How to Build a Road in Ecuador

1. Dig up the whole 12 km at once and make as much mess as possible.
2. Watch the buses and trucks slide off the road into the ditch, as the road becomes awash with mud. 
3. Make all the houses built along the road suffer months of choking dust coming into their houses, while the road is unmade.
4. Pile up stones in the entrances to people´s houses, with no prior warning, making access impossible repeatedly for days on end.  (Our friend had to hire a lorry for a week as he was unable to get his out of his gate to do his normal business! No refund for that expense!)
5. Break the water pipes as many times as possible, leaving the villagers without running water day after day after day....
6. Make access to our farm impossible for normal cars... we are glad we have a 4x4 at the moment!
7. Put clueless men in the road with Stop/Go signs to direct the traffic.
8. Put guards on the machinery at night who do not have any way of defending themselves against the armed robbers who then tie them up and steal equipment.
9.  Work day and night, banging relentlessly with dumper trucks, driving the local residents slightly potty from insomnia.
10. Make local traffic drive right under the swinging diggers... I have been certain I was about to be hit on more than one occasion...

... and it isn´t due to be finished for another year....  

A Supply Problem

I was puzzled when I went to the supermarket a couple of months ago and found the shelves bare.  Some products, such as washing powder, only had one or two brands available, instead of the usual ten.  Other products such as soya cooking oil or liquid for sterilising fruit and vegetables, had disappeared altogether.  Aromatic Colombian coffee and mouthwatering European chocolates were prohibitively expensive.    

It was an inconvenience, but not the end of the world.  I had to buy sunflower oil instead, and am scrubbing the fruit well in plain old water in my attempt to avoid eating worm eggs.    

It turns out it is a result of the new government policy that all products have to be made in Ecuador.  The aim is to help the economy.  The problem is imports have been made all but impossible through red tape before Ecuadorean replacement products are being produced. 

More worryingly the same has happened with medicine.  For several months there was no low dose aspirin available.  This is a cheap, effective drug for reducing stroke and heart disease and maintaining the circulation an preventing gangrene in the feet of my diabetic patients for example.  Thankfully this now appears to be being produced in Ecuador.  My arthritis patients are not faring so well, as the supply of cheap and easily monitored methotrexate has also dried up and no alternatives are available.  Likewise a cheap, effective drug for nerve pain, also common in diabetic patients, has vanished from pharmacies here.  Alternatives are outside the budget of my patients.

I hope essential medicine supply is made a priority.  

Patient with Arthritis