Guatemala, Long Way Home and beyond...

Long Way Homepage

2009-11-27T21:20:00.001-08:00

Long Way Home Fall 2009 Newsletter
If you have a serious interest in the work that Long Way Home is doing you can follow the organization on its website, on my blog and now you can subscribe to the LWH Newsletter. Here is the Fall 2009 edition which supplements the update I have written on this site. Check it out, sign up!

GlobalGiving Volunteer Trips to Guate

If you have an interest in volunteering with Long Way Home you can earn credit with your university, wwoof, organize a group or freelance, we are flexible. GlobalGiving, the online charity clearinghouse, offers a voluntourism trip to Guatemala which includes project time in Comalapa with Long Way Home among other organizations. Check out the above link if you are interested.

Boston 2009

2009-11-27T21:18:00.000-08:00

Mateo presents Long Way Home to Boston Society of Architects

The following is a brief account of my involvement with the Long Way Home organization since my last visit to Comalapa in October of 2009.

I recently travelled to Boston to lend a hand and attend a series of Long Way Home (LWH) fundraising and network-building events. The first was held at Margot’s Gallery in Haverhill, Massachusetts, and was a wine and cheese affair in which old and new LWH partners were invited to come and chat with the current staff and get updated on the progress of the school-building project. It was a relaxed evening for more folks from the greater Boston area to get to know us and our work.

The second event required a bit more formal preparation and thought. Our board president, Elizabeth Rose, had arranged for us to speak two nights consecutively to groups of professionals and students in related fields of work to our own efforts. On Wednesday, November 18^th we spoke to a group of 45 from the Boston region at an event sponsored by Long Way Home which took place at an annual convention and tradeshow for the building trades called Build Boston. The event was graciously underwritten by the Boston Society of Architects (BSA). Long Way Home used carbon-free webinar transmission to bring Michael Reynolds, the founder and pioneer of Earthship Biotecture (http://www.earthship.net/index.php) building design which specializes in tire and bottle construction, and the featured namesake of the Sundance Channel documentary produced by documentarian Oliver Hodge in 2008. Garbage Warrior (http://www.garbagewarrior.com/). During Long Way Home’s presentation Mateo Paneitz, Long Way Home’s founder and executive director, spoke at length about our mission and philosophy for the work we are doing in Comalapa and specifically about the need for the vocational school we are building out of trash and tires. Following Mateo, our on-site architect, Ericka Temple gave a power-point presentation on the architectural and sustainable design features of our school-building project, emphasizing the trash-bottle construction, thermal mass or water-harvesting systems built into the design of the each building.

Then it was Michael Reynolds turn, as he spoke to us live via webinar from the current Earthship building site in Crockett Texas. He gave us casual presentation of his company and Earthship organization as a whole, while showing us a series of photos mostly featuring the more artistic and refined aspects of his Earthship Biotecture. When it came time for the question and answer portion of the presentation, Mateo asked me to step up and ask a blunt question on behalf of Long Way Home - what were Mr. Reynolds' intentions for collaboration with LWH? In answering the question Mr. Reynolds was positive and reassuring to us while remaining uncommittal.

The following evening the LWH crew headed to Boston University for our last presentation of the week in front of a group of urban studies graduate students. We repeated the presentation from the previous night with a few tailored changes for the audience and then watched the Oliver Hodge documentary on Earthship Biotecture entitled Garbage Warrior. The movie explains the evolution of both the design innovation and the political installation of Earthships as a recognized and respected method of building. It features the best of Michael Reynolds’ efforts in rammed-earth tire construction, the use of passive solar and wind energy, and the development of integrated water-harvesting and sewage systems into the physical structure of every building as part of Earthship Biotectures’ basic building requirements. The film also documents Reynolds and his Earthship crew traveling to the tsunami-ravaged Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean and post-Katrina New Orleans in order to put their innovative building technology towards a humanitarian cause.

Thus, Long Way Home held a successful series of networking engagements in Boston, the result of which were new contacts and new avenues to pursue for technical and material support of the school-building project. In addition, the Long Way Home board of directors held their annual board meeting during that week. There was much to discuss including a new, transparent accounting system, the addition of two new board members and the overall growth of the organization in the last year.

Finally, there have also been developments related to the Cojol Juyu water project and the Engineers Without Borders (EWB) group from Seattle University (http://students.seattleu.edu/clubs/ewb/). We have been steadily working around the national moratorium on new EWB projects by connecting our University of Minnesota chapter with the Seattle University group. In fact, a University of Minnesota engineering student recently spent two weeks evaluating the project in Guatemala. Now the two EWB chapters are preparing student groups to travel to Comalapa this summer to complete Cojol Juyu water project. In addition, Seattle University is interested in sending a group of five Master’s level RNs down to Comalapa to do community/public health nursing field work, an idea that Long Way Home is interested in engaging.

Update 2 - Fall 2009

2009-11-27T21:12:00.000-08:00

Paxan School Building #1 With Tire Retaining Wall in Foreground

Update 1 - Fall 2009

2009-11-27T21:02:00.000-08:00

Chuwi Tinamit accepts our Premio!

The following is a brief account of my involvement with the Long Way Home organization since my departure from Guatemala in April of 2008.

As many of you will recall I interned in San Juan Comalapa with Long Way Home(LWH) between June and September of 2007. Upon completion of my internship I traveled extensively throughout Central America and southern Mexico while making regular stops back in Comalapa for reality checks. In total, I returned three times between October 2007 and April 2008, contributing over a months’ worth of volunteer work hours and seeing to the completion of a couple projects initiated during my internship. (See my LWH volunteer statement and other blog archives on this site to read further about past projects.)

