Exchange Report from Ecuador:

Reiko Sakai, pausing here for a photo in Ibarra, Ecuador, reports a marked difference in lifestyles between her Rotary Exchange home in Portoviejo, and the poverty-stricken countryside surrounding it. (Provided)

The News from Portoviejo

Reiko Sakai is a 2006 graduate of Randolph Union High School. She is spending an interim school year abroad in Portoviejo, Ecuador, as a Rotary exchange student. She plans to enroll at the University of Pennsylvania in fall 2007.

By Reiko Sakai

Greetings from Ecuador!

So what can I tell you about my life as an exchange student here in Portoviejo? Well, first I can tell you that I finished my third semester of senior year!

Classes ended in December at Cristo Rey, the Catholic high school I was attending. One highlight of the school year was the great success of a group of students, mostly kids from my class, who won a national "contest of knowledge," after months of preparation. I was so proud to see the articles about Cristo Rey, arguably the strongest high school in the city, all over the regional newspapers!

Outside of school, I’ve certainly been keeping busy. It’s been wonderful to find a really nice gym right here in my city. The classes I’m taking there are taught by an instructor who changes the routine daily, from salsa, to merengue, to reggaeton (which you’ll soon discover is a sort of epidemic here in Latin America, if you visit any country from Mexico down to Argentina) to traditional step aerobics, to tae bo! My friends and I are happy to have found a way to work in some physical activity and keep enjoying the amazing food here.

Fabulous Fruits

It didn’t take long to figure out that the main pride of Manabí is its cuisine, which is rich with fresh fish, rice, and the plantains that grow like weeds. Then, of course, there’s the incredible abundance of fruits that flourish in the region. Obviously, with Ecuador being the number-one banana-exporting nation, we eat bananas and plantains in many forms. But there’s also mango, papaya, starfruit, dragonfruit, coconut, and other varieties so exotic I hadn’t even heard of them before coming. I actually have a mango tree in my yard.

One of my most interesting experiences so far was staying on an uncle’s farm for the week after Christmas. He has acres and acres of trees bearing coconuts, plantains, bananas, papayas, starfruit, yucca (a starchy vegetable similar to the potato) and the key product, the fruit of the cocoa bean.

Ecuador is one of the main exporters of cocoa (as well as coffee, bananas, and all kinds of gorgeous flowers), and my host uncle works for a company that collects the seeds from the curious-looking fruit, dries them, and sends them out to be ground up and eventually used to produce fine chocolate in countries like Switzerland.

Rural Poverty

Spending time out in the country was a very valuable experience for me in that I was able to begin to understand what rural life was like here. The land is rich and perfect for farming, but the people live in pretty oppressive poverty. As soon as one leaves the outskirts of Portoviejo, there are no paved roads and the houses are mostly constructed in the traditional style of the region—they’re made of the stalks of sugar cane and stand on stilts, and are marked by a very large open kitchen and a hammock in every room!

Many people still use mules for transportation, and there often is no running water in the house. Often the farm animals, as well as the people, look seriously malnourished.

But one of the wonderful things about being a Rotary exchange student is having the opportunity to participate in projects to fight back against the poverty that prevails in the region. Several times throughout the holidays, I traveled with Rotarians from my club to disadvantaged neighborhoods to give toys to children who wouldn’t be receiving much for Christmas. The smiles on their faces brought us so much joy; it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my exchange year so far.

Somehow among all of the other things keeping me busy, my Rotary district continues to organize wonderful trips around the country. Our trip to Quito, the capital, in December was a huge success, and the next one planned is a week in the Amazon rainforest! We leave on the first of February; it should be fascinating—we’ll see if the computer game "Amazon Trail" measures up to the real thing….

Hasta luego!