Andrea’s Dispatches from Guatemala: Day 2
Our second day here my father’s cousin (Mario), another Rotarian, and I took a car tour of Guatemala City. We saw a lot of old government structures (i.e. a post office now converted into a museum) that were constructed from stone and really beautiful, natural colors of the rock, I couldn´t believe that they weren´t painted (like a light green, or rosy gold) as well as a few older Spanish colonial style buildings, a central town plaza, and rows upon rows of makeshift shops.
Surprisingly a lot of the architecture has a French influence (i.e. the main street is lined with sculptures of mainly animals like bulls or jaguars, and they even have their own version of the ¨Eiffel Tower¨, called the ¨Tower of Reform¨). Then we met up with the other Rotarians at the airport, where Mario (the only person in Guatemala I knew at this point) also happened to be picking up his son!
Once we were all together we had lunch at a local fast food joint (Pollo el Campero, latin version of Kentucky Fried Chicken) and made our way to Panajachel, a town on Lake Atitlán, about a 3 hour drive.
We got settled into Panajachel and the next day we started work!
We woke up and had breakfast, then had a meeting to learn how to assemble the water filters in homes, then lugged the filters down to the lake, and hopped on a boat to Cerro de Oro. In Cerro de Oro we were received by the principal, then we broke up into groups of 3 (our group consisted of 3 Rotarians, 3 women receiving the filters, and a male translator in the traditional Mayan language. I served as the translator from English to Spanish, and in some cases could directly communicate with the families).
We showed 3 families how to assemble the filters, then walked to their homes to place the filters in their homes. Then we ate a local meal of patín, beef cooked in tomato, lime, salt, and pepper and wrapped in a banana leaf, prepared by the locals, accompanied with a bottled Coca-Cola.
photo by Kirsten Noelle Hubbard, About.com, of Lake Atitlan. La Cueva Maya — the Mayan Cave — is the site of Mayan rituals and ceremonies, and boasts a captivating view from its interior. The cave is a fifteen minute hike above the Lake Atitlan village of Panajachel.
After lunch we took a questionnaire to homes that had had the filters for about a year and conducted a brief (surprise) assessment, checking if the filters were being properly maintained, asking the families how they were working, and so on. The feedback is that the families want more! I have to go to breakfast now, but today we’ll be heading to another town and only assembling filters (no questionnaires because this community has not received the filters before).
¡Hasta mañana!
