A Whole New World (Every turn a surprise!)

Tyler is receiving his cast for the hairline fracture of his wrist.

Small note: since the last time we wrote, we found out that Tyler did get a hairline fracture in his wrist. So if you see him with a cast in some of the pictures, don’t worry, it comes off soon, the doctor just wanted to be extra safe :)

Also, since Tyler insists that I be thorough with an accounting of our travels, we have also visited Mitad del Mundo and Otavalo on weekend trips. I might blog about them in the future, but in the meantime, pictures are attached to this post :)

You know that moment when Aladdin takes Jasmine on the very first carpet ride, and they’re singing from about a thousand feet up in the air as they look down on the city below?

First off, having dealt with some serious altitude change recently, I can tell you that that is completely unrealistic. They would have been gasping for air, not singing at the top of their lungs.

Just saying.

Second, I imagine it being something like thinking you’re working with a two-dimensional square and then realizing it’s actually a cube, in three dimensions, and there’s a whole other dimension that you didn’t see before. Jasmine must have been astonished to see the comfortable world she knew, her palace, from a completely different perspective. I wonder if it changed how she saw things after returning to solid ground.

Looking down on the Quito valley from atop the TeleferiQo, roughly 13,000 feet.

I thought I knew Quito: we’ve become familiar with the sights (houses, statue of Virgin Mary, hills, mountains, clouds), the sounds (the natural gas trucks honking their way through the streets, the buses braking loudly when a taxi cuts in front of them), and the smells (bus exhaust, hot tasty food, unwashed stray dog, fresh baked goods, more bus exhaust fumes) of the city all around us. I’ve come to love the sight of the mists curling around the hillsides in the afternoons, and craning my neck on clear days, hoping for a sight of the massive snowy Cotopaxi in the far distance. But lately that ‘it’s-a-cube-not-a-square’ feeling has been hanging around just out of sight, and whacking me in the face every chance it gets.

For instance: We went to La Ronda last Friday night. It’s a quiet little street in historic central Quito most of the time, where they told us families and tourists can go on weeknights or weekends to see fun things, visit the shops, and generally have a good time. We had been on weeknights before, and the shops are all fairly typical tourist shops, especially the Republica del Cacao shop where you can try different types of chocolate before paying astronomical prices for a few bars.

You never know what you are going to find in Quito...

But on the weekend, apparently, it comes to life. Street vendors have their wares laid out on the ground for passing pedestrians; magicians perform at the corners; Jack Sparrow, Iron Man, and Batman all wander up and down the streets, posing for pictures if you pay them a dollar. (Tyler got a picture with Jack Sparrow because he looked SO REAL!). Restaurants, tiny and exquisitely Ecuadorian, are jumbled together with bars like you would find anywhere. The upstairs rooms are lit and flashing, either for karaoke or dancing or both, along with large quantities of Pilsener beer, which seems to be the beer of choice down here. The restaurant hosts stand outside, hoping to entice potential customers with their menu or their smiles or by simply being the first person to invite you to eat. We sat in a tiny little bar and drank alcohol-free, house-made canelazo, which, for you unfortunates who have never tasted it, tastes almost like liquid caramel, but with just enough citrus flavor that it’s not too sweet. If I knew where to find naranjilla at home we would make it, but having never heard of it before we came, I’m not sure it’s available in the states. We pushed our way through the crowds, avoided the street vendors who tried to sell us anything from alpaca hats to little whizzy toys that light up and zoom 45 feet up before falling down. Everywhere we looked, there was something new and dizzying.

It was a completely different side of the city we’ve come to know.

Then there was the aerial view. We went up the TeleferiQo, which takes you halfway up to the local volcano, Pichincha. From there you can hike the rest of the way, and a little ways up the hike they have horses for rent which will take you on a 45-minute tour up the mountain. Every few moments, as we stopped to look back, there was another incredible vista, a new sight to be seen. It was also, miraculously, a clear blue day, which happens about once a week this time of year, and unlike most days where all you can see is a thick fog, we were able to see the entire valley and into the next. We loved every minute of it, although at that elevation, even having been in Quito a while, we were out of breath after every 5 steps or so. Literally breathtaking, pun intended.

Yes this is a real stick of cotton candy!

The giant ball of cotton candy we bought on the way back down was very nice too :) I’ve never seen one that big…

There’s so much more to this world than most of us ever see. We go through life, taking the same steps every day, every week, with the occasional brilliant moment of clarity when we are reminded, by a clear vista or a beautiful smile, that there is more to life than simply making do. I remember reading the story of the Snow Queen as a little girl, where a young boy is infected with a shard of magic glass in his eye and heart, making him see only the defects in the world. I felt sorry for him. He couldn’t see all the beautiful things around him, and most especially he couldn’t understand that sometimes it is the flaws that make something beautiful. Quito is not a perfect city, nor is Ecuador a perfect country. But those same imperfections make the beautiful things so much clearer: the cute babies on the bus, the sweet smile from a local giving us directions, the misty mountains and the clear blue sky, and the kids on the bus telling their parents that our shows have toes. We are learning, more every day, to value the good and look beyond the bad, to ignore my fear of heights and Tyler’s dislike of change, and instead enjoy the view from 9,000 feet and up. :)

For more photos related to this post click here

A Day In El Mercado

For everyone who asked us what we’re actually doing as volunteers, this is a snapshot of our day:

First things first, the children wash hands and face before playing.

