Two years ago I went to Ecuador by myself to volunteer with a few different organizations for eight weeks. It was the most challenging and rewarding experience of my life thus far, and ended up serving as a major inspiration for my decision to go on the World Race.
I flew into the capital, Quito, and decided to sightsee for a few days before heading down to the site of my first volunteer program. Quito is beautiful, and the people there are some of the friendliest. The hostel manager and I had long talks about life, and my taxi driver from the airport taught me all about Ecuadorian history. I had the opportunity for many cross-cultural experiences before I even made my way to the volunteer program!
After a few days in Quito, I made my way to Banos to volunteer at an organization called Fundacion Arte del Mundo. There, we focused on children’s literacy, art, and sustainability programs and also taught English to adults in the community. Every day, we would have about 50 kids run into our building and be thoroughly excited for an afternoon of reading and learning—this was such a joy! What I found the most amazing was that the organization was so deeply rooted in the community that we were able to work on service projects with, and grow meaningful relationships with, many other people in Banos.
Working with these kids and other people in the community was very much a humbling experience for me. During my time there, two local high schools were having a competition to see who could drop off more plastic at our organization to be recycled. The winning high school, they were told, would have a school party to celebrate. These students were so excited at the prospect of this that they dropped off bag after bag after bag of plastic until the entire courtyard was full of plastic. The community came together one day to take hours to sort and count the plastic with us—even the local military base came to help! Seeing the town pull together and donate so much of their time in order to bring students in their community joy was such a blessing.
During one of my last days working with this organization, we visited the village of Vizcaya. This town was about an hour and a half drive from Banos up a winding mountain road. Coming there was like taking a step back in time: everyone traveled by horse or foot, walking goats down the road was an everyday occurrence, and almost every family worked in agriculture. When we got there, almost every child in the area had already heard about our arrival and were waiting eagerly to read books and do arts activities. At the end of the day, a woman nearby even invited us to dinner to thank us for coming…we found out later that she had caught the fish and spent hours preparing a meal in her two-room home just to thank us! The people in this village might have had little in the way of resources, but they had so much joy in their hearts. I am so blessed to have had that experience.
After leaving Banos, I spent three weeks in Salasaca, Ecuador working at a rural, indigenous elementary school teaching Math. These children and their families had even less than the families in Vizcaya, yet they were the most loving and joyous people I have ever met. One of my favorite memories from this project was giving the kids and their families toothbrushes and toothpaste. No one in the area knew about brushing teeth, so the volunteers and I taught the kids, who then taught their families. Their favorite part of the day at school quickly became brushing their teeth after lunch! A simple, everyday practice that most Americans see as entirely non-eventful became a source of joy for these children. I might have been the teacher at this school, but I learned so much from my students during these few weeks!
Of course, this experience did not come without its set of challenges. Traveling to Ecuador by oneself is never an easy undertaking! In Quito, my phone and computer were stolen and I had bad altitude sickness. In Banos, I came down with such a bad bug that I was sick for almost the entire time there. I had some days were I felt so weak that I could not even move from bed to work with the kids. In Salasaca, the plumbing and electricity was down for half the time I was there, my camera broke, and the nearest food (and internet to talk to home) was almost an hour and a half each way (unless you could flag down a truck heading into town for a quarter!).
Experiences such as mine in Ecuador are never perfectly hassle-free, but that is what makes the journey all the more worthwhile! Being forced out of my comfort zone allowed me to invest all my time and energy into working with such great organizations and developing amazing friendships. I cannot wait to spend 11 months doing just that while on the World Race.
Blessings,
Alexa
