Every time we take a family vacation, we make sure to pack our sets of watercolor sketchbooks and paints. For as long as I can remember, the pile of watercolor books and paintings on our family room shelf has been growing. As many of you know, each book makes for some unique memories and a great way to remember every country we visit. Traveling with our art supplies has always allowed the opportunity to get off the tourist track for a few minutes (or hours), sit down in the town plaza as a family, and paint our surroundings.  I wouldn’t really call our painting a talent, but we do look forward to finding a new thing to paint in each city we visit. 

 For this adventure, we decided on bigger sketch books and individual paint sets. We also devoted one of our duffel bags to art supplies and projects for others: 50 sets of watercolor paints, a box full of brushes, special paper, and 25 sets of colored pencils, along with other health supplies like disposable toothbrushes and toothpaste to hand out to children. Because you never really know who you’re going to encounter while traveling, we thought that art supplies, which our family has grown to love, would be a great way to connect with other people. 

Luckily, we were right. There are tons of schools relatively far off the beaten path, even by Ecuador standards, that are lacking supplies. Within the last week, we have painted with more than a hundred students ages 4-12. First, sitting outside the Mojandita Clinic, with children waiting to be seen by Dr. Sonia Garcia. Then, with a group of 10 children at the Jambi Huasi Clinic after school hours. And on Tuesday, we travelled to Catumbi School, a two classroom schoolhouse, with 80 children and currently just one teacher (there are supposed to be three, but we wonder how often all three are really there). The kids are separated into two levels, and once they “graduate” from their rural village school, they either trek for hours to the Otavalo Segundaria School, or hitch a ride in the back of a pickup truck, if they get lucky. 

Cheers for the gringos (not a pejorative term here in Ecuador) echoed throughout the building as we ascended the steep dusty “road” towards the village. They all ran out of class to greet us with hugs and handshakes, telling us their names and asking how long we would be staying with them. Perhaps even more grateful for our visit was the teacher, who today was singlehandedly managing all of the children. Instinctively, Mimi and I told the kids to move their desks into a big circle where we taught them how to say the colors, first in spanish, then in english, while the rest of the family unpacked the paper and paint. Each kid selected from a variety of different shapes of watercolor paper: stars, hearts, teddybears, seahorse, flower, butterfly, turtle, fish, bird, and shared a package of paints with their partner. We pressed the finished paintings against the windows (or at least the windows that weren’t cracked and shattered) to dry as they moved on to either another shape or the game of fútbol, that Julia and I had organized  outside. 

Before we knew it, three hours had passed, we were out of paper, and we had promised to come back next week with a new project. We are brainstorming with different geographical projects, as many of the children cannot locate Ecuador on the map. Lots of hugs and pictures were taken, and the children were counting the days on their fingers until the gringos could come back and play some more. 

-Lena