The Ripple Effect: PIGS PIGS PIGS

Andres Laynez was my guide to the community Illom. For three years I have heard stories and been ask to go start a project in this community. Everyone has told me that this community is very poor because it is surrounded by a plantation and the people only receive $2-$3 for a day for labor. Andres know this community because when he was five years old the army burned Chel and after 2 years in the mountains the families he was living with sought refuge with the village of Illom. It too had been burn to the ground but the people of Illom found refuge on the plantation. For four years he lived with and was cared for by the family of Pedro Anay who we visited the first day. Alcohol is a problem here and when we arrived the road was blocked by a crowd looking at a man who had died due to drinking too much. The second day I saw three drunken men start to fight with machetes until the women disarmed them. The community has limited water no electricity and very poor housing. The road in is rough and there is no level ground as they cling to a red clay hill slide.
Despite all this It was one of the most entertaining trips I have had this year. During dinner with Pedro he informed me in his stucco Ixil that a gringo solder had come to the village 42 years ago and he had tried to talk to him but neither could understand each other. I am sure there has been another gringo since then but I was a novelity. Food and housing was free here and in the morning we would start looking for pigs to buy.

When I woke up I had a feeling with my good tracking skills we would be able to find some pigs
After breakfast we started going house to house with the alcade ( the mayor) looking for piglets. It was fun to crisscross the community and the sights we great but not a good time to carry a camera. I took these photos on a return trip when we set up a meeting time and place. When we found someone with the right size piglets we negotiated a price and recorded their name and how many pigs for how much. I was looking for 40 and we would deal with the transportation details latter. Around one thirty it we had contracts for 22 and had talked with a pickup owner who could only deliver that day and not the next as I had hope. We were running out of the perfect sized piglets and decided with our organized list to call it a day and head for Chel. That is when things began to change.
It was hard to find the housing where we had contracted to buy our piglets. The street signs and house numbers were not clearly marked here. Slipping and sliding up and down the hills we set up three meeting places where we would drive through at 3:00 sharp

At pick up spot one we were collecting 5 pigs. But wait here comes someone with two more. Oh there is a woman carrying another one by the ears. A crowd of twenty quickly formed and we talked about what I was doing and why. They share with me their needs and I shared with them some of my dreams in between races up and down the neighborhood looking at more pigs. I have a bag stuffed in my shirt with 10,000 questzales and am buying piglets like crazy in a community that the daily wages is 25-30 quetzales. We are trying to make it to stop two and find two missing owners and it is raining piglets.
No this one is too small that one too expensive but I’ll take those two for 250. I was writing down each purchase but had no idea how many pigs I had or how many contracted pig were waiting at stop three. I called a halt to the auction and we hit the gas for stop three finished buying the contracted piglets, said goodbyes and headed out of town with a pick-up full of piglets. The sun was shining the mountains beautiful, the people happy, life is good.

As when come into Chel the widows are converging on the field in front of Las Flores and I know it is for moments like this I am here. It is a special day. I tell the women that these are not piglets but seeds. Raise these piglets and when you sell them save part of the money to buy another. Allow this gift to be a seed of change for your lives. We then started handing out pigs and the squealing began anew