April 23, 2007 by will.krzy.

Hello all! I just returned from a very exciting trip to the jungle/amazon basin/el oriente/la celva/rain forest (what ever you want to call it, it goes by many names around here, mostly the spanish ones), and it was an incredible experience. Our plan was to observe the water projects, help where needed, and do hygiene training. Me, Phil (another working visitor in the water projects office), and Ali were visiting Alex and Alfredo Leon, a British-Ecuadorian couple working as engineers on the water projects team.

I left on Monday morning from Quito, headed towards a small town called Shell. This is named after the oil company, which sort of represents the large presence oil companies have in the Ecuadorian rain forrest. Its defining feature is the military airstrip, which I think is why there are missionaries there. The majority of the Ecuadorian rain forest is only accessible by plane, and missionaries need planes to reach the people. HCJB has a hospital there, a community development center, among other things. I think HCJB constitutes about half the missionaries there, Mission Aviation Fellowship has a few pilots, and another organization (I forget the name, I’ll change this once I figure it out) has about 8 families. I was quoted that the town is about 30,000 (but she said she was bad with numbers, and I thought it looked closer to 5 - 10 thousand, not including the military base).

We arrived right at sunset Monday night (one thing I learned, is that sunset in the jungle can’t be beat anywhere, the clouds are AMAZING!), and checked into our hostel, called “Germany Hostal” (which is kinda funny, because its run by a german woman, but they wrote “Germany” in english, and wrote “hostal” the way its spelled in spanish. I could see a mix of “Deutschland Hostal” or “Germany Hostel” or “Alemiania Hostal”… ), which had a great view of the rain forest plant life. We had to stay there because the guest house was full, it was cheaper, and prettier, so I had no complaints. We went out to eat at a pizza place, which had amazing pizza, and we found out they learned how to make it germany and was better than most pizza shops I’ve ever been to. This was surprising seeing as we were in a poor jungle town.

Anyway… the next morning we showed up bright and early to the HCJB compound, packed and ready for our flight. We dropped 1/3 of our equipment trying to make sure we were light enough for the plane, keeping essentials like rubber boots, rain jacket, parts for the pumps, dropping things like warm cloths, our shoes, and books (yeah, those are kinda heavy). All flights ended up being grounded because of poor weather, but we got to the hanger to be weighed up and we got in the air by noon, only 3 hours past our scheduled departure time (I learned that these departure times are give or take a day… regularly… very regularly). Me and Ali went over hygiene stuff, which we needed to do anyway.

The plane flight was something I had been looking forward to since we scheduled the trip, and hoping for since I knew I was coming to Ecuador. Jumping in and out of communities on the small planes, and the excitement of the whole flying process was everything I wanted, but looking back on the experience, it wasn’t the highlight. The highlight was the whole realization that came from trip as a whole, that Gods world is so vastly different, and intricate, and above all, beautiful! The people of Ecuador are so diverse, there appearance and culture, as you can see from my images, and there needs, which I realized can differ between communities 5km apart. Forces that impact a community can be so different in isolated communities in the jungle, and the spiritual, mental, and physical needs can be vastly different, and this calls for a huge investment of time into relationship building.

The first community was only 8 families, and needed a pump fixed. It was an extremely easy repair, but they had left it untouched for 4 months, leaving them with no clean water. This community seemed to need encouragement and empowerment to take things into their own hands, for realization that they are the primary agents of change in their own lives. Me and Ali did hygiene training, and it seemed that they realized that they need to change some of there practices, but asked for latrines to be built for them. Alex, the engineer on our team, was skeptical whether they would be willing to build it themselves, which really is the only way to ensure sustainability.

The second community was the highlight of the trip for me. There were about 36 families in here. This community was receiving instructions for their distribution system. They already had a clean spring captured and just need it to be distributed properly. This community was very receptive, giving, and motivated. I had a few wonderful conversations with some of the men and they seemed so excited to know all about what we were doing, about our lives, about what we thought of their community, about hygiene, about how they can do things better, about EVERYTHING!! It was so inspiring. It was such a blessing to be with these people.

