Stove Project San Pedro: Second day of school!

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Second day of school!

We planned to visit the first day..but were told the first day was cleaning day! Imagine your first day back is cleaning the school and the grounds! So the second day was actually the first day of classes. This was a time to for Jutta to meet with each of the teachers and see what the government has provided and NOT provided and what is critical to get for the school to run properly. Well, as we expected, they received only 2 jars of glue for the whole school and no books. But, there were 70 children registered and happy to be there! And more than happy to see Jutta! When you arrive you get so many bodies thrown on you and more kisses than you count. It make me happy to see children I remember from last year...I can imagine how Jutta must feel knowing these families and there situations for more than 5 years now. We had a great visit on the first day of classes.....Jutta has her laundry list of all the basic needs and there is no doubt in mind mind.....she will have them provided in no time.

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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.