Retreat groups and graduations

2011 started out just as busy as 2010. We had 3 retreat groups visit us in january, from Boston College, Iona College in New York, and Manhattan College. It was great hanging out and getting to know the visiting students. They asked a lot of good questions and noticed a lot of things about our lives and the community that we have long grown accustomed to and no longer notice.  It was especially rewarding to spend time with the BC group because of my own experience leading the BC group to Duran last year. I didn´t know any of the students this year but it was great seeing my former staff leader Chris Darcy, an administrator at BC, who returned to Ecuador with this year´s group. Retreat groups are one of our few connections to the US and it was great to get to know all the students and staff that came to experience life in Duran.

In mid January, local schools let out for a 3 month vacation, the equivalent of summer vacation in the U.S. A lot of kids that used to go to school in the afternoons have now started going to our After-school program. We now average 100 kids at Semillas everyday, making discipline and planning activities a real challenge. We have been slowly adapting the program to run with twice our normal attendance, but having over 100 energetic kids ages 4-15 running around at the same time has been crazy.

The rainy season is now fully upon us, which means mud everywhere, lots of mosquitos, very humid weather, and wading through standing water in rubber boots in order to get to work.

The last weekend of January all the volunteers went to the beach for our 6 month retreat. I have mixed feelings about my year in Ecuador being half over. Sometimes I feel that the first months flew by and i will be leaving before I know it. Other times it feels like I´ve been here forever and I can´t believe I still have another 6 months left. Our Ecuadorian neighbors are already getting sad about us leaving, but I try not to think about that yet, 6 months is still 6 months no matter how quickly the days pass.

I´ve been to two high school graduations in the past month. A few weeks ago Syrah Cuenca, one of our neighbors and the sister of a Rostro staff member, graduated from Nuevo Mundo School as the valvictorion of her class. She gave a very emotional speech thanking her parents for instilling the values of education in her and her siblings. We celebrated at her house afterward with dinner, cake, and lots of laughs and dancing.

Yesterday, my friend and neighbor Joseph Bonilla graduated from his high school in Duran. There is a tradition in Ecuador where children and their parents choose a "padrino" or God-parent to support them in each of their major childhood accomplishments, including baptism, first communion, confirmation, graduation from elementary school, and high school graduation. I was honored to be asked to be Joseph´s "padrino" for his high school graduation. After the ceremony we gathered at the his family´s house for dinner, more cake, more dancing, and lots of fun. Too few kids graduate from high school in our neighborhood, and I have so much pride and respect for those that do, especially given the conditions that they are raised in. One thing both Joseph and Syrah have in common is at least one parent that would do anything to see their child succeed.

                                                                                          

Joseph and I

Jospeh with his Mom, sister and me.

Christmas and New Years

My Christmas in Eucador was definitely not like any other. To start, it didn´t snow (as you may have guessed). The Ecuadorian Santa Clause does still drive a sleigh pulled by reindeer (presumably to slide through the mud that now fills the streets due to the arrival of the rainy season) and people still decorate there houses with fake snowmen and Christmas lights and fake Chirstamas trees. They still listen to many of our popular Christmas carols but have some great songs of their own, such as the one about the Donkey on its way to Bethlehem.

Christmas Eve started out with a mass and a nativity play staring a 1 month old baby as baby Jesus, an Ecuadorian pre-teen as Mary, me, as Joseph, and the other volunteers as shepards and wisemen. It was so much fun to participate in something that means a lot to the community but it was a real challenge to keep a straight face when I walked down the aisle barefoot wearing a robe and looked around to see everyone I know from Duran giggling at me. After mass we went to our neighbor Eduardo´s house to celbrate his son´s 9th birthday. We ate dinner and cake and did manadatory salsa dancing for a few hours before heading back to our house. Our boss Megan had a party at our house for a group of teenage boys from the street boy shelter who had nowhere else to go for Christmas. I had a blast spending Christmas eve with them. Their crude humor reminded me of my friends from home and we joked around and threw a football. We ate a big turkey dinner at midnight on christmas eve, which is customary here.

