FARM DREAMING

For my next trip to Guatemala I have two main goals. One is to try and get a small start on the water system for Nueve Puntos and Los Encuentros. That project could cost up to $25,000 so it will probably be done in a few phases. The other project is to start a collective farm for the Widows of Chel.
Purchasing land for a garden is like the long standing proverb ,”give a man a fish and tomorrow he will be hungry teach him how to fish and he can feed hmself”. Each month we have been giving $320 worth of food to 23 widows. It is easy to see their need and know the free food will help but it is so much better to give them the ability to provide for themselves. With access to land they can do just that and more.
HOW THE GARDEN WOULD WORK

Gaspar Santiago is an excellent organic gardener in the village of Chel. . During the summer of 2009 , he and a committee of three other people are looking for a small parcel of good farming land for “The Widows of Chel.” An acre of land would cost between $5000 to $7500 dollars. This is an impossible sum for widows living on $150 annually but it is an opportunity for us.



By providing land and organic gardening instructions we can share a gift that will give daily for years to come. This will benefit the eldest widows, the struggling moms and a new generation of children.



While targeting widows with young children, 25 to 30 widows will be selected. Each will recieve a 30’x30’garden plot to cultivate. With intensive gardening practices and a year round season, they can enjoy three main harvests. This will introduce a variety of nutritious vegetables into their diet that at present are unaffordable.


In combination with the vegetable garden, we would select 2 widows to raise 40 laying hens which would provide a source of fertilizer for the garden and eggs for sale. Another widow would raise a hive of honey bees increasing pollination and producing honey for sell.

In upcoming meetings, we will be working out the details of this project and are hoping to purchase land and get started the after the first of the New Year



The women who will participate in this program will “adopt” an older widow that is in the food subsistence program. Their “land payment will be to share part of each harvest with these older women. Theresa,(photo on right) the widow with the eggs is over 80 years old and weighs under 80lbs. Maria (phot below) is sitting in her kicthen/bedroom/living room. She has no bed and is surrounded by her only possessions. Theresa is too feable to work but Maria could still assist a younger widow gardening. Both women are now in the feeding program and would be assigned to a family with a garden plot.


The sample garden shown above is my personal garden and measures 30’x40’. It produces more then we can use as well as a good amount to give away. Here we are using raised beds, but in Chel we would use a no-path method to maximize space.
Our goal is to offer each of the selected widows a 30'x30' area.

Shown above is our surplus of fresh vegtables and berries beyond what our family can use. This amount is given away twice a week.


Cabbage and brocolli are good cash crops in Guatemala. A cabbage can sell for between .62 and $1.75 each depending on the weight.In comparison these women earn only three dollars for a full day's labor pruning or picking coffee.

This shown above of a 4'x4' bed of bush beans has produced eight gallons of beans so far and is flowering for another round



This "Farm Dream" is a vision on how we can make a sustainable change for these families and help to reduce the worries of the younger mothers who are trying to provide for their children. When basic needs are met, there is then time for education and growth in other areas.

Four of the older women shown above are part of the feeding program. The others are relatives or friends who are helping to carry the food allotment home. The power of community involvement is already evident. Our goal is to provide the vehicle, in this case land, to let them build up their own lives.

Shown above is a typical monthly food allotment for 23 of the most needy widows. By concentrating their garden on vegetables, the participating widows could sell their surplus to buy food and other necessities. A typical garden plot would produce this amount weekly!

(see photo on the right) Imagine these women with baskets full of their own produce instead of a monthly welfare allotment. This is the vision of The Ripple Effect. The land could produce enough for the gardening widow's family,the elder widow and $2 to $5 of income a week. This is a huge opportunity!

By being efficient with a small amount of space and a moderate amount of money we hope to create a huge change. The following is our basic projected budget. If you are interested in helping out with this project please e-mail me so I can keep you informed.This month we have recieved offical recognition as a Washington State Non- Profit. Hurray! President and founder Michael Ewens

Cost of land and fencing $7500
1 bee hive $70
40 hens shed,feed and equipment $500
Total $8o70
Beneficiaries’ 125 people
mewens000@centurytel.net

