Update on Nueve Puntos

Michael is getting excited about the upcoming trip to Guatemala. He and his wife Carol will fly down Jan 22. This is a major trip and Michael will being working in the villages until the second week of March. In reviewing some notes and photos from last May and November trip he felt it would be good to give an update on Nueve Puntos, which is one of the villages they will be visiting.
He states “I really love this village and know we are working our way to a grand fiesta. We will be completing three projects there this spring as well as performing a medical clinic. The size and location of this village has kept it from ever receiving help like this before and the gratitude of these friends is precious. I would like to let everyone 'walk' through some of my experiences there as they view these photos.”

Last May, Michael attended the Mother’s Day celebration at their new school. This is the first time ever that this village has had a school. The village provided all the labor and TRE bought $1200 worth of building materials

In October, TRE started funding the building of a clinic. When completed, it will have three rooms, a cement floor, and be about the same size as the school. This building qualifies the village to receive monthly medical supplies from the Ministry of Health. One of the villagers has recently completed his exams after two years of studying for a certificate of medical service. This combination will be of great service to the community.

Here is the cleared site in November. It now has the foundation walls and roof up. In February, we will paint the exterior and pour the floor. Michael's wife, Carol, is a registered nurse and will assist with physical exams, immunizations and care for all the village in addition to providing dental floss and teaching dental hygiene. We also hope to provide Multivitamins and Vitamin C tablets, especially to the children.


We also plan to bring more clothing into the village. Only $2-$2.50 will buy a nice fleece pullover for the kids.

In May, we started work on a gravity fed water system. Pictured here is the finished holding tank above the village. The task of forming the concrete holding tank was a new skill for the men in this village and so the finished product is even more impressive.

They have dug, laid and buried 1500’ of piping and completed digging another 1500’ of ditch.

Here is one of the surface wells in the village. By the end of next spring there should be five new community faucets bringing clean safe water to these people. This will be the first time in the history of this village that they have running water. Thanks to your support this project is fully funded.

In May, five of the village elders told Michael the history of Nueve Puntos. One common phrase he heard from the Ixil translator was “Este es un parte de la historia largo y se llena con tristeza" — "This is a part of our history, It is long and full of sadness." The following is a condensed version...
"In the 1920’s the Guatemalan government passed a law that all indigenous people would have to work on building the national road system without receiving any pay. These elder’s fathers were forced to work for 15 days at a time and were whipped if they didn’t work fast enough. At the same time the plantation owners could force anyone to work for them for up to three months. Legally they were supposed to pay for this work but even when they did the wages were very low. To escape this system of economic slavery the founders of five villages in this area fled into the mountains from Nebaj. For two weeks these families traveled further into the mountains making their own way as there was no road. In this remote area they began to build their communities. The childhood memory of these men was one of hunger, being cold and having bleeding feet as there were no shoes. For 60 years the people work acquiring animals and clearing fields but in the 1980’s the army entered Nueve Puntos burning the village and scattering the population. For 20 years these people were displaced only officially rebuilding in 2003."
A few of the elders.

Pedro Remundo, 74 years old, with his wife.

Nicolas Jacinto, 77 years old, with his granddaughter
Remundo, 55 years old. At age two he became sick probably with polio and became crippled in one leg. He told me how grateful he was for the care his mother gave him carrying him into the mountains when they were fleeing the soldiers.

Michael has visited caves, hidden springs and hidden plateaus in the mountains where the villagers took refuge. They were joined by other villagers as the whole countryside was in a state of exile, fleeing the oppression. In November, Michael was invited to visit one of these special sites and witnessed the exhumation of a clandestine cemetery where 30 bodies had been buried during the war.

Manuel, the man in the orange shirt is looking for his brother and father’s bodies. Nicolas Hacinto is looking for his mother. They uncovered 5 bodies, some only children, that morning. A forensic team worked on identification of the buried and recorded the personal stories of the survivors for three days. The people were buried by the community while in exile and represented inhabitants from five different villages. Those who died in the first few years were buried in coffins lashed together because they did not have any nails. Those who died later were buried only in their clothes. Because of a national law that forbade taking photos without prior written permission, Michael was unable to take any more photographs.But those things he witnessed and those images still remain in his mind.
On Michael’s first visit he found garden plots ready but not planted due to lack of seed.
In May, he ate from vegetable plants grown from starts that TRE provided for each family. In December, we provided the village with 8 different kinds of vegetable seeds for the next spring.

Two villagers have shown a real knack for gardening and this next visit we will offer them an interest-free loan to build a green house. We want to offer a couple of the women of Chel the same opportunity and TRE can contract with them to buy vegetable starts for our garden project. A win-win situation.

This sewing machine that Pedro owns, was bought with help from TRE. Sadly, Pedro (pictured here) has had some rough times and lost two mules this last year. One died from a snake bite.

Preparing for lunch.

This squash is really delicious.

Cleaning up after lunch.


Here are some needs for Nueve Puntos.
$150 to buy a Solar Panel for the school and clinic
$125 to buy clothing
$250 for loan for the green house
Well that is all the news for now. We wish everyone a Happy New Year

Michael made a quick trip in October to Guatemala to prepare for our February/March trip. We needed to meet with the municipal government to plan for the completion of the water Project in Nueve Puntos and the beginning of our water project in Las Flores. In response to a request he received in May he visited the village of Soltzil and expanded our work with widows and single mothers. Soltzil is one of the villages we travel through when we buy pigs in Illom. It is located 45 minute by road from Chel on the side of a mountain. With most of the surrounding land owned by the neighboring plantation and the absence of any flat ground the plight of these villagers is especially difficult. The following is a brief story of his experience there.
Although the road connects Chel to Soltzil there is no public transportation between the two villages. Both are located after a fork in the main road to Chajul. One branch travels up the mountain to Soltzil and the other over a small ridge towards Chel. This made it necessary for a delegation from Chel to walk there and meet with the women that represent this community. Five of us left one morning passing through the community of Jua and in front of the national dam project that brought the roads to this area.

