Clean shoes

Walking through the streets of Quito, I was approached by a 10 year old boy. He came running up the hill, panting away just to catch up with me. I was starlted at first, thinking that perhaps I may have dropped something. With his head arched right back to the sky so as to make eye contact with me, he pointed to my shoes.

“Hay sucio!”, which means “Thy're dirty!”. Perhaps a little, I thought, but how on earth could he expect to clean suede? Usually, the custom is to use polish. After contant nagging and convinicing, I gave up any thought that my shoes could possibly be clean in the first place and was led to some church steps.

We sat down next to some local teenagers, who sniggered at the thought that I had given to this young pretender. But as he unpacked his tools, I began to feel an overwhelming sense of tranquility.

Asking me to place my trainer on the next step down, so as his head was level with my foot, he first took out his brush, and dusted off all the dirt that I had accumliated from the streets. His eyes followed the brush carefully and with consideration.

I glanced over at the teenagers and they were now as intrigued as me and perhaps a little jealous of the careful attention I was getting. I looked at their shoes. They weren’t suede.

Having brushed off all the dirt, they did without doubt look better, but was still anxious of how the little one would clean suede. There was a line of different coloured pots each, as the boy explained, having the corresponding colour. He had done his homework. He had one for every colour of the rainbow, and turning this kid down would have been nigh on impossible barr having pink shoes.
Openining up the black one, to match my shoes, which by now looked like they needed serious attention, he dabbed his cloth into the powder and started to dab around my toes.

It was a similar feeling to having a hair cut. For no certain reason, you are safer in the hands of strangers who look after you’re appearance. Immediately there is trust. This little boy was no different. In his eyes was the purest of pure concentration, just making sure there were no fowl-ups.

Once finished, they were clean and could even have been mistaken for being new, if the white laces weren't so grubby themselves. It was a work of a precise vendor and promptly paid him double.

It crossed my mind that I should give this boy more. My inquisitive nature made me want to ask whether he went to school. He replied in the affermative to my relief and started to ask what he wanted to do.

He had ambition, focus and intended to go to college.

Sticking around as I walked through the streets, he started to ask for more. It was casual at first asking for a bus fare for example. But sensing a weak tourist, he began to ask for objects, photos, clothes or food for his family. Of course I had to turn him down and eventually asked him to leave. He was fine, I continued thinking, until I was approached by another kid. Similar looking, just as sweet and who claimed that my shoes were dirty.

Death is ever present

Perhaps an issue which is obvious to most of the western world. Where there is poverty, there is death. Caused by disease, famine or even suicide the culture and climate I am from just couldn't care less. It is not newsworthy and hence is not reported in the western world.

In the last two weeks, two members of the local community I have been working in died from the latter reason. One, a 15 year old girl and the other the son of the president of the community. He left his wife and three children behind.
The cause was apparent. Both had taken poison which is readily availible, but in both cases the reason was not obvious. There is no business of ours asking the question why, but only offer your deepest sympathy. What, however, we do know is that the man had had an argument with his wife. Nothing more needs to be said. The whole concept is quite distubing enough.

Soon after, a girl who was no older than five too. This time of a disease which could have been prevented if she had had the necessary injection when she was younger. Parents in indiginous communities have serious sceptacism on the local doctors here.

When two other volunteers went to pay their respects, they were in for a terrible shock. Here, the communities bring the body back to the house for friends and family to pay their respects.

As they entered, not realising what they would see, they stoped and jolted. It must be similar to the feeling when you nearly get hit by a bus. You just want to get back home as quickly as possible to somewhere you know and love. Here you are vunerable, and not quite sure how to react.

There flattend out in a coffin, no bigger than a baby´s craddle lay little Natalie. The cradle was handmade, white and the girl was dressed in a cream dress. Surrounded by dirt and dust of the house, it was the cleanest bit of furniture in the room. And naturally was the centre of the room. Surrounding were people with a motionless face. Glassed eyed as if drunk. They were. Offered on these occasions is an incredibly strong alcoholic drink to, I assume, numb the pain. It is a perspective of life that would be considered horrific in our culture. The idea of getting pissed watching your dead daughter lie silently is shocking. If not morally wrong. But this is the way of dealing with death here.

"You couldn't help but cry", said one. A 27-year old from New Zealand who stature as a character is such that it was no average comment. He was asked to take pictures of the scene, which naturally too, was very difficult. "Just felt like a tourist that wanted to get a snap for friends back home."

