Baca Ortiz

I have an intense dislike of being bored. Thus, as the lab work has slowed during our current planning/contacting/equipment acquiring phase, I’ve sought out new opportunities. These include tutoring a good friend in English and volunteering at the local state-run children’s hospital, which is just a 15-minute walk from my house.

I’d actually approached Hospital Baca Ortiz (HBO) about volunteering before but didn’t get a favorable response. I wandered around, directed from one person to another, until a lady finally told me I had to write a letter to the hospital’s director stating my reasons for wanting to volunteer. Why the heck would the director care why a gringo wanted to volunteer? I felt like the request was an easy way to get me out of her face; so, I didn’t write it and started looking for another way in.

Karla’s extended family is large, at least 30+ people in Quito alone, and they probably know a good 50% of the city’s residents. OK, a slight exaggeration, but they know a lot of people. I talked to Karla about my desire to volunteer in HBO, “Oh, I know someone in the Volunteer Lady’s organization there, I’ll give them a call for you.” – Great!

My first day I met Karla’s friend Laura and then got introduced to a bunch of other ladies who give their time as part of the “Damas Voluntarias” (Volunteer Ladies). The organization is unlike anything I have encountered in the states. They coordinate student volunteers like myself (who give out diapers/stickers/drawing supplies to hospitalized kids and play with them), have meal vouchers for poor/out of province parents staying with their kids, help parents locate resources (pharmacies, transport, anything really), run a free-clothing bank for those who don’t have a change of clothes, and provide general information. HBO is recognized throughout Ecuador as the top children’s hospital (age 0-12) for those with minimal resources and thus many patients arrive from every province, often over a days travel away. As medical emergencies rarely give time to prepare they often arrive with the clothes on their backs, a little cash, and not much else. In this context the services the Damas provide are vital indeed.

When I go in weekday mornings I help with the standard diaper/sticker/paper/crayons dispersal but it doesn’t leave too much time to spend with any particular kids. Thus, my favorite times have come to be afternoons and weekends – no other volunteers seem to come in but the kids are still there, lonely/bored/in pain. I’ll admit, it is hard to see kids suffering but the majority are getting better and if I can take their minds off the reality of their situations, get them to smile, maybe even laugh, I consider my investment a success.

I’ve just started taking in a few of Julian’s children’s books to read to the kids. I’ll pull up a chair in a room and roll the kids’ beds closer to me so they can see the pictures better and then launch in. It’s been a big hit! And, surprising to me, has been that the parents get into the stories just as much as the kids! Makes me think they never had anyone read to them in their childhood. I also play a drawing game where the child and I take turns drawing something and the other person has to guess what it is. Another highlight has been “Marco” my hand puppet cat.




(Me with Marco. Some kids like to talk and pet him while one young lad enjoyed playing catch with Marco!)


A recent idea I just tried out to great success is a special balloon that races around the room bumping off walls before heading in a new direction. The balloons also make a loud shrieking noise but no nurses have reprimanded me yet. The kids laugh and scream, then beg me to make it fly again.




(Balloon ready to go – this is in my house.)




(Flying balloon!)


I’ve also brought in my camera and let kids learn how to take pictures. They always like seeing pictures of themselves too. Some of the children I’ve spent time with follow:




(A big Marco fan with pictures we drew. I met this boy one day while giving out stickers in the room next to his – he pressed up against the glass dividing the rooms, gesturing wildly for me to come visit him next☺ He was all alone, no other kids in his room and the mom was gone. It is actually quite common that the parents have to leave (for food, to buy medicine, take a breather, etc. and the kids or babies get left alone.)




(A little boy I played the drawing game with. His parents were gone.)




(A man and his daughter – he really wanted a copy of the picture so I brought him one today.)




(A young boy who I hung out with and read a story to.)




(The cutest little girl – she liked playing with my camera☺.)


My time in HBO has been a blessing, sometimes I wonder who gets more out of it, the kids or me! I can go in whenever I have time (which has been a good deal lately) and make kids who are in pain or lonely stop crying, smile, maybe even laugh – you can’t beat that!

In other news, I’ve just decided to do a 15K. Dimas convinced me it is THE race to do in Quito, a classic that has been going on for 48 years. As I’ve lost the running shape I had for my 10K in the fall (more biking as of late) it will be a good challenge to get ready in the 34 days I have till the gun goes off.

Only a little over 2 months left, time sure is flying…

Hope you’re all well.

The Return

So, if you have been following these at all you may recall that a long ways back I met a family from Ambato in the Quito airport. The common misery of waiting for delayed flights was an instant bond and by the end of the evening I had been invited to visit them. I took them up on the offer back around month four and ever since have been planning a return. The following is the story of my return.

In order to see when a visit would work for my friends I gave Marco a call last Thursday. Turns out I caught them in the middle of Grandma’s 75th b-day bash. I talked to Marco, then he said Nelson wanted to say hi, then it was someone who I didn’t recall ever meeting’s turn, and things wrapped up with the grandma. They said come that weekend, so I did!