The third community was quite a different experience. It was occupied by about 50 families, and we recieved zero welcome or attention, accept for people watching the plane come in. One family was rather nice, but I didn’t have much exposure to them. I stayed in a large medical clinic that a German agency built. HCJB and this agency has had a bashing of heads in the past, for developmental philosophy differences. I won’t go into detail about it, but the community represented this divide. It was sad to see, but very real.

We made the trip back safely, Phil got his camera stolen on the bus on the way down, but that was the only misfortune of the whole trip. Well… I did get some badly bitten legs, even though I was wearing boots and pants. For those who are not faint of heart can look at the images of them on my flickr (just click one of the images). I have some really nice images of the jungle and the trip, so you should check those out. I had trouble putting images in and formatting the text. *edit* fixed - realized I wasn’t puting the pictures in block level elements. *edit*

Thanks for all the support and prayer, love you all

Will Krzymowski

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April 11, 2007 by will.krzy.

I went to the annual good Friday procession in downtown Quito this past week. It was a very interesting experience, because we don’t have anything like this in the states. Parades are not for religious reasons, and the crowd that shows up for a parade consist of families and kids. So the whole event was slightly familiar, but very much a new experience for me.

The parade consisted of 4 elements, saved souls (about 80% of the parade were people dressed in all purple, with pointy hoods representing the souls saved by Christs crucifixion), men dressed as Jesus carrying crosses, bands playing music, and floats with either Christ carrying the cross or mother marry (I think its odd that she’s called the virgin Mary, because she wasn’t a virgin her whole life, Jesus DID have siblings, and that its called the virgin birth, shouldn’t it be called the virgin conception… cause thats the defining part of virginity, and the part the was the miracle, just some thoughts). This was a totally different way of showing reverence to the Lord. I found out that a lot of people are in the procession because of promises they made to God. “If you heal my mother, I will walk in the procession,” and they thank the Lord by taking on Christs suffering in the procession. Sometimes a parent will promise the life of a child to the procession as thanks. This can be problematic if the Child grows up to be Protestant, or a non-practicing catholic.

We escaped the rain by going into a museum after the procession ended. It was also interesting to see how a lot of the procession has evolved. Historically it looked like it had a lot more variety, in terms of costume and color.

Thanks for checking my blog, and thanks to those who are supporting me through prayer while I’m here. Its been a real blessing. My plans for the rest of the time here are pretty much layed out. I’d like to get the website squared away, next week I’m spending 3 nights in different communities in the Jungle (I GET TO FLY INTO THE JUNGLE!! I’M SO EXCITED!!), Sarah is flying into Quito the following week, we’ll go on a river tour, then to a community where she’ll follow a woman who does hygiene training (tannia, if you remember from a previous post), and then I have a couple days to finish up some things and I’ll be flying back to New Mexico May 15th. Thanks for everything… I’ll be posting soon.

Will

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April 4, 2007 by will.krzy.

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve been in the office for a while and haven’t done anything thats really that interesting… well… for others. I’ve had a good time doing stuff, but its been mostly stuff like webdesign, video editing, and other misc. tasks. I’ll be posting some of the stuff I’ve been working on. Actually I have a video up on youtube.com of one of the general presentations I’m working on. Its a video slide show that generally states what the ministry of Clean Water Projects does.

About three weeks ago I went to a community called Lirio San Gonzalo with a work team from Alaska. We were there to construct a spring capture high above the community. They were already using the spring for irrigation and a little bit for drinking water. The spring had softened and cut out a small piece of the hillside. There were plants growing in it… and the water they were getting wasn’t protected from contamination in any way. Our department designed a system used to capture the water from the spring with minimal contamination. Its a process of layering semi-permeable geo-textile’s to filter out particles, pvc pipes to gather the water, three types of rocks and gravel to give it support, then a non-permeable plastic sheet to keep it safe, then encase it all in concrete to protect it.

