FCSF Cabo San Francisco Foundation

Day 2:
Another over 3 hours of travelling. We had breakfast in Tonchigüe beside the beach and saw lots of pelicans and other big birds. Within the last year, the first part of the last 51 kilometers was paved. The rest was a bumpy dirt road. There were several rustic villages on the way. Houses were generally made out of wood, bamboo and a roof of leaves. On the road (also on day 1) we came across horses (with or without people and one horse was carrying a pig, bananas and a person), dogs (sometimes sleeping in the middle), chickens, cows and pigs on the road. Cabo San Francisco is surrounded by tropical humid forests that come right up to the ocean. We arrived and got introduced to some of the locals and we made our way to the FCSF house. The FCSF house is 3 floors and a loft and is the tallest building in town. It's almost on the beach and has a view of most of the town. The house itself is made with a lot of bamboo, but so is most of the furniture. The house is built for people that work for FCSF: locals, doctors that volunteer and general volunteers. Other than a few bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen and sitting area the house has a pharmacy (one room with medicine) and one room that's being used as a laboratory and an examination room for the doctors. We were a bit surprised to find out how remote the town is (more remote than Bua de los Tsachilas), so as you can imagine there is no internet here (but we weren't expecting that). Also, we were unpleasantly surprised to find out that there was no running water. It was partially setup, but not functioning. To flush the toilet for instance, you need to bail water out of a large barrel into the toilet tank. To give you an idea of other toilet experiences in Ecuador: it is required to throw toilet paper in the garbage (not in the toilet) and many public toilets don't provide toilet paper. We have seen toilets that don't flush (missing the tank), shower curtains for a door (lots of privacy) and a sink where no water comes out of the tap. In the afternoon, the doctors saw a lot of patients and we cruised the beach and town and were really surprised with the amounts of garbage laying around. One of our tasks here is to try to cleanup the garbage and stimulate the locals to keep it clean. Previous volunteers have worked on this problem, but it takes time to set in. At this point Ricardo found out that Paulien didn't have any experience examining feces for parasites (the research that he wants us to conduct). The plan is for us to do an epidemiological study to determine the percentage of children that have different kinds of parasites. It was decided to go back to Quito on Sunday with the other doctors, so we could be trained. Sometime after 6pm while setting up our mosquito nets in the bedroom the lights suddenly went out. Later we found out that this is a daily occurence. The power outage can last from 1.5 - 6 hours. Luckily we had flashlights and there weren't many mosquitos. We were happy to find out there aren't many mosquitos, since we're right on the ocean and it's constantly windy. There was pretty loud music at night, since there is a discothèque across the road that turned up the volume briefly every five minutes or so. During the night noises from dogs and in the early morning roosters.

Day 3:
Two more doctors arrived to help out; there were a lot of people waiting to be seen by a doctor. There is usually one doctor visit per month. We saw ~6 year old boy poo and pee right next to the FCSF house. Shortly after we saw a girl of ~10 years of age pee on some garbage with other kids standing around. At night we saw two men peeing on a building and on the side of the main road. This made us question the level of sanitation here. We were walking around town and came across a butcher who was cutting up a bull and selling all the different parts. It was interesting to see the head and a leg under the table. The intestines and other parts were separated into different buckets, lungs were hanging from the roof and ribs were cut up with an axe! Since we were taking photos one of the kids there was kind enough to turn the head around to show us the bloody neck. One of the students asked us if we would teach english at the local college. That afternoon we prepared our first two lessons. We also practiced our spanish, which is very much needed. Many people here tend to talk really fast and mumble. Then we attended a long meeting in spanish about reforestation and other environmental projects that FCSF is also working on in Cabo San Francisco and area. Somebody had to pump water and then start an electrical pump, so we could have a shower before the power went out. This will hopefully be fixed when the technician comes next week.

Day 4:
Some general information: There are about 1000 inhabitants here and families here are big with an average of 8 children. You often see (small) children caring for even smaller children. We also saw many children working, for instance, making cement (shovel and wheelbarrow), carrying blocks and doing laundry. Lots of cement blocks are handed out by the government, which are being used to build many new houses. There are many unfinished buildings in town. Most of the people here are really friendly. Most people in the Esmeraldas province are Afro-Ecuadorians whose ancestors were brought as slaves to work in the cane fields. The plan was to leave around 9am, but that changed to 11am because the doctors had to see a pregnant patient. We ended up actually leaving at 2:30pm, since we were invited by the school director for lunch and got a tour of a plant nursery. With a short stop for dinner we arrived in Quito at exactly midnight.