Back from the mountain villages, still Guatemala

After six days I`m back in Quetzaltenango. Still with AFOPADI, but no longer up in the mountain villages where they work. After seven years of annul visits, I am starting to make sense of some things. It`s really true that the more I know, the less I know (especially in English since I`ve been thinking in Spanish).
This time, I feel the poverty very strongly. It is always there, but with the global economic crisis and the drop in funding from international donors all over the world, the effects of poverty are intensified here. It`s not that we don`t have poverty in the States....it`s been so hard for so many people in the States these past four years...but most of us in the US have not only things (clean water, light, heat), infrastructure (roads, schools, hospitals) and services they are mostly not corrupt (government, police), that we don`t experience the poverty of life here that is a given for most and worse for the poor.
Because of this the services of AFOPADI are so vital. Not buying commercial fertilizer, learning how to make organic compost to increase crop yields, growing medicinal plants for the daily sicknesses that visit those who live with incredibly minimal sanitation....living on the edge really manifests incremental differences. 
There are so many details to describe. The funny ones like the free-range geese who now wander the compound and make the broom my best friend. The sad ones like the brother of a facilitator who began having epileptic fits recently (in his early 20s) and is only now in the hospital because the family doesn`t have the money and only believes in traditional medicine. The inspiring ones like the same faciliator, a woman, who is now the Cocode (the leader) of the village. The ones that give me hope like the woman who suffered from depression (the first time after the army executed her brother in front of the whole village and the second time after her father died) and is back to normal, whatever normal means.
As always, I am grateful for the education in sustainable ways. I am grateful to learn the ways in which one adapts to loss and change. I am grateful to learn about sustainable methods that are a matter of business mostly in the States, but are a matter of life and death in Guatemala.
Everybody here that I work with through AFOPADI is so open, sharing and transparent.  I realize that it is this transparency that attracts me. Life is short and in the States, with Capitalist competition, the ruling factor is to rarely share one`s challenges.  But, of course, the real way to grow is to understand we are all the same and to share our struggles and successes.
I don`t idealize my friends here, they manifest the same human struggles we all endure, but what inspires me is that despite the ups and downs, they continue. And in the process, life in the company of others is a joy. Lucky me. Now I have "only"to find creative ways to report and to engage friends and donors...this is the time when giving/sharing makes a real difference.