July 14, 2008 by will.krzy.

This blog, so far, has been dedicated to the HCJB water projects period of my life which took place in early 2007. Since I’ve been back from Ecuador, I’ve married, lived in the Los Angeles area, moved to Oregon, and have started a 3.5 year Masters program in architecture. I will be located in Eugene / Portland for the next 3 - 4 years or so… and thanks to all of you who have read my blog. Blessings

Will Krzymowski

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April 23, 2007 by will.krzy.

Hello all! I just returned from a very exciting trip to the jungle/amazon basin/el oriente/la celva/rain forest (what ever you want to call it, it goes by many names around here, mostly the spanish ones), and it was an incredible experience. Our plan was to observe the water projects, help where needed, and do hygiene training. Me, Phil (another working visitor in the water projects office), and Ali were visiting Alex and Alfredo Leon, a British-Ecuadorian couple working as engineers on the water projects team.

I left on Monday morning from Quito, headed towards a small town called Shell. This is named after the oil company, which sort of represents the large presence oil companies have in the Ecuadorian rain forrest. Its defining feature is the military airstrip, which I think is why there are missionaries there. The majority of the Ecuadorian rain forest is only accessible by plane, and missionaries need planes to reach the people. HCJB has a hospital there, a community development center, among other things. I think HCJB constitutes about half the missionaries there, Mission Aviation Fellowship has a few pilots, and another organization (I forget the name, I’ll change this once I figure it out) has about 8 families. I was quoted that the town is about 30,000 (but she said she was bad with numbers, and I thought it looked closer to 5 - 10 thousand, not including the military base).

We arrived right at sunset Monday night (one thing I learned, is that sunset in the jungle can’t be beat anywhere, the clouds are AMAZING!), and checked into our hostel, called “Germany Hostal” (which is kinda funny, because its run by a german woman, but they wrote “Germany” in english, and wrote “hostal” the way its spelled in spanish. I could see a mix of “Deutschland Hostal” or “Germany Hostel” or “Alemiania Hostal”… ), which had a great view of the rain forest plant life. We had to stay there because the guest house was full, it was cheaper, and prettier, so I had no complaints. We went out to eat at a pizza place, which had amazing pizza, and we found out they learned how to make it germany and was better than most pizza shops I’ve ever been to. This was surprising seeing as we were in a poor jungle town.

Anyway… the next morning we showed up bright and early to the HCJB compound, packed and ready for our flight. We dropped 1/3 of our equipment trying to make sure we were light enough for the plane, keeping essentials like rubber boots, rain jacket, parts for the pumps, dropping things like warm cloths, our shoes, and books (yeah, those are kinda heavy). All flights ended up being grounded because of poor weather, but we got to the hanger to be weighed up and we got in the air by noon, only 3 hours past our scheduled departure time (I learned that these departure times are give or take a day… regularly… very regularly). Me and Ali went over hygiene stuff, which we needed to do anyway.

The plane flight was something I had been looking forward to since we scheduled the trip, and hoping for since I knew I was coming to Ecuador. Jumping in and out of communities on the small planes, and the excitement of the whole flying process was everything I wanted, but looking back on the experience, it wasn’t the highlight. The highlight was the whole realization that came from trip as a whole, that Gods world is so vastly different, and intricate, and above all, beautiful! The people of Ecuador are so diverse, there appearance and culture, as you can see from my images, and there needs, which I realized can differ between communities 5km apart. Forces that impact a community can be so different in isolated communities in the jungle, and the spiritual, mental, and physical needs can be vastly different, and this calls for a huge investment of time into relationship building.

The first community was only 8 families, and needed a pump fixed. It was an extremely easy repair, but they had left it untouched for 4 months, leaving them with no clean water. This community seemed to need encouragement and empowerment to take things into their own hands, for realization that they are the primary agents of change in their own lives. Me and Ali did hygiene training, and it seemed that they realized that they need to change some of there practices, but asked for latrines to be built for them. Alex, the engineer on our team, was skeptical whether they would be willing to build it themselves, which really is the only way to ensure sustainability.

The second community was the highlight of the trip for me. There were about 36 families in here. This community was receiving instructions for their distribution system. They already had a clean spring captured and just need it to be distributed properly. This community was very receptive, giving, and motivated. I had a few wonderful conversations with some of the men and they seemed so excited to know all about what we were doing, about our lives, about what we thought of their community, about hygiene, about how they can do things better, about EVERYTHING!! It was so inspiring. It was such a blessing to be with these people.

