Café Mundo : September 10, 2003

STU-DENTS IN THE HEART OF THE EARTH

Matthew Carpenter : September 10, 2003

Alumnus Matthew Carpenter recounts the Human Rights Society's 20 day venture through Ecuador's Andes.

"Don't look down". These are the only words of reassurance the guides can offer as our oversized bus, filled with 10 New Brunswickers, 4 Americans and 20-odd Ecuadorians, creeps and climbs its way up the side of the mountain on this one-lane dirt road. A glace out the window reveals a few inches between the bus's tires and a couple-thousand-foot drop.

We arrive two hours later, sweaty and excited from chancing death in the early morning, and are greeted by our host families and their mules. It is here the road stops and the only way to San Miguelito, our final destination, is a two hour hike through the heart of the ageless Andean mountains.

After the long hike through the trodden paths of the Andes we arrived at the school to divide into our groups. The children ran to our feet to shake our hands and extend a well rehearsed Buenas Tardes. For many of the children it was the first time ever seeing gringos, let alone the red hair and freckles of Hugh and Butch.

6 months before, me and my partner Michelle, an Ecuadorian who studies at STU, decided to organize an entourage of New Brunswick students to go into the depths of the middle of the earth to supply labour and material for a community in need of bathrooms. Working with Reed College in Oregon, the Catholic University of Ecuador and the community's local diocese, we managed to raise enough funds to purchase the supplies, rations and pay our transportation around Ecuador.

We set off on July 15th without really knowing what to expect. The community of San Miguelito, population 50, rests in quietude between layers of clouds. The population divides into 12 families who all live within a 45-minute/hour walking distance of one another. They have no electricity nor medical services and the educational system consists of a one-room school house where the 15 students study under a teacher who commutes in and out of the forest.

The purpose of our trip was to construct tiny bathrooms consisting of a toilet, sink and shower. The 2 x 6 x 6 brick structures drain through a series of underground pipes into a three metre deep septic hole. Working in groups of 5 which normally consisted of two gringos, two Ecuadorian students, and an Ecuadorian engineering student, each group was responsible for the construction of two bathrooms. The only tools we were equipped with were a shovel, a machete, two spades and a level. With these we would mix cement, lay bricks, install the accessories and dig the septic hole. Our days began at six when the sun came up and ended at six when the sun went down. After dinner and a bonfire everyone trickled off to bed around 9 o'clock.

The first bathroom I was assigned to was located in downtown San Miguelito, meaning right next to the school and a ½ hour from the closest neighbour. We pitched our tents next to the house owned by Don and Doña (spanish terms of respect) Carlos and Carmen and their five children.

The first thing to strike me about our new residence was the kitchen. As part of the agreement all of the host families prepared the meals from the rations we brought with us to last the 20 days. In her small 8 x 8 kitchen made of boards to sit on, three metal pots for cooking and the two metal rods and firewood which acted as a stove, Doña Carmen magically mixed up empanadas, rice, fresh cut freedom fries, crepes, eggs and chicken. (I should mention, one really hasn't tasted pollo until one has killed it with her own hands, plucked the feathers and separated the meat while breast feeding).

Despite our best efforts to boil and filter all of our agua, I became the first gringo to fall victim to the infirmity caused by the bacteria from the water. Doña Carmen, being an expert in herbal medicine, convinced me in my feverish state that her tea made up of unidentified plants and cow dung would flush my system and help me to avoid further complications. I trusted the sincerity of her face and confided in the knowledge she and her people had acquired after living so long in dependence of nature.

She was right! After finishing the last gulp of the magical mystery tea I immediately high-tailed it out of my tent and emptied the remainder of what was left in my stomach. Although this may not sound too appetizing, it helped me avoid what Hugh Donovan would later term as "the two-gate flood", a condition which many of my travel mates had the unfortunate luck to experience.

After 36 hours my stomach returned to digesting, I became as regular as I would be for the rest of the trip (not very regular), and my spirits were lifted from the progress made on the bathrooms during my absentia.

When we finished the bathroom, Don Carlos cried the first time the tap was turned and water gushed out from his newly installed sink. He told us that more than anything, he was touched people from as far away as Canada would be thinking about him and his family when so many Ecuadorians knew not of their humble existence on the outskirts of everything. As it turns out, things weren't going too well and not everyone was enjoying what to me was the ultimate camping trip.

Many in the group were discouraged by temporary illness, the physical demand of the labour, a lack of cohesion in some groups and the repetitive diet of tuna and rice. Having lost two members of our Canadian delegation, one to illness and one to an incapacity for the conditions, many were complaining and a lot of negative focus was being placed on the conditions rather than the accomplishments. We agreed to take a one day vacation to the closest city so the gringos could taste beer, ice cream and all of the other frivolities life in the mountains didn't offer. We returned fresh and ready to work in our new groups at our new locations.

Construction of the second baños was much more fluid as we all had the working knowledge of the first and the groups were composed with more attention paid to personality types. We finished in half the time it took for the first round and we all returned to the school to prepare for the communities festival in our honour.

The owner of the second house where I was stationed was Doña Rojelia Alajo (pronounced row-hey- lee-ah a-lah-ho). Doña Rojelia was a proud 34 year old single mother of 11 children, 7 boys and 4 girls. Her oldest boy was 20 and her youngest 5 months. Once of an age where one could walk and talk, each child was responsible for looking after those below him. In this way, Doña Rojelia and her two oldest children looked after feeding each meal to all 17 of us while the children played and helped each other with homework.

It's hard for me to write about the experience of the group because each individual came with different expectations and left with a different impression. If one went to Ecuador with the expectation of drinking cheap beer and being lazy on a beach, a stay in San Miguelito wouldn't be very fruitful. On the other hand, the opportunity to know these people, participate in their daily lives and share in their culture taught us a lot about what we really "need" to survive. Many of us left the mountains convinced the luxuries which separate our lives from theirs actually deter our overall feeling of content.

The great hockey scholar and obnoxious Canadian icon, Don Cherry, once said of his philanthropy that charity isn't charity if one talks about it. Having said this, I have no bones in writing an article about this trip because what we did was not charity, rather an interchange of hope. These people invited us into their homes and from the moment we arrived they never stopped giving, even though they had so few material possessions. They introduced us to a different way of life by teaching us about a planned economy based on nurturing nature rather than destroying it. They put faces, personalities and familiar hearts to the figures and facts used by those of us who study the evolvement of the world. Most importantly, they humbled us with their conceptions of time, money, wealth and possession.

It might not be our society's classic conception of a vacation, but really, why else do we go away? What is the point of going somewhere new only to have never left your comfort zone?