I’m Responsible For What? (A Galapagos story) By Rick Schleicher

Chapter 1
I never in my life wanted to go to the Galapagos. I particularly didn’t want to go there when I was traveling/surfing the coast of Ecuador in 2003. To get there meant a trip to a city and an airline flight. I was pretty content with the waves and people I had found. Those people all told me I had to go to the Galapagos and then there was the added pressure of fielding questions when I returned to the US. If I had been in Ecuador for three months why hadn’t I gone to the Galapagos? I made the trip to Galapagos planning to spend six days. I stayed six weeks.

Now by odd circumstance, I live here, married, kid, the kid has really put a bug up my butt about taking care of these islands and the people who live here. I can imagine without him that I would just shake my head at what has happened and is happening here, make my living in whatever way was the most profitable. With a kid though, you start thinking about his education, about the other kids growing up with him, the culture and the well being of his and his friend’s birth rights which as it has turned out to be specifically these islands, “an endangered world heritage site”. A friend once quoted a friend to me, “We do not inherit the earth from our fathers, we borrow it from our sons.” Most parents, I assume on the birth of their first child encounter this sudden urgency to care for a future for their sons or daughters, a future that will last beyond themselves, an urgency that I’m guessing lasts to your last breath. I am only four years into it and it only seems to grow more urgent, more breath taking and I’m getting ahead of the story here.

The moment when I knew I was going to ask my wife to marry me, we were sitting in a tiny open air snack bar next to the sun blasted runway of a small airport on a very large practically uninhabited desert island. Sitting with us was the Governess of this group of islands, a very cordial woman and friend of my future wife. The heat was “insoportable” (unsupportable). Cotton clothes pasted to our skins, the table littered with the tiny, four inch by four inch sweat soaked paper napkins we’d used to wipe our brows, cheeks, arms. What we really needed were towels or maybe air conditioning. I could see the Governess’s ample, pale belly protruding between the buttons of her blouse, blue-white and baby textured, I imagined. She asked me quite seriously, sense I was from California, if the next time I spoke with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, would I please extend him her personal invitation to visit these islands?


I had in my hand at the time a notebook within which I had written an attempt at a diner prayer in Spanish. I had neither much experience with Spanish or prayer. My Spanish is still very suspect. My future wife would pray before every meal, though no one would call her religious in the traditional sense. I had in mind a different kind of prayer, apart from her heart breaking, sweet, humble attempts to touch the infinite, apart from the world’s normal prayers asking for special favors. I wanted something truly functional, parts of which I could maybe use in conversation. It was good Spanish practice, “Dear God, thank you for your patience with our vanities and our insanities…” In Spanish those words don’t rhyme.

The reason we were all there waiting was that the Governess had confidence in only one of the pilots who worked for the small enter island airline and he had absconded with the plane earlier that morning to spend some time with a lover on another island. The Governess did not seem to mind the inconvenience and I remember thinking I might as well not mind it either. How many opportunities had I in my life to do just this, pass time with a gal I was in love with, in a place I’ve come to think of as romantic, in the presence of a woman who I’ve come to regard as a lunatic while we all soaked our clothes and paper napkins with sweat?

At this point in the story Ecuador just received its eighth president in ten years, third in the previous two. Each president appoints along with his cabinet members, the governors of each state, and equally important for the Galapagos head of the National Park and head of Immigration to the Galapagos. The impact of the rapid turn over of these posts was to basically paralyze the institutions those posts governed. We have friends who being affiliated with the political party of a new president, received a “cush” job at an astronomical salary, only to loose their job when the next president took office. They would shrug their shoulders and take a vacation on the money they’d made and wait for their party to come back into power. This rapid succession of presidents occurred at a time when tourism to the Galapagos was expanding at an exponential rate. There was a plan proposed to turn the Galapagos into Waikiki south, huge Sheraton and Hilton hotels, etc. Licenses for cruise ships were handed out like candy to anyone who had the ship and the prerequisite bribe. Illegal residents flocked to the Galapagos for a chance to make a better living than they could on the continent. Most of the remaining endemic hard wood trees were cut down, these trees unlike many hard wood trees on the continent are extremely slow growing, several of them need their seeds to pass through the digestion systems of giant tortoises to germinate and with the near extinction of wild giant tortoises this process had not been occurring for some time. It was discovered that the Japanese like to eat sea cucumbers which precipitated a mass immigration of fishermen from the continent and the near extinction of those mollusks from the islands, etc. and etc. At that time I had only a vague idea that it might behoove me to care about any of this.


