Adopt-a-Village in Guatemala

They’ve never seen a book?” one of the students asked me incredulously. “How can that be possible?”

I was giving a presentation to a group of Interact students in Venice, Florida. I had explained that believe it or not, some of our high school students at the Adopt-a-Village Mayan Center had gone through primary and middle school without ever having read a book. How did they learn? Copy down in their notebooks what the teacher wrote on the blackboard. Needless to say, such impoverished education brings acute remedial problems once students begin studies at our school. But it is the reality and one we have to deal with and work to resolve.

I explained to the Florida high school students some of the differences between their school and the Mayan Center school—like our lack of educational supplies and materials, no heating or air conditioning in the school or dormitory cabins, no proper kitchen, no running water, no toilets and only cold showers. My audience continued to be attentive but clearly remained incredulous.

When I described how our Mayan kids are responsible for a daily work program requiring them to be up at 5:00 a.m. to work on a variety of jobs, I received some puzzled looks. I explained how students must make, from scratch, 300 corn tortillas on an open pit fire every morning. The group grew quieter still. (From scratch requires carrying a big pot of cooked corn on a student’s head up the mountainside to the motorized grinder, grinding the corn into masa (dough) and then hiking back to the small rustic kitchen where the dough is expertly hand-formed to the size and shape of a cue ball, then flattened in a press, and cooked on a comal (a flat iron pan). During the tortilla ritual, other students cook a breakfast of porridge or eggs in the tiny kitchen on a wood stove by candlelight. Work duty is serious, but not without humor. Laughter abounds, even at the early hour.

Whereas each student receives a full scholarship that includes board and lodging, he/she must participate in maintaining and managing the campus based on the organization’s self-help philosophy and guidelines. A student council schedules the rotation of daily duties—cleaning the goat stables and collecting the precious manure for their school garden; tending the chickens, including learning how to apply parasite medicine and inject their vaccinations; and maintaining and cleaning the showers, latrines, and dormitory cabins. It’s been a lot of years since my son was in high school, but I can tell you that he definitely didn’t have to hit the bricks at 5:00 a.m. for work duty just to get some breakfast! This program is unique to our school. It was designed so that students can better understand the value of work and the value of their scholarship.

The remote rain forest mountain campus site has many distinctive and unique features. The area was chosen to give students the benefit of a tranquil and inspirational environment for their studies. The school community is self-contained with its own housing, food production, water supply, solar power, and a satellite system that allows the outside world to enter, when desired. In other words, it is self-sustainable.

We offer 30% more class time than traditional schools. Small eight-person interactive tutorial groups are the norm instead of the overcrowded 60-student classrooms in town where students endlessly copy their lessons written on the blackboard. At this time of writing we provide one computer for two students, until we are able to secure additional funding to provide a computer for each student. In other schools, the average is one computer to six students.

The Center’s 18-day study schedule provides students with concentrated uninterrupted study and after, the opportunity to spend the rest of the month in their villages helping their parents earn enough to keep the family fed.

And whereas many students entered our school without ever knowing a book, they do now. Through the efforts of two stalwart Adopt-a-Village supporters, Fran and Sue Lenski, their families, friends and others, the school has an impressive starter library with textbooks, reference books, encyclopedias, manuals, and a good selection of literature by well known Latin authors. I would venture to say that this small library is second to none of any other school in the department of Huehuetenango.

I am happy to say that the Venice Interact students are looking forward to communicating with our Mayan students. It will be a great learning opportunity for both groups and one that will lead to new international friendships.