Three weeks volunteering

Katitawa school
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After our previous volunteering mishappenstance we were unsure whether to go back, but we were eventually convinced and when we arrived back in the Salasaca we were met straight off the bus by Robert, a seventy-two year old American (although if you told me he was fifty, I´d believe you) who donates massive amounts of both money and time to a tiny little school in the volcanic mountains.

I don´t even know where to start describing our volunteering experience! The school we taught in in a scattered couple of buildings with three or four classrooms and serves a rabble of about twenty kids from a very isolated community who mostly live on farms in the hills in big family groups. The local language spoken is Quechua, the Incan language and the people dress in very traditional costume of thick rabbit-skin hats and ponchos.

Phil and Sandi
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Robert compared the way people live up here to the way native Americans live in reservations in the US - the Ecuadorian laws don´t really apply here, and there is a head of the community who makes all the major decisions. There is no real crime (although there is a many a feud between families!) and any law-breaking is dealt with amongst themselves.

If anything related to the community as a whole needs to be undertaken (for example, part of a road needed to be built during our stay) the head of the community holds a minca, which means every family must send one son to help in the project. The experience living in this community was incredible, and really isolated. And Quechua is such an interesting language! Whereas in the West we see the past as behind us and the future ahead, this incan way is far more circular, so their word for future is the same word as for behind because they have a non-linear concept of time and space, and see themselves on a constant journey.

Nicknamed "quiet kid", this boy spoke limited Spanish, but was very funny
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The school has two teachers who are paid - Luis and Rufino, and a lady who takes the nursery class, although, as she is unpaid, if she has other things she needs to do she does´t come in. On our first day, Phil and I were asked to take over the English lessons to the youngest two classes, who are all aged between five and eight. Our Spanish is now OK, we can hold stilted conversations nicely, but after being in class for five minutes it became apparent that several members of the class didn´t speak Spanish at all. It´s very hard to teach the days of the week in English to a child who not only doesn´t speak Spanish, but has no real concept that days can be split into groups of seven in English, and called a week, because they´re not in their culture. And I was very confused by a child of about 6 who told me he was 17 years old, because ages and years don´t signify the same time periods as they do in the West. So interesting.

Sophia facepainting
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The children are wonderful, they have so much energy and the older ones (up to 10 years old) will happily chat in a mixture of Spanish, Quechua and broken English . They´re very sneaky though, like children everywhere. Two 8 year olds were insulting each other in Spanish (their favourite being "your mum doesn´t wash her ears" which is SO very rude here) and I stopped them, but a little later they were chatting in Quechua, and another teacher informed me they were still fighting, just with big smiles on their faces so I wouldn´t know! Sneaky!

More straw than man
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So between 8am and 1 we teach lessons, but mostly play with the kids, and then head back to the house where Robert lives (about a 30 minute walk during which you can see three active volcanoes: Tungurahua, Cotopaxi and Chimborazo). It´s a big house with two giant downstairs rooms, and then four bedrooms, bathroom and kitchen upstairs where the volunteers and Robert live. In the afternoons we painted the classroom walls, built furniture, and generally tried to help out with all that was happening in the community (which meant Phil got very sunburned one day helping a woman move house!)

Sayri and Kimberly playing on the stilts we made
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We´d be completely lost were it not for Sam and Sophie, an American couple who´ve just finished university and had been at the school a month before we arrived. They´re amazing with the children and even find time to teach free Spanish reading and writing classes to adults of the local community on weekends.

During our stay we were asked to teach a song in English to the kids for them to perform at a local festival along with a very traditional Tungurahuan dance. The festival was wonderful and our children performed brilliantly; it was in the nearby town of Ambato, and we travelled there in the back of a truck with 12 people, a loom, a table, cooking pot, gas burner and gas cylinder. Dangerous? Not by Ecuadorian standards!

The Katitawa kids at the festival getting ready to dance
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One of the most rewarding things I did was teach maths one-on-one to a struggling 15year old named Sandra, and after realising I wouldn´t accept money, her family paid me in corn and beans grown on their farm. If only teaching in England was paid that way!

It´s interesting that the people in Salasaca have almost no use for money. One family told us the buy a sack of rice once every six months and everything else they grow or rear, and if one family is struggling, the others step in.

The football pitch we made
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Our last project before we left was creating a proper football pitch. They might be indigenous children, but football is one of the few western influences accepted here. Phil and others flattened the pitch and constructed goal posts whilst I wove nets and on our last day we held a massive football match complete with Phil as referee handing out numerous red and yellow cards, Sam commentating (in impeccable Spanish) and a half time show. The match ended up 5-4 to the red team, leaving several members of the green team in inconsolable tears!

Me with Sandy... would anyone notice if i kept just this one? shes only small!
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After three weeks in Salasaca getting back to Baños felt like luxury! There was running water in the house in Salasaca, but only on weekends (leading to an aptly named Pooh-Mountain in the unflushale toilet on weekends). We stayed in Baños in a very fancy hotel (at massively reduced prices) with a friend of Robert´s named Lorenzo. He is a very interesting character who decided to move to Ecuador rather than an Arizonian old people´s home and open a hotel, and who did not take kindly to Phil whooping him at cribbage! Very fun.

The voluenteers. Sam and sophie, phil and me, kit, Michael and Tess
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At this point Phil was expecting a package from to be delivered to the Baños family with whom we learned Spanish, and baring in mind we only had 4 days left on our visa he was cutting it fine! But despite the odds, the package arrived on the day we needed to leave, so we hastily picked it up and fled to the Peruvian border!

Come on Peru! .