a busy week

It's been an eventful week. A group of Canadians (many from my home church, Forestview) has come, worked hard, seen and experienced and learned a lot, and gone. And I have a new "grandchild".

Better start at the beginning.

Last Saturday night I, along with a number of folks from Bastion, went off to the airport to meet 17 people arriving from Canada. I went to see all of them, the Bastion people were going for really only one person - Tim Horne, back for a visit after more than a year. For them, the rest of the group was incidental! Getting there was a long awaited adventure for me - I had my first ever ride in the back of a pickup truck, a popular method of transportation here. We were having trouble getting the right bus, and the next thing I knew, to my delight, they rounded up a "camionetta", in we all piled and off to the airport. It was great, I can`t tell you how much fun I had - I grinned foolishly the entire trip! And the view is so much better from back there!

When we got there we entertained ourselves while we waited with a massage chair, nobody can laugh at themselves and have fun like these Ecuadorian friends of mine!

After a long wait, with the Ecuadorians looking at every "gringo" that came out and asking me if it was anybody I knew, our group emerged, and finally, Tim, who was greeted with Antonietta blowing a whistle and all the Bastion people popping all the balloons we had blown up while we waited. It was showstopping!!

It was a good week for the group, only a week, didn't seem very long, but it was a full week. The group from Forestview were billeted in homes in Bastion, half in Block 6, where they spent Monday and Tuesday painting the outside of the school, and the other half in Block 10, where they worked on some improvements to the church. An amazing amount of work got done in those 2 days, and it was a great experience for them all to work alongside the Ecuadorians, live with them, and get to know the community a bit, and most important, make some new friends. Also part of the team were people who have been sponsoring kids at the school, and they were able to go and meet their child in his/her home. Then on Wednesday morning everybody headed to camp with the grade 5 and 6 classes from the school, and some of the graduates from last year. Everybody packed themselves, their belongings, and supplies onto 2 buses, and left - without me. I was supposed to go with them, but that's where the other bit of excitement comes in.

Mitzi, the pregnant girl I've been helping, finally went into labour during Tuesday night, and I got a phone call at 6:45 from her mother to say they were at the hospital. So I thought quickly, carted my bags down to be sent on the bus with everybody, then jumped into a taxi and went to the hospital. Where I found her mother waiting, outside the area where the operating and delivery rooms are. Nobody is allowed in, NOBODY!! I tried, but no way!! So we just had to wait, having no idea what was happening, until at 8, a nurse came to a window and called "Cobos family". Yes, that's us!! She wanted the baby clothes that you have to bring to the hospital with you. Does this mean we have a baby? "yes" Well what is it and is everything fine?? "a boy, and everything is fine". Goodness, just like decades ago. In due course she brought the baby to the window to show us briefly, and then told us that we would just have to wait for 2 hours before Mitzi and baby would be transferred out to a room. So then I just had time to jump into a taxi and get to the buses so I could tell Erika and Linder, Mitzi's siblings who were going to camp, that they had a new nephew. Then I went back to the hospital to wait to make sure all was indeed well, and took my camera so I could take a picture of the baby to show to his aunt and uncle. Had to wait a long time, much more than the 2 hours they had told us, but finally out they came, I got my pictures and got on my way to camp by public bus, got there mid-afternoon. (I'm calling this baby my other "grandchild" because one day when I was bemoaning the fact that I would be so far away when my first grandchild would be born in Canada, Mitzi said that I could be a grandma to her baby in the meantime.)

Camp was a happy time, 45 children and assorted leaders and cooks and Canadians. The days were relaxed, not nearly as scheduled as the camps in March, and everybody had fun. The Canadians did really well, getting involved with the kids and adults, forming bonds, some of which will last a long time.

It was cold at the coast, which I found very strange, the only feeling I've ever had out there is hot, hotter and occasionally less hot, but never cold. Two of the three days were gray and windy, and one afternoon I got so cold after our beach time that I went back and made myself some tea, just to warm up. Weird!! Admittedly, I was colder that all the other Canadians, I seem to have acclimatized to the heat somewhat. But we did have one glorious sunny day, it was a perfect beach afternoon, and everyone made the most of it and enjoyed it thoroughly. It still never fails to give me a charge to see those kids playing on that beach, being children and doing what children are supposed to do: digging in the sand, playing in the waves, catching little crabs, bigger kids and adults playing soccer. I love to see it. That camp is such a blessing for so many.

There were times of singing, workshop times, devotions, crafts that the Canadians brought, and times to just hang out. Lots of wonderful Ecuadorian food, including 2 meals that involved fresh chicken. VERY fresh chicken, straight from the hen house at the Horsts' house. These chickens arrived alive and squawking, and to my horror were dispatched right there in the kitchen sink, with a kitchen knife!!! Oh dear, I guess I'm still North American, I like my chicken to come dead and featherless and wrapped in plastic!!

