Looking Over A Four Leaf Clover

Driving in Quito and getting lost is still my experience, a real ego-bruiser.

Coming from the plains where roads form a grid, I want roads that run straight, square and predicticable -- as symmetrical as the pattern on a plaid flannel shirt.

That just doesn’t happen in a city that winds around the base of a large mountain. But I DO ask for directions— not much of an option at The Trébol, where 60,000 cars a day pass through along with 1,100 busses.

El Trebol means The Cloverleaf, and in trying to find the toll road to San Rafael (with mounting anger in our car), we circled it two times. And THEN we caught the General Rumiñau toll road to Valle del Los Chillos and San Rafael.

Of course, a worse thing could have happened at the Trebol (please see the photo).

There was real trouble at The Trébol.



Hundreds of tons of earth simply fell away, leaving a giant hole big enough to swallow whole vehicles and then some. It is fortunate no one was injured.

With a lot of rain saturating the Trebol’s soil (which was fill material put in three or four decades ago) and the waters of the Machangara River pressuring the 400 meter concrete channel passing far beneath the Trebol, the fill fell down and was carried away by the river. Schools were cancelled for two days due to the traffic rerouting after the sinkhole occurred.

Was it the city’s lack of maintenance? “Not necessarily,” said Sixto Duran Ballen, who named three factors in the disaster: a) blockage of the river, b) lack of sewer maintenance and c) an extraordinarily large flow of water. (He was Quito’s mayor from 1970 to 1978, during which El Trebol was constructed. The fill material wasn't garbage, but instead layers of soil, packed after drying. Duran Ballen was elected president in 1992, the last elected chief executive to serve out a complete term in Ecuador.)

“Our problem in Quito,” he said, “and in all of Ecuador is that public works are not maintained. The policy is to think that earlier projects are no good. Schools and roads from an earlier government are not maintained. The sewers in Quito are an example. People sweep and throw garbage into the sewer grates. Probably part of what happened at El Trebol is that people continue to throw garbage in the Machangara, resulting in lack of maintaining the river and so the tunnels (beneath El Trebol) flooded.” (El Comercio 6 April 08)



Now, reconstruction work has been progressing for several weeks, with large excavators looking like Tonka toys inside the large crater on the east side of central Quito.
(The large diggers work on terraces that angle down at a 30 degree angle in the hole that is more than 100 feet deep.)

Hoy newspaper referred to it as a 60 million dollar project that could take six months and El Comercio newspaper reported that 70 percent of the Trebol is “stabilized.”



A new channel is being constructed, running parallel with the broken one but extending 200 meters longer. El Hoy put it this way: “It will run beneath the sector known as La Tola, in solid ground (I added emphasis by italicizing.)
(photo credits: El Comercio/Ultimas Noticias, H. Schirmacher)

Hands of Healing Amid Pain, Poverty and Suffering

By Dr. Susana Alvear

Mention India and people think of its beauty -- the palaces, the dreams, the kings, and the elephants.
But when your plane touches down, it´s reality! What we saw was a country of great contrasts and of great poverty. India has the atomic bomb, the world´s most economical car, and customer call centers for many U.S. businesses. But in spite of all this “grandeur”, this stands in contrast to the pain and suffering and poverty of the people. I don´t know if it is only material poverty; I think it is also spiritual poverty.
This had an impact. This was a challenge . . . for all of us on the team, I think.
I think we all endured initial shock of “Where do we begin?” You´d stand at a street corner and you see these rivers of people, rivers of bicycles, rivers of motorcycles . . . along with the animals, above all the cows.
The first day of the caravan, we had 300 to 350 patients, in facilities where there was no water, no electricity, no bathrooms – you´d turn your head to check the line [of people] and there was no end! And all the patients were so sick.
So one asks oneself “What am I doing? Just a little part? Making them depend on Western medicine in an area where there are no doctors?” My first day was frustrating, but after some time -and time spent in prayer – we knew our direction and purpose for travelling to India.
I set in my mind, “Each woman I see is a human being. I don´t need to worry about millions of people because I don´t have that capacity –not even the Indian government does! I´ll treat this person who came to me; treat those we could treat. Even though we couldn´t say “We love you” we did so with gestures and touch, and this changed my stay there.


This worked for me, with each person whom I had the fortune to serve -- women and children, whom I believe are the neediest because in their culture. They don´t have access to anything – even don´t have access to a plate of food, because if there are leftovers, they eat, if not, they don´t eat.

It was very good to treat them, and gripping see them in all the suffering they endure. I believe that we treated them well in that short time, and we hope there is lasting change because if you plant a seed and it grows in a fertile soil, many changes can take place.

(written by Ralph after interviewing Dr. Alvear)

Please also view the YouTube video "Healing India" by pressing play. Leave a comment on the blog if you like. Thank you.

Larry Norman in a Better Land

“An intimate evening with Larry Norman”. That was the newspaper headline.

