So I’ve been doing ministry here in Ecuador for a couple of weeks, so I think it’s only fair that I tell everyone who’s interested what kind of work I’m doing.
So I work at a place called Dunamis which means Dynamite in latin and is run by a guy named Borris. This place is basically meant to help sex trafficed girls recover and teach them life skills so that they’ll have something to go to one they have to go into the world, and most importantly teach them about Jesus, and that even though humans might fail them and hurt them Jesus never will. I’m pretty sure they’re supposed to stay here longer than at the shelters they already stay at since the amount of time they usually stay at these places just isn’t enough for them to recover and learn these things. Right now they bounce between a few shelters because shelters get money based on how many girls they’re taking care of so if you have 8 girls and swap them with a different set of 7 girls they get money for 15 girls.
The reason they can’t stay at Dunamis and have to bounce around shelters is because Dunamis isn’t finished yet. That’s where we come into play. My team, The Silverbacks, and another team in our squad, Team Tribe, are both assigned here and work together everyday Monday through Friday and together are newly nicknamed “The Troop.” We are working together to build a wall around the property. The reason for this wall is important. These girls make these bad guys a lot of money, and if they can get their girl back they will. Another thing is that these girls are abused and some of them are confused. They know that some dude has cared for them and don’t understand that they are being used and abused so some of them might try to run back to their pimps. This large cement wall will prevent both of those things from happening.
So for the couple of weeks we’ve been here we’ve been working on the same wall. If you’re heading into the gate it’s the left wall and if you’re leaving it’s the right wall. Up until the day I’m writing this we haven’t had to lay any cinderblocks because the part of the wall we’re working on already has that much done. For the most part we’ve been in charge making the cement pillars holding the sections of wall together and keeping them from being wobbly. If we’re lucky the cement mixer will work and we can get something like 8 pillars done in a day. If were not so lucky, which seems to happen pretty consistently we have to mix the cement by hand and we can’t expect more than 4 on a good day. In order to accomplish this we have to fill a certain amount of wheelbarrows full of sand and dump them into a pile on a certain spot that weve tried our best to clear of grass. Then we have to wheelbarrow a certain number of bags of cement mix that weigh 50 kilos, which is apparently about 120 pounds, which is about 20 pounds less than I weigh, up to the pile of sand and dump it. Then we have to use shovels that have really short handles to mix it together manually. We do this until it’s nice and mixed then we have to spread the mixture out until it’s just a couple inches thick and has a wall around the edges. Then will fill a certain amount of wheelbarrows to the brim with gravel and dump it on top of this area of mixture and spread it evenly within the walls of mixture. Then we have to add water. Depending on the day we’ve had to do this differently. On the first day we had a hose slowly fill of an empty metal oil barrel and then we have to manually use a large white plastic bucket to transport the water from the barrel to the mixture. Other days we’ve had to have somebody jump down into a relatively deep hole and scoop out water from a makeshift pool within said hole. Then we have an assembly line of people pass the bucket between each other to the oil barrel until we’ve filled it to how much we think we need, which is a lot. So we pour water to the middle of the mixture and it runs down the hill to the part of the mixture that we have to start mixing. We have to mix it manually with shovels until it’s the right consistency adding water as needed and it’s a long process. After we have enough with the right consistency we fill a wheelbarrow with it and move the wheelbarrow up to a an empty pillar, braced by wood. We fill a bucket with the wet mixture and pass it up to someone on the relatively tall wall who pours it down the hole. It takes many of these and it’s back breaking work but we do it with joy in our hearts. If we have the cement mixer the process becomes a whole lot smoother. We dump some water in the mixer then we put 40 shovel fulls of gravel, and then a bag of cement mix, and finally 30 shovel fulls of sand. We come to the other side of the mixer with a wheelbarrow, fill it with cement mix and the process is basically the same from there.
Here’s some details I left out. We are working in the mountains just outside Quito and because of this the temperature and weather up here is wild to say the least. It’s noticably cooler up here than down in the city which is already at a pretty ridiculous elevation. A lot of the time it can feel really nice, like my ideal weather, but other times the sun can get really intense and hot or it can get really cold. These aren’t temperatures that are new to me since we can get a pretty decent spectrum in Florida but these are extremes that can change in an instant. Because of the elevation we can sometimes find ourselves quite literally in the white void of a thick cloud. This is usually the time that it gets really cold. When there isn’t a cloud there is a beautiful view of the city or on the other side more mountains, and it’s really neat to watch the clouds creep over the mountains and head directly towards us and cover us with a cold white void. Because of the elevation it’s easy to lose your breath up here since there’s less oxygen. Luckily I didn’t get altitude sickness when I first got here despite coming from a place that’s basically at sea level. Because it’s in the mountains this place is not by any means flat. We have to push the wheelbarrows full of heavy stuff, up and down massive hills. Also we have to push that cement mixer manually to it’s location through these hills. This thing is obviously not meant to be pushed considering it only has one axle and a trailer hitch at the other end, but we somehow we manage every time, but I’ll be honest it’s definitely a couple of the other guys doing most of the work when toting the mixer. When the mixers on it’s hard not to breath in a lot of gasoline and when it’s pouring you have to look away because eventually a stray splatter is heading for your eye. The wheelbarrows are short, have one wheel and half of them have janky wheels that squigle all over the place, which is not fine when toting one that’s filled to the brim with wet cement on a slant. There’s certainly been plenty of spillage these last few weeks. We have access to like 4 wheelbarrows total, sometimes not even that, and 3 buckets total, some cracked, and sometimes not even that. We usually have one delegated for water and 2 for passing up to 2 people sitting on the wall to pour cement. When we have the mixer we can use all of them for cement and just take one away for water when we’re making a new batch. My Frogg Togg, which is a rain jacket and pants my Dad suggested I buy, has been extremly useful for keeping my clothes clean while I work, and keeping me warm when it gets cold. We’ve been managed by a guy named Diego this entire time and he’s really cool. Because of the elevation it’s really easy to get sunburned up here, even if it’s cloudy. Sometimes there’s too many people for the amount of jobs there are so sometimes I find myself just standing around, but this works out because we get swap out when we get tired and keep working at a good speed. We have to walk down a half a mile road to get to the property which is easy peasy on the way down, but on the way back it’s a pretty rough uphill.
Anyway this week we pretty much ran out of wall to put pillars on so we had to start laying bricks ourselves. We mixed water and cement mix only and then spread it on the bricks. This is less strenuous than the pillars but it’s a lot slower and more skill.
There’s more details I can add but I think you get the point. It’s a ton of fun and I’m living the dream but it’s also hard work. I’m going to update this blog later one I get a hold of some pictures to add so you can see what it looks like there.
