el inicio

Our group is starting a project. There will be tecotours - technological (ecological) tours - that will serve as a fundraiser so that the organization doesn't live and die by its dependence on external funding. In our first week, we tested some projects. The idea is that a group of people will come for a week or ten days to volunteer on various development projects and get a good dose of latin american politics, history, culture, ect. in the process.

On the first day, we headed to Llanos de Pinal, a little town (incidentally, just at the foot of Santa Maria) to a visit a little guarderia, a community/day care center - this one especially for children from abusive families. The guarderia is funded by a local spanish school for extranjeros (gringos), and they were building a greenhouse in the back. Pop Wuj also does a lot of reforestation projects, and it can get expensive with buying young treelings. With a greenhouse, they can grow their own. The project lead was a young american woman who had been in Xela for about seven months. People stay here awhile - Xela is the sort of place that sticks. We worked with her until it was done, about two weeks later.

For an afternoon, we drove out to La Esperanza. The traditional way of cooking in Guatemala (without what one might consider to be a proper kitchen, something rare in many places), is to build a fire on the floor of your house which would be of dirt or concrete, and to cook over it. First, and most importantly, this causes quite a lot of respiratory illness. Secondly, it's a very inefficient way of using wood. The country has deforestation problems as it is. But when you are poor and have no other options, this is what you do. The family receiving a stove this afternoon was of pretty average size. Lots of relatives, lots of children. We all worked together, the kids helping to make clay to seal the bricks at the top. I got to cut cinder blocks with a machete. The most urgent reason for this stove was that the baby kept getting sick - something like pneumonia three times, something bad. This is common here. The (efficient) stove will use less wood, and the smoke will follow the stove pipe up through the roof.