Christmas morning I hung out and had breakfast with my fellow volunteers. In the afternoon we went to Damien House to spend time with the patients there. We sang them Christmas carols and served them ice cream sundaes and soda. They were soo happy to see us becuase for many of them we were their only visitors on Christmas day. That night we went to Sister Annie´s house for a delicious Italian dinner (hadn´t had that since I left home). Sister Annie made us sing and act out the 12 days of Christmas which was a blast. It really felt like a family gathering, complete with my adopted grandmother Sister Annie.

For New Year´s Eve we were invited to a neighbor´s house for a late dinner, followed by burning some fireworks with the kids afterward. At midnight, we returned home to burn our ¨Año viejo¨ or old year. The people here make or buy paper dolls that are supposed to represent all the bad things about the past year, and they burn them in the streets on new years eve. We made a big rat to symbolize the 20 or so mice which we killed in our house this year, filled it with firecrackers, doused it in gasoline, and watched it explode. We then went on the roof and watched firework shows from all over the city. Everyone was hanging out in the streets blasting music, dancing, and blowing things up. That is my kind of celebration. Happy New Years to all.

 

Merry Christmas

A quick update on the last few weeks:

A few weeks ago we were supposed to go to a bingo at our church to raise money. We showed up on Saturday night only to find that the power was out in that section of town. After talking it over for a few minutes, we decided to invite the 30 or so people that were waiting in the dark back to our house, which still had power, and hold the bingo there. Everyone picked up the church benches and the bingo prizes and started a procession back to the volunteer house. We started setting up for the bingo in our courtyard as more and more people filed in. Soon the 30 or so people at the church had multiplied to almost 200. I think when people heard that the bingo was at or house, they all wanted to attend because they were curious to see what our house looked like. Bingo night at the volunteer house ended up being one of the most fun nights of the year and the church was grateful for our help. I guess we probably should have asked permission from our boss before inviting  the whole town over to our house. Oops


On Christmas Eve the 6 of us from Arbolito will be participating in a reinactment of the nativity scene. I am playing Joseph, which means I get to grow a beard and don´t have to talk, but I do have to carry a real baby, which is making me a little nervous. We have been practicing a lot and will hopefully be ready for next week. We all feel very out of place going to nightly play practice with a bunch of high schoolers, but it should be an interesting experience.

We have a week free to travel between Christmas and New Years and we wanted to go on an expedition through the rain forest. Unfortunately, a volcano started erupting right near the town we were supposed to go to. We have made back up plans, but it has been a little frustrating. If its not a coup attempt its a volcano eruption that ruins your travel plans. That is Ecuador for you I guess.


I hope everyone has a great Christmas. I will miss all of you and you will be in my thoughts and prayers this holiday season. If anyone would like to give me a gift, they can make a donation in my name to Rostro de Cristo and/or Damien House (the links are on the right). Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Thanks for reading!!

Happy Thanksgiving

Hey Everyone

I realize its been a full month since I last updated you on my life, so I´ll cut to the chase.

Halloween Party
We had a party for the kids at Semillas just before Halloween. They made masks and we taught them how to say trick-or-treat and gave them some candy. At first we handed out the candy in an orderly fashion, but then decided it would be much more fun just to throw it in the air and watch them scramble for it. Maybe that was a little mean but we made sure that everyone got a few peices and we got some entertainment out of it. The little kids were adorable running around with their masks.

Jair shows off his pumkin pictures which will soon be made into masks.


Retreat
Halloween weekend we had our first retreat. All 16 Rostro volunteers piled into the vans and we drove out to the beach for the weekend. It was nice to relax on the beach and reflect a little bit on everything that had happened the previous 3 months (although it was actually cold and cloudy for the first time in 3 months, go figure). Ethan, a former Jesuit Volunteer came down to Ecuador from Seattle to lead some reflections. In all it was a nice relaxing weekend and we got to spend some quality time just hanging out together.


