Ecuador: Dugout Canoes and Family Portraits on the Onzole River

We have now been in Ecuador for one month!

I’m sure time moves slower here. We feel like we’ve seen so much in such a short time.

Last week we were able to put our video equipment to use for a small school located in the squatter community of Bastion. Bastion is home to over 350,000 people in the city of Guayaquil. Through the years, more and more people have built homes over night on vacant property, until eventually a city within a city was formed.

Ironically, Guayaquil is known as the business capital of Ecuador. We visited a shopping centre that would give Vaughn Mills a run for it’s money. And it is a fifteen minute drive from some of the worst poverty we’ve come across here. The separation of the classes is much more evident than anything I’ve seen in Canada.

The Hope of Bastion elementary school was founded fifteen years ago, and has proven to provide children with quality education that the public system cannot afford to offer. We spent a day, interviewing Ecuadorian teachers, as well as speaking with some North American volunteers about the school – and visited a few of the homes of students currently attending the school. I’m looking forward to spending time editing the footage we shot, and help share the message of hope that this school has given many children, their parents, and the community of Bastion.

After we shot the video for the Hope of Bastion, we hopped on an overnight bus to a small town called Borbon, in the province of Esmeraldas. From here we took a three hour boat ride up the Onzole River, to a small community called Santo Domingo.

Throughout the course of the Slave Trade, Esmeraldas became a haven for escaped African slaves, many peopled carved out new lives for themselves in this province. As time progressed, and racism and slavery continued to be a reality in Ecuador, many Africans moved up the Onzole River – where there are still pockets of African American communities to this day. It was in Santo Domingo that we spent a few days volunteering our time.

For a number of different reasons, we decided to not shoot a video in Santo Domingo. But I really wanted to make some images. I decided a good way to do this, would be in a way that could directly benefit the community. I decided to offer free portrait sessions. When we get home, I plan to make some prints, and ship them to the individuals in the photos. This is quite possibly the first time they have had a professional photographer shoot portraits in the community.

Of course, I couldn’t limit the portraits to only family photos…

I was absolutely stoked to be able to watch part of the process of making a dugout canoe. Many of the boats on the river are built with a dugout canoe influence, with an outboard engine on the back. But many are used in the traditional manner, by paddling, while standing in the canoe. Apparently it’s real difficult to balance in them. But we saw as many as four people all standing and paddling in a single canoe!

Love Boat.

Ecuador: Great Big Country

If you look on a map and compare the size of Ecuador with other countries in the world, it doesn’t look very big. But I have been continually amazed by the overwhelming size of the landscape here. Mountain upon mountain rise into the distance – and standing on the edge of a precipice, or looking through a bus window, I am in awe, realizing people have navigated and formed roads, towns, and lives in this terrain.

The image of the tree at the very bottom of this post is a shot taken by my wife, Lydia. My brother Luke and I should help with the scale. The tree is HUGE! Should you want to visit it, you can find it in the small town of Misahualli – which is also a great place to get things stolen from you by rascal monkeys in the town square. We watched a man get his hat grabbed off his head, taken onto the roof, worn around mockingly by a little monkey who then left the hat in a tree! I had a monkey slip his hands in my pockets, looking for treasures.

We have had many adventures here in Ecuador so far, and if all goes as planned we still have a month of adventuring ahead of us. For now, I wanted to share some images of the beautiful landscape, as well some images that depict the way in which people travel across it.

Thanks so much for checking it out. If you would like to stay up to date on our trip, feel free to subscribe to my blog via email to the (readers) right of this post.