One Final Delivery - Something a Little More Concrete

Truck delivering our blocks

This week (7th December) marked one month on from when it all happened. On Tuesday the 4^th we reached the £1500 JustGiving online target and as of today (the 8th) our estimated total altogether is £1796 (give or take, with Gift Aid still yet to be finalised) - as always thanks so much to everyone who has helped us to keep going for so long, your support has been amazing! This will be my last entry so thanks as well for sticking with me, I hope it has been an interesting read so far!

Since the deliveries last week it has mainly been a waiting game. Donations have still been slowly coming in, which is more than ever expected, but we needed to wait until we had enough before making our final donation run. As teaming up with the organisation ‘Mujeres Trabajan Unidas’ last time was such a success and they are such an organised friendly bunch, we decided to continue joining forces and using their local knowledge to reach more families off the beaten track.

With a month now behind us we decided that we wanted to look in providing longer term relief. This is still only possible on a small scale, but with people’s priorities shifting to re-building and repairing, the provision of fairly expensive building materials allows families to continue using their incomes as they normally would. In this way we are only able to reach a small number of families, but the impact to their lives is greater than a bag of food which would only last a week or two. As has been so often repeated over the last few weeks all you can do is take things ‘poco a poco’ little by little and whether it is a bag of food or a pile of blocks it is still a start.

The Guatemalan government have also now started prioritising the rebuild effort. They have maximised the demolition process and are now providing low interest loans to rebuild homes. This is very welcome to many, however as we heard from one of the families we visited yesterday, the problem is that there is criteria as to how damaged your house is, which you have to meet before the government will provide help. In addition to this the replacement houses built by the government are of a standard size and therefore you may end up with a much smaller home.

MTU’s programme’s are entirely funded by the American Organisation of the same name – ‘Women Work Together’(WWT), although they are still separate charities. When we arrived at the office on Thursday morning Judith (the founder and co-ordinator of MTU) surprised us with the news that the US organisation had provided a sizeable amount to put towards the effort.

Sylvia is the administrator and liaison between the two organisations and she came along to oversee the spending of WWT’s money and help with the buying of goods. With both of our amounts combined we were able to divide the pot between 19 families in total. Our Q10,000 or £830 that we had available would be able to provide building materials for 11 of the families.

At the construction centre buying Corrugated Steel

As they already had a list of affected families that they work with in the department of San Pedro, the ladies rang round each of the families in turn and asked what would be most useful to them. This was important as there would be little point in turning up with materials that the families can’t make use of. Five families preferred to have corrugated steel sheets, which are widely used across Guatemala and extremely versatile. Six families decided concrete blocks would be of more use. So off we went to go shopping!

Q10,000 bought us 1500 concrete building blocks and 55 steel sheets in total. This was divided up as 250 blocks per family or 11 sheets, Q1000 or approximately £79 spent per family. Again, not a huge amount, but enough to make a start with and enough to lift people’s spirits.

Here are a few of the places we visited, pictures are always more informative...

This is the home of Osveli Estanislao Gonzalez Bautista, an 86 year old gentleman who has lived in the same house all his life. He told us he did not want to demolish his entire home as only parts were damaged and these could be repaired, for this there is no government help. From the outside it looks like it escaped the worst...

Inside the walls were rendered unsafe and had to be removed. This is their kitchen, already in the process of being rebuilt using our blocks! Evidence of us actually making a difference -moments like this make it all worthwhile! Here 15 or so blocks have already been used, shows that 250 blocks can go a long way to making somewhere safe again.

And more blocks!

At Osveli's House. From left: Sylvia, Gem, Veronica, Krystal, Osveli, Me, Blocks

This is the home of Minsi Lili Garcia Fuentes (in the red jumper). In the background is a giant rock which came loose in the earthquake and fell down the mountain, smashing into their home. They told us the noise of the crash was terrifying and are still scared of further rockfalls. 

