Buenas Amigos y Familia!
Your letters and emails in response to the blogs are fabulous - and giving me motivation to keep writing and keep sharing. I am delighted to see that they are somewhat entertaining enough to keep your attention. Thanks for all the support. For all those buried in a snowdrift right now, I am hesitant to report that it is about 85 degrees in Monte Sinai today (according to my trusty internal thermometer)... The rains have started. Night times are loud with the rain pounding on our metal roof. I wake me up a couple times a night from the pounding. This is surprising, considering the honks of the water trucks don´t even make me flinch in my sleep.
The last part of January, into March has been absolutely overwhelming for me. The first month in Ecuador was a Honeymoon period - everything was new and exciting. From there I moved into a period of frustration with the language and my job...maybe a bit of homesickness. The Holidays kept me busy as I started to get accustomed to life here and finding my niche in the community. I was starting to find my feet, feeling a part of Monte Sinai and feeling like I knew tiny bit of what was going on around me. Right now, the harsh realities are poverty are hitting me hard as Monte Sinai and my job are undergoing a few changes.
The day after New Years, my housemates and I woke up to some very active streets outside of our house. There were in the streets loaded with house-building materials. The stores were nearly cleaned out of food, no bread left in the bakeries, and people upon people walking in the streets.
We soon learned from Bolivar (local store owner) that president Correa had denounced Marco Solis and all the "owners" of the invasion communities in Guayaquil. They had been trafficking land, or selling government land to private owners without permission from the government. Correa put a large price tag on the heads of all the land traffickers, who fled the scene overnight. Rumor has it they are hiding in Germany... Anyone who had bought land from Marco Solis could keep their land and their house. All other land went to the government. Naturally, the news spread like wildfire, and people started rushing to Mount Sinai to claim all the unclaimed land, throw up a house real quickly, and claim that they had bought the land from Marco Solis. People started "squatting" on land plots (guarding it so others could not take it over), others stole already-standing houses. The rest built flimsy cane and tarp structures to claim the land when the military came to take a census. Today, a month later, people are still building. The streets have quieted down considerably, and we are still waiting for the military census. In some areas, the government is knocking down cane structures, claiming the territory back for the government. There are occasional tire-burning protests in the surrounding communities as the government moves in. Marco Solis and his comrades are nowhere to be seen.
My housemates and I have had considerable conversations about this transition to government control. We are experiencing this transition from Western, developed country ideals and by no means understand the situation around us. But from our conversations with neighbors about invasion neighborhood history, this transition had to happen sometime. In many ways, this is a good transition for the community. The government now has to recognize Monte Sinai as part of the city and provide the basic public services. (Electricity, water, security force, and trash removal). But with massive amounts of people, comes crime, drugs, gangs, and violence. Don´t worry parents - this comes a few years down the road. But for our neighbors, it is a great concern.
Without a basic infrastructure - schools, libraries, soccer fields, kids are left to walk the streets and find other activities to occupy their time. Right now, it seems to be a race against the clock... If the neighborhoods don´t form strong communities, security systems, and alternative options for their kids, the streets could become very dangerous very quickly.
With the turn of the new year, my job changed considerably. They revised the health program at Hogar de Cristo and decided that we have too many eggs in one basket - that is too many small projects running and not enough hands to keep track of them all. I agree 100%...but unfortunately it is the projects of the volunteer that get cut first. So yes, the HIV talks are no more. Verónica is very disappointed. I had put a ton of time and effort into developing that program and learning the HIV-Spanish lingo. We had finally gotten to the point of having measurable results and educating a good handful of people. I ended up with a lot of time at the beginning of January to figure out where I want to focus my efforts for the rest of the year. This gave me quite a bit of time in the neighborhood, and I rather fell in to the position of social worker in Monte Sinai. Veronica is delighted - this is a great opportunity for us to develop some sort of protocol and list of contacts for families in dire situations. I am also delighted, yet emotionally drained after my first 2 months of attempting to fulfill this position. I have had the privilege to working with two cases during these months- both of which have profoundly affected my experience here in Ecuador.
