¡Bienvenid@s a mi camino ecuatoriano!

If you’re reading this, then you must be somewhat curious about my decision to move to Guayaquil, Ecuador for a year to be a volunteer with Rostro de Cristo, and interested in keeping up with my journey throughout these next several months. ¡Bienvenidos/as!  Although this experience has already become quite difficult to explain in words, I will do my best to update this blog monthly so that all of you can have some semblance of what I am up to.

To start off, Rostro de Cristo is a Catholic volunteer and retreat program that, in its mission, invites participants from the United States to:

• Be in relationship with the Ecuadorian people and reflect on the face of Christ in their joys and struggles.
• Support the Ecuadorian people in their work to meet basic human needs and achieve a justice rooted in Gospel values in their developing communities.
• Lead a simple lifestyle, build an intentional Christian community, and immerse in the local culture and reality with respect and humility.

(from the Rostro de Cristo website).

Participants include us yearlong volunteers as well as high school and college students who visit our two volunteer communities for weeklong retreats (immersion experiences) throughout the year.

Accompaniment and mutuality are two words that are essential to Rostro’s mission, and part of the reason I was drawn to this program in the first place.  The idea of accompaniment, or walking with, rather than doing for, is something that is core to how I think about doing service and social justice work as a privileged person from the United States.  Rostro volunteers are expected to arrive in their communities of Monte Sinaí and Arbolito with a sense of humility and awareness that we are not trying to “fix” or “save” anyone or any community. For this reason, Rostro’s model is to send volunteers to work with schools and agencies that have already been established in Ecuador, rather than starting programs ourselves.  The idea of mutuality is similar, and refers to the idea that we and the Ecuadorian people we encounter are building relationships together and growing together, rather than one group giving and the other benefiting.

I live in Monte Sinaí, an invasion community on the outskirts of Guayaquil (I’ll explain what that is later!), with five other volunteers from the United States. Victoria, Maggie, Dan, Owen, and Isabel are a huge source of strength and support for me as I experience the challenges of acclimating to an entirely different culture than what I am used to. We eat dinner together and pray together five nights a week, which gives us a chance to debrief our long days apart from one another, laugh together, and stay grounded in faith together. We also have an intentional spirituality night and community night each week, which have been crucial in getting to know one another and in learning from one another’s experiences of God. In following Rostro’s pillar of Simplicity, we don’t have WiFi in our house, and have little technology to distract us from being truly present to one another. It’s so liberating! Each one of my community members brings in such a unique perspective and experience, and I have come to love them like a family. I would not be able to do this year without them!

So, back to Sinaí. It’s referred to as an invasion community because until its settlement, it was an undeveloped area of land (mainly forest and agricultural area) to which people from all over Ecuador migrated for the economic opportunities offered by Guayaquil that were not offered by more rural areas of Ecuador. So, my neighbors here are from all over- there is a large Afro-Ecuadorian community from Esmeraldas, the northernmost province of Ecuador, as well as a large indigenous population from the Andean Sierra regions (many of whom speak both Quichua/Kichwa and Spanish), not to mention many others from Manabí and other provinces. The internal migrants moved onto the land without legal titles from the government, and so for the beginning of Sinaí’s history, it lacked public services such as water and electricity. Although now there is a municipal presence in Sinaí to some extent, residents in more remote sectors (Sinaí has 38 in total) still struggle to receive these services.  The majority of roads aren’t paved, and so dirt roads cause some long-term breathing problems for residents. The trash collection system is also inconsistent, so burning of trash is a common way people deal with the issue here. The city bus system does function in Sinaí, however, which is Sinaí’s main source of transportation. The area has grown tremendously in the past twenty-thirty years or so, and if Sinaí was recognized as a separate city from Guayaquil, it would be the third largest in Ecuador. Mount Sinaí also has the largest concentration of extreme poverty in Ecuador.

Although some Sinaí residents have gone through the process of legalizing their land, most still do not yet have legal rights to their land, which leaves them in danger of being removed from the land by armed military personnel. Because of this reality, many (especially in the more remote sectors of Sinaí) live in cane homes that are easy to take down and move them to other areas- until the next removal process. The cycle then continues, as there isn’t a long-term plan in place to provide people with stable housing or a more expedited legalization process.  Overall, there is a pattern of government officials placing Sinaí’s access to basic human needs on the back burner. As someone who is passionate about migrant rights in the United States, it has been interesting for me to compare this «back burner» treatment of internal migrants with similar patterns of lack of access to decent public services in U.S. cities for immigrants and other marginalized populations (see: Flint, Michigan).