When I left Comalapa and returned home to Seattle that spring I had big ideas about the work I could and would do for the organization from the vantage point of the affluent United States of America. Fundraisers, grant proposals, project presentations and more were thrown about as potential U.S. outlets for my desire to maintain my working relationship with Guatemala and LWH. However, I was careful not to promise too much to Mateo, LWH executive director, and kept in mind that I was returning to a life of total uncertainty in Seattle as an unemployed, recent college graduate entering the job at the beginning of the Great Recession. That being said, I still do believe that I have underachieved in my stateside endeavors on behalf of LWH, at least relative to what is generally possible. However, despite my limited efforts to help the organization from home, the organization has made great strides and achieved great successes within Guatemala in the year and a half that I’ve been away.

I’ll start by briefly summarizing my work for LWH since April 2008:

For the most part I have been charged with foundation and grant research with the related role of unofficial “Northwest” representative for Long Way Home. Meaning that in the past year and a half I have written, spoken to or met with representatives from philanthropic or academic organizations ranging from the Seattle International Foundation to the University of Washington. In fact, my one success in this time has been formalizing a project collaboration agreement with the Engineers Without Borders at Seattle University(EWBSU).

In February of 2009, after months of religiously contacting Engineers Without Borders groups in both Washington and Oregon, I finally received an invitation from a Seattle University engineering professor to give a talk to a group of his students about Long Way Home’s appropriate technology projects in and around Comalapa. Professor Phillip Thompson, as one of the directors of Seattle University’s Engineers Without Borders chapter, also asked me to meet with him personally to discuss a specific development project for which LWH could use the support of EWBSU, either financially, materially or technically. Mateo already had a project in mind and “shovel-ready”, so he sent me the appropriate materials to present the Cojol Juyu water project. Cojol Juyu is a small, isolated aldea or village populated primarily by indigenous Kaqchikel Maya in the surrounding highland hills of Comalapa. As a result of which its basic infrastructure remains essentially non-existent. The town currently relies on an inconsistent water connection that comes from a neighboring village, thus on a good day Cojol Juyu receives just a few precious hours of running water to serve the village needs for cooking and cleaning. The little water it does receive is not fit for drinking, yet many do.

Unattended to by the municipal authorities, the town recently purchased the rights to a series of springs positioned perfectly, up-land from the town and its residents. Therefore, all that is required of EWBSU to help complete this project is to provide some basic surveying and technical assistance, along with some amount of the materials required, a usual feature of EWB project arrangements. Professor Thompson agreed to take on the project on behalf of EWBSU and after my presentation we identified an eager, student liason who would go on a preliminary visit to Comalapa and the Cojol Juyu project site during her upcoming summer break.

Unfortunately, since presenting LWH’s work at Seattle University last February not much has advanced in terms of the Cojol Juyu water project, therefore nothing has changed for the people of that aldea in terms of their water supply. The Seattle University engineering student did travel to Guatemala and completed some necessary prep-work for the completion of the water system. However, in May of this year the national headquarters of Engineers Without Borders instituted a moratorium on new EWB projects for the individual chapters across the country, including EWBSU, due to financial uncertainties in the organization caused by the bad economy. In conjunction with EWBSU we are now trying to work around that moratorium, going ahead with the student visit and preparing all the needed technical work on EWBSU’s end, right up to the point of construction. Of course, we will have to wait out the uncertain economic climate in order to receive the critical financial assistance from EWB and in the mean time Cojol Juyu continues to receive the same trickle.

The second, more minor achievement of my work, this time in conjunction with LWH partners all over the world, was an online fundraising contest sponsored by GlobalGiving (http://www.globalgiving.com/). The organizations that qualified in this contest received official registration of a development project on the GlobalGiving website, which is an international, charitable networking site encouraging and facilitating one-to-one direct philanthropic giving across the globe. In order for LWH to qualify our innovative school-building project the organization had to fulfill GlobalGiving’s “Open Challenge” fundraising requirements of garnering more than 100 individual donations totaling more than $3000 in just a two months of online giving. We were utterly successful in meeting these requirements, raising over $7000 in the allotted time, while proving LWH’s grassroots bonafides to GlobalGiving. Therefore, you can now find and give directly to the school-building on the GlobalGiving website (http://www.globalgiving.com/projects/build-a-school-from-recycled-materials-for-50-maya/).

Thanks very much to those friends and family members of mine who responded to my email, Facebook or face-to-face solicitations. Because of your generosity you can all point to a specific tire in the school-building wall which you helped to place there.

Lastly, the great achievement of Long Way Home in the past year and a half, not surprisingly, had absolutely nothing to do with me and everything to do with the hard work and inspiration Long Way Home has put into its school-building project. This past August LWH won second prize in an aid and development capital contest held by the primary, home-grown, corporate power in Guatemala, the fast-food giant Pollo Campero. In awarding LWH and our local, partner organization Chuwi Tinamit the $50,000 2^nd place prize, Pollo Campero’s Juan Bautista Gutierrez Foundation essentially recognized our school as the second most important development project currently under construction in Guatemala. (http://www.prensalibre.com/pl/2009/agosto/20/336228.html)

In addition to giving LWH the monetary means to complete the initial phase of construction for the school and employing a crew of ten local Guatemalans for more than a year, the Pollo Campero prize gives our project and the organization a heightened legitimacy and prominence within the global development community. It gives us a new-found credibility to go to established organizations who we want to work with and say, “Look, we’re grassroots by any definition of the word, yet we’ve been recognized by both GlobalGiving and Pollo Campero, a local Guatemalan company, pay attention to our work and get on board now!”

This recognition, more than the actual prize money, may be just the catalyst Long Way Home needs to sustain and grow our efforts towards the ultimate goal for this project; to design, build and institute a high-level, sustainably-built and maintained, academic and vocational institution in cooperation with locals and accessible to the whole community.