We returned the following day whilst they were in the process of blowing up the giant rock to be able to shift it and start work on the house...this is a video of the explosion.

This is it post-explosion. 

The rock itself left a trail of devastation in its path. Here is a house we visited further up the moutain, the home of Lucero Augustina Garcia Morales. This had previously been a living room. No one was injured in either of the families, luckily everyone was outside at the time.

Judith from MTU (left) with Lucero, one of the girls they work with and her mum

Deep in conversation with Judith about the future of Mujeres Trabajan Unidas over a glass of juice. After the funding runs out this year they may not be able to continue their projects with the young women of San Pedro. Time to get on the grant research....

Yes...more blocks - they never get old. 

This is one of the homes that requested the corrugated steel, as there is little hope of rebuilding this entire house in the near future, the steel is more useful as temporary walls or roofing. This space has already been made use of...

Another home marked for government demolition. This whole building is unstable and with each aftershock the family becomes more worried. We gave blocks to this family and although they won't make a dent in this rebuild and will probably be sat around for a good while, it is still 250 less blocks that the family have to buy when the time comes. 

Doña Gilda who lives in the house above

So it has come to the end. With all the money you gave we were able to reach 96 families in total, giving:

32 Blankets

500 Nappies

44 Gallons of Water

4 Water Filters

15 Giant Bags of Food

90 Half-sized Bags of Food

55 Corrugated Steel Sheet

1500 Concrete Building Blocks

Compared to what is needed here, this in reality does not go far, but to bring a bit of relief to even a few I believe is worth it. In truth what I have got out of this experience is ten times more than we put in. I have visited places that otherwise I would never had been and experienced the real Guatemala, been welcomed into peoples homes and felt real generosity. 

For one more time I thank all my family, friends, colleagues, friends of friends and complete strangers that have had faith in what we have been doing! It means so much! I leave you with a picture of the beautiful Guatemalan Highlands that I have come to love so much! 

Over and Out!

Week Three: All About The Girl Power

This week we teamed up with the grassroots organisation ‘Mujeres Trabajan Unidas’(MTU) (Women Work Together)! With three members of their team: Judith the co-ordinator; Samai and Alejandra the assistants; Gem; Kystal from Community Enterprise Solutions and me...the six of us lived up to the name!  With their local knowledge and our ever growing pot of funds we were able to reach several small communities that have not yet received any assistance or attention.

With all the governmental and international aid being directed to the populated centres of San Marcos and San Pedro towns, our aim has always been to target the forgotten places, the communities where there are not enough families for it to be ‘viable’ for larger agencies to reach or that simply are not yet known of.  As we travel to more sites the extent and severity of the problem becomes increasingly apparent.

The following article describes the situation particularly well and is really worth a read if you are interested...this is widespread, not only in the department of San Marcos but all of the 8 affected departments from the highlands to the coastal regions of Guatemala.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/rights/humanitarian-crisis-after-guatemalas-earthquake

Armed with our takings from the fundraiser and your donations from last week (Q3500) we made our way to San Pedro town first thing on Monday morning. This is where the office of Mujeres Trabajan Unidas is based. There we met with Judith Castañón the co-ordinator, an amazing woman who has endless energy and tremendous passion for the projects they run.

They are involved in three main projects: Las Hermanitas (Little Sisters); La Vida de mi Mama (My Mother’s Life Story) and Hora de Lectura Familiar (Family Reading Hour). All of these are designed to promote education, encouraging girls to stay in school, enforce the family bond and develop the value of literacy.

MTU works with mothers and daughters in 15 rural areas of San Pedro, these are shown by the map below. These areas are largely indigenous communities where daughters are needed to either work in the fields or stay and help at home. Following the earthquake, the small aldeas and caserios (villages and hamlets) of the San Pedro area, like so many, did not escape the destruction.  Before we arrived an assessment had already been carried out of the homes in each of the places they work. This detailed the number of members in the family, what the extent of the damage was and where help was needed the most. This level of organisation fills us with confidence!

