While in Guatemala my access to the internet was limited so only now I am updating Casa Brasil’s blog with my experiences down there with ADESPA’s Project, which, by the way, was very rewarding.
First, let me give you a little background on ADESPA. ADESPA (Asociación de Desarrollo Sostenible de Paraxaj) – Association for Sustainable Development of Paraxaj – was initiated in 2006 by Anabella Meneses with an Adult Literacy Project to help coffee farms’ workers and their families improve their self-esteem and socio-economic conditions. This project is supported financially by Coffee Kids and this support has allowed for the expansion of its programs.
Besides the Adult Literacy Project, ADESPA has initiated programs to improve the economic and health conditions of indigenous mothers. One of these projects was the creation of a day care to provide food and moral support to the kids of those women and a place where the kids can stay while their mothers work. La Guarderia (daycare in Spanish) is currently helping 23 kids from impoverished families. Since the number of kids that need help is large and the funds to maintain the daycare are limited, ADESPA has established an eligibility criteria for kids to be enrolled in the daycare: the child’s mother needs to be working or the family needs to be living in extreme poverty. ADESPA is also leading an economic empowerment campaign for these mothers, since in the Maya culture they do not have much autonomy and independence. ADESPA provides health care and educational services to the women in the communities of Acatenango and its surroundings, as well. In addition to that, there is a Handcraft Project to teach the women how to make shoes so they can sell them in Guatemala City to help encourage local entrepreneurship.
Mother´s Day in Guatemala, was the day of the Handcraft Project. The indigenous women who work in Finca Santa Felisa take classes every Monday and Wednesday on how to make shoes. During the lunch break, we all celebrated Mother´s Day with Don Walter, the shoes classes´ teacher, and the menu was carne guizada with rice and chile.
Posted in Misc, Progresso |
May 10th is Mother’s Day in Guatemala and we celebrated it in La Guarderia the day after. On that day, Paula and I took the opportunity to interview the mothers using a socio-economic questionnaire we created to collect data about the mothers and their families’ economic situation. Although we spoke in Spanish, that was an interesting experience since all the mothers were Maya and their first language is the Kaqchikel. Their Spanish is different and harder to understand than the Spanish spoken in the capital. Seven mothers came for the celebration and among those, none of them knew how to read or write and they all live on about 100Q (U$12.5) a week. This money they receive from their husbands to provide for an average of 5 kids per family. The sad reality is that the husbands make about $4/day working in the coffee fields. (In Brazil coffee picking workers make around $50/day.)
For the Mother’s Day celebration at Proyecto ADESPA, I made a Brazilian style orange/chocolate cake with coconut for dessert. The main course was chuchitos, a typical Guatemalan food that is similar to Mexican tamales, and was made by Dona Ioli, one of the local vendors from Paraxaj. The kids presented dances, poems, and plays to their mothers and Paula and Amalia, coordinators at La Guarderia, gave each mother a small gift from ADESPA. It was a fun day at La Guarderia.
Another adventure with ADESPA was the visits Paula and I made to several communities surrounding Acatenango (Pacacay, Paraxaj, El Mirador, Pueblo Nuevo, and Platamar). We took the local transportation, old door-less vans that stop several times getting people to take them to the small communities in that area. In some parts we had to walk since there was no van driving that way. Our goal that day was to talk to each community health to establish a list of all the women they have been assisting so ADESPA could contact those women to participate in the health care workshop ADESPA provided on June 19th. Many of the Maya women in that region have never done the pap smear exam and do not know about birth control methods or how to use them.
For a free half pound of freshly roasted, hand-selected Brazilian coffee: What crop is drying on the rack next to the VW Bug?
The next morning we woke at 4am to make sure that we made it out to the Pereiras by 5 in order to capture Ana Claudia’s complete day. Like Jose Elias, her day begins before the sun rises. She walks about 1km to catch the bus that will take her to the CEC School in Poço Fundo. After class, she catches the bus back home and quickly eats before heading to her afternoon job as a babysitter. Around 6:30-7 she returns home, eats dinner, studies, and heads to bed . Ana Claudia is one of the top students in her class. She uses small windows of time throughout the day to study (staying in the classroom during recess, for example).
