Week´s recap in pictures

Hi friends!

Airport run!

I thought I would give a small recap of our past week or so with pictures. First, on September 15^th our new In-Country Director arrived in Ecuador. The next few weeks will be filled with orientations and the transition between two directors. We got together with the Duran volunteers to greet her at the airport and provide a warm Rostro welcome. We spent the night with our Arbolito friends, which is always a treat. Chris and I got up early on Saturday morning to make his recipe for banana pancakes for all the vols. The pancakes were a nice reminder of home and eating them at all hours of the day and night on Williams 3 last year!

With the Jesuit novitiates at work

Mike and I have continued to work with the three Jesuit novitiates in our office this month. Unfortunately Thursday is their last day – we have had a lot of fun working with them and getting to know them. Like I mentioned in my last post, we are holding after school tutoring programs in different neighborhoods every day as this month’s project. It has been really great to be out and about in Mount Sinai every single day working and making new friends. In the coming weeks Mike and I will have to work out how or if we will continue with the program. On top of working, the Jesuits have brought a lot of life to the office. Our spare time in the office we passed doing everything from chatting about our distinct cultures, their Jesuit formation process or Wilo giving me salsa dance lessons (which is still definitely a work in progress!).

Any unoccupied time I’ve had in the office I’ve spent reading Poor Economics – A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. I was really captivated by a presentation given by Duflo at Holy Cross last year and brought the book along with me to Ecuador. It covers varies topics like health, hunger, microcredit, incentives, businesses, aid programs, and more. For me it has been extremely interesting to read while living in Mount Sinai. I witness the statistics given in 3-D form everyday in my daily life and hear similar testimonies as given in the book during casual conversations with neighbors. I’m learning a lot!

One last update from my Hogar de Cristo work – last week I met with the leader and a few women who collaborate with the Hogar de Cristo microcredit office. I’ll be meeting with a larger group of women this week to learn more about the process and how I may be able to accompany them or provide workshops on finance topics that would be helpful.

Dinner with Arbolito

This past weekend we again spent with the Arbolito community. First, Friday was our all Rostro de Cristo day of reflection. After a day of reflection, journaling, and logistics, Megan (our current In-Country Director) kindly made us all a lasagna dinner! We shared a great meal and then spent the rest of the night playing 2 vs. 2 soccer on our little patio. The next day we all woke up early to construct two Hogar de Cristo cane houses together with the 3 Jesuit novitiates out in the campo.

House Build 1

House Build 2 - Completed Home

House Build 3

House Build 4 - With the family

Mount Sinai is filled with these cane homes. They are lifted up on stilts because during the rainy season the flooding, especially for homes near the canal, is treacherous. The homes cost $1000 and the family can pay piece by piece – putting down a $50 down payment and then paying $25 a month for 3 years. Because of the level of poverty in Mount Sinai many homes are donated or given at a reduced rate of about $14 a month. They are simple – the chilly winds pierce through the cane at night and it is just one large room with one divider – but they are extremely popular.

With the (huge!) help of a Hogar employee, 8 of us constructed the Hogar home in exactly 5 hours! We dug the holes to put the poles in, then laid the flooring, then put up the pre-constructed walls, and then finished with a tin roof. When we climbed down after hammering in the last nails the family had already begun to make this house a home. Streamers hung, a table was set up, the little kids were blowing up balloons, and the parents and uncles set up benches. It was a really great day and a unique opportunity to build a relationship with a family whose house we built.

Night with the novitiates

That night Mike, Ana, and I went back with our three Jesuit novitiate friends to spend the afternoon with them. Since we met them they have insisted that we come swim in their pool and spend time with them outside of Hogar. We swam, shared a delicious meal, participated in mass, and then met a few of the other Jesuit residents. On our way home they took a few pit stops to see sights of Guayaquil along the boardwalk.

Yapangacho

The rest of the week has been spent in neighborhood time – literally just hanging out, tutoring, and cooking with our neighbors. One of the greatest ways the women of the community have ministered to us and opened up their lives to us is through their cooking. Most every neighbor asks us how the cooking is going on and if we have moved on from cooking just rice and lentils yet. When all we do is laugh they swoop in like any loving mother would and offer to cook with us. Our most recent cooking lesson was on Yapangacho (sp?): potato pancakes with a peanut butter sauce, fried eggs, salad, rice, and hot dogs. We are slowly but surely learning to cook Ecuadorian.

