Swallowing fears and llapingachos

(And now, a weekend recap by Dunc, who while typing remembered the day old llapingachos in his backpack...good thing he decided to write a blog today, or who knows how long those cheese potatoes would have spent molding in the dark!)

"Giving a speech in front of 7,000 people?! IN SPANISH!?!

Yes, those were my immediate thoughts when Seth announced that we had all been invited to speak at the Inti-Raymi (Quichua for “Festival of the Sun”) in one of the biggest towns in the valley. Magnifying my fears was the fact that Bibi, Holly, and I would be the only ones in town over the festival weekend due to the Amazonian rainforest excursions and glacier-capped mountain climbing adventures of all our other fellow PDs.

Luckily, we were able to round up of a few of our community friends to go with us, including 4-year old Iori, his mother Paola, and 16-year old Christian. While Holly and I occupied the bouncing Iori on the trip up to the festival, Bibi spent a good half-hour convincing Paola and Christian to talk on stage about their experiences as committed library patrons and teen center members, respectively. As we neared the festival, located in a large field nestled amongst the nearby mountains, however, Paola and Christian’s minds began to change. Along with the dancers in traditional indigenous attire, musicians, and food vendors (mmMMM Ecuadorian llapingachos!) came people. And more people. And even more.

(One side of the pentagon of people)

All in all a couple thousand people were in attendance, enough that when we were quickly ushered towards the stage as the dancers ended their performance, Christian and Paola suddenly declared they not only didn’t want speaking roles, but didn’t even want to go on stage! We luckily managed a compromise, and they joined us on stage while agreeing that Bibi would do all the talking. Fortunately, Bibi did a great job calming her own nerves and gave an excellent outline of our programs and services at the library to the suddenly rapt audience.

After exiting the stage and before I could make a beeline for the llapingachos, we were all swarmed by people interested about our programs. In just a few minutes, we gave out more than 200 fliers and offered even more details about MPI. Before heading home for the day, I was finally able to make my way to my long-awaited (like 30 minutes!) snack. The food in my belly just amplified the satisfaction I felt about the afternoon. We strengthened our bond with several of our best community friends, advertised our programs to a large number of people in a new neighborhood, and Holly and I successfully avoided testing our Spanish in front of several thousand Ecuadorians. I guess in situations like these it really pays off to be a Program Director rather than a Country Director…

-Dunc"

On the Cusp

First things first, thank you to everyone who emailed me suggestions. Your encouragement meant so much, and all your ideas were things I needed to be reminded of. So thank you! If I haven't heard from you yet, please don't hesitate to send me an email.


That said, we in the Manna house are on the cusp of big change. Children's Art ended yesterday after a 6 month run, Summer Two heads home on Monday, next year's Program Directors arrive a week from today, new July programing starts next week, and in a few days we'll celebrate one year in South America. Don't worry, I'm stockpiling most of my nostalgic reminiscing for the monthly update and won't go into soggy details here (that's for you, Dunc. Don't want to freak you out with tears or anything). We've got plenty of time for THAT.


To mark the end of Children's Art, I attached a tiny note, art quote and drawing to a brand new box of crayons for each of my bubbly little students; little snapshots of some of the drawings color this post (These are for you, Alecia!). Gotta love the wonders of colored pencils and an Andean afternoon with an open schedule. Apologies for the color distortion, not sure what's up with the brightness of it all.


Children's English also breathed it's last July breath yesterday, celebrated by an afternoon showing of Kung Fu Panda in the teen center (a BIG treat for the little ones who are too young to enter normally), balloons, popcorn, oatmeal raisin cookies, and Fanta. I may have laughed more at the movie than the students, but really, who's surprised by that.

Hope you have fun plans for the weekend! Between trips to the rainforest, climbing Cotapaxi part 2, attending the Gay Pride parade in downtown Quito, and a few things in between, our weekend is set to be eclectically wonderful.
~Holly

Foresight

(With less than two months to go in our wild South American adventure, harassment of the roommates for more guest blogs has officially commenced. Serena is up first, and she has some exciting things to share! Enjoy.)

"A visit to a public hospital ran by the Ecuador Ministry of Health:
-Cost of receiving vitamins and micronutrients for all children ages 3 and under: Free
-Cost of an x-ray: Free
-Cost of a C-section: Free
-Cost of a TB vaccination: Free
-Cost of getting your eyes checked: Free
-Cost of anti-diabetic meds: Free
-Cost of an emergency service: Free

In the US?
-Contact your insurance company. aka, get out your pocketbook.

