Each work day begins early for all volunteers at Katitawa. Robert comes to the hostel every morning at 6 am loudly singing John Denver’s famous Annie’s Song, and the idea is that when you hear it, you get out of bed. After walking by all rooms singing, Robert goes to the kitchen to make a simple porridge breakfast for everyone.

All of us were ready by 6.30 am and gathered in the kitchen for the porridge. Those who want something else for breakfast have to arrange for it themselves. Everyone was making faces at the porridge but I quite liked it, although that may have been because this was the first time I was having it. After eating rather hastily, we left the hostel at 7 am.

Once we hit the main road, the group of volunteers splits into two. The smaller group of 3 to 4 volunteers heads to the library, while the others head to the school. The library volunteers later come to the school at lunch time. Being used to having a school library attached to a school, I found it a little strange that here the library and the school were quite far from each other. Anyway, it was such a lovely clear morning that we could see all the mountains in the area, and Morgane pointed out all six volcanoes around us. I was told that it is very rare to be able to see all of them on the same day. Most mornings are misty, which makes it quite difficult to see beyond a few hundred metres, and even on clear days, at least some of the mountains would be covered by clouds.

It was a long trek to the school, through several fields, partially up the side of a hill, then on a flat path along its edge, and finally a short but steep ascent. Once we got there, Dotahn and Morgane gave me a brief tour of the school itself. There was a main building which had most of the classrooms and a smaller separate building which housed the nursery for really small kids. Two other structures were a kitchen-cum-eating-hall and a toolshed. Besides these, there was a small vegetable garden, a larger but still unused plot of land (which was to be made into a farm) and a small flattened football-cum-dancing playground. Next to the school was a forested area, which the school had rented for the next five years.

Robert told me that currently there were three types of activities that volunteers could help with - teaching at the school, working at the library or constructing stuff. I couldn’t speak any Spanish or Kichwa so teaching was out of the question. Working at the library meant sitting at a computer or engaging in creative/craft work which I wasn’t too keen on. So I opted to help out in the construction related jobs.

Dotahn, who was professionally involved in some construction related work back in Australia, was working on several small-to-medium sized construction projects at the school. Some of the in-progress and planned projects were making stairs to the nursery, making concrete poles to fence the planned farm, making a pond for the farm, making a smaller fenced section within the farm to house chicken and ducks, making a zip line through the adjoining forest and making a tree house with a rope bridge. I had never done any construction related activity before, so everything sounded new and exciting to me, and I was really looking forward to learn new things.

The first thing we did was make some concrete poles. For this, we had to first make moulds out of planks of wood. Then we had to mix sand, gravel, cement and water; and pour this mixture into the moulds with iron rods placed inside for reinforcement. It was tiring work, and by lunch time we had only managed to make three poles. Dotahn told me that it would take about 15 to 20 days for the concrete to fully harden. So it is quite likely that it will be a future group of volunteers that actually makes use of all these poles that we will make, without giving a moment of thought to how much effort went into making them :(

At lunch time, the volunteers from the library joined us. We all sat outside the kitchen to have a simple but satisfying lunch of beans and rice. After that we took measurements of the pine forest, and then decided to call it a day.

Dinner in the evening was followed by a house meeting, where the volunteers raised to Robert any concerns they had, and also summarised all the work in progress.

That brings us to the present. Me sitting with my netbook on my bed in the corner of one of the larger rooms of the hostel. This room is on the lower floor, and is shared by four volunteers in all. Our room also has a toilet-cum-bathroom with supposedly the most reliable shower in the hostel. So other volunteers prefer to come to our room to shower, but the door doesn’t have a bolt on the inside so there’s a small element of risk involved. When I tried it, the shower seemed to randomly oscillate between providing scaldingly hot and freezingly cold water. If this is what is termed reliable, I think I’d rather not find out how the other showers behave.

Anyway, tomorrow is a public holiday. So the school will be closed, but the volunteers would still have to work. The plan is to get a lot of things done tomorrow because there won’t be any kids to deal with.