A boy in the mountains

This is the story of a curly, red-haired, five year old, city boy spending an afternoon in the mountains.  While we were doing some work on our house in Challuabamba, Jonny went outside to play.  He would usually find sticks to play with or rocks to throw or just plain explore the great outdoors. 

The fields next to our house are rocky, filled with waist high scrub brush and tough wild grass. What more could a boy ask for to explore? A half hour later, we went outside to check on him and couldn’t find him. We called his name and, from a hundred yards away and out of sight over a rise, he answered.  We heard him climbing up the hill and talking to someone. Minutes later, he arrived, his shirt covered with burrs. Dust and dirt covered his hands and smiling face. “I’ve been with my friends,” he said with a huge grin. Behind him came two young children followed by a dozen sheep slowly eating their way up the hill. Jonny had been playing with and talking to two shepherds, a boy of about nine and a girl of possibly eleven years.  They were both dressed in long sleeve shirts and pants that had been washed so many times no color remained only worn cloth the color of tan dirt. The boy held a long stick, a staff, that he used to herd the sheep. Jonny ran up to us with a baseball sized rock in his hand, saying “He gave me this stone. It’s special. He says it’s part of the mountain and he gave it to me.”  The children stood nearby, passively, watching Jonny and us without a saying a word. We climbed into our car to head back to the city with Jonny clutching his magic stone. We all waved goodbye.  They waved in return and went back to herding the sheep toward fresh, new grass. 

This was just a moment in our lives but there were strong images that we will remember for a long time.  Something is happening to Jonny. After a long adjustment, he is comfortable using Spanish. He seems no longer to be frustrated by a lack of language and the ability to communicate easily with other children who speak only Spanish. He is much happier now than before in being able to talk to them. It has taken over a year but we hear him jabbering away in Spanish with an ease far more advanced than ours.  He asked if we could go back tomorrow so he could go looking for his shepherd friends again.  He sees no difference in them. They were just new friends. Jonny, by Ecuadorian standards, is a boy that comes from a wealthy family but cannot distinguish rich or poor. We thought about how this child of five has no class distinctions, and as yet, no rules of how to relate to others who are different. Where do we get this dividing line later in life of who we should be friends with and who is not acceptable? Class, race, status?  Where does it come from?

 We thought of the shepherd children and how different their lives will probably be compared to Jonny’s. What will their lives become? School is compulsory in Ecuador but does anyone check up in the mountains to see if these children were going to school? If they go to a local public school, it is obvious that the minute they get home they are told to take the sheep out to feed on the mountainside. We know of many people on our mountain who live in little more than shacks with dirt floors and an outhouse in the field behind. 

It is almost certain that these two children live in a similar shanty.  In the city, poverty is all around us but we seldom see a homeless person. Almost every poor person finds some way to sell something and survive. In the country, families scratch a living from almost vertical hillsides, raise animals, grow vegetables, scavenge the land for herbs to sell, collect firewood, and more. 

All is done without the need for a national safety net or welfare.  These shepherd children may, unfortunately, be a perfect example of how an Ecuadorian country boy and girl may grow up knowing little more than their mother and father’s existence and carrying on a life style that may never change. For Jonny, it is a different story. He is learning how to deal with diversity and poverty and friendship in two languages. With all of the problems of raising a child in a foreign country, an encounter like this probably has no match in the US. It would be all but impossible for Jonny to gain the same understanding almost anywhere else other than in the mountains of Ecuador. It is our hope that he will be a better person for this experience and many more to come. 

Children at Christmas

As we mentioned, Christmas is the big holiday here in Ecuador and there would be no more proof than the many, many Christmas school pagents performed all over town. Last week there were booths set up in the parks and holiday inventory was brought out in most stores, all catering to the need for Christmas pagent costumes. Our Jonny was not left out. He was assigned the role of Melchior, one of the wisemen. So, off we went looking for a crown, purple robe, sash and beard for a four year old. In San Francisco Park, almost all of the booths that usually sell only native Indian crafts had, on this special week, women busily sewing Christmas pagent paraphanalia. For a few dollars, we got the necessary costume parts and spent the next evening trying to make it fit and stay on a restless little boy. There was huge excitement the day of the pagent. The entire school spent the day at the San Sebastian Church yard rehearsing.  At the appointed hour we sat in front row seats of the church yard among a crowd of about three hundred parents. Angels, wisemen, Marys and Josephs paraded onto the scene. Spanish Christmas music played over loudspeakers and, class by class, songs were sung and the nativity scene was acted out. A huge success for all, especially the children who, though usually quite shy, sang out loud and clear. There is a seven year old blind boy who stood at one of the microphones and sang his heart out with a huge smile on his face. Christmas is a season where we too easily forget the real reason for the holiday but it came through for everyone, old and young last Friday evening. To see the children’s faces filled with joy at the applause and genuine attention who have never performed in front of an audience, was a pleasure to behold. And, a similar scene went on at each of the hundreds of schools in Cuenca. The costume is now packed away until next year. And the long wait for Christmas begins.

Children

If anything is absolutely universal here, it is the Ecuadorian love of children and family. It is very common for three generations to live in the same home. There are many children as Ecuador has a young population compared to the aging population in Europe and the US. Interestingly, most childbirth is done by cesarean section which is preferred by the medical profession. Cesareans are a much larger percentage than in the US. Children are adored and, even though a poor family has little, their children will be well clothed and may even be sent to a private school.  There are private pre-schools catering to children up to four on almost every block in the city. Public schools are also everywhere but most gringos choose to send their children to private school. Public or private, each school has a distinct uniform which the children from four to eighteen wear.  Almost all schools teach English at some level. One school we know of teaches English two hours a day yet another teaches English only twice a week. We have looked carefully at three schools for our 4 year old grandson who lives with us. The German School which is very regimented who do teach English but they don’t begin until the 4^th grade. The school has an excellent reputation but, unfortunately, they teach German in the Spanish language from almost the beginning which would make it doubly difficult for an English speaking child.  Another, called the American School has one or two teachers who know English and is also quite regimented.

Then there is CEDEI who has many English speaking teachers plus student teachers from the US doing their college practicum. It is where Jonny goes to school.  Choosing a school is a very personal choice and really depends, as everywhere, on the child and his learning needs. There is a continual controversy in the expatriate community over whether to send a non-Spanish speaking child to total immersion at a school where no English is spoken or to a school with English speaking teachers.  We have tried both and have found our child was happiest in the later. The private schools require the parent to supply the books. But school work books written in English are extremely expensive. For instance, a simple pre-school workbook we bought for Jonny cost $37. It is not unusual for an American parent to think their child has been assigned to a class that is too young for their child when they visit the classroom for the first time. However, the size of an Ecuadorian child is illusive. The typical Ecuadorian child is much smaller than most American children (as are most adults) so they look much younger. Ecuadorian children are also very well behaved almost to the level of seeming shy. Our exuberant child stands out with his high energy as well as his curly, red hair but he is adjusting rapidly and is very proud of his burgeoning Spanish.