We came back to Guayaquil yesterday, with a bug of some sort, which was passing through the group one by one. By this morning, 3 had had nasty bouts of sickness (I'll spare you the details!) and 2 others were feeling a little queasy. We saw them off and prayed that they wouldn't get any sicker or any more of them, because having what they had on a plane really would not be any fun at all!!

And now a new week starts tomorrow. I hardly even dare wonder what it will bring.....maybe a nice boring uneventful week? We'll see.

link to photos:

http://picasaweb.google.ca/heathermoore21/CanadianGroupJuly2008?authkey=l35fbLCovTE

hospitals, lines, shakes

I probably shouldn't have asked in my last blog "whatever next", because i got my answer on Thursday night. I woke from a dead sleep to a rumbling noise and my bed being shaken back and forth rather vigorously. It didn't take me long to work it out - an earthquake. It lasted just long enough and was strong enough to get scary and make me wonder if I ought to make a move, and then it all settled down, although it took me some time to settle down again! Apparently Ecuador is on a fault line, and these are fairly regular happenings. I went onto the Guayaquil newspaper website to see what I could find out, and it was a 5.2, which seems a fair little shakeup to me! 2 houses in Guayaquil were destroyed, both squatter type dwellings, made of bamboo. When you look at some of those places and where they are built, hanging onto hillsides by their fingernails, it's a wonder more of them didn't fall down.
At this end of the last 2 weeks it feels as though I have spent most of them in hospitals, in fact it has been big parts of every weekday but one. I have got to know 3 of the Guayaquil hospitals quite well! But will I ever figure out the system, or even if there is one?? The big project was getting a test done for Narcisa, our lady who has the heart problem. When we were finally able to get her to see a surgeon, he wanted her to have a cardiac catheterization done, so we would know if she even is a good candidate for surgery, or if the damage was too advanced. This would be a simple enough process in Canada, but a whole different story here. She was admitted to one hospital, and the test done in another. And organizing that took an astonishing amount of time, and patience, and tolerance!! And many trips back and forth between the hospitals, and many people to talk to and many lines to stand in and bits of paper to be signed. It took 4 half days for Nikki and I to get it all in place, with Narcisa in the hospital all the while. A word about the hospital she was in: A very old place, I think someone said it's a heritage building! It is something from another age, big old place, built around a central courtyard, which was actually very nice. But then you go into the wards, which are the oldfashioned wards from 100 years ago, beds all lined up along both sides. As basic as you can get, this is the hospital for the poor. Men and women on the same ward, different ends, but no real dividers. NO curtains to pull around the beds to give privacy, no tracks even, there never have been curtains. Patients provide their own drinking water, toilet paper, even their own dishes, which they wash themselves after each meal and keep by the bedside. And the signs on the walls - Don't sit on the beds, Don't throw garbage on the floor, and my personal favourite - Don't spit on the floor!
All was accomplished eventually, and on Tuesday morning I was at that hospital at 7, rounded up 2 porters, a wheelchair, a nurse and an ambulance, put the patient together with all of the above, and waited for the doctor who was to come along to show up, an hour late! And finally off we went, me in the back of the decrepit ambulance with all kinds of new friends I made while we waited. Then of course we had to wait for a very long time at hospital #2, because we were late, and the doctor had got himself occupied with other affairs. But in due course it was done, I only had to make 3 trips out to get DVD's that they needed that nobody had told me about, then go and pay for bloodwork they did during the procedure! Then finally done, and back to hospital #1, siren going! All in all, an experience. And I have left lots out.
The good news of all that was that the damage to her heart is less than they had thought, so she is able to have surgery. Sort of a good news, bad news story. Good that she is eligible for the surgery she needs to repair that heart defect, but when I think about what will be involved in getting that done...oh dear! And I have a bit of a misgiving at having something like open heart surgery done in that hospital.
Thursday and Friday mornings were spent with someone else needing attention, we went to the nearby hospital, which does have a system of sorts, but involves waiting in numerous disorganized lines, for every step of the process, and there are many. By the time I emerged at the end of friday morning, my patience had worn very thin. I think this is the hardest part of my job here, the hospitals, the lines, and waiting and waiting. I went home feeling frazzled and exhausted.
But then in the afternoon I went to Bastion, made a couple of housecalls, then went and visited with Graciela, the wife of the man who had the leg ulcer. I don't get to see them anymore, now that the ulcer is all healed up, so I went just to visit and catch up. And got such a welcome, and had a great visit. Then went to pick up my nicely sharpened machete (well, I have banana trees to deal with!) from Felipe, and stayed for awhile, sat on a stool in his shoemaker shop, chatted, watched him repair a pair of shoes that most of us would have thrown out long ago, and watched the world go by his place on the main street - most of Bastion does go by sooner or later. And he knows them all.
And so 2 hours later, I went home feeling restored and at peace again. That's the good part of my job, getting to spend time in Bastion, with old and new friends. I am so blessed by knowing these people.
An update on Michelle, the little girl with leukemia: we had a call from her dad this week, saying she is doing much better than she was, tolerating the chemo and in good spirits. Good news.

whatever next??

