Leaving Nebaj

We all had a difficult time saying goodbye for 2011.

Looking for the silver lining, we can say returning as soon as possible will be great!

Pictures that need no words

Mayan Hope School for the Disabled

The Mayan Hope School for the Disabled was going through a transition from 9 students and Don supplying the special ed teacher, to the school system supplying two teachers for perhaps up to 28 children (though they all do not attend at the same time.) There was a one week void between this transition for which Don asked Linda, Rachael, Willa, Haven, and as Lisa had time, to be the teachers.

I am hoping Linda or any of the rest who helped would add their own words to this write up, but I want to relate the story of their last day teaching when Linda had the kids create their own little pop-up books. The kids sounded almost estatic with their creations, hugging Linda and Rachael for having them make the booklets. When the parents came to pick up the kids, Linda said seeing the excitement of them showing their family their work was quite rewarding.

Advanced Marketing Techniques

Julie brought about 15 plastic sign holders for table tops. While there, she skillfully created signs featuring some of Popi´s menu items. We are anxious to see if sales of these items increase noticeably

!

Roasted chickens are generally a popular item in larger cities. Nebaj has no roasted chickens available to buy, so Don hatched the quite sound idea to fill this void with the goal being to keep Mayan Hope financially self sustaining. Julie brought Don a 2 or 3 chicken rotisserie. We were the guinea pigs for the first roasted chickens (they tasted great!) I asked Don how he would get word out around town of his new offering. Turns out a short radio ad costs less than one (that´s right, 1) dollar.

A Traditional Hike

We hiked our favorite trail, Nebaj to Cocop and then followed the beautiful spring fed Rio Azul to the town of the same name. Unfortunately, we managed a late start and could not take advantage of Julie´s offer of an water color lesson along this inspiring river.

We stopped and took the traditional picture of us on ´The Rock´ (see previous years´ blogs) along the trail just as Cocop emerges into our view. No one was around to snap the picture for us, so unfortunately, Tias is missing from the group photo.

A welcome rest stop.

The UFO siting.

A photo op.

Julie brought along tennis balls to give out to kids along the way. Thinking we were out of town, she gave a few to kids along the trail. What seemed like an instantaneous reaction, kids poured out of doorways of house up our trail. A mob of kids formed behind us making Julie seem like the Pied Piper. This experience proves that good news travels fast even without modern appliances such as cell phones. This picture shows the beginning of the mob formation, notice the reinforcements coming up from the rear.

Our crowded bus ride back to Nebaj accepted happily by tired hikers.

Assisting the Local Economy

Several in our gang of nine did their share of directly injecting money into the local economy. As in years past, women would invite us into their homes to show what they had to sell to keep their family afloat. This picture shows Lisa and Linda sporting their new skirts and belts purchased directly from a family near the Mayan Hope School.

More Projects!

Lisa, being a midwife, offered to give a birthing clinic. The offer was enthusiastically accepted, well attended with many questions from the approximately 20 local midwives in attendance. I did not get to attend being of the wrong gender, but I heard the presentation, questions and interpreter all had their funny moments.

Most everyone helped with waitressing the dining customers and ourselves.

There was also the plumbing project, various electrical system repairs, moving light switches to doorways, grouting tile, etc. Here you see the grouters at work.

The bathroom (that was started last year for the new dorm room) moved along primarily by Kai, Ti and Jim into having a second functioning toilet and sink by the time we left. This master piece of work shown to the right involved taking up a concrete floor and part of a foundation wall to get into the main sewer line.

The shower was all but commissioned by installing piping, a shower head and the expensive and heavy cable needed to bring electriciy to the water heater. Holding the coiled plastic tubing straight while the two single conductors of heavy wire were fed into the tubing was a six person job, Ti, Ki, Willa, Haven, Rachael and Jim. After pulling about 120´ of wire into 100´ of tubing, we then hustled this very long item up to the roof, laying it out from fuse box to shower head. The last 20´ of wire was pushed through conduit inside the building. The one item lacking is a breaker to connect this cable to the power source. As soon as that is installed, there will be two toilets and sinks and one shower to serve the rooms and beds on the second floor

Here Kai and Ti are running the newly made electrical wire and conduit in place.