A NEW NAME

23 years ago I used to listen to my wife teaching our four boys about the power of a small stone upon still waters. "Drop a pebble in the water watch its ripples grow. That’s the way when we love each other ever one will know.”
The power of our actions and what happens to us in life are beyond calculation. Sow a bad seed and you have a weed. Plant good seeds and you have a garden. In your hand you have a pebble, your next action. It is a small thing. Be loving or be self-centered, very basic choices. It is a little thing, but like a pebble it effects your moment, your day, and your life. Long after the pebble is released and has disappeared into the water the ripple expands until it touches the shore. So too, are the actions of our life.
I have been thinking of names for this organization for the last six months. Alternate names in case “Seed of Hope” was used elsewhere or if there might be a better description for this work. Legacy, Footprints, Seed of Change have all be considered. There are all good names with good ideas. Since “Seeds of Hope” is being used already and I have decided on “The Ripple Effect,” and feel it conveys both the hope of this organization and my life.
In June 2006, during the memorial in Gig Harbor for my son Forrest, some of you who were there will remember I told the story of my wife’s “Ripple Lesson”. The pain was still raw with our son’s life cut short. There had been a huge splash in the pond and we were caught in the waves. Looking over the crowd of friends, I asked them to take the effect of my son on their life and continue to let it live through them. Latter that fall, when I open a check that Megan, Forest’s wife, gave me from his life insurance policy I knew I wanted to continue the ripple. I was given $10,000 dollars ,10,000 ripples and began looking for a way to help the poor in Guatemala. Since that time the ripple has grown.
Today with under $28,000 invested we have;
1.) A well in Afghanistan for a village of 500
2.) A cattle program in Chel Guatemala that this summer will reach 40 cows
3.) A water system for 105 people in the village of Xesalli
4.) A co-op of 104 widows receiving thread for weaving or raising a piglet for sell.
5.) A food program for 23 of the most needy of the widows.
6.) Six micro-loans to help families gain a decent living
7.) Two plant nurseries and a garden program for 67 families
It is time to become an official non-profit!!
I am also excited to announce that we have a board of directors. Shirley Anderson of Tacoma, who has been very active in Habitat for Humanity and Karen Elam of Gig Harbor who has a background with humanities work in Latin America. Most importantly, both have a big heart. I am the third member. We have hired a company to file for international non-profit status and are incorporated in the state of Washington. We have a team of six dependable leaders in Guatemala to manage field work. In all we have an opportunity to make a change!
This month we presented our work at Imagine Great Things a fair trade store in Gig Harbor that is selling weavings from the widows. I will sponsor a dinner at my home in the middle of October and would like to have series of sponsored dinners in the fall. If you are interested in hosting one please let me know. I am seeking opportunities in Churches, Clubs, and small organizations to share the plight of these people and ways to help. Please by all means help me make these connections. We have already applied to two international organizations and have started contact with a third. I believe this work is a gift. So many things have gone well and I am walking in places that I am amazed at. I did not set out to start a non –profit organization but when I saw the need of the Ixil people and the successes we have attained I cannot stop. This ripple has grown. I ask for your support. We will stretch, twist and elongate every dollar through the sweat equity of the Guatemaltecans and creative programs, but I need your help.
My desire is to bring water to two more villages, build a school, start a collective farm for the widows, fund three more coffee nurseries, and begin a sheep program . Every visit sparks more ideas and open doors. And these programs are working. For example the first year I spent around $7,000 to buy 22 cows. This year I will only spend around $600 to help continue it and they will buy 40 cows. Sylvester who has a micro loan of $300 for a freezer has earned enough money last year to buy a mattress , add a bedroom to his house and start a second business and his loan payments have bought books for the school children in Chel Please join in, help sprend the word and watch this ripple grow,

