First week in Quito

July 27, 2007

Well, here I am! In Quito, Ecuador, about 9000 feet above the level of my permanent home in Brooklyn, New York. I have come here to serve as the second long-term volunteeer for the IVP (International Volunteer Program) with Habitat para la Humanidad Ecuador. I will be here for the next six months, until January 30, 2008. My base will be in the national office in Quito and I will spend a few weeks each month traveling to the affiliate offices with brigadas (teams) of international volunteers from the US, Europe and other foreign countries. Along with Daniel Mejia Acosta, the Director of the IVP program, I will be accompanying the brigadistas and helping to construct houses with them and the families who will own the houses.

As a bit of a background, I grew up in Tucson, Arizona and moved to Las Cruces, NM with my family when I was 11. I attended high school in NM and then moved to New York for college. I received a degree in International Studies from Marymount Manhattan College and then began working for Project FIND, a non-profit serving senior citizens by providing low-income housing and multiple senior centers. After three years of working with Project FIND, I felt it was time to move on and return to my original plans of working abroad with an international NGO.

After an emotional goodbye to my tenants and co-workers in New York, I spent two weeks preparing for my trip. I have lived for extended periods of time in Melbourne, Australia and Vancouver, Canada so I thought it would be no sweat preparing for six months but now I realize I left a lot behind! Ecuador is a country of dramaticaly varied geographical regions ranging from the high altitude, cold mountains of the sierra to the hot and humid areas of the costa and I will be traveling throughout most of them, so I had to pack various types of clothing.

I arrived late last Saturday night (July 23) after having a 2-hour layover in Miami extended to an unexpected 4-hours due to a sudden rain/lightening storm. The flight from Miami to Quito is only about 3 hours and I had booked a flight that was supposed to arrive at 6 PM so that I could see the city as we flew in. It turns out I was given an aisle seat so it really didn´t make a difference that we flew into the city after dark.

My arrival was a little stressful because I had been having trouble making contact with the national office in Quito and had only just found out that the secretary, Monica, would be meeting me at the airport. I was worried that she might not wait for my delayed flight so I was extremely relieved to see her big smile behind a huge Habitat sign at the airport. She had brought with her a woman, Suzy, in whose house I could stay temporarily until I found permanent housing.

On Sunday, I sat down with Suzy and found out that I am welcome to stay with her my entire time in Quito. She usually hosts exchange students from a local university so she is used to having Americans in the house and has a system in place. We will work out payment each month (I won´t have to pay while I´m traveling but I will be able to leave my things there-yay!) and I will essentially be paying $12 a day for my room, three meals and laundry. This is well within the range that various books recommend for these types of arrangements so I am happy. The house is located four blocks away from the Habitat office so it´s extremely convenient and I can walk home for lunch everyday. Suzy´s mother and son also live in the house and there was a student, Dylan, from North Carolina who stayed with her for two months but he left yesterday.

The house and the Habitat office are in the Northern part of the city in a neighborhood that I would compare to Midtown (for my New York readers!). Essentially, it´s the financial district for Quito so I am surrounded by highrise apartment and bank buildings. The great thing is that I´m one block away from a massive park, Parque La Carolina, that is the largest park in Quito and has a track, basketball and volleyball courts, a boating lake, skating rink, equestrian area, etc. It´s just like home, where I live next to Prospect Park in Brooklyn! It´s also situated in between three major shopping centers which are just like malls in the US. I´ve visited all three of them looking for small things that I forgot, and I´ve found them to be extremely expensive! I would admit that I´m pretty cheap but the prices are comparable to, if not more than, those in the US.

*One interesting thing about Ecuador is that the currency is the American dollar. The economy experienced a huge boon in the 1970s when oil was discovered in the oriente (the Amazon jungle) and many foreign oil companies came in and began exploiting the region. Starting in 1998, the country faced a severe financial crisis due to a sharp drop in global oil prices, the El Niño weather phenomenon, and other internal and external forces. In January of 2000, the administration of Jamil Mahuad announced its intention to dollarize the economy and they were promptly thrown out. His successor, Gustavo Noboa, continued the plan under direction from the International Monetary Fund, and the American dollar became the national currency in 2001. The transition has been difficult and the biggest problem today is the existence of fake bills. I´ve actually had my dollar coins and 20-dollar bills from the US be refused on two different ocassions because the person was afraid they were fake. I am curious how the average Ecuadorian feels about the imposition of American currency. Hopefully there will be more on that later....

My first five days in the Habitat office have been interesting, to say the least! I am the only non-Ecuadorian in the office and Daniel (my supervisor) is the only person who speaks a good amount of English. There has been a lot of turnover in the last few months and many of the other employees are also new. For this reason, I spent all day Monday in an introductory PowerPoint presentation with most of the office. Obviously, it was all in Spanish and I would say I understood about... half. My background in Spanish is basically a few classes in high school and college, a month in an intensive course in Oaxaca, Mexico four years ago and the last two months of conversational classes in a school in New York. Not only are there many regionalisms and words mostly used in Ecuador, there are many ´office´ words that I have simply never heard before. I have to admit I was pretty quiet the first few days, which is unusual for me! But I´ve found that my comprehension and speech have been improving everyday and I´m beginning to feel much more comfortable with the rhythm of the language and the office.

I am working in a room with Daniel and another woman, Ximena, who is involved in fundraising as well as operating as a liason with other social and political organizations to spread Habitat´s ideal of making adequate housing a social responsibility. I have not done much yet besides a little organizing of the volunteer database and writing a letter introducing myself to the affiliate offices. The month of July was chock-full of five different brigadas to different parts of Ecuador so Daniel was traveling a lot and is now attempting to catch up on ´office work´.

My first brigada will be with two different groups from the US who will arrive in Quito on August 4 and 5. We will travel with them to Tosagua, a TINY town that most Quiteños have never heard of. It´s close to the coast and next to a river. Best of all, it will be HOT!! As anyone who knows me can attest, I hate being cold and the temperature in Quito drops pretty quickly at night. The days have been beautiful with a lot of sun, few clouds and temperatures of about 70 degrees... but I can´t wait for the heat! I´m not sure about all the details yet but we will be meeting the group at the airport in Quito and then flying to Manta, the closest city with an airport, and then taking a bus to Tosagua. Surprisingly enough, I have never worked with Habitat or built anything resembling a house before so this is going to be a learning experience in SO many ways!


I am hoping to use this blog as a way to share my experiences both in Ecuador and as the second long-term Habitat Ecuador volunteer. I am planning to link it to the new Habitat Ecuador webpage (which we are making!) as well as provide links to other helpful sites for anyone who is interested in volunteering with Habitat Ecuador either as a brigadista or as a long-term volunteer. Please let me know if you have any questions or if you think there is anything else I should add!

Stay tuned for the next post which will be all pictures!