The Ecuador Diaries: Part 2

I have to come to understand this, while I wake up rested here, I will always feel sweaty, thank God for cold showers. After breakfast, we go down to the "The Boat", which according to a brief history lesson from Wes, was beached by a Swiss expatriate who made it into the restaurant/resort it is today. Gathered on the boat's top deck, we meet Cecile, the head honcho of the project work we are doing here and the owner of the hostel we are staying at. She is a real, honest-to-god social activist, she's active in a movement to promote gender equality here in Ecuador where societal roles are still entrenched. She was almost like Mother Teresa, giving off the kind of energy and idealism that I try to promote myself. We discuss what we'll be doing here, which is to help build a school for the kids in the nearby villages, and what each of us hope to gain from the experience. After lunch, we talk about the itnerary where the next day we'll begin our billet stays and the day after our work placements. I was have been assigned to an ecological farm for the first week, and work on the school during the second. After the meeting wrapped up, we all go down to the beach and I ended up shaken as I got pulled out by the riptide and having to work hard to get back to shore. That night we are introduced to the girl who works are are server in the hostel, she is our own age, 17,, her name is Viviana, and she's studying tourism business at the college in Puerto Lopez, and lives in Puerto Rico, it was really something trying to communicate with her as we only knew a little of each other's langauge. We end up going down with her and playing a game of soccer with the local kids, which is something we'd basically do every night while we are here (they worship soccer here, second only to Simon Bolivar). It is very moving to play with kids that are ridiculously poor in comparison to me, something every spiritual of being able to laugh and play with these kids.

Next day, we pack up and go to our billet homes after being told what to expect. I'm with the half of the group going to Las Tunas, the other half going to Puerto Rico, about a half hour walk away. Las Tunas is the picturesque image of the small, developing world, semi-post colonial village, which seem to have developed all along the coast. After meeting the other host families, Jeff, my billet partner, and I meet our family.

It's a family of three, mom, dad and 6 year old kid. Our mom's name is Miriam and reminded me of a big momma that takes care of everyone around her. Aurelio, the dad, works in the fish-flour factory in Salango, and for most the day he's out working and so much of my family exposure was the mom and kid. Antonio is the kid, and was very taken with the fact that we were much taller than anyone else. We end up spending the first hour in our home renovating our spanish and trying to understand what they were saying, as well as spending a long time trying to tell Miriam that I am a psuedo-vegetarian (the concept of someone not eating something out of choice is very weird to them, it's evidently a very Western idea). A guy turns up at the door dropping off bananas and oranges and tells us they are organic, and from the mountains. I had no idea oranges were so sweet! Any of the fruit back home simply was tasteless in comparison. After more talking we find out that our family, Wes and Steve's family amd Ali and Kalina's family are all related, don't ask how, my spanish couldn't figure it out. After a little time in the village we can also estimate that we live with one of the richest families in the village, our house has tile floors, which is evidently amazingly rich for this area. Also, everything is very cheap, I can buy a big bottle of Pepsi for $1.25. We found another soccer game going on in the center of town, with what looked like most of the men of the villages playing and watching, but there were no girls or women there. We meet Wes's mom, Rosa and his host brother, Fernando (16 years old, but he looks like 12), who for our time here was our best amigo and our guide. He's such a nutcase, (no wisecracks about a kindred spirit) climbing up on his roof and stuff, we also meet Ali's family, one girl Caty (14), and two brothers, Edison and Robertson (7 and 8 I think), and the mom Ellsa, and the dad, who I never figured out his name.

The feeling of community is much stronger here than back in Penticton. We play soccer with them that night (no surprise, every night was basically the same, but it never got boring or tiring, strangely enough), and they taught us spanish tongue twisters (trabajarlenguas, the exact translation is tongue work, haha) and songs. Fernando is really fond of the one english song he knows some of the words to, Hotel California, weirdly enough. It felt really good to have that kind of cultural exchange and was probably one of my happiest days in Ecuador.