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Ecuador Opened Students’ Eyes
To Third World Poverty On Friday the 13th of April, ten tired people from the Sustainability Seminar at RUHS, loaded into cars at 5 a.m. and began a trip to the small Andean community of San Cristobal, Ecuador. Ten days later we returned to a Vermont, where a sudden change in season reflected the change that those ten days had on our group. We didn’t grow in inches, or lose in pounds. Unlike Vermont, our physical appearance didn’t’ change, but the group that returned on Sunday the 22nd of April had changed nonetheless. Every day was filled with learning. The old saying that "you learn something new everyday" really didn’t apply, for we learned more than that. In a period of 24 hours we experienced what it felt like to be a hated minority when an angered man threw stones at us while yelling something about gringos, and we also experienced an event that showed community in the truest sense, when we were welcomed at the post Easter mass Mesopomba. This was a potluck lunch where the local people laid shawls and blankets 75 feet along the ground covered with food. So you literally have a pile of food 75 feet long by a foot or two wide. There are no containers or plates. You crowd around the pile and grab some food and eat with your hands. When we arrived the pile was surrounded, but people would step aside and let us in to eat what most likely was all of the food they had. After the meal, the gathering continued with games, such as sack races, three legged races, and dancing with a tomato between two people’s foreheads. Everyone from the little kids up on through the older generations participated. Our group was invited to participate in all of these games. Some we were good at, and others we weren’t. The conclusion of the festivities included a soccer match between the kids of San Cristobal and us. You can guess who won. The trip wasn’t always fun and games, though, for the next day we went down to another community to bring some books to the school, and visit their daycare. The daycare was something that was really hard to swallow. It was a hard floor with only one cushion to sit on and wooden chairs. The only toys were a few dolls that were missing limbs. There were few, if any, books. The ones we brought were instantly locked in a case. The visit to the daycare was a jolt of reality. Not all the people of the world live the life that we in the U.S. do. The fact is that I, as a little child, had more toys and books that the whole group of 30 kids in the daycare. I’m not talking about a difference of one or two books and a few blocks. I’m saying that the difference is in many multiples of what they have. We spent a lot of time getting to know the kids of the community. They were always around wanting to play games with us, or color with us. We had at least two children joining us for every meal. They even helped us out when we were working. They joined us while we packed small black bags with dirt mixed in certain proportions. All of the children were quite knowledgeable about what those proportion had to be, and just how much dirt was to be placed in each bag, which will be used to grow trees from seeds. The community has a tree nursery where, in a couple weeks, they hope to have 10,000 seedlings. Every weekend they get together in "Mingas," community work-bees when they work on the tree nursery and the community garden. In addition to packing over 500 little bags of dirt, we put a fence and gate around the community garden. The fence had already been put up, but the bottom wasn’t underground, which would allow animals to go under it. So we dug a trench around the garden, which at a 13,000 thousand foot elevations is no easy task. Our work on the garden and tree nursery are just two small aspects of the water project we were installed in. The water quality in San Cristobal is not good. All of the kids have parasites from the water. The collecting points have no fencing around them, so animals and humans frequently get into them contaminating the water with parasites. Also, most of Ecuador has been clear cut, so there aren’t a lot of trees to hold soil and filter water effectively. That’s why they have a large reforestation project as part of the water project. The plan is to plant the trees around the collection points to improve the quality of water. The community garden is an attempt to teach the people of ways of growing more than corn, and also to show them that they can grow many things and then sell them. The changes that are happening in the community of San Cristobal were described to us by Pepé Astudillo during our first day in Cuenca, explaining the vision he and his wife, Ana Cecilia Salazar, share. They have been helping the community of San Cristobal for over 14 years, and through many emotional speeches they explained their love of the place and left us teary and changed. Power of One These two individuals represent a common theme for our trip in Ecuador, the power of the individual. It seemed as though every day we met more people who were truly making a difference in the world. People who had passion for life and their jobs. People like Pepe and Ana, or Natasha, a native Texan who was our live-in translator and guide. People like Jorge and Rossy two volunteers at "Justica y Paz," who even with a language barrier were able to share with us their love of people. One day we worked with a Belgian named Bart who lived in Ecuador with his girlfriend and helped out wherever he could. We also met Doug McMeekin who runs a foundation called Funedesin, which is working with 32 communities in the rain forest. His right hand man was Miquel, who was to me the embodiment of what our future needs—people who infect you with energy and a sense that we can make the world work. Everyone we met was like that. I cannot possibly express the importance of the effect these people had on our lives, and the lives of others who have met them, or of the greatness of what they’ve done with their time on earth. I can only encourage you to join our group when we do presentations on all that we’ve learned. We will have presentations some time in late May or early June. I think my classmate Beth Bongiolatti summed it up best by saying, "This trip has changed me in many ways. I can’t list them all off, because I know that I’ll still be discovering how this trip has affected me throughout the rest of my life." On behalf of the Sustainability Seminar, I’d like to invite everyone to our presentations and once again thank everyone who helped us get to San Cristobal. We are deeply grateful, for you’ve allowed us to change with the seasons. Thank You! ____________ Sidebars Coloring Books Welcomed I am very much aware that basing one’s life on the collection of material possessions does not equal happiness. It’s not the fact that these children don’t have the latest video game system, or newest Power Wheel that makes me sad. It was watching the kids who spent many hours in our little home in the convent hall, coloring in the coloring books we brought. It was watching their beautiful little faces light up with the joy that they were coloring, and knowing that this artistic release was a rare thing for them.—Nathan A. van Gulden How to Help A group in Randolph, called, "Friends of San Cristobal," is trying to help San Cristobal by raising $10,000 for the water project. If you would like to help with this or have any ideas for raising the money please contact Sharon Rives at 728-3762. The members of the RUHS "Sustainability Class" in the village of San Cristobal, Ecuador, two weeks ago. Members described the trip as "A jolt of reality" which made them realize the dimensions of poverty in the third world. RUHS students in the photo are, from left (names to come) By Nathan A. Van Gulden |
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