It’s true, at 4 AM Sunday morning come rain or shine we’re getting on the road bound for Cali. We’re well aware it may take us twelve hours to leave the country with all the landslides from the rain, but trust that we’ll be documenting the entire route. Looking forward to the drive back!
I started to feel better when I stopped fighting; when I stopped being angry, let myself relax into the surrounding darkness and those feverish dreams I was having about a big earthquake destroying all our homes and everyone waiting outside the rubble, barefoot, holding on to their children and whatever they could grab hold of as they ran out of their homes. Their faces like chipped cups. All in unison they would look up at the night sky as the moon hid itself behind a cloud and Brad and I still asleep inside our home while the earth continued to shake. Brad said it was the sleeping pills I was taking to help me get the much needed rest while I fought off the flu for four days. I slept, but I saw the end of something. And then on Thursday when I was supposed to drive to Patzún to meet with a youth group, I could barely make it out of bed, so I had to tell them through my horrible coughing and sneezing that I wasn’t going to make it. It was painful to admit it. Feebly I said to the organizer, “How about you Skype me in?”. We laughed. Espero que se sienta mejor, “Please feel better,” he said warmly. At 9 AM I hung up the phone. At 11 AM I was in front of thirty children over Skype talking about citizen journalism and teaching them how to become reporters:
It helped to be awake more often 
Things happen when they happen. This past week was an emergency break for me to slow down, reflect and be mindful. Many changes are about to happen with our drive back home and it’s important to be present.
Every joint and muscle ached today and I thought immediately of my cousin Lucky and her children and how we share everything in my family, including horrible, miserable one-day flus. Nonetheless, “No hay mal que por bien no venga,” there isn’t a bad that doesn’t come for a good reason. And, sure enough, I watched all the donations alerts on my cellphone as I ambled around town imagining myself on a stretcher or on a heavy dose of pain killers to make the joints stop aching. If I had the sound of a one Quetzal coin dropping into a glass bottle, it would have clinked incessantly today. A smile was plastered on my face.
By the end of the day the race was won: we had reached our $3,200 goal! Even though our Paypal thermometer says we have $ 3,035 of $3,200 raised – some people sent checks directly to our account – we couldn’t figure out how to add them. Yes, you read it correctly, today we have reached the much anticipated goal of $3,200. Thank you all – friends, family and good samaritans – for being so generous and amazing! It has moved us, but more than anything is has created a fabric of trust, love and support that often is not something we feel in Guatemala when faced with poverty and the hardships of surmounting it alone. Monday I will see Tio Nefta and show him the list of people who supported him. He’ll laugh that shy grin of his and comb out his graying chin beard. Karol? Karolina!
Later in the I day called my grandmother immediately. She was flabbergasted. Nunca pensaba que esto fuera posible, mija. I never thought this was possible. That lasted for about two minutes and then she moved on to address what was missing. But what about the plaster and paint for the house? It’ll make it last longer. While I take great measures to shield myself from the persistent pessimism of my family and how they find fault with everything and distrust anything that might present a solution, this statement did bring up a good point: Stefan of ConstruCasa had also informed us that if we plastered and painted the house it would last longer in that harsh climate that characterizes Media Luna. But, would it be fair to ask for another $269-$306.25 to paint and plaster the house? What of the extra cost for digging the well for the bathroom or other added costs that might come up?
After much thought, we have, therefore, raised the end goal for the fundraising to $3,600. The show will still go on on Monday, September 20, but please feel free to keep contributing if you want to see his house painted!
To reassure me that we’re doing the right thing with the right people for the person that needs it most, I received Stefan’s awesome email with all this information:
The final blueprint of the final house:
Here’s our list of materials to build the house:
And here is our contract, notice the $3,300:
The first thing that surfaces from my bed is my arm scrambling blindly for my cellphone – my umbilical cord to the pixel world scrolling through my email. Sometimes it’s good news and I jump out of bed, sometimes I just bury my head in the pillows after one glance. It’s my own personal roulette wheel and it’s self-inflicted, make no mistake.
This morning the first email I read was: “[Donation Can] A donation of $200 has been made to Tio Nefta’s House.”