The third community was quite a different experience. It was occupied by about 50 families, and we recieved zero welcome or attention, accept for people watching the plane come in. One family was rather nice, but I didn’t have much exposure to them. I stayed in a large medical clinic that a German agency built. HCJB and this agency has had a bashing of heads in the past, for developmental philosophy differences. I won’t go into detail about it, but the community represented this divide. It was sad to see, but very real.

We made the trip back safely, Phil got his camera stolen on the bus on the way down, but that was the only misfortune of the whole trip. Well… I did get some badly bitten legs, even though I was wearing boots and pants. For those who are not faint of heart can look at the images of them on my flickr (just click one of the images). I have some really nice images of the jungle and the trip, so you should check those out. I had trouble putting images in and formatting the text. *edit* fixed - realized I wasn’t puting the pictures in block level elements. *edit*

Thanks for all the support and prayer, love you all

Will Krzymowski

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April 11, 2007 by will.krzy.

I went to the annual good Friday procession in downtown Quito this past week. It was a very interesting experience, because we don’t have anything like this in the states. Parades are not for religious reasons, and the crowd that shows up for a parade consist of families and kids. So the whole event was slightly familiar, but very much a new experience for me.

The parade consisted of 4 elements, saved souls (about 80% of the parade were people dressed in all purple, with pointy hoods representing the souls saved by Christs crucifixion), men dressed as Jesus carrying crosses, bands playing music, and floats with either Christ carrying the cross or mother marry (I think its odd that she’s called the virgin Mary, because she wasn’t a virgin her whole life, Jesus DID have siblings, and that its called the virgin birth, shouldn’t it be called the virgin conception… cause thats the defining part of virginity, and the part the was the miracle, just some thoughts). This was a totally different way of showing reverence to the Lord. I found out that a lot of people are in the procession because of promises they made to God. “If you heal my mother, I will walk in the procession,” and they thank the Lord by taking on Christs suffering in the procession. Sometimes a parent will promise the life of a child to the procession as thanks. This can be problematic if the Child grows up to be Protestant, or a non-practicing catholic.

We escaped the rain by going into a museum after the procession ended. It was also interesting to see how a lot of the procession has evolved. Historically it looked like it had a lot more variety, in terms of costume and color.

Thanks for checking my blog, and thanks to those who are supporting me through prayer while I’m here. Its been a real blessing. My plans for the rest of the time here are pretty much layed out. I’d like to get the website squared away, next week I’m spending 3 nights in different communities in the Jungle (I GET TO FLY INTO THE JUNGLE!! I’M SO EXCITED!!), Sarah is flying into Quito the following week, we’ll go on a river tour, then to a community where she’ll follow a woman who does hygiene training (tannia, if you remember from a previous post), and then I have a couple days to finish up some things and I’ll be flying back to New Mexico May 15th. Thanks for everything… I’ll be posting soon.

Will

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April 4, 2007 by will.krzy.

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve been in the office for a while and haven’t done anything thats really that interesting… well… for others. I’ve had a good time doing stuff, but its been mostly stuff like webdesign, video editing, and other misc. tasks. I’ll be posting some of the stuff I’ve been working on. Actually I have a video up on youtube.com of one of the general presentations I’m working on. Its a video slide show that generally states what the ministry of Clean Water Projects does.

About three weeks ago I went to a community called Lirio San Gonzalo with a work team from Alaska. We were there to construct a spring capture high above the community. They were already using the spring for irrigation and a little bit for drinking water. The spring had softened and cut out a small piece of the hillside. There were plants growing in it… and the water they were getting wasn’t protected from contamination in any way. Our department designed a system used to capture the water from the spring with minimal contamination. Its a process of layering semi-permeable geo-textile’s to filter out particles, pvc pipes to gather the water, three types of rocks and gravel to give it support, then a non-permeable plastic sheet to keep it safe, then encase it all in concrete to protect it.

I learned a lot about the whole process and whats its like to be on a team. The whole community set aside every morning to work on this project. There were about 40-50 community members working each morning, 7 work team members, and 6 of us from the department. There are two guys from the department who are native Quichuan, and work for HCJB clean water projects as ‘technicos,’ or technicians. They are described as the best two guys in the country at spring captures. Martin accurately described it as ‘an art that few people have mastered.’ A lot of their success comes from being able to speak to the Quichuans in Quichua, directing 40-50 people to work together, and bring everyone together to an extremely efficient and effective building team. They cleaned out the spring, dug it back to a clear source, built up a foundations, and captured the spring. It was fun to watch it being executed. It was fun getting in there, getting muddy, tossing rocks, passing cement buckets, pouring cement, catching cement buckets, and just being covered in lots of cement. I had a good cross cultural experience.

