[Carla B]

In the mid-sixties my husband was given a grant by the US Aid Dept. to spend six weeks in Guayaquil consulting with their university's Dept. of Business Administration. I had never been out of the country, except for a short trip or two to cosmopolitan Mexico City and had a lot of apprehension about being on our own in a 3rd World country.

However, after only one night in a small dismal hotel, my husband met an American colleague and wife (on leave from U. of Illinois) and they invited us to room and board in their large rented 2-story house in a nice neighborhood called Barrio Centenario. Two live-in maids handled all the cleaning, laundry, marketing and cooking at a cost to us of $12 per day, which left a good part of our daily stipend unspent.

We adjusted to living without air conditioning in the warmth and humidity of Guayaquil. The windows were always open. Every morning the orange juice vendor would wake us when he came to the neighborhood pushing his noisy wooden cart down the street, yelling "Naranja, Naranja."

Our hosts invited us on excursions in the new Chevrolet sedan they had brought in duty-free. He was an American of East Indian descent from Trinidad and fluent in Spanish, an enormous advantage for two naive tourists. We visited a Peace Corps town where buzzards flew over the funeral home and pigs and chickens roamed the dirt streets. But most of all, I'll never the forget the trip on the weekend we went to Quito. We drove from humid coastal Guayaquil, up the West side of the Andes, all green and verdant, and down the East side, where the climate suddenly gave way to cool and golden plains inhabited by numerous llamas and a mountainous volcano in the distance. On the way up we stopped to visit an Indian settlement and sampled our first Pisco sour.

We settled easily into the rhythm of daily life and enjoyed the cultural differences from life in the U.S., aside from the flies feasting on the raw meat hanging at the outside markets. The maids pre-washed all our food in a weak solution of nonpotable water and bleach and, thankfully, we never got sick.

The guys worked most week days but there were frequent strikes by various segments of the work force that would disrupt commercial or government services. One time a "general" strike disabled all services for a few days. Once my friend and I were locked in a super market for a short time due to a small riot. On the days of the strikes there was not much to do except stay home and play cards. We were warned of petty crime and I lost an item from my purse to a pick pocket.

The neighborhood was social and we became friends with a semi-retired doctor and his wife. There were many gatherings at our house or theirs and their extended families. Special were the pig roasts held in celebration of the return of somebody's son, nephew, cousin from schooling in the U.S. I noticed that the wives at these functions always prepared and served their husbands' plates before preparing their own and, in general, always deferred to the husband.

When the six--week assignment was nearly ended, my husband's boss, Prof. Nudd, arrived from Houston and that was cause for a going-away party hosted at our house on the night of our leaving. There were two hired bartenders and the maids had prepared a big spread. The time arrived for the three of us to leave for Guayaquil airport. So instead of shutting the party down, the bartenders simply picked up the portable bar and liquor and moved the entire party to the airport lobby for all to enjoy.

By then, I was comfortable with life in Ecuador; it was a bit of a culture shock when we returned. And flying was a lot different then!