On March 11, 2011, fifteen Minnesotans fly off to Guatemala to renew a service mission in an indigenous highland area known for its traditional K'iche' Maya culture. Three others will join us there. This "team" is comprised of individuals and couples with a wide variety of skills and experiences. There is one physician, a handful of others with nursing training, construction-savy foreman types, several with great general orginizational skills, and a few, like myself, who hope to follow clearly-given instruction. As a team effort, this trip has been taken numerous times in the past, each year with a changing membership. Our fearless leader, Kevin Schill, a United Methodist pastor who formed "Outreach Opportunities in Mission" returns. You can find his website at "outreachopportunitiesinmission.org." See the previous entry of this blog dated March 24, 2010, for details about Kevin and the NGO's he has involved in these efforts. The story is inspirational. We will also have the assistance of drivers, translators (although spanish is the official language in Guatemala, an indigenous dialect rules where we are working) and necessary community contact support. Suzanne and Jim Greenleaf are back for their upteenth effort. More than half of us are first or second-time participants. We need, and are getting, necessary leadership.
Last Sunday we spent much of the afternoon in final planning and dispersing large volumes of materials and equipment among our various suitcases so what we need to be there gets there. We divided up thousands and thousands of vitamins, reams of health literature, hundreds of pairs of eye glasses and cases, hundreds of toothbrushes, coloring books and crayons, circular saws, extension cords, cordless screw drivers, trowels, tin snips, and who knows what else: a strange choice of baggage for a "Spring-break" trip!
We fly into Guatemala City, the capital city with approximately 2,000,000 inhabitants within the city limits. Our home base will be Chichicastenango ("Chichi"), a city about 87 miles away with a population of a little more than 100,000. A map in a previous posting dated March 6, 2010, shows Guatemala in relation to Central America and the locations of Guatemala City and Chichi. These facts make it seem similar to flying into Minneapolis/St. Paul and driving to Rochester (roughly the same size towns and distance apart). Nothing could be further from the truth. Chichi lies at an elevation of 6,447 feet. The 87-mile drive is estimated to take about four hours. This is mountainous, difficult terrain.
We will actually be working in a smaller town called Xepocol, a relatively short drive from Chichi. The tasks are various. More stoves have been purchased and will be distributed to local families as they were last year. See last year's blog entries for a description of the stove effort. It is very important. Health education is also very important, so health instruction will occur daily, medical clinic services will be provided almost daily, and a "health fair" wraps it up. A "latrine team" will construct another facility, and a school room will be partitioned for use in part as a computer lab. Time permitting, we will add shower facilities to a local church. During the last rainy season, as many as seven families were forced to live in the church for periods of time.
Once there, the work schedule looks like this:
Monday 14-Friday 18: construction team at work on the above-described projects.
Monday 14-Thursday 17: health instruction and peridic medical clinic hours.
Friday 18: health fair.
While the adult locals are busy with these activities, child care and entertainment keeps the children occupied.
Right now, the work accomplished looks like this:
Two votes against the service trip look like this:
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