It is clear that this dedication to learning is a family value, established by her parent’s support and sacrifice, and in their marveling of life that was evident in the short time we spent with them. The Pereiras have a created a small library in their house containing numerous literary classics including Machado de Assis, Guimarães Rosa, and others. They loan books out to neighbors, friends, etc. João Baptista collects mills and is working on creating a museum. João Paulo built a pick-up truck from scratch using the chassis of a VW bug. Jorgina is an artist and has passed on her skill and artistic genes to Ana Claudia. They have knitted and hand painted hand towels and many other items throughout their house. My role and Lisi’s was mainly to assist in the filming and stay out of the camera’s way. The shots below are some that I snapped throughout the day.
If you will afford me the hyperbole, spending a day with the Pereiras was an incredibly uplifting and liberating experience. Their love, simplicity, and knowledge framed the perspective that most of our daily problems are simply fabrications of our own mind, non-existent in any real sense. Even Erskine Caldwell would have skipped into the sunset with the lilt of flowery prose. As with the Severianos, I hope that we did them justice.
-
- Outside the Pereira's home as Ana Claudia makes her way to school.
-
- Ana Claudia's father, João Baptista, warming next to the wood-burning stove before he begins the daily chores.
-
- Sunrise at the Pereiras.
-
- Another view of the sunrise.
-
- Day breaks on the hills around their farm.
-
- Meanwhile in the kitchen Jorgina prepares breakfast for us.
-
- Orelha do Papo, is what she called this dish.
-
- Early morning in Poço Fundo.
-
- Dairy cow ready to be milked.
-
- João Baptista milking the cow.
-
- João Baptista treated us to a fresh café com leite
-
- Lisi drinking her café com leite.
-
- Joel enjoying his café com leite.
-
- Tobacco Plant. Besides coffee, the other main cash crop for the Pereiras is tobacco, or "fumo."
-
- Tobacco leaves drying.
-
- An up-close look at the tobacco leaves.
-
- A look at a rack of tobacco leaves.
-
- Another rack of tobacco drying, this one next to their VW Bug.
-
- After the tobacco leaves have dried, they are rolled into cords. Here is João Baptista rolling the dried tobacco.
-
- João Baptista rolling the dried tobaco into cords.
-
- The cord must then be cured in the open air for several months. Every morning João Baptista re-rolls the cord and sets it out in the open air.
-
- As João Baptista's hand shows, the re-rolling is a dirty job.
-
- João Baptista after re-rolling the tobacco and setting it out for air drying.
-
- Tobacco curing in the open air.
-
- Tobacco that has been cured and is now ready for sale.
-
- The cured tobacco, or "fumo," can either be chewed or crumbled and rolled into a cigarette.
-
- The tobacco in now ready to be put into the corn husk and rolled.
-
- Ana Claudia's brother João Paulo with fumo and corn-husk cigarette.
-
- The patio for drying the coffee.
-
- João Baptista and son João Paulo in their organic coffee field.
-
- The Pereira's organic coffee field. The tobacco is (in the foreground here) is interspersed with the coffee and acts as a natural organic pesticide.
-
- A view of the valley from the coffee field.
-
- The organic coffee field.
-
- João Paulo showing new seedlings from their in-house nursery.
-
- A coffee seed just starting to sprout.
-
- Ana Claudia's mother, Jorgina de Jesus Pereira
-
- Jorginha serving our afternoon snack
-
- She also made some organic bananas in sugar.
-
- Lisi with a puppy
-
- Ana Claudia with her parrot.
-
- Nothing says Minas Gerais as much as a dairy cow on a soccer field.
-
- First roll: Joao Batista, Joel, Ana Claudia, Jorgina, Lisi; Second roll: Marcelo and Joao Paulo
(Poço Fundo, Minas Gerais)
Progresso
We are proud to directly impact eight lives by providing merit scholarships to the children of coffee producers. We thought it would be great to give you some insight into the lives of some of these kids, for ultimately it is our hope that the total value of the coffee in the cup should not contain the consumer’s charitable contribution, but rather his/her respect for those that produce the coffee. What’s the difference? The charitable contribution necessitates a superior economic advantage be maintained by the consumer. The respect is independent of this. This is the intent behind our “progresso” message.
A Day in the Life
I have the good fortune of having Marcelo Saúde Belém, a well-known videographer, as my brother-in-law and he volunteered to produce these videos. I will post them here on the site when they are complete later this fall. From dusk to dawn we followed José Elias as he arose in the dark, walked to catch the bus to school, returned home to quickly eat and then worked in the coffee fields and patio. Most of mine and Lisi’s time this visit to Poço Fundo was spent as production assistants. Here are some photos of the “The Making of a Day in the Life José Elias” we were able to take while tip-toeing behind the scenes. The Severiano’s are a wonderful and loving family of hard-working coffee producers. I hope we represent them well.
