AAV's mountain retreat offers unique adventures

Preparing for a visit from our child sponsors always creates a flurry of excitement at the Mayan Center—laying in food and water, sweeping out the cobwebs from the volunteer cabin, making a list of the tasks at hand, planning trips to visit the children.

Last month, Gary Owen, sponsor of two children, made the trip with his good friend, Roy Krausen.  Our visitors, both from California, have always enjoyed traveling to places off the beaten track where they can immerse themselves with a different culture and authentic adventures. We were delighted when they offered to volunteer their valuable construction skills in order to complete the kitchen at the new Nutrition Center.

Gary had learned about Adopt-a-Village five years ago while on a previous trip to Guatemala; this current trip would be his third time to volunteer for Adopt-a-Village.  The two friends spent 10 days building shelving, counter-tops, and roof-beam supports, as well as installing a plywood floor.  Apart from work, they hiked through a magnificent rainforest where the endangered Resplendent Quetzal nests, viewed the water-holes built for the wild animals during dry season, enjoyed a swim at Lake Maxbal, the pristine limestone-sink lake near

Volunteer Gary Owen and Pascual Domingo

the school’s property, and learned about edible rainforest plants, like momon, (so called by the Maya) a wild herbaceous perennial plant. (The crunchy, tangy stalk-like vegetable, tasting like a mix of celery and ginger, is added to soups, scrambled eggs, and stir-fries at the school kitchen).

We have to think that by making this bone-jarring trip through rugged mountain terrain three times indicates that time spent with the Maya at our rainforest retreat is definitely worthwhile!   Perhaps Gary’s friend, Roy, echoes his thoughts when he says, “… if we accomplished just a little bit at the school, it pales to the great experience and fun of working there.”  Giving back, having fun—a great combination for a great vacation!

We welcome volunteers with skills in sustainable gardening, nutrition, carpentry, mechanics, teaching, and more.  Contact us at guatvillage@aol.com.

The Venice, Florida, Interact Club, a group of 40 high school students, is working with Adopt-a-Village in Guatemala by supporting a scholarship for an indigenous student at our Mayan Center for Education and Development.

The club’s goal is two-fold—alleviate hunger by supporting a scholarship in sustainable agriculture.  In the remote indigenous villages in Guatemala, little opportunity exists to gain an education past 6^th grade, due to the extreme poverty of the region.  First, the Interact scholarship will put a Mayan student in an accelerated program, enabling him to complete three years of schooling in just two. A diploma opens doors to university studies, professional training, or management of a small business.  Second, the scholarship, by providing specialized training in sustainable food production, will benefit hundreds of indigenous children with nutritious food, thus helping to stem the severe malnutrition in the region.

Interact students sell Guatemalan crafts

Jane Mendola, Lead Interact Advisor and Rotarian of the Venice/Nokomis Rotary Club, says, “By training one student, our Interact Club is clearly helping to combat malnutrition of Guatemalan children.  The country suffers from the worst level of chronic child malnutrition in Latin America and the fourth highest level in the world.   Chronic malnutrition limits physical growth with the result that children’s bodies are stunted and highly vulnerable to disease and illness. It causes irreversible brain damage—leaving them unable to function well in school or in later life”.

Manuel wins a scholarship

Imparting one student’s expertise in growing food sustainably can positively impact at least 100 villagers.  Every student at the Mayan Center of Education is required to share his/her training in how to produce “super foods” (for instance, vegetables with the highest nutritional values). From “growing” soil (using green composting methods)—to using special planting techniques, to harvesting seeds for the next year’s crops—parents can change the health of their children for the better.

The motto “Train a student, transform a village,” is being marched out to the Venice and Nokomis communities where Interacters are selling hundreds of hand crafted Guatemalan key chains to raise funds.  Their one-of-a-kind international project just hit its midway funding mark last month, thanks to the enthusiastic participation of club members.  Their final goal—raise $2,000 for the annual scholarship.

