It’s a pleasant 76 degrees F. as I type this and while our team is out and about exploring the lovely municipality of Barillas I thought I’d take a few minutes and let you all know that we made all made it here just fine.
This is the first year, for our team anyway, when the team has flown in separately to Guatemala City. I arrived Wednesday, Craig, Christie, Jeff and Rico on Thursday and the balance of the 17 of team members on Friday. We all transferred to smaller aircraft (due to a timing issue we needed to take two flights rather than one) and, for the first time, met up as a team at the airport at Huehuetenango. That’s the short version of our story – for the full version please wait for the book.
We boarded our bus at Huehue and climbed to over 9000 feet to the Coffee of the Heavens coffee shop, which serves terrific coffee and chocolate along with a world-class view. Our trip then took us over the 11,000 foot mark in the Sierra Madres along many miles of hilly, narrow and fog-shrouded roads and through several towns until reaching our destination around 8 p.m. A fine meal by Mimi and Almelda awaited us. In the meantime, our friend and longtime Hands for Peacemaking staffer Alex was driving with all of our luggage from Guatemala City, arriving from the 12-hour journey about 9:30 p.m. (He didn’t stop for the long coffee and lunch breaks that we did so made better time).
Today was our stove training at the Aller Skills Center, where the team assembled and learned the finer art of stove assembly from Marco, Alex and Elvin, shop foreman at the ASC. I’ve done this a few times before, but always good to get a refresher course.
Tomorrow, Sunday, we will load up in the Hands for Peacemaking vehicles and head off to church, then pack up to the village.
A terrific trip so far with everyone healthy, enjoying the trip and each other’s company. Lots of laughter and fun conversation.
While we’ve been traveling and preparing ourselves to get to the village of Montenegro the villagers have been preparing too. Earlier this week all of the stoves were delivered in “kit format” and the villagers signed contracts. We will meet all of them Sunday afternoon sometime after what we hear is another long and bumpy road trip.
The team just returned from their walkabout, which included a market tour and an ice cream stop. I’m a little jealous of that, but did get in a nap and a shower while they were gone so am feeling refreshed and ready.
Cheers,
Brian