I simply enjoyed spending time with my future wife and swimming/playing with sea lions, sharks, marine iguanas and turtles, the dolphins, surfing, the odd culture, odd terrestrial animals, odd avian creatures, the air and water temperature. >There are no addresses in the pueblo. You receive your mail when someone who has been by the post office relays the message that you have some. There are very few hard to recognize street signs here in San Cristobal. The taxi drivers know where everyone lives. I tried giving directions once, only to be told who lived at the house to which I had given directions, “You want to go to ”La casa Del Professor Ojos Abiertos.” (The house of Professor open eyes), what he meant was, the professor who sees everything.

There are certain land marks used to give directions; “four corners” for example is the intersection where the first two streets in San Cristobal intersect, now there are many, many four cornered intersections. There are maybe ten bridges and only one of them is called The Bridge. There is also The Street, The Park, etc.

I’ve had a crash course in learning Spanish and am certain that even after seven years I am still crashing through the china shop of the language. You do get some gifts though where they have taken English expressions into the language. Here are two. “Box Lunch” and “Stand By” though they like to put a K on the end of “by” so that rather than referring to having to wait, it sounds like equipment for a bicycle. A parasol of course is an umbrella for sun, pronounced par-a-sawl. Para = for and (sawl) sol = sun. It’s a “for sun”. An umbrella for rain would then be a “for water” or paragua. Maw-day is how you read the tag on clothing, Maw-day (made) in Korea. Sear-rope-ay’ is what you pore over pancakes (syrup) and col-gaw-tay’ is what you put on your tooth brush (Colgate).

I heard about the 2004 Tsunami that wiped out half of Indonesia and Thailand from Romero Alvarado, a fisherman friend. He’s short, sixty-seven years old, but looks and acts maybe forty is always smiling. He was not smiling as he held onto my elbow while he spoke, glancing toward the turquoise bay every fifth word and then back up to my face. He was sure the Tsunami was on its way here. His point was that apparently it had also reached Africa.

My wife’s name is “Bere” by the way, short for Berenice and pronounced like the vine grown fruit. I had always associated the name Berenice with an over bearing, over weight gal of German decent. My wife is something else.

I am the only gringo resident on the island and so they call me “the gringo” or maybe “Colorado” which means red as I am often sun burnt. Ricky is often used too (as in Ricky Martin, apparently some famous recording artist). Up until my arrival here only my childhood friends called me Ricky.

My wife has eyes people loose themselves in, big, deep, black, straight staring, unblinking wells. “Posos” is Spanish for wells, though the word doesn’t translate the way poets use it in English. I’ve watched men in expensive suits and men in fish gut stained shorts have to look away, fumbling for words before they could speak. She wears her tender heart on the sleeve of a blazer that says, “Don’t fuck with me” and she is my wife, bless the gods.

Five years before I met her, Bere had come to San Cristobal to live, to care for the house and her father’s legacy. She’d returned from a year working as an au pair in a castle in England. After England she looked for work in Spain and not finding anything suitable had returned to her country. She didn’t like the opportunities available to her in Quito so she came to San Cristobal I believe because she didn’t know what else to do, I’ve known and not known “what else to do” enough times in my life to understand that people often do their best when they don’t know what else to do.

My wife’s family lived/lives on “the continent” just outside of Quito. They first heard about me from a friend of the family gossiping about Bere hanging out with a gringo in San Cristobal. The big hearted father of Bere’s family died twenty years before I had the privilege of meeting him. He died here on San Cristobal in the arms of my wife’s sister for lack of an oxygen tank. Bere’s mom was suddenly saddled with six kids ages eight to fifteen to raise alone.