Bah, $20 I thought, and then looked again. Wait, that was TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS! And so I jumped out of bed and skipped the crawl into awakening. Our good friend, Mark Savage and his family, had donated $200 and now we were only $290 from our end goal of $3,200. My uncle’s machete-carrying silhouette across the banana fincas late in the day when the shadows are long flashed before me. He smiled that sideways grin and push his bicycle along the dusty road. I missed him as I imagine a daughter misses her father. It’s always been the feeling I have for him. I’d been putting off a trip to visit him since end of July, but I was not about to arrive to Media Luna empty-handed, full of false-promises and the hot air of ideas to add to the desperate heat that is thick against your forehead in that finca that I’ve grown to know well. This morning brought me closer to fulfilling that promise I made him:
“Next time I come here we will build you a casita.”
This house:
With this roof:
With this bathroom:
Once out of bed the next email is from Stefan from ConstruCasa: Come on over at 9:30. Over the piles of dishes and the unmade bed I saw the clock turn 8:52. Who needs a shower? We rushed out of the house, past the marching bands, the hundreds of kids dancing to “JailHouse Rock” by El Calvario church and straight to ConstruCasa to talk logistics. Stefan is just the person for it, kindle, gentle, reassuring and patient. Here goes:
Money?
We will wire transferring whatever we have to them, about $2,900 and Stefan will send me all the wire transfer info. (This by the way is very rare in most Guatemalan nonprofits.)
The Plan (“Solo si Dios quiere!” mi abuelita reminds me)
Sleeping arrangements?
Everyone bring their petates or straw sleeping matts and mosquito netting and flash light. We either sleep under a kind stranger’s house, in the car, or in the empty church or school house.
What’s going to be done in 2 to 2 1/2 weeks?
We can add the following for additional costs:
Here’s Stefan from ConstruCasa talking about the house:
For more videos and pictures click here.
This is when it hits me that I won’t be there when the house finishes because we’ll be driving to Oakland. It hits me hard, but I’d rather know he’s got a place to rest his head during that four months we’re gone then know he’s homeless during yet another rainy season.
When I come back in January, I tell myself, I will bring him a housewarming present. I will bring him pictures of all his family to hang on the walls.
When he wakes up everyone will be smiling at him.
The marching bands are all over La Antigua (thumping incessantly near your house even) this week in preparation for Guatemala and the Central American States’ Independence Day on September 15, 2010. There’s a frenetic youthful energy that is hard to encapsulate into one moment, but I’m sure this one does a good job:
As many of you know we’ve been working on a project to build a house for mentally ill uncle who lives in the fincas of Media Luna near Puerto Barrios. So the good news: ConstruCasa agreed to start building the house before we have the full $3,200. They are giving us a month to finish fundraising the last $490 which I’m confident we can do before we leave for the SF Bay Area on October 1.
Here’s the email from Stefan Ege, Operations Manager at ConstruCasa:
Hi Kara,
Thanks for your call today.
I spoke with my team today, and it is possible to send two albañiles on Monday, Sept. 20th with you to the finca. They would then stay there right away, and build the house. They will buy their own materials. Here I need to ask you where they can buy materials, and how far away this is from where we will construct. Media Luna is about 50km from Puerto Barrios, is this correct? Please give me a call tomorrow, so we can speak about the details. As I remember from our past emails, we will build:
– A two room house (1 door, 2 windows), where one room can be used as a bedroom, and one room for living, dining and cooking.
– With a toilet, and a pozo (10 meters or so), since there is no drainage if I recall correctly. If there is indeed drainage, we would build a shower instead of the pozo.
– The regular Constru Casa house has no sink, electricity, paint or plastering. If you would like to add anything of this, it would increase the price.The price we had spoken about was Q24,000 for the house, plus an additional Q2,400 for viaticos, since the place is quite out of the way. This is an estimate and could vary a bit. But as I said, we can start with what you have already fundraised, and then give you the final accounting so you can pay us the rest. I am looking forward to speaking with you tomorrow to settle all the details.