Mendola says, “our Venice Interact Club is not just helping one student, it is helping entire villages—they are doing something vitally important that is improving the lives of many.  The Interact Club has really taken this project to heart and our facilitators at Rotary and Faculty Advisor at the Venice high school are very proud of them.”

If you belong to a group that would like to support a student, please Frances Dixon guatvillage@aol.com. 

When the Guatemalan Civil War ended in 1996, Juan Diego was seven years old.  He would grow up in a time of hope that the Peace Accords would bring better health, education, and economic times to his people—but, sadly, he would reach manhood to realize the failure of that hope.  Today, his people are hungrier than they were 50 years ago when the war began.  Now, chronic malnutrition threatens to destroy a generation.

As the main breadwinner of his family, young Juan Diego had certainly known hunger.  But those were in the days before staples such as corn and beans had not doubled, tripled and quadrupled in price.  A year ago, six tortillas could be purchased for 12 cents.  Today, one cannot get more than three or four for the same price.  Juan has neighbors who cannot afford to eat beans.  Rice is a luxury—meat, eggs, and cheese don’t show up on a Mayan family’s table in this distant corner of northwestern Guatemala.

The future of this current generation is clearly threatened.  Chronic malnutrition deprives bodies of vital proteins, stunting physical growth.  Without sufficient nutrients, brain capacity diminishes, sometimes up to 40%.  Willem van Milink Paz, a representative for the World Food Program in Guatemala, calls chronic malnutrition a “life sentence” that condemns generation after generation.

How to turn the tide of this tragedy when poverty is so extreme that parents can’t afford to buy even sufficient food staples?  With a small plot of land and a hand up from Adopt-a-Village, self-help gardens can produce food.  We believe that using sustainable agricultural practices in villages is the best way to combat chronic malnutrition—starting small—mother by mother, father by father, village by village —teaching, encouraging, empowering.  From the first step in building nutrient-rich soil in family plots through the interim steps that produce highly nutritious food, our Mayan friends can create an ongoing cycle of food—a cycle of life.

Who better to lead such a movement than a Maya who first-hand understands his people’s plight—their hunger, their deprivation, their need to work hard to survive?   Who better than one of our own graduates armed with specific knowledge in sustainable agriculture?  Who better than a young person known to be responsible, resourceful, a leader?   Juan Diego, of course!

Juan was awarded the coveted internship and took his place alongside the small but growing contingency of Mayan teachers at the Center.  He will teach the incoming students the basic elements of sustainable gardening; and he will train families in outlying communities, empowering them in the art of growing nutritious food.

Adopt-a-Village embraces 2012 with a two-fold goal:  First, expand the number of villages currently receiving training; and second, introduce a community training program at the Mayan Center where parents can learn advanced techniques in gardening and nutrition.  The Mayan Center’s Nutrition Center and demonstration garden will serve as the base where courses in organic pest and disease control will be taught.   Parents will learn how to choose the principal vegetables for nutritional value and how to preserve nutrients when cooking the food, as well as seed harvesting techniques and food storage methods.  With these skills, they can return home, using this knowledge to build a foundation of health for themselves and their children

Through a simple but effective plan of harnessing the educational resources of the Adopt-a-Village Mayan Center, chronic child malnutrition can be combated.  Families have already demonstrated that they are eager to learn these new skills that can restore their health, vigor and dignity.  Self-help gardens, not food handouts, can help them to attain this goal.    Join us in this unique partnership—your help in purchasing seeds and tools and supporting the training of young Mayans like Juan Diego can make a powerful and positive impact in their future.

Non-hybrid seeds that can be harvested and grown successfully for future plantings are provided from the Mayan Center of Education, the Adopt-a-Village unique school that trains indigenous students in academics and sustainable agriculture.  A major goal of the school is to combat the chronic child malnutrition in the region.