The other volunteer, a 19 year old from Canada, couldn't turn off the water works. There was no room for words.

You know what, our ‘culture’ isn’t that great

The South American way of doing things is so refreshing. Never have I been to a culture that has made more sense than the one I was brought up in.

To start with the language was obviously invented by one of the world’s great academics. Simple and effective. When you ask a question like “What are you doing?”, the Spanish translates as “What do?”. The language just cuts out all the irrelevant crap out of any sentence.

The same goes too for the pronunciation, where letters are always said the same, regardless of surrounding influences. It simply makes more sense.

OK, and now one for all you drivers. Have you ever been sitting behind someone waiting for the light to go green, and for whatever reason once the colour changes there is no movement? Probably in a massive hurry, you honk your horn only to receive a ‘V’ sign back. Infuriating.

South America’s response: a thank-you, a wave and a smile. They make eye contact as you drive past as to say a) sorry for holding you up and b) thanks for the nudge. Is that not how it should be every time?

Further more, hooting your horn to pedestrians is considered thoughtful and polite, again to say, “I’m here so don’t walk out in front of me.” Again this is greeted with a wave of thanks. Civil. Makes you wonder why people get so hot headed about such trivial matters.

And now one perhaps for the clubbers: Those of you who enter clubs hoping to go to bed with someone at the end of the night don’t come to South America. It doesn’t happen (unless perhaps you go to the capital, in which case the person isn’t worth the time of day).

The hindsight point of view is this. Doesn’t it resemble just terrible insecurity to go to bed with someone on the first night? Shouldn’t there be a gap between meeting for the first time and being invited back?

The truth is, from a guys point of view, there is more dignity amongst South American girls (or Latinas). So much so, that there is no guarantee of even kissing on that first evening.

Instead, you dance. You dance until you sweat alcohol and need water to keep you alive. You dance until everyone around you who was there when you started, have stopped and a new bunch take the next shift. You dance all night. This in itself, I find more classy. There is something both terrifying and thrilling being on the dance floor knowing that the immediate crowd is watching the ‘tourist’ try the moves on their soil. They want you to slip up, so as to make a fool of the ‘gringo’. But like playing away in a football game, the pressure adds to a performance.

There are also, unwritten house rules which you can’t break. The only place to touch your girl is on the hips. Go higher or lower, then expect a slapped hand. The second rule, is that you can get as close as you want with your lips to theirs. But under no circumstance to you kiss her on the dance floor.

And just to quash one more myth, if you don’t talk the talk, you’ll never walk the walk. The final chapter is to be able to have a fairly intimate conversation in Spanish. If you accomplish all of this, then maybe you get your hard worked for earned kiss. And, from experience, it’s one of the best you will ever had. The same feeling I guess, as if you had just built a house in a night. Hard work, but worth every minute.

How is this better? In hindsight it is. It makes you realise that she doesn’t do this for free. Not because she is drunk, and not because you bought her a drink. Not because you dance well, and not because you talk well. Because she likes you.

On top of all of that, she would never invite you back. I am told, possibly not for months. This, I believe, is just wonderfully refreshing.

Police corruption

A 15 year-old girl drifts the streets of Otavalo at two in the morning having sniffed her third dose of glue in the last 24 hours. Her eyes stare up and then down, floating in the boundaries of conscious and unconscious. The arms flop down her sides and from time to time she has to lean against street lamps to stay upright. A ‘gringo’, as the tourists are known, would probably cross the street to avoid any kind of contact. There is something intimidating about her, a kind of aura which suggests a menacing trait. To the locals, though, Maria is just another kid, no taller than 4ft. If you weren’t told, you’d guess she was as young as nine.

But Maria has three children all under three. There is no clue who the father or fathers might be. And there is nothing strange about that in the streets of Otavalo either.
This small town in the highlands of Ecuador is full of multiple teenage pregnancies and child drug abuse. The reason: Police corruption.

A former policeman, who left the force soon after joining, said that over half of the police force is corrupt. He explained there are many forms of corruption including ´fake fines´ for tourists and constant drug abuse by the people that are supposed to stop it. These can be as high as $100 USD. Police run protection rackets, can be paid off for a price, and people just hope they have enough in their wallet, house or bank account to avoid going to jail.