Before we made our flight reservations “to meet the family”, the family requested that I document myself, aids test, some kind of documentation regarding my non-marital status from the US, criminal record. What they really wanted was a good FBI file. Bere, bless her heart only wanted to give me the rest of her life.

I was sure I would have stood a better chance at acceptance into the family if her father were around rather than trying to convince a cynical mom, two brothers and three sisters that I would make a good husband for The Bere. This is how you talk about someone you know well here in Spanish. The Mike or The Suzy, as if there could be no other in the world and of course within the family there certainly is not. She had thirty-two years at that time and the family had practically given up hope on her ever finding a man, particularly given where she was living. This is now a family of attorneys, engineers, a TV personality (in Ecuador) and The Bere.

After the documentation I’d been received cordially for the most part, though every now and again they served up a good portion of Rick a la plancha (grilled Rick). The mom had some pointed questions, the most appealing answer, "It’s none of your fucking business", wasn’t quite available. Bere was Quito born and raised of an English father (Peruvian born) and Ecuadorean mother. They married when he was forty, working for British Intelligence (Bond, James Bond) and she was twenty working for the same agency (Miss Moneypenny landed Bonds). The family would come to the Galapagos yearly for three month vacations. The father, Roland particularly loved the islands and the kids grew up feeling themselves and the islands special.

After he left British Intelligence, Roland’s business was selling insurance (out of Lloyds of London) to the first cruise ships that operated in the Galapagos. As I mentioned Roland died here in San Cristobal unnecessarily (long sad story). Shortly before he died, he purchased a house intending to surprise the family with the news. He was a man who lived by his word in all matters and gave people the respect to allow them to do the same, a questionable practice here, at least until you have the respect he had earned. About a week after his death, a man contacted the family informing them they owned a house in San Cristobal. If they wanted to keep it, he had the papers ready for them to sign. If they didn’t, he would return their money.

The family stopped their annual visits to the Galapagos and the property fell into disrepair, neighbors used it as a dump. Bere arrived a single woman with no friends to a place that until recently could only accurately be described as a Latin cultured fishing village on a remote island, six hundred miles off the coast of Ecuador. She first worked as a waitress in a seedy bar while restoring the property and house. Shortly there after she founded and directed the first association of B&B’s on San Cristobal, no small accomplishment for a woman in a somewhat primitive Latin (macho) culture. When I met her she was running her B&B and working for an eco-carpetbagger. These are generally very glib people who salary themselves out of a non-profit ostensibly doing good works in a needy location, but who actually care far more about their salary than any “good works” or the people they are to be done for.

I’d received two messages early on from friends and acquaintances in San Cristobal regarding the two of us together, one was approximately “That’s one tough woman", the other was, "If you break her heart, I’d prefer you dead". Almost universally though, the people in San Cristobal gave a thumbs up with regard to the two of us together. In San Cristobal I had a good reputation that I’d earned by spending two surf seasons there doing nothing but reading, writing, snorkeling, surfing, staying out of trouble and reflecting or often trying not to reflect about what at forty-six years old, “else I might do”. Arriving in Quito however, for Bere’s family it was as if I’d fallen out of the sky.


We had the big meeting, just me, Bere and my future mother in law in a restaurant. “How many women have you been with in your life? How come you’ve never been married?” I believe god and my bad Spanish carried me over the rough questions. Then she had an easier question, “How much love do you have for my daughter?” I answered that words were cheap. That it was a thing I’d prefer to show her, prove to her than to tell her, to which I received a deep frown and skeptical eye. So I tried, “Enough to fill the heavens,” which brought a tear to her eye and then one to each cheek as she smiled at me.

In Ecuador couples tend to address each other with things like, “Mi Amor,” “Mi Vida”, “Mi Corazon”, “Mi Alma”, “Mi Alas”. So it sounds like this, “My love, don’t forget your galoshes, My life, will you please pass the pepper? My heart, a small kiss please. My soul, did you see the sky today? My wings, will you hold my hand? My love, life, heart, soul, wings…


We live among quite an assortment of winged creatures. Among is the operative word. Most people live within a certain proximity to birds, have bird feeders etc. Here you can call them and they’ll come, flocks of sparrows (Darwin Finches), mocking birds will land on the shoulder of your friend if he stands still enough while you call, here six foot wing spanned pterodactyl looking black pirates of the sky will eat out of your up stretched hand while flapping their wings, others with vibrant blue colored feet nest an open ground will not be the least phased if you witness their mating rituals or approach within arms reach of their nest.