LWH Internship Reflection

2009-11-27T20:55:00.001-08:00

A short-term intern turned long-term volunteer

http://longwayhomeinc.org/en/internreflect
I discovered Long Way Home through the very formal process of applying for an international internship with IE3 Global as an undergraduate student at the University of Oregon. At the time I was very ignorant of the range of opportunities afforded to me as a Long Way Home intern to do good rewarding work in Guatemala. These opportunities presented themselves as the basic informalities involved in performing development work in a third world country. I was soon to discover the world of possibilities that lay in waiting for me and other Long Way Home volunteers in San Juan Comalapa.
During my three month internship in Comalapa there were the regular, predictable days consisting of morning lesson planning, teaching a Latin American history class at a local school, food shopping in the market, working in the Parque Chimiya garden in the afternoon, coaching local girls in a game of pick-up basketball and ending with an evening development work discussion over dinner.
Yet, there were also the days when the distinct character of Guatemala as a developing country surprised you with what that day’s work brought you. The days when a group of Guatemalans show up to invite you to their sustainable agricultural project in a neighboring town and feed you delicious, fresh fruits you have never heard of, nor recognize. The days planting trees at a reforestation site when a small indigenous man twice my age, with twice as many tools and saplings on his back, moves twice as fast as me up and down the hillside planting trees.
Or there was the rainy day when a local woman showed up at Parque Chimiya on foot with a baby on her back and a young boy circling her legs, all drenched. She wanted to inquire about having a wood stove built at her house by us. Mateo happened to be busy at the time and asked me to drop what I was doing so that we could get an assessment of the woman’s need and reason for coming to us with this request. In general, when deciding to do a project with an individual or group, Long Way Home requires that there be sufficient need and an appropriate amount of participation or investment by the benefitting person or party.
In talking with that woman and visiting her home that rainy day I found out that her alcoholic husband had basically abandoned the family, leaving her to sustain her two boys by taking odd jobs like washing clothes and relying on a meager corn patch for some sustenance. As we talked in her sparse weaving room she served me a little sweat bread and instant coffee heated up over coals of an open fire located outside the shelter underneath some sheets of corrugated aluminum. She cooked all the family meals there, kneeling and squatting, breathing in acrid smoke all the while like all too many women in the developing world. I easily determined she was in need. Next came the discussion about what she could do or provide in the stove-building process. As I mentioned, with nearly all the development projects that Long Way Home undertakes in conjunction with Guatemalan organizations or individuals we ask the locals to provide as much materials, physical labor or logistical assistance as appropriate and possible in any given situation. In this case, the mother said she would be able to procure the block and cement required for the stove as long as we donated the expensive part - the metal stove top.
Over the next few weeks Mateo continued the process of soliciting a Guatemala City Rotary Club for a donation of a quantity of metal stove tops. All the while the woman continued to stop by Parque Chimiya from time to time to inquire about and remind us of her request and our deal. She eventually secured the materials we agreed upon and readied the stove site area. Simultaneously, my designated internship time came to a close with Long Way Home and I departed for a long awaited vacation and travel period in Southern Mexico. My obligatory and formal period of work in Comalapa came to an end and that easily could have been it for my work and continued connection with the people of Guatemala. With all due respect, for many volunteers and interns who pass through Comalapa and work for Long Way Home once their designated work period is over, their self-satisfaction secured and with a few unique Guatemalan experiences in hand, that is it. They walk away from development work. And that’s fine for some, that’s all they are looking for and Long Way Home still benefits.
However, what I feel is the advantage of the grassroots open nature of the Long Way Home organization is the opportunity for sustained, meaningful work both in Guatemala as well as back in your home country.
For example, in this case I kept in contact with Mateo about returning after my travels for another few weeks of volunteer work. The wheels kept turning during my travel absence and when I returned to Comalapa a few weeks later the stove tops had been secured and delivered to Parque Chimiya. In fact, the day after my return Long Way Home’s resident mason, Adam Howland, was planning on beginning construction of the mother’s long awaited wood stove. Thus I was able to start the project process and see it through to the end despite my brief departure from Comalapa. I was able to show the woman Long Way Home’s sustained, genuine care for her situation by placing the literal and figurative first and last blocks of her family’s new efficient wood stove.
Furthermore, since returning to the United States from my time in Central America I have continued my support of Long Way Home’s mission by fundraising, volunteer recruitment and promoting the organization in my home community. In addition, I recently made a return visit to Comalapa in October of 2009 to participate in and witness the realization of Long Way Home’s principal goal - the construction of an earth built vocational school. Yet there are many more avenues for continued stateside support of the organization upon completion of your on-site work in Comalapa including grant writing, project coordination and community presentations. If you are like me and believe that doing development work in the third world requires a sustained, long-term, on-the-ground approach, Long Way Home is the development organization for you.

Reforestation in Simajuleu

2007-09-26T15:59:00.000-07:00

For the past three years, Mateo, the founder and director of Long Way Home has been recieving training and technical support from AIRES(Alianza Internacional de Reforestaciones), an international reforestation organization. Mateo and AIRES workers have built up and realized a successful tree nursery at Parque Chimiya, with a variety of species, including pine, cyprus and fruit trees.

