Ecuador Day 8: Our Second Day in Cerro Alto

We got up early again, but mom got up an hour earlier so she could go with Kaitlin and Beth to the beach to watch the fishermen.  Afterwards when she got back she said it wasn't as exciting as she thought it would be but she was glad she went anyway.

I made myself get out of my bed and prepared myself for another long day in the humidity and headed downstairs for breakfast by Richardo.  We put on stiff clothes that had been drying on the railing all night. This time he made pancakes as the main dish, he had made to order omelets, fruit, breads and assorted juices.

I asked mom if we had everything that we needed for the day in her back pack including some snacks because you never knew when we would break for lunch or what lunch was going to be that day.  We all piled into the vehicles and headed back to the community of Cerro Alto.

Again, there were a lot of people waiting to be seen even before we got there.  It was overwhelming because the building was not big enough for everyone so we started sending patients to be examined first by Dr. Harris and an assistant and they triaged their conditions and wrote their name and what they needed on a piece of paper.  It seemed to go better than what we were doing the past few days.

I got my sterilization area ready and got slammed after the first set of patients.  Luckily, I had Thomas bringing me buckets of instruments that needed sterilized.  You could tell after a few days of not properly drying some of the hinges started to get a little rust on them and I don't think we had any oil or lubrication with us.  

Around early afternoon I was getting hungry so I ate some of my snacks I brought and found out mom took a small break earlier with some of the other volunteers to the small convenience store down the street.  She brought back some wafer cookies and some chips.  It was fun to see the wrappers in Spanish.  She told me I could have some of her wafer cookies.

Near mid afternoon, around 2-3 p.m. everyone started taking shifts walking over to our hosts/community organizer's house.  He and his family made a homemade Ecuadorian meal for us.  This one also involved chicken or pork, with rice, veggies and plantains.  I ate my rice and chicken but I just didn't really like the plantains.  They were too chalky for me.  I'd rather eat a banana.  I understood that this community also didn't have very much money and I ate as much as I could and then gave Maritza my plantains and veggies so I didn't waste them.  This family had indoor rabbits, some chickens and dogs in the back yard.  I was pretty sure the chicken we were eating were some of the chickens that used to be in the back yard that morning.  I used their restroom, which most bathrooms in Ecuador have been horrifying, and this one wasn't pretty either.

On the way back to the community center, I reflected on how great we have it at home in the US....well some of us in the US, not everyone lives the same there either and I am thankful I came from a place where we had opportunities and resources to make our lives better.  I am very grateful I have a job, a retirement, benefits and earned days off.  Mom, Maritza and I watched dogs, pigs and a goat, who yelled at us to pay attention to him.  We laughed because these farm animals were really friendly.

When we returned it had thinned out a bit but there were still people waiting patiently for their turn.  I do have to give everyone so far who has received care from us props, some of these people have been waiting all day, ALL DAY, to see us.

It got pretty crazy after 4 because we wanted to make sure everyone got the care they needed.  I was constantly sterilizing and sending clean instruments out with Thomas to the various rooms that needed them. I either had something that didn't agree with me, too many snacks or all of it was catching up to me due to travel but I desperately NEEDED to use the restroom.  I wasn't too keen on the idea of the bathroom situation.  The bathroom was gross.  I brought my own toilet paper and some sanitizer wipes.  I wiped down the toilet as best and I could and did my business.  Basically that toilet could not hold what I had stored since I left the US on Thursday.  Since this country didn't have good enough plumbing, I had to throw away my toilet paper into the waste basket.  I panicked because it was definitely too much for the toilet to handle.  I am not going to go into detail on what I did but I eventually left the bathroom better than I found it and felt a lot better afterwards.

As the crowd of people thinned I got excited that it was almost time to go back to the hotel, take a shower and go to bed.  We worked on our last set of people while we cleaned up and put our supplies away in the bins.  I rinsed out all of our buckets, wiped down the tables and chairs and made sure we had everything put in the back of the truck to be transported back to the hotel.

When we got back to the hotel, I was still feeling blah after my bathroom episode I was afraid to eat anything.  While everyone else ate food, that Richardo prepared (seafood, pasta and salad) I sat in the lobby and ate a Cliff bar and drank water.  I used the really slow WiFi to talk to Ben for a while.  Everyone got their clothes to the laundry room and they were washed.  Myrna brought them back up and asked if she could have help hanging them over the railing.  I hoped they dried in time for our last community in the morning.

