After a short flight from Costa Rica, we found ourselves in a slightly more urban locale: Quito, the capital city of Ecuador. We spent the better part of a day at the offices of our partner organization, Yanapuma, learning about Ecuador and specifically about Bua, where we would be staying. The two-hundred family community is primarily populated by the indigenous Tsáchila tribe (pronounced like “spatula,” but without the “p”) and is strung out along eight kilometers of highway running out from the region’s main city, Santo Domingo. What used to be forest a mere fifty years ago is now land used for growing yucca, banana, plantain and other local crops.
During our month in Bua, we lived in pairs with our homestay families and spent our days working on one of the various projects we were juggling. Our primary undertaking was the construction of six ecological toilets at the local elementary/middle school. We dug many trenches, determined the topography of the field, sifted a ton of sand, sawed, hammered, mixed, carried, painted and much more. We also built a single ecological toilet behind a house that would be used by three neighboring families in the community. In addition, we worked on hand-digging a well at the local cultural center.
All said, our time in Bua was wonderful, full of new tastes (boiled plantain anyone?), new sounds (roosters at 2am) and newfound muscles (never used that one before). It was an experience none of us and hopefully none of the welcoming Tsáchila will ever forget.