onzole continued

So to continue the story...although I´m at an internet cafe using an uncooperative keyboard again, so we´ll see how it goes.

So after 2 1/2 hours we rounded a bend in the river and I got my first glimpse of the village of Santo Domingo, high up on the riverbank above us. As we pulled in onto the sand, the bank above us exploded into action, with children pouring out of everywhere and down to meet us. Talk about a welcome!
This village was settled originally by black slaves from Africa, brought over by the Spanish conquistadors. When they either escaped or were freed, they settled all along the river in that area of Ecuador, and the people in these communities look as though they just got off a ship from Africa. A mission in Quito has been involved with this village for some years, and that´s how our connection has come about. A group of Canadians built a big mission house there 3 years ago, and that´s where we stayed. Basic but adequate. No running water, no electricity in the whole village, including our house, so it was a little like camping. I shared a room with an Ecuadorian missionary who lives there full time, a lovely girl called Yadira. I had met her in other years at camp.
And so I found myself in a completely different world, a world that felt very far removed from any I have ever known. It felt so unreal to me, felt like I was watching a National Geographic program, but I wasn´t, I was actually in this world, living in it and sharing a bit of it with those people. A world of mostly small bamboo houses, more like shacks, most of them. The women´s lives seeem to revolve around a porch outside, where I saw a lot of daily life happening - washing dishes in large pans of river water, food preparation, bathing of small children, brushing of teeth, washing clothes (although that also happened down at the river´s edge, I found a couple of laundromats down there one day). Water is carried up a very steep bank from the river, and they also collect rain water for drinking. The only means of transportation into or out of the village is canoe, made from a huge log dug out and shaped by hand. I saw one being made over the course of 2 days, and talked to the guy making it. He would be taking it into the town of Borbon to sell, and will only get $100 for it. A little different to the boats Anthony makes, 2 years and a LOT more money!
A lot of the people earn money from little "fincas", farms that are all along the bank of the river. We visited one on Friday,and it´s not an easy way to farm, they are up those steep river banks. They grow cacao (for chocolate), plantain, bananas and some of them have cows as well.
The purpose of the trip for our group was a construction project. Originally to have been some work on the school, but it was closed in September due to a lack of funds needed to run it. More on that later. So instead the team was asked to expand the little church. Over 3 days it was extended out by 6 meters, and a second story added to one half to house a new library. Those guys worked at an incredible rate,and in some amazing heat a couple of days, and got the job done.
I wasn´t part of that work, and had gone at the last minute with no real job there for me, but I helped out in the kitchen with food preparation, and found myself a patient or 2. On Monday, a young guy came to me in the street - "Doctora" - and showed me his hand. He had cut it quite badly 8 days previous on a motor, and it had been sutured (I don´t know where), the stitches were still in, and it was very swollen, and hot. Oh great - infected. Now what do I do? So I told him to come and see me at the house, and I took out the stitches, cleaned it, and dressed it, pretty certain that it would open. Lacking any better ideas or antibiotics, I gave him a course of Cipro I had and told him to come back the next day. Sure enough it opened and was draining, so for the next few days I looked after it, and by Thursday I wasn´t feeling very good about it. But I had no other options, so kept up my program of cleaning and dressing it. And then when I looked at it on Friday for one last time before we left, WOW - it was dramatically improved. Wound closed, swelling down, and looking good. So I left feeling much happier. His name is Nixon, 17 years old,and he will be coming to camp at the end of March. A really nice young guy.
Enough for now, more another time.

see the link below for photos
http://picasaweb.google.com/heathermoore21/OnzoleJungleTrip