Capstone Project Day 4
Today we presented our project to the Chamanga community. A group of about a dozen residents showed up to the meeting and listened to Fabian and Sofía tell them about our projects. It was easy to tell the residents and the students apart. The health center leaders closed the door to our 2nd-floor meeting room, locking the heat and humidity inside. It was the second most intense heat I’ve ever felt. All of us from PUCE and Notre Dame were sweating through our clothes. The locals weren’t bothered by the intense heat. Poor Fabian and Sofía gave the presentations flawlessly despite the raging inferno. The president of the health center stood up when we were finished and urged everyone to help us. He said it’s important for the health of the community. Sofía and Fabian are rock stars; I don’t know how we could do this without them.
After meeting the community, we saw the sunset on Pedernales Beach. Sofía suggested ice cream for a treat. I got a banana split. We ate a large seafood platter in the village near the beach. I wasn’t hungry because of the large banana split.
The shopping area near the beach was destroyed in the 2016 earthquake. Many of the businesses proudly display the magnitude of the quake, “7.8” on their signage. One restaurant we have been frequenting has a motto displayed inside, “no nos vamos, nos quedemos.” (We didn’t leave, we stayed.) There are pictures of what many of the businesses used to look like. So many of them were three-story tall buildings with hotels on the second and third floors, shops and restaurants on the bottom.