At Home In Guatemala

We´ve been in the village of Casaca, where AFOPADI is located, since Saturday evening. We arrived with the rain that usually comes late in the afternoon and during the night. The sound of the rain combined with the loud croaking of the toads and the softer chirping of the frogs is perfect for sleeping. The morning is announced by roosters, dogs and burros. They say the the indigenas people here don´t need clocks because the burros neigh every hour.
I am writing from the internet cafe in the nearby town of San Ildefonso de Ixtahuacan located due West of Huehuetenango in Northwest Guatemala close to the border with Mexico. When I was last here there would be only one of two people beside me. But now the cafe is very crowded on weekends and after school with students during their homework. It´s a big change, almost as big as the growth of cell phones in the past few years. The countryside is catching up with the cities.
Up in the village of Papal (at 10,000 ft), change is a bit slower. We spent Monday there to celebrate the opening of 12 cisterns that AFOPADI had funded. Aside from the obvious benefits of bringing water to people who do not have any, this program also falls under the banner of "gender." Since the women are the ones who fetch water and wash everything (dishes, babies, clothes), having a cistern improves the quality of their lives substantially. The entire day was devoted to a fiesta, complete with traditional dancing: first the women, then the men, then the "extranjeros," five of us (two Belgians, two Americans and one German) making quite a motley crew. The lunch consisted of a giant corn stew with turkey, tortillas, coca-cola and Aguardiente (the local vodka from corn).
Yesterday AFOPADI held a workshop on vermiculture (worm compost) in Casaca. I only attended the first hour since it was my turn to get "la tourista." I was out of commission all yesterday but had wonderful attention. Being here is a very communal experience and that applies to being sick. While trying to lie still on the bed, everybody would poke their head through the shutters to see how I was feeling. That and the expert medical help I got from one of the health promotors helped me heal faster. Today I am well enough to eat rice and boiled carrots & plantains while washing them down with various medicinal teas (fennel & pericon) from the garden. And I had enough energy to ride in the pick-up down to this cafe.
Luckily Wesley was able to attend the workshop yesterday so I hope to add pictures later. As a student of Public Health with an interest in food/land/health, he is an ideal companion. We share interests, but his youth and the fact that this is his first visit outside the US means he has many interesting questions. (My first visit to Guatemala was in 1988 so I am a little jaded about some things here although my long relationship with this country I love enables me to have a little bit of perspective.) The night before they were preparing for the workshop, the AFOPADI people went into when kinds of manure would be useful for compost, how to split up the mixtures of materials that form the compost, what conditions the worms need, how fast they reproduce (every 8 days) etc.
This is my fifth visit to the projects (Health, Education and Agriculture) since 2005. The gains are incredible in face of the challenges: not enough land and very poor quality, little and unsafe water, little schooling or medical care, racism, the effects of the war, to name a few. I am constantly inspired by the people I meet here, how they continue to work towards a better life relentlessly despite great and frequent setbacks. These trips always make me consider the many things I take for granted. I not only feel grateful to have been born in a society that has so much, but I always feel lucky that I was born into my culture as a woman. Life is so hard here, but especially for the women. Just as when I taught Welfare mothers in the Humboldt Park neighborhood of Chicago, extreme poverty and discrimination often results in high alcohol use by the men who then take out their frustrations on the women with physical violence. What attracts me in AFOPADI is their capacity to address all the aspects of the problems and to deal with process. Even though many things are needed, ultimately it is the internal changes in self-esteem that result in the most sustainable changes.
Here "sustainable" is far more than a fashionable word or a business strategy...When I return, I hope to find people generous enough to donate a little to a place where small amounts make a huge difference. AFOPADI has asked me (in my capacity as the Earthways Project Director of Organic Agriculture) to focus on raising funds for cisterns. At $1000. per cistern, that is a small amount to change the life of a family. Even though the economic situation is not good in the US, we have relative wealth. And especially since our government has a long history of interfering in Guatemala and changing things for the worse, sharing what we have is what I suggest.