Common Hope
Trip Start
Mar 22, 2005
1
6
26
Trip End
Sep 09, 2005
Antigua,
Guatemala
Monday, April 4, 2005
I stole this description of what Common Hope is all about from their web site:
The heart of Common Hope's work in Guatemala is education. In Antigua, we are helping 2,300 students attend school
a new home the team built during the week
. In New Hope, we are building a school for over 600 hundred students. In the Ixcán jungle, we are helping 60 students attend junior high. We also believe a comprehensive approach to human development is critical in helping families and communities reach their full potential. For this reason, we also focus our efforts on health care, housing, and family and community development.For more about Common Hope:
http://www.commonhope.org/
Our week with Common Hope was carefully structured to let us get a taste of the scope and depth of Common Hope´s programs and let us work alongside the employees and volunteers who make up the programs. We helped with construction of homes, went off-site on social work visits and into the communities served, and learned about the services and structure.
Antigua is a relatively rich town, compared to most of Guatemala (rich because wealthy Guatemalans live here, because of the tourism and because of a thriving expat community), but you only have to go a couple minutes outside the city walls to see horrific poverty. People live in barely-there houses on borrowed land, families don`t have the money to keep their children fed let alone in school, in many places,
health care not to mention clean drinking water just don`t exist
A school at New Hope
. There is infinite need and very finite resources. I have seen poverty like this before -- in Belize, Guatemala on my last trip, in Mexico, Cambodia -- and in the US. Seeing this through Common Hope´s eyes gave me a sense of optimism and hope (not to be cliche) but its still very difficult to witness. It makes you question your assumptions about life and I don´t know how its possible for someone from a wealthy country to see it without feeling a sense of guilt -- and in many ways, a sense of responsibility. Its a horrible truth that the wealth and prosperity of countries like the United States -- and as a beneficiary, people like me -- has resulted in part from the exploitation of people and countries like this. Its difficult to know what to do, though.
I`m still processing what we saw and trying to understand where I fit. At the very least, what can I do to not perpetuate the problems? And, more so, how can I be part of a solution?
I´ve rambled forever below about what we did and what I experienced. Sorry for the length. The single moment that sticks out the most in my mind is going on a social work visit the other is attending a class on herbal medicine with a group of indigenous women. Those are marked below with asteriks. (*****)
Monday -- Herbal Medicine
****** Monday afternoon, we hop in the back of a pickup truck to go to a small village where Franklin, our driver and escort, is teaching women to make herbal medicine
class
. I just can´t imagine why riding in the back of pickup trucks is no longer legal in the US as I feel like we´re all going to fly out at any moment. But, its a great view going up and over the mountains that surround Antigua.We pull off the road and into a small village. Towns outside of Antigua are built mostly from very simple construction -- tin roofs and wood scraps in some cases, cinder blocks and tile in others. This town is no different and kids scatter out of the streets as we pass by. We arrive at a small home where about half a dozen women are waiting. This is a typical home and has a small front room that opens onto the street, connected to a simple kitchen in the back that opens up to a long narrow walk-walk that runs perpendicular to the house. Outside is access to a toilet and washing sinks. Inside the kitchen is a refrigerator (indicating more wealth in this family than the average, I suspect) and a small stove.
All the women are indigenous (or of Mayan descent, although I haven´t been about to get a clear answer on how to describe them in PC terms) which is readily apparent by their traditional dress. Most speak a little spanish but are more comfortable in their own language -- kaqchiqel (pronounced kah-chi-kal). Franklin´s vision, and that of the women, is that eventually they will be able to supply their town with medicine by having a sustainable herb garden and learning the recipes
Dom filiberto
. Right now, there is "one bottle of tylenol" available at a local store, according to Franklin. Eventually, they hope to have an assortment of herbal medicines, in particular for issues like chest congestion and stomach parasites. I´m delighted by the idea of creating employment and jobs for these women, supplying the community with much-needed medicines, and doing it all without the intervention or even reliance on big pharma companies. To call the economy in Guatemala sluggish would be a vast understatement -- creating mico-industries like this is essential to progress in these communities.Observing the class is fascinating too ... through simple instruction and the use of just a handful of different herbs, Franklin explains how to pick, chop and cook the herbs to create a cough syrup. The women listen intently and the self-appointed leader takes notes and translates some of the difficult spanish phrases into kaqchiqel . The
herbs have the same medicinal qualities as effedra.