The Personal Side of War

Martin Santiago lives in the pueblo Chel and has two jobs there. He is one of 9 masons in this community and one of eight pastors. He is pastor of the church Verbal which is probably the largest evangelical church in Guatemala. For the past two years he has helped me during meetings in Chel. This year he was paid twelve dollars a day to help construct the water tanks in Xesalli. The following is a brief history of his life.
As of March 20 2009 Pa Tin (his name in Ixil) was 38 years old. When he was ten his Father, two sisters and two brothers lived in a small village called Poi. This village was located one hour away from Chel and an hour and a half behind Chajul high on the side of the mountain overlooking the river. They lived with eleven other families totally about 55 to 60 people. His father owned one hundred cuerdas the equivalent of 12acres and raised beans and corn, had a horse, cow and chickens. In April 1982 the Army entered this village and burned all the houses and crops to the ground. They also killed all the livestock and captured and killed nine of the eleven heads of households. His father and one man fled with the nine new widows and children into the mountains. During this time all the villages around Chel were burned to the ground. All refuges spotted in the forest were simply shot without any question. All crops were destroyed and for three years Martin and his family hid in the mountains behind what remained of Poi .
Eating what food the forest could provide and living with little clothes, blankets, food or shelter life was hard. Martin’s father buried his two daughters there. One from a sickness that crept into her weakened body and the other simply refused to eat after a bombing raid on their hide out. At the end of three years Martin’s father was captured and taken to Chajul. Martin found a man who fed him for six months after which at the age of fourteen he entered a rebel group called “10th of January.” This group consisted of 180 soldiers who had left the army in an attempted coup on that date. For six months he trained in the mountains with 85 other new recruits’ men, women, and teenagers. They practiced maneuvers, throwing rocks to mimic grenades and shooting wooden rifles. In total this group expanded and combined with other rebels into three companies. One represents Cortzal, one Chajul and the last being the original soldiers. During his first time in combat they spotted the army, and moved the three companies in front of and on two sides of the route the army was taking. He was placed with thirty other new solders on a ridge to wait for the engagement to begin. They had small arms and grenade launchers but had not fired a live round to this date. The army had mortars and helicopter support.In this attack the rebels were repelled and lost two comrades.
For five years Martin lived and fought with this group. He received six different battle scars from bullets and shrapnel. They ate grass, herbs, a root called Malaga, bananas and wild animals that they shot. Martin did not have shoes and slept with one small blanket. During the 1980's the Guatemalan army stationed 6,000 soldiers in Chajul to control a population of 37,000. That is one soldier for every six local inhabitants. This was a war with full scale battles. The atrocities committed by the army included rape, murder, torture, child abduction and forced conscription. Many of the villages I have visited encountered massacres. In Chel over 154 died in one day. People were forced into the Catholic Church and many women were raped. Later a group was led to the bridge at the entrance to the town and 97 people were butchered with machete and thrown into the river naked. The Army hoped disrobing and throwing them into the river would make it harder to find and identify the bodies. Babies were burned on the pile of cloths that had been gathered. In Estrellar Polar 97 people were locked into the Church and the army then threw hand grenades in the widows killing everyone. In Solztil and Illom over 160 citizens died in a single day. All of these atrocities happened within 10 miles of Martin’s village Poi


While trying to enter Chajul ,Martin was captured and forced to fight for the army. For eighteen months he fought against his former comrades. During this time the general population was forced to participate in civil patrols and if someone was found without papers it could resulted in immediate arrest. It was a very dangerous time
After leaving the army in 1991 or 92 he was working with a portable saw mill in Chajul when the rebels surrounded the work crew. They were looking for Manuel Asicona the brother of Higinio my main contact in Chajul. They wanted to kill him because he was in contact with the army but that day he had stayed home sick. The rebels were offered food but suspecting poison they would not eat it. In 1995 a peace accord was signed by all parties. According to Martins account it was in 1997 that the army left Chajul. A little before that the rebels turned in their old arms and hide their good one in the mountains and things started to come down.
This was a full scale war. All the villages in the area I am working were burned to the ground. Everyone has a different story but all the people suffered immensely. Around 1000 men and women were killed in combat here and an estimated 3000 died due to malnutrition in the mountains. Martin can name how many died in each of the surrounding villages and where there are tombs in the mountains and where this widow or that widow relocated to. It is a very personal story and a very common closing remark heard in these interviews is “Gracias a Dios ya hay paz”. Thank God there is peace now.
As I have said this story although unique in specifics is representative in depicting the general suffering. At the end of this article there are a series of photos and brief description of what has happen to many of my friends there. The war was fought for three main reasons.#1- Over land, Guatemala has the most unequal land distributions in central America. #2 cheap labor, the united food company and large plantations have enslaved the population. Today in the villages of Illom, Solzitl, Estrellar Polar and others the surrounding land is controlled by large plantations and the people can only find seasonal work at $2.50 a day. #3Human right abuses. Today in Guatemala 17 people die daily due to violent death, one of the highest per capita rates worldwide. This last month 30,000 youth signed a manifesto demanding political integrity. High level assassinations have been the headline news during my last two visits.
But my work is with the small picture. I love entering a village of 20 to 30 families because with $5 to $15 thousand dollars and two to three years we can bring real change. Mother Theresa said “live simply so other can simply live”. Christ said” to love you neighbor as yourself”. The book of James state faith is shown in our work. If we believe we care, but don’t act’ we only have an emotion. If we believe in a moral way of living’ but don’t walk it, we only have a doctrine. We are this season people. What we do effects our world now and our future.
. I obviously did not ask for the effect or ripple caused by my son’s death and still scream against it at time. Tragic death is tragic. Our world is full of tragedy. It is not as simple as my wife’s nursery line. But we have a choice on how we live and respond. Let us each drop our own pebble and watch the ripples change the world.



