Quito Tour, CENIT

No matter how much I plan or don't plan this course, things seem to just happen and work out in the end.  Today was no exception.

Today we had a humane wake up of 7:30am with breakfast at 8 and a departure at 9.  Too bad that the hotel did not make any wake up calls.  Remarkably, everyone was ready on time, and we left the Hotel only a few minutes late.

The students drove up to the Basilica with Dr. Richter, Dr. Szlavezc, and Dr. Parker.  I stayed back with two students, Scott and Peter, who were headed off to the rainforest to start studying the soil at Yasuní National Park.  Peter is an alumni of this course - he took it as a freshman last year.  Although it was touch and go for a while, Scott and Peter apparently have arrived at the research station with their enormous pile of equipment and car batteries.

My taxi reached the group just as they were distributing water bottles in the bus after their tour of the Basilica.  Re-hydrated, we drove down the the historic colonial center of the city.  We had a very nice tour led by an excellent guide, Jose Naranjo.  We visited the gold church of La Compañia, the convent at San Francisco, and walked through the main squares.

After a pleasant lunch at the restaurant that is embedded within the Incan stones on which the San Francisco church sits, we boarded the bus for our 15 minute drive up the "Panecillo."  This is a small bread-shaped hill with a large aluminum statue of the Virgin Mary which is visible throughout almost all of the city.  The Panecillo divides the metropolis of Quito into two sections - north and south.  Lining both sides are mountains and ravines, making for a skinny, banana-shaped city.

Our final visit of the day was special - we visited CENIT http://www.cenit-ecuador.org/ .  This is a Catholic-run foundation that serves the needs of children that work on the streets, particular the girls that are most vulnerable.  We were greeted by the head Nun, and then escorted by two volunteers, Marianne and Sherry.  Sherry just graduated from McGill and runs the Adopt-a-Dream program, and Marianne, who hails from Great Britain, is the volunteer coordinator.  They brought us to two markets, El Camal and Chiriyacu.  I think that we were the first ever 30 person gringo tour of these two markets.  CENIT has outreach programs at both markets, providing educational, medical, and other services to children who spend most of their time there.  The approach is wholistic insofar as the programs try to work with the entire family to improve the outcomes for these children.

It was a moving visit, and Sherry managed to drive everyone to tears with a story about a particularly difficult case involving one of the young women they help.  In previous years we've heard similar stories, and it has moved over 7 of our students to volunteer at CENIT - one who stayed there for well over two years.  I am always amazed by their work, and hope that perhaps one of our students will be moved to volunteer there in the future.  We were reminded, however, that we have poverty in our own back yard in Baltimore, and that volunteer work closer to home is also desperately needed.

At dinner it was clear that we wore everyone out.  I'm hoping that the students are deciding to go to bed early - especially since we have another busy day tomorrow.  Wake up call at 6:30, leaving for Cochasqui by 8!

- Eric Fortune