Guatemala, Nov '09 from Roy

Uneventful leaving from Denver on Friday the 13th for Guatemala City. We arrived in the evening and stayed in the city rather than going directly to San Lucus Tolimo. Saturday morning we had a fantastic discussion with Karen. Karen Weisbart was with an international oganization called NISGU, locally called Acoguate, which provides international observation of events; specifically accompanying targeted people. Our group had spent several weeks reading and discussing Rigabertu Menchu´s book prior to coming and having Karen paint a picture of the current political situation in Guatemala was super informative.


We left Guatemala City and arrived in a DRY! San Lucas on Saturday afternoon. Those who came last year will understand our excitment, it was DRY! Filipe´s place is doing well and everyone is there. We spent Saturday afternoon walking around Pampojilla and saw several of the estufas (stoves) we built last year. Rosa is still Rosa. She met us and walked along,catching up on things.


On Sunday we met with Dennis Evans of San Lucus Tolimon Scholars and met the children we have been sponsoring in school. They are so wonderful. The kids talked about their favoraite classes and we took pictures. They are all off school now so they can pick coffee. School vacation is not a vacation for them. They all go to the fincas (large plantations) and earn a couple of dollars a day picking coffee beans. The boys were proud to say they could pick 100 to 150 pounds a day. Kids here can go to school for free through the sixth grade. After that they have to pay. Denis has been helping serious students go on to junior high and then senior high school. Currently, he is helping around five hundred students. We pay $200 a year to send a student to school. Most of these kids come from families where the parents have, at most, a third grade education, most are illiterate. Many families are living on 40 or 50 dollars a month during the non-harvest season and a lot of our students come from families with 12-13 children. It´s a phenominal story, what´s going on down here.


Got to go. I´ll send pictures as soon as I can...........


Roy McCutchen