kentnann's travels

reflection, kind of!

2009-07-04T11:26:00.000-07:00

It’s hard to reflect when you are moving around so much. We left Panyebar the middle of May to drive back up through Mexico, visit Kent’s brother’s family in Alabama and then head west to home. And now, as we prepare to leave for Europe (today! July 4!), it’s doubly hard to reflect because our minds are elsewhere, distracted by thoughts of new adventures, places and people.

backing our car out after a big storm!

But we remember what happened to Rudy, the first mud victim… Kent and I were walking home from school on Tuesday of our last week in Panyebar when we saw a bunch of kids piled on top of each other peering through the cracks between the boards of a house near ours. What the heck was going on? We spotted our neighbor Juana and she breathlessly told us that Rudy, one of my students, had been carried into his house, something desperately wrong. So, Kent and I rushed through the crowd of kids and knocked on the door. The family let us in and there sat Rudy on one of the beds in the cramped room, crying in pain, cradling his left arm which was obviously broken. Kent went for cardboard to make a sling and I ran home to get the vicodin. What to do, though? It was almost 7 p.m. and where would there be a doctor? Way too far to a hospital. Juan (our host) was also there and said that a doctor wasn’t the solution anyway.

What people in Panyebar do when someone breaks a bone is go to a huesero, a bone healer, in the town of San Pedro, an hour away down the mountain. So, off we all went: Juan, his son to drive, another guy and me. Rudy’s mom stayed with the 5 other children because her husband wasn’t home, working in another city. “Thank God for vicodin,” I thought, as we bumped down the dirt road and over the speed bumps. We found a huesero who was home and got Rudy down to his “office,” basically a Catholic shrine, complete with flashing Christmas lights, banners and a big print of Mary over a table decorated with various other Catholic kitsch. The huesero looked Rudy over, sat him down in a chair and took hold of his wrist. Three of us dove on top of him as he writhed in pain, the huesero twisting and pulling on the arm. “Seño, seño, (Teacher, Teacher…)” Rudy moaned until what was actually a dislocated elbow fell back into place. The huesero twisted some more until he was satisfied and attached a cardboard disk to either side of the elbow using masking tape. He then wrapped the elbow in toilet paper and then a final application of masking tape to hold everything in place.

I could relate to Rudy’s pain as I had dislocated my elbow many years ago, but he couldn’t relate to my shock at the price: free. What? Mine had cost more than $5,000 and a huge headache with medical insurance. But the huesero insisted that this was his ministry and he wouldn’t charge. Juan and I put our heads together to give him a donation of 50 quetzales (about $6.00) and back up the mountain we went.

Thinking about this afterward, Kent and I realized that medical insurance, one of the most important resources here in the US, just isn’t an option for people. Which means that doctors aren’t an option unless someone is near death which means that there are a lot of people who die from treatable causes because by the time they are near death, it’s too late.

Soleme and her dad - she needed a doctor for abdominal pain and they scraped together the money to go.

Another resource that we just accept but isn’t always available in Guatemala is education. One of my students stopped coming to school. As no one is ever absent, after a few days, I asked his friends what was up. Where was Marvin Lorenzo? “Oh, he decided he wanted to work instead of going to school.” What? Marvin Lorenzo? One of the most gifted and curious students in this particular class? The one who was always thinking, asking questions, testing out answers? No way. So, I asked one of the students to point out his house to me and the next day before school I went looking for his family. I asked a couple of women standing on the path and turns out one of them was Marvin’s mom. I told her I hadn’t seen Marvin for a few days. Why wasn’t he in school? She said that he had seen how hard his father was working to send him to school and feed all 7 kids in the family and decided that, as oldest boy, he needed to go to work.

“But he is very bright! Is that what you want for him?” She responded (honestly, I believe), “no,” but that he had insisted. I told her that the Colegio had just introduced a program for families that can’t afford the monthly fees; students and their parents can work 16 hours a month for the school effectively working their fee off. We decided that she would talk to Marvin and her husband. A few days later Marvin was back in school. Thank God.

no "resuciAnnies," instead a "resuciTweety!"

The kids I worked with will finish 9th grade. Once they finish 9th grade, the obvious thing is to continue through high school, right? Well, there is no high school (called diversificado) in Panyebar. The high school in the nearest town is private and too expensive. The best public high school is in the city of Quetzeltenango, 2 hours by bus away. For the kids of Panyebar to attend there, they have to live away from home, which is expensive. Some kids from previous classes have addressed that problem by living communally in a house in the city, sharing expenses and food, coming home most weekends. But, for many, a resource that we take for granted is not always within reach.
the graduating class (they will graduate in October 2009)
As Kent and I have spent time considering Guatemalans' resources and our resources as Westerners, our thoughts regarding development work have begun to change. Many of you are probably already way ahead of us on this; consider us slow learners and bear with us!

