ecuador week sixx

wow, i have been in ecuador for six weeks now.
it´s crazy how fast time flies without you realizing it.

week one: i arrived in quito, ecuador with my PWST group at nine o´clock and we were greeted by two ecuadorian volunteer coordinators of simon bolivar. this week, we took spanish classes for five hours a day and some of us volunteered at the baca ortiz children´s hospital. i took care of a baby named mateo who was abandoned by his mother right after birth. it´s unbelievable how someone can abandon a baby as precious as mateo, but i guess people have their reasons. the health care system is terrible here. there were about twenty to thirty parents with their sick children outside of the hospital waiting for a space to open up so that they can get their child cured. these people come from all over the country because there aren´t suficient health care where they live. a nurse told me that these people sometimes camp out side of the hospital for weeks until they are let in. and there is nothing she could do about it. my time at the hospital ended when i was told that mateo has been sent to an orphanage. and they couldn´t tell me the orphanage he was sent to.

week two: we left the city of smoke and drove three hours to a place called cayambe, where we met stuart from the great britain. he came to ecuador six years ago with his girlfriend and decided to stay. now he runs volunteer program at an organic farm run by a ngo fundación brethen y unida. in the mornings i worked at a small school with about thirty five kids and two teachers. there was three grades in one classroom and one teacher. all of these kids were very behind in their educational level, and most of the first graders i worked with couldn´t even write their names. i was really surprised at the affection of these kids. the moment we met they were all over me, hugging and kissing. they were so full of energy and love. after lunch i worked with everyone else at the organic farm planting seeds, harvesting vegetables, and learning about the ecuadorian environment from stuart. every meal that we had was prepared with the vegetables from the farm minus the rice. i also touched a cow´s utter, which i´m never ever doing again.

week three and four: we left the hot showers and warm beds of the farm in to the highlands of the andes mountain. our group of eighteen students from UM was split in to three groups and our group went to a small village called el cristal. we were greeted by five mothers who were to take care of us for the next to weeks. my host mom was a very small lady with a short bob. we walked to our home from the bus stop, which took us thirty five minutes. we had to walk up and down mountains to finally get to her house. the first thought that ran through my mind when i arrived at my new home was "how the hell am i going to live here for the next two weeks?" the house was made out of wood pieces which were not assembled correctly. there was a bathroom outside of the house with a toilet bowl, with no flush. there definitely wasn´t a place to take a shower. i was told that if i wanted to take a shower she would hook up the hose to the well and pump it for me. even though the living condition was a huge shock for me, i loved every moment that i spent with maria dolores, pedro, and their six kids. they treated me like a family with care and full of love. our group painted all the outside walls of the school my kids attended and painted a beautiful mural on one of the walls. the people of el cristal were untouched by the modernism and the purest people i´ve ever encountered in my life.

week five and six: i had to say bye to all my seventeen loves that i spent every moment together for the past four weeks and set out to meet my new group through the quito project. the quito project was located one hour from the downtown of quito more to the south where poverty is more visible in the streets. i arrived at the oñas, who were the founders of the fundaciòn san martìn. i met twelve other tutors and grad students from the school of public health, social work, and the med school. i began working at the fundación the next day. i am currently working with two boys with learning disabilites. the hardest part about it is having patience all the time because sometimes i have to repeat myself more than ten times for them to understand the material. these two weeks probably have been the toughest, but i´ve learned so much about my capacity and passion for helping kids.

i´ve seen so much and so little of all the beautiful, depressing, and heartwarming side of ecuador. and now i only have one more week before i head off to peru. i hope that the time i spent here and everything that i´ve learned will stay strong with me.

my new adventure begins in seven dayss.

love love,

lyla