Cabo San Francisco - Last 3 weeks

We updated previous post by adding days 9-11 and adding some photos.

Cabo San Francisco has a population of about 2500 people living in about 280 houses (usually single floor and small).

First Week (days 12-18) - Preparing
We arrived in Cabo San Francisco Monday morning. We talked with both of the primary school principals, Richard and Fulton, to plan what we can do with both schools. There is a primary school on each end of town. One with 260 and the other with 40 students. They only give classes in the morning.
With Richard we went to Esmeraldas, the capital of the province (3 hours by bus), to buy plates, bowls and spoons for all the kids at his school. There is a government supplied lunch, but the children had to bring a plate, bowl and spoon from home. This was not very hygienic since they often dropped them on the ground, some plates were old and made out of plastic (with probably many germs in the scratches) and they might not all be washed properly at home. Now, when some more supplies are bought, the plates will be washed at school and will stay there. Just when we were about to go on the bus back some guy tried to rob Paulien by grabbing her bag and pulling really hard. Paulien (and Brian too) held on to her bag tight and she screamed loudly getting the attention of everybody around. Then the guy ran off empty handed when he realized he wouldn´t get her bag. We got a bit of adrenaline, scratches and a slightly bent pencil and sunglasses. We were warned about it being dangerous there.
We ¨had to¨ buy dishwashing liquid and sponges because the cooking lady was washing our dishes with a sponge that she used for everything including wiping juice and ants off the floor. Also, she wasn´t using soap to wash the dishes. We both had upset stomachs in the beginning.
This week the schools were closed, so we couldn´t do any work there. That´s why we used this week to prepare garbage cleanup, english lessons, website translation and hygiene information, which actually took a lot more time than we thought it would, since we were doing everything from scratch.
When walking through the town we again noticed how much garbage there is everywhere, even though it´s apparently a lot better than it used to be. There is a lot on the beach that is washed in by the current, however, there is also a lot dumped by the inhabitants. They dig big holes in the beach and fill them with garbage and cover them with sand, even though there is a garbage truck picking up the garbage. The volunteers that are staying after us are looking into solutions for that problem, because we didn´t find out about this till later on.
We walked through the finca (farm) of 2 local FCSF people. They are brothers and come from a family with 14 children, which is not uncommon here - the average is around 8. The whole finca is still rainforest and includes many different plants - bananas, cacao, hot pepper, coconut, bamboo, etc. Also, they have a waterfall in their finca which supplies the town with fresh water, that´s used for laundry, cooking and cleaning.
On Saturday we went to Muisne, which is a town on a nearby island. We went with the students going to the college in Muisne. First in an overloaded truck to the village Bunche where we crossed a river in wobbly canoes. Then another truck to the boat over to Muisne, which took less than one hour in total. We checked out the town and the beach. We went on the internet which was extremely slow and bought a stuffed animal dog for our hygiene play. We looked through the book that they use at the college for teaching English and more than 1/2 of the sentences had at least one error! We went to a Karaoke bar then for somebody´s birthday (Karaoke is popular in Ecuador). We went back to Cabo San Francisco, but this time we walked the last part, accompanied by lots of mosquitos.
On Sunday we were invited to a beach bonfire (to clean up the driftwood and not for warmth) by Tamara, a local girl studying in Guayaquil.

Second week (days 19-24)
Now we finally started working. Generally our day would start with some preparation or other work, an English class (4 different classrooms) at Richards school from 10:30-12:30, lunch, more preparation/work, English class at the other school 3pm-4:15ish (plus 1/2 hour walk each way) and after dinner a movie. Additionally, we sometimes did garbage cleanup.

