It was eight o’clock at night and we were standing in a slightly run down park at the center of Atacames. We were all tired and needed a bottle of water and some food, but Efren (Efren is my younger brother’s best friend who is from Ecuador) kept saying we needed to visit his Aunt. Five minutes later we were standing at the bottom of a flight stairs outside a gate, and a small Nun was approaching with keys. This lady was Efren’s Aunt. Standing on the porch it was astonishing to see her and two other Sisters standing among my brothers. She and the other Sisters were so short that I could look over their neatly covered heads. The expressions on the nun’s faces and the accent with which they spoke Spanish made me smile. After spending four grimy and uncomfortable days in a small fishing village called Monpichu, coming into the nuns’ home was an unexpected joy. Things we had done without for the last four days such as flushing toilets, hand washing soap and glasses full of drinkable water instantly relieved a little bit of the stress we all had been feeling as we got off our first bus ride of the night and prepared to take the next 8 hour trip up 3000 meters of mountains to Ibarra.

As we all sat politely in the sitting room of the Sisters and listened to Efren talk to his Aunt, the simplicity and knowing and kindness of the women captivated me. I began asking questions through my sister, Sarah, who speaks Spanish, and impatiently tugged on her to tell me what they were saying. One Sister, who was originally from Columbia, had bright sparkling blue eyes that were so young, even though she was probably 60 years old. She answered my questions frankly with joy and hope. My questions were hard questions too. I am studying the anthropological side of the HIV epidemic, an area of research that has been under-funded and ignored by much of the scientific world until recently, and I wanted to know many things. I asked through my sister “How are the women treated? Do women have good jobs?, How long do girls remain in school?, Have you seen many HIV cases?” There has not been a time in my life when I wanted to be able to speak Spanish more.

I wanted to know what they saw in the hospital they worked in daily. At first I think they might have been startled by my questions but all three Sisters were happy to tell me about the work they did day after day, and they answered without any cynicism and with hope. The Sisters agreed that gender inequality and economic dependency are a reason why many women had more children than they could manage and became infected with HIV. They told me stories of thirteen year old girls being prostituted out by family members. This happens all over the world in very poor communities, even in the United States, but it is always upsetting to hear.

Throughout the trip I experienced small losses of independence at times and I found it annoying and inconvenient. This is common in all traveling, but at points in Ecuador it was more exaggerated than expected – I was frustrated that I was a “girl” at points. It was decided that females should not walk around alone at night, and so every time I or the other female in the group wanted to leave to go and do something one of the male members of our group had to go with us. I wondered if this decision was based upon foolish western fear, but I observed that all the Ecudorian women were accompanied by a male counterpart at night. However there was one exception to this - the Nuns.

At one point during our brief two hour stay in Atacames, I lost my party for a few minutes and waited patiently and a little nervously on a street corner for one of them to come and find me. At the moment when I decided I was really lost, had no idea where the bus station was, and wondered seriously what to do, I saw a Sister walking back home. She saw me instantly and came over and took me by the hand and led me to the restaurant where everyone was waiting for me. It was a small thing to have happened, but upon reflection, a powerful biblical example of Christ’s care, love and protection – a lost sheep found.

As I spent a sleepless night in a bus flying up and down the Andes Mountains around tractors, fuel tankards and the occasional horse, salsa music blaring in my ears, I began thinking about the Sisters and the “inconveniences” of the trip. The trip experiences certainly call attention to gender roles and gender inequality, but they also remind me of the beautiful and hopeful work of the church for all people all around the world - the blessed work we all have to do.

I am 24 years old and have just spent 10 days in Ecuador with my two brothers, my sister, and two friends. We visited Quito, Monpichu, Atacames, Ibarra and Banos during our trip. I am a summer intern in the Women’s Ministries area of the National Church in New York.