A bit of background: one of the issues with Colegio Bethel, Panyebar, is that there is confusion over authority and responsibility. The actual building and land is owned, not by a non-profit, but by a pastor who started the original school in San Pedro, one of the larger towns on the lake. He responded to the community's calls for a secondary school here and purchased the land. People from the local Catholic and Evangelical churches and community worked together to lay the building's foundation and build it. The everyday running of the school falls on the shoulders of the director, a warm engaging man named Max. However, the final decision-making for anything remains in the hands of Pastor Emilio, who technically owns the school. Max, therefore, in many ways, has felt paralyzed. If he starts a project, it just might get nixed by Emilio. If he sets priorities, Emilio just might change them. So he waits for instructions. But Emilio has a gazillion responsibilities and Panyebar isn't the most important for him. Therefore, very little gets done: windows don’t get fixed, rooms don’t get cleaned, water doesn’t get piped to the tank, etc. It’s frustrating for “let’s-get-to-it” Westerners, but this cultural dependence upon the one seen as the “Patron” is very real.

So in praying for ways to come alongside rather than acting as our own version of the “Patron,” just throwing financial resources at the school and doing things for them, Kent and I were reminded of the people who initially called and worked for a secondary school. Why couldn't a Board of Directors, a "Comittee" made of people from Panyebar, work together with Max to set priorities for maintenance and building issues? Why couldn't a group like this help to collect the monthly fees from parents who had resources, but simply weren't paying, ensuring funds for these projects? Why couldn't we meet them half-way with funding resources instead of simply "solving" problems?

We spoke with the men who had initiated the school search so many years ago and the horse took the bit and ran. All we had to do was step out of the way. Without any further input from us, these men have initiated meetings every 2 weeks, have spoken with parents in a kind and gracious and effective way (resulting in virtually full payment of monthly fees) and have prioritized projects. the Comite...
We have money available to come alongside in projects when they have set aside enough money to pay for half. This method of development is slow, but completely owned by the community. There will be times when there are big projects and it is not possible for them to put together their "half" of the financial resources. Let's face it. One of the things we as Westerners have is a lot more money than Guatemalans. So, we can discuss it and figure out alternatives. Emilio, so far, has been supportive. Our hope and prayer is that that would continue.

This, we believe, is our most important learning. We must step back and foster independence, foster self-reliance, foster pride and ownership instead of stepping into a role of fast results through "rescue." As we thought, we have learned and gained far more than we have given, through the generosity and beauty of the people we have met in Panyebar, through the generosity of Western friends who have heard a need and responded with the resources they have.

on our way to CA!

2009-06-12T18:20:00.000-07:00

Just because we haven't written since, yikes, April... We left Guatemala the middle of May, drove up through Mexico to Alabama to help Kent's brother's family move, and are now headed back to California trying to experience as many state stereotype-breaking adventures as we can.

Hard to reflect when you are constantly moving, so we will write our last post after we have been at home for a day or two before we start planning for Europe (yeah, right!).

We should be back in the Bay Area around the 20th or so depending upon how much interesting terrain we can explore between Flagstaff, Arizona (where we are now with my folks) and home.

Peace to you All!

tortillas and stoves

2009-04-20T16:04:00.000-07:00

a plancha already cooking with tortillas...

If it’s not your custom to eat tortilla three times a day, it’s easy to max out. Now, nothing wrong with tortillas but I have had to get creative so as to keep eating them and not insult Rebecca, our host. So now I leave a few on the plancha to toast up to an almost tortilla-chip crunchiness and Rebecca, noticing how I’ve done this, always leaves a few to get over-done for me. And then, heaven of all heavens, she decided to one-up me and deep fry some day-olds in a decidedly trans-fat-rich mixture of margarine and oil, sprinkled with an artificially-colored, super-salty soup powder. Like I said, heaven. Couldn’t stop myself from downing probably triple my normal intake!

But there is probably not a Guatemalan alive who shares my trouble. Tortillas are this country’s lifeblood. I am surprised that any Guatemalans survive in the US without their daily infusion. In Panyebar, fresh, hand-made corn tortillas are eaten at every meal.

corn fields or "milpas" in between plantings

Almost every family has a little bit of land somewhere where they grow corn. Whoever harvests it brings the fresh corn cobs to town in big bags on his back or maybe by horse where it is dumped on a patio to dry in the sun. It is then separated by quality and stored someplace dry, like in the room next to ours since this really is supposed to be a kind of storeroom. When needed, the bags of dried corn are hauled back out to the patio and someone beats them with a stick to knock the kernels off the cob, doing the last bits by hand. The kernels go back into the bags and back into the storeroom where big bowlfuls are dug out about every other day to grind into tortilla masa.

