Adopt-a-Village in Guatemala

Previously, we wrote that several graduates, including Juan Diego, would be interviewed and assessed for a coveted internship at the Mayan Center for Education and Development. 

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.

In our last post, we wrote that Juan Diego’s grandfather asked Adopt-a-Village to consider his grandson for a scholarship at the Mayan Center for Education and Development…

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….

Juan Diego lived in a clapboard shack on a mountainside in abject poverty but had the good fortune to be able to enjoy a magnificent view of the mighty Ixcán River in the valley far below.  Tranquil and peaceful during the dry period, the river broils up muddy and angry during the months of heavy rains.   More than one imprudent man and his mule attempting to cross it have been pulled down to a watery grave in the clutches of its powerful rapids.

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…