Friends we want you to hear a perspective from Ecuador. We translated this from the writings of Marcelo Valle Guevara. Please allow these words to penetrate your heart. Our hope is that you understand the “Stay home, stay safe” orders from the perspective of those most hurt by them.
“Stay home,” says the artists, hugging his wife as their children run through the 400 square meter, (1312.34 square feet), mansion where they live.
“Stay home,” says the politician, as he chooses in which of his properties he will spend the quarantine, he knows that his salary will arrive intact and his bank accounts are full of money resulting from corruption.
“People do not understand,” says the woman with a privileged position, while they unload fruit and vegetable and the bags of food she bought online and paid with her credit card at her door.
On the sidelines, in the invisible neighborhoods, the 4×4 “houses”, wooden huts, plastics, and cardboard, where the cold is COLD and the HEAT embraces and burns and does not let you sleep.
Online classes, seriously! What world do they live in? There is no light, no computer, much less internet.
Are they blind? They do not see the reality of the world where there are millions of families and homes in which what is earned yesterday is today’s food. Where, if you didn’t work yesterday, there is no food today. Where sanitary measures are known, but are impossible to comply with because there is not one mask to cover mouths or antibacterial gel.
Fearful, trembling, and hungry, a father goes out into the street to seek to earn a penny to buy food, even though he knows that he might die.
People are just trying to live, resist, survive day by day.
The virus does not make us the same.
The virus highlights, even more, the intolerance, the apathy with which the privileged sector of this society looks at those who have the least.
“Stay at home“, to take care of each other.
Outside the danger is the virus, but inside the danger is hunger, your children’s faces, disappointment, uncertainty, hopelessness … thousands of people without work, without money, without food … there is nothing worse than seeing your family hungry…
It is easy to say “stay home” but at home death is slow, it comes from within and it is hunger!
If each one who has food to eat would give at least one meal to someone who doesn’t have food it would make a big difference!
–Marcelo Valle Guevara
Our hearts are heavy because we see the suffering here in Ecuador first hand. We see people who were once healthy now standing before us skin and bones. We see the hunger in children’s eyes and hopelessness in the eyes of their parents. We have extended our hands, shed tears, prayed and fasted and now we need your help. Please click here to be taken to our food campaign page. Every donation helps us feed hungry people here in Ecuador.
Blessings,
The Downing Family