The big diesel corn grinder motor belongs to Rebecca’s family and gets started every morning about 4:30 a.m. when the first woman knocks on her door to ask her to start it up. The deep loud “whoop whoop whoop” of the motor finds its way through all the neighboring houses including ours, providing a nice backdrop for those final hours of sleep (adding to the roosters and dogs that really get going near dawn!). Adding water as the machine grinds turns the corn into a workable dough that the women carry back to their houses and use to make their tortillas. So, the tortillas are basically pure corn, nothing besides water added, and Guatemalans practically survive on them.

To cook the tortillas, one needs a really hot fire and a heavy metal plate called a plancha. Some people put their plancha on top of 3 rocks and a small stand with no ventilation. These are the most primitive. But other planchas are built into stoves that have tiled borders where the woman can put her masa and other food prep tools. Usually, since it can be pretty chilly here, families, including ours, eat around the stove. That way, you pull the tortillas right off the plancha, like eating bread fresh out of the oven.

tortillas made from blue corn...

Kent:
Last week I was visiting homes of potential recipients of the new high efficiency wood stoves we’re installing. I was surprised to see Eliseo, one of Ann’s students, at home since it was school hours. He was fighting with his sister. Had he opted to skip school that day in order to enjoy a day of pestering his sister? No, he told me that his mom had told him that he couldn’t go to school that day since he needed to collect wood for cooking.

an example of one of the most primitive stoves

I haven’t seen a house yet here in Panyebar where wood isn’t the primary source of fuel for cooking. The typical family uses a wood stove to cook tortillas three times a day. The stoves used are typically made of cinder blocks with a metal cooking surface. They’re not very efficient and they require a fair amount of wood. The typical family goes through two bundles of firewood a week. Each bundle is about two feet in diameter and takes about one half day to collect. One person-day of wood collecting per week, every week. That time dedicated to wood collecting will only increase as people have to go greater distances to find wood. Currently it’s about 2 miles each way to find wood.

The stoves we’re installing use about one half the amount of firewood that the ubiquitous cinder block stoves use – good for whoever has to collect the firewood and good for the forest. The existing stoves in most homes also leak a lot of smoke creating a smoky cooking area which is a real health problem. These new stoves vent all the smoke outside. The stoves are called “Onil” and are being manufactured and sold by Helps International here in Guatemala.

Currently we’re not charging the families for the stoves that we’re installing. They cost $100 each and we’ve got funds for 30. The idea is to get the stoves installed for a study that measures the impact on families who receive them.

The recipients of the stoves attend four half days of class to learn about the benefits of the stoves and how to install them in them in their homes. The stoves are used in the same way that people are accustomed to using use their existing stoves. Still, small differences can create a negative first impression for the recipients and result in them abandoning the new stoves and going back to their old smoky, inefficient stoves. The training has been key for the new users in using the new stoves long enough to experience the benefits and successfully adopt this new technology.

I’ve been working with a local, Victoriano. He speaks K’iche, which is the first language of most people, knows most of the people in the community, and has a real heart for forests that the community relies on. Our first class was conducted in a mixture of my Spanish and his K’iche. Future classes will be taught by him. During the week after the class concluded we went to the homes of each of the families and helped them install their new stoves. The routine that’s been established is that we start by making a prediction of how many times I’ll hit my head on the ceiling of the home where we’re doing the installation before I “learn”. As we put the stove together I periodically whack my head on the wood branches that hold up the corrugated roof. With each thump the family sounds out the number of that “lesson” in unison. They find this entertaining. The average is seven hits per installation.

When the installation is complete we build a fire in the stove to heat it up and test it. As the stove heats up we’re always served something to eat and drink as thanks. Victoriano takes advantage of this time to chat with the family both about tips on using the stove and life in general. If it’s a Spanish speaking family I get to participate. If the conversation is conducted in K’iche I fiddle with the new stove and ask what they’re talking about from time to time - just to make sure they don’t think they can talk about me and get away with it.

a newly installed stove...

We finished installing the first 10 stoves last week. This week we’ll start a class for the next ten families. We’re looking forward to visiting to the families from the first group to hear about the impact the stoves have had. Maybe Eliseo won’t have to miss any more school.

