The Ripple Effect: OPERACION BENDICION

Well I had another excellent day today! I recovered 117 photos that had been corrupted and so now I get to share this story in technicolor. The most expensive project I was involved with was a project I called "the cow project". I heard the leaders in Chel talking about Operacion Bendicion and asked my friend Miguel what they were talking about. He said that the leaders had named my "cow project" the "Operacion Benicion" Well I have to admit it sounds better then “the cow project” so “Operation Blessing” it is.
Here is a brief outline of what we offered.:
I would buy 22 cows that would be about a year old. The leaders would select 22 families with enough pasture to raise them for 18 months. The families would give 1 vaccine every 6 months and provide vitamins and feed their cow. After 18 months they would sell the cow and buy two more. One of these new animals they could keep and the other they would give to another family selected by the community leaders. There were eight to ten leaders in this committee and the families submitted applications to help determine whether they had the capacity to raise a cow and also that we were reaching across the community and not just within a select group. This is a seed project that could grow to help 66 families in 3 years. One cow equals a little over 1/3 of a year’s income. The committee then sent two teams of two looking for cows. It is easy to buy one or two cows but to buy 22 meant that we would have to travel to one or two communities that raised lots of livestock. The team that went to Uspantan had success and a round up was planned. Higinio contacted a business for transportation, I transferred funds, and 6 of us from Chel would head to Uspantan in 10 days. The night before we left, I was in a village called Santa Clara and it had one pickup that carried people out each day. That was the good news. The bad news was that it left at 12:30 a.m. and I had only just gotten to bed at 11:00pm. There was only enough room in the pickup for one of my legs to touch the pickup bed and I couldn’t have fallen over if I tried. Three hours later we switched to a bus in Chel, and then at 7:00 we changed again in Nebaj, and at 3:00 in the afternoon we arrived in Uspantan. Transportation is a real issue and expense in this region .

Here is the Saturday livestock market in Uspantan. Uspantan is a drier and more open region then Chel. This market was described as very big with all kinds of animals but it was not at all like a stockyard in the U.S.. The team had made arrangements with a rancher to bring about 35 cows to a field about two blocks away.

We had inspected the cattle the night before and after agreeing on a price, called for two trucks to meet us at 6:00am and started the round up. It was obvious we had some new cowboys in the group.

The first truck loaded easy but the second took three times as long. This is the easy one.

Meet Juancito and Higinio. Higinio has been my main contact in Guatemala and we have been e-mailing ideas back and forth for a year. On this day it dawned on me that this was not simply an idea anymore but a flesh and bones reality. The animals were good, the people grateful, excited, and I was getting to live out a precious dream. I couldn’t have done this without his help.

The cows looked heathy and ready for some good pasture.

The ride back was more direct but the last 2.5 or 3 hours was a low geared crawl. Here is one of the corners that trucks and buses must back up on because it is too sharp. The second truck broke down on this road and we had to hire another truck to replace it but it did not arrive until 9:00 at night. The owner of both of the trucks we hired had worked in the U.S. and started a trucking business with the money he earned. His son was driving the truck I rode back in and told me that the people in Chajul were saying that when I died that I would go straight to heaven. I didn’t understand the Spanish very well and when I asked him what he meant he said that anyone that did so many good works would go to heaven. This statement made me aware of what impact we have the opportunity to make. A small amount of help and most of it hours away from Chajul was the subject of talk ,hope and prayers of blessings. For me this whole trip has been humbling to be embraced with such appreciation.

We arrived to people waiting and fireworks and started unloading the first truck.

A sign of thanks and a day for fiesta.

Finally a long awaited drink

Who benefits from programs like this? Whole families and whole communities.

Later that night the second truck arrived and there was more fireworks with scared cows running up and down the road. When things settled down Higinio read the rules of the program and then Manuel read the list of selected families(see above). This was my last picture of the night because the memory card in my camera was full. We tied cards with numbers around each cow's neck and then men and a few of their sons picked a number from a hat. They were smiling like little kids and the whole family was excited when they found out which cow was theirs. That night they gave me a hat that is typical for the Ixil men to wear and I felt that life is good .

A few days later I shot these pictures of the new cowboys. Juancitos corn field is some distance away from here and he arrived covered with sweat but proud and happy to be carrying feed for his cow.