I was approached by two guys who wanted to go to the United States. One was 23 and had a wife, the other was 29 and had a wife and two children. They spoke very plainly, saying they couldn’t find good work here, and wanted to work in the United States. I asked the same question probably 3 different times, in different ways, why they wanted to go to the states. They didn’t seem to know a whole lot about what they wanted. They also kept asking me if I could take them on the plane with me. I told them it wasn’t that simple, that they need passports and work visa’s and lots of stuff you needed to apply for. I didn’t want to discourage them, even though I think that any problem they are trying to solve isn’t going to get solved by moving to the states to work. I gave them my number, and contact information if they ever found their way to the states. Watching them hang out with all their friends, laughing, having a good time building this spring capture made me think what their life would look like if they DID actually make it to the states some how. The close community they had their is non-existent in 90% of the country, the strong social fabric they had would be torn apart if they were to ever return with loads of american money. They wouldn’t fit back into that society very well. They would have to break up the family to leave, and I’m sure kids would grow up with out their farther for years and years. I talked to Ceasar Cortez, an Ecuadorian engineer/pastor who was that head of this work team about the situation today because they called me asking for information on passports. They thought I could get them passports, and Ceasar explained that it would be impossible for them to obtain a work visa for the states even if they did get a passport. That made me think… I can go to almost any country I feel like going to (hypothetically - I don’t really have any money). If this guy spent his whole life trying to get to the united states… he MIGHT make it. How much privilege I have to be able to do the things I do. Even being a poor missionary should be considered a financial privilege. Looking back at these two guys, I believe they had the resources and opportunity around them to improve their situation. Because of the Ecuadorian social structure and years of oppression, it would be a hard uphill struggle, and I guess thats what we’re there for, to alleviate some of the uphill battle and to encourage and empower them, but they are they’re own agents of change, we are merely the facilitators.

The team got a nice feast at the end of the week. A whole Cui! In Otovalo those go for $15, so this was a major luxury. I eat about 3/4 of it… which is really quite a bit of food. I think what we were served could have filled me up at 3 different meals.

Ok, so what else have I been up to. I took a lovely trip to downtown this past weekend with Ali and Phil, and Ali’s family. I should probably explain that Ali is a Calvin grad who I’ve gotten to know, whose actually really good friends with Erin Holwerda, and Phil is a co-worker of mine who just got his masters in mechanical engineering at Michigan tech. We saw a couple cathedrals. The one thats picture is really neat because they basically have put stairs and ladders to let you access every little nook and cranny of the whole building. The top had some really amazing views of Quito.

Quito has a lot of cool cultural events that I realized I have been missing out on. Its such a cultural center for Ecuador, and I haven’t taken advantage of living here. I’ve gotten out a bit into the the surrounding area, and down to the coast, and tried to do something cultural every weekend, so I don’t feel to bad.

This is me Dangling my feet off a ledge on the roof top of the Cathedral. You can see it just below the cross in the first image.

I’ve also become pretty good friends with two guys who I live with. One is an American student named Brandon, studying at University of San Fransisco Quito (San Fransisco is the patron saint of Quito and a University here, not a town in CA), and the other is the son of the host family. His name is Diego, and is studying political science. We have good arguments about politics. Brandon grew up as a poorer African American, so I value his opinion on a lot of things because of how different it is than mine. Diego grew up the son of an Agnostic Latin American professor, so his views are rather different than most Americans. Its all been wonderful.

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March 12, 2007 by will.krzy.

I have been very busy in the past week and haven’t been able to make a post. This one will be condenced since I have very little time.

I just got back from a week traveling around to 3 communities teaching about the importance of hygiene. Some of the projects have recieved clean water, but need some more instruction on how to take full advantage of having this resource. It was a tremendous experience and the interaction with the people was so much fun. Tannia, who I went with, is an Ecuadorian from Ambato, who graduated from hope college. She is in charge of hygiene education in the Clean Water Projects department. Me and Ali Dykhouse (fellow Calvin Grad and HCJB working visitor) traveled with her, and I realized the extreme importance of this ministry. Not only is it teaching, but its building positive relationships in the communities that encourage and build trust.

I attended a Quichuan church service. We were asked to sing the song “I have decided to follow Jesus” in English, which was then sung in Spanish, then in Quichua. 

Lots of other stories, but I have to cut it short. The first image is of me and ali wearing some of the traditional clothing. I wish I had one of some of the Quichuans but I don’t feel comfortable point my camera at them. The second is Ali and Tannia leaving La Pacifica. The one right below is an image of the highlands above Pueblo Viejo. Ali is brushing her teeth or something. Hope you enjoy… will

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February 23, 2007 by will.krzy.

