Today I helped to build a Women's Nutrition Center in Tzunona, Guatemala. It was quite amazing to participate in a project where we started in the morning with a plot of land, and by the late afternoon we had posts, supports, cross-beams and a simple roof completed – all with only 6 men, one of which had to leave early due to an illness. I learned a few things about carpentry, made some new friends and even got a few smiles from some local children by speaking one of the few K'iche' phrases I knew that meant “How are you?”
Haley goes to Pana for the children's nutrition project. - The easiest way to travel between villages here at Lake Atitlan is to travel by boat, so I took a boat to Panajachel to meet up with German, an intern at Amigos de Santa Cruz ,to help obtain information about local children in nearby villages from a lady working for Vivas Mejores (Better Lives). It was an adventure. After meeting up with German at the dock, we walked for about 45 minutes to 2 different locations to try to find the director of Vivas Mejores, whom we discovered was not in for the day despite the fact we had a scheduled meeting. Her assistant was not familiar with the software to list out the kid's info so after about 1.5 hours, a few viruses, the removal of viruses, we were handed our USB with what we thought was the information we requested. We unfortunately discovered later that the information provided was only part of what we requested :(, and for those of you that think it was related to my Spanish, well, German, a local Guatemalan was doing most of the talking :). For the afternoon, we met up with a local doctor to talk about the program they are using to track kids. She mentioned that they were having troubles with an Excel document in their office so I offered my help, but unfortunately they could not log in to the computer because only specific doctors know the password and they were all out for the day. Today was an eventful and insightful day. So far, I have learned that doing business here takes quite a bit of patience and an understanding that things can take longer than expected.
And some more pics of the beautiful Lake Atitlan area:
1 comment:
The pictures are just beautiful! Hope you are keeping all of them. You are having an experience of a lifetime. I just can't believe we didn't get to see Haley on her birthday and we won't get to see you either. Love you guys! And thanks for the beautiful butterfly card. Loved it! K
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