Stove Project San Pedro: The first meeting

Monday, January 21, 2008

The first meeting

Sorry for the delay, spotty internet and lack of free time has made a delay in posting. We held the meeting at the Bella Vista school. to explain the process and obligations of each family to that has been chosen. At leat one person form each family was required to attend. Elias, (a leader of the village) has been a huge help in this process. Here are 2 pictures. One of Elias and his daughter Brenda and one of entire group.

Elias explained the date of arrival of the stoves and the date of instruction each family needs to receive in order to get a stove. He also explained each family is responsible for purchasing and obtaining the 11 cement bricks needed as a foundation for the stove. This way a small but obtainable part of the stove is paid for by each family. There was no doubt that everyone in attendance realized how important getting a stove was and they were very thankful.

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A bit about the village,lake,people,culture and the area

At the southern edge of the broad highland belt that runs through Guatemala, captured in a mountain basin commanded by three towering volcanoes, lies Lake Atitlán. A score of Indian settlements, dwarfed by the mountain backdrop, lie scattered around the twisting shores of the 1ake which measures twelve miles long and half as wide. Like the million and a half Indians that make up half of Guatemala's present population, the residents of the Lake Atitlán basin speak dialects of the Maya-Quiche linguistic stock, akin to the language once spoken by the builders of the fabled Maya Empire of lowland Guatemala and Yucatan. The women weave on backstrap looms, the men cultivate corn on mountain slopes and valley plots, and the people of different villages exchange goods in open markets.
The villages surrounding the lake differ from one another in size, specialized crops, and level of wealth. Each has its characteristic costume, its peculiar dialect, and its distinctive customs, despite centuries of cross contact. Each community has repatterned its twin heritage of original Indian and introduced Spanish traditions into a way of life as distinctive from the others as are the personalities of different individuals. Every village may be said to have its own culture. Reliant on spoken rather than written tradition, yet increasingly subject to city ways, these peasant communities combine primitive and civilized features.
San Pedro la Laguna, has a cluster of some five hundred adobe houses compactly grouped in blocks around a central square. With a population of 2400, the village is third largest of the lake settlements and occupies a terrace more than a hundred feet above the water at the base of an inactive volcano whose steep sides form part of the agricultural hinterland. Situated about 5,000 feet above sea level, the village enjoys a temperate climate, the annual cycle consisting of a wet and dry season of about equal duration.
No roads connect San Pedro with other villages. The people travel on foot and occasionally on horseback along narrow paths winding around precipitous hillsides.