A new home for 20 poor Andean families in Ecuador

This report is coming straight from Angamarca, Cotopaxi, Ecuador.

Ester is our volunteer living in Cotopaxi, where our project is active. She shares every single day with the families in the area, assisting them with basic medical care. Here she tells about just a normal day.

“Today it’s hot. We are having some wind, yet not as much as they say we’ll have next month. My day starts with the incoming news about a house that got burnt in the night. The large family which lived in it has lost everything: they only have the dresses they wore at the moment. The fire wasn’t completely extinguished, the mother went with the kids to visit a deceased, and when they were back they found only four bare walls.

Today I’m going to visit an old lady living not too far from Angamarca. As soon as I approach her house, I can see Dorilla cutting wood with a machete. She points to a wooden bench where I can sit, but first she lays a sack on it, in case it were dirty. She prepares her meals on the fire; I help her lighting it, since she struggles with the matches I gave her: she has little paper and the wood is thick. I tear some pages out of my notebook and finally the wood burns.

As usual, smoke gets in my eyes and I start shedding tears. Finally, our meal is ready – rice and egg; the pots are blackened by smoke just as the “kitchen” walls are - there’s not a real kitchen. We have lunch in dishes contradicting any pretense of hygiene, yet the food is good. Before I go, I give her a shot of painkiller for her aching legs.

In the afternoon I go back to Angamarca: more patients are waiting for me, my days go by so fast … and there are so many stories yet to tell."