A serious amount of corn

Monday morning was dedicated to a slightly different variety of retail therapy; we split into teams of two and headed off to get price comparisons on corn, beans, rice, powdered milk, sugar, oats and oil. This is not the most enjoyable part of the process, but at least with a local doing the bargaining it took off the pressure of trying not to get ripped off. Usually the market vendors immediately start seeing pound (or quetzal) signs as soon as a young female foreigner walks up to the stall.

Monday afternoon was dedicated to bagging. The big sacks of corn, rice, beans and oats were weighed and divided up into smaller bags. With the office turned into a store cupboard and Judith arranging transport for the next morning we headed back to Xela for the night.

Packing the bags!

 We have now upgraded to two pick-up trucks full of provisions! Tuesday morning we split up into two teams to cover as much ground as possible over the day. Team 1: Gem, Krystal and Alejandra; Team 2: Judith, Samai and me.

Team Yellow Pick-up with Judith and our Driver

Team Blue Pick-up

Gem and co headed up north to a caserio called Santa Teresa (shown on the map in top right corner).

Three out of nine daughters in this family, hopefully this food and water will help a little bit.

I headed further south to an Aldea called Corral Grande and another small community called Chim. Again we were off-road for the majority of the journey. This is a beautiful part of Guatemala with amazing views, such a stark contrast to arriving at the communities and seeing the destruction and heaps of rubble.

In Corral Grande we went to each family individually, meeting many of the girls that the organisation works with. Here we gave 8 families enough food to last at least a few weeks if not more. 

Photo from MTU

On the left is Maritza Lisbeth Valdez Godínez, who lived with her mum and dad in Corral Grande. After her house was rendered uninhabitable they had to move to live with relatives. The house has now had to be completely demolished (below). The problem is finding the money for re-construction which takes away from the amount available for food and other provisions.  

Maritza's House

Chim was a very small community with only two or three families here. These were the kindest and most welcoming people I have yet to meet on our trips ( I realise this keeps happening each time!). We dropped off bags of food and clothes, some of the girls had a field day at this point, rummaging through the bags to see what new things they could find! 

One of the families invited us to eat lunch, we said no, not wanting to take up precious supplies, but they plated up some rice, guacamole and tortillas and told us to sit down and eat all the same! The generosity was amazing; they even gave us some avocados to take home. These are people with next to nothing with their homes crumbling around them and yet the hospitality was unlike anything I have ever experienced and I continue to feel privileged.

As of today (30th November 2012) we have reached a total of £1356.30 so thanks to everyone! We are so close to our target of £1500, please help us get there! I know December isn’t the best month to be asking but even a fiver goes such a long way here. The next one is likely to be our last bulk buy, so we want to make it as big as possible! After that I promise to shush!

For all the photos so far:

https://picasaweb.google.com/106018520631272812546/GuatemalaEarthquakeNovember2012

For one very last time here is my fundraising link, just one little click! http://www.justgiving.com/guatemalaearthquakeappeal

Turning Tequila into Comida!

Saturday 24^th November

In the day: 13 families, 2 communities, 26 bags of food, 39 gallons of water, 4 water filters, 15 blankets and 20 bags of nappies

In the night: 1 fundraiser, 130 guests, Q15 entry, Q5 shots, Q2000.05 raised in total!

Setting of at 6.30am we made our way to the Xela bus terminal, where we met up with Krystal from Community Enterprise Solutions, one of the organisations we have teamed up with here. The camioneta (chicken bus) to reach San Marcos takes about an hour and a half if you make it the whole way. About 15 minutes away from our destination we ground to a halt and the engine refused to allow us to go any further. So off we hopped and found a taxi to take us the rest of the way. At our destination we met up again with Juan Carlos Morales and Erick Navarro who had helped us with the previous delivery. Our left over supplies from Wednesday had been left in the INTECAP office in San Marcos to save us the cost of hiring a vehicle to transport it from Xela. So again we loaded up the pick-up truck provided by Erick, made a quick pitstop to purchase another 24 gallons of water and headed off to the Municipality of San Rafael Pie de la Cuesta.