Mom was tired so she went up to our room and relaxed a bit.  I went up shortly after to get cleaned up because I had going to bed sweaty and dirty.  I am not sure what the rest of the volunteers were doing but I didn't have any energy after today especially since my cough wouldn't go away.  My bed rolled so I had to make sure it didn't move a lot while I was sleeping or I could have been stepped on if mom or Stephanie got up to use the restroom.  I used my shoes to keep the bed from rolling too much.

Around 11 p.m. I gave up and went to bed.  I wore my ear plugs and my sweatshirt again because Stephanie wanted the AC on while we slept.  I was excited that we were almost done with our volunteering so we had some time to check out some of Ecuador before we left on Monday.

Next Adventure:  Ecuador Day 9:  Volunteering in Comuna El Azucar,  the Night Life in Montanita and Beach House

Ecuador Day 7: Traveling to Santa Elena, Hotel and the Community of Cerro Alto

The night before we were told that we were going to have to get up early so we could drive to the Santa Elena providence on the western coast of Ecuador.  It was going to be a 2 hour drive and we were going to be there for 4 days and 3 nights.

That morning we got up around 6ish.  I was a little slow because I hate getting up in the morning and I still felt under the weather a bit.  It usually got worse as the day went.  Luckily we still had a bunch of the cold medicine we bought at the airport.  I washed up, got my clothes on and made sure I had all of my stuff packed in my pack.

Again, I went into the kitchen to grab a banana because I wasn't sure when we will be having breakfast.  Getting and shuffling 20+ people around is a pretty daunting chore.  We had to go into two separate groups, one group went with Felipe and his van, our hired driver for the next few days, and the other had to pay a few dollars to take a city bus to the hotel in Ballenita which was technically in La Libertad.  Mom and I made sure we got in the van to avoid a taxi and a bus fee.  Our bags and supplies went in a separate truck.

We left between 7 and 8 a.m.  We got onto the E40 freeway and headed west towards the coast.  About a half hour in I was so tired I fell asleep.  I woke up a couple times throughout the drive but quickly fell asleep.  I woke up for good about a half hour from our destination. 

This section of the Santa Elena providence was very rural and had several thousand acres of banana plantations.  It was an experience to see where some of our banana's are imported from.  Several of us, because we are not banana plantation owners, were curious to why several of the crops were covered in plastic bags.  Felipe answered our question in Spanish and Dr. Harris quickly interpreted it for us.  She told us that the bags help the bananas ripen.  Makes sense.

We finally made it to our destination around 10ish off of the E70.  We put our bags in the lobby and were told that the chef, Richardo would be making us breakfast.  I guess he went to culinary school, he spoke English and his food was pretty fancy.  We got in line and he made us an omlette to our liking...I picked cheese, green onions and ham.  I got a little bit of oatmeal, a bread, watermelon with some orange juice and a banana for later.  I sat with mom, Maritza and Dr. Harris while we ate. 

About halfway through breakfast the rest of our group arrived via bus.  They said the ride was awesome.  I guess the bus had a bathroom, reclining chairs and movies.  I don't know if they were trying to make a bad thing into something good to make us jealous or the bus actually had those things.  I will never know.

When we were done, we were told to go out to the back to start our first group of the day.  They were the community that lived directly near the hotel and there were probably around 75 or so adults and children.  I heard we were to work on them then go to another location about 10-15 miles from the hotel.  I knew this was going to be a long, humid, sweaty, tiring day.  I followed mom to where we were suppose to go.  Maritza and my mom ran the restoration station and I was close by getting ready to set up the sterilization area.

There was a periodontal/adult hygienist area, two station of kid cleanings, another restoration area and in one of the hotel rooms were the extractions...mostly for privacy and people who yelled and cried during the procedures.

My sterilization area was basically towels, bowls, buckets and a hose.  Of course my prior training with sterilization made me think of this situation as unsanitary.  This would definitely not be acceptable in the US with their standards but according to Maritza this set-up was perfectly acceptable for Ecuador as long as we had bleach.

It was a blur once we started.  I had to change out the water in my bowls a lot just because of the oral surgery happening in the room.  We had a lot of people have their teeth pulled because they were not able to be saved with the amount of decay in them.  We saw a lot more adults this round and we still had one more place to go after we were done here.  There were a few times I was told we were done and we weren't.  I had taken my station down at least twice and had to put it back together because we really weren't done.  In this situation, my improvement to the group would be to have a plan and communicate it with everyone.  We would waste less time, resources and more people could be seen.