Panyebar

2009-03-28T08:44:00.000-07:00

Neither of us has ever lived in such a small town as Panyebar. There is something cool about walking down the paths or street and greeting people by name. Or having kids run up to you and ask if you like the braids that their sister’s best friend’s cousin put in your hair (how would they even know that?)! Even in a small town like Pinole, we know relatively few people and it is always a cause for small celebration meeting people we know on the street. But not here. It’s just the way it is.

Panyebar is nestled at a low place on a ridge at about 6800 feet between the Pacific Coast and Lake Atitlan. Steep, classically- shaped volcanoes form the surroundings and we have felt at least two earthquakes in the past month. It’s pretty chilly most of the time and the cold is exacerbated by the fog that rolls in every afternoon from the coast. The fog is beautiful and mysterious and usually clears up sometime in the middle of the night (when I am stumbling across the path to the bathroom!) but as it blocks out the sun and brings with it a cold wind, brr, I would prefer it if it were less regular.

About 110 years ago, a small group of indigenous K’iche families recognized the fertility of the land and moved here. They stayed, intermarried and had children, lots of them. Which means that just about everyone is related in one way or another. Which means that some kids look a lot alike and it’s easy to mix them up. Which also means that if families continue to grow by the current average of 4 – 5 children every generation and stay here, a serious strain on resources is inevitable.

One thing that Panyebar is blessed with is a clean healthy source of water that comes straight from a pristine spring in the mountains, through pipes to get here. But there isn’t enough, so the delivery of water is alternated between sectors. This of course means that on the days that you do have water, you fill up your big tank (pila) so that you can wash clothes, clean dishes and take baths. Some people, however, don’t have these big tanks and are forced to put water in jugs and pots and whatever they can find. It can be hard to find enough pots to store water for a family of 8 or 10 for a day. This only promises to get worse over the next few generations.

The same holds true for the forest which is quickly disappearing because of the constant need for firewood. Yesterday, one of my students didn’t come to school because he had to go cut and carry wood home for his family. Kent figured out that the average family spends 8 hours every week cutting wood to burn in their stoves. This rapid deforestation and use of time are two of the impetuses behind the stove project which decreases wood use by half.

And garbage: Though it isn’t a resource, the number of people affects the amount of garbage produced. It seems there are 3 things one does with garbage around here: 1. throw it on the ground to blow away somewhere else, 2. collect it in a little garbage can and throw it in the creek or bury it, or 3. burn it. There is no garbage collection. So I wasn’t too surprised when I walked into the kitchen the other day to find a broken children’s bicycle wheel melting and burning up in the stove. We have become all the more aware that the problem is the same at home; we just find bigger holes to bury our garbage in. At least here there are dogs and chickens that run around and scavenge all of the bones and food scraps. Without the plastics, this system of burning or throwing would be fine, but now that plastic is ubiquitous, it causes real problems.

One thing that works really well here is child-care. The entire community is a children’s playground. Kids run around outside, make toys of whatever is available, play and fight with each other without their moms having to make play-dates. There is not a huge concern with danger – kids play with knives, ride their bikes on concrete and crash, climb trees and fall, and generally get up, cry and get on with it. Because almost every mom is at home, there is usually someone around to help if needed. Panyebar is a safe place.

Education is another issue facing this rural indigenous community. According to a survey of 350 families last summer, the average number of years of formal schooling for female heads of household is two years. And for men, the number isn’t much better: three years. The first language spoken here is K’iche. According to Guatemalan law, education is supposed to be bilingual in elementary school and it mostly is but national statistics and anecdotal evidence here in Panyebar suggest that the biggest dropout rate happens after 1st grade. K’iche-speaking children taught mostly in Spanish can’t keep up. Or instead of dropping out right away, they keep repeating 1st grade until they are say, 10 years old, when it is hard to be in the same class as a 6 year old. (We know 15 year olds in 6th grade.) The government is introducing a Cuban program to fight illiteracy and we are doing our part to encourage kids to stay in school and change the future.

So, like anywhere, Panyebar is a mixture of good and bad, easy and difficult. But all things considered, we are glad to be here, glad to be contributing (with your help) to a community that in some ways is healthier than home and in other ways is so needy.

finding balance...

2009-03-14T10:51:00.001-07:00

A good way to start out: "Flying rubber chickens sold here!!"

Well, the honeymoon is over. I find myself irritated much of the time, complaining to myself and to Kent (the only ones who will listen) about lots of things: the garbage problem, the looseness of direction and lack of follow-through at school, how sick I am of tortillas, how I miss my friends and family, how I would like to step out into my garden instead of a dirt patch, how I would give my right arm for a piece of rich chocolate cake. (You have to promise to keep reading; I swear I am not stuck here!!)

