Day 16 - House visits

Today we went to an area in the South of Guayaquil. The South is notorious for being dangerous so rather than going in twos, all four of us went together. Israel, who is one of our high school students who has been helping out used to live in the area so we were happy to have him with us.
The area we visited is situated on the river and in the rainy season (now) is often flooded. Parts of it have cement roads and brick houses but the majority are made from Caña (bamboo) and have been built with the help of Hogar de Cristo, an organisation that provides free and low-cost housing to the poorest of the poor in Guayaquil and South America. We were told that 10 years ago much of the area was dense mangroves. (That explains the flooding.)
We met up with one of the mothers on the main road and she led us to her house. She was lucky enough to live in a brick home and even had a fan. She then became our guide as we moved from house to house around the area on mototaxis.
Most of the houses had basic services, water and electricity, they usually consisted of a small tv watching room, a bedroom or maybe two depending on how many people lived there (one three bedroom place had 15 inhabitants) and either a kitchen or a space in the tv room for cooking. Two of the houses had dividing walls made from unfolded cardboard boxes and they all had tin roofs which radiated the heat and made them feel like ovens. It was usually cooler outside than in.
In one very organised home a SARS awareness poster hung on the wall and in another a huge framed picture of the Emelec soccer premiership team of nineteen eighty something. It seemed like every single person shared a bed with at least one other person. The smallest house we saw, a one room brick place had a double bed and a double bunk bed for seven to share. Sadly only two of the three had mosquito nets covering them is an area where mosquitoes are a big problem.