guatemala3

Yesterday we worked for half the day, and both sites are nearly half completed with foundations and up to the windows of the houses. We then had lunch with our families, with many tears over how quickly people can become attached and mean something to one another. We then had an official "despedida" or goodbye party, with both families, again more speaches and a lot of emotion.

After that, we went to a house dedication for another family. It was great to see a house that was completed, especially for the students. The National Board for Habitat was there, as well as Luis, the Director of HG. I met several of the board members, including the current president and the founder of HG, which was terrific. Linfield College was mentioned several times, and the President of the Board mentioned how impressive it was to have these students working on their spring break. They also saw how our students immediately started playing with the kids, including a pick up game of soccer on a dusty field nearby, before things got going. Linfield students are amazing, as they generally are very positive and willing to go with the flow of things--very little happens on schedule here, but they deal with it well.

We are currently in Antigua for a bit of an afternoon off. We have been to markets and bought coffee, and relaxed a bit. We will have our last dinner together tonight, and then we fly out at noon tomorrow.

guatemala habitat 2 posting

We have literally had about ten minutes per day for down time, so it has been hard to get here, much less possible to get any pictures up.

So far, things have gone well. The group is working hard, and we are now laying a lot of cement block. I have moved back and forth according to the need at the site, so that I could mix cement and also be able to move mountains of cement block. good times. The families are great, and very appreciative. We had a birthday and they brought donuts, something to drink and sang happy birthday for Sam.

Last night we had a guy who fought for 13 years in the Guatemala war, as a guerrilla, talk to the group. It was very powerful, as he joined at the age of 12, after his father was kidnapped and subsequently killed by the Guatemalan military. He talked about the physical and psychological scars, and despite this, managed to introduce some humor into it. He was also was very frank about the U.S. involvment in the wars and spoke specifically of the U.S. green berets and other special forces that he would regularly see directing the massacres at villages, and also responsible for the training of their counter-insurgency groups. Hard to hear at times.

Tonight I am talking with Luis (head of Habitat Guatemala) about possibly helping with a research project that they need done. Might involve HAVING to fly back here a couple of times--what a bummer that would be...

Tomorrow we head to Momostenango to see Thelma and Luis, the weavers, and that will be fun. We will work half a day, which I think will be a welcome respite after two full 8 hour days.

Habitat Guatemala

We made it to Quetzaltenango after missing the flight out of Houston. We were booked on a very tight layover, and then the plane was late out of Houston to Portland, which meant there was no way to make it back to Houston for the Guatemala flight. We arrived here on Friday then, and drove directly up to Quetzaltenango, or Xela, as it is known here. We made it in time for an orientation and to meet the two young families for whom we are building in Colonia Esperanza.

Saturday we have had a very full day. We were up early for breakfast, and went out and worked half a day at our sites. We dropped one group off, their foundation is poured and building is beginning. Our other site was dug out and set up, but we poured the foundation this morning which meant a lot of cement mixing, cement hauling, and then we moved about 400 concrete blocks down the hill.

We returned for lunch, and then went to the hotsprings near Zunil to soak our wimpy American muscles and bones. Tonight we have found out that there is a soccer match, so we are going to that. Tomorrow we head to the Chichicastenango market, before a long week of work.

One note-you may have heard of the kidnapping of 11 students in Guatemala City. Habitat folks are quite upset, as they felt that the group should not have gone to that region, and then on top of that were traveling well after dark. We have been fine, no problems traveling, and no security issues that we feel at the moment. There are also some conflicting stories on how the events took place. One issue that is a frustration of how anything outside of the U.S. and Europe seems to be "barbarous" and somehow too wild for members of civil countries to travel. While there are never any guarantees, it is important to remember that taking all of the possible precautions one can is key. We hope those kids are fine, of course but also feel that the story and the parental reaction seems to be a bit over the top.

It was the economy, stupid...

Once again, the idea that the Republican "strategery" is to criticize the new president for not understanding economic principles demonstrates the perils of "faith-based" economic ideology, as opposed to having any semblance of understanding how the system works. In part, I would argue, the problem is not so much the issue of economic theory, but a fundamental disconnect from having to deal with the consequences of their policies in any substantive way. It is possible to be faithful to this economic ideology (rather than understanding economic principles) because people like JIm Boehner and Newt Gingrich do not suffer at the hands of their failure.

Among the two greatest failures of the RNC over the last twenty years are George W. Bush and Newt Gingrich. The former now seems like a distant memory, exiting to Dallas with barely an afterthought from his own party. One would not have known that the RNC worked in tandem with GWB over the past eight years helping pass the finishing touches on an economy that is now devastating the U.S. and creating tent cities. Gingrich fell out of power long enough ago that he can apparently rise out of the ashes to reaffirm conservative economic ideas, such as small government and a faux free-market ideology that is actually no such thing in their application. Thus, we hear arguments that certain businesses cannot fail, while "greedy" individuals who have too large of a mortgage are treated as if they have sinned mightily.

Among other things, there is a major concern about the plans for us to re-start the economy. The first is that there seems to be no accountability for those who occupy the upper echelon of the system, be they the de-regulators in congress or the corporate hierarchy that took advantage. It is not economic policy, but a political spin of moralization that creates low-level economic sinners and leaving the policy saints in the clear to benefit. In the case of the RNC, they are arguing that somehow they deserve to be architects of future policies to combat the very disaster they constructed. In the case of the corporate elites, they seem prepared to buckle down and do the work of creating jobs for the rest of us, after having been greedy at a rate one thousand times over that of the average home buyer. The same people who convinced the average person to buy a home beyond their means, because they "qualified" for it, are doing another sales job on us.

It should be interesting to see what new products they will now produce for us, so that we can later be blamed for our greediness... We can best help them out by asking for less government oversight, socializing banks but not healthcare or home loans, cutting education, ending pork-barrel spending (because they obviously did so during the past 8 years), and btw, the president needs to be more positive. It is not polite to be negative about receiving a gift from someone, even if you've been re-gifted a Depression economy.