From Wall Street to Panajachel
Lead Summary
By
Jim Thompson-
Back in Panajachel, Guatemala this week. I have been down here with our church and come down by myself to help build houses for the indigenous poor over a half dozen times in the past.
This time, I have a different sort of group with me – a group from the industry where I have spent my career – the paper industry. This effort was initiated by an industry colleague with whom I have worked for nearly 20 years. He and I met when his company hired me to work with them on financing projects which enabled them to build new facilities in the United States. We have spent a lot of time together in conference rooms with the bankers on Wall Street.
His objective for coming here, besides helping the people, was to learn to lay cement blocks. He is coming along fine. It helps that he speaks fluent Spanish. He is a native Colombian who came to the U.S. to get an engineering education in 1976.
The mission here, Porch de Salomon, continues to grow. It looks like they will build 12 to 14 houses this year, up from an average of about 11 in recent years. They continue to send about 100 kids to school (there is no free education).
The other group that is down here this week is a medical team. Medical teams from the states come regularly.
The house we are working on this week is for a family who thought they could make a better life for themselves in Guatemala City. After struggling at that for several years, they came back to their own village. What is remarkable about this family as compared to the ones we normally work with is that it is intact – it has a father. Most of the time, we are working on homes where the father has left and it is only the mother and children we serve.
Life is very hard here for those at the bottom of the economic ladder – the indigenous Mayans.
The soil is rich but they do not get good seed, so the yield, especially for corn, is very low. When you drive across the Midwestern U.S., you see corn fields with all the stalks the same height and the fields look very uniform. Here, that is not the case. Hybrid corn is not used and the crop is very irregular in height.
In this part of the country, I have never seen a horse or a mule, let alone a tractor. The land is very steep and terraced and is all farmed by hand.
Another family with a house under construction consists of two women with three children. The oldest woman is 23 and her sister is 19. Two of the children are the result of rape. The sisters’ parents are dead and they have no other family. The older sister works and supports them all, grudgingly. She is looking for a husband and if she can be successful in that quest, she will leave.
Prospects are very dark for the younger sister. She was involved in an accident some time ago, and although she has all her limbs and appendages, movement in her arms is limited. This is critical, for this means she cannot make tortillas – an absolute essential skill for a woman and a wife. Hence, she is not a desirable prospect for a wife.
Corn, mentioned above, is the center of the economy. The people eat tortillas for every meal. This is a low-nutrition diet. A recent study on heights of people in the world reported that Guatemalan women are the shortest people in the world, clocking in at an average of 4 feet, 11 inches. This, is of course, due to the poor diets.
So, Porch de Salomon also has programs to help the people get established raising chickens, which are an excellent source of protein, either as meat or eggs. Every group that comes down here hauls large quantities of vitamins, too, for distribution to the folks.
The Porch, as we like to call it, was started in 2005. The great news is this mission continues to grow and expand its ability to serve people here. Besides direct aid, the mission employs about 35 local people now as builders, humanitarian aid workers and so forth. It is making quite an impact in the area.
The group of papermakers, by the way, all tell me they are getting much more out of this than they are putting in. As my colleague mentioned above has said several times, “This is the most fun you can have legally.”
None of them has been on a mission trip before and it sounds like, for all of them, this will not be their last one (and the oldest member of our team is 84).
Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga., and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.
This time, I have a different sort of group with me – a group from the industry where I have spent my career – the paper industry. This effort was initiated by an industry colleague with whom I have worked for nearly 20 years. He and I met when his company hired me to work with them on financing projects which enabled them to build new facilities in the United States. We have spent a lot of time together in conference rooms with the bankers on Wall Street.
His objective for coming here, besides helping the people, was to learn to lay cement blocks. He is coming along fine. It helps that he speaks fluent Spanish. He is a native Colombian who came to the U.S. to get an engineering education in 1976.
The mission here, Porch de Salomon, continues to grow. It looks like they will build 12 to 14 houses this year, up from an average of about 11 in recent years. They continue to send about 100 kids to school (there is no free education).
The other group that is down here this week is a medical team. Medical teams from the states come regularly.
The house we are working on this week is for a family who thought they could make a better life for themselves in Guatemala City. After struggling at that for several years, they came back to their own village. What is remarkable about this family as compared to the ones we normally work with is that it is intact – it has a father. Most of the time, we are working on homes where the father has left and it is only the mother and children we serve.
Life is very hard here for those at the bottom of the economic ladder – the indigenous Mayans.
The soil is rich but they do not get good seed, so the yield, especially for corn, is very low. When you drive across the Midwestern U.S., you see corn fields with all the stalks the same height and the fields look very uniform. Here, that is not the case. Hybrid corn is not used and the crop is very irregular in height.
In this part of the country, I have never seen a horse or a mule, let alone a tractor. The land is very steep and terraced and is all farmed by hand.
Another family with a house under construction consists of two women with three children. The oldest woman is 23 and her sister is 19. Two of the children are the result of rape. The sisters’ parents are dead and they have no other family. The older sister works and supports them all, grudgingly. She is looking for a husband and if she can be successful in that quest, she will leave.
Prospects are very dark for the younger sister. She was involved in an accident some time ago, and although she has all her limbs and appendages, movement in her arms is limited. This is critical, for this means she cannot make tortillas – an absolute essential skill for a woman and a wife. Hence, she is not a desirable prospect for a wife.
Corn, mentioned above, is the center of the economy. The people eat tortillas for every meal. This is a low-nutrition diet. A recent study on heights of people in the world reported that Guatemalan women are the shortest people in the world, clocking in at an average of 4 feet, 11 inches. This, is of course, due to the poor diets.
So, Porch de Salomon also has programs to help the people get established raising chickens, which are an excellent source of protein, either as meat or eggs. Every group that comes down here hauls large quantities of vitamins, too, for distribution to the folks.
The Porch, as we like to call it, was started in 2005. The great news is this mission continues to grow and expand its ability to serve people here. Besides direct aid, the mission employs about 35 local people now as builders, humanitarian aid workers and so forth. It is making quite an impact in the area.
The group of papermakers, by the way, all tell me they are getting much more out of this than they are putting in. As my colleague mentioned above has said several times, “This is the most fun you can have legally.”
None of them has been on a mission trip before and it sounds like, for all of them, this will not be their last one (and the oldest member of our team is 84).
Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga., and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.