About a month and a half ago myself and the other volunteers at Long Way Home had the privilege to help execute a fairly large reforestation project in one of Comalapa´s surrounding villages. The area in Simajuleu included a deforested hillside, community market, soccer field and the local cemetery. The deforested hillside was three cuerdas, just about one acre, and it alone required nearly 1,000 Ilamos or Elm trees.
On the morning of the project a large, flat-bed truck showed up at 6am and before I had gotten out of bed ten men had formed a relay team and was handing the needed trees down the hillside from our nursery to the truck. An hour later we were all in the back of a pick-up headed out to Simajuleu following behind that bed of green. Not too surprisingly for Guatemala, we parked at the end of a series of backroads and on the edge of a large, steeply graded corn field, through which we walked in order to get to the planting site. After hiking down hill through woods for about ten minutes we arrived just above the bottom of the ravine where we were to begin planting. As we came out in to the macheted clearing, myself and Long Way Home´s resident forestry technician, Cesar, were surrounded by nearly 100 young and old, tough-looking Guatemalan men. There was a small fire going and the men were sitting around drinking soda and eating their warmed tortillas for breakfast, while joking with each other in Kak´chickel.
Our former, favorite candidate for mayor, Valeriano, had come out to put the DIA Party stamp on the development project in his hometown, at the height of the campaign season. He and Mateo gave short speeches, one taking the credit and the other sharing it around. Then Cesar gave a short instructional notice to the men as to our strategy for planting all the trees. Ilamo was to be planted because of the natural springs which perculated up at various points on the hillside, as Ilamo is not a high water content tree like Cyprus, for example. In addition, the Elm tree grows quicker and spreads its roots system faster than the our other tree options.
Three meter long sticks were to be made and used to properly space the trees out in a triangular formation, which was decided upon because of erosion considerations on the constantly wet hillside. And finally, as Cesar´s lecture came to a close, the trees were handed out and we spread out over the top portions of the hillside with our machetes and shovels.
As soon as the planting began and the planting formula found its rhythm, the men moved down the inclined slope like an army of ants. Nine hundred trees were planted on that hill before noon of that day. I personally planted only eight because that was all I had time for before our reforestation crew finished the entire job.
The whole experience out on that remote and random hillside that day was unique and unforgettable. For example, my planting partner was a toothless old man, who spoke less spanish than I did and was amazed that a gringo knew some words in Kak´chikel. This man had to be older than sixty, yet he had the body of a twenty-year-old lightweight boxer and moved up and down the rugged terrain carrying a satchel of trees and a hoe more effortlessly than I did while only carrying a machete. Afterwards we sat out in the woods with some of these men drinking cheap rum, talking, laughing and eating some of the best flank steak I´ve ever tasted.
But the day did not end there. Mateo had also arranged for us to plant 500 or so Cyprus trees at various community areas throughout Simajuleu proper. This was to serve two purposes, for municipal beautification and for educating the town´s school children to the importance of caring for trees and how to do it. In this less physically demanding project we were assisted by the entire fourth and fifth grades of the local, public school. Cesar gave a similar speach to the 100 or so kids who took part in lining their town market, soccer field and cemetery with the Cyprus trees. All of them learned how to plant and care for the trees through demonstration and then were put to work doing their part for the health and beauty of their town´s environment. Working with these kids was yet another one-of-a-kind memory, containing many great individual moments and connections.
Just last week we went back to Simajuleu to check on our trees and follow-up on the project as a whole. We took the kids back to the cemetery, soccer field and market and cleared weeds, staked weaker trees and transplanted a few to better locations. My planting group of kids and I sat on an un-marked cement block which was apparently a grave after we had finished and looked out over the impressive panorama while they informally taught me funny words in Kak´chikel.
Guatemala faces a serious deforestation problem, which is exacerbated by unsustainable efforts at economic development, a culture of environmental abuse and a high population density. Therefore, I feel particularly proud to have contributed to such a worthy project. Because of the importance that I feel reforestation has for Guatemalans, in terms of prevention of soil erosion, water contamination, landslides and loss of biodiversity, I have kept a tally of the trees I have personally planted throughout greater Comalapa area, the amount of which has reached 42.

The Tecnico Maya Field Trip and the Antorcha

2007-09-17T16:48:00.000-07:00

This past Saturday, the 15th of September, was independence day for Guatemala. In accordance with tradition the Tecnico Maya school took a field trip to a site of national pride and history during the week before the holiday. My fellow volunteers and I were fortunate enough to accompany the fifty or so students, teachers and parents to the ruins of the Quiche Empire, near present-day Chichicastenango.
As part of the trip, the school rented a bus and we all met at 4:30am in the town center to head off on our big day. The reason for leaving so early is that the day before Independence Day in Guatemala it is tradition for the people, all across the country, to particpate in something they call the Antorcha, which means torch in Spanish. Essentially, people run with torches in hand along the highways of Guatemala for great distances on this day, passing the torch to a new runner when one gets tired. We were planning on running through three cities, at least 20km, after our visit to the Maya ruins in the morning.
The Quiche ruins proved to be interesting despite being less than impressive architechturally in comparison to some of the other well-preserved marvels of the Maya in Guatemala. Kids played soccer in the central area between great mounds of dirt, rock and stone which made up the edifices of the ancient city. The Tecnico Maya teachers gave a few lectures explaining the history of the Quiche Empire and the significance of certian Maya sites and altars on the grounds. We entered sacred caves in which Maya sacerdotes still practice their religion and rituals.
In the afternoon, after leaving the Quiche ruins it was off to modern-day Quiche for lunch and the start of our Antorcha run. We started in the town center, where we recieved the sacred flame from government officials, which is meant to represent Guatemalan liberty and patriotism. After filling the paint-can stuffed with rags and attached to a tree branch, which I had constructed in the tradition style to serve as my torch, with diesel fuel, I stuck it in the official flame, we took some ceremonial photos and were off.
We ran through the streets of Quiche, Chichicastenango and Comalapa, about a total of only 15km. The bus generally followed behind, rolling along very slowly and waiting for those who straggle behind and tire quickly. The streets on this day are filled with people observing and participating. Those who do not run in the Antorcha make sure the runners stay refreshed. So from balconies, roof-tops, overpasses, bridges and hillsides comes a barrage of water, clean and dirty. The whole Antorcha tradition can be summed up as a nation-wide marathon in the midst of a nation-wide water fight.
We ran into Comalapa at about 8pm in a steady rain and with the applause and cheers of on-lookers. In spite of the rain, we took our victory lap through the city-center and then retired our flames in the Tecnico Maya schoolyard. It was an amazing time for both the kids and us volunteers. For many of the kids it was their first time to Quiche and to the ruins. It was also the first time many of them had participated in the spectacle of the Antorcha as runners, which every Guatemala seems to take great pride in. For us volunteers, it was an amazing opportunity to feel part of the Guatemalan cultural fabric for a moment, instead of simply being regular foreigners, travelers and gringos.
A very big thanks to all who helped make this field trip possible. I am extremly greatful that we could make these great memories happen for the wonderful kids of Tecnico Maya.