Anyway, all that to say that I think this is a normal progression. You arrive somewhere and it’s all new and shiny and different and interesting and all those things. And then reality hits; you know, people are people, there are problems like anywhere, and you go through periods of longing for home. Normal. I think I understand that the next step in the progression is to find something like a balance, learning who you can really trust, remembering what is good, flexing with the culture and accepting the times of wishing you were home. Now if I could just take care of that chocolate cake…

But as for balance, if I look, it’s not too hard to find. It comes mostly when I think of the kids. Most of them come from large families where there is hardly enough money to feed everyone let alone send them to a private school where they have to pay 60 Quetzales (about $7.50) a month.
You see them in school in their uniforms and forget that they might have had just a cup of coffee and a couple of tortillas and beans for the day. Or that that uniform is the only one they have. Or that their mother just died of probably preventable complications from diabetes (which happened to 2 of my students just the other day). Reminds you to look past the surface (and try not to complain about not having chocolate cake!).
Marleny, whose mother died just days after this photo was taken...

The other day, the 9th grade class put on what is called an “Acto Civico.” They led the school in the national hymn, did an interpretive dance, presented the flags and danced a traditional balet folklorico. I hadn’t seen them preparing at all – apparently they did it all on their own time, taking seriously their charge to exemplify leadership.

And then in our Science classes, we decided to pick up garbage around the campus. We talked about leadership and contributing to the community, handed out plastic bags and went for it. Those who I most expected to complain led the pack.

We pulled nasty things out of the dirt, attacked piles of garbage and when we were done, threw everything into the burn pit, plastic, cloth, paper and unknowns. Of course the issue is now to keep things clean which is hard when the accepted way of disposing of little bags and such is to just let them go in the wind to blow away to some other place.

This week is kind of a statewide Olympics for soccer and basketball. So there are no classes and the focus in all of the secondary schools is on sports. Last year the Colegio Bethel girls’ soccer team went to the equivalent of the state competition so hopes are high for this year. The Panyebar soccer field is kind of funny. Kids have to run uphill and down, through big ditches and dust bowls, and try to anticipate which way the terrain is going to send the ball rolling. The basketball court also has its quirks: on one side, if the ball goes out-of-bounds, chances are that it goes flying off down the hill, onlookers chasing after it. (Update: the girls lost their 3rd match so they won't be going to State...)
And finally, the bano… As it neared completion, it was the kids’ job to paint it and paint they did. Okay, paint everywhere, on the floor, on them, on us, but after cleaning, look at that shiny new bathroom which will be ready for use next week. The best part was tearing down the “provisional” bathroom and burning it!

So, finding a balance doesn’t have to be so very difficult. It involves remembering why we are here, not worrying so very much when I am bothered, emailing to keep in contact with family and friends and eating the locally-made chocolate that Kent brings up from San Pedro so I don’t have to think too much about chocolate cake!

learning ...

2009-02-28T13:02:00.000-08:00

The longer we are here, the more we learn. For instance, we now know that there IS another secondary school in town, run by the government. It’s been here for 1 ½ years and is a free option for those who can’t pay the inscription at the Colegio. Only problem is that it is what is called a “tele-secondaria,” with two teachers for all of the students, and classes given by video. Not the best option. What we hear about the differences between the schools is of course about the quality, the number of teachers, the homework, etc. Sometimes I wonder how much is true and how much is learned recital, as in “Of course the Colegio is better; it’s a private school…” (Reality is that the students that leave Colegio Bethel continue to do very well in the Guatemalan system if they choose to pursue schooling beyond 9th grade.) However, the most engaging classrooms we have yet seen here in Guatemala belonged to a government school on a remote dangerous road rarely traveled.

Right: the road going down to La Costa.

We had decided to bike down the mountains to “La Costa,” the flat plain that extends to the Pacific Coast. The road splits into two at the top of the highest ridge and we took what we soon discovered to be the awful road down. Dust 6 to 8 inches deep on the steepest corners covering rocks forced at least me to do a bit more walking. Houses perched at intervals along the way bespoke a deep poverty. And there, on a widened little patch beside the road sat a two-room schoolhouse. We rode into the yard and peered into the rooms,

expecting nothing. But these were the tidiest of little rooms, decorated with cheerful colorful greetings in Spanish and Quiche, all of the little chairs neatly stacked on the desks, a corner with towels hung on little hooks beneath children’s names. Clean, cheerful, welcoming rooms that revealed a care apparently seldom seen in rural Guatemalan schools. One of my thoughts was that Colegio Bethel, Panyebar could learn from those isolated classrooms and take more pride in caring for its space.