Trip to the countryside
The first few days of November are holidays in Ecuador, one of which is the Day of the Dead. On this day, many Ecuadorian families go to the cemetary to visit their fallen loved ones. They bring flowers like we do on memorial day, but they also bring much more. Families bring food and drink to the cemetary and have full picnics and parties at the graves of their relatives. They make traditional bread shaped like people and a special fruit drink which is served either hot or cold. On this day, Brendan and I accompanied Germania, the Ecuadorian director of Damien House to the countryside to deliver donations to Hansen patients. We visited some little villages where almost half of the households have at least one Hansen patient. We were greeted warmly at every house (we ended up eating 3 lunches that day) and learned a little bit about the challenges of providing quality medical care to poor people living so far out in the countryside.  It costs these people more than a day´s wage ($5) to travel into Guayaquil for treatment, many doctors in the countryside do not recognize their sickness as Hansens, and many people are afraid to seek treatment due to the stigma surrounding leprosy.  We visited one town where a woman had been treated for Hansen´s at Damien house and now works to connect other sufferers of Hansen´s in her town with medical services from Damien. It was nice to spend a day out of the city and learn a little bit about the conditions that the patients at Damien house come from.

A Visitor from the US
The highlight of this past month was definitely a visit from my girlfriend, Kristen. I brought her to work with me to meet the patients at Damien House and to spend time with the kids at Semillas. We then spent a few days traveling in Cuenca, a colonial city in the mountains about 4 hours southwest of Guayaquil.  In Cuenca we enjoyed the colonial architecture, the cool (sometimes downright freezing) weather, the international restaurants, and the beautiful mountain scenery.  It seemed a world away from Duran and even from the noise and smog of Guayaquil. We went hiking in Las Cajas National Park which contained dense forests, sparse alpine terrain and lots of lakes .  We returned to Duran for a day of hanging out with some of my neighbors and a night hanging out on the malecon (boardwalk) in Guayaquil.  We both had an amazing week but it was tough to say goodbye again at the end.

Mountain landscape in Las Cajas National Park.


Retreat Group
Our first student retreat group arrived in Arbolito the day Kristen left. The group consists of only 5 students from Pope John Paul II high school on Cape Cod, Mass, and their chaparone Allan Lynch, a former in-country director of our program. The group spent the week in Duran and Mount Sinai getting to know the people and helping out at the after-school programs. It was fun to chat with them a little bit and hear Mr. Lynch´s stories of how our neighborhood used to be when he worked here.

Thanksgiving
We celebrated Thanksgiving on Friday night at the Nuevo Mundo school in Guayaquil whose headmaster is American (three of our volunteers teach at this school as their job placements). We enjoyed a delicious homemade Thanksgiving dinner (the stuffing was nothing compared to yours Nana) with all the volunteers, some staff from the school, and Father Jim, the founder of our program who was visiting for the week. Spending Thanksgiving under palm trees reminded me of our Fricchione family vacations although no one at this dinner was quite as entertaining as my family usually is.  I left our Thanksgiving dinner
feeling a little closer to home and much fuller than usual.

Census
So tomorrow is the national census of Ecuador, so everyone in the entire country is required to stay in their houses from 7 am until 5 pm while high school students walk around to collect information. All businesses and roads are closed and even mass is canceled, which is a very different way of doing the census for us, but I think we will enjoy the forced day of rest.  These first 4 months have passed quickly and I can´t believe it is almost Christmas. I hope everyone is well and had a very pleasant Thanksgiving.

The Past Month in a few Paragraphs

A lot has happened since I´ve written last. I apologize for the long time between posts but I have been very busy.

I´ll start with the craziness of September 30. I was at Damien House when I recieved a call from our in-country director who had just landed in California for a week of vacation. She told me that the bridge between Duran and Guayaquil was closed due to some protest so I should stay at Damien House for a while because I wouldn´t be able to cross the bridge to get home. After hearing the news, the staff at Damien House turned on the TV to see that this was not just any protest, but the national police themselves had decided to go on strike, blocking roads and leaving the country without police protection. Ecuador´s president promptly appeared on the news claiming this was a coup attempt (its still questionable whether it really was) and challenged the police to kill him. (not the best way to diffuse a tense situation in my opinion.) He almost got what he asked for when a police officer gassed him with tear gas less than an hour later. This was all really exciting to me at first, because I had gone through four years of studying international politics and reading about coup attempts in this and that Latin American country, and now I was finally getting to experience one first-hand. I soon discovered however, that any sort of political instability is really just a big pain in the butt. I had to sit at Damien House all day until our security guards drove an hour and a half down river to cross the next bridge and come pick me up (they also forgot money to pay the toll and ended up having to trade the first aid kit from the truck in order to cross the bridge, which I thought was pretty hilarious). The other workers at Damien had to walk two hours to their houses becuase the buses weren´t running. The student group that I was supposed to lead canceled their visit that I was really looking forward to, and we had to cancel our travel plans for that weekend and sit at home doing nothing instead. Everything went back to normal the next day and the police went back to work, so besides providing some excitement and being a big pain in the butt the police protest really had no more of an impact on us.

