rush. She charged towards the shelter like a giant furry battering ram, slamming into the log wall, smashing straight through it and bursting out the other side without a pause. Logs the size of an Ecuadorian rained down in her wake. Lesser branches came to rest a more impressive distance away. In a tiny fraction of the time it had taken to build, Osita had reduced the shelter to kindling.
I was gutted. Johnny sighed in his best world-weary manner and trudged up the hill towards the road.
“Ha! She wants you to go back in and fix it,” said Ashley.
“Why not?” asked Toby. �
�You up for it mate?” He clapped me on the shoulder. “Fancy a game of Pick-up Sticks?”
Machachi and Machita
On Sunday morning, Ashley and I made the epic hike down the mountain. As we came out onto the Quito road a bus was rapidly approaching. So was another one, about twenty feet behind the first. Another was just cresting the ridge about half a mile away. And no doubt three or four had just left.
The first bus slowed vaguely as it approached us. The little sign in the window said ‘Machachi’. Judging by the random limbs sticking out of every available window it was pretty full.
“Shall we wait for the next one?” Ashley asked.
“Ha!” was my only reply. It was my duty to heap scorn on such a naive idea – nearly three weeks in the country qualified me as a veteran. I knew we’d be more likely to catch a bus to Mars than to find one with enough space on it to breathe freely.
“Machachi Machachi Machachi,” called a skinny young lad leaning out the door. I nodded and waved, and the bus slowed even more. The lad reached out and grabbed my hand as I leapt for the step. He thrust me past him and reached out with his other hand to grab Ashley by the wrist. It was over in a flash – two new passengers picked up within ten feet of each other. Useful kid. Though what the hell he’d have done if we’d been three fat chicks with a pram each is anyone’s guess.
I was really excited to be spreading my wings a bit. Granted, I wouldn’t be able to spread very much at all until we’d arrived and got off, but I had Ashley with me and we were on an adventure into parts unknown. And I’m not just referring to our neighbours on the bus – although it is true I was being squeezed closer and closer to certain parts of their parts than I really wanted to be.
“Machachi?” I croaked at a young girl as the bus pulled up ten minutes later.
“Sí,” she replied.
“We’re here!” I grabbed Ashley and swam for the door.
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