So, onto what I am up to on a daily basis here in Monte Sinaí! As volunteers, we work part-time jobs at local organizations in the area. I work at Hogar de Cristo, which is a nonprofit organization run by the Jesuits that started in Chile during the 20th century and has a presence in several South American countries. Hogar in Sinaí is focused on access to housing and economic solidarity via microloans, but offers several other social services, including healthcare, the only shelter for women fleeing domestic violence in all of Ecuador (!) and youth programming.

I work for Proyecto Misión, the community organizing office at Hogar, which is something I’ve never really done before! The office’s main goal is working with community leaders from Sinaí to advocate for legalization of people’s lands. The area of the office that I work with plans and provides programming for kids and youth in a few different remote sectors of Sinaí, called Realidad de Dios, Promesa de Dios, Voluntad de Dios, and Los Juanes.  There is a high rate of drug use among youth in Sinaí, and so Proyecto Misión seeks to work with young leaders to foment a new, healthier youth culture. It is clear that youth drug use is a symptom of structural poverty and the lack of opportunities available for young people to succeed. I wanted to make sure to note this in my blog as drug use is sometimes linked to a lack of moral judgment, which I believe is a misguided understanding of a complex situation. Right now, I am leading English classes in Realidad de Dios, which is something the community had been asking for, because although English is taught in almost all schools here, many school teachers don’t speak English and aren’t able to provide the assistance students need to succeed. The classes are also a good way to bring the community together. This week I plan on integrating environmental themes into the class, since the kids’ parents are involved in some community initiatives to start composting and preserving green space in the neighborhood, as Realidad de Dios borders the Bosque (forest) Papagayo, much of which has been damaged in recent years.

The other initiative I’m working with through Misión is related- it’s a youth-led environmental preservation and activism group in the sector of Promesa de Dios. A seventeen-year-old resident of Promesa, Ronald, is passionate about environmentalism and wanted to take a stand against the environmental degradation in Sinaí, and so he created this group, called «Eco-Community.» The group seeks to focus on reforestation (a timely issue in the Americas!). My role will be to go to the group’s meetings and serve as the point person from Hogar to connect the group to resources and materials from the office. Eco-Community is entirely youth- and community-led, and so I truly only wish to be a support for whatever the kids need, rather than a leader.  I am new to all of this still, and am really looking forward to experiencing more of what these strong, motivated, smart leaders from within Sinaí are working on to lift up their own communities!

As volunteers, our other main role is to visit neighbors in the community for several hours each week. Neighbor visits have already become the highlight of my volunteer experience, even though it’s only been a month! Our neighborhood is filled to the brim with compassionate, welcoming, faith-filled, hardworking, genuine people.  Every day I hear pase no mas (pass no more/come in) from another neighbor inviting me into their home or small business. One day a couple other volunteers and I might visit Luz Maria in her DVD store, where she will practice her pronunciation of English words, teach us some (extremely difficult!) words in Quichua, and then her husband, Jaime, will ask us what we think of the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border and then show us the cuy (guinea pig) that he is raising to grill soon.  Another day we might visit Gloria, an older woman who is extremely honest about her struggles living in a wheelchair, and listen to her talk about her experience with faith and what she thinks Jesus’s message is, as she and Raul, her twenty-four-year old son with special needs tenderly and lovingly care for one another. And, of course, we will blow bubbles with Raul, one of his favorite activities! Another day, we might go as a group over to Juana’s house for a meal with her five beautiful, funny, caring daughters, and listen to music and talk about our families. One of the most beautiful things about living in Monte Sinaí is that each day is an opportunity for a new moment of raw connection with a neighbor that might come from a completely different continent and background from us, but who wants to invite us into their home, their space, their life. And we seek to invite them into our lives in return. As I sit here typing these words, I struggle to find the right ones to describe the incredible (and undeserved) hospitality I have received and will continue to receive during my time in Ecuador. Estoy llena de alegría y gratitud!

Thanks so much for reading this first installment of my blog! Stay tuned throughout the year for more stories of the struggles and joys I will inevitably continue to experience as I live in this lively, love-filled place!