22 Hours in an Ecuadorian Detainment Center

I had a whole post planned out for today. It was about a writing exercise I use while traveling to keep my writing mind sharp. As you know, I try to keep my posts focused on writing, but as a storyteller, I can’t pass up the opportunity to share this one with you.

After I left the hotel in in Orlando on Sunday, I met up with my husband and kids in Dallas so that we could all continue on together to Quito, Ecuador. My husband was born in Quito and we try to go back and visit the extended family as often as we can. This year was the first time we were brining both kids.

On the plane, my husband used our passports to fill out the immigration forms, but some time between that and when we made it to the front of the immigration line, my passport vanished. It was just gone. We checked the bags. The flight crew checked the plane (they wouldn’t let me back on to check, but they swear they looked). We retraced our steps. Nothing. They couldn’t let me into the country without a passport.

I stood on the no-mans-land side of the immigration area and watched through two layers of glass while my husband negotiated on my behalf.

Anxious and pacing, I got hot and took off my sweater. I was wearing a floor-length cotton dress, because when I’m traveling and have to sit for hours on end, dresses are just a lot more comfortable. It wasn’t a scandalous dress, by any means, but it was only a matter of minutes before I noticed a guard looking at my chest. I turned away. A few minutes later an airline employee walked over, and without a word, leaned around me to look at the tattoo on my back. I felt very much on display, but I was hot. I decide to stick to my American feminist ideals and leave the sweater off for my own comfort. It’s not like it’s a muslim country. Women were walking by in far less clothing than I was wearing.

Anyway. Around 1am, they escorted me to a holding area where I was allowed to talk to my husband. He explained that they were detaining me. As soon as the embassy opened at 8am, he would go and try to get me a temporary passport, but American Airlines policy said that if we couldn’t get me documented by 5pm local time they would have to deport me on the next flight out, leaving at 12:15am Tuesday.

So I hugged my husband goodbye and went through a door to the detainment room. A few minutes later a guard came in with a couple of bags from the store in the airport – my husband had insisted they deliver a care package to me: six bottles of water, some chips, a snickers bar, and three energy drinks (because thankfully my husband knows the things I need to survive – I had told him I would be fine with the jerky and nuts I had in my bag, but he knows me better than I know myself sometimes).

It was a pale room with fluorescent lighting and nothing in it except cushioned chairs. There was a small bathroom with a shower stall. They told me not to drink the water from the tap. The door was locked behind me. A guard stayed in the room with me, but I haven’t seen eyes that bloodshot since college. He promptly laid back in one of the chairs and fell asleep.

I immediately locked myself in the bathroom and changed into jeans and a t-shirt. Feminist ideals aside, it’s frankly harder to rape someone who is wearing a tight-fitting pair of jeans. If you’re a guy you’ve probably never done the calculation, but the ladies out there will know what I’m talking about.

I drank one of the energy drinks straight away because I felt insanely vulnerable and I had no intention of sleeping. Due to the time difference, it was only 11pm in California so I texted the house sitter back home. For about an hour we tried to find my old expired passport (because I knew that would expedite getting a new one), but no luck. But she did find a photocopy of my current passport. She texted it to me and I texted it to my husband.

If you don’t have a copy of your passport somewhere, stop reading right now and go make a copy of it. I’m telling you. You don’t think you’ll ever need it, but you might.

Once that was done, there wasn’t much to do but wait. I had just started reading “The Name of the Wind,” so I settled in.

Around 5am I nodded off for a few minutes and woke to the creepy, stoner security guard staring at me. I drank another energy drink.

Around 7 things began to pick up again at the airport. Apparently the detainment room is the only place to charge a cell phone, so guys would come in and sit in the corner chair while texting or whatever. No women. Only men. There is something so unnerving about being locked in a room where men can come and go as they please.

I didn’t feel like chatting so they assumed I didn’t speak Spanish. It was comforting to eavesdrop on their conversations and hear all the usual inane banter of bored employees.

While my husband was at the embassy, I was trying to figure out how to get a replacement passport as quickly as possible from my end. I called the state department. I would need a birth certificate so I called record locating companies. The Internet was slow, but I was able to fill out a lost passport form on the state department website. I texted my family. My mom had a copy of my birth certificate in Portland, but she was out of town, so my sister had to drop everything and go dig through her storage space to find it.

In between desperate texts and phone calls, I read. This is what the first couple pages of “The Name of the Wind” look like after a day of trying to figure out what to do.

By 3pm it was clear the embassy wasn’t going to be able to produce the documents we needed. I was getting deported. I texted my sister and asked her to FedEx the birth certificate to Dallas. Then I sat there for another seven hours, waiting to be deported.

At 11:30 I was escorted to the plane. As soon as I was buckled in, I fell asleep. I never thought an airplane seat could feel so safe.

I spent Tuesday getting new passport photos and sleeping at a hotel in Dallas.

Wednesday morning I woke early to meet the FedEx package in the basement of the hotel, then hopped an Uber to the Dallas passport office. They were AWESOME. Two hours later I had a new passport. At 5pm I boarded a plane for Quito and now I’m here!

I finally made it.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get rid of this copy of “The Name of the Wind.” It feels like an old friend. I was so grateful to have a good story with me. After food, water and a tight-fitting pair of jeans, a good book was the perfect thing to have with me for a really, really long day in detainment.

On Tuesday we’ll get back to our regular programming. I’ll stop talking about myself and tell you about that writing exercise I use while I’m traveling. Promise.