We leave the offices, carrying all of our gear, at about 8:30 every morning, and travel to a different market by bus each day. The buses are busy but not crowded, so we don’t worry too much about our lunch money as long as it’s in a deep pocket. We bring rain jackets because it will rain on our afternoon market.

The markets are busy, and as we set up our not-quite-broken little canopy tent (it was two tents before one of them broke), the children are already arriving. Some are hesitant, waiting until they see a friendly face before daring to enter. Others rush in for first hugs from anybody they can before the other children arrive. All are directed to the two basins we have set up so they can wash their hands and learn the importance of hygiene. We are in a small, unused area of the market, with the market above and around us. All morning we hear the calls of “Una libra, un dolar” and we smell everything being cooked at the open-air lunch spot right next to us.

When the children need to visit the bathroom, we take them by the hand and hold on to make sure they don’t run off, walking into the bathroom past the seated, wrinkled woman selling toilet paper and the buckets of water you have to take to put in the toilet so you can flush it. There is no soap or hand washing station in the bathroom, only huge garbage bins where you can throw away the toilet paper, because the city’s sewage system can’t handle it. The smell is not pleasant.

Then it’s away from the bathroom, children once again in hand, back to the tents, where the ‘prof’ or teacher, is leading all the kids in learning their vowels: ahhh, ehhhh, eeeee, ohhhhh, oooooo. Later we will give them all a piece of paper stamped with the vowels and help them glue letters cut from magazines onto the page, and then they’ll color the paper with broken bits of crayon.

One little girl falls asleep crying on my lap; I think it must be her first time away from Mom. I feel her pain; I miss home too, right now. Other children nestle up to me, sitting on the cement pavement, all eager for any word of approval. They show me their glued and painted pages over and over again to hear how nice, how beautiful, I love it, I’m so proud of you, look what a good job you did. Many come just to be close to a grown-up who will not push them away.

Tyler has his hands full with a small child (who might be a boy or a girl, we don't know), who one of the other volunteers warns me is always a troublemaker. The child can’t seem to decide between trying to get away, and playing with the toes on Tyler’s Vibram shoes.

I get my hands dirty on the pavement as I try to shift myself to better accommodate the weight of the silently crying child on my lap. I laugh with the other children over how I need to wash my hands, too, but I don’t dare get up. I wipe the little girl’s tears away, speaking soothing words, but even that little bit of kindness is too unfamiliar, and she begins to cry in earnest. One of the staff members notices, and carries her off to her family. The other children stare at her tears for a moment, but don’t make any moves to help. Here each child must care for himself or herself; there is not enough care to go around, even with all the volunteers have to give.

Holding hands for safety.

Now it is time to go, and we wait for parents to recover their children. The older ones can go on their own, but some are waiting in vain. We take them by the hand and begin to navigate the maze of the market, hoping to encounter a face they recognize. Some remember where their families are; others do not. All are smiling at the fun they had coloring today. Many give us hugs as they leave, and a few even show their families what they did today.

As I look at their families, I feel like I am glimpsing the future these small, bright little children will have without an education: a makeshift life selling fruit along with hundreds of other fruit-sellers, making enough to scrape by each day, and sometimes not quite enough; but always surrounded by family. Suddenly I begin to understand why family is so all-important in Latin American culture: sometimes family is all you have, and it is still enough. As long as you have family, you have everything you need.

Time for lunch for the volunteers: not the delicious-smelling food being cooked by the market vendors, but a huge, $3.00 almuerzo at a safe restaurant nearby. After lunch it’s back to the market for a few more hours, giving all the love and attention we can. I ask them what they ate for lunch: soup, they say, or rice and chicken. Some bring a piece of fruit as their lunch. We do the same activities over, and despite the fact that many were there in the morning, they still ask for my approval of this afternoon’s work: good job, it’s beautiful, I love it, I say. They all try to be as close to me as possible, and it’s hard not to just sit and snuggle them all. At 4:30, it’s time to pack up the tents and head home. We take the bus back to the office, once again carrying all our things, and from there head back home, to relax for a while before another much-anticipated dinner.

They're ready for a nap and Tyler is ready to play.

I’ve been truly humbled here. These children have so much potential, but they need so much more than we can give. They need school supplies, and help with homework, and more than anything else they need love and individual recognition. We give what we can and trust that together with the other volunteers’ efforts and the continued efforts of the program staff, it will be enough for most of them.

When one of our two tents broke down, I asked the staff if they’re going to replace it. They told me it’s simply not in the budget right now, as they are still trying to raise enough money to provide the children starting school with notebooks, pencils, erasers, and other necessary school supplies.

I know we’re all busy and we have so many things to worry about. But I want to ask you to think for a moment about the things we don’t have to worry about, like whether or not there will be enough money for a 15 cent notebook, or whether or not our loved ones will beat us for not working hard enough today (at least I hope nobody at home has to worry about that!!!). This program is taking kids from the streets and helping them to become engineers and doctors, giving them an opportunity to become more. Most of these children are the first in their families to learn how to read and write. All need help. I hope you can find it in your heart (and wallet) to help out with this program, or others like it, since I know there are needs all over the world. Here is the link where you can read about UBECI and their efforts, and help out if you can.

UBECI

Thanks!

For more photos related to this post click here