Juan Carlos's Office in San Marcos (Grupos Gestores)

One of the products that Community Enterprise Solutions trains local entrepreneurs to sell is water purifiers and as we were headed specifically to two villages with water problems this was a brilliant opportunity to take advantage of. Each water purifier cost Q170 at a discounted price (about £13.40) and lasts for a year before changing the filter at a cost of Q100 (£7.90). There was enough stock in Xela for us to buy two for each village, which should in the long term save a reasonable amount of money from not buying packaged drinking water. Rebuilding homes over the coming months will now be the priority, and even saving a little money over a long period means it can be put towards this instead.  

Our plan was to visit an village called Chayen with an adjoining caserio called Las Palmas, but on arrival into San Rafael town (just before reaching the locations) we were greeted by a church leader who insisted we visit two families living on a hill in damaged homes, in need of supplies. This is another town where little government or organisational aid has been received, however not being able to help on a wide scale we need to prioritise what we have on places where it will have an impact, as difficult as it is to make the decision.  

After a lot of discussion, lists of families being produced, new names of affected villages being brought up and all the while being very aware of the time we agreed to continue on to Chayen.

One of the lists produced was for a village about a 20 minute walk up from Chayen called Nueva Libertad. In this community there are 6 families who at present have no water supply. Each community is provided with water through a pipe at certain hours of the day which fills up a concrete storage tank. Following the earthquake many of these pipes suffered damage and water supplies to certain areas have been cut off, as in this case. The majority of the water we brought with us was distributed to this small community along with two water filters for the future, blankets and food for each of the families living there. Hopefully this water will last until the pipes can be repaired.

Members of the Nueva Libertad community with boxes of water

In Chayen the secondary school is being used as a shelter, temporarily housing 7 families. There are a total of 40 people living in one room, with not even enough beds for each family to have one. Some are sleeping on a sponge layer and many of the parents on a thin layer of cardboard. 

Despite this, the community here was one of the most friendliest and welcoming we have been to, one of the last things I expected to be doing was learning Arabic from a woman called Maria who had learnt it from a friend in America!

One of the women wanted us to come and see her house up the hill and sometimes it can feel too invasive to be entering homes especially when they have been so badly damaged. However, at the same time to be warmly invited into a family’s home at such a difficult time and to be able to see a glimpse of real Guatemalan life is a great privilege.

The house itself contained 3 beds where 7 members of the family sleep, the walls had crumbled and the roof was completely unstable. This is why they have had to relocate to the shelter. Another women from the community accompanied us and became teary when looking at the destruction; it was a very sad moment. Had the earthquake happened at night with everyone asleep in their beds, it could have been a very different story.

Back at the shelter we offloaded the remaining 20 bags of food, 9 blankets which hopefully will be a bit more comfortable than cardboard (at least in this area it is not too cold at night) and the remaining water and nappies. At this point Krystal explained to a few people how to use the water purifiers. When the school is finally returned to its original purpose and people return to their homes (who knows when this will be), the filters can remain there and provide the children easy access to drinking water.

After spending a few hours in the village we said our goodbyes and headed back to San Rafael for a quick lunch. We made it back to San Marcos at about 4pm, still an hour an a half away from Xela. With only a few hours to go until we needed to prepare for the fundraising event in the evening we hoped for a swift getaway! Naturally the chicken bus waited around for about 40 minutes for it to fill up (here there is no such thing as a full bus, even with 3 people to a seat, sometimes 4, and the rest crammed into the isle there is always room for one more). We eventually arrived back home with an hour to go. Enough time for a shower and to nip to the shop to buy limes – the key to a successful evening when there is tequila involved.

