Culture

Continuing on with more of our walking tour of downtown Quito.  Here in Ecuador our experience is a lot like it was in Peru. The cultural emersion continues.  

Going back to our visit to the market earlier in the morning, I mentioned there was about anything available.  There was one thing we didn’t see there.  But our local guide for the Quito area, Alfredo, had arranged for us to meet with a Quito sex worker.

In the picture below is Alfredo and the sex worker.  Alfredo interpreted for us as she told us her story and answered our questions.  

We learned that this was legal in Ecuador, there was health care available and that checks for STD was a requirement.       

Though possibly seeing up to 5 clients per day, her income would be below the taxable threshold therefore was not taxable.

She also shared with us that she had two children who were staying with her mother and  they didn’t know what she did to earn a living.  She would be working in Quito for two weeks and then go home for two weeks to be with her children.  

Her long term plan was to earn enough to open her own restaurant. She felt like she needed to continue this routine for 5 more years to be able to accomplish her goal. 

I think that many of us go immediately to the idea of earning enough for a downpayment and borrowing the rest.  In this part of the world the interest rates charged make this type of business plan very prohibitive.  The same is true for building a home.  They work with cash and build in stages as they have the money.  We saw many homes in various stages of the building process where you can tell work had stopped awhile ago.