The people and the life

Most of the women marry when they are 15-17 years old and the men maybe a few years older. It is very unusual with birth control so the families are big. Even up to ten kids or more is not rare. The family mostly owns two beds, one for the parents and one for the children. The houses aren’t really small but they aren’t big either.

In Atillo they grow very little, mostly potatoes and cereals, and some sort off grass to use for fire. They also grow pines, a tree imported from Europe. But what they do for a living is to have animals. The cow is the most important animal. Every day they sell the milk to the local cheese factory which pays 25 cents per litre of milk. The total gain of course depends on how many cows the family haes, and how many of the cows are giving milk. I think most of the families have about 20 cows. Mostly only the woman gets up early to get the milk. Of course she milks by hand, and even though she is fast, it will take her two hours. I asked a few families what they earn and it is about 6 dolls a day.

Other animals are horses and donkeys for transportation, sheep for clothing, dogs to guard the house, and to eat or sell pigs, hens, guinea pigs and rabbits.

There are not many opportunities to do any other work in Atillo. There is the restaurant with Dora, her parents and two girls, a kinder garden where one man works, the cheese factory driven by one family, a small place where they cross stones, a small “fishfactory” for “trutchas” and some very small shops for food and sweets. Mostly the families go to Riobamba to by their food though. They had just started to build a new school but they need more money to finish it.

The School

I taught in the school placed in the middle. There are 22 children in age 6-12. They are divided into three lasses, even though there is only one teacher, Licensiado. The way he works is two give two of the groups tasks to finish while he is teaching the third group. The older kids have got a book about history, geography, mathematics, politics and even a little sexual education.

The teacher lives in Riobamba which means he has to go by bus two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. He told me he had tried to live in a small room close to the school but he thought it was too cold and lonely. The teacher is sometimes lazy and wants to stay in Riobamba. Then he tells the children that he has got important courses or tells them some other excuse.

The bus arrives at 8.15 and lives at 12.15. There is also a pause at 10 ò clock for lunch, so in all there is about three hours of teaching. The lunch is made by the mothers of the children. The government gives some of the ingredients.

The building is not a real school. They started the school only one year ago and before it was a community house. It is very noisy and cold but there is sufficient space and light. No toilets and water though.

The College

There is no college in Atillo. If the children go to college they have to move to Riobamba or some other place. If they are lucky they have some relatives to stay with. They start in college when they are 12 years old and finish when they are 18. It is difficult for the children from the countryside to live in the town. They have been to worse schools and also they haven’t got a lot of friends. Many of them will give up and go home to Atillo again. An alternative is to study in distance. I don’t know a lot about this, but I bet it must be hard to learn on your own.

Earlier it was very uncommon to go to college. But maybe this will change. All the children I spoke to said they will go to college. I hope they will.