Back in Chamelco........finally

Does anyone else hate airports as much as I do? We were suppose to leave Wednesday night, but after a 6 hour delay there was no way to make our connecting flight. So we quickly called our 2 airline carriers to change our tickets, which had to be successfully done within an hour or repurchasing tickets would have been neccesary. Then we learn we will leave Missoula Friday morning and have to hang out in Las Vegas until Saturday night. Bummer.
We did make the most out of this unexpected time in Vegas and enjoyed spending some much needed ¨us¨ time together after our packed 4 weeks in Montana. We think the worst is behind us and only smooth sailing from here on out until at check-in in Vegas we find out we can't board until we purchase return tickets since we don't have our work visas yet (after 12 months of waiting) but only tourist visas. So once again the race was on and there we were trying to buy return tickets within the hour and making sure we could get them credited to our account when we cancel them. After that near panic attack was subdued we arrived in Detroit at 1 a.m. and had to spend the night in the terminal since we had to be back at 4 a.m. for check-in. I slept only about an hour when I overheard some disgruntled airport workers discussing the ¨campers¨ behind their work station. Oops. Due to that one delay in Missoula and switching our flights we flew from Missoula to Vegas to Detroit to Fort Lauderdale to Guatemala City. Yikes. Why we had to fly to Detroit I have no idea.

I successfully accomplished two things from my ¨top 10 least favorite things to do¨ list. First was sleeping in an airport and the second was throwing up in a confined space. There I was head hung over my barf bag as we landed in Guatemala City. How humiliating.

Then I had to board a bus for a 5 hour twisting, turning road. 58 hours after we left Missoula we arrived home and were able to reunite with our o-so-loved puppy, Scout.








As you can tell by the pictures we had a great 4 weeks with friends and family.

Montana Bound

We will be heading to Montana for the first time in 14 months. Woohoo! Don´t expect any blog posts in July. We are looking forward to seeing everyone and we´ve missed good ole Montana too. The majority of our time will be spent with family and since we have 70 monthly supporters and many friends we won´t have much time to see people one on one, although we´d love to. Therefore, we will be having 2 barbeques for family, friends and supporters. Our newsletter tells the house addresses (don´t want to give them out over the internet) so please come!

The Billings barbeque is July 1st (Friday) from 5-8
The Missoula barbeque is July 17th (Sunday) from 2-5

Fire!!!

Pop, pop, poppity pop! Everyone in the FH office abandons what they are doing and runs to investigate the noise. The source of the sound is an electrical cord sparking and smoking. Turning off the breaker proves ineffective, so the sparks grow into small flames. In the meantime, chaos takes over. The reactions range from panicking people running around and screaming, thereby adding greatly to the already mounting chaos, to the few, paralyzed with fear, just staring at the flames from a distance, while still others are busy removing vehicles from the burning area. Rather than using the preferred method of using dirt to put out the flames of the electrical fire, it is getting doused in water (for those of you who didn’t take fire safety: electricity + water = a bad thing). In the mayhem, the cord is severed with a nearby broom, putting an end to the excitement. To our surprise we noticed the doctor, from our office, taking people’s blood pressure making sure the fright of the event wasn’t causing serious health problems. I kind of chuckled as I thought this was some sort of joke, but quickly realized that this scenario was taken very seriously.

Now let me bring it up close and personal to an experience two weeks earlier. One morning before work while enjoying a shower I start to notice a strange smell. Mind you, bizarre smells are common in our bathroom, so I didn’t think too much about it. However the smell became much stronger so I quickly rinsed the soap off my eyes to assess the situation. Looking directly up I see my shower head…on fire! Yes, on fire! The natural question that pops into your head is probably the same as mine, how in the world does a shower head catch on fire? Well, hot water heaters aren’t common, so an electric shower head can make a freezing cold shower warm. Anyway back to the shower…I leap out of the shower covered in suds from head to toe hollering for Shane to throw the breaker. My relaxing morning quickly turned thrilling since it’s not everyday there’s an electrical fire just inches above my head and in water at the same time. The wiring in many homes and offices isn’t done by professionals and are wrapped and repaired with little things found around the home. Bad wiring was the culprit of both scenarios, and I’m hoping two fires in one month are all I will be experiencing.

Joys of Dry Season

There is quite the social gathering going on over at the river just outside of town these days. People bathe (while wearing clothes), wash laundry and fill up pitchers to carry to their homes for drinking. It doesn’t matter how much money or how nice of a house some have when it comes to running out of water in the dry season. The dry season affects every socioeconomic status. Whoever is on the city water system (almost everyone) has no water during the day and a drizzle for a few hours in the middle of the night. We haven’t been able to flush the toilet at work for about 2 months. Apparently everyone but me knew that all you have to do is to fill a bucket with water (the drizzle from the night before partially fills a sink) and pour it into the toilet so it can flush.