All the best,
Stefan
www.construcasa.org
We’ll be meeting with ConstruCasa on Monday, Sept 13 to work out payment for the amount we have so far which is $2,710 and get on the same page about next steps. I will be blogging about other logistics as they come up. I am including some of the possible plans for the two-room constuction of Tío’s house:
Part of the building of the house also include drafting up a legal contract for the use of my cousin Santos’ land to build the house which will be in both mine and Brad’s name for security purposes. The agreement is called Usufruto vitalicio which means lifetime use of the land even after inheritance. After Tío passes away, the agreement will also include, the title of the house will be changed over to Cousin Santos’ children as a way to thank them for taking care of Tío and providing him with a support network. Of course to make this happen Santos needs to go see our the lawyer, Luis Chigua, 5497-4078, in Puerto Barrios (recommended to use by our lawyer in La Antigua) carrying his land title which Chigua will confirm how the property is registered at Bismuebles in Guatemala City. If the property is not registered then he drafts the contract under a Right of Possession. While Santos doesn’t understand any of it, he is driving out the 40 kilometers from Media Luna to Puerto Barrios on Monday and I’ll be calling them when he’s there to figure the best way to draft the contract. Meanwhile, I am also plotting ways to collect the rest of the $490 before we pack up the house in La Antigua (get in the car and head out into the gang-ridden territory of Mexico) and find a side-kick to accompany me to Media Luna and back on the week of September 20.
Everything seems possible now and so much closer.
Foto: Presidencia
It’s so quiet now as the rains have stopped in La Antigua and the Central part of Guatemala. This time yesterday the mountains had buried the living with avalanches of mud along the Ixtahuacan region, Alaska to be exact, KM 171. As families searched for their disappeared more were buried, 150-200 the mayor informed us around midnight over the radio waves. I listened to his voice crack and invoke God’s mercy.
Volcán Fuego rumbled beneath us, a hollow groaning moan of malestar or malaise.
At the bottom of the revine the long bus stuck out of the mud like a cigar tilting out of its own ashes, surrounded by layers of people with blank stares watching as the big Catepillar tractor scooped up mud to pull the bodies out. Already I can feel a numbness, just by knowing how quickly life can be taken away.
“Guatemala made the Swedish headlines,” my friend tells me. I think of the ink splotching the immaculate white of newsprint turning yellow. I think of the large hole in Zone 2 and how we made headlines there, too, while Agatha pounded the rural villages on the West, by the Lake Atitlán, one fell swoop taking twenty houses in Santa Catarina Palopo.
With the firefighters we were poised for a 3 AM night run to dig bodies out, but CONRED warned us to stay put. So we waited in silence, texting, retweeting, Facebooking from afar as the news crews flew in through helicopters in the area that was too unstable even for help crews. Volunteers were already sinking into the mud and more rains were coming. It was nature’s wrath, it was our whimper.
I felt it all day, even while the sun mocked us with its brilliance in the morning. Is it really better to dig up 37 dead by the light of day?
July 23, 2010
Zona Reyna, Lancetillo
I am sitting in an open salon of some one hundred young indigenous children watching “La Isla” quietly and attentively after having finished their hot chocolate and sweet biscuits on a Friday night in Zona Reyna, El Quiche. Not a single whisper escapes in the group as they stare intently at the Guatemalan army marching sequences and footage of the National Police Archives being recovered and the testimonies from family members of the disappearances of their family members. The crickets’ song fill the night and every once in a while the iron of a desk scrapes against the cement floor of this Catholic School. It’s cool and humid outside and I can hear the nuns in the kitchen. It reminds me of my own childhood growing up with the nuns in the United States, in a world so different than the world my family had immigrated from in Guatemala.
During the chocolate intermission break I tell them to line up against the back of the salon for a group picture. They all rush back quickly and obediently and I find myself staring at them, feeling a wave of peace.
The four hour drive from Uspantan to Zona Reyna in Lancetillo, El Quiche was the roughest terrain of Guatemalan terreceria, graded road, full of deep holes, steep switchbacks and sudden drop offs to plummeting heights where the fog rolled over the tops of the Cuchumatanes and the tree line thousands of feet below. We pass young girls carrying heavy loads of wood on their heads, children peaking out from the bottom of windows, older men with their shirts off, galoshes over there pants chatting to one another while draped along door frames. It’s late day now and we did not anticipate the terrain would take all of us to maneuver. There’s no turning back, we’re here to train a large group of young indigenous people how to tell their stories using photo and video. The result of an entire day of reporting and production resulted in these:
Puesto de Salud en Lancetillo, Guatemala from Habla Guate on Vimeo.
El Rio en Lancetillo, Guatemala en julio 2010 from Habla Guate on Vimeo.
Las Hermanas de Lancetillo, Guatemala en julio 2010 from Habla Guate on Vimeo.
Un recorrido por Lancetillo, Zona Reyna Guatemala from Habla Guate on Vimeo.