There has been a more or less steady stream of creatures in and around my house since I arrived. You read all about the rats (I'm happy to report that they have not reappeared - yet?). But there have been lesser critters coming in and trying to join me in my home - big fat slugs in the rainy season (never go around barefoot!), little centipedes motoring along on their many tiny legs, "grillos" - rather large crickets that come in under the doors at night, harmless, but very loud if they get into a hiding place and start to sing in search of a mate, and unnerving when they suddenly fly up at you. And there is always the occasional biggish cockroach to be dealt with, that's where flipflops are indispensable! The permanent residents who are allowed to stay are the geckos, little rubbery lizards who travel around on the walls making a living eating bugs, including mosquitoes. And out in the backyard assorted wildlife comes and goes: a big toad who lives back there, making himself useful I hope, little wrens, 2 little doves with a nest, the occasional hummingbird, giant dragonflies, once a beautiful blue butterfly.

But the other day I had 2 completely unexpected guests. I got up in the morning, opened the back door as I always do, and looked out. And heard some scuffling noises. Looked again, and there scratching about under the banana tree as though they'd always been there doing exactly that were 2 half grown chickens!! I couldn't believe my eyes. My yard is completely walled, by very high walls. I had to look again, just to make sure, but yes, those were chickens alright. Great, now what?? All my friends in Bastion would have said, Keep them of course! Chickens from heaven, think eggs, think soup, think "seco de pollo" a local chicken dish, or even KFC!! But I don't want chickens in my backyard, I haven't become quite Ecuadorian enough for that yet. So I got busy, opened the back gate, got a broom and directed them to the exit. One obligingly used it right away and hasn't been seen since, and the second one came close, but at the last second veered back in. And so began the chase round and round my little yard. After awhile Katelyn, my current housemate, woke up and came to help. She had once had a job on a turkey farm and said that she could catch it. But first you have to get near it, and that chicken was not about to let anyone near it! So we chased, dodging around the banana tree, flushing it out from under the play house, and behind the ficus tree. If anybody could have seen these 2 women chasing this beast around, in their jammies...! Finally he perched for a minute, and in a flash Katelyn reached around, grabbed him by his legs and ran out the gate. And I will always treasure the mental picture I have of her, outside on the pathway that connects these houses, clutching that chicken upsidedown, trying to decide which way to run with it. And then heading off out of sight to let it go far from my gate. I nearly did myself an injury laughing.

How did they get in? I had no idea, until I finally sat down outside with my coffee to recover, and heard chicken noises. And way up there, on top of the back wall, was another half grown chicken, eyeing my yard from above. Oh no you don't, I said, and shook the banana tree at it and it flew off. Thus solving the mystery as to how they arrived.

is it summer now?

As hard as it is for me to get my head around this fact, being so far removed from everything that would usually remind me of the time of year - it is in fact July now! I'm missing all my usual signals that tell me that summer has arrived: kids finishing school, the Sound of Music festival in Burlington, the Forestview carnival, barbeques, Ontario strawberries (can you hear the agony in those last 2?!), and of course Canada Day.

But I did know that it was July 1st, and in case I forgot, Felipe sent all of us Canadians a text message first thing in the morning wishing us a happy one. And I (rather patriotically, I thought) hung my Canadian flag out on my front door. Later in the morning, we Canadians were talking about it and wondering what kind of Canada day thing we might be doing if we were at home. Barbeque? Oh yes......(again, hear the pain), a barbeque! So we decided to have our own little party that night, with hamburgers and chips and salad, and not a grain of rice in sight! The burgers had to be cooked on a baking sheet in the oven, not quite the same flavour as on good old BBQ, but we did have real Canadian cheddar cheese to put on top! And Nikki made a strawberry dessert, not Ontario strawberries, but hey, what can you do? We attached all the necessary extension cords involved in plugging in the white lights around the picnic table, tried to ignore the blinking that they now do (just added to the festive atmosphere!) And we had ourselves a Canada Day party in Ecuador. And I tried not to cry over the missing fireworks (those of you who know me well know my fondness for fireworks!).And now today is that other big July celebration for that other country up there! And can you believe it, there is an awareness of it here! More than an awareness it seems, we were in the mall yesterday and the window of the party store was full of stars and stripes stuff - flags, hats, cake decorations! And tonight there is another free symphony concert in honour of the 4th of July. Why, I wonder?? But I'm just accepting the fact, and the free concert, and looking forward to that.

But maybe we need to do some awareness raising for Canada. And try for fireworks next year?!