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| My little Jewish stuffed doggie Maya traveled with me |
On February 1, I began one of my most fascinating trips. I flew to Guatemala to begin a ten–day trip sponsored by Fair Trade Judaica and MayaWorks.
Guatemala is a beautiful country with a very troubled history, and it is still recovering from a Civil War from 1960 to 1996 (but especially bad in the '80s and '90s) in which many indigenous peoples were killed. I read several recommended books before the trip to learn more about the country.
( If you click on the underlined names, you will be connected to the website of that name.)
Fair Trade Judaica is a non-profit organization begun about
7 years ago by Ilana Schatz in California to list all fair-trade certified Judaica
items under one umbrella. It includes some that she sells
directly and many items sold by other organizations.
MayaWorks is a fair-trade non-profit run by Jeannie Balada of Chicago, which Danny Siegel, the mitzvah man of
Conservative Judaism, has been promoting for many years. Because
of Danny and his Ziv Tzedakkah Fund, I bought colorful kippot from MayaWorks
in 2001. All of its products are
made by women in Guatemala, and their kippot are marvelous. I had wanted to meet the women behind these
products, and when I found out about this trip, I signed up. It was amazing—both for the women we met and
also for my fellow travelers, including the two fantastic women that run these
two groups.
Some of the main fair trade principles are:
1. Creating
opportunities for economically disadvantaged producers, especially women
2. Paying a fair
price for products and paying 50% at the time of the order and 50% immediately
upon delivery.
3. Not employing
children
4. Ensuring good
working conditions
5. Respecting the
environment
6. Maintaining connections for the long term
This entry is the introduction to the trip before we ten
travelers and 3 coordinators (including Ilana’s husband David—our tech
guy), and also our guide and van driver met up formally for dinner on February 2.
On January 31, I arrived in Guatemala City and got a ride to Antigua where I was to meet up with the group. The city of about 35,000 people is 5,030 feet (1530 m) above sea level, so it was good that I had two days to adjust! We stayed at the Posada de Don Rodrigo, which was made of three former residences, one of which is over 300 years old. I think the doors are originals. The key is in the slot of the first room I stayed at, in the picture below. I had a "little" trouble locking and unlocking it!
At breakfast the morning of February 2nd, I was treated to a view of one of the three volcanoes surrounding Antigua.
I spent the day, exploring the town. Antigua was the capital of Guatemala from the 1543 to 1773 and some of the buildings of that time still can be seen.
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| The Cathedral in the mail square |
The narrow, one-way streets are all paved with cobblestones.
From our hotel to the right was the Santa Catalina arch, originally built in the 17th century to enable nuns to walk from their convent to the school without meeting the public.
and to the left I saw the following colorful buildings:
I didn't hear much American English, but I definitely heard tourists from Europe. Many local women wore traditional clothing, especially women who came to sell items on the streets.
The women wear distinctive, regional woven tops called huipiles , pronounced /wee-pea-les/, and special skirts called cortes (/cor-tes/).
Another typical sight around town is of women carrying items on their heads, using a cloth shaped to fit their head, for carrying objects. Often they have a baby on their backs and maybe one or two others next to them.
I wandered through an artisan market off of the main square, the labyrinth main market, and also a huge open store called Nim Pot near our hotel, which gave me a good introduction to Guatemalan handicrafts.
I was warmly received by the tourist office in town and got some nice maps there, explored the Museo Cultural Casa Santo Domingo in the Hotel Santo Domingo, which gave me a great introduction to art and history of this area.
The hotel was originally the largest and richest monastery in the then capital of Guatemala and later a university. Much of the structure has been preserved.
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| A pair of macaws--among my favorite birds |
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| The cooking area from monastery times |
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| Gold from church use |
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| Examples of huipiles and cortes in the popular arts section |
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| Shopkeeper at museum working on a backstrap loom while waiting for customers |
The next morning I met the three members of our group from Pennsylvania, Betsy Teutsch, Helen Seitz, and Mindy Shapiro. Mindy is a papercut artist and a mussar teacher. Helen has been an activist for much of her life and an avid traveler. Betsy is a Judaica artist and has a number of Ketubot she sells. She also has just written and published an amazing book 100 Under $100 which tells of many projects where people can donate $100 or less and make a significant contribution to fight poverty.
Betsy had suggested that we visit a macadamia nut farm and then look for one of the Guatemalan projects mentioned in her book, Maya Pedal. I was happy to join the group.
We hired a cab for about 5 hours and headed out first to the Vahalla Macadamia nut farm.
It was started in the mid 1980s by a California fireman named Larry (Lorenzo) Gottschamer, who had retired with disability at age 32 and moved to Guatemala where he established a macadamia nut farm about a half hour from Antigua, planing two types of top quality macadamia nut seedlings. His goal was to find an environmentally better farming product that would encourage reforestation and create jobs, Aside from a tour group from Israel, we were the only visitors at that time.
Bo, a retired surgeon from Snohomish in Western Washington, was our guide. He still volunteers in Nepal and Guatemala, fixing cleft feet and other foot and leg problems.
He told us that the nut was named for John Macdam, a friend of the botanist who "discovered" the plant in the wild. The farm has over 35 trees on five acres of land, and each produces a minimum of 300 pounds of nuts a year. These organically-grown trees are healthy. The oldest trees are over 35 years old and have many more years of production left. Nuts are harvested after they fall to the ground and rarely hit the workers who harvest them.
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| Machine made by Mac Giver to take off outer shell |
Then the outer shell is removed and the nut and inner shell are left out to dry
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| Outer and inner shells |
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| My Jewish stuffed doggie Maya sitting on drying macadamia nuts |
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| Nut sizer |
The trees have a deep tap root, half the height of the tree. They produce nuts four years after being planted and can live for at least 50 years. The trees and crops have improved the nutrition of the local people, provide shade, and provide a solid income. When pruned, the branches are used for firewood, so fewer trees are cut down for that purpose.