A few weeks ago I finally had the chance to go and watch an Eagles game. A friend and I went to Sport Planet, an American style sports bar in the wealthy part of the city and enjoyed a cheese burger while we watched the Eagles play the 49ers on Sunday Night football. It felt so good to finally see a game as I felt that there was something very important missing in my life (besides just my friends and family). Unfortunately, we couldn´t have a beer while we watched the game because Ecuador has a some stupid law that no one can sell alcohol on Sundays. In a country where laws are largely ignored, and just a week earlier the police themselves had decided to burn tires in the streets and let criminals rob banks without consequences, we were denied beers because it was against the law. If the police ever go on strike on a Sunday, I am going right to the bar to watch a football game and drink a beer.

Sometimes being a volunteer in Duran is very similar to being a celebrity in LA. Wherever we go, people know who we are, whether they are kids who attend our after-school program, neighbors who have known volunteers for years, or just people from the neighborhood who know that the only 6 foriegners in town are the volunteers. One day I was sitting in the cyber trying to write an email during the short time I have between Damien House and the after-school program when a kid from our program came in and stood over my shoulder. (this actually happens several days a week) I said hello and went back to my business becuase I was tired and worn out from the morning and wanted to take advantage the short time I have to use the computer. The kid just stood there peering over my shoulder for half an hour, making me feel uncomfortable to the point that I couldn´t focus on what I was writing. When I left the cyber, he walked with me all the way back to my house asking me questions. I gently reminded him that the program doesn´t start for another 30 minutes, but he didn´t get the hint. He stood outside our house waiting for me to get changed and get ready for my afternoon job, walked with me for half an hour as I picked up kids from their houses, and asked me questions right up to the minute the after-school program officially started. I was very annoyed that my hour of me-time between jobs was usurped by this curious little kid, but later on I felt really bad about how I had felt earlier. I am here for these children, and this isn´t a job that has set working hours and set break times. This is a job that requires us to give our full selves 24 hours a day and seven days a week. Whenever a child is in need of a friend or companion, I should be there to be their friend, even if that means sacrificing a little me-time. I can see in their reactions that five or ten minutes of personal attention does so much more for these children than five or ten minutes of peace and quiet does for me.

But...it is really nice to take a vacation every once in awhile, so last weekend 5 fellow volunteers and I went to Puerto Lopez, a town on the Pacific coast, to do some sight-seeing and relaxing. We took a bus ride up the coast for a few hours and arrived at our destination Saturday morning. On Saturday we took an hour boat ride out to an island off the coast that is populated with rare migratory birds and is surrounded by sea turtles and coral reefs. Our tour guide Don Cherry (yes that was his real name) took us around to see the populations of the funny looking Blue-footed boobies and these other birds with big red chests. We then watched sea turtles eat from the side of the boat and went snorkling at the coral reef. Once returned to the mainland, we had dinner and spent some time relaxing in the beach-side hammocks at the tiki bars that lined the beach front. The next day we paid the driver of a produce truck a few dollars to take us to a nearby national park in the back of his truck. We spent the day relaxing on a beautiful white beach inside the park that we had nearly to ourselves. It was surrounded by forests and flanked on either side by large cliffs. Puerto Lopez was a unique fishing town with bustling fish markets but a relaxed culture. It was so great to get away for the weekend and recharge the batteries.

A few other things:
- I have been teaching the neigborhood kids how to play baseball, and they love it. (it will never surpass soccer but it provides some variety) They play with bamboo sticks and plastic balls but its been lots of fun. A few weeks ago we had a classic Sandlot moment when a ball was hit over a fence into someone´s yard and a rotweiler chewed up the ball.