I’ll end this post with a funny (well now) story about my attempts to slowly let go. I wrote in a previous post about my current focus on embracing this feeling of lack of control in nearly every aspect of life. This week a group of women were in my office working with another employee on an upcoming workshop. Upon finishing they asked me for my help. The women were taking a course on haircutting at Hogar de Cristo and needed heads to practice on. With some hesitation I agreed – how could I say no when 6 women were standing with smiling, pleading faces. We get to the salon across the Hogar property and I learn that these women actually do not know how to cut hair yet. One woman was put in the middle as the example and the “professor” taught how to cut hair as all the women furiously took notes. As you can imagine, a little bit of anxiety rose in me. I never realized the control and importance I placed on my own physical appearance. What came to mind as I sat there for the first few minutes of silence as she began cutting my hair was our reflection during all RdC on simplicity. Simplicity can also be interpreted as letting go – of all those things that prevent us from being fully present to or building honest relationships with ourselves, our neighbors, and our God. So in that moment, I decided to let go of what may happen to my hair and I engaged in conversation with the woman, learning all about her life and her hopes for starting her own salon one day to support her family. It was a difficult and honestly stressful morning, but I did learn something from the experience. And all ended well – the “professor” went around at the end and fixed everybody’s hair. Another interesting day at the office…

Love and miss you all,

Colleen

La herencia de los vulnerables

Hi friends!

Abrazos from Ecuador! This blog post will end up being all over the place, but I hope to share a few activities and prevalent themes of our last few weeks work.

First, Mount Sinai made the news! Two all-star Hogar de Cristo volunteers from Spain and Chile presented their two-year collaborative project entitled “La herencia de los vulnerables” (The inheritance of the vulnerables). They first presented this to the presidents of the eight community groups in Mount Sinai one night in the neighborhood. Then Ecuavisa, a national and international television program, came to Mount Sinai to film interviews of the community leaders’ opinions and needs and take footage of the dire state of some sectors. The main topics covered were the legalization of land, quality of life, informal work, education, and the natural risks during the rainy season. This concluded with a book launching this past week at La Universidad Catolica de Guayaquil where the volunteers published their findings and presented it to a few government officials. Not only was it amazing to accompany the community and Hogar de Cristo throughout this exciting time, but the nerd in me LOVED all the presentations – I learned a lot!

A few people throughout the week told us what a big deal this publicity was. The only times Mount Sinai makes the news is for a murder or crime that occurs – and therefore the only perception most other Ecuadorians have of Mt Sinai is as a dangerous place to never visit. Never has there been a news crew here to film the actual state of poverty. To actually recognize the humanity of the people living here. It was an inspiring and humbling experience to see both the excitement and nerves the people of Mount Sinai had before going on camera (Mike and I gave out many hugs and high fives before and after). It had me questioning how often anybody actually asks them themselves what their needs are or their daily life is like.

El Universo, a newspaper, also published an article. (http://www.eluniverso.com/2012/09/04/1/1445/monte-sinai-vive-condiciones-vulnerabilidad.html). For you non-Spanish speakers, try popping it into Google translate to at least get the gist of it.

One of my other jobs here is as the Rostro de Cristo accountant. While I have never even taken an accounting class, I’m excited to learn. This past week I had my first closing of all August cash and expenses. I’ve clearly already adjusted to “Ecuatime” because I began going through the receipts around 7pm Thursday night when they were due 7am on Friday morning – as you all know, I am not typically the procrastinating type. I was bummed that I had to miss out on part of the volunteer dinner with the Santa Clara group in country and was dreading what looked like a couple hours of work after a long day of working. Literally as I pulled the first receipt out of the envelope, the power went out (happens often and at random times). All I could do in that moment was laugh and say “God does have a sense of humor.” So I accounted by candle light and entered the info into a little notebook. This was just another moment of needing to take a step back, recognize that most everything is out of our control in this year, and all I can really do is accept that and adjust. Ecuador continues to humble me – everyday things I’ve always taken for granted like consistent electricity or access to a computer is no longer a given. This small moment reminded me of a quotation from the book I just finished Gracias! By Henry Nouwen, an account of his 6 month stay as a Maryknoll missioner in Peru (highly recommend the book as well):

