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| The single woman who received the roof |
Even though we are all home now safe and sound. I plan on finishing the rest of these off. For myself as
well as the web page. Since I am busy with lots of things here I will send you a shorten version. ( At least I say that
now.) I am probably not even going to proof read, so just ignore any mistakes.
Monday July 19th.
We got
up early on Monday to leave for Nahuala. John and Marta went for a walk and found some juice and banana bread for us.
Marta can find lots of things and also brought us back some fresh brewed coffee. Her talents and her spanish go a long way.nbsp;
We loaded up the van and headed for the celebration. The celebration was with a group that Mayan Hands works with in
Nahuala. There are 32 women and they had gotten either a new roof or a stove. The money came to Sharing the Dream
from a group in Ill. called Global Village. Global Village is similar to Sharing the Dream but they work with groups
all over the world and not just Guatemala. They have a store and it is run by volunteers too. One of the volunteers
from there had gone to Guatemala last summer with a Sharing the Dream group and had seen the cement floor project we had done.
She brought the idea back to her group and they decided to use the profits from their store this year to go to projects in
Guatemala. So this was the first one finished. Whenever we do a project with Mayan Hands there is always a blessing
and celebration at the end. When we arrived at the celebration they first took us to see some of the homes. The
first home we went to was a mother and daughter. They were both weavers and the daughter was single. The mother
and daughter had been living with another daughter and her family. It was very crowded in the 2 rooms with everyone.
When the mother and daughter found out they could have a new tin roof they decided to build a small 2-room house. We
were told the expensive part of building was the roof. The house is made from adobe bricks and they can make the bricks
themselves. This is what the two women did; they made the bricks and built the house. They were so pleased with
it. Each room had a small vase of flowers and a container with incense. They had not moved into the house and
would not do it until we had the house blessing and celebration. We then went to a couple of other homes that had gotten
roofs and then went and saw one of the stoves. The stove was propane stove and Clemente said this was a really good
thing because there was a scarcity of wood and this would be so much better. Again the woman had not used the stove
yet so while we were there she lit it for the first time. It was quite exciting for her. In this same room there
were 2 women kneeling on the floor grinding some sauce for our meal. They used the old stone grinding stones.
There was a small kitten snooping around them but they quickly shooed it away.
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| Room with flowers and incense for celebration |
After our tour of the roofs and stoves we came back to the main housing compound for the program. The program was
quite cute and included skits, dancing by the children and presentations. They used one of the outside stoops for their
stage. They had a loud speaker that really didn't work but they enjoyed trying it. The rest of the village was
the audience along with all of us. We had brought gifts for the women so we presented those. It was a glass candleholder
with a vanilla scented candle in it. We had wrapped them in brightly colored tissue paper. Kyle was our representative
to present the candles and he did a great job. He said how the flame of the candles represented the passion and the
connectedness of the group and all of us in the states. He said that when the flame burned out that the love and caring
we had for each other would still live in our hearts. Kaye and Marta presented the gifts. At the end, we had the
ribbon cutting and John was given the honor along with all of us behind him to cut the crepe paper ribbon that was hanging.
Now the women could use their stoves and move into the rooms that had been redone. They told us the celebration would
continue throughout the day and into the next day. They were going to have several different religious celebrations.
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| Women grinding things for sauce |
When we were finished with the program. Several women came and took Kaye, Marta, and Carisa to dress them up in the traditional
clothes. They were giggling the whole time. So when they came out all dressed up there were different groups of
women who wanted their photos taken with them. Several people in the village had cameras so they took photos too.
This was quite the turn around from Gringos usually doing the picture taking.
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| Women ready to light her new stove |
After the photos we had a meal. They served us and the men first. It was a good meal and they had worked
long and hard on it. Everyone in the area came to eat. After we ate we said our good-byes and headed out.
We had one more group to go to today.
The next group was about 30 minutes away and was called Vasconselos. I
have not been to this group for several years so I was looking forward to seeing the women again. When we got to the house
where the meeting was supposed to be the woman was weaving and said that the word they got was that we were coming on the
29th. She then proceeded to get the word out, ( without telephone or e-mail) and within about 15 minutes there were
about 12 women at the house. Some of them had been running and were out of breath. They apologized for getting
the dates wrong and were just glad that we had come. We spent some time chatting and talking about their weavings.
This group will be getting cement floors, again from the Global Village group and really wanted to visit about it. They
said, "Are you sure we are going to get floors?" I really don't like making promises with groups, but they were so excited
that we assured them that they would be getting them...So..Tonya if you are reading this, they are very anxious and want to
know when it will be happening..... We met one young weaver who is 16 and in high school. She lives by herself
in one small room with her sister. She will be getting a cement floor and is excited about that. She gets up early
to catch the bus for school and rides about 2 hours. When she gets back in the afternoon she weaves so she can pay for
her schooling. After putting in quite a few hours weaving she starts her homework. I think some days she doesn't
get to bed until 1 or 2 in the morning. We discussed with Clemente about finding her a scholarship. I think someone
in the group will be doing that. Clemente says there are several other young women like that in the groups he works
with so we told him to gather the information so we can put some of these young women on our scholarship list.
After
saying our good-byes we started out for Chichicastenago. We dropped Clemente off so he could catch a bus. The road to
Chichi is quite curvy and the group survived it pretty good. I did however get a few takers for my dramamine. It really
helps with car sickness, especially if you are sitting in the back of the van on those curves.
We arrived in Chichi
and went to Ruth and Nohemi's. It was great to see Pastor Diego and his wife Juana again. We had a nice dinner
and then Juana told us a bit about her week. She has a medical group that she is taking out to one of the villages.
She was quite tired but did spend some time with us. We did our reflections and than called it a day. We are a
early morning rising group but fade real fast about 9PM. Even Kyle is getting used to our schedule.
I will include
some photos. No more quotes.....
Diane
go to part 2
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