More from Guayaquil

It has been a busy few days and we are getting behind in our blog. Janene and I are going to give you a rundown of the last few days.....

On April 28th while Kathleen attended a surgery at the children's hospital, the rest of the team spent some time with the members of Guayaquil Sur Rotary Club. President of the club, Enrique Vasquez and Paco Roseney accompanied Janene, Bev and Ben to women's hospital where they deliver over 27 000 babies a year. It is the 2nd largest women's hospital in South America. We heard that a large percentge of babies are delivered by c-section, but no numbers. The babies are kept in the same beds as their moms and discharged after 24 hours if there are no problems. The hopital also provides immunizations, 3 within the first year as recommended. Moms and babies line up at a gated entrance at the side of the hospital and are quickly seen before the next child moves in.

An excellent project we were able to see was the Mechanical cow. The funding comes from Guayaquil La Puntilla Rotary Club and there is a school program involved. The "cow" uses every part of the soy bean. The process takes half an hour start to finish and it makes almost 100 litres of soy milk per 8 hour shift. They make four flavous of soy milk, corviches and soy meat. A half litre bottle was fifty cents, one litre seventy five cents. They are working to start a program in nearby schools to incorporate the milk into breakfast programs. The place smelled AMAZING and the fresh soy was unbelievable.

After the cow, we attended a health clinic before meeting up with Kathleen at the Guayaquil Tenis club for one of Ecuador's signature dishes - Ceviche - delicious. We then attended a sports complex where children from all over the city are welcomed to be active playing sports such as soccer, tennis, archery, badminton and using the velodrome for cycling. After a rest we attended the meeting at the Rotary club where it was Wives night. It was wonderful to meet families of the Rotarians we have been spending time with and celebrate with them.

The next day was spent with the oldest Rotary Club - Rotary Club of Guayaquil which is 82 years young. We spent the day with president Luis Eduardo Burbano and his daughter Camila who was able to assist us with translation (Muchas Gracias!) as well as Ricardo Koenig and Aparicio Valero Ochoa. This day was special for Ben as we began the day at Fasinarm a school for children with downs syndrome. The club has worked on projects with the school including the provision of computers for students and are working to cover one of the play areas. We visited with the children and handed out stickers and Ben played some Ukelele.

We then moved to the University Hospital which is where Rotary teams are brought in for cleft palate surgeries and eye surgeries. The hospital executive director Freddy Duran met with us and explained his philosophy is "to feel different, think different, be different"and to encourage others to provide service which is one of the reasons he is grateful to partner with Rotary who has a great record of service above self.

We visted a retirement home that is attempting to sustain themselves through gardens and an orchard of banana trees. They are attempting to expand with a tilapia pond using funds from a Rotary grant. They provided us with some delicious traditional snacks before we headed to an amazing project in a poor part of the city.

The Rotarians have created a small city of houses approximately 30x18x8. Families apply to Rotary to be considered and the club provides the down payment. They are also funding a school in the small city for the children to be able to learn close to home. There is a micro credit program which helped a number of women begin businesses out of their homes including shops and a restaurant. The people were all smiling and happy to see the members of the club and it was great to see such positive work being done.

We finished our visits with lunch at a Brazilian restaurant. The restaurant was fun. Meat was brought to the table on swords. We were joined by our friend Hugo throughout the day and we enjoyed our visit and our lunch. We presented to the club that evening and will continue to update the blog about the rest of our travels as we are able....

Kathleen and Janene

PS - The picture is us with our tour guide from University hospital and we are attempting to load the video from the Besitos shop too....