Juan Diego (center) celebrates graduation with friends

The Mayan Center, located on a mountaintop, isolated from the distractions and pollution of population centers, is a very desirable facility at which to study for several reasons. Foremost, the school offers a two-year accelerated curriculum that puts a student on a fast track to a high school diploma, thus saving time and money to enter higher education or begin working.  That prized certificate, possessed only by a small percentage of Mayan youth, opens the doors to university advancement, professional training, or managing a small business.  Additionally, the Center’s students receive 30% more class time than what is offered at “in town” schools (classes run all day, not half days as in other schools).  Individual use of computers and Internet service are provided.  In other schools, groups of six or more students must share one computer during lessons; and, they must pay for computer time at Internet cafes in order to complete homework assignments.  The Mayan Center boasts a large library, a rarity in any level of school in rural Guatemala.  Ready access to books and computer equipment provides an enhanced opportunity to learn more and thus gain better grades that assist them in gaining entry to university or employment.

A feature important to parents is the school’s 18-day intensive study timetable that gives a student the ability to spend the remainder of the month at home working to help to help sustain the family.  To win a scholarship, Juan would have to demonstrate certain attributes—speak a Mayan language, demonstrate leadership skills, produce records of good grades, and be financially unable to pay tuition and boarding costs.  He easily demonstrated these requisites.

Juan was awarded a scholarship and lived on the rustic mountain campus with his fellow students for two years.  He studied hard and fulfilled of all his academic obligations. In addition to class time, the school requires that students take part in managing and maintaining the campus with the purpose of building leadership skills.  Work involves keeping the school and campus clean and orderly, tending the student’s vegetable garden, feeding the chickens and cleaning their coop, daily grinding the corn for tortillas and helping to prepare mails, and performing other tasks that support a well-run educational facility.

In addition to a heavy load of academic classes, Juan received intensive training in sustainable organic agriculture.  A component of the training is that students use their skills to help impoverished families in nearby villages.  During their practicum, they work alongside family members, teaching them how to prepare soil, produce green compost, transplant seedlings, use water-saving techniques, and harvest seeds for the next planting.  Juan excelled in the sustainable gardening course. He confided to the school director that his long-term goal was one day to pass along this specialized education to young people by teaching at a high school.

A few weeks ago, Juan Diego graduated as valedictorian of his class.  His long years of struggling during his childhood had given him the needed determination to succeed in winning his high school diploma.  He had clearly shown himself to be a hard worker, responsible, and resourceful.

What would be his next step?  He knew that the school administration was offering an internship to a graduate.  The internship would provide an opportunity to study and teach under senior teachers at the Mayan Center, offer advanced organic agricultural training, and gain paid work experience in nearby villages by teaching sustainable food production.   In its assessment of Juan, the administration noted not only did Juan’s skills meet a challenging set of needs, but also his background could made him ideal and very important candidate for the work he would undertake.  He could be empathetic to the extreme level of poverty the Maya suffer.  He spoke the Q’anjob’al language—the dominant Mayan language of the region.  And he had proved himself to be a dependable leader.

Several graduates would be interviewed and assessed for this desirable position.

To be continued….

Kristina Edmunson, a Peace Corps spokeswoman in Washington, said the move stemmed from “comprehensive safety and security concerns.”  Guatemala is one of the Central American countries that is used as a staging point by drug cartels to ship cocaine to the United States from South America.  The escalating drug and organized-crime violence in Guatemala has had much press lately. The country has one of the highest per capita murder rates in Latin America at 42 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants.   (On a comparative level, the murder rate in Mexico is reported to be at 15 per 100,000).

Peace Corps technicians and others like Adopt-a-Village volunteers have the background to teach a variety of skills to empower rural people in improving their lives.  With the rate of chronic child malnutrition in Guatemala now at the 4^th highest level in the world, Adopt-a-Village has focused on teaching sustainable agriculture— soil improvement through no-cost green composting, (instead of using expensive chemical fertilizers that leach and eventually exhaust the soil), multi-cropping, correct water usage, and seed harvesting for the next planting—all viable techniques that an impoverished people can use at virtually no financial cost to help themselves out of the grip of ever-worsening hunger.

