Profiles

Karly

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 11:12:38 -0600

Hola! My name is Karly and I spent the month of April at Paulino and Elvia’s house(and their three kids Bolivar, Roberto and Hugo). It was a great month full of adventures, Spanish practice and art! Yup, art. I intended on spending my time tutoring and helping at the school, but ended up spending the time painting eight murals. I arrived at Malingua Pamba with several members of Pam’s family and another volunteer, Suzal. Suzal used to be a high school art teacher and was responsible for painting the murals on the new big community building. The murals were designed to tell the story of Pamelita and how she assisted Malingua Pamba. We didn’t realize how detailed the murals were going to be and by the end of Suzal’s week painting, it was clear I was going to be the one responsible for finishing the rest of the smaller details. That is how I ended up painting for about three weeks straight.
Fortunately, I wasn’t painting all on my own. The goal of the project was to get as many kids involved with the painting as possible, and we got A LOT of help. The kids were so excited to get into their little paint smocks (Suzal and I had cut holes in fabric for the painters to stick their heads through and cover their clothes) and put some paint on the walls. There were times when there was too much interest in the project and some paint would end up in areas outside the designated wall space. I have not had much experience painting so I was very thankful to follow Suzal’s suggestions and organization to get as much of the project completed before she had to leave. We ended up working a lot with Alcedes’ older sons, especially William and Patricio. Paulino’s sisters Sonia, Blanca and Enma also helped a lot and even had complete control over an entire mural. I really enjoyed spending the mornings hanging out with the older teenagers as they painted and we got to ask each other questions. I also had a lot of fun helping Suzal with the kids because she couldn’t speak Spanish and I was her bridge of communication when she needed to explain the paint assignment.
In addition to painting, which I did mostly in the mornings and a bit into the afternoons Monday through Friday, I also had a chance to help at the colegio (the older kids’ school) two Saturdays. One Saturday I helped with a few classes and the following weekend I taught all day, working on the English verb “to be” and “to have”. It was tricky to know exactly what to do with the class because I was pretty much just thrown into the classroom with no idea of what the students knew, what they were working on, what resources they have, etc, but as the days went on I got more comfortable and enjoyed interacting with some of the older classes especially. I was surprised at the low level of English knowledge of all the high school students and am unsure how much of a lasting impact I actually had on them, yet I don’t question that each class I was in had a few good laughs! For example, one day I was trying to say “I am hungry” in English, but was translating it into Spanish. I sometimes have a difficult time remembering the difference between hungry and man in Spanish (hambre vs. hombre) and accidently said “I need a man” which of course was a lasting joke throughout the rest of my time there.
One of my favorite parts in Malingua was forming relationships with some of the students and kids at the school. I particularly enjoyed talking with the older students who were curious in my culture and were more willing to answer questions I had for them. I particularly remember this one time when I was working with Enma, Blanca and Sonia on some English vocabulary. The girls had asked if I could tutor them sometimes during the afternoons, and while they were so busy it only happened once, we still had a great time together that one lesson. After going through several lists of words, we started chatting about the United States. Sonia asked me a very interesting question that I was very excited to answer: “Is there poverty in the US?” I instantly thought of all the stereotypes concerning Americans in the media and realized that Hollywood films don’t always show all sides of the story. Although the truth is not pretty, I was happy to share with the girls my view on how there are some very real similarities between Ecuador and the states. This conversation is something I won’t forget because I felt a great connection with the girls and was actually able to talk about more than just how many siblings I have or what my parents do.
Besides the painting and little teaching I did while in Malingua, I spent some time exploring the area on a few hikes and eating some great food. If I could give a “World’s Best Popcorn” award, it would definitely go to Elvia! Her popcorn was always perfect, never burnt and didn’t have too much salt. She was such a gracious host, serving fresh fruit juice, hot tea and plenty of tasty food. I loved spending time with her young boys: Bolivar (Boli) is hilarious and always said my name several times whenever he saw me; Roberto is adorable and loves to point out different objects in his school books (sometimes in English, especially “butterfly”, his favorite English word); and baby Hugo who constantly had a smile on his face and put one on mine. I clearly remember the day I saw little Hugo walking around the house with a chicken foot in his hand, sucking on the meat as if it were a lollipop. Visions like this are what I will continue to take with me and reminisce about when I think about Malingua!

