Last Friday started out as most of my days do, waking up around 9 am, fixing some breakfast and deciding what to do with my life.  That morning I got up after a long night of hanging out at a swanky night club, listening to this amazing 8 piece band ripping through all the bolero, salsa and mambo standards that I grew up with from stealing my dad’s tapes and records.  Picture the New Year’s Eve scene in Cuba in The Godfather Part 2, when Michael is telling Freddo that he knew it was him that sold him out.  The music was excellent, my beer was cold and everyone on stage was in white tuxedos. I seriously couldn’t have asked for a better night.  Half awake, I wandered into the kitchen and made myself a cup of coffee and warmed up an humita in the microwave, a cornmeal cake filled with raisins and snugly wrapped in a banana leaf.  Amy, our awesome house guest was in the living room doing her blog thing and Jenna was getting ready for work. I was about 2 chapters into my latest purchase, a used copy of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis when it hit me that I hadn’t been keeping track of my finances that week.

I decided to log into my bank account and see how I was doing financially, I almost spit out my instant coffee when I saw that someone had just withdrawn $80 that very morning, which was impossible as I had been asleep and the closest ATM was a good 3/4′s of a mile a way which would have been nearly impossible for me to sleepwalk to.  As I looked a little closer at my bank statement, I noticed a total of 8 unauthorized transactions had been made at a place I never even heard of  totaling about 495 dollars just in the last 2 days! I freaked out after I noticed the thieves had only left me $1.93, barely enough for an almuerzo, if that.  Right away I flew back to my room down the hall and checked to see if my debit card was still in my possession.  It was! How did those fuckers get my money?  Think Freddie, think!  Luckily I remembered I had an uncashed check I had been squirreling away in my nightstand from when I worked at the University-so I wasn’t totally broke.  I got on SKYPE almost instantly with my bank and was speaking with someone within 2 minutes.

The conversation was pretty straight forward, V. did her best to understand my situation and walked me through the steps towards filing a claim with MasterCard, the issuer of my card. She instructed me to go to the local police station, file a report then fax it back along with an affidavit that they would send me stating that someone indeed had fraudulently used my card and had somehow learned my PIN.  She told me that I would probably be reimbursed for about 85 percent of my losses if the investigation showed that it was indeed a case of fraud and that I would have my money in about 2 weeks!  2 weeks! Shit, I have to move out of my place on the last of the month and backpack across Ecuador for the next 3 weeks.  Not the best timing at all. Fuck it. Heavy stuff for a Friday morning, all I wanted to do was read my book and lounge on my favorite couch like the character in The Metamorphosis, who was once a young businessman that awoke one day to find he was a giant bug and passed the time by sitting on his couch looking out from his window. Now I had to run across Quito to Banco del Pichincha to cash this check.  I made it to the bank, the line was about 20 people deep but moved surprisingly quickly.  When I finally made it to the counter, the teller had the nerve to ask me to step aside to endorse my check and write down my passport number, something that took about 10 seconds tops but still was annoying as I had to wait for someone else as she had started dealing with a new customer.  After the bank it was a mad dash back to the apartment as we had a lunch shoot to film with our favorite food blogger.  I wolfed down my lunch and ran back across town to file a police report.

The police station was an uninviting multistory building  fortunately not far from our place. Knowing how inefficient offices are around Ecuador I first stopped off at an internet cafe to print out some copies of my bank statement and passport that they would surely need.  Finally I made it to the office at the station where one files a police report only to find it full of stressed out people whom had been victimized in Quito that morning.  Some people had just been held up at gun point, others had their cars broken into, laptops stolen, you get the idea.  I didn’t know if I should wait in line as there wasn’t anyone really waiting in one so I asked a police officer who was draped over a chair watching the Chile vs Spain match of the World Cup on a television in the waiting room. He hardly looked away from the screen as he lazily motioned me over to a part of the room where I waited until a woman behind a desk acknowledged my presence and motioned for me to sit across from her. I calmly explained my situation to her and she started typing up my report.  She asked me for the bank statement, my passport and other details like my telephone number and address in Quito.  The she printed out the report and then asked me to run across the street and make her 3 copies of everything! I had to haul ass jay walking through traffic across to a copy place to make them and run back through the heavy iron gates that surrounded police headquarters. I was amazed at my lightning speed as the whole ordeal took me 3 minutes tops.  She took my copies and asked me to sign them, she gave me one set and asked me to come back on Tuesday to follow up with someone who would look over my case.

Now I am without a working ATM card and hoping my family back home can send me the replacement card when it arrives to their house in 2 weeks!  I might have to stick around in Quito longer than I intended to until this all wraps up.  Lessons learned:  always have some back up cash on you when you are out of the country as you never know when you are gonna need it and always have a good book to read.