The wife of the man who performed our civil wedding ceremony here in San Cristobal hung herself three weeks afterward. Suicide by hanging is amazingly popular on these islands, six hundred miles off the coast of a third world nation most famous for bananas. If this were the US, they’d put warning labels on ropes (a drawing of someone placing a noose over their head within a red circle with a red diagonal line through it) and or the woman’s husband (a drawing of a wedding ceremony within a circle with a line through it).

In those days, 2004 and now even still, renegade horses, cows, pigs, iguanas and giant tortoises roam the highlands. There’s only one road that crosses the island, rutted, pot holed and slow going to reach the farms on the far side. In the pueblo the sea lions sleep on the door step of the bank, people wait for the sound of the arriving airplanes before they move. The church bells on Sundays ring at five thirty to wake you, at five forty-five to hurry you along and at six to tell you you’re late. They ring constantly when there’s an emergency and they ring when there’s a death, six bells and a pause, six bells and a pause. It’s an odd thing, usually we know of someone’s who’s bad sick (small town) or if not, fear there’s been some kind of serous accident and when we hear that series of bells… in the pause between the six rings you can hear the sea lions bellow on the beach, almost feel the sea turtles popping their heads above the water to take a breath, the Blue footed Boobies taking an instant from skydiving for fish. They do not ring the bells for suicides.

They installed the first traffic light here around that time and the mayor was so proud he put on a party to end all parties in celebration of how fast we were moving forward, except of course when the light is red. Shortly there after he began to hear jokes about how a small and unsophisticated town could be referred to as a “one traffic light town”, so he put in a second traffic light. There was no party for the second light. It was only three years before the traffic light went in that we received electricity 24 hours a day.

A large part of the population have some odd and cherished ideas about themselves, my wife included: There is more infidelity in this town than anywhere else on the planet. More than fifty percent of the youth have aids. Seventy-five percent of the people are addicted to drugs or alcohol. I’ve been here six years and have yet to see an aids patient. The percentage isn’t accurate about drug and alcohol abuse, but there is a tolerance/acceptance for this behavior that does not exist in “developed” countries. As for the infidelity, they may be right. During the first year of our marriage, when my wife was away for a week, I politely fended off a surprisingly long string of women visitors with nothing more on their minds than to try and take “the gringo” for a test drive.

This is a Latin culture, a small community on a large island six hundred miles off the coast of a third world nation, a veritable breeding ground for eccentricities, jealousy, boredom, paranoia, sloth, etc. Along with those we also prefer to think of ourselves as living on the cutting edge of twenty-first century civilization rather than in a kind of South American back water and for proof we act like people we see in the soap operas, prefer to believe we have serious aids and drug problems and even better we have the only traffic lights in the Galapagos. No traffic of course, just the lights. My only comment on the actions and thought processes of my friends and neighbors is, Bless their hearts.

There are no “natives” or indigenous people to the Galapagos. The oldest families date back scarcely a hundred years. About ten percent of the families living here have been here for more than fifty years, about twenty percent more than twenty years and the rest of us… Seventy–five percent of the population has arrived within the last twenty years. Everyone came here looking for opportunities. We’re all a bunch of gold diggers.

 
The most popular sport next to soccer is gossip and we have some world class gossipers.

In order to be married in the Catholic Church, Bere had to be confirmed and together we had to take a marriage course. Suspended from the ceiling, above and behind the Altar in the Catholic Church here on San Cristobal is a full size statue of my high school buddy Don Stevens at age twenty-three, really stoned. Long hair, hippy looking guy, completely bewildered with his circumstance and surroundings as I imagine Don would be were he to find himself there, feet dangling, floating over the priests and their robes, looking out at a congregation of fishermen’s wives.