Joëlle Ribaux

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 18:40:38 -0600

Hi my name is Joelle, I’m from Switzerland, and I turned 20 in Malingua! I think the months I stayed there were the most special of my life. I used to teach English and Maths to the kids on the weekdays, it was great because they learn fast but it happens that they also forget fast I as noticed after the two vacations weeks for Christmas. When looking at it backwards I think that doing more Spanish reading and understanding would be more useful, if I ever come back I know what I would do! Besides the scholar stuff we did lots of puzzles and some games such as Rummy Cube, Candy World, and I made a game in order to make them review some English vocabulary. For Christmas we made a Advent Calendar with paper rolls to make little tower, and every morning one of the kid open one tower. We also did a Christmas tree with lots of decorations which was one of the best thing I remember! Those kids are great! They don’t spend enough time playing or making creative stuff and God knows they are creative : take a look at our Advent Calendar and Christmas tree!

I didn’t teach that much to the high school teenagers, mostly because I didn’t feel the right to be a teacher for them : they are more or less my age and they have much more experience and responsibilities than I have. I felt like they could teach me more to me than me to them…

Usually I spent the afternoon walking around with William, playing with the kids or helping Elvia with the household, and preparing some stuff for the next days. William shown me everything about the area : Pucará, the hot water spring, one day we walked to Quilotoa which was kind of hard! Another day we went to Chugchilán which was also great ! I hiked to the Mirador and saw the whole valley. I spend some time with Enma and Blanca, Paulino’s little sisters and they taught me how to cook chicken, from life to the plate! Elvia decided to build a shelves to order the clothes so we spent some afternoons nailing and bending clothes ! then she made some collages with all the pictures she had. Now Elvia and Paulino’s room looks like a real home! For Christmas we also made a Christmas tree, with stars drawn by Bolivar and Roberto.

As I said I turned 20 up there and it was the most special and warn birthday I’ve ever had! I also spend Christmas and New Year’s Eve there, and that was awesome! Lots of dancing, lots of drinking too… We went to Tungiche for the corrida, then to Isinlivi for the election of Miss…, and celebrate Christmas as well as Elvia’s birthday with killing and eating a sheep. New Year’s Eve starts with the baptism of three children and then by lots of eating and dancing at the parents’ house, then we came back to Malingua to burn the Viejos in front of the church, dancing around the fire.

Those two months weren’t always easy but they were great! The first week was actually really tough, it was cold and in the addition the height doesn’t help you at all to keep up with them (especially playing football), and it was mostly trying all day long to adjust to a reality so totally different than the one I’m used to. Fortunately Katrien from the Hostal Tiana warned me and the fact that I could come back to Latacunga anytime was reassuring. Hopefully at the end of the second week, Pam, Jill, Alex and the engineers came and that allows me to settle and to be ready to carry one by the time they were gone. Alex stayed for one more month and that was so easier to be two to rely on each other. Then she left and I was left alone but much more at ease than before as I spent the last month there. I even think that this last month alone was the best because I was totally immerged in their lives. On the whole, my time there was… genial!

By the way I’d to thank so much William, Elvia, Paulino, Lautaro, Alcides, Aurora, Ignacio, Wilmer, Edison, Marco, Lorena, Celinda, and all the other for giving me so much warmth and joy! Oh and I thank Pam for making all that possible…!

Jannis Steinke

Fri, 3 Oct 2008 20:59:25 -0600

Hi Katie,

Finally I have got time to write about my project what I promised you to do about 2 weeks ago. I returned to Germany without problems and now I am really sad that I cannot be in Ecuador anymore.