Decision 2007

2007-09-17T16:19:00.000-07:00

The elections passed pretty quietly in Comalapa. Mateo and I did quite a bit to support our candidate for mayor, Valeriano Pixchit. He is a board member of Chuwi Tinamit, the host developement organization for the Long Way Home here in Comalapa. Both Mateo and I advised Valeriano before debates and at other key moments of the campaign. We sat in on meetings, supported him at rallies and undertook development projects in the name of his candidacy. While I wish that Valeriano and other rural, Guatemalan politicians like him had a little more education and a little less self-interest, I truly believe that out of all the candidates for mayor of Comalapa, he was the best one for the job.
Unfortunately, politics in Guatemala, like in many countries, is not as simple as doing good work, gaining experience and proving that you are the best man for the job. Some people say the political system here is rigged from the top, and has been for years. Others say that only the candidates with money and exposure win, which appears to have some truth. And still others say that all Guatemalan political candidates are just waiting to cash-in once elected.
In any case, the elections passed reletively peacefully and with no major corruption scandals. Voter participation was at an all time high for a democratic Guatemala, 65%, which is more than can be said for the U.S. They had a nation-wide youth election, which has been attributed with raising registered voter participation in the elections, while building a legitimate democratic future for Guatemala as well. Ten years after the 1996 Peace Accords ended the thirty year Civil War here, Guatemala appears to be on a firm, but imperfect, democratic path.
Nevertheless, Valeriano lost and so did Rigoberta Menchu. In fact, her campaign appears to have disappointed expectations, while she recieved her anticipated 2% of the national vote, some of the mayorial candidates on her party´s ticket recieved more votes than her in many departments. For now the two big winners were Alvaro Colom of the UNE Party, and Otto Perez of Partido Patriota. The two spent the most money and can be seen on the most billboards throughout Guatemala. In many peoples opinion, neither offer anything new or exciting for Guatemala, just more of the same machine politics. Since no one recieved a 50% majority vote in the primary elections last week these two candidates will have a ¨segunda vuelta¨on the 4th of November to determine who the next President of Guatemala will be.

My Nawal

2007-09-17T15:07:00.000-07:00

Nearly everytime I spend a few hours hanging around the Tecnico Maya school I seem to pick up a little more knowledge of what exactly modern-day Guatemalan´s believe are the religious, spiritual and cultural foundations of their Maya ancestors. At the school they teach the mathematics, calendars and language of the Maya, developing much of their curriculum from the Consejo Nacional de Educacion Maya (the national Maya education council), which conducts research, publishes educational materials and advises Maya education programs, such as Tecnico Maya.
The teachers at Tecnico Maya and other indigenous peoples of Guatemala are currently in a common position for Native American groups in the 20th and 21st Centuries. They are attempting to accurately and sufficiently preserve their culture in the new generations, while adapting and assimilating to the rapidly changing modern world. Thus, the curriculum at Tecnico Maya has shed much of the ritualism and superstition that it is still practiced and preached by many Maya priests.
So, for example, they teach that the beheading of a chicken in a sacrificial ceremony, a fairly common occurance at many Maya ruins here, is an antiquated practice, that is not in agreeance with the Maya belief in respecting all of God´s creations in nature. The teachers at Tecnico Maya also tell me that the Maya believed in one, universal God, which they call Ajaw. This is in contrast to what is taught academically in the U.S. about the Maya, which is that they were polytheistic in the pre-Colonial era, worshiping the many gods of the different natural elements of the earth. I have been told that the Spanish colonizers assumed the Maya were polytheistic because they had ceremonies for their maiz crops and for rainfall, and therefore the Conquistadores assumed they were praying to individual Gods on each occasion. In reality, the Maya believe in one God, who is the universal creator, and the Maya Nawales or Gods of fire, rain, healthy birth, and abundant corn-crop, for example, the images that can be seen carved into the sides of the great Maya pyramids, are earthly essences or representations of the one God, Ajaw.
The other day I was fortunate enough to have my Nawal told to me by the teachers. A persons Nawal in the Maya religion is the equivalent of someones Zodiac sign, as they are believed to determine a persons personality and life path. The Nawal is determined by one of the three Maya calendars. There is a lunar, solar and purely mathematical calendar, the last of which is used in this case. There are thirteen Nawales or characters which represent different personality traits or destinies. These thirteen symbols are numbered one to thirteen as well, with thirteen being the strongest number and one the weakest. A persons Nawal is then broke into three groups, 1)Nacimiento-Birth trait, 2)Origen-Your purpose or calling in life, 3)Esperanza-Your destiny for later life.
Being born on April 9th, 1984, I have a 12 No´j, 4 Toj, and 7 Kan. A 12 No´j in first category is apparently very good because it means that I have a strong number, 12, and No´j means sabiduria in Spanish or wise, intelligente, or thinker. 4 Toj is pretty good as well. It means I have a small debt to God, and have to do some of his work throughout my life. The last, 7 Kan, sounds good to me as well. It means that I will have a decent amount of peace when I am old. Here´s hoping all of your Nawales are as good as mine.