The first full day (Saturday) started off with a visit to Marco’s auto shop (of the 6-7 siblings 4/5 brothers are auto mechanics) where two customers happened to show up and I got to watch him work some magic. I’ve never seen anyone work so fast and efficiently. He completely disassembled a door, removed the broken lock mechanism, welded on a new piece, filed it up, and reassembled everything in under an hour. He charged the man $6.00 – wow.




(Welding.)


Another customer came so I played Frisbee with Marco’s daughter Diana (no one here has ever played Frisbee – great fun to teach them!). Marco’s wife Lupe and his sister-in-law Cecelia + babes hung out in the car.




(Happy baby.)


After the shop we headed outside the city a ways, passing through some beautiful countryside chock full of avocado trees (yes, avocados grow on trees; this was news to me before getting here). Marco was very excited to have me along; this was due in part to my height allowing maximal avocado extraction. I think we hauled in over 50 just from a few roadside trees by the afternoon’s end. We’d be driving along, Marco peering intently at the trees before he would shout with excitement and send us screeching to a halt to collect avocados.




(Valley.)


For lunch I was lead to believe we were going to a lake where we would fish for trout and then have someone prepare out catch right there. It wasn’t quite like that. There were trout and they did prepare them for us but from there my fantasy and actual reality diverge. The trout were all in a series of small cement ponds and the only fishing involved was watching a worker catch them in a net. Still, it was delicious and my friends were so excited about the place I got excited too.




(Trout ponds.)


The eating of the trout was an experience in itself that I must comment upon. Basically, people don’t waste anything in Ecuador. Thus, skin (de-scaled), fins, and the finale – the entire head – are all consumed with gusto. When they saw I hadn’t eaten my fish head they inquired what was wrong, “the head is the best part” I was assured. So, I ate my fish head and I have to say I’m not a convert yet. The jaws aren’t really edible, the eyeballs squished, and something I’m assuming were brains looked too much like bird poop. I got most of it down though and was given approving looks from my new teachers.




(Me eating a trout head. Not highly recommended.)


Other new foods of the weekend included a delicious fruit that I never learned the name of and a grain similar to wheat that is pounded into flour and then mixed with water or milk and sugar to make a porridge type dish - really good! The final meal included a soup with what I gathered was the lower forelimb of a cow, essentially just bone, fat, gristle and skin. I had had enough of crazy new foods by that point and had to decline. Marco ate mine and I had an extra serving of rice.

Sunday was the day of the great excursion. We stayed the night out on Marco’s mom’s farm and planned to hike as far up the large hill/small mountain behind their property as we could. We had been talking about this since I last visited and I was pumped! Marco, his brother Nelson and son Israel, a neighbor named Pepe, and I all headed out at 9am. My initial idea of a great exploration hike had turned into a hunting trip at some point and the three men all came well armed with guns that might have been made 50 years ago and I seriously doubted could actually work. They made there own bullets to save money, powder, shot, and toilet paper. However, it soon became obvious they were not hunters by trade as all we managed to do was frighten some birds and get a few nearby cows to look at us. Despite our failure as hunter-gatherer males to bring back anything of use the adventure was a great success.




(Hiking up a dry ravine.)




(The group.)


During our hike Marco lit two small fires as “smoke signals” and then would just leave them! He assured me they would “just go out.” This wasn’t exactly kosher by my standards; one I left small and another I put out with dirt after they got ahead. An additional cultural clash was the dispersal of trash. Ecuadorians just throw trash everywhere, including the forest. I told them this is why their country often looks like a trash bin and they should stop. Then I picked up their trash. It was more an act of defiance than anything, as I could have walked another twenty feet and likely found more trash from someone else. They seemed to just think I was weird but I later heard Marcos telling several other family members how I picked up the trash because “he’s a biologist and protects nature.” Another act of mine that I heard related with awe/non-understanding was how I refused to pay into/accept my winnings from a game of volleyball after I told them I just wanted to play for fun.

Back down from the mountain after walking for almost 5 hours we had a big lunch and I met some more of the family. I conducted a Frisbee throwing session before lunch and managed to get all those interested throwing quite well. Those who didn’t want to try all pulled up chairs and watched. The Grandma even got in on the action – she was pretty good!




(A family shot minus 4 females who didn’t want to be in the picture.)




(Grandma.)


My return trip to Quito was slow for several reasons. First off, all the buses were full where I tried to catch one so we had to return to Ambato (from the countryside) which lost an hour or so. Second, there was recently a huge collapse/cave-in that swallowed some of the road and created a hole 50m across and 50m deep near the bus station in Quito making traffic a nightmare. And then the taxi guy wanted to charge me $4 to go to my house - $4, can you believe it! That’s outrageous. So I walked 35 minutes/took the Ecovia. I was a little worried I’d get mugged (as I had some cash, my camera, and other things I’d rather not lose) but luck was with me!




(Big hole.)

Goofing

So, Julian and I started playing "Mar" (Sea) where my bed is the base and the floor is the sea full of sharks. This somehow morphed into what you see below.




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