For the past three years, Mateo, the founder and director of Long Way Home has been recieving training and technical support from AIRES(Alianza Internacional de Reforestaciones), an international reforestation organization. Mateo and AIRES workers have built up and realized a successful tree nursery at Parque Chimiya, with a variety of species, including pine, cyprus and fruit trees.
About a month and a half ago myself and the other volunteers at Long Way Home had the privilege to help execute a fairly large reforestation project in one of Comalapa´s surrounding villages. The area in Simajuleu included a deforested hillside, community market, soccer field and the local cemetery. The deforested hillside was three cuerdas, just about one acre, and it alone required nearly 1,000
Ilamos or Elm trees.
On the morning of the project a large, flat-bed truck showed up at 6am and before I had gotten out of bed ten men had formed a relay team and was handing the needed trees down the hillside from our nursery to the truck. An hour later we were all in the back of a pick-up headed out to Simajuleu following behind that bed of green. Not too surprisingly for Guatemala, we parked at the end of a series of backroads and on the edge of a large, steeply graded corn field, through which we walked in order to get to the planting site. After hiking down hill through woods for about ten minutes we arrived just above the bottom of the ravine where we were to begin planting. As we came out in to the macheted clearing, myself and Long Way Home´s resident forestry technician, Cesar, were surrounded by nearly 100 young and old, tough-looking Guatemalan men. There was a small fire going and the men were sitting around drinking soda and eating their warmed tortillas for breakfast, while joking with each other in Kak´chickel.
Our former, favorite candidate for mayor, Valeriano, had come out to put the
DIA Party stamp on the development project in his hometown, at the height of the campaign season. He and Mateo gave short speeches, one taking the credit and the other sharing it around. Then Cesar gave a short instructional notice to the men as to our strategy for planting all the trees.
Ilamo was to be planted because of the natural springs which perculated up at various points on the hillside, as
Ilamo is not a high water content tree like Cyprus, for example. In addition, the Elm tree grows quicker and spreads its roots system faster than the our other tree options.
Three meter long sticks were to be made and used to properly space the trees out in a triangular formation, which was decided upon because of erosion considerations on the constantly wet hillside. And finally, as Cesar´s lecture came to a close, the trees were handed out and we spread out over the top portions of the hillside with our machetes and shovels.
As soon as the planting began and the planting formula found its rhythm, the men moved down the inclined slope like an army of ants. Nine hundred trees were planted on that hill before noon of that day. I personally planted only eight because that was all I had time for before our reforestation crew finished the entire job.
The whole experience out on that remote and random hillside that day was unique and unforgettable. For example, my planting partner was a toothless old man, who spoke less spanish than I did and was amazed that a gringo knew some words in Kak´chikel. This man had to be older than sixty, yet he had the body of a twenty-year-old lightweight boxer and moved up and down the rugged terrain carrying a satchel of trees and a hoe more effortlessly than I did while only carrying a machete. Afterwards we sat out in the woods with some of these men drinking cheap rum, talking, laughing and eating some of the best flank steak I´ve ever tasted.
But the day did not end there. Mateo had also arranged for us to plant 500 or so Cyprus trees at various community areas throughout Simajuleu proper. This was to serve two purposes, for municipal beautification and for educating the town´s school children to the importance of caring for trees and how to do it. In this less physically demanding project we were assisted by the entire fourth and fifth grades of the local, public school. Cesar gave a similar speach to the 100 or so kids who took part in lining their town market, soccer field and cemetery with the Cyprus trees. All of them learned how to plant and care for the trees through demonstration and then were put to work doing their part for the health and beauty of their town´s environment. Working with these kids was yet another one-of-a-kind memory, containing many great individual moments and connections.
Just last week we went back to Simajuleu to check on our trees and follow-up on the project as a whole. We took the kids back to the cemetery, soccer field and market and cleared weeds, staked weaker trees and transplanted a few to better locations. My planting group of kids and I sat on an un-marked cement block which was apparently a grave after we had finished and looked out over the impressive panorama while they informally taught me funny words in Kak´chikel.
Guatemala faces a serious deforestation problem, which is exacerbated by unsustainable efforts at economic development, a culture of environmental abuse and a high population density. Therefore, I feel particularly proud to have contributed to such a worthy project. Because of the importance that I feel reforestation has for Guatemalans, in terms of prevention of soil erosion, water contamination, landslides and loss of biodiversity, I have kept a tally of the trees I have personally planted throughout greater Comalapa area, the amount of which has reached 42.
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