Although Peace Corps support has been cut to Guatemala, USAID is assisting this “focus country” with another style of foreign aid.  In a recent meeting at which current food security policies were discussed with a USAID official in Guatemala City, Adopt-a-Village representatives were told that USAID does not “support subsistence farming programs,” (perhaps not understanding the difference between “subsistence” and the “sustainable” methods AAV uses).  Rather, the USAID view is that some of the most promising opportunities to lessen poverty and chronic child hunger lie in non-traditional agriculture, horticulture, and coffee exports.  USAID programs have engaged thousands of small-scale coffee growers in the highlands to develop production and participate in the global market. (Some would argue that land would be better used to grow food for hunger-stricken local people).  Additionally, USAID has forged an alliance with the multinational giant, Walmart, which recently bought out Guatemala’s largest family-owned chain of grocery markets. Whereas this government/corporate agricultural partnership provides jobs for some, most of the food grown is exported to other countries in Central American and to the United States. (Google “Feed the Future” program for details on this alliance).

Crime and corporate agricultural goals aside, Adopt-a-Village in Guatemala is committed to staying and continuing to make a difference in the lives of malnourished children.  Come January, we will enter our 21^st year of service in northwestern Guatemala.  If you are the adventurous sort, we welcome you to come and volunteer with us—we are especially looking for people with organic gardening skills, carpenters, and Spanish language teachers.  (Fluency in Spanish is a Ministry of Education requirement in schools.  However, our students have been raised speaking one of the Mayan languages and need help in mastering Spanish).

Your support, as always, strengthens our resolve.  As we have stated, our foremost goal is to stem the current devastation of stunted growth and minds of Mayan children permanently impaired by chronic malnutrition.  To achieve this, our progressive school, the Mayan Center for Education, is creating a network of Mayan villages where nutritious food is being grown—but this goal needs your help in order to succeed.

In this time of giving thanks, I want to extend my most heartfelt thanks to you for your past and present commitment to the Maya of Guatemala.   Together we are helping to empower them to make important and meaningful changes in their lives.

The river flows from its source in the Cuchumatanes mountains, drops into the lowland jungle valley near the Mexico border and continues northward into that country.  For all its past and present acts of treason against the Maya, it nevertheless guided thousands of frenzied families as they fled on dark nights from the infamous Ixcán massacres in the early ‘80’s.   Their pathway still exists today.  Walking it, one can imagine the terror of those times—mothers running, babies in sarapes tied on their backs, fathers with toddlers on their shoulders and others grasping their hands—and the older children, barefooted, rushing, desperate not be left behind.

Those were the worst days of the genocide.  Rios Montt, an army general, had just wrested presidential power through a coup d’etat in1982.  He became known as the most violent dictator in Latin America in modern times.

Juan Diego was born a few years later, but it wasn’t until he turned seven that the effects of the civil war caught up with him.  Tragically, it was just after the Peace Accords were signed that his father made the fatal mistake of picking up an abandoned grenade.  His foolish act not only instantly ended his life, but also forever changed the course of his first son’s life.

As the eldest son of four children (Juan’s mother was then pregnant with his little brother), his days changed from childhood play to hard labor in the fields.  His solitary companion was his father’s machete.

Despite the long and lonely work, the lack of food and clothing, the mud floor he slept on under the leaky roof, Juan Diego managed to continue his schooling.  Sometimes, he dropped out for a year when the family’s supply of corn shrunk to a few kernels and it became obvious that the family wouldn’t eat if he didn’t go back to work.

At age 19, he left for the sprawl and grime of Guatemala City in the hope of finding work.  Even though he’d reached adulthood, his culture decreed that his family obligations had not ended.  As the eldest, he was expected to continue to support his mother and younger siblings.