Building Appropriate Technologies...

2007-07-24T13:01:00.000-07:00

Last week the Long Way Home crew completed two appropriate technology projects; a solar shower for ourselves and a wood-burning stove for our neighbors. With the help of our resident AT Peace Core member, Ben, we were able to construct our shower over a two and a half week period, while the stove took us just five days to finish.
The solar shower is a very simple peice of equipment requiring some lengths of hard PVC piping, 50 to 100 meters of black tubing, a couple of valves, a shower head, roof space and a few hours of direct sunlight per day. We fit all the peices together by putting the black tubing (mangera) under a flame, leaving it malleable and then fitting it over its PVC counterpart. We used a strong adhesive (pegamiento) and wire to stick and securely fasten all joints together. The 100 meter coil of mangera is located on top of our shower and bath rooms, on a flat surface, which recieves at least six hours of direct sunlight a day. We may place a piece of sheet metal underneath the mangera in the future in order to amplify the heat the coil recieves from the sun and thus heat the water in the tube faster and with less sunlight. Considering that our water supply flows at least 200-300 feet down hill from its source before reaching the mangera coil, we now have a very strong, hot flow from the shower, which is quite a luxury.
While the solar shower has certainly added to the gringos comfortability at Parque Chimiya, this is not what we came here for. That is why building the stove for our neighbor David and his family was so much more rewarding, and became the central project for us last week.
The stove was built in 6 stages, more or less. First you dig out a small, rectangular fitting which becomes the base for the whole cooking station. After digging and leveling, we mixed-up a batch of cement and began placing the cinder-block foundation. Three levels of cinder-blocks later we packed the center of the cinder-block rectangle with garbage, rock and dirt until it was filled to the top, forming a single, solid platform. Upon this platform we then layed clay tiles, on top of which the wood is burned. After that structure sat for a day and settled and hardened, we came back and built the enclosed stove area itself. Using a mixture of fine sand, clay and molassas we coated the tiled floor of the stove and built-up a three-sided brick casing for the metal stove-top (plancha o pollo). The molassas mixture is used around the stove area instead of cement because it bakes and hardens like brick after just a few firings. Finally, we placed the plancha in its brick casing and attached and sealed the stove-pipe and ran it up through the roof.
It is interesting to note that this final step of placing a proper smoke exhaust system is really the most important aspect of building stoves like these in the developing world. For most Guatemalan women their day is filled with two activities; washing clothes by hand and cooking over an open fire. Many women experience complications in pregnancy and birth defects in their children because of the years of smoke inhalation. In addition, firewood (leña) is a big expense or a very time consuming effort for most Guatemalan families, as they almost always have a fire going in order to cook or make tortillas (tortillar). The efficient stove we built for David and his family will hopefully allow his mother, the perpetual cook, to breath in less smoke, while saving them time and money.

Teaching II...

2007-07-17T14:43:00.000-07:00

For those of you have wondered, including myself, how exactly I could put to use my History degree, rest assured The Long Way Home and Comalapa have provided me with a wonderful opportunity to do just that.
Myself and fellow History major and volunteer, Rosie, have begun teaching a history series at the Tecnico Maya school I have previously mentioned. I have been assigned to the sixth grade class, which allows me to cover some fairly serious and complex historical events and issues, although in quite a simplified manner. The sixth grade teacher at Tecnico Maya, a bright, dedicated and distressingly under-paid and under-trained young man named Carlos, has asked me to teach the students something about the history of the rest of Latin America, as the students have already been required to study a bit of Guatemala´s.
I therefore started with a lesson in the historical relationship between Latin America and the United States, as it is a sordid, yet extremely important relationship for both parties. I chose to begin with what Americans call the Spanish-American War of 1898, in which the United States, acting upon the principles of the Monroe Doctrine, for the first time in its history broke out of its isolationist shell and participated in a war outside of its continental boundaries. However, south of the Mexico border this war, along with what we call the Mexican-American War are respectively known as La Guerra Hispano-Estadounidense(The Spanish-United States War) and La Intervencion Norteamericana(The Northamerican Intervention), as most Latin Americans take offense to the fact that those of us from the U.S. reserve the right to call ourselves "Americans" instead of using an equivalent english phrase for estadounidense(person from United States).
As for the class itself, I believe it was something interesting and new for both the sixth graders and their teacher, yet I think I tried to accomplish too much with it. I used the well-known song "Guantanamera", written by the famous cuban poet, writer and war of independence martyr, Jose Marti, in order to illustrate through pop-culture how the historical events of the Spanish-American War still have implications for the present day relationship between Cuba and the United States. For the result of the Spanish-American War was independence for Cuba, as Jose Marti had envisioned and fought for, but not on their own terms, as the 1901 Platt Amendment ceded Guantanamo Bay to the U.S. indefinitely.
As I said, I believe I overreached on my first history "lecture" to the sixth graders, but it certainly made an impact on Carlos, and the directora of the Tecnico Maya school. Both of them observed with fascination during my presentation, and asked many questions during and after. I will no doubt get better and more efficient in my history teaching method, but if nothing else hopefully the teachers will learn something from them that they can pass to class after class once I am gone. In development work, as in life, if you teach a man to fish or to teach a new subject more properly, that effort will always have a greater impact on a community than just feeding them fish or information could ever have over the long-term.
I was immediately reminded of this at the end of my class, when Carlos and the directora of the school came up to me to discuss my lesson further. The older woman at one point asked whether or not the manner in which Cuba gained its independence had any affect on the building of the canal by the U.S. later on in the 20th Century, obviously confusing Cuba with Panama. Without hesitation Carlos went back to the board and clarified for the directora the difference between Cuba and Panama, and again explained the historical implications of the U.S. possession of Guantanamo Bay, loosely likening it to the history of the Panama Canal.
This geographic and historical ignorance demonstrated by this directora of a developing nation´s school, like the similar histories of many Latin American nations in relation to the U.S., was not and is not unusual, and I think it is an interesting yet not surprising anecdote.

