My Best Day in Ecuador

There’s nothing like being creamed at soccer by a group of ragamuffin blind boys.  When I went to Ecuador, I didn’t have a lot of expectations. I just had two things that I really wanted to do in my two weeks there: I wanted to hike, and I wanted to spend time with some Ecuadorian children. It’s funny that I ended up doing both of these things in my very last two days in Ecuador. My second to last day, I finally got the opportunity to hike to a waterfall. At the end of the day, I decided it was my favorite day there.  It was such a wonderful experience. I didn’t know then that the next day would take the cake!

While in Ecuador, I stayed with a family that I’m friends with. Both of the parents, Dawn and Michael, teach English at local schools. There were a couple of days during my trip that their daughter, Rachel, and I went to Miss Dawn’s school to help her students practice English. One of the students we met was a college girl named Maria. Maria told us how she would go to a school for blind kids there in Loja, and volunteer spending time with the kids. After we returned home from the hiking trip, Maria reached out to us and asked if we would like to go with her to the school the following day.

Maria pick Rachel and I up at San Sebastian, which is kind of like Loja’s town square.  Most people in Loja don’t own cars, but Maria did. The drive through the narrow streets of Loja was terrifying, but not because of Maria’s driving skills. It was because driving in Loja is always terrifying. Navigating the roads in her small car, however, was actually much better than the massive buses that we usually used to get around. Maria told us that the children stayed at the school through the week, and then went home on weekends. That is, if the children had homes to go home to. Many of them didn’t.  A lot of the families couldn’t handle their children’s condition, and had given them up completely to the school. For these kids, the school was home.

Historic Lourdes Street, crowded as usual.

San Sebastian clock tower.

The school was closed in by a metal gate. When we got there Maria lightly banged on it. At the sound, boys came running from everywhere. It felt like they were popping up out of nowhere, running to the gate from all directions. They found an adult to let us in, and as soon as we were they swarmed us. They touched us all over, and shouted things in Spanish that I couldn’t understand. Maria told us that they wanted Rachel and I to teach them English. The boys instructed us to all sit down in the grass for an English lesson. What they really wanted, however, was to tell us the English that they knew. They yelled, “Gato, Cat! Perro, dog!” with so much pride.

Although the school isn’t exclusively for boys, there were fifteen to twenty, and only one girl. They all seemed to be between the ages of seven and eleven. The boys all liked to play rough and wild, and the little girl didn’t. This left her alone most of the time, with no one to play with. She was a sad child, and you could tell. My heart ached for her. While we were there a boy ran into her and broke a beloved pair of pink sunglasses. She was devastated. These kids didn’t have much, so to lose something like that was a big deal. She wouldn’t stop crying until Maria promised to buy her another pair.

After the boys were done showing off their English vocabulary, they all insisted we play a game.  Rachel suggested telephone.  Our attempt was hilarious. It proved not to be doable, considering their limited English, and our limited Spanish.  Instead we agreed to play Duck, Duck, Goose.  I thought it was interesting that all the games we played we’re also games we played growing up in the states. The boys had so much fun playing this.  They didn’t seem to play by the real rules.  It was just a lot of running around chasing each other and us, yelling,”Pato, pato…. ganso!”

But of course, the big game to play was soccer.  Or as the Ecuadorians call it, futball.  Although I don’t usually participate in sports of any kind, I was thankful they had chosen soccer and not the national sport of Ecuador, EcuaVolley.  The people are very proud that their country has it’s own sport, which is essentially volleyball.  But, instead of using a soft volleyball, they instead use a hard soccer ball.  The difference is painful to the hands.  The soccer ball that the school had was specially made for blind people. Inside it were objects that rattled when the ball moved, so that the kids could use their hearing to track the ball.

Honestly, I believe these kids could have played with a regular ball.  I believe these kids could have done anything. They absolutely blew my mind.  We split up into teams. It was Rachel, Maria, and myself versus them.  At this point some of the boys had dropped out of the games, so their were about six of them left playing against us.  It felt like even though we were outnumbered, we would be able to take them easy.  I thought we would probably have to let them win a game or two. But no, those boys butchered us. They not only beat us, but they beat us so bad.  It turned out that the fact that we could see the ball and they couldn’t wasn’t really an advantage.  These children were actually Jedi. They ran around their schoolyard so fast and never tripped.  They new every root and hole, so they knew where to step. They had every inch of their little world memorized.  They also were able to keep track of where everyone else was in the game, so they didn’t run into each other or get in each other’s way.  It was almost enough to make me wonder if the kids were even blind. But a couple of them didn’t have eyeballs at all, so there was really no room for doubt.

They not only beat us at soccer, they also creamed us at dodge ball. They thought it was so funny when they hit one of us!  Yet, perhaps the most shocking, was that they also beat us at hide and go seek. This is where their real Luke Skywalker came out. I could be hiding, not moving, not making a sound, and one of them would walk right up to me and say in Spanish, “There you are.” It was down right unearthly!  They were so pleased with themselves for beating us at everything, and I couldn’t have been more pleased myself.

When we had to leave, we tackled a couple of the boys with hugs. But the others got smart.  They told us that they would only hug us if we promised to come back and play with them the next day.  Their schemes made me love them even more, but I was leaving the country the next day and couldn’t.  Kids are my passion, and I had been wanting to do something like this for so long.  Prior to this trip I had just decided to go to college and major in Early Childhood Education with the intent of joining the Peace Corps.  If there had been any doubts in my mind about that life path, this would have erased them.  I have never been happier than I was grass stained and out of breath, playing with this ragamuffin group of kids.  The experience was too special to even photograph.  My only regret on my trip to Loja, was that I hadn’t found these boys the first day I was there, and spent everyday with them.