Winner of December’s Celebration Contest — Short Stories
Phyllis Houseman 1st Place
About Phyllis:
- Biology, Physical, and Computer Science Teacher
- Peace Corps Volunteer in Ecuador
- Manager of a Software Security Firm’s Multi-cultural Team of Web Analysts
- Romance Writer
“If you live long enough, you can do anything.”
A Celebration in a Small Ecuadorian Town
In the summer of 1962, I traveled to Ecuador as part of a Peace Corps Volunteer group of science and math teachers. First, we trained for two months at the University of Maryland’s College Park campus.
Half-way through the course, our small team had the honor of meeting President John Kennedy in the White House Rose Garden. He shook all our hands and told us how much we were wanted in Ecuador. No one had a premonition of what his future would bring.
Assigned to the Escuela de Excelencia, a secretarial training school in the southern city of Loja, I taught Nutrition and English to three classes of girls. They were the hope of their families to provide the income needed to escape a life of poverty. Home for many of the students was a tar-paper covered shack, with an earthen floor and no running water or electricity.
The school had few resources—the classroom I used had bare adobe walls. And they owned no actual typewriters. The young ladies practiced typing at a long, battered table, drilling on flat wooden replicas that had keys painted on their surfaces.
Determined to change the barren surroundings, I organized a project to obtain classroom materials from a variety of U.S. companies—many from my hometown of Detroit. The girls composed dozens of personalized letters to the businesses, using the ream of paper, envelopes, and postage I secured from local donors.
One student, Manuela Rodriguez, wrote so movingly I asked her to copy her message into a half-dozen requests.
“Sirs, we have little in our school to help us become excellent secretaries. Not even typewriters. But our mothers let us stay out of the fields and laundries. With your generous aid, we may succeed.”
Materials flowed in during the next several months: colorful charts of food groups and nutrition goals went up to brighten the naked walls. We read from an English-language, short story anthology a publisher contributed. There were enough copies so that each girl received her own volume.
The most amazing gift was a microscope with prepared learning slides. The rector immediately locked it away in a display cabinet, never to be used, but always admired by visitors.
No typewriters arrived.
About a year into my stay, I learned the school qualified for a government educational grant. Now they could purchase several real typing machines.
Just before I left for home, the funds showed up, and a committee of various city officials held closed-door meetings on how to best use the money.
The grant the school received was nonspecific. To my gringo mind, using it to get actual typewriters for girls studying to be secretaries was the logical thing to do.
A month later, I stood in the Plaza Central viewing the parade celebrating the Ecuadorian Independence Day. Many area schools marched by, carrying streaming flags and banners.
None strutted more proudly than the young ladies of the Escuela de Excelencia. The girls all wore brand new marching uniforms in the school colors of white and baby blue.
I felt a wave of affection for my students, and sadness that I accomplished so little in my two years with them. The purchase of uniforms instead of the machines was their priority. It was my lesson in cultural values. Who was I to question how they expressed their pride?
The next day, they carefully stored their outfits to be ready for other ceremonies. The girls then sat down at the table to practice on the painted letters of the old wooden typewriters.
