"To reach a goal you have never before attained, you must do things you have never before done."
Richard G. Scott
We started early, boarded the bus, and headed over a high mountain pass into a remote area of Ecuador hundreds of miles from any large city. We dropped from the chilly air of Cuenca – Yes Dagny, the sweatshirts have come in handy multiple times in Ecuador – to the 30 Celsius thick air of a jungle village setting at around 1800 feet above sea level. The trip took about 7 hours and we were rewarded with amazing views of the Ecuadorian landscape again. Imagine mountains that shoot straight up in the air that are covered with lush vegetation similar to what you would expect to see on the greenest islands of Hawaii. The steep hillsides were covered with dense trees and plants with interspersed palms, banana plants, sugar cane, cocoa plants and fruit trees. Occasionally we would see small scratched areas of the hillside that a local farmer has deforested and cultivated for sustenance or cash crops. We also passed two of the largest hydroelectric dams in the country that were fed by countless springs, rivers and cascading veils of water carving out white veins in the near vertical emerald green hillsides.
Along the way, the group caught up on sleep, listened to music, and received Kieri’s daily devotional. Kieri loves the long bus rides because it provides her the opportunity to initiate collaborative games and exercises that end up being the highlight of the experience for the performers. These activities force them to come out of their shells, share details about themselves, and most importantly, learn and think about their own strengths, weaknesses and life desires. It’s a miraculous process to watch a young mind think a new thought, internalize it and form new synapses triggered by a new perspective. Kieri uses a speed dating process of sorts. All of the young adults are paired up in the seats of the bus. The person sitting near the window stays in place as the person sitting on the aisle rotates to each stationary person every 3-5 minutes as questions are posed to the group. Example questions include:
What are the qualities in a person you most admire?
What are the “winning” qualities the person besides you possesses?
Who was the person you had the hardest time forgiving in your life and why?
If you could change places with anyone in the group, who would it be and why?
What are the qualities you are trying to develop in yourself? What are the weaknesses you are trying to eliminate from your life?
As fun as these “sessions” are (the most entertaining thing to watch is the parent chaperones subtle attempts to listen in to their son or daughter’s responses – how else are they going to ever hear more than 2-5 word responses to a question), we were all very glad to see the sign announcing our arrival to Limon. Limon or Lemon, was named for the locale that miners used to gather to take a break. They would gather at a particular spot because at that spot there was a lemon tree growing and they would be able to make lemonade as they relaxed. So goes the story how Limon was first established as a town in the late 1940’s. It is a fantastic, small town of 3000 that centers around a park downtown. Everyone knows everyone. It is a clean place you feel safe walking around in at night and where everyone is friendly.
Victor, who now lives in Greenwich, Conn., grew up in this town. Many of his friends and relatives live here. He arranged home stays for all 19 young adults. It seems everyone we meet are “cousins” to Victor. So as soon as we arrived, we were fed a great late lunch and then we canvassed the town with flyers to let town know we had arrived and we wanted to see them at the show the following day – just in case our lime green shirts and huge tour bus that drove all over town didn’t already clue them in.
Jim Stark and I took some time to check out our next venue. It is always a challenge to find power for the tech equipment and adequate stage space to put on the show. We fed our intel to Victor and Kieri to make sure we were ready for the next day.
After getting acquainted with the town, we dropped the younger half of our crew at each of their respective Limon homes. They will stay with their hosts for the next 3 nights. Now this normally would have been a time to relax for the chaperones, and perhaps even a time to find a 5 Star restaurant or massage or something except for 2 problems: One, this town had no such establishments, and two, Kieri was way too stressed about the safety and experience of the performers. It wasn’t until later that night when we regrouped for dinner that Kieri felt like everything would be ok. Victor had chosen his host families well.
Our hotel was ok. A few details had us questioning the idea of staying here 3 nights. First, the wood floors and trim of the hotel had just been re-oiled and the smell was a heavy creosote. Second, all of the hotel rooms did not have a bathroom and those that did had a shower door with an etched naked siren. The rooms were very hot and stuffy with no fan or breeze. There were 2 fans to share amongst the 6 rooms. Lastly, the water on trickled out of the shower and sink with no hot water in sight. It was going to be an adventure. After dinner Jeff Davidson and I walked around the town around 9:30 pm and the town was still hopping with people walking around, shops open, and music blasting from 2 story windows. Jeff and I were on a mission to find a fan. Our bodies were missing the cool nights of Cuenca. This simple task would have been a lot simpler if either one of us knew how to speak Spanish or minimally knew how to say “fan” in Spanish. Eventually, we did find the only fan for sale in town and started to walk back to our hotel. We did find a few mini-marts that had great snacks for pennies. You have to take the bad with the good. As we approached our hotel we found Cherie Shoemaker who had found a lavenderia that would do our laundry for .30 cents a pound. Another small blessing. The last event of the night worthy of note happened next. We were crossing the street to our hotel, Jeff and I, with our new Walmart quality fan in hand, when all of a sudden above our heads, something flew out of the third story window of the hotel. It hit the power lines as it descended, sparks few everywhere. The foreign object was severed in half and dropped to a truck canopy parked directly underneath and eventually slid to the ground. It was then that we recognized the projectile as a fan. It took a minute to process, but it was clear one of the fans had been placed too close to an open window and had fallen out. It was at that moment that Elizabeth VanLueven came running outside to see what had happened. Jim Stark’s silver Spanish tongue saved us from the hotel assuming we were starting our “Hangover” inspired weekend. It was at that moment that Jeff and I knew in the back of our minds that our hard earned acquisition would be handed over eventually as a replacement as it was the only other available in town. After seeing our crew back to their homes once again (they had come out with their host families to the central park area across the street from our hotel), we called it a night.
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