North we go

Where in the world am I?  Pimampiro, Ecuador.  Pimampiro is a small town, population about 5,000 in the northern part of Ecuador (about an hour and a half south of the Colombian boarder, 4 hours north of Quito, maybe somewhere in the Andes mountains?).  We got here around 7pm last night, after beginning our travels early Monday morning from Guayaquil.  I am convinced that very little in the country/continant is consistant.  For instance, evertime I go into a new bathroom I wonder which part about it will confuse me.  The shower in Lima, we had to set up the hot water heater to be on during certain times of the day, but the times were never right on the machine, nor did an hour really mean an hour.  Guayaquil; must flip switch above shower to make coils heat up to get hot water.  But you can barely have any water pressure because the more you turn the water on, the colder it gets.  Quito; electrical outlet in shower. WHY? Pimampiro; super crazy shower contraption that our hostess had to turn on from outside.  The shower head consists of a huge blue device with several hoses attatched to it and various exposed wires wrapped around it.  Then there are three knobs, the two that say hot/cold apparently do nothing, but when I touched the third, the lights got brigher in the bathroom and the shower went off.  I stand there frozen, not sure if I´ve blown all a fuse somewhere or if I was about to be electricuted when I hear "Elizabeth, do you have water?" (in spanish from the hostess). I of course don´t, so she had to come into the bathroom (mid-shower) and fix it for me.  By fix it I mean, return it to it´s state of dribble.  Jana and I are going to have shampoo in hour hair for a month.  But at least we´re clean.

So the time we spent in Guayaquil was very nice.  The hostel where we stayed is amazing.  We had everything we needed and then some.  While we were there we met with people from the Archdiasis who we were connected with through Javier (our Peruvian contact). They took us to several clinics around Guayaquil and one hospital in a poor area.  The hospital consisted of 20 beds, an ER, a birthing ward, a chlidrens ward, and on OR.  The OR was pretty nice; 4 surgical suites, it´s own autoclave type machine and so on.  They said they do about 25 planned surguries per month.  They have 4 nurses and 4 doctors on staff for the whole hospital.  Total. One nurse and one doctor on at a time.  But there was only one in-patient while we were there so I guess that´s not too bad.  Hopefully they don´t get too many influxes.  So the plan is to eventully get surgical teams in from the states and do a bunch of surgeries for something in particualar (such as cleft lip) over the span of a week or two. Also, there are living quaters on the top floor of the hospital, so we will eventually be living there.  Fun stuff.

So why am I in this small town in northern Ecuador? Well that´s a whole new story.  Thurday night at the hostel, we started talking to this guy who is from the states, but lives here is Pimampiro.  He described the town and the people, so Jana and I decided to come and check it out and live here for awhile.  The fellow´s name is Paul (of course!) (New Paul? NP?).  So here we are.  Our journey started on Monday morning, with a 10 hour bus ride from Guayaquil to Quito.  The bus was a new and interesting adventure.  It was a free-for-all of people constantly jumping on and off at seemingly random places along the Pan American highway.  The bus helper man was very efficient.  You had about 3 seconds to get yourself either on or off the bus before it took off again.  At times it seemed like it barely even stopped.  More like a run and jump to/from a moving vehicle type scenario.  So we got dropped in a ghetto in Quito, which is not at all where we wanted to be for obvious reasons.  We were trying to meet up with NP, who had flown in.  After several phone calls and us passing our phone to strangers trying to give/get directions for NP, he just got a cab and came to get us.  Our night in Quito was nice.  Had some lovely, delicious Indian food and got some much needed rest. I was unable to sleep at all on the bus, but stayed awake and enjoyed the incredible scenery. Jana on the other hand nods out at the drop of a pin anywhere she is, so she slept most of the way. That morning we went with NP to the historic disctrict so he could buy some fabric and thread and whatnot.  Quito is at a much higher elevation than we were used to, so by the time we left the city we were exhausted and sick.  We both slept on the way from Quito to Otavalo, which is about a 2 hour ride.  Otavalo has the largest outdoor market in the world every Saturday.  We saw the mini version of this on Tuesday and I bargined a few items.  We met up with NP´s friend Segundo, who is an indiginous man that lives near there and does verious organic agricultural projects in his community.  We then learned that NP´s name here is "Paulito," so no more NP.

Paulito and his friend Sue have several projects here in Pimampiro.  Sue is a teacher, and works with kids at an all girls school on various art projects. We visited her at the school today and everything is very beautiful that they create.  Paulito is working with the community here, and various communities up in the mountains on organic agriculture projects.  This town has recently been introducted to pesticides and farming chemicals that are ruining their soil and ability to produce crops in the future.  So he is working on educating the community on the reprocutions of using such products.

Today Jana and I went to the local clinic.  It consists of 5 or 6 doctors, and one nurse.  We will be volunteering there tomorrow, but hope to do more work in the more rural communities up in the mountains in the future.  We shall see.  The town is quite nice. Very small, quiet.  There is free wifi in the center park, but it doesn´t seem to work. No funciona. Very glad I bought that iPhone.  So we are using the internet cafe next to Paulito´s office, which costs 80 cents an hour.  We are staying with the woman named Elena.  She is 50 years old and has 3 kids.  Two of her kids live in the states, and one in Quito. Her mother died 8 months ago, and a few weeks after that her husband left her for another woman, so she gets lonely.  We found out today that we are going to be working with her ex-husband, who is a doctor at the clinic.  Gotta love small towns. Should be sufficiently awkward... The house is small, and in an L-shape.  She has to go through our room to get to her room, or go outside.  Our room is her kid´s old room and there is still all of their old stuff in it. We are constantly being stared at by dolls, and afriad to move suddenly for fear of upsetting one of the thousand trinkets in the room, but it is homey.  She is very nice and feeds us three meals a day.  All for $10 per day.  This may sound cheap, but it adds up pretty quickly.  We need to find a place of our own that is cheaper.  Paulito pays $70 per month for a nice, 2 bedroom apartment.  It would be ideal to find something like that.  Ok, my mind is getting fuzzy and we need to go rejoin the rest of the world.  More updates to come. Miss you all.