Immigration

The week before I left Cayambe, my friend Marcela asked me for ideas for her husband who is in a big city in the U.S. working. He was working rather, he got laid off from his job in construction, owes lots of money to the people that got him to the states, and was generally feeling despair about having left his family in Ecuador. She was hoping I could help him in some way and I do not know for sure what she had in mind, but about the only thing I could think of was to get her some information on organizations that work with immigrants. It took me a couple weeks, but once I got to Cuenca I pulled up the National Council of La Raza site and found two affliates in the city where her husband is working with job placement services. She seemed pleased to have phone numbers to give to him, but we will have to see if they can get him some connections to work.

Marcela is 23 and has two beautiful kids who are five and one. I met her when my language group attended a nursery school graduation in Cayambe. She came to the little practice charla that we had and she consented to let me do an interview with her that I had to do as part of my pc training. From there we became friends and when my host mom in Cayambe suggested I invite some of my classmates over for a farewell dinner, I asked if I could invite Marcela too. It might have been a social class thing or some proprietary feeling about their gringa, but my host mom did not want to invite some Ecuadorian girl to dinner. I had to explain three times who Marcela was, where I met her, and why I wanted to have a chance to say goodbye to her. I took a little gamble, because Ecuadorian hospitality is sacred, and I figured that once Marcela and her son were in the house, my host mom would make them feel as welcome as everyone else, and that was they way it worked out. Her parents live near Cuenca so hopefully I will get an opportunity to see them again at Christmas.