We were here until about 2ish.  Maritza told us to actually pack up our stuff because we were being transported to the community of Cerra Alto.  Before we actually headed out that way everyone met up in the lobby and had some lunch.  Richardo had made us rice, pork/beef, salad and fruit.  

We all piled into the van and truck and headed to our next village.  The drive didn't take that long and we got to see all of the big buildings and beach houses along the coast by Punta Blanca.  I heard we were going to stay in one of the beach houses on Friday night.  When we got to our location, it was a small community center, and we were welcomed with open arms.  We got our supplies out and scouted the rooms we were going to be in.  Again, similar to the previous locations, we had a restorative room, a oral surgery room and a hygiene room.  I was with the restorative room again because they chose the room with the sink.

The place was packed with people which overwhelmed me.  How are we going to get through all of these people before bed time?  At the time, I had no idea we were going to come back tomorrow for an all day stint at this particular community, but we were.  

I was constantly sterilizing and moving around instruments.  I even had Thomas helping me move instruments to and from rooms.  They were concerned at first, they didn't want him actually touching them, so we designated a dirty bucket and a clean bucket for him to transport.  It worked pretty good since he seemed like he was bored and needed something to do.

Just after 6 p.m. we all took a break.  Some of the community members all made us tuna fish sandwiches, juice and Coke.  It was very nice of them to take the time and money to make us food.  We knew a lot of these people didn't really have that much to give.  The break came at a great time.  It was nice to sit and relax after the amount of people we went through.

We got through several other people before Myrna and Maritza decided it was time to pack up our stuff and head back to the hotel.  We packed all of our equipment up into our plastic totes and placed them aside for tomorrow since we were coming back to this location.  When we got back we were instructed to figure out room assignments and get into something to go down to the beach.  We needed to get our stuff into the washer so we could have clean clothes for tomorrow.  Plus they would have to dry over night as long as possible so they could be dry.  The process for picking rooms was complicated for some reason and my mom and I ended up in a room suite with Stephanie, Dr. Smith and Thomas.

They told us the nearest beach entry was less than a mile from the hotel.  We were originally going to walk but one of the hotel guys said to hop in the back of his truck.  All of us fit in the truck.

He drove us the few blocks to the beach, let us out and told his he would be back in about an hour.  We walked down and took off our shoes.  Some of us actually went swimming 9 p.m. at night and some of us just enjoyed the warm Ecuadorian breeze while we walked along the beach.  I was not one of those people who went swimming.  I reflected on my time so far since we've been here.  I still could not wrap my head around the fact that I was actually in Ecuador.  I was actually away from the United States in another country in South America.  This was insane.  I was on the other side of the equator where they were just getting out of their winter and beginning their warm season.  If this was their winter I wondered what their summer was like.  I Googled it.  Winter was like our summer season at home in Washington and summer is their really rainy season.  Their temperatures really do not change as much they still are in the tropical humid mid 80's during the day and the tropical humid low 70's in the evening.  No matter what you were going to be sweaty.

The truck showed up exactly an hour later and we all piled into the back of the truck for the short ride back to the hotel.  We thanked him when we got back and I went to my room and showered before all the hot water disappeared.  I brushed my teeth and headed to bed.  I was exhausted and I knew tomorrow was going to be a long day as well.  I wish this cold would go away.  I put in my ear plugs and went to bed.  During the middle of the night I got cold because Stephanie put the AC on so I had to wear my sweatshirt to bed.

Next Adventure:  Ecuador Day 8: Our Second Day in Cerro Alto 

Ecuador Day 6: Our First Volunteer Gig in Monte en Senai

We all got up around 7ish and I was glad I took a shower the night before because it was a mad house with that many people wandering around the house.  There were people sleeping everywhere.  I was hungry so I went into the kitchen and took a couple bananas to tie me over until we had a plan of what we all were going to eat.  The transportation was suppose to be here around 9 a.m. to take 20+ people to our first volunteer site.

We took all of the supplies we would need downstairs along with our personal belongings and stood there for I don't know how long while Myrna feverishly tried figuring out the transportation issues.  

One van came and we tried to fit as many supplies and people into it as we could.

Another vehicle pulled up behind the van there was no way the rest of the people and supplies were going to fit into it.  Myrna had to figure out another way for all of us to get to our location.  In about another half hour a city bus comes rolling in.  I didn't know you could rent a city bus but you might be able to in Ecuador.

It seemed like it took forever to get to the part of town this community was in.  I had no idea what to expect or what the people were going to be like that we would be working on.  It was probably one of the saddest bus ride's I've ever been on.  There was trash everywhere.  I mean everywhere.  No one used garbage cans.  When the garbage truck did come to pick up trash, people would heap it on the street corners loose or in bags.  I saw several people digging through the garbage to see if there was anything worth keeping.