The first month of dry season we weren’t affected since the ranch we live on has a different, more abundant water source for only 5 houses. The second month we were without water about once a week with an occasional 5 day stint without. This month we have had more days without water than with. Everything stinks without water, literally. I am down to my last pair of clean socks today, haven’t showered in 4 days, we still cook every night, but aren’t able to wash the dishes afterwards. We buy 5 gallon jugs of purified water so thankfully we do have clean drinking water.

I have also noticed how insanely dusty everything is when it doesn’t rain 5 or 6 times a week. My Dirt Devil experience occurs every morning on my way to work when a bus goes flying by and I feel as if I am trapped in a vacuum bag holding my breath waiting for someone to hit the power button. The humidity allows the majority of these tiny particles to stick to every inch of visible flesh. “Oh, how a shower could make everything better”, I say as I walk home with fingers crossed.

~Kallie

a.k.a. Señor Gordo

My jaw has dropped many times in the last year when it comes to fat comments and here are a few I've overheard in just the last month.

On the way back to the office one day we stopped to pick up one of our other workers . We didn't see him in the usual meeting place so our friend hung his head out the window and asked the nearby children if Señor Juan had already left? They shrugged not recognizing the name, so our friend then asked if Señor Gordo** had left? They immediately nodded and pointed.

Marta is 26, single and carries a little extra weight around the middle. Her concerned friend pulls her aside and explains to her, "Marta you are still a señorita*, but you look like a señora^. You really need to lose weight or you´ll never get married looking that way."

After a weekend with friends I mentioned I had eaten too much. My friend turns to me and says, "yeah, I have noticed you've gained some weight in the last few months and you're stomach isn't as flat anymore." Ouch, not exactly what I had meant by one weekend of overindulgence. But surprisingly, I do find their honesty quite refreshing most of the time.


*Senorita = young, single
^Senora = married with children
**Gordo = fat
^^Names have been changed to protect the innocent

Speaking of weight. Here are some women waiting to get their children weighed for the month to know if they are growing like they should be.

The Story Behind the Frown

The staff does and has been doing great work in the communities here. They are out in the villages every day, teaching, encouraging, motivating, and building trusted relationships with the people. Fighting poverty is a proccess. It requires time to change ideas, not quick monetary fixes.

With that being said, I'm so glad that we can be part of the FH Guatemala team. I have not been able to do as much engineering type work as I would have wanted this first year in Guatemala, but that's ok. I'm glad I have been able to lend a hand in other things that need to get done and I'm glad that I have been able spend time in the communities building the relationships and trust that is so vital to what we do.

For example, one job I have had is taking pictures of kids for the child sponsorship program. Sounds fun, it sure is. Sounds easy, it sure ain't. When taking pictures the typical cultural thing to do is get rid of your smile, just like Americans did 50 years ago. Not exactly what we want when we send updates to sponsors or are trying to get new sponsors. The kids here are adorable, especially with their big smiles that they almost always have, so my difficult task was to capture it. I think I've said "smile, look at the camera" a million times in Q'eqchi, in a million different ways to get kids to smile for me. In fact, when I'm in the communities now I commomly hear a kid repeating those words I'm now so known for "Se'en, i li camera". Overall, I think I've done a decent job, but there are some kids, if you saw their picture, you would think they were pretty depressed.


So next time you recieve a child update and they seem to be angry, imagine, just two seconds earlier they probably had the biggest, cutest smile of all. And if you ever are thinking about sponsoring a child and are flipping through photos, don't skip over the kid with a frown because it was only the lack of skill on the part of the photographer to draw out that wonderful smile.

Changed

One whole year in Guatemala has flown by now and I believe the whirlwind has left me (Shane) a changed person, in many ways.

This last week a friend commented that I drive more like a Guatemalan now. Not sure if I should take that as a compliment or not, but you may not want to catch a ride with me when I'm back in Montana. I carry a purse (a man bag here) to town sometimes and am not the least bit embarassed. In fact, purses are actually very practical men. I don't even mind hopping on the back of a motorcyle with another guy now, it's totally normal. The extremely over sugared coffee in the communities does not taste so bad anymore (I've had to get some cavities filled at the dentist though) and for some reason I have not noticed the food being nearly as salty lately (and I should probably get my blood pressure tested).

I'll also see the world through a different pair of glasses now. I've seen first hand that material possessions don't lead to happiness, and though I knew this truth before, I now understand it much better. Related to this, I also understand that poverty is not just a of lack of material things, but of relationships, with God and other people. I also understand much better how every culture has it's evils and goods and how shaped we are from the culture we live in. I've learned the only way to truly sort things out in this world is to better understand God's will revealed in the Bible, this will take a lifetime.

Recently, while doing some surveying in "Caclaib" for a water project I was invited to join the community for a special lunch. It's corn planting season here and communities all plant corn together, taking turns planting eachothers fields. The family that is getting their field planted cooks a special lunch for everyone on that day. I was very grateful to be able to celebrate with them and as I sat at the table not understanding Q'eqchi, I thought about how cool it was that God has placed me here in this tiny community in Guatemala to be a part of their lives. Not a scene I could ever had pictured a year ago, but now a memory that I don't think I'll forget.