Engineering in Ecuador: Chillanes

The past few days have been so neat. I went on my first trip out to a community to see the progress another engineer by the name of Steve had made. Myself, Danielle, Emily, and Wim all drove down early Wednesday morning. Our trip brought us up over the Andes, and we got an amazing view of Mt. Chimborazo. It was a very windy ride, but after about 5 hours of travel, we found ourselves in Chillanes.

In the town, we first went to Martha and Linda's house. Martha and Linda are two missionaries who have been working in Chillanes for the past 25 or so years. These two ladies are some of the most friendly, hospitable, and loving women I have met. They fed us like royalty and were just very welcoming. After eating lunch with these ladies, we went out to the community called Mariana de Jesus. Here Steve, an Engineer from the UK, was working with the community building a spring protection. If you are wondering what that is, I'd suggest either looking it up or calling me on Skype.

It was awesome to work with the community on their project, and downright inspiring to see them all work together. I got to mix concrete and haul rocks right alongside them and I'll tell you what, these people work hard! I spent most of Wednesday afternoon helping them mix and pour concrete and then, after a lovely meal at Martha and Linda's we went to our $8/night hotel and slept. The next morning we yet again met up at Martha and Linda's and had breakfast. From there we went back out to Mariana de Jesus. We didn't have a lot of work to keep busy with so we mostly just shadowed Steve and asked questions about his reasoning and technique for the project. I learned a lot from this time observing a water project first hand, and I can't wait for the next trip! We traveled back thursday afternoon and ate some amazing food in Baños at a Swiss restaurant. After getting back around 9:30 I crashed and slept till 7 or so this morning.

Today was a bit of a scattered day, but I spent most of my time importing files into auto cad and unsuccessfully trying to glean some data from them. I learned a lot, but still not enough to get the information I needed. Regardless, it was a much slower day which was nice after a lot of busyness and traveling. We then had a nice dinner in Puyo tonight along with two other ladies who teach at the Nate Saint school. Tomorrow we will be biking into the mountains about 25 miles! It should be quite the adventure! Until next time!

In Him,

Sam Hodges