Celinda is a 25 year old neighbor of Consuelo who lives with a mental disability (undiagnosed) in the midst of an extremely alcoholic and abusive household. She lives with her single mother, younger brother (23 yrs) and 2 nieces in a chain house, barely elevated from the mud puddles underneath.
Her sister (Mariana) lives two houses down with 5 kids and dysfunctional husband. The sister is an alcoholic as well and extremely abusive to her five kids. Jenn has been working with this family to get the kids into the shelter - as they are left to the street, without school and many times without food. On a couple of occasions, I have walked into Consuelo's house to find the five kids and the mother seated silently at the table with plates of chicken and rice sitting in front of them. Consuelo and her kids are quick to sit me in a chair and serve me the same. All the while, Consuelo does not have funds to send her kids to school.
At the beginning of January, Consuelo and a couple neighbor ladies began to notice that Celinda could be pregnant. A visit to the hospital soon after showed 32 weeks of pregnancy and that Celinda would need a caesarian section. Breaking this news to a family that already goes at least one day a week without eating was extremely hard. A pregnancy means another mouth to feed, several trips to the doctor, and medical expenses.
We continued with minimal prenatal care throughout January, until Celinda gave birth to a baby girl on February 1st, 6 to 8 weeks premature. (Each doctor came to a different conclusion as to how far along Celinda was with each ultrasound). The baby was born extremely malnourished and rushed to the incubator soon after birth. Celinda was diagnosed with active Tuberculosis in the hospital along with a heart murmur. Despite her sickness, they sent Celinda home to recover
3 days after her caesarian section, keeping the baby for another 10 days.
Celinda and baby have now been home together for 3 weeks. We found funds from Hogar de Cristo to buy milk, diapers, and vitamins for the baby. I took my boss from Hogar de Cristo to visit her last week, and we found the baby extremely weak and malnourished still. It turns out Celinda has been caring for the baby with the help of Jaqueline, a 12 year-old niece. The grandma leaves the house everyday for work, unable to oversee the care of this child. Concerned for the health of Celinda and baby, I took them by bus (yes, a 2-kilogram baby on a public bus...) to one of the Hogar de Cristo sub-centers. The doctor told us that Celinda needs to be admitted to the infectious disease hospital for her respiratory infection and heart condition. I took Celinda back home and broke the news to her mother. Sending Celinda to the hospital is not an option for them. There would be no one to care for the baby, the house, or the kids.
For a week, Veronica and I have been bustling around Hogar de Cristo trying to figure out options for this family. The situation is nearly impossible. The women (mother and sister of Celinda) are the only ones who work in this household. They both travel 1.5 hours into the city every day to clean houses, making just enough money for transportation and to feed 7 kids, plus Celinda, the baby, and themselves. Sometimes various men will show up, eat the food, drink away the money, and then leave for long periods of time. Celinda has undertaken the role of house-sitter and care-taker of the 7 grandchildren than hang around the house. Without her, the women cannot work, and the family does not eat. Poverty hurts.
We have found a few resources that could save the situation. Hogar de Cristo partners with a church in New Jersey who provides funds for people in need. They have offered a monthly $200 to buy milk and diapers. We also found a foundation in Guayaquil for malnourished kids. They could take the baby for 3 weeks and nurse her back to health - if the family will let us take the baby. The Hogar volunteers have been incredibly supportive in offering a hand with this case. We may form a rotating schedule to have people stay with Celinda in the hospital for her treatment. The only thing missing is the trust and support of the grandmother. If we can get all these working parts together, we may be able to move forward with treatment.
It is difficult for me to write about the second case, as I know I cannot explain everything. Juan Carlos was our neighbor, living across the street from San Felipe in a cane house from Hogar de Cristo. Juan lived alone with a mental disability, depending heavily on his neighbors for care. He wandered the streets daily, collecting plastic bottles for recycling, kicking around the soccer ball with the kids, and grabbing a bite to eat here and there from the local store owners. Although he was 35 years old, Juan had the spirit of a five-year-old -always coming up to me to shake my hand with a smile and to ask me where I was going. If I was going to mass, he would come with. He loved to be a part of the crowd, participating in the songs and never failing to smile the entire way through.
