Do you want to die?! DO YOU WANT TO DIE?! (Ecuador)

I can't believe the holiday my Nepalese friend Narayan has just had. He arrived in my hostel in Quito about 5 weeks ago, along with about 25 other Nepalese men who arrived over the next few days. He's an intelligent, didactic type with burning eyes and a scrawny Indian body. Due to his days as a frequently-beaten cook's apprentice in Nepal, he's a fabulous cook. He has an excellent sense of humour, which proved to be quite necessary over the next few weeks.

On the day he and some of his friends arrived, they treated me and a Danish couple to a combination of whisky and excellent Nepalese food (spicy, with lots of garlic, chillies, ginger and onions). Nepalese are outlandishly friendly and hospitable people, and we Europeans were immediately hailed as their 'brothers' and 'sister'. I contributed some cheap pina coladas to the soiree. One fat Nepalese was stunned by my similarity to his absent brother, and seemed quite fixated on the resemblance. The genial Asiatics began singing a famous Nepalese song about butterflies, and dancing around in that girlish, wrist-twirling Indian way. As my fat 'brother' got drunker, he insisted that I was, in a very real way, his brother. I must have looked sceptical. "You don't believe me? Here!" - opening his wallet and taking out 100 dollars - "Take this money!". I demurred. His eyes narrowed and his lip curled. "Take it!". The situation was becoming unpleasant. I tried to explain how weird this was for a European (or perhaps for any human being). He glowered and tossed his arm up in disgust.

Narayan and the fat man clearly had no ability to take a drink. They started raving at myself and the Danes, and shouting furiously at the other Nepalese. The Danes left, and I and some sober Nepalese bundled the drunkards into one of the bedrooms. I settled down to chat with the manageress. But the shouting continued, and we heard fists thudding on skulls. It was getting late and people were trying to sleep, so after the brawling had gone on a few minutes, I went into the room to try and shut them up. Narayan was crosslegged on the bed, his left eye a livid purple. He gesticulated furiously at the fat man. "This is very bad man! He have to beat us!". The fat man was standing in the middle of the room, shouting something in Nepalese. An Iranian-looking Nepalese was sitting on his bed weeping. His friend explained that 'Iranian' thought the fat man had ripped up his passport, and that he'd never be able to get out of Ecuador. The fat man was clearly creating most of the problems, so I pushed him out of the room and into the adjacent room where some more Nepalese were staying. I instructed his friends to keep him out of Narayan's room. I went back to Narayan's room, and tried to calm down the manic inebriates. Fat man came back into the room, and started shouting at me that his friends had stolen 2,500 dollars from him. He hurled himself at the weeping 'Iranian' and clobbered him around the face. I jumped on his back and threw him onto the floor.

Narayan jumped off his bed and grabbed me and the boss by the collar, insisting that we had to listen to his side of the story. We told him that we really didn't care, he just had to shutup, but he was having none of this. We tired of his caper, and dragged him, flailing and gibbering, towards the door of the hostel. He fell down on his knees and threw his arms wide, begging our forbearance. (Rosa, the manager, later told me that some other Nepalese - friends of the current batch - had been in the hostel a couple of years before, and had also ended up fighting. While asking for forgiveness, they took off her shoes and tried to kiss her feet). We gave Narayan yet another last chance, and this time he shutup. I went to bed, more amused than irritated. About an hour later, I was woken by a hubbub coming from Narayan's room. He was lying in bed, eyes blank, his entire body and limbs jerking in seizure.

He was taken to hospital, and diagnosed as epileptic. He'd never had an attack before. He was in hospital for a couple of days, at a total cost of about 900 bucks. The fat man paid half, and could be seen walking around shamefaced over the next couple of days - I guess he felt, not unreasonably, that he might have brought on the attack by whacking Narayan in the cranium. Or it might have been the stress, or the fact that Narayan, in the fastidious brahmin tradition, had never got very drunk before in his life (brahmins are the priestly caste, the highest caste in hinduism).