Teaching...

2007-07-04T12:48:00.000-07:00

My fellow volunteers and I have been busy teaching and educating the Comalapan children about their environment and how to protect it. While the indigenous population here is certainly more connected to their land than I may ever be to the tierra of the Northwest, they lack an understanding of how modern, Western technologies detrimentally affect their milpa, water supply and health. Clear-cutting and a subsequent lack of biodiversity, litter and vehicle pollution are the basic problems facing Comalapa and its surrrounding aldeas.
Therefore, El Proyecto Chimiya brings children and teachers to our park for an environmental education program which explains the interconnections between humans, plants, animals, insects, waterways and the air we breath. Simple excercises demonstrating the ¨web of life¨ show how human health and prosperity are dependent upon the natural resources that we often take for granted. We identify local species of plants, animals and insects and directly associate them with the local food and water supply. We also encourage the children to think of nature not only as a vulnerable and valuable commodity, but also as a place where they can maintain their indigenous traditions and values; something that has an intrinsic value as a healthy, communal space.
As a reward for our session with the Tecnico Maya school, a few of the children demonstrated a traditional Maya rain dance ceremony. The Tecnico Maya school here in Comalapa is one of the only schools not directly funded by the Catholic Church. This is the case because the Church considers the school a teacher of the pagaen traditions of the Maya. While the school teaches reading, writing and arithmetic just like all others, it also teaches Kakchiquel, the local indigenous dialect and many of the dieing Maya traditions. If you scroll down to the bottom of the blog site you can watch a video of their demonstration, in which the children dance, sing and play music with their chinchines.

A quick update

2007-06-28T12:28:00.000-07:00

I have found out that Rigoberta Menchu is polling at about 2 to 3 percent of the vote right now. However, that is not as bad as it sounds because there are nearly a dozen candidates running, and the three major establishment parties and their respective candidates are expected to garner the majority of the votes in September. It therefore seems likely that this election is simply an initial entry into politics for Rigoberta Menchu, establishing herself as a serious Guatemalan politician and activist for the long term.
As for me, I have spent the last few days organizing and preparing for a series of projects that are going on next week at the Long Way Home and in Comalapa. Next Wednesday, the Long Way Home is going to host a free Dia de Diversion, where girls and boys will come to the Home and get organized into age-grouped leagues which will compete throughout the summer and may become permanent.
In addition, my fellow volunteers and I have been going around to the local schools and asking if they need any assistance or support with education curriculums. We have more interest from the schools than we can handle right now. For example, Rosie and I are going to teach a little history, english and basic environmental education for two hours a day, every day next week in the main school in Comalapa.
Most of the free schools here are funded by the Catholic Church, and nearly all are underfunded and overcrowded. It is an interesting and telling commentary on the state of rural schools here that there is so much interest in having foreign gringos come and teach whatever we would like for however long we would like in their schools.

First day on the job...

2007-06-25T13:21:00.000-07:00

Ok, so not surprisingly I have a lot to write about now that I have arrived in Comalapa and have settled in a bit at El Proyecto Chimiya. I´ll be breif and allow you to use your imagination to understand the excitement and genuine pleasure I have been experiencing in the last twenty-four hours.
First of all, my fellow intern, Rosie, and I found our way to this small rural town on a series of short but eventful ¨chicken bus¨ rides. The roads are never straight and you are constantly surrounded by imposing ravine drops, sheer cliffs and far away hill-top maize farms terraced on seemingly impossible angles. All of the farm work is done by hand here because of this geographic exigency.
The grounds of the project include a new basketball court, a soccer field, an ecological park with a nature trail and new schoolhouse, two housing cabanas, a solar shower and facilities. The mission of the Long Way Home is essentially to fill any type of educational or recreational void that exists in Comalapa. Children in Comalapa only spend a half-day in school, so for most, the rest of the day is spent either helping or watching their parents work their corn or strawberry fields. In addition, nearly all of the people here are wholly ignorant of basic environmental concepts, which is common in most developing nations. There is not recycling, trash is thrown wherever, rivers are the the dumps, forested property is cut down for firewood to cook with and environmental protection is a luxury most think they can ill afford. The Long Way Home is attempting to change this with education on local tree varieties and by slowly communicating to the community its role and its future benefits from sustainably using its natural environment.
But we are not just about lecturing, we wouldn´t get very far if we were. Instead we have to get people involved in a fun and exciting way, which is why participating and encouraging athletic activities is key. So, for instance, today I woke up early and went with my fellow intern, Ben, a former peace corps volunteer, and spent two hours coaching an 11 and 12 year old girls basketball team! They are the champions of the Chimaltenango department(i.e. state) and are going on Wednesday to Antigua to compete in the national championship tournament for their age group.
Their local coach asked us gringos to help him coach because both Ben and I have extensive playing histories and I have a coached a little. I lack a knowledge of specific basketball terms in spanish, but somehow through demonstration and persistence we were able to drill them on proper chest-passing technique, general movement on the court, layups and defense. They had recieved very little formal training like this before and it was great to see them improve right there in those two hours. I think we all had a great time and learned something.
Afterwards, Ben took me around town to meet the locals that the Project works with and is supported by. A local communtiy development group called Chuwi Tinimit owns the property where the Project is located and the head of the board of that group is running for mayor of Comalapa in the upcoming elections. We are officially supporting him. I met him, along with the crew of workers that are building the new schoolhouse and the local weavers whose indigenous crafts we sell in the US for funding. All are very committed to the Project and strongly believe that we are filling an educational and environmental awareness need here.
However, the best was yet to come. As we left a pizza parlor and were heading to the Internet cafe that I am writing from now, a politcal rally of some sort started filtering past us playing loud music, waving signs and attracting a large number of people to it. The rally was for the political party and campaign of Rigoberta Menchu, the indigenous Gautemalan Nobel Peace Prize winner. If you have not heard of her and are interested in learning more about Guatemala I strongly recommend that you read I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala. It is the testimony of her life during the civil war period here, and it is for that which she won the Nobel Peace Prize.
In any case, she was the one drawing the large crowds, shaking hands, talking with the locals and looking very much the politician. And in fact, she recently announced her candidacy for president, no small thing in a primarily indigenous country that has been run by white, male Ladinos for centuries. I shook hands with her and took her picture as she was embraced by the people who obviously love her. There is for the first time in many decades an excitement about the political process that is taking place in this election cycle, there is more participation, and more recognition of indigenous rights, as is evident in other Latin American countries recently as well. This movement is attempting to change the long-standing political and economic status quo, which is not without its inherent divisiveness. In fact, one of the opposing parties to Menchu´s uses the symbol of el mano blanco in its political campaign, the name and symbol of the former campaign of state terror that was directed towards the rural indigenous populations during their years of civil war.
After all of this, believe it or not, we are headed back to the Project site to hook up another, better solar shower for us interns. I am hoping it lives up to the hype because I could certainly use a hot shower.
Just remember, this was my first day on the job...

