essays
Only Outside the Western World
a chaotic presidential encounter:
reporting from a world where not everything works but everything works out
There is no better place to casually experience the extraordinary than anywhere outside the western world. Like getting up close to a president (or two) as randomly and as leisurely as I don’t know what. Yesterday was one of those days.
I’d just traveled from Europe to Ecuador the day before, flying out of one womb and straight into another like – there’s nothing like that, end of sentence. It is true though: both places have sheltered me when I was at my rawest. And nowhere do I reincarnate better than in Ecuador. This place has rebirthed me once before and if it doesn’t do it again, it is homecoming at the very least.
Anyway. Let me switch to present tense for this little tale.
Mika opens the door. I used to live here. Boy did I use to live here. We catch up. Later she tells me about the event tomorrow (that is now yesterday). Incumbent President Noboa is passing through little Pelileo along his campaign trail ahead of next week’s elections, and they asked her to host the shebang. Hosting events is just one of her many vocations, aside from politics, running a nonprofit, a hostel, some small business ventures, and teaching three languages. Money doesn’t grow on trees here, so you best be resourceful. She’s telling me what they told her just hours prior when they hired her. That’s how that works here. Very last minute, very messy, very little information, but it will definitely always kinda somehow inexplicably but without fail work out just fine. It’s wild how much you can rely on chaos. Being chill is king and improvisation is queen. She asks me if I want to come. I do. Obvio.
I stay over and sleep for a thousand hours after a long journey. Breakfast. Now I’ll have to go home, change, get my camera. What a stupid question that was, whether she thinks I can rock up there with my camera. Of course it’s fine. Super fine. I’m supposed to meet her in Pelileo at 1 pm to take some car to some venue whose precise location is known only to those who live within a 10-foot radius. We’ll figure it out somehow. This whole continent runs on somehow. It is 11:30 now. The round trip will take me at least two hours if I’m being too optimistic. We both know it’s impossible. But that doesn’t matter. Because somehow. Somehow it’s gonna work out just fine. The president is supposed to arrive at 2pm. No he won’t.
Mika manages to be at the venue at 1:30 pm. Her bad. That’s way too early. I arrive at 3 pm after an odyssey that merits an essay of its own. Some soldiers point me into the direction of the little stadium and I follow a little crowd down the little hill. More soldiers peeking out of tanks and lining the surrounding hills and rooftops like meercats. Quite a few police too, but overall security feels underwhelming considering that president Noboa rose to power after the assassination of leading presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio less than two years ago with several other assassinations of local politicians happening that same year. The cartels can’t be too happy with Noboa either.
At the entrance of the “stadium,” which is really just a soccer field with a stage dumped there for the day, they take half a look into my backpack and frisk me as though it was a petting zoo. I could carry pretty much anything in there except for a bazooka.
Mika is already on stage, standing behind her lectern. There is a crowd but I don’t need a machete to weave through it within thirty seconds. Even if Mika wouldn’t be waving at me – making me feel and look so very important – nobody would care or complain about my rude approach to conquer the front row.
I have no press card, no clearance, no nothing. But here I am, a kid’s arm’s length from the stage where President Noboa will deliver his re-meh-kable remarks in just a bit. Mika tries to convince one of the secret service agents to let me on stage. That’s a bit much, a bit late. Front row will have to do.
And hey, just in time. A few minutes later, Mika starts addressing the crowd, a secret service agent constantly by her side as though to make sure she doesn’t deviate from the script they gave her. The speech she wrote based on the next-to-no details they gave her last night, was a waste of time but not much time at all.
And there he is now, president Daniel Noboa, the world’s youngest democratically elected head of state, hopping on stage, handing out handshakes, hugs, and smiles like they were merchandise. If the West wants progress in the fast lane, maybe let some politicians in their mid-thirties drive. After the national anthem he takes a seat, and two speakers later he gets up again to receive a parade of gift-givers from the local community, who hand over food baskets, a crate filled with produce, tapestries, a hat, a jersey, and a poncho. Everything moves smoothly like a conveyor belt from their hands to his hands to the hands of secret service agents, and on to unknown hands backstage.
Noboa’s speech is short, as is the entire event, which leads some guests to remark later that it was “a bit lazy.” Fair enough, but knowing that these events can stretch on for two eternities, I’m completely satisfied with this more digestible duration. President Noboa, who might or might not be reelected next week, says the right things – from democracy to diversity and dignity – and delivers them with enough zing for an event this size. But the labored smiles during the gift ceremony spoke a language of their own, and the words he’s saying seem a little too polished. Anyway, I don’t know the guy well enough, and just a little better now, standing a few feet away from him.
After the event, we are invited for lunch by the organizers. There is no guestlist, nobody is counting, but there is always enough food for everyone, even freeloaders like me, always. They have that down to a science I don’t understand.
Noboa isn’t the first president I stumbled upon in Latin America. Some ten years ago, I happened upon Bolivia’s Evo Morales in a similar fashion. My then-boss and zen-boss at the language school had hired me as an interpreter/babysitter a day prior to an event at the presidential palace in La Paz. A delegation of FIFA and Coca Cola officials stopped by with the soccer world cup trophy ahead of the 2014 tournament in Brazil. To land a gig like this in any western country, you’d have to be among the crème de la crème of interpreters, whipped by many years of experience and academics in the field of linguistics. I had neither. All I had was the combined confidence of my boss and myself that I could wing it. And wing it I did. Just like anybody else here wings it every day, and it definitely always kinda somehow inexplicably but without fail works out just fine.
