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by Sarah Martin '03 This past summer I ventured off to Ecuador with the program Amigos de las Americas. I arrived there with the intention of building latrines, gardens, and animal pens as well as informing the public with both environmental and community sanitation education. I had began preparing for this experience eight months before my actual departure to Ecuador. There is no way to describe in words the feeling I felt when I arrived to my host town, San Luis, Ecuador: eighty people who all lived on the same side of a mountain, 13,000 feet above sea level. They greeted me with tremendous hospitality. My host family had three small rooms to their house; the kitchen, a bedroom, and a play room for their three small children named Natalee, Jose, and Christina. They gave me the children's playroom as a place to stay for my seven week service there. The family, all five of them, slept on two beds in the bedroom. My first couple of days were filled with questions about the culture, politics, and economics of Ecuador. I learned that Ecuador was in a state of economic crisis. El Nino from the year before had wiped out a tremendous amount of the main exported crops: bananas and sugar cane. The sudden loss of the main exports slowly drove Ecuador into massive debts with various countries. To get the country back on track, the President was considering to sign a contract with the IMF to raise the gas prices within Ecuador and on the export of gas to other countries almost five times as much as it cost at that current time. The new gas prices would be the equivalent of almost four American dollars per gallon. By raising the gas prices, the IMF would agree to loan Ecuador around $50,000,000 to jump start the economy once again. The threat of raising gas prices, though, was the cause for many strikes and protests within Ecuador this past year. After gaining knowledge of all that was going on there, I felt truly privileged to experience such a crucial point in Ecuador's history. I worked hard the next few days at digging holes two meters deep for the latrine construction. However, I came down with Amebas my sixth day on the job and I had to go to the hospital in the city of Ambato. My field supervisor came to pick me up from the rural town of San Luis in a four wheel drive jeep displaying a government document on the right side of the windshield. I asked her what the document was for and she informed me that there was a nationwide transportation strike and therefore only vehicles marked with a government document were allowed passage through the streets. As we made our way to the hospital, we passed taxi barricades, protestors, burning tires, bloody carcasses of cows and other animals, and soldiers with plastic crowd shields and loaded weapons. There were natural barricades in the road as well as giant trees, bricks, and boulders that caused us to find alternate routes. The strike ended up lasting two straight weeks, getting worse and more violent each day. I became a prisoner in the city of Ambato in that I was physically unable to return to San Luis with the transportation strike in full swing. It was so amazing to see an entire nation coming together for a common cause: attempting to dissuade the president from signing the IMF contract. With a massive gas price increase, no one would be able to afford gas, which would devastate the economy even further in that all transportation would be thwarted. I even had the opportunity to attend an evangelical church service. Everyone inside seemed genuinely thrilled to have an American support their religion and their efforts. They were not afraid to approach me or talk to me either. They were good people who were going through so much, and I wanted to help them in every way I could. To my disappointment, I was told that I would have to leave the country because the conditions had become too unstable. There were indigenous uprisings and a couple of deaths in the main cities. All my belongings-- camera, journal, fleece jackets, and pants-- were left behind. However, this is insignificant to me. My experience in Ecuador this summer is one that I will never forget in that it taught me so many valuable lessons. Having pride in yourself and your country was the most important lesson I learned.
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