AUTHOR: Nancy
TITLE: Saturday, October 3, 2009
DATE: 10/03/2009 06:09:00 AM
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BODY:
Good Morning!
It's again a beautiful day in Antigua with clear blue skies and the perfect climate that makes me come again and again.
Yesterday we accomplished a lot of what we came for. The day started at Fernando's Cafe next door to Posada la Merced and from there we continued to Marco Tulio's former factory site and saw that it was still in operation producing stoves. He will continue to have workers there for another month and then, after our team has helped with the new site, move there.
Don and Susie stayed with Maco to work out the logistics for the November team and found that communication will continue to be a challenge until either Maco perfects his English or Don and Susie perfect their Spanish. Ahhhh...more of a reason to return to language school in Antigua!
Gerry, Jack and I traveled to Guatemala City to meet with Eva Carola Vallejo and determine what paperwork was necessary to establish a subsidiary non-profit organization and register the logo and design of the stove here. We found her charming and extremely helpful and look forward to working with her in the future.
Don, Susie and Maco joined us for lunch with the Rotarians Juan Carlos Cheves and Mauricio Nanne at a local barbeque restaurant where we worked out the details of the new grant between Irvine Spectrum and Guatemala Sur Rotaries. A distribution agreement and payment system were established and paperwork is now flying around the world by e-mail.
We returned to San Antonio Aguas Calientes where we were hosted by the Municipality and Cocode Ukux Juyu, a local environmental organization. They have formed an agreement to provide the Mayan population who lives around the mountain the very first Ecocina stoves in Guatemala. Jack and I practiced our Spanish and Ketchiquel while Gerry, Don and Susie struggled to catch a few words of the movie about protecting mother earth. There were speeches welcoming StoveTeam and Ecocomal (Maco's factory) to the community, and StoveTeam was presented with a beautifully woven momento of our trip.
We then proceeded downstairs to watch the stove distribution, and learned a new feature of the Ecocina - it fits in a tuktuk! The stoves were brought to the town by truck, and then people either carried them off on their shoulders, took them home in wheelbarrows, or loaded them into a tuktuk and drove off. How charming to see a woman in traje sitting with her stove in the back of a tiny vehicle just a bit bigger than a motorcycle!
The supper of pepian was beyond delicious and Jack spent quite a bit of time chatting with the mayor and they compared notes of legal issues in Guatemala and the U.S. The mayor offered to assist Maco with security and water for the new factory, and I had a great time talking with Eddie, who is the president of the environmental group. He is not only concerned with protecting the forest, but preserving Mayan culture and language. The area here is being considered for a UNESCO site, so this portends great things for the future. As the mayor said to us, the Ecocina stove project is just the baby, so let's watch this project grow!
NancyLabels: Guatemala
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