But now lets talk about Malingua:

I will first write about me and my experiences and then write some suggestions of mine to improve or change something or just some comments that come to my mind:

The first day I arrived in Malingua, I felt really a little bit helpless and lonely because first I had to cope and to deal with the new circumstances and the new food and to get to know the new people. The other thing was that I had to decide everything that I do at school for myself and didn´t receive help. I had to decide who to teach, what to teach and how. So this was a challenge for me to be self confident and to trust myself that I am strong enough just to do what I think is right. I watched the first day how Rosa is teaching at school and directly recognized the big losses that exist there: Rosa has to teach too many people at the same time so that it is not possible to dedicate to a single pupil if he or she has questions. The other thing is that Rosa does not explain anything at all, her style of teaching is just to tell the pupils what to do and if they are not able to finish in time, they receive an X. However, Rosa doesn`t have time to explain anything. Because of that experience, I decided to take a small group of pupils to teach them separately and in another room. The first week I took the 5th grade (I think about 6 children) just to test myself and them, what I am able to teach and what they are able to learn and if my methods are good or not.

By the way, I never taught before especially not in Spanish and so I had to make up methods and contents that I could teach and see if it´s good. It was sometimes very hard to think about new topics because I didn´t find a book for teaching English and so I invented everything by myself. the books that exist in the library are much too difficult, even the "easy books". So I started to let them write down their names on a piece of paper and to paint their favourite animal. After that, I translated that in English and also taught them how these animals are moving and what they are eating. So we were able to build phrases. Quickly I recognized that my methods are good and that it is very easy to teach if you mix teaching things on the whiteboard with playing games (where I tried also to include things to learn) or singing songs.

The children liked my classes, I think, and so I took also the 6th grade together with the 5th and until the last week I had about 14 pupils. if you are interested in the things that I taught especially, you can look in the volunteer´s file because I wrote most of the things down. In the last week, I took the 3rd and also one day the 4th and the 7th grade and with the small pupils, I painted much or cut things out of paper with scissors. Sometimes it was hard to teach because I always had to be sure that it is right what I was doing there because no one ever gave me a feed-back or visited my classes to watch me teaching. They always expected that everything I was doing was great and good and that was sometimes a big pressure.

About the classes at the college I am not sure because the pupils are so shy, they neither tell you when they understood, nor when they didn`t understand and always speak with such a low voice that I could hardly understand anything. So I was never sure if they liked my classes or if they understood anything and also the college was only on 4 afternoons because in the 3rd week no one arrived (maybe because of the party in Guantoagloma). but it was also hard to teach math because I had to get to know new vocabulary and to make it interesting and understanding. Also no one told me the exact level of the pupils. Paulino just gave me the books and pointed on one page with the words "I suppose they stopped around here, but I am not sure...". So I had to guess when I prepared classes the level of the students and had to adapt my methods on this imagined level. The next day in the afternoon, when I had classes, I found out, that the students were much worse than I imagined. even in the 1er de bachillerato, with 18 years, they are not able to count properly things like 2 times 8 or 4 times 9 !! So I could not really teach the things in their books, I had to start at the basics! I felt very sorry for them, because it is not the students fault but the absence of a proper maths teacher since 2 years I think is a big problem. Moreover I think that the amount of materials in the library is very very great!! Thanks to Sytske, she helped me very much with buying so much material and games, many times I was inspired by them to prepare my classes. But I think now there is missing much paper, glue, felt tips, pens and rubbers because I used this very much. if there is any money that could be spent for this, maybe you can buy this and put it in the library.

In my free time, I often helped at the fields, built a house for guinea pigs, helped with the animals or just walked with Willian. Willian cared most of the time about me and that was very great because he helped me not to feel lonely what I actually never did!! The nights were very cold and so I had to check how many blankets I would need and how many clothes I had to put on to prevent me from being cold.

Sometimes I think, Paulino, Elvia and the children were not very considerately at night, because there were times, when also the grandmothers slept there and they were so loud and even put on loud music that it was not possible to sleep. One day, I remember that there was a big union in Malingua and after that, they were talking the whole night until 2 o´clock and I tried to sleep. every time, someone entered or left and every time slammed the door and even put on loud music. I think, they don´t have a sense for this and I know, that they don´t mean it bad, but it was some time hard to tolerate. I didn´t talk about that with them because I also know, that the end of the day and the night is mostly the only time of the day were they can sit together and have free time and have time for their children. if I had told them about that, they even would have been more scared that I feel uncomfortable there and also i said to me that I have to get used to the circumstances there and not to behave like a European tourist.