This project is almost completed and has opened this area, for better or worse, to the world outside. Before the road was established it took all day to walk to Chajul. It is interesting to hear people in their 40’s or older tell about their first experience hiking to Chajul to visit or carrying hundred pound loads of coffee all that distance to be sold for six or seven dollars. That price had to cover the work to grow, harvest and dry it as well as transportation. I listen to elders tell me how easy it is now but let’s continue on our journey we still have a pretty big hill to climb.

After the dam we chose to travel up the right side of this ravine to make a more direct route. With all the little paths that take the farmers to their fields the hill are a criss cross of trails. We just keep choosing what was heading in our general direction.

It doesn’t take long for the dam project to fall far below

The creek in the ravine drops away sharply too.

Juana and Hacinta, two women from Chel went with us to share their experience working with the widows. I ask Hacinta why she wanted to come and she answered me in a way that made me feel that the answer should have been obvious. "Because they are just like me, without a husband and in need. We want to help them too." She also told me the next week that she could hardly walk the day after our hike!

Andres and Manuel were my male escorts and the trail wasn’t any easier for them.

After climbing a ridge we begin to descend into the village and a soon as we ducked under a fence we met Maria. Times like this affirm why I travel thousands of miles, why we hike through these mountains. To alleviate suffering! Maria has been suffering from a mental condition for two years, her husband has left her and she lives next to her elderly father. She was seating in the dirt chewing on some old cane stock as dry as hay stubble. She had no skirt no shoes no belt.

Her father Mateo is 75 years old and showed us her house

This is the view inside her home. The dark spot is her bed. She has no blanket, no grass mat, only a huipile (shirt) to keep her warm. This is one of those times my heart cries NO MORE! There is a danger in entering into the world of poverty. Without the separation of distance you have no more excusses and are left only with the responsibility to care. But that is actually a good thing. How many times do we really get to cloth the naked? We will visit Maria latter.

I don’t know whose children these were but the boy was showing me his kite while we visited with Mateo, Maria's father

The women’s committees of Soltzil meet us at Maria and then took us on a brief tour of some of the special needs in the village. This widow is caring for three orphans that are not related to her. This one has serious handicaps. Other children had club feet , another with a a cleft pallet that prevented him from talking.

Passing through the draw we visited with the women washing clothes.

With pigs running free in all the villages we are teaching the women in our program the importance of acting responsible by corralling their animals.

After a lunch, our first meal of the day, the committee of Soltzil gathered the women. We have offered to bring our pig program here to start helping this community.

Pictured here are around 70 women. In total this village had 67 widows and 30 single mothers. We had funding to buy pigs for the widows but have to wait to help the single moms.

Gaspar explained the importance of protecting the environment by penning their pigs.

With a show of hands and latter a thumb print on our registry book all women agreed to the rules of the program. For those of you not familiar with the program we give one wiener pig free to widows or single women but teach them that after raising their animal they must either breed it or save part of the profit to reinvest. Our goal is to develop ways for these women to earn an income.


After the meeting we headed back to Chel and planned to return the following Friday to buy the pigs in the neighboring village of Illom.
For our returned trip we rented a pick-up truck and driver for the day Seven representatives from Chel gathered at 4a.m. to begin our days work. It is exciting to see the committee of Chel volunteering their time to help in Soltzil. We dropped off part of the group in Soltzil to fill out all the paper work and five of us continued on to Illom. For half a day we slipped and slide up and down the dirt paths there looking for pigs. We were not having much look and by noon we started back with only 20 pigs. As we came into Soltzil we watched as women dropped their work and almost run to the gathering spot. There is so much excitement for these women to get an opportunity as simple as this.

We explained that we had to keep looking for pigs and distributed what we had to the first twenty women in the our registry



They also give me a new hat and shoulder bag. Note the look of satisfaction Maria has to be giving something back in thanks.
After a nice lunch we gathered four more helpers and 11 of us traveled to a neighboring plantation to look for more pigs. We had much more success there finding some really nice looking animals (that is good looking for pigs). I stayed close to truck this time so I could pay for the pigs and the group spread out into the village.

I admit it is a little exciting buying the pigs but it is also hard and dirty work. Yet here we had 11 Guatemalans helping without any pay. We were tired and thirsty but full of laughter and contentment. It seems clear part of what TRE can offer is the ability for people with a good heart to have the opportunity to serve others. At six it was time to head back to Soltzil. We still needed to gather the widows again and distribute our cargo.

We had enough pigs for all but 10 and which we bought two weeks later.

It was becoming a long day as we unloded the last of the pigs but there was one more important job to do. Return to visit Maria Pecheco

With a smaller group following we went to visit Maria

Entering into her home we brought a new blanket, skirt, belt and huipile. I did not know how she would respond since she had remained silent on our first visit. Her face took on a childlike smile as the women dressed her and in Ixil she thanked me saying “thank-you, you have cared for me like a Father.” I knew we had done well and there were a lot of happy ladies in the village that night.
Please keep these people in mind during the holiday season. We have made some nice gift certificates. You can donate a pig for $25, start a garden plot for $32, or a coffee nursery for $35. All these projects are for widows or single mothers. Another choice is to donate to our water projects in Nueve Puntos or Las Flores. We will send a nice gift certificate and a blank card with a photo of our work with these people. Each of these gifts changes the world just a little and is tax deductable.