The first town at the bottom of the mountains was destroyed by Hurricane Stan and is still incredibly poor. This woman is drying coffee.

From the road we took back up into the mountains, you can see the road we came down. The school was right wherethe road hit the ridge on top...

Right now, somewhere outside our little house there is a marching band exuberantly practicing away. Another learning curve that I might not ever master: acceptance of boomeranging noise! We all know how sound echoes and in a place where most of the houses are build of cinder block and concrete, sound bounces seemingly forever. This would be fine if there was only one set of sounds bouncing around. However, we seem to be located at the nexus of the sound waves that burst forth from at least four churches within 5 minutes walking distance that all seem to hold their services at the same time during the evenings. Every church service is marked by the most off-key lead singer ever backed by the loudest band ever consisting of a bass guitar oompa-oompaing along, a drum set banging away and a keyboard repeating the endless chords. Not that we mind people worshiping God, but, Lord, the noise of it all! Earphones can be a glad refuge but only if you turn up the volume enough to cover over the oompa-oompaing…

Another thing I have learned is that it doesn’t always pay to accept invitations to lunch. Kent and I have been eating healthily with Rebecca and Juan here and have had no digestive issues at all. (The town’s water comes directly from the spring we visited in the mountains several weeks ago and is clean.) However, the teachers were invited to lunch at the house of one of the students. the house of pain...

Two of us have gotten pretty ill. The ickiest ill you want. So after three days of not being able to eat, I have started on tetracycline to kill it off. You know you’re supposed to have a prescription for this kind of thing but Kent just bought a bunch of powders mixed with chocolate (yum) that I will take over the next week. (Hope it’s really an antibiotic!) If things aren’t better soon, though, I’ll have to make sure it’s not some other sort of parasite. At least my body has started absorbing fluids again after a couple of days of dehydration worries, but I am weak and ready to get better.

A few shots from San Pedro...

Routine in Panyebar

2009-02-14T14:37:00.000-08:00

Above is the town of Panyebar. Below you see the two story building. Our "house" is the little one at the corner of that building facing us.

You never know what you might find outside your door when you walk out in the morning… the other day, it was a big pile of corn cobs; yesterday, a cow’s jawbone with teeth intact; everyday, plastic bags that have blown into the little dirt yard. Regardless of what arrives, it is usually a surprise.

But Panyebar is small enough that there aren’t usually too many surprises. We have settled into a routine that works pretty well so far. A shower followed by a cup of coffee while we sit in the sun…a nice start, esp. since the coffee is what we call “local-grown, plancha-roasted, stone-ground by hand, Guatemalan best” which we found at a local house where an ancient woman prepares the coffee as needed. This, as opposed to what everyone drinks (a couple of tablespoons of instant and a bunch of sugar in a couple quarts of water), wakes us up!

Routine includes school for me, where I now remember why teaching was so hard! My plans of using science to teach English have pretty much disappeared, as the level of kids’ English is at the learning-colors level. So, in addition to the actual preparation of 3 classes of science materials, I translate words into Spanish, even simple words like “pour,” “container,” “magnet,” etc. You get the drift! And we all have to suffer through my massacre of the Spanish language. I tell the kids that we are all learning together and they correct me as needed, which is often! I do give them English names as well as Spanish names for materials, so we’re working on it, but I realized that English is a foreign language for them and it is not like kids in the States learning English as a second language.

The other day we dissected a cow’s eye in one class, explored magnetism in another and 2 days ago (Monday the 9^th) I started chemistry with the youngest class of 7^th graders. The latter was a disaster. If I were teaching at home, I would call it the “class from Hell!” You know, kids aren’t trained yet in how to behave in class, they can’t sit still (especially since the class is from 5:35 pm – 6:15 pm), and of the 27 students, 75% are boys, immature ones at that. You can imagine… One of those classes that makes you feel like a failure. So yesterday I shut down the materials introduction and we took notes instead. Makes a teacher’s heart cry. One more shot at it today and perhaps I will choose not to do hands-on with them. As a visiting teacher who is not 100% conversant in either language or culture, it might just not be worth it and the kids just might not be ready. (UPDATE: kids

moved easily if noisily into groups and we are proceeding apace! Yes!

Kent has quickly endeared himself to many, including the family we are living with, the local carpenters and

contractors, and the school staff. He fixed the broken shower water-heater and fixed other water leaks at home. At the Colegio, he has fixed broken lights (one class had no working lights, so when the fog rolled in around 5, it was hard to see your hand in front of your face, let alone try to write!), is replacing broken windows and fixed the school bell which now rings out through the entire town.