Even though these women come from an entirely different culture, they display the same personality traits as any group of women. They laugh, they share jokes, they try to include us in the dialog. One woman has her baby wrapped around her the whole class, another has a 6 or 7 year old daughter who listens in between running around
drawing while others play soccer
.Tuesday -- New Hope
New Hope is another project, located on the other side of Guatemala City. This site grew out of an idea after hurricane Mitch -- could Common Hope help rebuild so the thousands of ravine dwellings that were destroyed could be replaced? Yes, they could help, but no one thought it made sense to rebuild in such unstable areas, and eventually the inspiration and opportunity came together to buy land and create a new community. New Hope has two main parts -- a school where the teachers are taught as much as the students (things like how to teach critical thinking and how to understand childhood development are generally not taught to teachers here so this gives the school a
huge advantage over most schools) and a new community where people have voluntarily relocated from the ravine slums in the city and paid for their homes through "sweat equity" (their own labor).
We spent the morning learning about and touring the site and the afternoon playing with the kids there. The guys from our group were beaten badly in a soccer game against the boys from New Hope while others drew pictures and swapped stories. The kids seemed to be fascinated with trying to guess our ages (and were off by about 20 years most of the time).
The progress at New Hope in terms of community development has been slow, and understandably. To offer a new way of life to people who have been living as exiles from society is not an easy thing
Felix and family
. From what we heard, its been hard to gain -- after all, these are people who are not used to having anyone to trust. And, its hard enough for people in desperate poverty to think a week ahead, let alone several years ahead (the time it would take for them to own their new homes). But, there are exciting stories coming out of New Hope. The school is incredibly successful and the community to starting to grow on its own. I heard one story about a woman who is not only trying to help her own family, but looking to find a way to learn about and help women who have been sexually abused. To relay a quote I heard, she said something like "a lot of things that shouldn`t happen, do happen in the ravines. There are old wounds that need to heal and things that could be done to prevent new ones." Wednesday
Wednesay morning I help varnish cabinets with a German carpenter who is down as a long-term volunteer. Common Hope is staffed by employees and long-term volunteers who commit to a year or more of service and short-term volunteers and "vision teams" like us who come in for a week or 10 days at a time. I spend the afternoon with Maggie, Joe´s
daughter, who is a long-term volunteer and is working with kids and young adults who have hearing disabilities. She has started a program teaching them how to make beaded jewlery, key chains and other handicrafts. They sell the jewlery at the project site and are making a substaintial amount of money. Eventually, she hopes they will be able to purchase materials on their own and support their small business themselves. The simpicity of this idea is brilliant -- and you can tell her students are delighted to be doing something productive and to have people want to purchase and take home their work
Franklin teaching
. As you may guess, in a country where the entire education system is lacking resources, kids with special needs (be it hearing loss, a learning disability, downs syndrom, etc) are often just discarded or never given the attention that could make them independent, successful adults.Thursday -- concrete and social work
Thursday morning, I´m assigned construction. I haven`t been put on this team up to this point I think mostly because the guys are really energized to help build houses. Common Hope has created an interesting method for constructing homes. Because most people do not own the land hey live on, the homes need to be mobile. Many times, a landowner
will reclaim his land only after the squatters have built some kind of housing of value. Common Hope`s homes are made of pre-fab panels, concrete slabs that create a floor and a simple roof. Families qualify for the homes by working at Common Hope for the required number of hours (200, I think) and having a child in the program. Everyone really enjoys seeing the new homes so I´m excited to go out and check out the place they`ve been working on this week. However, when we show up at our assignment we hear that we`re staying on-site to pour concrete slabs -- each one is about 2 feet by 2 feet and we later
figure out requires about 3/4 a wheelbarrow full of concrete
fresh tortillas and guacamole on top of a volcano
. We have about 50 forms to pour. No fancy concrete mixers here -- we`re doing this all by hand. I am no stranger to manual labor (we had horses when I was younge which required a good amount of moving bales of hay, hauling around 50 pound bags of feed, and shoveling out stalls..... andfrom the time we were big enough to be on construction sites as teenagers, my sister and I would help my dad during the summers) but its been many many years and I was thinking yoga has probably not conditioned me that well to be shoveling sand and gravel and mixing
concrete. Three of us work alongside Pablo and Felix, two of the Guatemalans who work at Common Hope who we`ve gotten to know this week. Its fun to work with them, but the work is hard. I`m pretty sure they could have done it faster without us, but they certainly seemed happy to have us involved. It takes right about 4 hours to finish the job and I`m flattered when Pablo says I´m "fuerte" -- strong.
***** After a shower and lunch, I meet a social worker to go on visits with her in a nearby town. Common Hope`s focus is education, but they soon realized you have to support a whole family in order for a child to grow. Their case workers go into the communities to visit with families and help address problems at home (alcohol abuse is pervasive in Guatemala, for example)
garden or septic system?