The most harmful form of corruption is, however, an unwritten convention with thieves. Once a thief is let out of jail, they become ‘friends’ with the police, meaning they can continue to commit crimes, which can involve both physical violence and theft, without being prosecuted. In return, police will ask for information on other misdemeanours in the town.

This in itself is a big problem for the citizens here. “You can be walking around and there can be the guy that mugged you last week,” one resident said.

Ultimately, what appears to be a helpful way for the police to get ‘the bigger players’ then hits other parts of society like Maria. Children who have been raped, kicked out of home for financial reasons and are now homeless, provide the thieves with easy targets. The thieves, many of whom are homeless too, also provide shelter for homeless children in the main market square of the town. Here, these adults are only too happy to hand out glue and harder drugs including crack cocaine to children who are still under 10.

The reason so many sniff glue in the first place is that it keeps them warm, keeps them silent and will give the illusion of being ‘full’, so looking for food is cut out of the equation.

The police continue to allow all this to happen because they know that information will continue to flow from such an environment. Only if ‘unregulated’ child drug abuse is seen — outside the thief/police informer system — is any action taken to stop it. Inevitably, the child will not have sufficient funds to pay off the policeman, and it is then thrown in jail for up to 18 months without trial, depending on the seriousness of the crime was. Only if money is forthcoming can this process be short-circuited.

Jail, of course is gruesome place, with police behaviour still more corrupt away from the public eye. Sasha, an American resident living in Otavalo, was only 14 when she was put in jail for a month for having seven ounces of marijuana on her person. She said that ‘one policeman grabbed my face and kissed me. I turned and went back to my room only to be told that it was a normal occurrence in prison.’ Telling her mother of the incident, the policeman was moved and eventually fired.
‘But sex between policemen and 12 year-old girls does happen,’ continues Sasha. ‘A lot of kids, who get put in there for smoking crack can get it easier inside too. Visitors don’t get searched.’ The cells, which measure 6x6 foot, hold two or three prisoners and can be locked in there for days at a time with the prisoners receiving no exercise. On occasions when the police arrive back late from duty on a weekend they will open up all the cells and have, what Sasha calls, a house party.

Sasha ends every sentence with a shrill, nervous laugh. Her left arm is scarred and scratched where she has been cutting herself. It looks as if someone has scraped a cheese grater all over the skin. It is a terrible sight and the 17 year old is keen not to go into any more detail.

You find all sorts of characters in jail as you do in the UK. One boy, Alex, whom Sasha became friendly with during her time in jail, was asked by his father to smuggle drugs south from Columbia to Ecuador. Only 12 at the time, Alex will be staying in jail until he is 18. With no education and ultimately a horrifying time inside there is no telling what kind of life he will lead.

Drug trafficking is dealt with a fierce hand in South America. Should you get caught with cocaine, there is an automatic one year sentence assuming you get a trial straight away.

It is, however, an appealing way of life. The average wage here is 72p a day. The minimum national wage is 50p an hour. When you deal with cocaine, you are talking thousands of pounds a week, depending on how well you are known. You are respected, well liked and have ‘street cred’. It is no wonder that people are pressurised into dealing and why you see families ask their children to smuggle drugs (essentially income), into the country.

As for Maria, her children and the other children who have turned to drugs as their comfort, a place away from the world, hope has all but gone. Their brains, by now, will have been corroded by the daily fumes of glue and crack.

Lacking charities to take these children into care, there is general consensus that these children cannot be helped. One middle aged man from America, Stephen, tried to help them but failed. Having seen the state of affairs, he gave them food and a place to sleep every night. But the children were already addicts to the drugs that had destroyed them. Soon after setting up shelter and regular food, he left the country and left the children to battle the elements for themselves.

Teaching can be more than Political Correctness

A week or two before I came to Ecuador to work with children as a volunteer, a school vicar kissed a ten-year old girl on the cheek at an award ceremony at the end of a school year. After a complaint by the parent the vicar was forced to step down after inciting ‘indecent behavior’. The question begs: has this political correctness all gone too far?
In a contrasting culture in Ecuador, schoolchildren are ever so affectionate to the volunteers by wanting to be picked up, hugged and kissed as soon as you arrive in the morning. They swamp you like pigeons do in Trafalgar Square when you pick off a loaf of bread. It is overwhelming to say the least.