Andres was my guide to the village of Illom to by pigs. He know this region becuase at age 7 he sought refuge there with a group from Chel after hiding in the mountains for two years.

Gaspar Santiago is teaching gardening techniques for me in Nueve Puntos and told me how he fled the army into the mountains around Nueve Puntos. By fleeing through and hiding in thorn bushes he escaped with his life.

Elane watched her husband get chopped down by three machete blows in her homes doorway. She fled to the woods and rejoined her daughters Margret and Juana who also lost their husbands that day

Julia and an orphan Marie who lives with her. Her husband went to the fields one day and was never seen again

Marie and her daughter Marie lost both there husbands and there son/brother in one day

Los Encuentros And Nueve Puntos

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Los Encuentros And Nueve Puntos
On February 18 through 22 I visited these two communities to look at a proposal to bring in drinking water from a spring behind Nueve Puntos. Last year I had briefly visited Los Encuentros but this would be my first time in Nueve Puntos. This area is part of the micro region VII of Chajul and consists of six villages of Ixil from the Nebaj area. The langue is a little different as well as the style and colors of weaving. Of these six villages I believe only one, Amajchel, has potable water which is piped in from eight kilometers. At the end of this article is a brief history of the region beginning in 1927 when the people migrated to this region. It is interesting currant history especially when you met the people who have gone through it.
To reach Los Encuentros from Chel we hitched a ride in a pick-up with the alcalde of Los Encuentros. I was traveling with my friend Manuel Riviera to help with interpretation. Both communities had sent out a delegation to Chajul to meet with promoters of a national program called Mis Familias and we would catch a ride when they returned. Three hours late the group from Los Encuentros arrived very dusty and we hopoed in and headed up the mountain. Roads deteriate rapidly after they leave Chel and the little pick-up strained with its human cargo.



Both of these communities of lack water and depend on catch basins to collect rain water. Los Encuentros lies along a 4x4 road and trucks water from Amachel a nieghboring community during the dry season. There are 47 families here without legal right to barrow water and when Amechel is low on water they have to drive back to Chel. Cost for one water trip to Chel equals the cost of one and a half months supply of corn for a family of five. Nueve Puntos has 22 families and is a 45 minute walk from Los Encuentros. My first priority is to investigate a spring behind Nueve Puntos that might service both communities.


The group from Nueve Puntos arrived around 7: oo which meant they had to leave Chel around 4:30 and after breakfast we followed them up the trail.









If you want to get community involvement in a project offer a community without water to study how to bring in drinking water. It is so important that everyone is actively interested and after a brief meeting we left with a good sized company and headed out to see the spring. It is an hour and half to the spring and the trail almost immediately disappeared. I wondered how they ever found this spring but after passing a cave which had been used as a camp I remembered these mountains was their refuge for years during the war and today is their backyard. I was worried about the elevation also as we were going up and down a lot and really needed a good ascent to guarantee a gravity feed system. Dropping down a valley we crossed a small stream where the women have to come to wash clothes and collect drinking water during the dry season. This water is not the cleanest and is a long way on a slippery trail from their homes. The last half hour answered the request for an ascent as it was a grasp the roots and branches climb in the mud. This was going to be work to haul sand and cement back here and then dig a ditch all the way back to the village.

Up and Down it is pretty simple until you grap a bag of cement.


The delegation that went to the spring

The spring was disappointing for two reasons. It was not very large and the elevation did not look high enough to clear one hill between the village and us. We measured the flow at 5 gallons in 70 seconds. This is not much but over a twenty four hour period would yield 6,000 gallons, enough for about 85 gallons a family. We discussed building a small dam to trap all the water and coming back with an altimeter. I wanted to help but had doubts with the situation.

Above- Ringing the school "bell" And below school children without desk or a teacher. This photo is being carried to a meeting with the president of Guatemala to demonstrate the lack of goverment provision in these communities. We anxiously wait for change.



One thing that has amazed me this trip is the lack of separation of church and state in Guatemala. It many meetings like this one in the local school,they will pray at the end of it and it is not just a formal prayer but a chorus of cries for help and blessings with almost universal participation. This meeting was my official introduction to the community and information about how we would proceed with the study. Latter around 9:00 we had another meeting to discuss providing grass seed to sow their fields. In talking with the alcalde about providing a little help this year I learn they lacked the money to pay $10 to collect grass seed from neighboring fields and plant their fields. When I learn of opportunities like this that can make a real positive change for very little money I am ready to jump on it. The community was divided on this idea because pasture needs animals and animals need water. Back to square one!

