On May 18th, while teaching English at a primary school in Quito, Ecuador, I felt slightly light headed. As I paused my speech to regain my balance, I thought to myself “Probably still trying to kick the altitude sickness.”
Seconds later, at the sound of the school alarm and the sight of frenzied, evacuating students, I realized my mistake. What I’d felt was the tremor of a small earthquake, one of two aftershocks Ecuador experienced following the trembling, 7.8 magnitude, earthquake they’d endured the previous month. The April 16th earthquake claimed 660 lives, and displaced 73,000 families.
By the week’s end, my team and I were on our way to the coast with a local organization to offer relief to those more directly affected by the initial quake, and now, re-traumatized by the recent aftershocks. We went town to town, offering food, clothing, and hygiene parcels to hundreds of displaced families living under tarps among the remains of what they used to call home.
We held crying, month old infants, sang happy birthday to a ninety-year-old man, knelt to pray with the injured and handicapped, and watched, with grief, as parent after parent struggled to choose between clothes and hygiene packs or food and water parcels, as the supplies ran low.
You may not see updates of the earthquake in Ecuador on your news feed anymore, but don’t forget that while the ground has stopped shaking, the worlds of these families are forever turned upside down. Homeless, void of all their earthly possessions, and mourning loved ones, they are scared and hopeless.
Pan de Vida, the small foundation that kick started the relief trip, has pulled all its resources to acquire the necessary supplies to distribute to these distraught coastal families. Volunteers of PDV have now made a total of three such trips to the coast, a near nine hour, overnight drive away, offering their free weekends, to meet the need.
To support the work of Pan de Vida as they strive to reach the physical and spiritual needs of the souls the media has so quickly forgotten, please visit www.pandevida.org.ec and check out the video below.