“All the functions of life, which previously hardly required attention, are complicated and time consuming operations here: washing, cooking, writing, cleaning, and so on. The winds cover everything with this layers of dust, water has to be hauled up in buckets from below and boiled to be drinkable, there is seldom a moment of privacy with kids walking in and out all the time, and thousands of loud sounds make silence a far away dream…Living here not only makes me aware that I have never been poor, but also that my whole way of being, thinking, feeling, and acting is molded by a culture radically different from the one that I live in now. I am surrounded by so many safety systems that I would not be allowed to become truly poor…I am not poor as my neighbors are. I will never be and will not ever be allowed to be by those who sent me here. I have to accept my own history and live out my vocation, without denying that history.”

Additionally, in accordance with reading the book Gracias!, I have been thinking a lot about gratitude and humility in these past weeks. I come from a place of privilege in a number of ways (health, economic stability, education, etc etc) and I’ve been thinking a lot about how I can humbly enter into this community and accompany through my work at Hogar de Cristo with gratitude. Last week during our spirituality night we reflected on a bible passage that for me really connected on this theme: “When he looked up he saw some wealthy people putting their offerings into the treasury and he noticed a poor widow putting in two small coins. He said, ‘I tell you truly, this poor widow put in more than all the rest; for those others have all made offerings from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has offered her whole livelihood’” (Luke 21:1-4)

This passage is so clearly evident in our everyday life here. People are constantly giving to us from a place of poverty. Even though they may be making it by day to day in terms of money, they will ALWAYS feed us a plate of food if we are visiting, and usually give us the largest plate. From their place of poverty, they not only offer us their endless hospitality and love, but what little they have to eat as well. Upon hearing this passage, I began reflecting on how I, as a volunteer, can give from my own places of poverty within myself as well. Not just participating in the community in the ways that come most easy, like joining into a soccer game with kids or cooking with the mothers, but giving in even those manners that are difficult or uncomfortable for me.

To wrap this up I’ll just list a few other things we’ve been up to: There are three Ecuadorian Jesuit novitiates working in our office at Hogar de Cristo for this month. Mike and I have had fun getting to know them and we have been working with them to run after school extra help in the neighborhoods (it’s nice to speak English for a bit as we help with English homework!). I’ve also been accompanying another volunteer who is giving a three-part workshop series on intra-family violence to groups of women in the community. Our first US retreat group from Santa Clara University was here for a week staying in Duran – we had a great day in Sinai with them introducing them to neighbors and our parish life. I’ve become the resident baker – we have been baking banana breads for birthdays and celebrations. Ecuadorians have never had it, but love it and call it “pan de gringo”. I’m also slowly learning how to cook like an Ecuadorian – our neighbors love to share recipes and cooking tips – we are all going to a neighbor’s home tomorrow for lunch to cook and eat Yapingacho (spelling? haha). There’s so so much more to share, but all’s good in Ecuador.

Love and miss you all!
Colleen

Photo Blog

Hi Friends,

All is well in Ecuador. Things have slowly picked up as we get into our routines and continue to meet new neighbors and friends. As a result, I haven´t had time to sit down and write a blog post, and thought instead I would share a few photos from our first month here in Ecuador....

The decision...

Orientation - the whole RdC/JVC crew

First dinner in our new home

First time swimming in the Pacific Ocean! (Day at Las Playas with all volunteers)

Visiting Grego´s family in Nobol

St. Narcisa de Jesus

Dinner with Padre John

Mt Sinai at night

Iguana Park

Maleconn lighthouse (Guayaquil)

Guayaquil at night - view from lighthouse

ALL PHOTO CREDIT TO MIKE - City of Guayaquil

 

Mt Sinai

Mt Sinai

Mt Sinai