There is no doubt, however, this kind of conduct in Britain would be severely frowned upon, with questions asked about the motives of that teacher. Once a complaint heads your way, suggesting even the slightest hint of ‘teacher abuse’, consider yourself looking for another career outside of working with children.

But why should this be the case? What the volunteers offer here, is something more than teaching. Something which even children in Britain do not get. Love. What is necessarily so despicably wrong with ‘touch’.

An American teacher, who is working here as a volunteer, said on an occasion she was left with an awkward situation where one of her students was strangling another. For the risk of leaving a mark on the arms of the attacker, she had to think twice before taking action, where to most the course of action is obvious.

The children here love to be loved, and the volunteers love dishing it out in multiple doses. There is no risk of parents marching up the hill saying ‘I’m sorry but, you’re just giving them too much attention. I’m filing a complaint.’

Many of the children here have a single parent, some are orphans, some a beaten terribly badly for superficial misdemeanors and school is a place where they get away from the harsh realities of life.

The result is a positive one. The children turn up to school, unless they are made to work by their parents for that day. They want to learn, to get it right and feel a little better when they go home.

Ask someone in the street today ‘what was your favorite subject was at school.’ It is a practical guarantee you could marry their favorite subject with their favorite teacher. The infamous expression that ‘if you are having fun you are not learning’ is ridiculous and incredulous.

A recent English lesson in the freezing school of Urcusiqui, which sits at an altitude of twice Ben Nevis’, was met with skepticism at first. It is on the other hand their third language behind Quichwa and Spanish.
If, however, you turn the lesson into a sing-song, pronouncing each syllable by itself, it gets the whole class up in arms.

Hello. How are you? Very Good. And you?

It would be nearly impossible and perhaps slightly ridiculous to try to bring this method of teaching back to the UK. But there must surely be a stop to this profound culture of political correctness we have found ourselves in. There must be logic behind reason, and a smile behind teaching.

The Indigenous Ecuadorian Class

Sitting at a mere 9000 ft above sea level or twice the altitude of Ben Nevis, the indigenous children of Urcusiqui, who are aged between seven and 12, share a classroom in the most simple of conditions. The roof is made of tin; the windows have bars to prevent thieves from stealing the much-prized stationary and with no central heating the classroom is freezing cold even in the summer. It is in these conditions the children turn up every day with such overwhelming enthusiasm. That is unless their parents want them to work in the field or with cattle for that day.
I am currently working with a group of volunteers many of whom have given up jobs and summer holidays to come here for their cause. When we arrive, every single child runs up to patter on the windows and doors as if Father Christmas had arrived. Upon a relatively short introduction, they are desperate to be picked up and hugged. As soon as you put down one another comes steaming up who wants a ride on your shoulders, back or arms. It is a touching gesture of warmth and tragedy. Warmth because of their welcome, but tragedy because they believe you can perhaps ‘help’ them when you know deep down you can’t and this is only a temporary stay.

The most awesome sight is seeing children as young as eight carrying their younger siblings on their back all day without complaint. It is, to a Westerner, at first a sweet sight watching a bigger sister or brother walk around doing normal things with a little baby on their back. But you soon feel for the situation when the elder of the two tries to read or write whilst having to pay attention to their responsibility.

They are not, as one might expect, dressed in indigenous clothes. Imperialism has reached even here, and many of the children wear trainers and jeans. They are however, very dirty and will often wear the same clothes to school every day of the week until they have a weekly wash in a bucket of lukewarm water.

Apart from being dirty, their skin has been severely burnt where they have had no protection from the fierce sun. It is incredibly painful for the children and comparable to the sensation of having chapped lips, only it is all over your face. When they smile, their skin cracks and can even force bleeding.

At the moment, they are on their ‘summer holidays’. But school is still the thing to do, which is why there is a regular turnout of at least 15 a day. This is something which shall be gone into further in a later blog.

At the end of the school day the children are given fruit by the volunteers. This is a huge treat and even a privilege for them. They surround you like pigeons do in Trafalgar Square when you have a lump of bread you pick off. One boy, who was ‘not in the mood’ for any fruit, was beaten five times with a stick by his mother for simply turning it down. It was witnessed by another volunteer, who described it as ‘one of the most shocking things she had ever seen.’

Essentially, however, the children here are treated well and have the most amazing attitude to life. If you look into their eyes they already have that mature and adult look each with its own story to tell. It is these ‘stories’ which I intend to find here in Ecuador.