Salasakabi kani.

Back in Salasaca...

As I write, I am sitting under the eaves of the terrace, listening to the rain and watching the storm move through the valley. Although it sure is something to watch, hopefully it will stop soon, so that I can grab a truck into the center of town at some point, to use the phone.

The days are flying by. I’ve been going up to the school in the mornings with Rosa Maria, my friend and also the founder of the school (which is called Katitawa). We get up at around 6 and leave around 7 or 7:30, so as to make it to Katitawa by 8 or 8:30. Somehow, it really is uphill both ways, no matter whether you’re coming or going. It’s an amazing place, though. The kids, who number around 30 or so, range in age from 3 to 15. A lot of them are there because their parents value native language education, but a good number are there because they couldn’t get into other schools, be it for so-called “linguistic deficits” or for regular old learning disabilities of some kind or another (the latter being correlated with the former, I suspect). The instruction is divided up loosely by age, although secondarily by proficiency. There are 3 teachers (not including myself). The school gets about $150 per month from the government, to pay the salary of one teacher. The other two teachers are volunteers (one of them being the school’s founder). Twice a year, the school also gets a subsidy of about 50 pounds of rice and beans. This is to feed the kids, many of whom wouldn’t eat otherwise during the day.

Most of the amenities at Katitawa have been funded by donations from foreigners, including solar panels for generating electricity (there isn’t any otherwise at that altitude in the community), running water, a kitchen, a small library, and a bathroom. 2 out of the 3 schoolrooms were also built with donated money. Anyhow, right now, the batteries that get charged by the solar panels are broken, so there is virtually no electricity. We are trying to figure out a way to remedy this, but despite the intensity (understatement!) of the sun here, there is not a whole lot known about solar power in Ecuador. So, finding somebody who can help, let alone get the parts, is nearly impossible. And, just today, the water pump piping broke. This happened because there is only one pump, and two tanks; one potable, one not (that one is for irrigating the small organic crops they have going). So every day, to make lunch, we have to switch out the one pump to the other tank. This has put a lot of stress on the whole system (not to mention the fact that there is some mixing of potable water with non- in the process), and now the washers and pipes that connect everything are completely stripped. In lieu of not eating (we were all really hungry!), we hauled I-don’t-know-how-many gallons of potable water from the tank site up to the school itself. We talked about it, and decided that the best thing to do would probably be to try to fix the piping, and to also try to get a hold of a second pump. The problem? Well, supposedly, the pump that we need, which hooks up properly to the solar panel wiring, costs around $1250. This is a crazy amount of money, especially for here. An American man who has been helping out financially (and otherwise) at the school is trying to get the money together to buy the second pump. I will end up pitching in too, I’m sure. We’ll see how it all goes, anyway.