The bano is now making serious progress. As one who had to use the “provisional bathroom” (read “pit toilet surrounded by cardboard blown apart by the wind”) in a moment of desperate need, I can hardly wait!

Wading through various misunderstandings and miscommunications has been challenging, but Kent’s Spanish

ability is up to it and already he has gained the trust of the local contractors.

For me, I would wish for a little more freedom. A teacher’s day is a scheduled day and I have to be at the

Colegio. But last weekend, we accepted the invitation from the dad of 2 of my students and we hiked to the spring that is the source of all of Panyebar’s water. This was, may I say, a killer hike.

The kids never complained and were spirited fun the entire 9 hours. Crossing into the nature reserve called Panan, the forest, now only a shadow of what it used to be, still had the power to amaze. Flowers, trees, bromeliads, even freshwater crabs at the spring made the hike memorable. Those and the aching knees and quads!

We made it home in time to eat dinner with the family where we are staying, as is the routine every night before

going to bed.As long as the neighbors aren’t playing their music super loud, or the wind isn’t trying to blow the corrugated roof off, or the dogs aren’t having extensive conversations, it is a blissful drop into sleep.

The girl above in the black is the daughter in the family we are staying with. The two playing are friends and the three below are the brother and sisters of the kids we walked into the forest reserve with.

driving through Mexico

2009-01-27T18:41:00.000-08:00

The last gasp; our poor little Tercel just couldn’t make it up the steep hill. And we were on our last energy as well. I had never heard Kent say “I am just DONE” before (my common refrain) but in the town before San Pedro La Laguna, that was it. He was done. As was I. And the car. But we did make it to San Pedro and right opposite us on this steep hill was a parking area for a hotel and Kent could just coast back right into it. We were staying there whether we liked it or not! Thank God. We had arrived.

Our drive down the eastern coast of Mexico was beautiful. We had left Texas a week ago and it didn’t take too long to get used to the more aggressive approach to driving on these roads. Pass at will, make approaching vehicles move over, move onto the shoulder yourself so the big trucks and buses can pass you and hopefully not squash you like a bug.

The only thing we were a little bit worried about were the Federales. It’s not like we were obvious or anything: CA plates, 2 mountain bikes strapped on the trunk, boxes piled high in the back seat. And that first day when I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the lights flashing, the adrenaline rush flooded me with sweat. “I swear I wasn’t speeding, Kent!” I pulled off the road and just waited for the officer to saunter up to the car and give us a huge ticket. He approached us and asked in perfect English where we were from and where we were going and apparently satisfied that we weren’t doing anything illegal, he said that he had noticed our bike rack was bouncing around. I knew that wasn’t true but I jumped out of the car anyway and checked it. “Thank you for being so observant and watching out for us,” I gushed. “Drive safely,” he replied as he got back into his fancy brand-new Chevrolet muscle Federale car. We got back on the road.

I predicted that we would be stopped every day, but that was it. Instead, it was the roads further south and nearly stopped us. Along the way we took a day to explore a UN Biosphere called “El Cielo,” famous for the migratory birds that stop there. The 4-wheel drive “road” we rode our mountain bikes up was tough enough that I sometimes got to practice my “mountain-bike walking” skills. And we chose to go back down the old road which was hardly that, so steep and rocky and slippery that I actually walked the entire 7 km down. I am the original mountain-bike chicken. But Kent even got off his bike for a good part of the way.
We had another day of riding further south in an area called Los Tuxtlas, having found a wonderful colonial hotel in a small town to stay in. We rode up the small volcano near town, up a road that eschewed switchbacks for the direct route up. Man!

But I had started talking about the roads. Vera Cruz is the state we ended up naming “topelandia” for the gazillion speed bumps called topes that you had to inch over in every town. Sometimes they were unmarked, forcing a screeching halt in order to keep the car’s suspension from being broken.

Add these creatures to the perfect roads which regularly without notice degenerated into axle-destroying hole-infested pavement and it was nerve-wracking. Whoever was driving at the time couldn’t take attention off the road for fear of coming upon a tope or hole and also had to watch for oncoming passing traffic in our lane. Very tiring. When the roads were good, they were perfect and when they were bad, they were way bad.

This abuse may have compounded the problem with the Tercel’s clutch. We both became quite adept at manipulating the gas and clutch pedals while quickly putting the stick into gear as we went over topes or around holes. We were worried enough that in one small city, we went in search of parts after figuring out what we thought the problem was. We received better help than we might have at home and a mechanic even did some work at no charge. We could have waited there for the parts to come, but it would have been about a week. So we decided to go for it. That decision almost cost us.

