The Barrios of Manta: A Personal Account of the Peace Corps in Ecuador by Rhoda & Earle Brooks

Author:Rhoda & Earle Brooks [Brooks, Rhoda and Brooks, Earle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SOC000000
ISBN: 978-1-61187-354-2
Publisher: Untreed Reads Publishing
Published: 2012-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

One especially eager little reader caught my eye whenever I went past the tiny library. He always flashed me a bright, friendly smile and waved a cocky salute. “Senorita gringuita” he called me, and I discovered his name was Jorge. He seemed so alert and eager to learn that I asked him why he wasn’t in school. He told me his father had died when he was very young and his mother did sewing to support the family of eight children. Young Jorge had to shine shoes to help his mother buy food, but he was learning to read at school at night. He went to neighborhood evening classes from 6 to 9:30 every night after a day on the streets! Although he was ten years old, he was only in first grade. There were forty-eight other children in his class who also had to work during the day. He smilingly posed for a picture with one of the new books, and the Batavia Herald printed it on the front page. I imagine Jorge still carries that well-worn clipping in his pocket.

*

After the successful completion of the library project we began to think of other ways in which we could involve our friends at home. So many had told us when we left, “If there is anything we can do to help, just let us know. We can’t go ourselves, so let us participate by sending money or materials.” There was so much need for this kind of help that we wrote a long newsletter describing our work and the new life in which we were so completely involved. Earle’s former secretary, Pauline Matteson, had graciously offered to stencil all such letters and run them off for us, so we sent the letter to her and she promptly mailed it to a list of about a hundred friends and relatives.

Within a few weeks an avalanche of mail began pouring in from the States. The post office put it all in Viliulfo’s box as we didn’t have one of our own. Each day he would say jubilantly in English, “More letters!” and we would thumb through the pile, quickly scanning the return addresses. Friends from far and wide had answered, full of enthusiasm and news of home. Some said they still had doubts about the Peace Corps, but many expressed such confidence in us that they sent checks for us to use where we thought it would do the most good. Money even came from friends of friends, who had heard about us indirectly or who had read one of our letters passed on from the original recipient. The correspondence piled up so high that I had to start planning to spend half a day a week just keeping up with it. During the Christmas season of 1962, we received over six hundred dollars for our various Peace Corps projects in Manta. Our original motto, “Help the people to help themselves,” remained our motto, and we never handed out cold cash or ignored the resources available locally.

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