I'm starting a blog...

I've decided that I'm going to start to a blog. Before, much earlier in my life, I thought these things were a narcissistic waste of time, however, as some of you know I do write letters and emails to a select few people and those serve as my narcissistic record of my life if I ever want to see how my former self spent his time. I also journal the dirty little things I don't want to tell other people.

I plan on keeping up with those few correspondents. However perhaps those letters will have less biographical content, so much the better as I see it. Also, it seems like a waste to be here in Guatemala and not tell people about my experience if they want to know. I have been keeping a kind of photo blog already on flickr.com, but only pictures and a few lines leave alot to be said. But enough lofty preamble.

A bit about my daily life: I get up at around 7am, however I want to change this due to a recent photograph taken of me with me shirt off. I´ve put on some pounds here and would like to begin my days with a run because I don't really want to change my eating style. I´ve found a new love of food I never had before, perhaps a sign of age or maturity. I'm okay with either, but not with the fat.

Then I go have breakfast in a house a couple blocks up the mountain with Intervida one of the NGO's I work with here. However they are having some financial difficulties right now because the administration in Spain stole a bunch of money. Currently they have half the budget they had last year. So they have decided to cut half the personal and projects they have. This is huge for Guatemala, and I don't know how many other countries b/c almost all the schools here were built by or in conjunction with Intervida. They provide huge support to the rural subsistence farmer here. There methods may not be as sustainable as they could be, but perhaps this drastic change in funding will promote change in that area.

After breakfast I go to either Intervida or ADICTA, the NGO here in Tejutla that I work with. They too are also having financial problems. I work with them three days a week, miércoles a viernes. It's weird to explain all this basic information in inglés. I've been telling it to everyone in Spanish the last three months or so. They only have one project so far this year with Veterinarians without Borders. It's a small project with micro loans for buying animals: cows, goats, maybe chickens too. I think that they are promoting "criollo" animals which is a good thing. "Criollo" means local. So they are more resistant to diseases but don't produce as much milk or and their the meat isn't as tender. The same goes for plants.

So we go out to "aldeas" and meet with men’s and women’s groups and when I first arrived here I would be introduced by my coworker, either Juan Carlos (Intervida) or Virginia (ADICTA) and then I would stand up introduce myself saying many of the same things b/c that's about all I could say at the time. Then after that I just tried to understand everything I could.
However, more recently I've been giving a "charla" about composting. That's my project here: Organic Farming. The goal is to start a bunch of family vegetable gardens so that the family can supplement their diet of chicken flavored noodles and tortillas and sometimes "tortrix" the junk food of choice here with vegetables. Malnutrition is a huge problem here. I really like the project for it's sustainability. The people only have to buy seeds which are cheap and fairly accessible here.

I have also been selling seeds in small quantities to the people in the groups. I buy them by the pound and then divide them into little baggies I can sell for one quetzal. At first I was selling what I could in "bolsitas" for 50 centavos but the people would almost always take two of the same thing for one quetzal! The idea was that they could diversify their garden without spending more than three quetzales, but it was working and costing me alot of time...currently I'm selling both sizes. (Right: One onza bolsas)

Well, that's probably too much to hold the attention of my future readership. So just end by saying I just bought some little computer speakers to hook up to my iPod, and I love them, all 30 little Watts and "bass you can feel" the box says in English, French and, of course, Spanish.