On our first day at 10:30 the kids were all lined up, like they do everyday after the break before their last class. They were lined up per class and symbolically we gave the plates, bowls and spoons to each class. Then we started our first English class and we were surprised at how unbelievably slow the children wrote. Also, their attention span isn´t very good and their understanding of doing a simple conversation in English, but they were very good at repeating the things we said. The age range in one grade was up to 6 years (8-14 years). The second day was a lot worse when we taught a different class. It was a mess the children did not write, listen much and were making masks and playing with a soccer ball. We got their attention sometimes, but it wasn´t very long - that was unfortunate for the few children that were interested. We were clearly not prepared for losing control of a class like this and it obviously didn´t help that the teacher wasn´t there. The classes after that went a lot better. Everyday children would follow us home and often hold our hands - even on the first day when they didn´t know us. Participation in the English class in the afternoon at the other school was voluntary and we mainly taught the principal´s family. The big difference with the other school was that they paid attention and wanted to learn. Also, because the class was smaller and we gave lessons almost every day to them we got to practice with them more and noticed how much their pronounciation improved.
On the first day that we wanted to start our parasite research we only got 2 samples of the 10 that we expected. After looking at them under the microscope we decided that things were not as clear on this microscope as the one that we were training with and there were a fair amount of things we couldn´t identify.
Brian mentioned to people that he was a software engineer as an explanation for why he couldn´t identify parasites. Unfortunately, this meant that it was time to look at some computers in the town and to teach computer lessons.
Half way through the week we got frustrated because it was so hard to get things done. We really wanted to do useful work there that produced results, but not everybody and everything seemed to cooperate. For example, at that point the plates were still being brought home and the English classes at Richard´s school seemed to have very little effect and there was nobody to continue with the lessons.
On Thursday and Friday we cleaned up garbage instead of teaching English lessons. We started out with a little play about hygiene (washing hands) and not throwing garbage, which the kids loved. Even the ones that didn´t pay attention in class. Paulien was handing out gloves to the children for picking up garbage and almost got pushed over by the mob of excited children. Then we cleaned the beach with around 40 kids. The bags were filled in a flash and they were all asking for new bags. We didn´t get all the gloves back, because some of the children apparently thought that they were a gift. Even some of the boys were crazy about the women´s gardening gloves with colourful floral patterns. We filled up 10 super size bags (76x92cm) and 3 normal size. The second garbage cleanup was a bit better organized and we also got them to pick up the smaller pieces. A big part of the beach actually looked clean now.
One afternoon with Tamara on a bus to the nearest town Tongara. We followed the creek to the ocean. There we had a nice swim in the ocean - the water in Cabo San Francisco is brown close to shore because of all the wood bits and sand. Unfortunately, we couldn´t walk back to Cabo San Francisco so we went back to Cabo San Francisco the same way. It was the first time we actually did something not related to working, so it was a really nice break. Even though on the way back it was raining and we got bit by mosquitos.
There are more mosquitos than we thought our first weekend. Paulien was kept up for 4 nights in a row because mosquitos were inside her mosquito net.
Another volunteer, Felix, arrived on Friday. He was going to stay 10 days teaching a course on starting a small enterprise. Also, he brought $3,000 worth of goods for the pharmacy (donated by a pharmaceutical company). It was nice that he spoke good Spanish and English, so he could help us translate. Later that day Ricardo and 3 other people arrived. It was a full house and soon we ran out of water. We wanted to ¨shower¨ in the ocean but it was too dirty, so we ¨showered¨ in the river, which was probably not much cleaner than we were after cleaning garbage :)
By the end of the week many people knew our names and kids were calling our names and saying english words (Hello, bye-bye or good morning) while we were walking down the street.
On Saturday 2 new volunteers arrived - a German girl (Lena) and a Swiss girl (Andrea). It is not normal for FCSF to have this many volunteers simultaneously; on average there are around 12 volunteers per year (staying 1 to 3 months each). Lena was mainly going to do health related stuff and Andrea was mainly going to work on the house and the plant nursery. After talking to us and people in town they also decided to do some English lessons and garbage clean-up. That night we went to the nightclub for the first time. It was pitch black with really loud salsa and raggaeton music.