- Guayaquil´s independance day was October 9 and we celebrated by attending a riverfront firework show and a free outdoor concert. I´m not a big fan of Latin pop or Salsa music but the atmosphere was fun

I hope all are well, I will try to do a better job of updating my blog in the future. 

Some good, some bad, some strange

So the last couple of weeks have been a little of everything. I had some really disturbing experiences, some really touching ones, and some downright awkward and strange ones.
I´ll start with the dirturbing ones. Another volunteer and I were walking over to our after-school program when we ran into one of the kids that usually goes to the program. He is one of the more violent kids and he is rarely well behaved.  On this day he was sitting outside a house, holding a little baby who was crying hysterically.  The boy was hitting the baby, screaming at it, and sticking his fingers in its mouth trying to get it to be quiet. We scolded him for treating a baby like that but he didn´t stop. He said it was his sister´s baby and she was at the cybercafe using the computer while he watched the baby. We didn´t feel comfortable taking a baby away from its "uncle" but we also didnt feel comfortable just letting him hit it and scream at it. I don´t know who in the right mind would leave their baby with any ten year old, and especially this kid. Luckily an older teenager who knew the family came over and took the baby and told the kid to go get his mom. It was just a really disturbing experience where I felt pretty powerless to do anything.

Another tough experience was seeing a little girl get beat by her mom with a cane because she didnt want to bring her notebook to the after-school program. That was especially tough because we are pretty close with this family and they are great people, I guess I´m just not used to seeing violence used as a way to discipline little kids.

With the exception of these two experiences, the last few weeks have been largely positive. We are beginning to get a lot closer with our neighbors. Last week I went to the gym with an 18 year old Ecuadorian that lives by us. The gym was the sketchiest place I´ve ever been, we walked into a dark garage, the guy told us it was closed, the kid I was with said we only want to work out for 45 mins, and he said fine go ahead. We walked up a few flights of pitch dark stairs to a full gym of old rusty equiptment. Despite the sketchiness, it was great to finally get some exercise and to get to know this kid a little better (and it only cost 50 cents for the hour!)

We were also invited to a traditional Ecuadorian Flag ceremony. They have this ceremony at every Ecuadorian high school throughout the country. We went with a family to see their son kiss the Ecuadoran flag in a special ceremony that all seniors in high school have before graduation. It was kind of strange becuase all the students line up in the courtyard almost like soldiers and march up to the Ecuadorian flag one by one, lean down, and kiss it. I guess it is kind of like a really intense pledging of allegiance to the country. Anyway, they were really happy that we went with them and they treated it like it was a pretty important ceremony.

We have started walking out to other parts of our neighborhood to pick up kids to bring them to our after-school program. We walk to an area called Sector 4, which is the least developed area of our neighborhood. Many of the parents there dont let their kids walk alone to our program because it is kind of far, so we go everyday and round up a group of kids and walk them to Semillas. The first day we brought only 2 kids, now we are walking a herd of 10-15 kids to the program every day. Its been a great way to meet new people. One day we showed up at a women´s house to pick up her kids and she handed us a covered bowl and said she killed a duck for us and made us dinner to bring home. Today we went to her house for her son´s birthday and she served us pig intestine stew, salad, and pork from a pig that her husband had killed the day before. It was really awkward at first as we all looked at each other and tried to eat the intestines without gagging, but after the meal she served us cake and we ended up staying for a few hours and having some really good conversations. I am still amazed at how much these people offer us even when they have so little. They live in a one room bamboo hut and yet they killed one of their ducks and pigs and made a meal for 5 of us and served us all cake and even gave us cake to bring home. The hospitality and genorosity is truly incredible here. How many of us would welcome foreigners that we just met into our homes and feed them big meals, and yet these people are so hospitable despite being so poor. It is really humbling to experience and it really sucks when all we can do is say "gracias" and we have nothing more to offer.

One other strange thing this week: I had to break up an intense cane fight between two 90 year old men at Damien House. I am still not sure what they were so mad about but they were savegely swinging their canes at each other. I felt like i was breaking up a fight at my after school program, it was actually really funny.

Thats enough for now, I hope everything is well back in the USA.

A little more about life on the equator.