Up on the Roof

Don was looking to build a 10 by 15 poultry pen and a 12 by 20 greenhouse roof (for plants not wanting as much water as Nebaj receives during the summer.) These structures were to be built on the flat topped concrete roof. The ladder access hole through the lower roof had to be enlarged as well. There was a pile of hand hewn 1" boards, 3 by 3´s and 2 by 4´s as well as some sawn 4 by 4´s. We did not have much for tools with which to work, an almost spent hammer, a small hand saw, a wrecking bar, wire cutters, electric drill and a few other misc tools. Especially having another hammer would have sped progress along, not to mention another saw, but I did not realize the importance of this until the projects were almost completed. However, we persevered with what we had and made it work.

Kai at work sawing.

Jim directing.

Haven coming up to offer her help.

Plasticing the green house roof.
(How's that for a new verb?)

These pictures show the finished greenhouse roof (sides may be added later if found to be advantageous) and the poultry pen, now affectionately referred to as ´Popi´s Poultry Pen.´

Misc note of interest to the do-it-yourselfer without many tools: Not realizing we had access to a tin snips until much later, I developed a technique to cut tin roofing with a machete and hammer. I simply pierced the tin with the tip of the machette. Then, holding the machette vertical to the tin´s surface, I simply used the hammer to hit the blade sideways through the sheet metal. The resulting cuts were quite nice!

How We Struggled to Enjoy the Evenings

Besides the fun of eating and sleeping at Popi´s, a new evening activity surfaced after discovering that Trivial Pursuit was a popular game with our gang of 9 as well as Don. I think there were five evenings in pursuit (pun intended) of trying to outsmart whichever team Don was on. He is a wealth of all kinds of knowledge! There was only one time Don was on a losing team... We even entertained the idea of everyone but Don being on one team against Don.

Don explaining his reasoning for his almost always correct Trivial Pursuit answer.

Other evening pursuits:


Looks like back rubs were appreciated.

Reading was popular too.

Tias and Kai would often fill some free time playing chess, much as they did last year. I heard that with all the two weeks worth of chess games pooled, they were about evenly split on wins and losses

Once games were played by candle lights when the electricity disappeared for awhile.

Another feature of evenings were four family style feasts Don put on for us! So wonderful, so delicious....

Here is a plate of buxbol, our favorite (especially Linda) traditional meal of the Ixil area of Nebaj.






Here is a picture of the first plate finished:

Can you guess whose plate this one is?

The evenings were also a time to talk with some the Peace Corp and non-governmental organization (NGO´s) who would stop in for dinner or desert. The two Corp volunteers we had seen the last two years were both back home, but we were lucky enough to meet one of their replacements, as well as his parents who were visiting him at the time. We also met an American Woman from VA who worked for a water project NGO. She replaced a German woman doing her thesis on water projects. She was there with another friend of hers from Oregon who had spent the last 3.5 years in the Nebaj area working on public health education. We learned alot about details of water projects done well, ones not finished for want of one 2" tee and one 2" elbow to formerly functioning water projects broken for want of a $2 item and perhaps lack of initiative to look into problems. We also learned of public health education challenges. We treasure these conversations for many reasons, including as a way for the kids to see possibilities of things they can themselves do in the future.

One evening we were honored with a visit from our friend Francisco whom we met on our first visit to Guatemala in 2000. At the time he was teaching in Chichicastenago where we helped establish a library. Francisco retired a couple of years ago and moved to his home town about midway between Chichi and Nebaj. He coincidently sent us an email about visiting sometime, and despite lost or unreadable emails, through the able assistance of our friends Bud and Sara Hudson fielding communications through Wisconsin while we were in Nebaj, we were able to contact Francisco via phone and arrange an evening together. That was great fun and wonderful to visit with this dedicated teacher of Guatemala´s youth.

And don´t forget to picture these evenings occurring in the room with a low fire to cast warmth on everyone there. People placed themselves as near or far from the fire that suited their comfort, while others would spend brief times directly in front of the flames accumulating heat fast and then leaving for cooler corners of the room.