5/30/07 - Carter

Hola a todos! (sorry guys this is a long one, but I thought this email was overdue)

I hope everyone has had a great start to their summers! Right now I am in Quito, Ecuador. It is the second highest capital in the world -I felt really dizzy when I got off the plane- but I am now pretty acclimated to the altitude, although I still have trouble going up multiple flights of stairs. I live with an affluent family. I am the only foreigner in the house, but I already feel like part of the family. Moro is about 19, but he is not around much. Carolina is in her mid-20s and she is awesome. I also love my host mom. My host father is an avid bowler, and has represented Ecuador in many international tournaments. They have a room that is almost entirely dedicated to displaying his bazillion trophies! The family has a housekeeper who makes most of the meals and does my laundry every other day! Since, lunch isn´t until mid to late afternoon, Mariyuxi (the housekeeper) makes me a sandwich and juice to take with me to the hospital. I certainly did not expect this kind of treatment and it has been a nice surprise :)

The second day I was here, I went to the equator, which is just a few miles outside of the center of the city. They have a little museum there where they talked about the indigenous peoples who used to live there, and also did a few fascinating science experiments on the equator that can be done nowhere else. It is easy to balance an egg on a nail when standing on the equator. Also it is physically impossible to walk in a straight line on the equator. The guide also had some fun facts about the native tribes most notably, that the entire family slept in one bed and when they wanted ¨to do the sexo¨ (as he said), the couple would go outside and do their business on the ground in public as they believed that being closer to the earth would make the woman more fertile. Also these peoples practiced the technique of shrinking heads and they had a real shrunken head on display. They would decapitate their enemies and then put their heads in a solution with strong chemicals. This head was about the size of a baseball! The guide said they did this until the 1960s, which freaked me out a little.

Quito lies right beneath a giant, active volcano. In fact, my house is on a hill that slopes upward and meets the side of the volcano. Luckily, they keep close watch over it, and my guidebook has reassured me that Quito will most likely miss the initial lava flow, should it erupt. It is still slightly unnerving though, and last night when I was half asleep I was certain that the thunder I heard was actually the volcano erupting. The city is also interesting because the indigenous Andeans interact in the same space as the well-suited businesspeople. The native women wear very brightly colored clothing and fedora-like hats and usually have a small child slung across their backs. Just today I was sitting on the bus next to an Andean woman who had a basket full of fruit to sell and about 5 dead chickens sitting in her lap. Imagine this in the middle of morning rush hour in a city of almost 2 million. Quite and unusual scene. speaking of buses, they are insane. They don´t ever really stop so you have to get a running start when you want to get on. I have learned that taking a giant leap off the moving bus is easier than trying to lightly step off the platform.

I volunteer at the hospital every week day from 9:00 to 2ish. It is a public children´s hospital, and those who have some money (like my host family) usually go to private practices. This hospital is the most depressing place I have ever seen. First of all, the place is extremely overcrowded and chaoitic. When you first walk in you are overwhelmed by the children screaming, crying, and running in every direction. There is not enough seating so many families are just sitting on the floor in the halls. Also, most of the floors do not have lights. The patient´s beds are glorified cots and most are badly rusted. The entire hall (about 16 patients and their families) shares one bathroom. There are 4 patients per room, in a space the size of a typical single hospital room in the U.S. oh and about 1/4 of the windows are cracked or shattered. And there is no a/c and I swear some of the halls are above 90 degrees. They also don´t give their patients anesthesia for many procedures which require it. None of the patients have IVs- only those who are receiving chemo. In fact, I don´t understand how patients ever get well in this hospital. Yesterday when I went into one of the rooms to visit a girl with cancer, two nurses came rushing in after us. They asked if our foundation could get this little boy to the U.S. for brain surgery. Unfortunately, the group for which I volunteer, is only for children with cancer, so we couldn´t really help. Now for the really hard part- the boy had been in a serious accident and his skull collapsed and part of his brain had died. They had done surgery on him to remove the dead part, but the boy was left with half of a skull. I had never seen anything like this before. Half of his head was sunken in. If you looked at him from one side, he looked OK, but from the other, all you saw was a huge cavity, where there should have been the other half of his head. He couldn´t speak, or really respond to any stimuli, although his eyes were open and seemed to be somewhat fixed on us. really sad.

I volunteer with two other girls that are about our age. When I first met them, I was confused as to why they were speaking to me in Spanish when they both appeared to be from the U.S. I thought they were just trying to show off their Spanish skills. Turns out one is from Norway, and the other from Germany. All 3 of us have different first languages, so speaking in Spanish is the best way for us to communicate. They have each been here for well over half a year, and they both speak fluent Spanish and are well integrated into the culture. The one from Norway lives with her Ecuadorian boyfriend. They are both really nice and fun.

that is all for now.

hasta luego,

Carter