From the flower to when the nut falls takes seven to night months, but unlike other plants, the trees flower year round, so nuts are harvested through the year. The trees self-pollinate as bees would be too big to pollinate the tiny flowers.
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| Macadamia nut flower, which was about 4-5" long |
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| Tiny macadamia nuts forming |
Twenty local people work at the nut farm, pruning and harvesting, and also work at the blueberry farm six hours away. A paid guide also works there and Bo is an unpaid volunteer who gets free housing and food. Vahalla also grows bananas, lemons and products from the nuts and have a spa. Betsy and Mindy got a wonderful, free facial while visiting. The farm got electricity (solar) a month ago so they no longer just have to rely on a generator for part of the day.
Lorenzo is a character but has lofty plans.
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| Lorenzo chatting with Helen |
After our tour, we each had delicious macadamia nut pancakes topped with blueberry jam from the farm and tasted the cashew juice that Helen had ordered. Fresh cashew juice, which I had over 40 years ago on the Amazon, tastes VERY different from dried cashew nuts. Mindy was delighted to have gluten free pancakes.
Nuts are sold inside the Guatemala, but products made from the nuts including oils are shipped internationally. Lancome and Nivea are interested in the skin products.
Our taxi driver then took us to our next stop, Maya Pedal, in San Andres Iztapa (a town of about 20,000), one of the special places mentioned in Betsy's Book 100 Under $100. I was the translator as the driver did not speak English, and I was the only one of the group who spoke Spanish.
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| Fellow travelers along the road |
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| Welcome to "San Andres Itzapa" sign |
Amazingly, the driver had been to the site before. He managed to find the sign to the entrance down a bumpy dirt road.
We found the shop on a dead end road, next to the Mormon Church and a colorful mural to the right of the shop's entrance.
Betsy knocked on the door, but no one answered even though the sign said that the shop was open from 9 to 5. She then called the two numbers she had from the website and the two on the sign. Three were no longer working and the fourth was answered by a man who said that that number had not belonged to Maya Pedal for two years. Things were looking bad until I spoke to a farm worker who knew the owner and said that he would take us to his home. We walked two blocks and saw the car. The house was just down the road. Mario Juarez, the current director of Maya Pedal, was eating lunch with his family, having quit work early as they had finished a big order recently and were taking some time off. He was happy to see us, and even though he had an appointment in a few minutes elsewhere, he said he would meet us at the shop in 15 minutes.
So we returned to the shop, and waited and waited. After a half an hour, it was decided to give up and head back, and as we were pulling out, Mario drove up! It just showed we had to be patient and realize that Latin Americas often view time differently than we do.
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| Betsy with Mario, who is holding Betsy's book open to the page mentioning Maya Pedal |
Mario told us the history of the place and gave us a tour. With the help of two Canadians ( I think named Richard Andres and Patrick Richman) from the organization Pedal (an NGO in Vancouver, BC, Canada), Maya Pedal was created. That organization helped them get a grant from the Canadian Agency for International Development, and the independent NGO Asociacion Maya Pedal was formed in 2001. A website in English and Spanish was created by a French man but became inactive as of 2011, but there still is good information on it. The 5 videos on this website are definitely worth watching, especially the one with the woman in traditional clothes riding on one, as it shows the many uses of the bicycle machines ("bicimaquinas") that this group makes.
The active website for MayaPedal is in Spanish on Facebook.
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| Publicity on wall of shop. Column on right lists advantages of the bicycle machines: no need to use electricity, you repair it yourself, better for health, does not contaminate, saves money, self-driven, removes stress |
Mario and his staff of two take used bicycles and gives them a second life, adapting them to meet the needs of local people. Each has a different design but start with a basic frame.
The different machines can do a variety of jobs, including pumping water from a depth of ten meters, shelling nuts, taking dried corn off the cob, powering a blender for food, shampoo (using an aloe plant), powering a simple clothes washer, threshing, etc.
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| Mario demonstrating a machine that can spin thread |
22% of Guatemalans do not have electricity so bicimaquinas really can make a difference in the lives of rural Guatemalans. Mindy and I tried pedaling one, and it was quite easy.
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| Note doggie Maya riding along |
Volunteers also come from many parts of the world, especially young adults from Europe. There is a simple bedroom, as well as a bathroom and a kitchen in the workshop.
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| Vocabulary for volunteers and for manuals. They are putting manuals for each design on Facebook to share with the world and need help in translating them in English |
Bikes cost a bit under $100 to adapt including overhead costs. Sometimes individuals pay for the bike or a local group collectively buys an adapted bike and shares it. And sometimes a volunteer pays and donates the bike to a needy person. From 2001 to 2004, Maya Pedal got government support but since then has been self-sustaining. It takes two days to adapt a bicycle. They recently had a heavy order and adapted 14 bikes in ten days. They adapt about 80 to 100 bikes a year. Each of the workers has another job in order to fully support his family.
Maya Pedal also sponsors a week in town to clean up the outdoors. Close to 5,000 people from the area of San Andres Iztapa, Chimaltenango particpate in this annual event.
I got my camera cleaned just before the trip so can take close up photos again. I will include some of them at the end of entries. We were in Guatemala during the dry season, so there were fewer flowers than I expected. Here are some flowers seen along the way on February 1 and 2.
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| A tiny day lily that looked like an orchid |
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| Bougainvillea |
2 comments:
Bravo!! Metsuyan!! What a throrough and wonderful travelog. Was great being in the trip with you.
Danny Siegel told me: Gorgeous pictures! Yasher koach!!!!!
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