March 18th was an exciting day for the agriculture people I have been working with in the District of Cahabon. A new Association was created, certified by the Guatemala government, which will allow us to organize villages so they can band together to market their crops in a professional way. The English translation of the association's name is Association for Agriculture, Social and Sustainable Development. The individual receiving the approval document in the picture below is Darwin Garcia. He is the Director of Agriculture for the Cahabon District, which has jurisdiction over 202 villages, with around 70,000 people and 13,000 peasant farmers. I have been working with him since I arrived and have found him to be of high character and extremely conscientious about the plight of the peasant farmer, and he is anxious to help them rise to higher level of economic stability. I am not sure if I have ever seen a group of leaders that are so dedicated to improve the lot of their constituents.
I will be very much involved with this new Association and feel a huge responsibility to get it right. Our aim is to help the farmers produce higher yields of higher quality. We hope to improve marketing by bypassing the middlemen and selling directly to end-users --in hopes of achieving a higher price. Higher yields and higher prices could go a long way in helping these people. Darwin said that this has been a dream of his for a long time. This program will include several of the key crops. However, our immediate goal will be on cardamon, a spice that is used primarily in the Middle East. We will be setting up dryers, sorters and packaging equipment to help them with this endeavor. Thanks so much to our donors that have made this possible.
As some of our friends in the U.S. know, there is also the Corn Project -- a program that will provide a bag of fertilizer for 9,000 peasant farmers. Our donors have made a significant contribution to this program also. This program will also be administered under this new Association, and we are working toward helping the farmers become sustainable. Sometime in the next month we will be having a huge activity where we will be handing out 1,000 bags of fertilizer for 9 days. This will be done in their soccer field, and could be quite the event.
There will be a lot more going on during this activity than handing out fertilizer bags during this activity. This will be somewhat similar to the handing out of our 5,000 water purification filters, that were also provided by the friends of Welcome Hand and Sustainable Families. Words cannot describe the atmosphere as we hand out the filters to these people. They are so grateful for this special gift. One mother expressed much gratitude because now she can give her children clean water to drink and know that they will have a better chance of living a healthy life. At these events, they usually have Susan or I speak, and then we help hand out the filters. We have no trouble feeling their gratitude because of the warm hugs and smiles. This is a special experience several times a week, and we have to pinch ourselves to think this is really happening. Susan had no idea the magnitude this program would become in Cahabon when she first had the impression to provide filters to the people who had dirty water after the hurricanes last year.
Besides our humanitarian efforts, our main goal is to build relationships of trust, and soften hearts, to open the way for missionaries in the area. The magnitude of the filter project and the upcoming fertilizer project is allowing us to become well acquainted with the people -- a big step toward building trust.
As we travel from village to village we are faced with a challenge of complying with a very important tradition. They insist, or maybe a better description is that they require, that you sit down at their table and consume a bowl of chicken soup. Every village has the same recipe. I can taste it, just talking about it. You get two or three large pieces of chicken in the soup, probably from an aged chicken, and it is boiled in a broth that is made with a very spicy herb. You are supposed to lift up the bowl and drink out of it. This particular spice causes me to cough, and it is very embarrassing. This is a huge sacrifice for them, as they have to kill a chicken or two. The big problem is that if you have to visit three villages in a day you end up trying to eat six to nine pieces of chicken. And, it is a little unnerving that they never eat with you, but stand around watching you eat. They consider it an honor to have you as their guest. Last week we were visiting three villages that were associated with the new Association, and when we arrived at the last village it started to rain and I could not make it up the hill with my leg that had major surgery a couple of years ago. The trail was very slippery so I had to go back to the car and I felt really bad about it, but then I looked on the bright side -- I wouldn't have to eat their chicken soup. Not so -- they brought the soup down to me.
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A report on our Family to Family Corn Project: As of March 20th we have raised $4,650 to help 186 families. We have to turn in the number of contributions on April 1st. We are grateful to all the families that have contributed $25, and some more. We will be keeping track of these families, and report later in the year the impact of the 100 lb. bag of fertilizer.
You can find out more about this project on our website: welcomehand.org
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