HOME FROM MISSION TO QUITO, ECUADOR

Mary Jane Trinkus R.N.

Well, another mission completed. We’re flying home from Quito, Ecuador, eleven of us. This was a combination mission with a construction and a medical component.

The construction team was composed of four men – their assignment to help build a kitchen and dining area for a local school. The present building was a small dark shack with a two-burner hot plate. The school has 157 students, grades 1-7 with seven teachers and 1 principal. The shack served as a break/lunchroom for the teachers and a place to prepare a warm snack for the students. The snack was served to the children through a small window.

For eight years they were requesting a larger room, one to cook and serve a real lunch and a place for the students to sit and eat out of the weather. With the financial help of Fr. Don Kenny, a retired Joliet Diocesan priest who is a missionary in Quito for 3 years now, their dream has come true.

These four giving men worked with the local laborers hauling concrete block, sifting and transporting sand in wheelbarrows and putting in a concrete floor. They came home each day tired and sore but with smiles on their faces. A good day’s work always done well with their local Ecuadorian brothers.

The medical team was composed of two physicians, a nurse practioner, a pharmacist and 3 nurses, along with a local Ecuadorian physician and nurse. Our arrival marked the ‘grand opening’ of a medical clinic, newly built above a soup kitchen in a very poor barrio (neighborhood). The soup kitchen and clinic was also built as a result of Fr. Kenny’s efforts and the generous donations he received due to his fundraising efforts in some of the parishes in the Joliet Diocese.

The word was spread that we were coming through the local churches in the barrio and the response was overwhelming. We charged $1.00 per person for their visit which included the medications we gave them. The money went to help sustain the clinic, but no one was turned away who could not pay.

We worked everyday and then opened again in the evening. After celebrating morning mass with Fr. Don, our start time was 8:30am and people began to line up earlier and earlier. A father would stand in line for his wife at 4am, while she stayed back to get the children off to school, a son would wait for hours to get a number for his father who was at work, an elderly woman would be transported to the clinic in a wheelbarrow because she couldn’t walk the distance from her home. As the days went by desperation was growing – everyone wanted to see us. The last day some people came at 11pm the night before, brought blankets, made a bonfire and spent the night out in the cold just to be assured they would get in.

We saw 420 patients, filled 600 prescriptions (with the medicines we brought). Difficult as it was to not be able to serve them all, the medical mission team felt good about the fact that the barrio now had their own clinic - a clinic open Monday through Friday staffed by kind-hearted Ecuadorians, Dr. Salazar and as his nurse, Sr. Anita. Prior to the birth of this clinic, the closest medical care was 45 minutes away by the common mode of transport, a municipal bus.

Our accommodations were different than the other missions we’ve traveled on. We slept in a large spacious room next to the clinic above the soup kitchen. The eleven of us shared this same room, sleeping in sleeping bags on a foam mat. Curtains were put up to separate the women from the men. There was no heat; temperature would drop in the 40’s at night. We shared three bathrooms, we were fortunate to have hot showers. 6am was our ‘wake up’ time but usually the barking of dogs and the crowing of roosters was our true alarm clock and many times earlier than 6.

In the morning we would put together our own breakfast of cereal, bread and fruit. Our lunches and dinners were prepared for us by 2 wonderful cooks, Rosa and Julia, who served us in the soup kitchen. The soup kitchen is open Mon. through Fri. for the people in the barrios. It is a place for the poor to receive at least one nutritious hot meal a day.

So, we’re all ready to come home now, enjoy the comforts of everyday life we take for granted, like drinking water from our faucets, flushing toilet paper in the toilets and sleeping in our cozy beds.

It was a good mission. As we said our goodbyes, we were asked, “Will we return?” With warm smiles we were able to say, “Yes we will be back!”