My First Days...

2007-06-23T12:02:00.000-07:00

Well, after sitting in Seatac for 5 and a half hours, I am finally here in Guatemala. On the flight from L.A. to Guatemala City I sat next to a Guatemalan couple who allowed me to practice my feo spanish with them in a pleasant, yet stunted conversation. The couple was wonderful, they both worked in a hotel in Santa Barbara and traveled to Guatemala to visit their family, once a year. During the take-off and landing the woman crossed herself multiple times, along with her husband and me. Without knowing much about me and in a custom unknown to North Americans, they invited me to breakfast, to their granddaughters quinceañera, and offered me a ride to Antigua. I of course accepted all of their incredible gestures of hopitality. Unfortunately, I cannot attend the ceremonial birthday celebration. However, I arrived in Antigua sooner than I would have thanks to them and gained a quick appreciation for the people here.
Today, I walked through a public coffee plantation and got a free lesson on coffee cultivation and the classes of the local jade from one of the neighboring locals named Juan Fransisco Garcia. He took me to his sons jewlery workshop, where he made beautiful jade and silver earings, necklaces and pendants. Juan told me how Guatemalans grew their coffee in the shade of the Grabilea tree, so as to protect the coffee plants from being burned by the hot tropical sun(I have also heard that this is a much more sustainable way to grow coffee for both the health of the land and the pickers of the beans). It was a gorgeous place, muy tranquilo, with no tourists, which is always a unique experience in a tourist trap like Antigua.
Juan also told me about his job in a local fabrica or factory, which is owned by Nestle Corp. He packed 90 packages of dried soop a minute, for eight hours a day, five days a week. He said it was a good job in Guatemala, very steady, with good pay and not in the exposed coffee or sugar fields. It appears that Juan, along with the family I met in Guatemala City, are part of the Guatemalan middle class or maybe upper class, although neither was visibly wealthy by any North American standards. They were also non-indigenous as far as I could tell, Ladino is what they are called here. Therefore, I have yet to see or experience the poverty that I saw in South America. It is quite a different economic state here in Guatemala, because the disparities are not quite as dramatic or as visibly dichotomous as they are in Buenos Aires, for example. However, I have not been to the rural, indigenous areas of Guatemala and therefore cannot speak with any certainty on this subject. But I am eager to get a sense of the differences between the conditions of the poor in Argentina's villas and Guatemala's rural, indigenous communities. Hopefully, the Long Way Home will immerse me in that exploited and forgotten world. I´ll let you know....

First post...

2007-04-11T19:43:00.000-07:00

Well, this may be the beginning of an interesting story and adventure, at least thats what I hope. On June 21, 2007 I leave for my internship with the Long Way Home in Comalapa, Guatemala, a rural town in the Highlands comprised mostly of indigenous Mayans. The history of the indigenous peoples of Guatemala is long and impressive, while the recent history is fresh and still very ugly, as the the Peace Accords of 1996 signaled the first real ceasation in violence since the early 1950's. Yet, despite its current poverty, racism and inequalities Guatemala offers a unique Latin American history and learning experience, particularly as U.S. citizen. With a prevalent and culturally rich indigenous population experiencing a revitalization both socially and politically the natural landscape and history of Guatemala is beginning to shine once again, in a "New Dawn" as they say.
The Long Way Home is a kind of community center as I understand it; with community buildings, soccer fields, basketball courts, an organic garden, indigenous arts center and tree farm. I will be doing physical work for this aid and development organization, building and maintaining infrastructure, gardening, hauling, digging, etc. I hope to be integrated into the community a bit as well, hopefully practicing my Spanish and picking up some Kiche(an indigenous Mayan dialect). But certainly I will be doing my fair share of physical labor; digging, hoeing, hammering and the like.
While I'm in the community I am interested in learning about the their experiences during the early 1980's, when many say the government exacted a genocide against its own indigenous population. But I would really like to learn what, if any, political and social solidarity among indigenous and Ladino populations came about as a result of the state terror. Or what kind of activist and development groups or social and political movements have been involved with the community since.
I plan to see some beautiful sites as well like Lago Atitlan, the Mayan ruins at Tikal, and possibly all 32 volcanoes in the country. And hopefully there will be a hurricane that I'll have to avoid. Talk to you next from Guatemala...