Dan McIver: Musings on Ecuador 2009
March 26, 2009 by Chris Fane · Leave a Comment
I recently returned from a Life Change Adventures trip to Ecuador. Half of the team spent the week volunteering at a children’s camp in Playas, while our half was involved with construction and painting work on the school in the jungle village of Onzole.
Living in Onzole are 500 descendants of African slaves whose ship crashed on the shore of Ecuador many generations ago. There is no running water or indoor plumbing. Showers are just a bucket of rain water and toilets a bucket of water poured in for the gravity flush. We spent the week sleeping on Thermarests on the concrete floor. After the 35 hours of transit from my home, the accommodations almost felt comfortable.
How do you describe an experience that stretched you physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually? An experience that required your very best effort and still seemed to be asking for more? Perhaps the best way is to break it down and provide just a few highlights in each area. It doesn’t come close to doing it justice, but it’s a start.
Physically
Going into this trip I was feeling pretty good about my fitness and strength. In September, I joined the YMCA and had access to a personal trainer once a week. I knew that rebuilding a school in Ecuador would be physically demanding. Swinging a pick axe (when the sun was beating down on me I could only do about 10 swings before needing a break!) and mixing concrete with shovels all day pushed my back to the limit. What I didn’t know was that I would see seventy year old men with abs of steel and muscles to match in this tiny village. Hard physical work on the land around their homes and a diet of rice, plantain, and fish gave them incredible physiques.
Mentally
I spent most of the trip wishing my limited Spanish vocabulary was more robust. On two occasions, a small group of us were invited into the home of one of the teachers to share dinner with them. We had a few gifts for the family and I was trying to figure out how to explain it to them and express my gratitude. All I could manage in my tired stupor was to say “familia” over and over again as I placed the gifts on the table.
Socially
One of our students on the trip, a recent graduate from Queens, remarked that we have a big personal space bubble in North America. We can find ourselves uncomfortable just sitting on the same park bench as someone else. While in church on our first day, a few of the kids slipped under the bench and sat beside me. At one point, I felt a prickling sensation in my left shoulder, only to discover one of the little boys pulling my shoulder hair! This progressed to include my underarm hair as well, and over the course of the week I had kids poking my innie belly button (another novelty) and rubbing my chest to see if there was any skin beneath the hair on my chest. Talk about having your personal space invaded!
Spiritually
My role on the trip was to work alongside Nikki Horne (who can usually be found running the sponsorship program for the school in Bastion) to help the participants in this trip learn from their experience and to make spiritual/life applications. We were there to make sure that this wasn’t just a cool trip to help some people, but a life changing experience for all. We wanted to help them figure out how to apply what they had learned here to their situations back home. We sought to come alongside the participants personally, to get to know them and help them process what they were experiencing.
To Sum up
We mixed and poured a lot of concrete to fix the school foundation, built huge dividers for the classrooms, painted others, and parged walls. We worked with the people to fix up a school that was falling apart and didn’t have the funding to continue. Life Change Adventures, along with Nikki Horne and Dale Horst, will be continuing this work with the next group to put on a tin roof and finish what we started. They have made a commitment to see the school completed and to decide with the community what the priorities are in terms of health care, water systems, education, and work skills.
Just before we left one of the mothers stood up, and shared the following with us through a translator:
“What you have done for us is bigger than huge. It is enormous. We are an isolated community and the government has forgotten us. But you Canadians have remembered us. As you go away please, please, please, please don’t forget us.”
Those words are a little haunting to me as I return home to the busyness of my life. I am glad to say that Life Change Adventures has made an ongoing commitment to the community, and who knows maybe I will return someday to help further their efforts.
Thanks for being part of the community of support we so desperately need around us. We can do so little alone.
Sincerely,
Dan