Moving to Santa Rita

I have just finished moving into my new home for the next 3-4 weeks! I am now in the Kichwa community of Santa Rita, about 20 minutes up from Archidona and 45 minutes away from the house in Tena. I am living with the President of Santa Rita, his wife, and their 6 children.

In the province of Napo, the word “community” is used to refer to a Kichwa village. Santa Rita is the largest one I have seen, consisting of 120 families. Most communities are built around a soccer field and a covered court (built by the government) with the primary school on the edges of the field. Santa Rita was founded in 1965 by a group of families moving from the deep rainforest to be closer to the town of Archidona. The houses are quite close together, each with a bit of land to grow fruits and yuka. Most of the food is grown in a family’s “chacra”, which is a plot of land with a mix of wild growth and planned cultivation. A chacra tends to be between 1 and 2 hectares (100m by 100m) and is usually a few minutes walk away from the centro.

The house I am living in is basic, with two bedrooms and a common space. The family’s other house has the same design but is on stilts and is made out of wood. Obviously, they are very different from my family’s house in the US. That being said, I am curious to know if I am now living in a house that most people in the world would consider a normal house. I suppose my question would be, what is the overall state of houses in the world? I’m not going to pretend to know how one would statistically determine that. However, for me it is interesting to think that I might now be living a life most people in the world would consider normal while the life I had before would be considered abnormal (at the least). For those that are Hunger Games inclined, I imagine it to be like moving from the Capitol to any of the other districts.