Traveling in Ecuador Again by Tim Ghazzawi:
Last year, I spent at least 576 hours teaching to computer screens. September through March. 80 minutes per class. 3 classes a day. 4 days a week. 576 total hours. All from my dining room table. The outside world wasn’t much fun either. Our borders were closed and so were our bars. We communicated from behind facemasks and plexiglass walls. Our hands were greased in sanitizer. Barrier after barrier constructed to keep us apart. And so, we learned how to be alone, how to live with our own thoughts, in absence of each other.
Things have changed, thankfully, in recent months. My pockets are heavier now that I carry a vaccination card in my wallet and my mask next to my keys. We’re dining in and out again. Phone calls and hangouts seem more hopeful than not. And this summer, I took my first trip since before the pandemic began. The world opened up just enough for a small group of us to travel to Ecuador, and try to regain a little of what we’d lost.
Together we caravanned around one of my favorite countries, scaling volcanic mountainsides, snorkeling amongst sea lions, and ziplining through cloud forests, never a computer screen in sight. Nature was, for the first time in a long time, both my classroom and my home. And it was enough. And it was extraordinary.
The thing is, the ordinary moments on our trip managed to feel extraordinary, too. After dinner each night, my students and I played cards and performed magic tricks. We sang bad karaoke. Made and ate burnt popcorn. Told scary stories. Practiced back flips. Painted nails. Stared at stars. All ordinary things made so much better simply because we shared them with each other.
Our group cried saying goodbye because goodbyes are hard. This one particularly so. We’d peeled back layers of cloth and plastic and distance and fear, and formed a kinship that we’d almost forgotten we needed. By myself, on my flight home, I continued to feel sad. The woman sitting next to me was sad, too. Tear stains were evident on her face and her eyes looked like mine. Curiosity got the best of me and I tried to peer over my shoulder to see what she was texting about. She wrote in Spanish but, from what I gathered, she was breaking up with her boyfriend… or perhaps he was breaking up with her. I couldn’t be sure.
Though she would probably disagree, I found there to be something comforting about our shared sadness. There was nothing numb about what we were feeling. It was raw and natural, a kind of ache born out of an in-person human connection we hadn’t experienced in over a year. Emotions were back. And it felt good to be getting ourselves back, too.
Tim, this is incredibly beautiful! Your writing skills are impeccable! I have been so incredibly honored to have met you and shared an Ecuadorian adventure with you! You are an extraordinary human being! This piece of writing really got me and made me cry. Thank you for sharing something so beautiful with the world!