Narayan came out of the hospital and seemed to be gradually recovering. As always, he sat in the kitchen for hours on end, giving instructions on how to prepare the huge Nepalese meals with their multitudinous ingredients. As his health improved, he took more and more part in the cooking, to the delight of everyone's tastebuds.

6 days or so after he came out of hospital, he went into the toilet to take a leak. His vision narrowed, and everything turned dark and spinny. After a couple of minutes, another Nepalese, Bhisma, realised there was no noise coming from the bathroom. After calling with no reply, he got ready to break the door down. Narayan started to come round - first his mind, and then, slowly, his senses and vision. When I came in to translate for the Ecuadorean doctor, Narayan was lying in bed, sunken-cheeked, whimpering. "This holiday...". He was brought to a private clinic, where he was diagnosed with typhoid (http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/typhoidfever_g.htm) - contracted in Singapore earlier on in his holiday.

He stayed in the clinic for about five days, setting him back another 1000 bucks.

He came back to the hostel and started the recovery process again, returning by degrees to his normal alert, quick-witted self. He decided to wait out the remaining couple of weeks in the hostel, just taking it easy. It's quite possible that he would have done this even if fully healthy - I have rarely seen such useless tourists as this group of Nepalese. They pay thousands of dollars to come to Ecuador and sit in their room playing cards! The concept of tourist attractions seems beyond their ken.

About a week ago, a group of four Ecuadoreans, three men and a woman, appeared at the door of the hostel. One was dressed in the uniform of the Ecuadorean immigration police. Maria, the maid, let them in, and they asked what room the Nepalese were in. They went in, and looked at the holidaymaker's passports. They singled out Narayan and another Nepalese, and insisted that their perfectly valid 90-day visas were in fact defective. Ordering them to accompany them to the immigration office, they bundled them into a car. They drove them around Quito for hours on end, snarling at them in Spanish and broken English, drawing their fingers menacingly across their throats.

Meantime, either the Ecuadoreans or some associates had contacted the rest of the Nepalese and demanded 20,000 dollars in cash. The panicked Nepalese managed to get together about 10,000 dollars and handed it over. Narayan and the other hostage were dumped in the carpark of the nearby Supermaxi supermarket, minus passports. A concerned Pakistani approached them and asked what the trouble was. When he heard the story, he offered to do whatever he could to help.

Later on, this good citizen contacted the Nepalese. He demanded more money for their passports, which he now had in his possession. The Nepalese were somewhat peeved. Their situation was difficult - there is no Nepalese embassy or consul in Ecuador, and the Ecuadorean police are legendarily corrupt and un-public-spirited.

Bhasanta is the leader of the group of Nepalese. He's quite an interesting character. Sometimes he locomotes on crutches, and sometimes he's pushed around in a wheelchair by Kumar, his helper, who belongs to the 'Mongolian' caste in Nepal. Bhasanta is, naturally, a brahmin. He is quite friendly, though his manner is almost as strident as his orange-and-black Nehru cap. He spends a lot of his time travelling the world, dividing his time between playing cards and seeking out "transit wives" to whom he can "make deep love for entertainment". He got me to translate some phrases into Spanish for him, so that he could romance a local woman over his mobile. The phrase "quiero comer pollo organico en tu casa" - "I want to eat organic chicken in your house" - struck me as particularly romantic.

Anyway, the day after the Pakistani called, Kumar wheeled Bhasanta into the internet cafe where I was doing some work for my company. Bhasanta phoned the Maharajah restaurant where the Pakistani works. A torrent of invective ensued. Most of it was in Hindi, but there were occasional passages of English. "HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI Motherfucker!! Do you want to die?! Do you want to die?! HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI HINDI Muslim bastard!!"

I left the internet cafe after uploading some stuff to the internet, and turned the corner for our hostel ("Hostal Adventure"). Kumar and another Nepalese were standing at either side of the street, guarding against Pakistani incursions.

The next day, the Pakistani's older brother, who appeared not to be as maleficent as his sibling, handed the passports back to the Nepalese. But not the money. Narayan and Bhasanta left Quito the same day.