After a week of negociating I decided to fund the cafe nursery. It will have 13 families participating in it and produce 15,000 to 20,000 plants a year. After three years each family will have planted 5 or 6 cuerdas and begin their first harvest. When all 6 cuerdas are producing they will yield $750 a year. In many cases this equals a year’s income. This program will cost under $300 a year- a great investment!Here is what a typical nursery looks like. These families will gather poles and leaves so they can shade the plants. The plants are grown in small bags and after 9 months to one year transplanted in the mountain fields. This nursery is one quarter the size they are building.

In a week I returned to Nueve Puntos with Gaspar Santiago (pictured above) a great gardener from Chel. I wanted to present a plan to provide seeds and instructions to grow garden vegetables. Both communities like this idea and all 67 families will participate. So for under $500 we will start personal gardens with 10 days of instructions in organic Gardening. I really hope this takes off. It would add good nutrition to the diet.

A family plot ready for planting

On one of my trips out to Chajul there was a festaval going on with lots of cheap clothing. I bought enough for every family to have two pieces for under $70




In los Encuentros there are 10 families (pictured here) who I provided seed potatoes to grow and then divide the harvest so that next year each family can grow potatoes to sell. Again a little money, their work and a new opportunity. Each family should be able to harvest around 3,000 pounds of potatoes in two years and sell them for $1,000. This only cost the price of 700 pounds of seed potatoes and transportation to Los Encuentros --$250. There are 28 families who have requested help in raising sheep and when I have $1600 I will start a sheep program like the one with cows in Chel




Back to the water issue. In total I made three trips to these villages. On the second we visited two other springs. One was too small to bother with but one was perfect. We could connect the two springs and use a different route back to Nueve Puntos and have a gravity feed system with 20 gallons a minute or 80 gallons a day for every person in both villages. We measured the distances with a 100 foot long section of string. Total distance -8,500 feet. We are going to complete the study and a preliminary budget and then I am going to start looking for funds. This is a big project but would yield great benefits for these families.


My third trip in we constructed a dam in front of the first spring so that in a month during the driest part of the year we can measure the flow accurately. The hill slide was so steep we made a platform to mix the concrete on. Sand and cement were hiked in. We made gravel on sight and fell a tree for form wood. Sad for a carpenter to us 1x18 clear hardwood for concrete forms.


At this point in my trip I was pretty worn out. The trail wasn’t getting any easier and I had lost #15 and was ready to feast on my way home. I often think about my privilege. After two months I can retreat to hot showers, a bed, and plenty of food. My friends here will continue the struggle to find the basics of life. Like these women in front of this dry well. Two weeks ago they washed cloths and watered animals here. Now it is a hours walk away. This water system will bring four community house bibs of clean water to these people. I hope to be a bridge between our abundance and their need. Will you help the dreams become reality.



Recent History.
In 1927 during the presidency of Lazaro Chacon who was elected by big business and ignored the needs of the poor a law was pass making it mandatory for the farmers to work on the plantations for free. There already was a law that allowed the plantation owners to send trucks into the mountains to conscript workers but now they did not have to pay for this labor. This was done in the name of national interest to protect cheap labor for the united food corporation to export fruit.
With forced labor and lack of sufficient food twenty families travelled two weeks threw the mountains looking for a place free from such dominations. They called this area “pura Montana” for there were no roads or villages. It took one week to find a trail to Chel which is only a 3 hour walk today.
The people increased for the next 26 years but then a sickness came that killed many. They carried their dead in chairs to Chel because they didn’t have boards to make coffins with. In 1956 they pationed the municipal oc Chajul to be recognized as a village and began petioning for schools, clinics and other projects. In 1960 both aldeas of Los Encuentros and Nueve Puntos were established. Los encuentros was named because there was a church there and that was where they had their meetings (encuentros) and Nueve Puntos was named after a tree with nine main branches in a sacred mayan site.
In 1980 during the presidency of General Lucas Garcia a large offensive against the gorilla movement came to this region. All six villages in this micro group were burned including the schools clinics legal documents animals and crops. Once again the people fled into the mountains. They hid under boulders and in caves during bombing raids and eat what the forest could supply. In 1988 the village of Almechel returned but received repeated attacks from the gorilla movement because it was part of the civil patrol system of mandatory service. Los Encuentros returned in 1995 the same year that a peace accord was signed between the army and gorillas. The gorillas turned in their old arms but hide the better weaponry in the mountains until 1998 or 99 when the army left Chajul. It wasn’t until 2001 that Nueve Puntos return home and started to rebuild. This is recent history with the participates in the preceding photos.