Rachel Dann - Pieces of My Life

We have to slam on the brakes as a huge bus lumbers around the corner ahead, occupying both sides of the road, belching out black smoke as it continues on up the steep street to our right, creaking and groaning.

As we pull away again cautiously, pedestrians bustle past, brushing right up against the car. Smart men and women dressed in suits striding to the office, lines of schoolchildren in identical and beautifully starched red-and-white school uniforms, and plump, squat women wrapped in brightly coloured shawls, wearing what look like shiny bowler hats over their long, plaited, black hair.

‘Look at the indigenous ladies’, says Rodrigo, thankfully turning the music down. ‘The Quichua. They were here before the Spanish… but now they’re almost foreigners like you.’ He gives a sad little chuckle. ‘Some of them don’t even speak Spanish – just their language – Quichua. My Grandma spoke it. They live their own way. Many of them are very poor.’

As we crawl through traffic, one of a group of Quichua women approaching us looks up from talking animatedly to her companions and meets my eye for a second. I note her beautiful, Pocahontas-like features and slanted dark eyes, and wonder what she makes of the face staring back at her. I notice my reflection in the car window and suddenly see my mousy blonde hair, pale skin and uneven sprinkling of freckles in a new light. Here, I am the foreigner. Fascinated by the women, I twist round to stare after them out of the back window and take in the heavy-looking bundles tied in place across their backs by what looks like just a piece of cloth, containing a variety of carrots, corn cobs, potatoes and, in one case, a peacefully sleeping baby.

The day is already promising to be a scorcher as the equatorial sun beats down on the car roof, and I marvel at two young policewomen of about my own age, dressed in impossibly hot-looking long-sleeved khaki uniforms, standing in the centre of a crossroads blowing into whistles and flailing their arms to direct the traffic.

‘Here we are!’ announces Rodrigo proudly, as if he’s just safely delivered Frodo and Sam to the gates of Mordor. ‘ Casa Hamaca . Hammock House. Your hotel.’

We’ve mounted the kerb outside a three-storey building, in the same restored colonial style as the rest of the street. Except, it’s painted bright turquoise. A wooden plaque over the door says ‘Casa Hamaca – hotel and restaurant’ and there are flags flying in the breeze from the first-floor balcony. Ecuador, United States, Spain, Italy, Union Jack, Scotland… and several I should probably recognise, but don’t. All in all, despite the garish colour, it looks like a proper hotel. Thank goodness for that booking website.

We give Rodrigo a hug and a tip, then find ourselves on the pavement in the middle of a city where we know absolutely no one.

Suddenly a voice, in what sounds like a Scottish accent, calls down from somewhere above our heads, ‘Harry and Kirsty?’

We look up to see a scruffy dark-haired man of about our own age leaning over the second-floor balcony, grinning down at us. ‘We have been awaiting your arrival. I call myself Ray!’

He disappears briefly, and there is just enough time for a frightening Norman Bates image to flash into my mind before ‘Ray’ materialises in front of us, swinging the front door open. ‘Come in, come in, welcome to my casita, my little house in Quito!’ He’s still grinning, as if he’s never been so happy to see two bedraggled, confused backpackers in his life.

As we enter the hotel we realise it is much more than a ‘casita’. Opening out tardis-like around us is a bustling restaurant and bar, filled with tourists of varying ages and nationalities enjoying breakfast. The tantalising smell of brewing coffee wafts past, and as we follow Ray towards a steep, wooden, spiral staircase at the back, we hear German, Italian, Spanish, and several unrecognisable languages being spoken at the tables around us.

Ray leads us up the stairs and flings open the door to one of the rooms. ‘This, mis amigos , will be your habitation! Please make yourselves comfortable, then perhaps later come downstairs for some lunch and a cold beer, on the house?’

The room, or ‘habitation’, as Ray bizarrely put it, looks wonderful. Blue-and-green silk drapes billow in the breeze from the open balcony doors opposite us, and a string hammock in the same colours sways gently in the corner. The walls are white and fresh, and a huge bed with multicoloured patchwork covers spreads out before us invitingly. A voice in the corner is talking loudly in Spanish about the release of three thousand drugs mules in Ecuador.

Wait – what ?

‘Sorry! I must have left the television on when I was cleaning the room.’ Ray picks up a remote from the side and points it towards the flatscreen TV on the wall opposite the bed.

‘No! Wait… I want to listen to this.’ I hold up my hands to stop him, and sink down on to the edge of the bed without taking my eyes off the TV.

‘Ecuador’s president confirms that a new and controversial law, coming into force next week, will mean the reduction of almost every sentence given in the last ten years for drugs crimes. This will lead to many of the worst narcotics criminals in the continent being immediately released from prisons around the country.’

Woah – even in my sleep-deprived state I realise this is very big news. Still not allowing my eyes to leave the screen, I tug the remote control from Ray’s hands and turn up the volume. I’m dimly aware of Ray and Harry drifting out on to the corridor and talking about Wi-Fi passwords.

‘This news comes at a time when the government is focusing on the quality of penitentiary conditions for the first time in decades, with the construction of two brand-new prisons in the north and south of Ecuador. This investment in living conditions and the release of so many detainees at once is a bold move never made before by any Latin American government, aimed at drastically reducing overcrowding. However, public safety concerns are rife and protests took place today outside parliament.’

The television cuts to a scene of an angry crowd pushing and shouting outside a beautiful white colonial-style building, presumably the presidential palace. Next, it split-screens to a map of Ecuador, two flashing red dots showing the locations of the new prisons, then finally a picture of a huge, sprawling building complex – presumably one of the new jails, still empty. Then, suddenly, the newsreader’s calm, smiling face is back on the screen, talking about the football results.

I feel like an ice bucket of reality about our first holiday destination has just been thrown over me.

A noise in the doorway makes me jump.

‘Ray just told me the weirdest thing.’ Harry reappears in the doorway holding his phone and a sheet of paper. ‘All that stuff about prisoners in the news… well, his wife actually visits the prisons. Some kind of volunteering, apparently.’

I turn to stare at him, feeling a fizz of interest, despite the tiredness almost overwhelming me.

‘Crazy, huh? Rather her than me…’ Harry shakes his head and goes to sit down on the end of the bed, still staring at his phone.

‘Yeah… definitely,’ I mutter, but already my mind is whirring. Just the mention of prisoners has revived my memory of Joel, all those years ago during my work experience at the solicitor’s office. For the thousandth time in the interceding years since I met him, I wonder what he is doing now and whether he managed to rebuild his life as he had promised the courts. Then my mind turns to the news I’ve just witnessed and, if it is to be believed, the thousands of men and women about to be released into the real world after years of confinement, faced with the daunting and possibly terrifying task of starting all over again…