The greatest day was really the party that they arranged for me on the last Thursday because they only did it for me and acted in a play that showed the scene how I arrived there. Later they played their traditional music and I had to dance with Enma what was very funny. they even had presents for me, a scarf and a hat, and Pedro made a flute for me. In the end, when I said thanks to all the people that came there ( just the half of the village!!) I recognized how sad I was and how grateful for them.

All in all, Malingua Pamba is just a piece of heaven, like they told me that Pamelita said to them. The people are just so friendly and care so much about you and while I stayed there I felt always so calm and happy and satisfied with myself as I never felt before in my life. when I left there I had the feeling that I really helped them and maybe I get the chance to return one day.

If I consider, I don´t have really a tip for you to improve or to change something, because every volunteer is different and no one can really help the volunteers because it is their work and not yours. if they have questions, they can always ask you, but normally a volunteer goes there also to get more self confident and to learn to manage unknown situations on their own. I also would recommend all future volunteers to try to deal with the circumstances and to adapt to the life there without complaining because they come there to see a completely other world and so they don´t have to carry too much behaviour of their home country to Malingua. If they stick to this tip, their experience over there will be much more intensive and they can say in the end that they really have been in Ecuador!

Just a slight thing to improve: In the description of the project in Malingua that TravelWorks gave me, is not written down the height of Malingua and that sometimes the streets are so bad. Maybe you can write, that it is recommendable to carry a back pack ( if you remember our trip on the first day) and that people must be sure that they can live in a height of 3100 m for 4 weeks. I don´t know if you write the description for the project in Malingua, but if you do that, maybe you can change it.

I hope I didn´t forget anything, hope that you are fine and please write back when you have read my experiences.

Nice greets also to José Luis and bye,

Jannis

Katie Browning

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:42:33 -0600

Malingua Pamba. These two words evoke too many emotions to describe. There is the feeling of happiness, of course, remembering the wonderful people who live there and the many fun times we enjoyed with them; peacefulness, remembering the beautiful scenery, the high plains, the waterfalls, and the cute town itself; longing to see all of our Ecuadorian friends in Malingua Pamba; and fulfillment, knowing that we helped the community and its people develop and grow.
My name is Katie Browning, I’m 15 years old, and in November of 2006 during Thanksgiving break my mom (Frances Hartogh) and I traveled to Ecuador to help build and organize a library for the schools. Before we left for Ecuador, I was nervous and a little doubtful about our plans. I wondered what the people would be like, if they would look down on us because we were rich, white foreigners or view us as outsiders. I was worried about my Spanish speaking ability. Although I was a five-year Spanish student at school, I knew speaking in a foreign country with native speakers was quite different. I was also worried that we wouldn’t know what to do when we got there.

Needless to say, we left for Ecuador and, after two painless flights, arrived in the capital city of Quito. From there we hired a driver who showed us Cotopaxi National Park, home of the largest active volcano in the world, and drove us to Isinliví, a highland town just down the mountain from Malingua Pamba, where we stayed the night. The next morning the owners of the hostel drove us to Malingua Pamba.
We were greeted by the president of the town Paulino and his wife Elvia. They were such wonderful people! They showed us our room, which they had temporarily converted from a classroom into a bedroom, and gave us a tour of the town. The town was much different from what I had expected, but in a good way. We met one of the soon-to be-librarians, Lautaro, and were told that we would meet the other soon.
Lautaro became our unofficial guide for the duration of our stay. He was 16 years old, spoke Spanish fluently although his native dialect was Quechua, and was one of the nicest people I’d ever met. With him, we explored the countryside, played volleyball, had many conversations in his fluent and my broken Spanish, planted seeds in the building of the composting toilet, and built and organized the library.
Our main job in Malingua Pamba was to set up the library. Prior to our departure, Pamela had given us three duffel bags filled with donated Spanish books. We arranged the books on shelves made by the community, and gave Lautaro and Pedro, the other librarian, tips on how to run the library and keep it organized. Throughout the construction, little groups of kids came into the library and watched shyly until we asked them if they would like to read a book. They all smiled widely and nodded, devouring book after book after book. It was so wonderful to see! I felt like we were really helping the community, bringing them such joy.
Lautaro also helped us plant seeds in a little garden in the composting toilet that would later be transplanted outside after they had had time to grow. We planted flowers, peas, corn, and many other types of plants. Most of the children who were attending school that day came in during their lunch and helped clear away the existing weeds and pack the dirt down for the new plants.
We ate our meals in the communal kitchen with the Sacatoro family and sometimes other members of the community. The food, made by Elvia and Aurora, was always wonderful. For breakfast, there were fried eggs and bananas, and for lunch and dinner there were many different kinds of steaming soup made with local ingredients.