. We are dropped off in a small town about 10 minutes away and stop by a couple homes and find no one around.Eventually, we get to a tiny home on a filthy street and find a woman there with her four kids -- I count four anyway, but she has six total (a typical family size here). She invites us inside the small dark living area where flies buzz about and die on a sticky curly strip that hangs in the middle of the room. She and the kids wear clothing that looks more ragged than what I`ve seen most people wear (Guatemalans in general dress very well, even though many are very poor). She and the social worker chat casually for a little bit (I can pick up phrases hear and there but its hard for me to understand when people speak quickly and with a lot of slang) and I sit alongside them. Then, the conversation turns more serious and the woman hangs her head and stares at her hands on her lap. I think she`s uncomfortable that I`m there, so I go sit outside.
In the street, two girls in filthy clothes with unwashed faces play in their mom`s too-big shoes and clop up and down the concrete steps. A couple of small boys kick up dust as they practice soccer moves with a plastic Coke bottle and stab trash with a long branch. They manuever around broken glass and pieces of tin and discarded wood that line the street
housing at New Hope
. The kids from the house we`re visiting shyly run in and out of the dark main room where their mom talks with the social worker. A boy who I`m guessing is 7 or so seems embarassed and hides behind his mom but peaks his head up long enough for me to glance in his direction every couple minutes. He´s wearing too-small sweatpants and no shoes. He has some random chunks shaved out of his head, or scars where the hair has not grown back, I´m not sure. His sister, who is a bit older and a beautiful little girl despite her snarled hair, carries around their baby sister like a doll. Eventually, she comes and sits next to me with the baby and, once she decides I`m OK, plops the 10-month old on my lap.As I sit there holding the baby and watching the kids play on the not-safe streets, I can`t help but think how lucky I am to have born into the circumstances I was. How many more opportunities I have simply by being born in the US (multiply that times a thousand for being born into a not-poor family who valued education), how ridiculously rich I and everyone I know is, how much easier my life has been and will always be than the kid`s I`m looking at now. And, how random and perhaps how horribly unfair that I get my life and they get theirs.
Friday -- catching chickens, growing plants on concrete patios and the house blessing
Friday morning, we hop in the same pickup truck and head over the mountains back to Santa Domingo
Joe playing head, shoulders, knees and toes
. This time, we`re going to a chicken co-op to vaccinate about 500 chickens (this meant catching every chicken and putting a couple drops of vaccine into their nose or eyes -- and some of those chickens were really quick!). This is another brilliantly simple idea to help a community grow: create a co-op where responsibility is shared among many families and in doing so, create a source of income for those families and a source of much-needed protein for the community. In the afternoon, we went to build a simple garden for a family. In concrete-covered villages, there`s not a lot of room for gardens. By lining a chicken-wire cylinder with plastic and filling it up with potting soil and poking a bunch of holes in the sides, we created a compact but highly-effective spot to grow greens and, for this family, a sweet herb similar to stevia to help the diabetic mother.
Late that afternoon, we went to the house blessing. This is a simple "ceremony" to dedicate a new house and wish the family well in their new home. The house our team had been working on all week was for a family who lives just on the outskirts of Antigua. I counted about 4 women and a handful of children in the home. Joe gave a touching blessing which was translated into Spanish for the family. The mother of the house told about working at Common Hope to "earn" the home -- it took her many many months to put in the required hours because she has other jobs all day long.
Everyone was teary-eyed. Such a simple but indescribably powerful thing to provide a home.
But, this family`s situation highlighted that the need is for so much more: one of the daughters had hearing disabilities and was no longer in school
kids on the street in the old city
. We ascertained that another family member had taken her hearing aide (for who knows what reason). There were many adult women around, but the presence of adult men was blatantly absent. And, those are the very circumstances that drive Common Hope`s work today. You cannot "just" support childhood education. A child has to be healthy to learn; a family has to have basic necessities to have healthy children; a healthy family cannot exist in an unhealthy community; etc, etc. ________________________________________________
Finally, (you knew this was coming, right?) organizations like Common Hope desperately need more money. They have a great program where you can donate monthly by sponsoring an affiliated child. For $30 or $60 a month, you can help pay for the services that Common Hope provides and establish a relationship with a child and a family here. Or, of course, you can just donate cash too -- that never hurts. Your money will go a long way in Guatemala.
Go to http://www.commonhope.org/ for more info.
Also, I`ve pondered the idea of trying to put together a "vision team" like the one I was part of for a week. It would include coming to Guatemala for a week or more and having a similar experience to what I`ve described above. If you`d be interested in this, let me know.
This is a private blog 
