After seven long weeks, yesterday was our final work day in
the field. To conclude our work, we held a final campaign with one of our
entrepreneurs in the community of El Cisne. El Cisne is particularly known as
the largest Catholic pilgrimage site in Ecuador.
History indicates that in the 19th century Ecuador
wanted a religious host site centered on the Virgin Mary similar to how Mexico
has Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. So, they had a statue of a virgin
created in Quito (Ecuador’s capital) and chose to bring it to the town of El
Cisne in the south. At the time the south was in an absurd drought, but as soon
as the religious image of Mary, which they call Our Lady of El Cisne, arrived
there was an incredible rain storm and all the crops were replenished. This is
known as the first miracle of Our Lady of El Cisne and since that time many
more miracles have been performed. Every year in August thousands of Catholics
from Ecuador and around the world go on a pilgrimage to El Cisne to celebrate
the Virgin of El Cisne.
The church in El Cisne is now the focal point of the whole
community which only inhabits about 1500 people. Luckily we were able to host
our campaign on a Sunday so we were able to see the incredible crowd that
flocks to El Cisne every Sunday to attend mass. We also got to see a blessing
of the cars that takes place every Sunday as well. All the people who travelled
to El Cisne park their cars in the street and a priest comes around to each car
and sprinkles it with holy water and blesses the travel and safety of the owner.
Just imagine hundreds of cars parked in the street with their doors and hoods
open and hundreds of people fighting over the priest’s attention trying to get
their car blessed…for a religious ceremony it got pretty feisty.
I actually got to meet this priest later in the day, who is
originally from Nigeria, when I gave him an eye exam. He has lived in Ecuador
for three years now, and every Sunday travels four hours by bus to El Cisne to
do blessings such as this. (I have to admit giving a Nigerian priest an eye
exam in Ecuador and seeing him wearing our glasses later in the market makes
the list of my favorite moments here in Ecuador).
The moments where you could see that a single pair of
glasses completely changed their world…that is what makes this work so worth
it. I will never forget the pride you could see on the faces of the people we
helped when they could finally see clearly enough to read. We take these
things, the accessibility of glasses when our vision is blurry or clean water
when we are thirsty, for granted, but it just takes one or two people to remind
you of how blessed our lives are…Isn’t it crazy that one or two humble people
in a small community thousands of miles away can touch your heart so deeply and
not even know it…
Our campaign in El Cisne produced a relatively modest
outcome, but with an incredible entrepreneur and those few special customers it
was the perfect way to end our work. To make it even more exciting, our bus
back to Loja was incredibly overcrowded (like always) so I ended up sitting on
the dashboard for the hour and a half ride back (and no I don’t mean in the
jump seat, I mean on the dashboard). I have to admit, even though my
life felt in danger, there is no better view of a country than driving through
the mountains on the dashboard of a bus. To top off the incredible view I saw
three different rainbows on the ride… I couldn’t ask for a better farewell
image of the south to keep in my heart.
So now we are headed back to Cuenca for the final
presentations of our work to our bosses. Only a few more days until I head back
to the US!...
Lots of love from Ecuador,
Jen
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