News from Nuestro Hogar - Ecuador
By Istvan Szanto
I have just met Etienne Moine, one of the people in charge of the Association in Ecuador which opened ? as you could read it in the preceding editions of our Bulletin ? the care center named Nuestro Hogar close to Quito. This center just received its seventh child, a little boy about three years found abandoned in the streets of Quito, given to the Red Cross which entrusted him to this center.
Etienne Monk showed me a small film of about fifteen minutes on the life of the center, a amateur film, made without any staging. One can see first a short sequence of a dressing of a baby of one year by a nurse (beginner according to Etienne Moine) trained on the spot. Slow and soft gestures, taking the child into her arms with a lot of caution, moving the child by supporting the back and the head, and laying the child on the ground with softness. Then there is a scene of a dozen minutes in the garden.
There is a child who moves crawling and carefully examines his environment; two small girls who play with water by pouring from one container into another one, pouring the water back into a vat, taking it out again and restarting the operation with much seriousness. Only at the end of the sequence one sees a nurse sitting on a bench looking at the children working (playing) all alone. She is there, ready to intervene if necessary.
The last sequence shows a small girl, perhaps of two years and half, who helps Maria Vasquez, the person responsible for the center, taking out fresh eggs from the bottom of a basket and putting them into a box. I was filled with wonder by the smoothness of the gestures of the small girl and by the confidence of Maria who let the small girl do it all alone.
It should be remembered that the children welcomed into this center are children in situations of distress, abandoned and educated (I would say kept alive) in families living under extremely precarious conditions, whose parents are in prison, or even children living in the street.
This is a private institution financed by the founders and donors. Although to support such a care center is not one of our activities, the Board of our Association decided to accept, for practical reasons, to receive and transfer specific gifts in favour of Nuestro Hogar.