Building Appropriate Technologies...

Last week the Long Way Home crew completed two appropriate technology projects; a solar shower for ourselves and a wood-burning stove for our neighbors. With the help of our resident AT Peace Core member, Ben, we were able to construct our shower over a two and a half week period, while the stove took us just five days to finish.
The solar shower is a very simple peice of equipment requiring some lengths of hard PVC piping, 50 to 100 meters of black tubing, a couple of valves, a shower head, roof space and a few hours of direct sunlight per day. We fit all the peices together by putting the black tubing (mangera) under a flame, leaving it malleable and then fitting it over its PVC counterpart. We used a strong adhesive (pegamiento) and wire to stick and securely fasten all joints together. The 100 meter coil of mangera is located on top of our shower and bath rooms, on a flat surface, which recieves at least six hours of direct sunlight a day. We may place a piece of sheet metal underneath the mangera in the future in order to amplify the heat the coil recieves from the sun and thus heat the water in the tube faster and with less sunlight. Considering that our water supply flows at least 200-300 feet down hill from its source before reaching the mangera coil, we now have a very strong, hot flow from the shower, which is quite a luxury.
While the solar shower has certainly added to the gringos comfortability at Parque Chimiya, this is not what we came here for. That is why building the stove for our neighbor David and his family was so much more rewarding, and became the central project for us last week.
The stove was built in 6 stages, more or less. First you dig out a small, rectangular fitting which becomes the base for the whole cooking station. After digging and leveling, we mixed-up a batch of cement and began placing the cinder-block foundation. Three levels of cinder-blocks later we packed the center of the cinder-block rectangle with garbage, rock and dirt until it was filled to the top, forming a single, solid platform. Upon this platform we then layed clay tiles, on top of which the wood is burned. After that structure sat for a day and settled and hardened, we came back and built the enclosed stove area itself. Using a mixture of fine sand, clay and molassas we coated the tiled floor of the stove and built-up a three-sided brick casing for the metal stove-top (plancha o pollo). The molassas mixture is used around the stove area instead of cement because it bakes and hardens like brick after just a few firings. Finally, we placed the plancha in its brick casing and attached and sealed the stove-pipe and ran it up through the roof.
It is interesting to note that this final step of placing a proper smoke exhaust system is really the most important aspect of building stoves like these in the developing world. For most Guatemalan women their day is filled with two activities; washing clothes by hand and cooking over an open fire. Many women experience complications in pregnancy and birth defects in their children because of the years of smoke inhalation. In addition, firewood (leña) is a big expense or a very time consuming effort for most Guatemalan families, as they almost always have a fire going in order to cook or make tortillas (tortillar). The efficient stove we built for David and his family will hopefully allow his mother, the perpetual cook, to breath in less smoke, while saving them time and money.

Teaching II...

For those of you have wondered, including myself, how exactly I could put to use my History degree, rest assured The Long Way Home and Comalapa have provided me with a wonderful opportunity to do just that.
Myself and fellow History major and volunteer, Rosie, have begun teaching a history series at the Tecnico Maya school I have previously mentioned. I have been assigned to the sixth grade class, which allows me to cover some fairly serious and complex historical events and issues, although in quite a simplified manner. The sixth grade teacher at Tecnico Maya, a bright, dedicated and distressingly under-paid and under-trained young man named Carlos, has asked me to teach the students something about the history of the rest of Latin America, as the students have already been required to study a bit of Guatemala´s.
I therefore started with a lesson in the historical relationship between Latin America and the United States, as it is a sordid, yet extremely important relationship for both parties. I chose to begin with what Americans call the Spanish-American War of 1898, in which the United States, acting upon the principles of the Monroe Doctrine, for the first time in its history broke out of its isolationist shell and participated in a war outside of its continental boundaries. However, south of the Mexico border this war, along with what we call the Mexican-American War are respectively known as La Guerra Hispano-Estadounidense(The Spanish-United States War) and La Intervencion Norteamericana(The Northamerican Intervention), as most Latin Americans take offense to the fact that those of us from the U.S. reserve the right to call ourselves "Americans" instead of using an equivalent english phrase for estadounidense(person from United States).
As for the class itself, I believe it was something interesting and new for both the sixth graders and their teacher, yet I think I tried to accomplish too much with it. I used the well-known song "Guantanamera", written by the famous cuban poet, writer and war of independence martyr, Jose Marti, in order to illustrate through pop-culture how the historical events of the Spanish-American War still have implications for the present day relationship between Cuba and the United States. For the result of the Spanish-American War was independence for Cuba, as Jose Marti had envisioned and fought for, but not on their own terms, as the 1901 Platt Amendment ceded Guantanamo Bay to the U.S. indefinitely.
As I said, I believe I overreached on my first history "lecture" to the sixth graders, but it certainly made an impact on Carlos, and the directora of the Tecnico Maya school. Both of them observed with fascination during my presentation, and asked many questions during and after. I will no doubt get better and more efficient in my history teaching method, but if nothing else hopefully the teachers will learn something from them that they can pass to class after class once I am gone. In development work, as in life, if you teach a man to fish or to teach a new subject more properly, that effort will always have a greater impact on a community than just feeding them fish or information could ever have over the long-term.
I was immediately reminded of this at the end of my class, when Carlos and the directora of the school came up to me to discuss my lesson further. The older woman at one point asked whether or not the manner in which Cuba gained its independence had any affect on the building of the canal by the U.S. later on in the 20th Century, obviously confusing Cuba with Panama. Without hesitation Carlos went back to the board and clarified for the directora the difference between Cuba and Panama, and again explained the historical implications of the U.S. possession of Guantanamo Bay, loosely likening it to the history of the Panama Canal.
This geographic and historical ignorance demonstrated by this directora of a developing nation´s school, like the similar histories of many Latin American nations in relation to the U.S., was not and is not unusual, and I think it is an interesting yet not surprising anecdote.

Teaching...

My fellow volunteers and I have been busy teaching and educating the Comalapan children about their environment and how to protect it. While the indigenous population here is certainly more connected to their land than I may ever be to the tierra of the Northwest, they lack an understanding of how modern, Western technologies detrimentally affect their milpa, water supply and health. Clear-cutting and a subsequent lack of biodiversity, litter and vehicle pollution are the basic problems facing Comalapa and its surrrounding aldeas.
Therefore, El Proyecto Chimiya brings children and teachers to our park for an environmental education program which explains the interconnections between humans, plants, animals, insects, waterways and the air we breath. Simple excercises demonstrating the ¨web of life¨ show how human health and prosperity are dependent upon the natural resources that we often take for granted. We identify local species of plants, animals and insects and directly associate them with the local food and water supply. We also encourage the children to think of nature not only as a vulnerable and valuable commodity, but also as a place where they can maintain their indigenous traditions and values; something that has an intrinsic value as a healthy, communal space.
As a reward for our session with the Tecnico Maya school, a few of the children demonstrated a traditional Maya rain dance ceremony. The Tecnico Maya school here in Comalapa is one of the only schools not directly funded by the Catholic Church. This is the case because the Church considers the school a teacher of the pagaen traditions of the Maya. While the school teaches reading, writing and arithmetic just like all others, it also teaches Kakchiquel, the local indigenous dialect and many of the dieing Maya traditions. If you scroll down to the bottom of the blog site you can watch a video of their demonstration, in which the children dance, sing and play music with their chinchines.