When we got off of the freeway (E40) and made our way through the various streets.  There, we saw how people made their living outside the city in the "suburbs."  Most of the people have store fronts that sell whatever they can.  Most of it was rice, veggies, fruits and plucked chickens hanging from wires.  I even saw whole pig faces hanging from wires.  Some sold sodas, juices and water.  Most people bought the sodas and juices because they were cheaper than water.

Most of the area was in disarray.  Some of the cinderblock houses were incomplete, some were missing doors, windows, parts of the streets were unfinished, there were potholes.   There were tons of children running around, stray animals, mostly dogs and cats (which they treat like rodents) and most of the people were just trying to sell their goods to keep their family afloat.

A lot of the clothing and shoes you could tell have been loved.  You know for a fact that some of those clothes are worn just about every day if not most of the week.  Most of the people who lived here wore sandals or flip flops and they are so worn you could see that they've had them for many years.

The sights, sounds and smells just made you thankful that you didn't have to live in these conditions. Just this tiny exposure to the way third world countries live really opens your eyes.  This was my first time out of the country and you just can't imagine a place like this without actually going there.  Pictures, documentaries, the news...anything media related just doesn't even come close to the reality of it.  I really can't imagine living in a place like this after what I've been exposed to my entire life.  I mean, it was day 6 of being abroad and I missed drying my clothes so much.  It's too expensive to own a dryer and a lot of people have drying rooms or hang them out on the clothes line depending on the weather of course.

The stuff people worry about in the US is nothing compared to what these people worry about day to day.  Some of them don't even know where they are going to get their next meal or their next bottle of clean water.  The sanitation systems in Ecuador are very subpar however since the 80's they have gotten better but still is no where near what we have in the US.  A lot of the water people use for drinking and cooking have to be trucked in, the rest of it is undrinkable and is used for showering and cleaning.

We turned down a street and I could tell we were almost there.  There were a lot of people gathering at this little run down community center.  They were very excited to see us and even made a sign.  When we got off they cheered and cheered for us and we haven't even done anything yet.  It was a humbling experience and some of the volunteers that were with our group cried.

They welcomed us with open arms.  We unloaded our supplies and set them in the designated areas we would be working.  We followed them into the community center where they served us a breakfast of hard boiled eggs, crescent rolls and orange juice.  It wasn't a lot of food but it did the job for now.  I can not remember when we actually started working but we all found our spots and started working.  I was the sterilization tech and my job was to make sure the instruments we used in people's mouths were sterilized as regulated as it was in Ecuador.  My process was to rinse them, scrub them with a brush with soapy water, dip them in the bleach and wipe them off with cavi wipes.  I did that a few hundred times that day and the water kept shutting off so Maritza kept yelling "EDNA, EDNA!"  Edna was one of the people who set up the communication between the Love project and this community.  Since she spoke Spanish she was able to keep the water going for me at the sink.

When I wasn't sterilizing instruments I was giving out toys for kids after they got their teeth cleaned by our assistants and I also got a few pictures in.  Even though we were in the shade I was really sweaty.

It was really sad to see how poor this community was and how bad some of their teeth were.  I found out it was because of the sanitation conditions, money and the availability of sodas and juices.

Around lunchtime, the community made us rice chicken and plantains.  The rice and chicken were delicious but the plantains...meh, not a fan of them.

We saw a bunch of kids and some adults who sat there all day to be seen and their time sitting there to them was worth it.  These people were tough.  The procedures we performed for them...people in the states would whine over or need nitrous. They just went about their day when they were done.  Several kids went out in the street with their goats, chickens or pigs and played with the soccer ball.

We helped them put the chairs and tables away around 6ish when we were done and they had made us dinner.  I wasn't really hungry so I didn't partake in dinner. 

We took a couple of group pictures outside the community center and grabbed our stuff while we waited about an hour for our city bus to get here.  I was so ready to take a shower and go to bed.  My cold was kicking my butt.

We got back to the apartment after bringing up all of our belongings and supplies.  I got into the shower as quickly as I could.  Myrna washed all of our scrubs and t-shirts and hung some of them outside and some in the drying room.  We will just have to remember that they were out the for the next day.  I did some chatting with Ben with what little public internet I had and I went to bed around 11 p.m. I was so tired.

Next Adventure:  Ecuador Day 7: Traveling to Santa Elena, Hotel and the Community of Cerro Alto