At the beginning of January, Juan was found in the street with convulsions. A couple of neighbors rushed him to the Hospital del Guayaquil where they admitted him to the neurology unit. Here he stayed for over a month. My housemates and I found him in the hospital five days after being admitted. He had not been bathed, did not have clean diapers, and had not received any diagnostic tests to progress with a diagnosis. They had stopped the seizures, but since he did not have a family member with him they just let him lay there. This was a hard lesson for my housemates and I to learn – medicine in Ecuador is a completely different ballgame than the system in the US.
The hospital provides only basic medical care. The doctors rotate through the patient rooms in the morning, write out all the prescriptions for medication, write a small update in the patient records, and order tests. It is then up to the family member to buy the medication, buy supplies for the tests, wheel the patient in their bed to and from the tests, remind the nurses to give the pills, bathe the patient, and feed the patient. The following day, a different doctor will rotate through and read the small update from the day before and make his/her own assessments. If the tests from the day before were not carried out, they order it again and move on.
With no luck in finding Juan´s family, my housemates and I "adopted" him. It was truly a pleasure to visit Juan every day in the hospital. We all learned the in´s and out´s of the hospital quickly. When not chasing down doctors and nurses for tests, we tried to keep a smile on Juan´s face with coloring books and singing. Maria Juana, Madre Nuri, and Fr. John joined us on several different occasions to pass time with Juan.
Two weeks after being admitted to the hospital, we finally ran into Juan's sister, Fanny. Juan was absolutely delighted to see her. She helped us piece together Juan's story. Had had been lost from his family for almost two years. Juan had an adventurous spirit and often wandered out of the house, jumped on the bus, and went where ever the bus took him. This was not the first time that Juan was lost from his family for an extended period of time. The longest period of time
was four years, lost from age 10 to age 14. No one knows where he was, who took care of him, or what experiences he had during this time. We did, however, put on our detective hats to figure out bits and pieces about his last two years. Through talking to neighbors and friends, it seems Juan lived with an extremely abusive man outside of Mt. Sinai for several months before his neighbors rescued him and gave him a home in Mt. Sinai. A little over a year, he livd alone in Mt.
Sinai. Juan was extremely blessed to end up in the community that he did. Maria Juana and Martha fed him, Danny and his kids walked with him in the street, the kids played soccer with him. The nuns at San Felipe organized a bingo for Juan to pay for medications - we raised $130, which covered expenses for about 10 days.
After Juan's sister came, his health worsened considerably. His HIV tests came back positive. We suspected he had a serious case of AIDS as he suffered from several severe secondary infections. These infections soon took over Juan's system, and after 6 weeks in the hospital he passed away. It was time for him to pass onto the next world and rest. He had suffered in many facets in his life from physical, mental, and most likely sexual abuse. After being so sick and scared during his time in the hospital, passing from this world must have been an incredible relief for him.
Juan´s presence in Mount Sinai is greatly missed. He was always a friendly face in the street open for a visit. The community formed around him when he got sick. Everyone asked about him, many donated money for medication, and offered to visit him in the hospital. Fr. John said a mass in Juan´s name to celebrate his life, followed by a reception with cola and crackers where the family members could meet the community who had taken care of him. It was a beautiful reunion between the two sides of Juan´s life who unfortunately never came together until he passed away. My only hope is that he knew how much his community and his family loved him. He greatly impacted many lives, including my own.
Well, it is now May 7. Four months after I started this blog... So much more has happened - I will have to turn around a start a whole new blog to give updates! My work with Celinda continues (The baby weighs 5.2 Kg!!!). She gets stronger every day. We are still in contact with Fanny and Juan´s family who are looking into moving Juan´s house to a new location.
I heard that spring has hatched in the States. I hope all is well where you are. And as my Grandpa always tells me, keep your plow in the ground and hand on the throttle.