I learned a lot about the whole process and whats its like to be on a team. The whole community set aside every morning to work on this project. There were about 40-50 community members working each morning, 7 work team members, and 6 of us from the department. There are two guys from the department who are native Quichuan, and work for HCJB clean water projects as ‘technicos,’ or technicians. They are described as the best two guys in the country at spring captures. Martin accurately described it as ‘an art that few people have mastered.’ A lot of their success comes from being able to speak to the Quichuans in Quichua, directing 40-50 people to work together, and bring everyone together to an extremely efficient and effective building team. They cleaned out the spring, dug it back to a clear source, built up a foundations, and captured the spring. It was fun to watch it being executed. It was fun getting in there, getting muddy, tossing rocks, passing cement buckets, pouring cement, catching cement buckets, and just being covered in lots of cement. I had a good cross cultural experience.

I was approached by two guys who wanted to go to the United States. One was 23 and had a wife, the other was 29 and had a wife and two children. They spoke very plainly, saying they couldn’t find good work here, and wanted to work in the United States. I asked the same question probably 3 different times, in different ways, why they wanted to go to the states. They didn’t seem to know a whole lot about what they wanted. They also kept asking me if I could take them on the plane with me. I told them it wasn’t that simple, that they need passports and work visa’s and lots of stuff you needed to apply for. I didn’t want to discourage them, even though I think that any problem they are trying to solve isn’t going to get solved by moving to the states to work. I gave them my number, and contact information if they ever found their way to the states. Watching them hang out with all their friends, laughing, having a good time building this spring capture made me think what their life would look like if they DID actually make it to the states some how. The close community they had their is non-existent in 90% of the country, the strong social fabric they had would be torn apart if they were to ever return with loads of american money. They wouldn’t fit back into that society very well. They would have to break up the family to leave, and I’m sure kids would grow up with out their farther for years and years. I talked to Ceasar Cortez, an Ecuadorian engineer/pastor who was that head of this work team about the situation today because they called me asking for information on passports. They thought I could get them passports, and Ceasar explained that it would be impossible for them to obtain a work visa for the states even if they did get a passport. That made me think… I can go to almost any country I feel like going to (hypothetically - I don’t really have any money). If this guy spent his whole life trying to get to the united states… he MIGHT make it. How much privilege I have to be able to do the things I do. Even being a poor missionary should be considered a financial privilege. Looking back at these two guys, I believe they had the resources and opportunity around them to improve their situation. Because of the Ecuadorian social structure and years of oppression, it would be a hard uphill struggle, and I guess thats what we’re there for, to alleviate some of the uphill battle and to encourage and empower them, but they are they’re own agents of change, we are merely the facilitators.

The team got a nice feast at the end of the week. A whole Cui! In Otovalo those go for $15, so this was a major luxury. I eat about 3/4 of it… which is really quite a bit of food. I think what we were served could have filled me up at 3 different meals.

Ok, so what else have I been up to. I took a lovely trip to downtown this past weekend with Ali and Phil, and Ali’s family. I should probably explain that Ali is a Calvin grad who I’ve gotten to know, whose actually really good friends with Erin Holwerda, and Phil is a co-worker of mine who just got his masters in mechanical engineering at Michigan tech. We saw a couple cathedrals. The one thats picture is really neat because they basically have put stairs and ladders to let you access every little nook and cranny of the whole building. The top had some really amazing views of Quito.

Quito has a lot of cool cultural events that I realized I have been missing out on. Its such a cultural center for Ecuador, and I haven’t taken advantage of living here. I’ve gotten out a bit into the the surrounding area, and down to the coast, and tried to do something cultural every weekend, so I don’t feel to bad.

This is me Dangling my feet off a ledge on the roof top of the Cathedral. You can see it just below the cross in the first image.

I’ve also become pretty good friends with two guys who I live with. One is an American student named Brandon, studying at University of San Fransisco Quito (San Fransisco is the patron saint of Quito and a University here, not a town in CA), and the other is the son of the host family. His name is Diego, and is studying political science. We have good arguments about politics. Brandon grew up as a poorer African American, so I value his opinion on a lot of things because of how different it is than mine. Diego grew up the son of an Agnostic Latin American professor, so his views are rather different than most Americans. Its all been wonderful.

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