Our final day pushed us to the edge, yet was full of little miracles. We emailed Joe LoMonaco of Proyecto Fe who was sending some people down in early February and asked him to bring us the parts we needed to fix the car. Then we headed for the border. Our experience in the past had always been positive with the men who rush the car to “help” you through the confusing border paperwork, so we accepted one’s offer. Big mistake. He was a number one swindler and tried to bilk us out of almost $200. We had enough information to know what he was doing, but we were missing one important piece of paper – the original title to the Tercel. We had copies but not the original. An official said that we couldn’t pass without the original title and our little swindler used this to push us to pay a kind of bribe. This is where Kent’s patience and knowledge of Spanish, and God’s providence stepped in. As we waited in line to pay a finally agreed upon $75, Kent turned around and there stood a man who looked at him in a funny way. “Hey, don’t you work for Rainin in Oakland?” What? Turns out Michael is a Guatemalan who had worked with Kent a few years before. No way. Talking with him gave us the confidence to grab our paperwork back and deny our little swindler anything. He was pissed. But a young woman customs officer stepped out of her office and said she would work it out. And she did, for the expected $5.00 charge. What a start to the day!

We drove into Guatemala and very soon were on steep roads that sometimes required 1st gear to climb. Up and up and up we climbed into the clouds. And over the topes, an even more vicious strain of topes than in Mexico. Our car scraped and huffed over each one. As we finally turned off the main road and started the descent to Lake Atitlan, the way grew steeper and steeper and then we started down the final steepest descent, switchback after switchback down the volcano. At one point, we met a truck around a corner. We tried to reverse back up the hill but the just Tercel couldn’t do it. So we were at an impasse until a pick-up showed up with a bunch of guys who got out and temselves pushed us back up the hill. Down a steadily deteriorating road and a succession of higher and higher topes and Kent let out his, “I am DONE!”

So we at last arrived in San Pedro to be met by the final straw: a diversion around roadwork – we led the line of cars down a narrow street until the cars coming the other way stopped us. Who was going to go around? It’s not like we could back up or anything. So, we squeaked by each other, the bike tires scraping the wall that hemmed us in on one side. Oh man. I had to get out at one point to swing the bikes so we wouldn’t screw up a wheel or anything. And the final last gasp into the hotel. We were hysterically relieved. And then, a funny thing. Turns out the hotel is run by Christians, one of whom is the nephew of the head teacher of the school we are going to. Go figure! He later called his uncle Francisco and we met, after all these months of emails. Wednesday we go up to the community and school to begin figuring out how we will best fit in. An amazing end to an amazing God-day!

leaving home

2009-01-16T21:21:00.000-08:00

A milestone - our filthy, icky, paint-spattered, over-used clothes into the garbage. After 2 months of daily use in fixing up the house, the clothes are discarded and we are on our way at last! I never thought the day would come. But we leave knowing our house is in good order. On to Guatemala until sometime in the Spring (you know how definite our plans have been...) and then on to Europe to bike tour for the rest of the year.

But first we drive through Mexico to Guatemala - land of unbelievably gorgeous textiles, stunning (and active) volcanoes, a multitude of different indiginous Mayan languages and one of the worst educational systems in the Western Hemisphere, third only to Haiti and Nicaragua.

The rural highland village Kent and I will work in is on Volcan San Pedro, above Lake Atitlan, a popular tourist destination. In Panyebar, kids suffer from skin disorders and worms gained from lack of shoes. Families farm small plots of land on the volcano. Most women cook over open wood fires in their homes and families have medical conditions associated with the smoke. Up until the recent past, Panyebar had only elementary schools and children did not receive an education above 6th grade. But about 3 years ago, a middle school opened, supported by friends and churches in California and Alaska. This community will be most of the focus of Kent's and my time.

Our roles are still fairly undefined. Most likely, Kent will be working with a research project that is endeavoring to quantify how cooking with clean-burning, vented stoves affects the health of families that have always used open fires. I will work with the middle school, teaching science and English and assisting the teachers.

Many of you have donated funds and materials for both the stove project and the school - we do not go empty-handed. In fact we bring FOSS science kits, school supplies, financial donations and good wishes. Just hope those FOSS kits make it through the border crossings intact! "Uh, officer, that white powder is just citric acid..." Maybe our mountain bikes will distract them!

So we leave, knowing that we bring much but will receive more as is usually the way in such things. In the mean time, it's Motel 6 and roast chicken from the grocery store until we hit the taco stands in Mexico!

2008-12-19T09:22:00.000-08:00

testing photo uploads