Father Miguel was on vacation so we had the Monsignor Thomas of Galapagos attending to our needs. He told Bere he could confirm her the following Tuesday. Bere said no, that would not be convenient, tomorrow, please. So this skinny little old man in a robe with a gold chained crucifix around his neck, pushes his spectacles back up his nose. Looks at her, at me, measuring pluses and minuses and says, “Very well.” Now we have our names in this huge, ancient, leather bound Catholic book in the church here. The people have been putting their names into that tattered same book for some hundred years.

This is what I remember about catholic school. The number one reason to get married is to procreate. They say it, just like that. That’s the reason. It’s a Sacramento. Another Sacramento is “marriage is between a man and a woman”, not woman/woman, man/man and definitely not man or woman with an animal. Also there are some impediments to getting married Catholic. For example you can’t get married if you are impotent. I asked the Monsignor in complete seriousness if there was some kind of test they did for that or how did it work? There’s not. You can’t marry anyone under seven. Turns out with a little finagling you can marry your cousin. You can not marry the spouse of someone who you’ve murdered intentionally. It’s one of those kinds of lists and the only charming thing about it all was the complete earnestness with which this information was presented.

My adopted Uncle, when talking about the first tourist he ever saw here speaks with the exact same tone of voice that Monsignor Thomas had used while talking about the sacramentos. We’ve all heard my Uncle’s story so many times, but we never grow tired of watching the twinkle he gets in his one good eye. He doesn’t get around so well anymore, had a cane and now a walker, but still his eye twinkles as good as it ever did. “It happened in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and sixty-nine.” In that year there were no paved streets, there were three “sometimes” working cars on the island, there was electricity only for a couple hours a day, some days. Sometimes a week or weeks would pass without it. Candle light was popular; flashlights were rare because batteries were even rarer and expensive. People ate what they grew or caught, supplemented by a sack of imported rice or flour and if times got hard, they could always eat lobster. It was easy to catch by hand and plentiful, the poor man’s meat. It was not surprising for sailing yachts to arrive occasionally, but these were not “tourists proper”. According to my uncle, the first proper tourist disembarked from a cruise ship owned by Metropolitan Tours. My Uncle held out his hand at the pier to a “classy”, very beautiful woman and helped her from the dingy to the solid planks of the pier. She “pierced him” with her smile. She was accompanied by four other tourists and a guide who quickly separated the company from my Uncle’s presence. He watched them walk away up the pier toward the only store and smelled his hand. After her touch it “smelled of roses”. At this point of his story he’ll pull out of his wallet a folded, old, weary, crinkled magazine picture or if you’re in his home, point to a framed, glass covered picture on the wall of a less weathered, but still faded ancient copy of the same magazine picture he has in his wallet. It is a picture of Jane Fonda circa 1970. “It is for the touch of this beautiful woman that I never married.” If any of his old friends are around they will smile at this. He was a well confirmed forty something bachelor when he shook young Jane Fonda’s hand. The next day he came down with a horrible cold and within a week, everyone on the island had the same cold. He’ll finish his story in these times where we have electricity usually 24/7, water delivered by pipe, five cruise ships anchored in the harbor and the people still as in his day practically unable to touch these visitors to our islands. He’ll have that twinkle in his eye, “This is why the powers that be keep us separated from the tourists, to protect us from diseases.” His one good eye sparkles at the joke he has just made.

Less than ten percent of the revenue generated by tourism in the Galapagos touches the hands of the people that live here. Of the ninety percent left about half of that goes to Ecuadorean companies on the mainland whose interest in the Galapagos does not extend beyond immediate capital gains and the only “reasonable” argument against that is concern for long term profits which they don’t seem to have. The rest, almost half of all the revenue generated by tourism in the Galapagos goes to foreign owned travel agencies, cruise ships, airlines and investors in the previous whose only interest in the Galapagos is as a place to make money. They do not pay taxes to the Ecuadorean government on the profits they make off of the Galapagos nor do they have a responsibility for the impact on the islands that those profits create. If you work in tourism here, you with very few exceptions work for one of those companies and are paid a fraction of the real world value of your services, the company pockets the rest.

Next...Chapter 2