Third week (days 25-31)
A lot of things got cancelled, mainly English classes, often we didn´t find out until we got there. The second computer class (for the teachers) wasn´t so much cancelled, but nobody showed up - either by lack of communication or willingness to learn. Also, we put up signs in town to organize the garbage cleanups. We had a sign-up sheet and a box for messages. Lots of people signed up, but nobody showed up for the 3 days (even though at least 12 people were signed up, for example, for the previous Saturday). This surprised us because we got over 10 positive and motivating messages about what we were doing. Then suddenly our message box, sign-up sheet, notes, pen disappeared - it couldn´t have been the wind because a bunch of stones (to keep the notes from blowing away) were also gone. One time we cleaned by ourselves and the 2 other times we cleaned with kids from the neighbourhood. The kids were really happy to help us and the kids were asking/begging for the next time they could do cleanup. However, they easily got distracted and started playing, hugging us with dirty gloves or fighting. Still we loved them and appreciated their help. Also, the kids loved to wash their hands afterwards with soap and would try to wash their hands 3 times. This is probably because they´re not used to washing their hands. At school they just got washing basins to make the kids wash their hands. Next on the list is supplies to do the dishes.
This week was the worst week for water, but the best week for power (not as many power outages). Most people or maybe everybody except for the FCSF house do not have running water. We heard there was water supplied every other day for 15 minutes for filling water tanks. We didn´t have water Tuesday, Thursday, Friday or Saturday. To be able to flush the toilets that were getting really stinky or for an occasional shower we had to get water from a well, which was probably contaminated from the pigs that lived in the same back yard and the garbage that was dumped nearby on the beach. Obviously we had to take the water out with a pail and rope.
We learned a really confusing card game called 40, which was really fun.
For Andrea´s birthday we had a big bonfire (using all the wood collected in garbage clean-ups) and singing in 4 different languages.
On Thursday we gave the class that we taught twice an English test. Before giving the test they were told there was a test and we went over everything that was on the test really well. Lots of the students wrote on their hands and prepared cheat sheets before the test. We tried to make sure they didn´t cheat that way, but there was so much talking and looking at neighbours tests that we couldn´t keep up with the cheating. By cheating and us allowing bad spelling, the average grade was 75%, but some answers were so bad they were funny because the English and sometimes Spanish looked like Chinese. They often mispelled common Spanish words, even when written correctly on the board.
On Friday, our last day, the German girl Lena started a parasite research. Since she had some experience in Germany she was able to identify more parasites than we could, so she is able to continue on with the research.
In the afternoon we went on a walk with Tamara again. We went to the government run health center, which we didn´t know existed. It seemed to be pretty well run - there were two full time doctors, a dentist, pharmacy (with free medicine), laboratory, vacination room, maternity room, etc. We also saw the former FCSF house that was destroyed by an earthquake. Apparently during the earthquake a volunteer was taking a shower and was trapped inside, but somehow got out safely though. Higher up on another hill in town was a big water tank with an amazing view of town. On the way there we saw an old guy making little pipes and massage thingies out of local tree material. At night there was a going away party organized by Tamara at the discotheque. Next morning we left early we were lucky enough to get a ride directly to Quito.

Some general things about our stay in Cabo San Francisco
The Food
Lunch is the biggest meal of the day and usually consists of soup and a rice plate. We had a lot of fish and seafood (even for breakfast maybe fried squid and home-made yuca fries). Lots of plantains or plantain-like food every day and multiple times per day - it is, however, surprising how many different ways the same food can be prepared. Most of the food is fried and there is a lack of vegetables. We were looking forward to going to Quito again and having nicer and more nutricious food. The tastier things were pancake things, empanadas (fried dough with cheese), maracuja juice, sweet bananas rolled up in leaves and cooked and for Brian chocolate milk made from local cacao beans (first dried, toasted and then ground into a paste). Specially for our last day, lunch was crab and took a long time to eat. Multiple times we noticed that there was sand in our food and one day we saw freshly caught fish being cleaned in the sand, so we knew why!

Language
Lots of things are -ita or -ito. For example, ahora (now) is ahorita. Also, the ´s´ is generally not pronounced.

Overall Experience
We were a bit sad to leave, because we were just getting to know the people and town better. We were also happy to go because we had so many setbacks that got us frustrated (lack of organization, lack of cooperation/participation from the people, things getting cancelled, preparation taking too long). We would not do it again, but we did, however, learn a lot from the experience. It was a shame we couldn´t do as much as we wanted to or make a big a difference as we would have liked. The people were very friendly and grateful and the kids were generally very sweet. When we got to Quito we were inclined to say hello (hola or buenas) to people on the street, since that is the custom in Cabo San Francisco). Also, it was nice that in our last week we had some company from other volunteers and we were less isolated. Unfortunately, they took a lot of ¨our¨ water :)
We hope that things will improve for future volunteers in the areas of organization and communication. It is hard to change the mentality in town - that will only happen slowly, but hopefully the changes within FCSF will go quicker. At least FCSF is interested in improving their organization and everything in general. We made many documents to help future volunteers so they won´t have to start from scratch, but they will also help with continuity in the various projects. We also supplied a lot of feedback to FCSF. So, we hope that our stay was worthwhile.

We are in Quito now and leaving tomorrow morning to go south towards our final volunteer stop, which is in Peru...