HCJB is taking on a new project where it wants to add the internet to its tool for communication and outreach. I don’t know who exactly the audience is, my guess is American young adults who readily access the internet. So when a memo was sent out to some of the folks here at HCJB Quito that suggested that www.youtube.com would be a small project, I found myself explaining to some of the older generations what the significance of youtube was, and how it could be used. I think its a worthwhile ambition, it could be an interesting way to gain exposure to people who could get excited about this line of work. Here is a video that HCJB posted on youtube.com.
Truth in Motion

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February 17, 2007 by will.krzy.

My image host, www.flickr.com (which is a service of yahoo.com), has a bug at the moment. I don’t know if it was caused by a hacker or what, but images are being randomly switched with images from other users.

If you click on a thumbnail you are given a larger image, and you are also given options to see it in many other sizes. The images that are switched are random, not every single size is switched if the original one is… nor are the optional sizes guaranteed to be the image of the thumbnail.

I sent a complaint. One of the images that was switched was inappropriate, which is kind of frustrating seeing as I’m linking the images to a blog I sent to church members and family friends. It only effected less than 5% of my images, so you can still look at them with most accuracy.

You can see how one of my pictures that I linked to on this blog was effected. Its in the post “Trip to the highlands.” I was quite surprised to see it!

Anyway… for those of you who want real news on a post… today I’m planning on going to the historic district again. This time I hope things are open. Its carnival weekend, which means the whole city pretty much turns into one big water fight. Its pretty much appropriate to soak anybody at anytime. Young kids can pelt a 70 year old woman with water balloons and for some reason its acceptable. Its exciting!

I’m working on presentations for the Rydbeck family (engineer who runs the clean water projects), for their HMA (Home Ministry Assignment), which has been a little frustrating, but a good experience. I was expected to be given a little more freedom with the project, but I wasn’t. This was a personal presentation, which I eventually realized, and was glad to relieve them of a stressful part of HMA’s. They were very grateful for my help, which I learned to appreciate.

At some point I would like to work on a project more along the lines of a documentary, with more of a narrative approach, rather that a straight up factual presentation. Where the message isn’t laid out point by point, rather it can be connected by the viewer. In this way it allows the viewer/audience to get emotionally involved. I think this would be most effective, representationally accurate, and achieve a level of inspiration. When people are challenged to think, a message sinks in deeper.

I think I’ll have to do this on my own time, and give my work day to what they want me to do. Thats fine by me, I’m here to serve. Ok, a little into Will’s head, but there you go.

Love you all,

Will

UPDATE - problem was fixed, apparently it was a server crash that did something weird. The images are all sorted out, and i also posted a new one of the refugio on Cotopaxi (elev. 15,700 ft), which is the highest I’ve been on since the last time I was at the refugio when i was 7 or 8 years old… ok, enjoy

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February 12, 2007 by will.krzy.

The biggest thing that happened last week was my trip to Carabuela. Its a small village outside of Otovalo. Otovalo is a cultural center in Ecuador and famous for its market. Carabuela’s primary source of income is making items to sell in the Otovalo market.

The reason we went to Carabuela is its water. The people of Carabuela came to HCJB’s water projects about 3 years ago and we have slowly been working on developing a plan of attack for this communities problems. I don’t exactly know why its taken so long, but I know that there is a long waiting list for this departments services, and this particular community doesn’t fit the type of projects they like to accept. I don’t exactly know the criteria, but I think its based on need and highest priority. This community has a lot more financial resource (comparatively) because of its close ties with Otovalo, and has large amount of water infrastructure already built. The problem is that it is terribly inefficient (common of government work), and costs the community a LARGE amount of money to run. Our department has committed to devising a plan for them and they are responsible for taking it to the local municipalities for implementation.

Beto is a pastor and graduate student working on his engineering degree. He is doing a version of his own of this project for his thesis. My job was to help him understand the survey equipment and assist in teaching everyone the new data collector. There ended up being more people than jobs in this particular situation so me and phil shared the duties of teaching and running the instrument. It gave me a good excuse to talk to some of the people of the village.

Over all the trip was fantastic. I got to eat some more Cui (I checked the spelling of this and this is the official way to spell it), take some pictures, talk to the people of the village, and sleep on a woven mat! This is probably one of the most beautiful valleys I’ve seen.

