Los huérfanos de Portoviejo

Photos and dispatch by Melanie Wood

The children eagerly await the bus to take them to the piscina.

Non-medical volunteers of Hands for Humanity, and I, took Ecudorean orphans to a swimming pool recently.  The adults all stuffed themselves into a 9-passenger van, the kids in a large bus.  They were so excited!
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This is where the children live, nurtured and supervised by nuns and former nuns.

Every year while volunteer physicians and nurses, mostly from the Mayo Clinic are taking care of their surgical patients, their wives, children and other volunteers spend time at the orphanage, a few miles outside Portoviejo.  Past projects have included building a play structure and painting the buildings.

This year the Hands for Humanity volunteers showed the children how to make jewelry from the Tagua palm nut and helped paint the outbuildings.  One of the teenage girls has started making jewelry to sell, and she helps the younger ones improve their skills.

Sonria!  (smile)

The infant being cuddled by an orphan is the child of one of the physicians.   He was a rock star amongst the chicas.  All the girls wanted to hold him.

Los huérfanos take over the pool.

The pool has something for everyone--a shallow, enclosed area with short slide, a deeper end with long fast slides for the teens, and shaded areas with comfortable chairs for adults who don't want to get wet.

The most fun ever!

These two One World Futbols were among 10 taken to Ecuador this trip.

These two balls came with me from Seattle to be donated to the kids at the orphanage.  I gave them Quechua, indigenous, names:  Suyana and Amaru.  They are indestructible, but they wouldn't survive a fire. 

Futbol, the most popular sport in Ecuador

While the young children were playing in the pool, the American teens and some of the Ecuadoran teens played with Suyana and kicked the script right off her.

A walking boot never stops a dedicated futboler.

Happy futbolers!

Los niños were very glad to get Amaru and Suyana.  Maya, on the right, is originally from Portoviejo, but now lives in Rochester, Minnesota.  Her mother, Kate Whelp, is the creator of the Hands for Humanity foundation.

We were going to tell you readers about the volunteer physicians, but that dispatch is being slipped back so that we can tell you about distributing One World Futbols to four Quechua communities on Sunday, April 12.

Love,
Melanie, and
Robert and Wilson