Day 74
I got up crazy early again this morning. Well, crazy early for me. I rode the bus into town with Jimmy, who always gets up this early to go to school. How these kids manage on 6-7 hours of sleep a night, I don’t know! I got to La Primavera around 6:45 and started hiking up Ruco Pichincha again, this time a different way. I got up to about 11,500’ when I got a phone call that wound up changing all my plans around, so I started heading down. Which is a good thing, because it turns out Carlos was waiting for me in La Primavera and I had the keys to the church. Carlos was heading to Puyo to provide transport for a baby girl who has been in the hospital for some time. Which was also convenient, since I left my camera case and Bible in Puyo. Anyway….we wound up going back to Carcelen, picking up some things and driving back into town to go to the Covenant Church Headquarters. (I think I spent most of the day driving around town!) At the Covenant Church Headquarters, I dropped off a donation from all of you - I asked them to put it to an area of great need and they told me the area of greatest need right now is a church in the Oriente in a place called “El Chaco.” We were with the pastor in El Chaco just the other day, so it’s fun to see everything fit together like that.
I then made my way to the historical district to try to find Luis and give him the picture I took the other day, because I didn’t think I could make it there tomorrow. I hung out with a kid named Manuel for a while and we chatted about his life and why he has to work on the street all the time (Manuel is always there on Friday afternoons when we do the street kids ministry with Covenant Bible College). He wanted to clean my shoes, but I wouldn’t let him because I don’t want to benefit from kids having to work. I’d prefer to give them the 25 cents I would have to pay and just let them not have to work for fifteen minutes. So Manuel asked my why I wouldn’t let him clean my shoes and probably just out of exasperation I let my words fly and told him that this world is just messed up and it wasn’t meant to be like this and he shouldn’t have to work on the streets because he should be out playing and he shouldn’t have to beg for money to feed him and his kid brother and…. Yeah, so I just spit it all out. When I was done, Manuel just looked at me and said, “Buen dicho!” (Good speech!) Meanwhile, it was raining really hard and Luis didn’t show up. After a while, though, his cousin did, and said Luis wouldn’t be coming until tomorrow. Change of plans again. I called Margi to swtich the time of my Spanish class, so now hopefully I can meet them tomorrow morning.
In the afternoon, I went to the Compassion Project in Comite Del Pueblo. They thought today was my last day, so they threw me a big party, thanking me for helping out these last few months. Jenny (the teacher) read aloud a note they had written. I nearly cried as she read it, it was so cool. Then she invited the kids to speak, and many of them individually spoke wonderful words of encouragement. It was so cool. I’m not going to say goodbye, though, until next Wednesday afternoon, because I really want to go to the project one more time.
I made my way over to Russ’ house for dinner and we talked a bit about tomorrow’s climb (Russ is leading the trip, as he did up Cotopaxi in March). But mostly our conversation steered towards the economic situation in Ecuador and how difficult it is for most people just to get by and how awkward it becomes for those of us who can pretty much do whatever we want whenever we want. It’s really frightening the power that money brings and the social stratification that results simply from the possession of money. I have been increasingly frustrated as of late because it seems as if my relationship with Carlos has shifted a bit. Because all of you have been so generous in helping support the construction of the church addition, it almost feels at times like Alex hs become an ATM. No longer can I just be the guy who is here to learn Spanish and learn from the people of La Primavera and serve in the soup kitchen and the dump and the street kids and the Compassion project. I’m the guy with the money, and it makes everything awkward. There’s simply too much need here and it’s impossible to give without a thousand other hungry hands reaching out for help. I try to help the street kids as quietly as possible, because there are thousands of them, all in incredible need. Better to help a few than none, but if you help a few, the thousands come looking to you. And what can you do? Maybe that’s why I unloaded those words on Manuel today. There’s just too much need and not enough one person can do with limited time and money. The $2.24 billion Ecuador loses to debt payments every year could probably do something, but for some reason international lenders don’t see it that way and enjoy continuing collecting interest on what Ecuador owes while the children beg for bread. I just don’t get it. How did we get so messed up in the first place and how will we ever get out of this mess?
I then made my way to the historical district to try to find Luis and give him the picture I took the other day, because I didn’t think I could make it there tomorrow. I hung out with a kid named Manuel for a while and we chatted about his life and why he has to work on the street all the time (Manuel is always there on Friday afternoons when we do the street kids ministry with Covenant Bible College). He wanted to clean my shoes, but I wouldn’t let him because I don’t want to benefit from kids having to work. I’d prefer to give them the 25 cents I would have to pay and just let them not have to work for fifteen minutes. So Manuel asked my why I wouldn’t let him clean my shoes and probably just out of exasperation I let my words fly and told him that this world is just messed up and it wasn’t meant to be like this and he shouldn’t have to work on the streets because he should be out playing and he shouldn’t have to beg for money to feed him and his kid brother and…. Yeah, so I just spit it all out. When I was done, Manuel just looked at me and said, “Buen dicho!” (Good speech!) Meanwhile, it was raining really hard and Luis didn’t show up. After a while, though, his cousin did, and said Luis wouldn’t be coming until tomorrow. Change of plans again. I called Margi to swtich the time of my Spanish class, so now hopefully I can meet them tomorrow morning.
In the afternoon, I went to the Compassion Project in Comite Del Pueblo. They thought today was my last day, so they threw me a big party, thanking me for helping out these last few months. Jenny (the teacher) read aloud a note they had written. I nearly cried as she read it, it was so cool. Then she invited the kids to speak, and many of them individually spoke wonderful words of encouragement. It was so cool. I’m not going to say goodbye, though, until next Wednesday afternoon, because I really want to go to the project one more time.
I made my way over to Russ’ house for dinner and we talked a bit about tomorrow’s climb (Russ is leading the trip, as he did up Cotopaxi in March). But mostly our conversation steered towards the economic situation in Ecuador and how difficult it is for most people just to get by and how awkward it becomes for those of us who can pretty much do whatever we want whenever we want. It’s really frightening the power that money brings and the social stratification that results simply from the possession of money. I have been increasingly frustrated as of late because it seems as if my relationship with Carlos has shifted a bit. Because all of you have been so generous in helping support the construction of the church addition, it almost feels at times like Alex hs become an ATM. No longer can I just be the guy who is here to learn Spanish and learn from the people of La Primavera and serve in the soup kitchen and the dump and the street kids and the Compassion project. I’m the guy with the money, and it makes everything awkward. There’s simply too much need here and it’s impossible to give without a thousand other hungry hands reaching out for help. I try to help the street kids as quietly as possible, because there are thousands of them, all in incredible need. Better to help a few than none, but if you help a few, the thousands come looking to you. And what can you do? Maybe that’s why I unloaded those words on Manuel today. There’s just too much need and not enough one person can do with limited time and money. The $2.24 billion Ecuador loses to debt payments every year could probably do something, but for some reason international lenders don’t see it that way and enjoy continuing collecting interest on what Ecuador owes while the children beg for bread. I just don’t get it. How did we get so messed up in the first place and how will we ever get out of this mess?