How people move around is one of the most vital pieces of information that defines a community. I hadn’t thought about this before until I traveled through Arizona on a publicity excursion for an eye glasses campaign we will hold there on Saturday. Arizona is a small town in the Municipal of Puerto San Jose, a run-down port town since displaced by the larger and more modern Puerto Quetzal (the main pier in San Jose has since fallen into the sea from neglect).

As we drove through Arizona for the first time in our microbus we flagged in the port, I noticed the sleepy town atmosphere, the cross streets little more than a footpath. I was surprised that the several people we flagged on the street for directions did not know where our contact lived, a member of the local Cocode (small-town communal leadership). It turned out that this seemingly small, sleepy town had over 3000 people.

As we drove the streets, we drove block after block asking for directions, and after ten blocks or so Doña Isabela finally called us to tell us where to meet her. The driver dropped us off at the local gristmill and sped off up the coast to drop passengers at the next several towns along his route.

As we waited for Doña Isabel outside the gristmill, I began to notice that everyone who passed by did so on bicycles. When Doña Isabel showed up several minutes later atop her six speed, she apologized that we would have to walk a ways because we didn’t have bikes, explaining that everyone in Arizona grows up riding bikes from the age of about three. Read more >

One of the most interesting aspects of my GCY experience is the opportunity to periodically shadow Yoli and Clara.  These resourceful Guatemalan women are two of the owners of SOLCOM, the small Guatemalan-owned social enterprise that turns a mild profit by delivering healthcare products to rural communities. Recently, Yoli, Clara and I were scheduled to leave on a campaign to sell eyeglasses. We planned to leave at 9:00 a.m. so I showed up at 8:30. It turned out that Yoli and Clara had other important things to do, so we didn’t actually depart until 10:30. That’s life in Guatemala for you!  As we left, we joked because Clara grabbed a very ugly pair of protectoras, which are glasses with a UV covering that protect from sun and dust. She put them back, saying in Spanish, “If people saw those, nobody would come to the campaign on Thursday to buy our glasses!”

On the way to Santiago Zamora, we traveled through San Antonio Aguas Calientes, a small town which serves as a transportation hub.  I soon learned that the only way to Santiago is by tuc-tuc, a small motorized rickshaw. There are no busses to Santigo because the community is too small. After pulling out  in our tuc-tuc, we entered the most enchanting drive on a stone-paved winding road through coffee plantations and pastures until we reached Santiago Zamora twenty five minutes later.  Yoli and Clara had told me that we were traveling to one of the most beautiful places they had ever seen.  I believed them, but could not have imagined how beautiful it would be without seeing it with my own eyes!

When we began our publicity for the campaign, I began to stretch my definition of “rural”.  Yoli and Clara had described Santiago Zamora as a rural town and I had expected to find a town festering in squalor. Instead, I found a small, quaint town with only about a thousand people, with nicely paved roads and lots of cement homes with doorbells. Nobody owned cars, but they seemed to live pretty well in Santiago. Doña Yoli attributed this to the creation of several weaving co-ops a dozen years or so ago, which have significantly boosted the mothers’ incomes and increased their abilities to provide for their families.

For me, the weaving co-ops in Santiago provided a great example of the positive impact of sustainable development work. I found it very encouraging to see how a small town such as Santiago Zamora has created a new life for itself, while maintaining its rural charm.

Have you ever thought about where your water comes from and how many people are involved in bringing it to your faucet?

Recently, out of curiosity, I headed off with Don Omar in his water truck. Don Omar is a pretty successful businessman in Santo Tomas; he owns a small farm and also owns a water delivery service called Transportes Rodriguez. Starting work at 6:20 a.m., we headed to a farm nearby to use its deep well to fill up the 55 barrel truck for the first run of the morning. We then headed to a small colonia (the romanticized word for a small neighborhood on the outskirts of a small town) where “not much water falls”. We drove through the Municipalidad de Magdelana Milpas Altas, heading out one of the only roads leading toward the mountain, across a small bridge and through fields and fields of corn before we finally reached the colonia. Somehow, Don Omar’s Tigo clad water truck made it up the steep hill at the entrance and through a narrow gap between the trees before we began delivering water house by house

As we went along, I learned about the fascinating history of this small colonia of about 700 people. The neighborhood, creatively named “El Once de Augusto” was founded on the eleventh of August. Positioned on the side of a mountain, it is a very impoverished place, with dirt floors and muddy, rut covered streets. This undesirable land was formerly owned by the municipality until, on the eleventh of August following Hurricane Mitch, the government of Santa Lucia Milpas Altas purchased land from neighboring Magdelena for its constituents whose homes were destroyed in a landslide caused by deforestation. Now, the area faces problems because its position is such that no water falls into the local cisterns and the residents must purchase water from Don Omar in order to eat and bathe. Although the mayor of Santa Lucia built a public pila for washing clothes, it is void of water and the residents of the Eleventh of August wash their clothes in a nearby river. Read more >

I had a pretty exciting encounter with a chucho today. A chucho is a wild dog. So as I was panicking that I couldn’t find my phone, I walked down the street to Zuleika’s house (one of the other fellows who happens to be staying with my host mother’s sister, or something like that). I needed to find my phone because I was worried I had gotten pick pocketed on the Chicken bus. As you know from my last post, this would be very easy place to get pick pocketed on the chicken bus, because there’s obviously a lot of other things you’re thinking about, like not falling out the open door… or putting your butt in some stranger’s face by accident. You know, like the usual stuff people worry about on their daily commute.

So anyway, I’m in a kind of frantic state, to say the least, and I’m walking briskly down the street to Zuleika’s house consciously thinking about how cold it was and how its not supposed to be cold in Guatemala, and unconsciously thinking about how I could have possibly lost my phone.

As I got near her house, this dog about the size of a small lab came running at me growling fiercely as though it was protecting its house. Of course, Zuleika’s host family doesn’t have a dog, they only have about 30 chickens and 10 turkeys in their front yard. This dog was vicious too, all growling and baring its teeth and all. Read more >

Today we commuted entirely alone for the first time ever. Just the five fellows living in Santo Tomas Milpas Altas. The world didn’t seem to like that idea.

Today Zuleika and I left the house twenty minutes late, knocked on Ian’s door to make sure he had left, and got to the bus stop at exactly 7:50. We got lucky and got on the micro bus that was waiting near the stop. If you’ve ever been to the Air and Space museum in Washington DC and seen the miniature van that the McDonald’s stand out front uses to move food around (come on, I know you have), this is what a microbus is. Its like a mini-van version of a golf-cart, and today there were 9 people inside, with 4 on the back row and one standing up bent over near the sliding door. Read more >