If memory serves me, it was in the spring of 1983 when Larry Norman performed for college students not two hours from my home. (Kathy was able to attend the performance.)

In a box of clippings stacked away in storage, I likely still have the account of that intimate concert. I missed the event and now I will not have another opportunity to see the daddy of Christian rock music do a concert.

I even missed the news of his death. I went to the CGR site (it is here) and found a forum threat titled “In Honor of Larry Norman’s Passing.”

Turns out he died in February of a heart condition he had been battling.

In the 1970s, Larry Norman wasn’t afraid to challenge conventions . . . just like another musician whose untimely death prompted in me feelings of personal loss, Keith Green.

I have strummed Norman’s “I Am A Servant” on the guitar and I’m familiar with his haunting lyrics about the end of the world in “I Wish We’d All Been Ready.” I know a few of his songs, certainly not all of them.

He asked the Church a question, “Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?” Not merely giving a rationale to play religious rock and roll, he was bringing his conversion to meet his passion for music and determining what fit and what didn’t correspond to a Christian lifestyle.

It was a public evaluation for all to view, if you took the time to read the liner notes on his LPs. Not everyone agreed with his conclusions. But thanks in part to Larry Norman, it isn’t necessary to wear a crewcut and love southern gospel music to hear the gospel.

Why Should the Devil Have All The Good Music? Even as Norman acknowledged an existential search by secular songwriters, he challenged the church to find bridges of communication with culture. Consider the questions:

How many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man? (Dylan’s response: The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind. The answer is blowing in the wind.)

Who’ll stop the rain? (John Fogerty’s solution: And I wonder, still I wonder, who’ll stop the rain?)

If God had a name, what would it be? And would you call it to His face? (answers to Joan Osborne’s questions provided by Mel Fletcher here.)

Would you know my name, if I saw you in heaven? (Eric Clapton’s response: I know I don’t belong, here in heaven.)

They ask the important questions, seeking structure to help make sense of life’s particulars.

Thanks Larry, for the answers your musical message gave us – that there is a another land.

A land where you have gone.

A better land.

A quick primer to understanding Latin America

Why is this man (me) on top of the world at the Middle of the World? Does he know anything at all about a yaggi antenna or is merely “fiddling on the roof”?

First of all, it only felt like I´d reached the top of the world because for four years now I´ve intended to get a coaxial cable hooked up to the antenna on top of our house. It took the painters´arrival with an extension ladder to put me on the summit. It is a two-story structure, and I will now dispense with my hyperbole.

However, the Middle of the World is Ecuador´s boast. On shortwave radio, we used to say “we´re broadcasting from the Middle of the World - Quito, Ecuador.”

I connected up and with great anticipation. I tuned in and I caught . . . Radio China International (not such a great catch considering Okeechobee, Florida is just a bouce or two away of the shortwave signal), the BBC and a couple other shortwave stations.

A precious few. Two few. (Hear the minor key strains of “Anatevka" playing as you read on.) BBC had already announced in February its end of English-language shortwave service in Europe after 75 years. It was just one of many such announcements over the last several years. (story is here.)

But I got it hooked up in time for Ken and Polly´s arrival in Ecuador. Twenty-five years ago he wrote in his first book*, news is the staple of most international broadcasts.

An avid shortwave listener over the years and a news junkie, Ken's lament has been long over the flight from shortwave frequencies by international broadcasters.

I will mark it as one of life´s little ironies the comment Ken made as he arranged to housesit our place for awhile: “if you have Cable TV, don´t disconnect it as we would like to use it.” My effort and his loyal shortwave listening! Replaced by cable?!

But I´m only pretending to be overwrought. Times change, technologies change. We adjust, some by a downward adjustment in their news intake. Others by more aggressively hunting out non-filtered, from-the-closest-to-the-event source.

A constant over the two decades I’ve known him is Ken´s voracious appetite for news–especially about Latin America. And the fact it is not fed by media based in the US. (See column by Andres Oppenheimer in which he provides examples of minimal coverage of Castro’s power handover, a three-way flap after a cross-border raid in Ecuador, and other stories. Oppenheimer summarizes a media study by Excellence in Journalism.)

As part of Ken´s personal campaign for more information from and about this region, he has recently released the book From Rio to the Rio Grande: Challenges and Opportunities in Latin America .

World magazine calls the book “A quick primer on the current geography, politics, faith, and economics of the region.” It is reviewed here but World asks a subscription fee.

A former U.S. ambassador to Paraguay says it is “An excellent sweep of key topical issues.”

The book can be ordered here. As the reviews (and the title) indicate, the book covers a lot of ground with the incisive writing of a journalist and the perspective of a longtime pastor and missionary. Not only is it a good book to buy and read, it’s quite a bit easier than climbing up on the roof.

*Tune In the World - The Listener's Guide to International Shortwave Radio (1983)