Overall, my experiences in Malingua Pamba have been some of the best of my life. They gave me a glimpse into the lives of people who live so differently from myself but who were some of the most kind, compassionate, and helpful people I have ever met. The fears that I had brought with me soon vanished. The people welcomed us into their community and their hearts, they were very patient with my Spanish, always willing to repeat themselves or rephrase what they said so we could understand them, they even tried to teach me Quechua (which, I’m sorry to say, I failed at miserably J!). We never ran out of things to do. My biggest fear turned out to be a fear of the bugs (of which there are many, and many big ones, but none that are harmful). Malingua Pamba has become part of who I am, and has influenced how I think of the world and its people. I hope to return next fall and encourage others to do so as well!

Brett Sargent

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:39:57 -0600

Dear All,
I have just arrived back to Ecuador after yet another amazing ten days, this time in Cuba. What a place, the color, music, dancing, old cars, architecture, cigars, stunningly beautiful women, warm clear blue waters, soul warming sun and more mojitos than I thought it possible to drink all create a spectacular country to visit. The trip was a smashing success and sharing it with one of my closest friends was for me, truly special. I have and lead a uniquely charmed life, with good fortune as my watchful protector and for this I am humbly grateful.
Arriving back to Quito I´ve finally had some time for reflection and self reflection about our special experience in the Ecuadorian Andes and I feel it would be remiss of me not to share with the group, that which I shared with the group.
I have lived, worked and travelled all over the world, and I have been touched by many things. Poverty is a powerful and emotional issue, which can make for easy tear shedding in the face of first world guilt. Often it takes to witness first hand the hard ship of others for the reality to set in, to truly understand the plight of the other, as much as one can having been raised in abundance.
Living where I do in Peru I have to some extent become less sensitive to phenomenal poverty. Although I am not poor myself, I am constantly surrounded by it and therefore not shocked by it, or at least less sickened by it these days. What does all this mean? Good question. It means that for me, in going to Malingua i was able to see, without an emotionally clouded head, what Malinguan life means to Malinguans. I was able to glimpse, and I say glimpse as it would be ignorant and arrogant of me to say otherwise, the culture, the heritage, the lifestyle, community spirit, sense of belonging, ownership, shared responsibility, and the willingness and want to challenge the ways of the past to bring about a brighter future. And I was able to do all this without a sense of pity or sadness for what they have or lack therein, with the obvious poverty not the focus. This brought a richness to my experience and an unexpected sweetness. But this is just one side of the story. Its equal and matching half can now only be referred to as the dream team. In the early days I was most curious to see how everything was going to pan out, the people, personalities, intentions, work share, space sharing, individual need in group dynamics, attentional to detail with the bigger picture in mind etc. It was for me nothing short of amazing to watch the immense and concentrated intellectual pool merge waters with a unified want to do what ever was possible, and then more. The energy invested was overwhelming, the dedication and commitment absolute and unwavering, the dream team a force to be reckoned with. I am humbled by each and every one of you.
So I extend out to all of you my thanks on behalf of the universe. People like you change the world, and I feel privileged to have been a part of it all. This experience has made me feel, think, hurt and once again reconsider from where and how I view humanity.
Pam I take my hat off to you, you are an inspiration.
Live well, the choice is yours.
See you next year
Brett