The fundraising party at ‘Pool and Beer’ went really really well, again better than I could have imagined. So many people came and showed their support, drank vast quantities of cheap shots (with not too much persuasion) and donated generously for crispy cakes on the way out! So thank you to everyone! Our final profit from the night was Q2000.05 which to put it into perspective, is enough to buy bags of food for 30 families.  Also thank you to Joel the owner for letting us have the place for free and for helping us out throughout the night! Finally crawled into bed at a ridiculous time in the morning after a very long but productive day.

 

So aims for the week – Monday tomorrow, we will go to San Pedro to meet up with another contact who works with local women’s groups in the area. We plan to do all the shopping in San Pedro, leave the provisions there and return on the bus on Tuesday to distribute. Will let you know how it goes :)

Week Two: Four NGO's are better than One...

I would like to start of this entry just by saying thank you to everyone who has donated money, shared our link to friends or even just asked how it’s going here over the last week and a half (the last bit is every bit as important!). It sounds cliché but we really wouldn't be able to be doing this without all of your support. This week we reached our £1000 donation mark, which is a massive amount that we can do a lot with! While I am on the subject I have also been really surprised by all the people that don’t know us, have never met us and have put their faith in us and donated money to our appeal, we really appreciate this!

This week I have learnt that, like so many things in life, if you have a plan of action it needs to be more like a vague outline of action...and even that will most likely end up being the opposite of what you initially intended.

Our last donation delivery to the village of Las Lomas went better than we could have ever imagined for a first run and although this raised our spirits and motivated us to really get going, it may also have given us slightly false expectations. However, nothing easy is every really worth doing so onwards we plod.

Since we last spoke:

Last Friday I received a call from Cesar the newspaper reporter who had come with us on the donation run the previous Wednesday. He wanted to ask a few more questions about what we were doing and our organisation. On the Saturday we found ourselves in a small article in the local section of a national newspaper, the ‘El Quetzalteco’, as a ‘symbol of friendship and support from England’, very happy to be this! Again, on Tuesday of this week, I received another telephone call from Cesar informing us that the newspaper office have now stopped taking donations from the local public and would they be able to send any other donations our way to distribute on our delivery trips. It is a shame that this was so short-lived, but happy if we can provide our service to keep the in-kind donations coming in from people around Xela.  

In order to get our goods to the best places we are relying on local information and as a result are working with a couple of different organisations here as of this week. We have now teamed up with Krystal Werner who works for Community Enterprise Solutions. The organisation works to support self-sustaining local businesses and particularly works with a number of families in rural areas of the San Marcos Department (the worst affected).

Through Krystal we were introduced to Juan Carlos Morales García who works for Red Nacional de Grupos Gestores and Erick Navarro who works for INTECAP (Instituto Tecnico de Capacitacion y Productividad), both capacity building national organisations that promote initiatives for local and regional economic development.

Yesterday, the 21st November, we set off with Juan Carlos and Erick to head to the Municipality of Tejutla, within the Department of San Marcos. Happy to report we have now upgraded from a 4x4 to a pick-up truck, with more bags, blankets and boxes of water. After a quick show and tell session at the INTECAP offices in Xela we were on our way. We arrived at the rather grand looking Government Buildings in the town of Tejutla, where we were now introduced to Marco Aurelio Paz a senior official at the council and shown into a room with a number of other council officials, and a member from COE (Centro de Operaciones de Emergencia), in charge of overseeing the organisations of shelters in Tejulta (at this point slightly regretting the multi-coloured shoelaces in my walking boots and general looking like I have just come through a hedge backwards). 

The building itself is over 100 years old and had withstood most of the earthquake damage, escaping with a few minor cracks.Marco Paz explained to us the situation in Tejutla. There are 151 houses in total that have been completely destroyed. There are three temporary shelters for families that have lost their home or been evacuated, however the majority are living with neighbours or unofficial shelters near their homes to look after what possessions they have left. 548 children and 271 adults in total are living in shelters or with neighbours.

