Thursday Update--Guatemala Team

This blog was written last night, but it was not until today (Friday) that we got internet access!! All is well!

Greetings from Guatemala!!!!
We are all alive and well. No one is injured.  Yesterday we had a warm welcome from the community. All the kids were watching at us and laughing at us right from the start. We had a ¼ mile trek up the mountain which we had to carry our suitcases and equipment. All of us were out of breath after a few steps up the muddy slopes due to the high elevation (at least that’s our excuse). The Guatemalan men on their “water committee” came and carried two of our bags at a time and had us all amazed and embarrassed. They are a lot smaller than us, but as we found out they are stronger than us. There is quite a language barrier as we have to go through Spanish to Ketchi. They cooked us lunch and killed two of their chickens to feed us. We were very grateful and honored because they share so readily with us. Later they wanted to share their music with us, so a few of the villagers played the Marimbas and drums. Then a few of us danced (mainly because DeeDee pulled us up out of our seats) and some of the women danced with us as well. Laughter is universal, especially when Americans try to dance. Jon Lee, however, whipped out some sweet swing dancing moves and impressed us all. We also had introductions and went around and said our names. We prayed together, and they read some passages out of their Ketchi Bible. It was evident even with the language barrier that we are all brothers and sisters in Christ. Afterwards we did some surveying and ran across a couple issues. Our water site near the school could not be found, so we had to move down the hill a little bit. Nothing a couple of engineers couldn’t figure out. In the evening the men in the village invited us to join in one of their religious ceremonies where they would ask God to bless our work. They lit candles and read the passage of the woman at the well out of their Ketchi Bible. They burned incense and placed the candles around the spring source and prayed about the work we would be doing the next day. We all felt very privileged to witness such a ceremony.
5/14/09
We all had an early day today, breakfast was at 6:30. Promptly afterwards we broke up into teams and went to work. At one source, “site A”, we were able to get the ram pump working, and John did a great job with that! Meanwhile, Steven and his many helpers started on the spring box for the spring near the school. By mid morning we had a nice crowd of Guatemalans watching us crazy gringos trying to split 4 by 4’s. After lunch we flagged out a path for the pipes that will carry the water from site A to a couple level areas where we will put the filters and clean water tanks later on this week. The flags are for the Guatemalans tomorrow to go through the hillside and clear away the bushes and trees to make it easier for us to bury the pipes. Alex and Sam did a great job mixing cement and made a platform for one of the three pillas. The pillas will be used for washing clothes and dishes. Kris and a Guatemalan mixed a nice cement base at the spring near the school, and finished just as it started to rain. The first spring box was finished off, and piping was put in at the school site. Kevin was determined to get a temporary rain water catchment pipe attached to the roof of the school, and with the combined powers of John, Dr. Patterson, and Katie, they were able to get a pvc pipe attached to the edge of the roof right as the afternoon thunderstorm rolled in. The rain was a nice reason to stop our work and soon thereafter some of the guys went and showered in a waterfall down the mountain. Cata and DeeDee cooked us an amazing spaghetti dinner which we all wolfed down. I never knew spaghetti could taste so good. We’ve started to learn a few words in Ketchi thanks to Cata and Heidi. Heidi was able to get them to count to ten in English, and they tried to get Nathan and Heidi to count to ten in Ketchi but it was a lot harder for them to make the Ketchi language sounds. Mateosh means thank you, Shanshakeel means Buenos Dias, Ha means water and Sa means delicious. (The spelling is wrong but that’s what it sounds like.) Sam said Sa Ha and all the villagers laughed at him…I don’t know if it was due to his poor pronunciation or the joke. The kids are so fun, they love having their pictures taken but then they will hunt you down to look at their photograph afterwards. They think it’s hilarious to see themselves on the camera. Around 7:30 pm Jon and Christian came back from their day trip of visiting the nearby villages and seeing their needs. They were trying to get a feel for other nearby communities that could possibly need help in the future. We played some cards and made plans for the next day. We are all excited to sleep, even though we are sleeping on concrete floors. It’s only the beginning of the trip but we got a lot of work done today and hopefully tomorrow will go as smoothly and productive. Yay! <3