One day, Juan’s grandfather, upon realizing that Adopt-a-Village was about to open the Mayan Center for Education and Development, approached the organization.  If he could locate his grandson (his namesake) in the city, he asked, would we interview him and give him a chance to win one of our scholarships?

To be continued…

The Mayan Center for Education is situated in a pristine rainforest four hours north from a bone-jarring drive over four-wheel roads of Huehuetenango’s northernmost supply town of Santa Cruz Barillas.  Even their inhabitants don’t really know where it is and as most are non-aficionados of the wilderness, really don’t wish to know.  Nevertheless, Mayan youth who were born in isolated mountain villages call it home for two years as they live, study, and work on campus to earn their accelerated two-year diploma.  Once in hand, they can choose one of several paths—begin university studies, train in a professional facility, or even start a small business.

In addition to academic classes (where students receive 30% more class time than “city” schools), intensive training is provided in sustainable organic gardening.  Guatemala suffers from the worst level of chronic child malnutrition in Latin America and the fourth highest level in the world, according to United Nations statistics.  Every student graduates with the ability to provide his family and village the help they desperately need to produce sustainable food to stem the staggeringly high rates of child malnutrition from which they suffer.

Mateo Ordoñez, pictured here with his father, Pascual Ordoñez, and the school director, Osman Casteñada, has already introduced to his community the unique methods of soil preparation, green composting and multi-crop planting.  His father, an enthusiastic of the Center’s sustainable organic growing techniques, has volunteered to head up village committees to encourage others in these methods of food production.

Only the country’s violent October tropical storms threatened the schedule.  Three days before the ceremony, president Alvaro Colom issued a plea for people not to travel the flooded highways—many of them destroyed by landslides, and mountainsides still collapsing with the heavy rains.  “Travel only in an emergency,” was the edict.  AAV’s director, Frances Dixon, determined that attending the first graduation of the Mayan Center for Education definitely required travel, and after 3 ½ arduous days of re-routing and skirting blocked highways, she reached the isolated mountain school, drenched and muddy.

Strains of the marimba music lifted spirits (although not the rain) and signaled that the festivities were about to begin. The school’s colors, green for the mountains and gold for the jaguar that lives nearby, festooned the hall; students proudly presented themselves in their forest-hued shirts and gold satin cummerbunds; and all proudly posed for keepsake photos garbed in a traditional cap and gown.

The ceremony climaxed with smiles and tears as parents rose and stepped forward to embrace their children.  What were they thinking?  Long-held dreams were coming true for them in those joyful moments.  Education had been denied parents in their youth when they found themselves trapped in refuge for years in Mexico during the Guatemala civil war, but in these moments they could rejoice, watching their first children graduate.

Two years of dusk-to-dawn days spent by staff and students living and studying in a remote rainforest mountain campus had paid life-size dividends.   New doors were opening—some students were continuing on to university, others were taking jobs or preparing to begin small businesses, and a top student had won a teaching internship at the Center.

Best of all, students would be sharing their knowledge in their home villages.  Indeed, they had already introduced sustainable organic gardening skills to their families and neighbors, and seven nearby communities had benefited from the students’ instruction during school service projects.  “Train a student, transform a village”—this school motto had born fruit with the first graduation!  Their education had empowered them to create a powerful surge of change in their communities—a change ensuring nutritious food for a people suffering from one of the world’s highest rates of chronic child malnutrition.

Please share these joyful times with us.  You can assure the continuation of a better future for the Maya by giving a scholarship to a deserving student for the 2012 school year.

Give Now

Juan Diego

If you would like to help a family grow their garden, please send your contribution by mail to Adopt-a-Village in Guatemala, 1264 NE 156th Street, North Miami Beach, FL 33162, or go to our website to access PayPal at www.adoptavillage.com. If you like this short piece of Maya history, please share it with your friends!