Erradicating Child Labor...By Making Kids Work

I´ve been busy and bored at the same time for the last couple of weeks. With the schools on vacation until September, I have a lot more free time during the day, but I´ve been trying to keep occupied. Even though we are allegedly in the “Dry Season”, the weather has been overcast and it has rained every week lately.

Since I had some time and the weather hasn´t been sunny, I took my laundry to Latacunga last week to wash it at the laundry mat. My buddy John had dropped of the ad we made for the cleaners earlier, so when I showed up, they didn’t charge me. The free laundry was nice, but when I talked to John, he said that he just gave them one copy of the advertisement. The owner assumed that we had handed out a bunch of copies. John said that we would de that, so I had to come back to Latacunga another day to give out the ads. We spent a couple hours going around town giving the ads to all the hotels and tourist agencies that foreigners usually go to. Also, we hung up about 50 copies around town. After we posted a flier, we´d walk away and almost every time we´d look back and see a couple Ecuadorians looking at the ad. The ad was totally in English, so I know they couldn´t understand it, but I guess the novelty of a couple gringos hanging up fliers was too much for them to resist. We even gave out a few ads to people who came up to us on the street and asked for one to take home.

I went into Quito last week to see the new Batman with some friends. The movie was good, and while in Quito I bought a couple more movies and the entire 4th and 5th seasons of “The Office” (All for $14. You gotta love pirated DVDs!!) Also in Quito, I bought a thermometer to use with the yogurt project I´m trying to get started. Out of curiosity, I had some water boiling and took its temperature. It was boiling at only 188° F. At sea level, water boils at 212° F. Living at an elevation of 11,200 feet does some crazy things.

Other than watching “The Office” and reading, I´ve been trying to practice my Spanish a little. I bought a copy of the Instant Immersion CD/CD-ROMs. It said “Advanced” on the package and I though it would help with my vocabulary and maybe get rid of my accent (I´ve been told by Ecuadorians who live in the city that I sound like the Ecuadorian version of a redneck). Unfortunately, my Spanish is above the level of the CDs, so I don´t think that they´ll do me much good.

Another thing that I´ve been doing is working on the gardens around my house. I have two new ones going and I was finally able to harvest some broccoli that I´ve been growing. I steamed some for dinner the other day and I have to admit that it was the best tasting Broccoli that I´ve ever eaten. The problem is that it took almost 7 months to grow. In the States it should only take about 2 ½ months from seed to harvest. The short days, lack of sun, and cold temperatures really screws me here.

I did also get a little publicity for the gardens we are doing near Latacunga. There was a half page story (mostly pictures) on them in the July issue of Social Responsibility magazine. I think the head of the project that we are using to get our contacts in the schools wrote it up using pictures that I had taken. The funny thing is the magazine´s purpose. Social Responsibility has it´s mission statement printed under the title on the front page. It says that the magazine is dedicated to “Eradicating child labor in Ecuador”. Of course, most of the pictures in the article show kids from the schools working in the gardens. I guess a garden can´t count as a sweat shop even if the kids are sweating.

The last piece of semi-exciting news is that JayInEcuador is now the top Google result when you search my name. Finally!