The Ripple Effect

Sorry for not keeping up with the blog, but in a lot of the places I have been, I have been unable to. Today I am back in Xela a city of 250,000 -300,000. Just passing through and staying long enough to chatch up on the computer. The following photos are from Chejul, where I will be tomorrow. I had meetings there and Chel, during the week of the 4th and it was in Chel where I had hoped to build a school. More on that in the next post. The first picture is of the sink in the "Hilton" I stayed at. They have a urinal under the stairs that doubles as a mop sink. Very efficient and for $3 a night I guess you can´t expect much. From now on I will be staying with a family while I am in town. They have a block house with a dirt floor , two kids and he is a teacher at two different schools. The next two pictures are of some farmers I met on walk. The first two were repairing a fence at thier field. They buy fence posts for 30 cents that last them two years. For 30 cents, a friend of theirs cuts a pole , then cuts it in two or three pieces with a chain saw and packs them out to the road. The next two pictures are of Juan, another compenero, I met and who I will meet with tomorrow and again the following week. I am trying to set up a micro-loan program for 5 families with him. His family consists of 3 generations under one roof, a dirt floor and a clay block house. I am planning on offering three different "loan" options and we will buy pigs ,chickens or goats. Half the loan will be a gift and the other half will be paid back in one year to other to help other families. The second year I will offer 1/2 the amount with the same terms. By the third year the goal will be that they can buy the own animals with their own money. For example we buy 6 pigs and during the first two years they have one pig to eat ,two pigs to sell and use 25% off the money for family needs now and the rest for the next years pigs. Two pigs are sold to expand the program to other families and one pig is not counted in case one dies. I will not go in to detail on each project's form but this is the basic method. 1/2 as a gift 1/2 to multiply the outreach and personal involvment of the recipetant. I love the personal contact with these people and the opportunity to help. If anyone wants to help in any project let me know by e-mail.
In Chajul, I am a novelty and sometimes at night I would have people three or for deep asking why I was there. Ixil is the primaray language, so two or three people would ask questions while I would try to explain in Spanish and then they would translate to the rest of the people. A carpenter makes between $2.20 to $3.50 a day. The farmers walk 15 to 40 minutes to their fields, work them by hand for about $900 a year. A loan of $250 will make a big difference.