Give `em a Break

As much as I adore our Ecuadorian kids--it really makes me happy to play, sing, talk, and paint with them at the markets every day--I am always so pleased when the weekend comes, excited for a chance to get away from all the dirt and grime, the little noses dripping with snot, the blasting reggaeton that makes your ears bleed, the vendors (adults and children alike) giving you sad looks that make it impossible not to pity them with every ounce of your being, the hour-long rides on stuffy busses to get where we need to go. I always think, phew, I´m so ready to not have to wake up at 7:30 am, to not have children hanging on my limbs...and to be CLEAN for a change! It´s not like I feel like I "deserve" it after a week of hard work or anything. I don´t. Nonetheless, it feels good.

I can escape from the little things in Quito that make me uncomfortable. From work, I can escape on the weekends. I can even leave the city if I want to and go somewhere I can actually breathe in without inhaling...opaqueness. I depart from this country in less than two months and return to one of the most well-off places on the planet where I will experience virtually complete comfort again. There will always be toilet paper and soap in the bathroom, and there will always be clean drinking water when I´m thirsty. I can wake up in the morning and put on a clean shirt that doesn´t have any holes. I never had to do my homework outside, on the floor, amongst rotten fruit or peels. Little luxuries that I usually take for granted--even here, I guess, with my own host family--are things that these 3-to-12-year-olds, evidently, rarely have access to. It seems like they never have even a short break from this unfortunate situation into which they were born. I´ve never had to do anything to make sure my family´s ends meet.

I wish I could do more than I do now. I always try remind myself that grassroots movements like this take decades and decades to truly make change ("It isn´t a sprint, it´s a marathon!"), but it´s these specific little children that I have come to love and care about. My heart aches for them. If someone were to tell me that last year, 20% of kids in Quito worked and this year it´s only 18%, that wouldn´t mean anything to me at this moment. Despite whatever development work that organizations like UBECI do, these kids--Camila, Evelyn, Oscar, Edwin, Erika, Lesly, Anahi, Melany, Viviana, and dozens more--are growing up right now with windburned faces and stuffy noses and untreated injuries...and selling crap alone in the markets, on busses, or in the streets. They don´t stop for weekends and can´t leave on December 16th. I think about that and really feel powerless.