Hey There

Just another little update on what is going on in my life (which is a lot). So last week was a pretty tough week, but I completely expected to have tough weeks from time to time. One of the patients at Damien House was giving me a hard time because he thinks that he has prostate cancer but he really doesn´t. He therefore had been begging me for money so that he could pay for a surgery that he had convinced himself he needed, but doesn´t actually need. This man, named Julio, is much younger than the rest of the patients (around 40) and is obviously in need of a lot of attention. He was constantly telling me that he was going to die and that he really needed me to give him money to save his life. He would break down crying in front of me and would get upset when I would try to convince him that he doesn´t need surgery. This put me in an awkward situation because I just didn´t know how to react. I didn´t want to just ignore him because he was obviously struggling emotionally and one of my main jobs at the clinic is to be there to accompany the patients. Luckily, he realized that I could not give him any money and has stopped begging me. He began telling me about his past struggles and wants to teach me how to make hammocks next week.

I also felt really guilty last week because one of the cutest little kids at our program fell off a bike (which are not allowed) and got his foot stuck between the frame and the wheel. He had some bad cuts but nothing too serious. I just felt bad because it happened under my watch, but I can´t be looking everywhere at once I guess. I also had to send three kids home for fighting on the same day, making them go without their piece of bread and banana for the day. I know we have to do something to discipline kids and keep the rest of the kids safe, but nevertheless it is always hard to deny a kid a piece of bread and a banana when you aren´t sure if he will be able to eat anything else that day.

Last weekend we finally had an opportunity to just hang around in our neighborhood. We spent a while just hanging out with one of the teenagers that helps us at the afterschool program. He introduced us to his mom, and then we ran into another of the older helpers, who introduced us to his family, who then took us to the house of another neighbor who wanted to meet us, and so on. It was nice to get to know some of the people living around us and feel a little bit more like we belong in their community. On Sunday we went to the house of one of the Ecuadorian employees of our foundation (her name is Aide, she is our age and studies sociology in a local university, but she is from a very poor family in our neighborhood.) Her mom cooked us a huge lunch of chicken, plaintains, rice, and veggies and we spent some time just talking to the family and they even gave a some birthday cake after revealing it was Aide´s sisters´ birthday.  Later that afternoon I was invited by some guys to play soccer in the street with them, but their game looked a little too intense for me so I politley declined their offer and told them I would play this upcoming weekend, giving me a little more time to practice against the little kids at our afterschool program (sadly, even the little kids are much better than me.)

Our first retreat group has been here for the past week. They are from Santa Clara University in California. They visited Damien House twice this past week and Semillas once, but they are staying in the other neighborhood so I haven´t gotten to know them too well. It was nice having them around for Semillas because it is so much easier to manage the kids when you have 10 extra helpers, and the kids just love to have a group of people to play with them and give them piggy back rides.

Last Tuesday we went to a soccer game at the biggest stadium in Guayaquil to see the local team play a team from Uruguay. It was pretty crazy (everybody brings their own fireworks to the game to set off when the team comes out of the tunnel) but the local team lost 2-0, which was a let down. I bought my first soccer jersey here (for $4) and the kids at our program were happy to see me supporting the local team.

This weekend we are helping out at a fundraiser for our local church. We volunteered to make banana bread for 150 people to sell and make money for the church. Brendan and Kipp are playing the trumpet and guitar with a local rock band for entertainment, and apparently they volunteered the rest of us to do a coreographed dance while they play. I have a feeling the Ecuadorian will be very entertained by a group of foreigners doing a silly dance in front of them, but then again they are very entertained just by how we look (we are taller and whiter than them, which they think is funny for some reason) and how we talk (whether it is that crazy english language that they dont understand or our funny spanish accents.) So I´ll let you know how that turns out.

On Sunday, we are going to a memorial mass for the father of one of the ecuadorian employees who died when we first got here. Tomorrow is the opening weekend of NFL season, which I will unfortunately miss. We are hoping to find somewhere to watch the games later this month but it is going to be tough not seeing my Eagles.

If anyone has any questions they want answered or want to hear more about a specific aspect of life down here, just shoot me an email and I´ll include in the next post. Thanks for reading, I hope all is well at home.