The map below indicates affected towns and villages, with red being the most severe. This time around we took a different approach to our delivery of donations. Rather than travelling to one severely affected village and dropping off all of our provisions; we made our way between a number of smaller settlements with varying levels of need. However, this brought with it a number of problems.

Map of affected areas in Tejutla

Setting off from Tejutla centre we first reached Caserio (small village or hamlet) Los Solices. Again taking a steep dirt track off the road we made our way to a small part of the village where 7 families were living in the hills. We were shown around the houses here and the damage was minimal, with a few cracks in the walls (not dissimilar to the giant crack in the wall above my bed). These were farming families living off the land and food shortage was not a major problem; what would have been more beneficial is help with making their houses safe and we are not architects. However having been shown up to this village it was not an option to leave without offering a bag of food to each of the 7 families.  Although they were thankful to us and happy to receive nappies for the three babies living there, having seen the severe situations that other families are living it was a difficult call to make.

We continued on to another Caserio called La Demogracia. Here we were shown to a family home that no longer existed; all that was left was the foundations. The pictures here show where the home originally stood and the small room that now houses the 5 family members (who all sleep in one double bed) and all of the possessions. A few minutes further down the road and we found a house with only a chimney left of what once was a kitchen. These families legitimately needed all the help they could get and we were happy to off-load bags of food, water and blankets.

Family Room

Room with 5 people sleeping in one double bed

The foundations of the original house

The last Aldea (village) we visited was called Esquipulas. At this point we still had the majority of our donations in the pick-up and time was pressing on. We scrambled up a steep hill and reached the top to be shown another two houses with a few cracks. In one of the houses I also noticed that the Red Cross had already been as a box of bottled water was sat in the corner. Here there were 12 families in the community and a senior member of the community told us it was necessary to give to each of these families to avoid conflict (of course). This is a perfectly valid point with such few people living here, but again it was not the best use of our donations.  

Feeling disheartened and 24 bags down we set off back to San Marcos town, to the office of Juan Carlos to re-group. Driving through San Marcos again put the day into perspective. With the majority of houses marked for demolition in the process of being demolished there were gaps in the rows of shops and buildings; heavy machinery and piles of rubble everywhere. The air was a thick haze from the dust being blown around and when we arrived even our donations were covered in a layer of the stuff. Even the building adjoining the office was in the process of being demolished. 

We sat down and discussed the day and Juan Carlos agreed it was less than what he himself had hoped to achieve. He made a number of calls and spoke to a planning officer from San Marcos with more information about the local area and we were able to make a decision based on this. Although it was a disappointing day in general, we have made some good contacts, been able to share resources, costs and ideas. 

So the vague outline of action, now for Saturday morning, is to head a village called Chayen where there are reports of a real food and drinking water shortage. At present they are using water taken from the river which is contaminated and not safe for drinking. We hope to be able to take advantage of our partnership with Community Enterprise Solutions who as part of their business initiatives promote the use of water filters. If we can get some of these to the main focal points in the village, for example the school and community centre in addition to supplies of bottled drinking water this would be much more beneficial in the long run as they last for a year.

In other news....here in Xela fundraising is in full flow. We have a fundraiser on Saturday. If you are in Xela and reading this it is at Pool and Beer and there will be free vodka jelly and large amounts of ridiculously cheap tequila...you know you want to! We have also started a donation collection of food, clothes, blankets e.t.c at the local Spanish Schools, we will be round to collect on Friday, or you can find us at Escuela Miguel de Cervantes (when we are not hounding local market stall owners or ruining perfectly good cars).

Thanks also to everyone who helped us with the packing of bags this week...the production line we had going on was definitely worth it for the comic value! Special thanks to llsy for putting up with us taking up the hallway and generally getting in the way all the time :)

So Saturday is our next big day, up at 6.30am for the donation run and fundraising party from 8pm till 1am – I promise to update you all with how both of these go!

Thank you again for reading!

http://www.justgiving.com/GuatemalaEarthquakeAppeal