StoveTeam Blog

We had an absolutely incredible trip with a fiesta for 350 in the village to wrap it all up this afternoon.

The fiesta today was absolutely incredible as the women who have the Ecocina catering business and have been feeding us at the factory every day stayed up until midnight last night making the "empanadas con pollo" and then got up at 4am to continue cooking.  Rosanna arranged for individually wrapped pieces of birthday cake for everyone as well as a piñata that delighted all of the children.  The first people to take a swing at it were Sanya, then Fernando (the current Rotary President), and then Bob Way.  We sang to them as they all had either just had a birthday or were about to have one.  Then Chris (our UO connection) took charge of organizing kids to take a swing while Anibal pulled on the rope.  We entertained the entire village until the large piñata finally gave way.  The little kids didn't even have a chance as adults dove into the pile grabbing whatever candy they could.  Dogs yapped, kids squealed, and everyone in the village was laughing out loud.  They are now very comfortable with us and said they were very sad to see us go, as they had looked forward to our visit each day.  This was quite something as in the first days when we arrived they were extremely shy and timid and barely spoke to us.

We had an "oracion" in the church which was evidently quite moving with many of the volunteers crying.  (I missed it as we were still lighting fires in individual homes as part of the training.)  Then there was a formal presentation by the mayor who had made a special stage for the occasion.  The mayor spoke, Anibal spoke, I spoke, the mayor again, but the most moving part was when an elderly Mayan priest blessed us in Chorti, their rapidly disappearing local language.  This was followed by two young girls singing in Chorti, and then I was presented with copies of their legal papers showing that the Guatemalan government had finally agreed that they were the owners of new land where they hope to move, and then I cried when he said they were changing the name of the town from San Jose de las Lagrimas - (San Jose of the Tears), to Nuevo San Jose (New San Jose) as our visit and presentation of stoves had given them new hope.  

The mayor spoke about how wonderful it was that there were people from the U.S., from Honduras, and from Guatemala all working together on this project of new stoves to protect their land, but he said that more than that he was not a Chorti as he was a Maya, and that actually all of us are brothers and sisters and that there really are no frontiers to divide us.

It doesn't get much better than that!