On the weekend I landed myself on the mountainside of Cotopaxi. The Harrison family invited a couple of us on a trip to Cotopaxi, an active volcano a few hours south east of Quito. I asked if had erupted recently and got the answer “not in 500 hundred years” but upon further research its been VERY active in the past 300 years. Just not in the recent past. “There have been more than 50 eruptions of Cotopaxi since 1738. Numerous valleys formed by powerful lahars (mudflows) surround the volcano. This poses a high risk to the local population, their settlements and fields. The city Latacunga has been completely destroyed at least twice in its history. Cotopaxi’s most violent eruptions in historical times occurred in the years 1744, 1768, and 1877. In the 1877 eruption pyroclastic flows descended all sides of the mountain, with lahars traveling more than 100 km into the Pacific Ocean and western Amazon basin. There was a major eruption in 1903 through 1904, and some minor activity in 1942.”

I have some good shots of us hiking up it. Hopefully I’ll get those uploaded soon.

So Phil brought along his GPS device and made some cool images from it. Hope you like them (I’m thinking my father will enjoy them quite a bit). Read my flickr for more information (click the image).

Oh yeah! I almost forgot… the weekend before last I went to Mindo, which is much lower than Quito and in the cloud forrest. Erin (holwerda) might remember her tube trip, and waterfall jumping experience when she came to Ecuador. Well, my experience of Mindo was wonderful. I went on these ginormous ziplines and had a blast. One of them was about 400 meters long and I took it going stomach down which was an incredible experience. We then went to a hike to see some waterfalls which you can see my whole experience via flickr. Anyhow… please keep praying. Me and Sarah need some prayer seeing as this distance thing can be rather stressful. Thanks… love you all.

Will

P.S. Mr. Van’t Land… the people in the office do remember your daughter. Bruce and Roberto send their greetings. The work she did is still functioning strong, and they were very happy with it…

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February 2, 2007 by will.krzy.

Although the week proved to be very productive and exciting, even though it wasn’t very photogenic. I did a lot of learning about survey work. I know can take the survey equipment, use it to take points, record them, use the given software that comes with the instrument, upload it to “AutoCAD Land,” and inject them, add contour lines, and make a 3D model of the land… ALL BY MYSELF! Ok… know that I figured out the equipment (with the help of a fellow working visitor, who’s two degree’s are in aerospace and mechanical engineering) I have to teach the people in the office how to use it. Most of the engineers are really busy and never had the time to figure out how to use a piece of equipment called the Data Collector. Today I spent 2 hours explaining it to Beto, who is doing his masters thesis by working one of the projects in our department. He didn’t know how to use the equipment so I tought him… IN SPANISH! I’m learning!

As for the Spanish, I started doing an interchange with a class at HCJB’s communications college (I don’t think its a full 4 year college but you do receive a large portion of credit - I think up to 3 years of credit - acceptable to most US schools). So, I’ve really noticed how much I’ve improved my Spanish while talking to them. I could carry on a conversation in three tenses (past, future, and present). We talked about relationships, my fiancee, slang, and many other things… it was very entertaining. I’m continually building friendships, and its been very exciting.

Here is some pictures of my sightseeing in downtown Quito. This is the historic district. Its very European, maybe spanish , and quite beautiful. They’ve had a problem with crime in the past, but they have police posting on pretty much every corner so its quite safe now. Hope all is well back home. Love you all, and hope to hear some replies!

Will

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January 27, 2007 by will.krzy.

I just finished with my course here in Quito that was put on by Wheaton Graduate school. It was called principles of development and was taught by Dr. Steven H… who is currently a missionary doctor in rural Bolivia. The course was attended by about 45 people involved with HCJB’s Community Development program and two christian Ecuadorian government development workers. It was extremely valuable material and I’m very glad for taking the course. It was taught in Spanish but there was an English translator. I did join spanish speaking discussion groups which was about 30% of our time so I did have some practice speaking and learned some new vocabulary relating to development.
The course was based on the book “Walking with the poor,” by Bryant Myers which called for a more holistic approach to development. It criticized the common approach to development as a means to solve the poor’s lack of material possessions and education. It promoted an approach that sought to understand the human being as multi-dimensional person, attempting to make people realize that the spiritual aspect of humans can’t be ignored.

It had many other much finer points that are worth mentioning. He calls for a redeeming of relationships as a kingdom response to the powerlessness of the poor. A redeeming of our relationship with the poor, a redemption of the poor’s relationship with God, with themselves, with their community (direct community, and authoritative community - meaning hierarchy of power and the rich). This biblical model of justice really struck me as very important. It makes me seriously question our countries view of justice. But anyway… there is a lot more to the book.

The Harrison family was kind enough to let me use the internet connection here at their house. I took some pictures of their house to show what a typical quito house looks like. It is very typical because it reminded me of many of the houses that I lived in while I was here.

So long for now. I hope to do another update soon. Love you all.

Will

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