My first overseas trip with the military was with the 505th engineer unit out of Forest City, North Carolina. We left Charlotte on a C130 airplane and flew to an airport at Esmeraldas, Ecuador. Once we arrived we boarded a chicken bus for the eight hour trip to the military installation near San Lorenzo. We had to get off the bus twice for it to be loaded onto a raft to be floated across the river because there were no bridges.
Very few people had electricity and children under age five typically went naked because they could not afford clothes. There was an open air flea market in the middle of San Lorenzo which sold chickens from an open table while the pigs ran wild down the dirt streets.
One night when I was in the day room I heard a whistle blow. Then all of a sudden the Ecuadorian soldiers quit playing pool and ran into the street to join their unit. Their wives and children crawled under the pool table and tried to get me to join them but I did not understand why. I was a bit scared because I did not know what was going on and all I could hear was the sound of boots as they ran to the beach. I was told the next day that it was a drill in case of an invasion because we were only five miles from the Colombian border.
My military unit was tasked with building three schools in San Lorenzo. These schools were nothing like the schools in America. The buildings were built from blocks which were imported but they were not standard sizes like ours. The schools had metal roofs and open gable ends to let out the excessive heat. They had no doors or windows just re-bar to keep out thieves. The buildings had no electricity or indoor plumbing just the outhouses we built for them.
The temperatures in Ecuador were over 100 degrees every day when we were there. To eat lunch we huddled under the nearest house that was on stilts for shade. The local children would watch us work and then beg for food from us. Seeing so many starving children broke my heart but it sure made me appreciate what we do have even more. This is article is based on my personal experience of what I saw in Ecuador.