I grew up with my parents and my six brothers and sisters in a small, wooden house in Lago Agrio. Very modest. It was full of joy, but we knew that the reality outside it was different. It was quite a tough childhood in the respect that we didn’t have the resources to get by. My Dad and six brothers and sisters fought hard to bring home food to the house. My Mum also fought really hard too, to get us the things we needed, like food and education.



My family and my town are full of hard-working people with fighting spirit. Because of the oil industry there, there was work, so my Dad always worked, so did my brothers and sisters when they were old enough. In order to help out financially at home, I joined my other siblings picking up bottles and collecting them over a period of months so we could then sell them. I was a fighter too.



That’s what it’s like when you live in a little town where people are needy: it can be a little sad at times and everyone has to struggle hard to scrape a living. We fought hard so we could struggle through every day, it wasn’t easy. That’s how it is.



Don’t get me wrong - there were also happy and joyful moments spent playing and sharing with my brothers and sisters. It was like a kind of fifty-fifty childhood, if you like: half the time happy and half the time sad. But that’s life! Not everyone is born with the same luck.



Not everyone, for example, was lucky enough to have a huge football pitch right in front of their house, like I did.



Lago Agrio, the local team, played their games there and not only would we always go and watch them play, we would also play on the pitch whenever we could. Virtually every afternoon and evening we’d be there, dividing the huge pitch up into small-sided games. We’d play seven-a-side until 10pm or 11pm, and most of the time either they would turn the lights off to make us finish playing, or my Mum would come over cracking the whip, telling us to pack it in and come home.



So we played a lot of football and, thanks to God, I was given the chance to make a career in the game.

