Wednesday
This morning our teams were split up. Our team of 11 people stayed in Guayaquil and the remainder of the team headed to Cuenca. We will join them there on Thursday.
We started our day off at 8am. Three local Rotarians picked us up in their cars and we travelled to some more remote areas to visit some school projects that their club has been working on.
Anyone who complains about our Canadian school system needs to come and visit any one of the public school in Ecuador.
We visited 5 different schools. The “nicest” ones were those where Rotarians had already competed successful projects and some of them even had computer labs with brand new Dell computers.
The poorest of the schools were no more than buildings with worn out desks. Students were sitting so close together.
The really amazing thing is that these kids were so happy. They played in the school yard, participated in class and felt privileged to be able to attend school.
The Rotarians were very proud to show us the plans they had to expand one small school. At present it has 3 classrooms. Rotarians here seem very good at partnering with other organizations, especially with the various church groups who will often run the school and be responsible for the education in the schools. The Rotarians own the land and the buildings and pay for part of the operating costs of the schools.
The Rotary club also sells scholarships to send more children to school. The cost to send a student to school is about 8$US per MONTH! Think about it…. That is about what the average Canadian spends at Tim Horton’s in a week!
We also visited an entire community that has been built by a partnership between the city and 5 of the local Rotary clubs. They took an area that was swamp land, filled it in and built concrete buildings. They basically have 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom and a very small kitchen /living room area.
Let’s just say that today was going to be another really heart heavy day.
For lunch, we were taken to a private tennis club where the President of our host club was a member. The Seviche de Cameron (shrimp) was to die for!
This place would be considered opulent in any city in Canada. It was difficult to see such a contrast between the total poverty to the total luxuriousness
After lunch, we were to distribute another 40 wheel chairs in a nearby village. Everything went really well and a good time was had by all.
I am still trying to deal with some of the things I have seen on this trip. It’s a beautiful place, the people are kinds and happy. The scenery is breathtaking. And yet, there is poverty at a scale that no one back home can relate to. Even after seeing it with my own eyes, it’s hard to comprehend.
For now, I will leave you with another image that just took a piece of my heart.
