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Home / Offices and Ministries / Youth Ministry / Encounter Ecuador / Past Experiences 2009 - Day 2: SarahJane 2009 Ecuador Experience Day 2: SarahJane Kukawka
 Today we returned to Chocavichico. Unlike yesterday, I was determined to make conversation. After a morning mass with too many people to fit inside, we started the tedious work of building walls out of cement. Twisting "alambres" around parts of bended reinforcement bars was looking much easier than hauling buckets of cement, so I asked the Maestro Carpenter to show me how. The indigenous women around me bent and reinforced metal as a team, laughing and giving directions as they worked. Soon, with the initial questions of "where are you from" and "do you have a mother," I was included in the conversation. With my broken Spanish, I learned that twenty three year old Marian was married with three children. Don't think she was a "three in four years" mom, her oldest child was nine.
 Usually when foreigners come into a culture they criticize and belittle it so that they can justify their "improvements." But, while I had a hard time imagining what my life would be like with three kids already, I was able to see the genuine happiness in Marian's face. Though she had only been able to go to school till she was twelve, she and her husband were eager to learn their numbers in English. And that was how we spent the day: simply laughing and learning from each other. Each of us were enjoying the newness of life and the differences in the world. I envied her mountains and she fired off questions about my university. I gobbled another plate of potatoes and beans and she laughed at the idea of guinea pigs (also on the lunch menu) as being pets. As we sat together on the boulders we were transporting, we shared our hopes and dreams that day. For her, she wanted more children, for me, I wanted to be part of their lives. I have never seen a happier or healthier group of people...or such an equal community. To me, these two characteristics are deeply connected, and have nothing to do with nutrition. With strength in arms, legs, and lungs both women and men worked side by side, identical and necessary in their roles. This image has stayed in my mind throughout my visit to Ecuador, and has become my goal in the "Living Simply" community I will be part of this fall semester.
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