Of course, I'm not saying the health care system in Ecuador is superior in any way. All health care systems are internally flawed. But here I am, living in a relatively impoverished country that is considered "developing" by Western standards, and getting a free physical check-up without having to fill out any forms about who my provider is. In the same situation in the US, without insurance, I'd be paying close to triple digits. I don't get it.

But unfortunately, free services do come with a price. There are not enough medical personnel working for the MoH to service all patients who are in need of care. Many clinical physicians find themselves multitasking at both the micro- and macro- levels and end up running entire clinics completely on their own. Although Rafael Correa (the Ecuadorian president) is increasing spending on health care, the patient to physician ratio is over-saturated, so patients will only be seen if they are showing physical symptoms, thus diverting the attention away from the important aspect of prevention.

This is where we come in.

Along with summer volunteers Mari and Priya as well as our new Country Director Bibi, we have been working tirelessly on finalizing a promising health proposal in hopes of turning the 4th floor of the building that hosts the MPI library/teen center into a full-fledged, no BS, locally-owned Preventative Health Center (PHC). So far, we have held the first of many successful focus groups with 20+ women from the Exercise and Nutrition Program and attended various meetings with the Ministry of Health to obtain insight on local/national health issues as well as how to get this moving. We're currently in the process of contacting local health promoters and prospective community health workers (our aim is 10), connecting them with the Municipio (town) to provide professional and certified health promotion training, and then finally, in the long-run, hiring them to work at the PHC to create local ownership and sustainability.

We hope our surrounding communities will frequently utilize the health resources provided by the center, learn to properly care for their health before getting (and while being) sick, and in the long-term lower the national cost burdens spent on preventable illnesses.

Empowering individuals: Check
Strengthening institutions: Check
Building networks: Check

With the help of Healthechildren, we have high hopes of turning our idea into reality that is nothing short of extraordinary. Oye, that's how the library started, right?

-Serena"

(If you're interested in learning more about this program or how to donate directly to it, please email either serenazhou1@gmail.com or bibi.alebrahim@gmail.com)

A Quick and Useful Survey

To Whom it May Concern:

In the interest of filling this blog with the stories, information, and pictures people are actually interested in (instead of using it as my own personal sounding board and dumping ground for sunset pictures), I'm going to try something new. Something exciting. Something called "Asking for feedback"... see, exciting, I told you! We aim to please down here.

Basically my creative juices are less like juice and more like molasses...as in not flowing. So that's where you all come in: What do you want to read about? What would you like to see photographs of? If I post another sunset picture will you throw something at your computer screens? What programs haven't been given enough blog time? More stories about the house, or more focus on Manna as an organization?

Any and all suggestions are welcome, either as comments or as emails directly to me (holland.c.ward@gmail.com)! Just don't tell me that my grammar is atrocious or my spelling is bad, because a) I'm very sensitive about that and b) I am well aware.

Looking forward to hearing from you!
Holly

(Not related at all to today's post, but still kind of cool. The Conocoto church is now PEACH. Less cool)

The Girls and The Quito

This past weekend, Jos and I planned a girl's weekend in Quito for the four of us. We rented 2 rooms in a hostel and spent the weekend wandering through our beloved city as (slightly more informed and jaded) tourists. Serena and Dana joined us Saturday night for a nap, some dinner, and a lot of dancing, per usual. When there's a live cover band singing a medley of Beatles, Led Zepplin, and Doors songs, one has no other option. One must dance. Please enjoy the pictoral account of our weekend.


On Saturday morning, Jos and I had bagels and fresh fruit juice for breakfast and wished our house had potted plants in our window sills.



We spent a late morning in silent awe inside a church painted in such decadent colors it felt as though we had walked into a sorbet coated, South American Versailles.








We walked through a tent city protesting PetroEcuador's presence in the rain forest.




We climbed two huge metal balls in a park. And then some spray painted helium canisters because they looked lonely.






We ate a lunch of red bananas, pineapple, freshly baked wheat bread, and avocado-black bean-onion-tomato-lime salad on our little hostel balcony.



Then we took a nap and readied ourselves for a classic-rock jam session with 100 of our closest Ecuadorian friends...


On Sunday, Dana reorganized some of the cement parking aids...


while Jos found herself a handsome boyfriend at the mall.


Then we all watched Transformers 2: Rise of the Fallen. And we LOVED IT. Seriously. It was hysterical.

At 9pm, we hailed a cab, piled all our bags into it's trunk, and let out collective sighs every few minutes as we drove our tired, city-dazed little souls back to the boys, the summer vols, and the fresh-aired valley.

Sigh. We will certainly miss this place.

-Holly