As the sky cries an endless river of rain during a gray Monday that began with thick clouds, I take shelter in a library – the Spanish Cooperative library in La Antigua. I run across the courtyard surrounded by ruins, past everyone huddling at the doors like birds waiting for the rain to stop (why Guatemalans never have umbrellas with them during rainy season I still don’t understand), close my umbrella dripping over my clothes and with a light footstep make my way to the back of the building. It’s only 5 PM and I have one hour, I say to myself, but nothing can encapsulate the relief I feel when I see the wooden doors flung wide open from the wide Spanish columns that open up to the cobblestone courtyard lined with park benches under manicured trees. I enter the quiet warm embrace of books, carefully placed lights, necks bent over newspapers as in prayer, hear the soft clicking of people on computers and the languid footstep of someone scanning the stacks. The librarian lets me pass, no one says a thing and it’s our conspiracy. This is where I grew up, among libraries, all over the United States in more than 20 cities and states, just peeking out from the library way back in the corner like those hiding places between the clothes we’d all find, cozy, quiet and ripe with unspoken possibility. The fact that I am in a library in Guatemala is like being the smallest wooden Russian doll, right there in the very center, held by some invisible force of belonging and being left to one’s own recourses.
There aren’t enough of these libraries in Guateamala, much less for children, which is why I value the work that the Riecken Foundation is doing with setting using the simple building block – a community library with free Internet – to build a human being and, ultimately, as a springboard for a community.
Check out some of the libraries they’ve already set up in Guatemala and Honduras:
One perk of staying up until 3 AM each night is that I get these bursts of creativity and then I drag my husband and my friends with me on bizarre ideas like thisSXSW proposal that ended up with us recording a cover of a famous Buggles tune. We called it “Cellular Saved the Radio Star” and I think you might recognize it:
Cellular Saved the Radio Star by karaandrade
“Cellular Saved The Radio Star”
Original by: The Buggles
(Verse 1)
I heard you on your phone in the Honduras coup
Lying awake intent on tuning in to you
Me in the States did not stop you from comin’ through
Oh-a oh
You took the credit for your cellphone reporting
Broadcasting stories with the new technology
and now I understand issues you’re texting in
(Bridge)
Oh-a oh
I met the people
Oh-a oh
What did they tell me?
(Chorus)
Cellular saved the radio star
Cellular saved the radio star
(Verse 2)
Radio came into your phone
Oh-a-a a oh
And now we listen about the state of things
Broadcasting from our hands like awesome techno kings
And you remember how the landline used to ring
(Bridge)
Oh-a-oh
You were the first one
Oh-a-oh
You aren’t the last one
(Chorus)
Cellular saved the radio star
Cellular saved the radio star
(Bridge)
In my ear and on my screen
We can’t rewind/it’s all been seen
Oh-a-a-a oh
Oh-a-a-a oh
(Keyboard solo)
(Chorus)
Cellular saved the radio star
Cellular saved the radio star
(Verse 3)
In my ear and on my screen
We can’t rewind it’s all been seen
Radio came into your phone
Put the blame on our cellphones
(Vocal break)
(chorus outro)
Cellular saved the radio star
Cellular saved the radio star
Cellular saved the radio star
Cellular saved the radio star
Cellular saved the radio star
Cellular saved the radio star
Cellular saved the radio star
Mobile technology leapfrogs in countries with a poor to non-existing ground-based communication infrastructure. The reality for Latin America’s Telecom advantage is starting to influence the way information is received, created or shared. As an example, news organizations and others heard through people’s cellphones provide text or breaking news SMS alerts free of charge, and ask listeners to contribute news, comments traffic reports, often read out on-air. As an example, during a major electrical blackout affecting almost all departments in Guatemala in Oct 2009, people messaged radio stations that were reading SMSs out loud while listeners tuned in via their $10 cellphones bought at the local market.
Cellphones are vital for airing local broadcasts in their own indigenous languages. Daily about community radio volunteers broadcast live from cellphones to their communities – translating to their indigenous language. On the other end station volunteers transmit and broadcast the message live via the cellphone to the radio transmitter. The cellphone becomes a microphone, radio station, audience and distribution.
Some local studies in Latin America have reported above 60% illiteracy rates, why cellphones enabling local and national information to be shared in a cheap way – voice-based and ubiquitous. This broadcast radio revolution Americans long ago left behind with the birth of the podcast is underway in the forgotten backyards of the United States.
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