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We had an orientation to Guatemala and then headed for Esperanza the squatter’s settlement. Our first stop was our friend Lubia and her daughter’s. Lubia has the 3 disabled daughters. We visited Lubia family. A church from Casper Wy is sponsoring the family which has three daughters with a degenrataive disease. The daughters were clean and neat and Lubia was glad to have us and served us some juice and a tostado. She talked about the girls health and told us to thank the people in Casper for all the help she is getting. The group wondered what would have happened to the girls without this help. We then went Upivaim (a women’s cooperative) that is located in a very rough part of town. The cooperative is a gated compound. It provides a day care center, elementary school, and employment for the women of the cooperative. The coop is experiencing marketing programs for there wares with the economic downturn in the US and the lead guidelines. The store at the cooperative was visited and the women of the group helped the cooperative with their purchases. The men of the group were able to exhibit self control. The cooperative members have a safe place for their children during the day. (Lee wrote the above paragraph as well as the next few.) The group was able to collect the remaining baggage that the airlines had managed to misplace. We were not impressed with American Airlines baggage handling. But after an hour or two we were on our way again. Driving in Guatemala is a different experience. No space is wasted. One does not get sleepy when sitting in the front seat. No space is wasted for allowing for space between vehicles. We did not see any real sports cars but the bus drivers would qualify for the Indianapolis 500 or maybe NASCAR. The geography of Guatemala reminds me of southern California. The topography is steep with similar vegetation. Flor de Campo is small village in the mountains of Guatemala. The area is mainly agriculture with all of the labor being manual. The main crop is corn and the all of the field work is by hand. Some of the fields are on slopes of up to 50%. The corn is grown on furrows on the contour. The corn had been harvested and we saw it drying on the house roofs. TV antennas are on the majority of houses in the village, so I would expect that American culture is being introduced in the villages. I was surprised that the village had electricity and modern plumbing. We saw no draft animals of any sort. The cattle that are present are small (not larger then a Jersey or Gurnsy) and I would expect are milk cows.   The cooperative at Flor de Campo weaves material and is marketing there product to Sharing the Dream and looking to to market fabrics to Upiviam. They are discovering the pains of capitalism. The village is very rural and has one road in and out. The road is dirt and access is limited during the raininy season. The president of the cooperative told stories of the civil war, and how the village was affected. It is hard to comprehend what the villagers were subject to, and what measures that were necessary to survive until the peace settlement was signed. Maria Antonio told how they had to leave the village and at one point they lived in the mountains for over a year. This was after the military came to the village and killed many people and burned everything in the village. We stayed overnight at Flor de Campo after having a very nice meal with the women. It was really cold at night and some of us had wished we had brought warmer clothes. Sat. Feb. 28th. Diane writing… Jennifer, Arlene and I got up early and took a big walk around the whole village. It is hilly so it was a pretty good walk. We then went back to the Flor de Campo centre and had breakfast. After breakfast the women showed us how to back strap weave and the foot loom. Jennifer tried to do both. Our next stop was the paper group. They had moved to a new location so it took us a bit to find them. Venicio are trusty driver is pretty good at finding places though. The two men gave the group a demonstration of how to make paper. Everyone was amazed at how they decorated the front of the paper by cutting up leaves. About 12 we headed for Panajachel where we stayed at Maya Traditions. We took our bags to the bungalows and then went to the MT shop and had lunch. Jennifer from MT had lunch with us and told the group about MT. We then spent a few minutes in the shop where we saw many of the new colors that Virginia designed. Next was a tour of the medicinal garden. We ended the day by spending time in Pana looking at the different shops, listening to marimba music and having a nice dinner. |