A Typical Mountain Family
For 3 years in the mountains of Santa Maria de Jalapa, we have lived at Laguna El Pito on the land of the Jimenez family whose patiarch Don Margarito and his wife Dona Cecilia have hosted our team for 7 months each year. In 2007 we have found our own place near by where we are building a permanent camp for the volunteers of Wells of Hope. We would like to thank the Jimenez for their hospitality and we would like to introduce you to the family of Roberto and Alba, a typical Mayan, mountain family A man, a woman and four small children living in an adobe brick house at 7000 feet in the mountains of Guatemala about 125 winding kms. From Guatemala City and 15kms from the small town of Jalapa (18,000 pop. )

Roberto is 32 years old, 5' 6'' tall weighing about 150 lbs. Dark skinned, black hair and eyes,he is a very strong,, tough man.He is friendly, smiles a lot, talks a mile a minute in Spanish and is a willing and hard worker. We got to know Roberto quite well. He worked last year (06 ) with Ted on the drilling rig. Hard demanding work that requires skill. This year ( 07 ) he was hired by Ben as a laborer at the new camp building. He mixed and poured concrete, dug trenches, layed pipes, loaded and unloaded crushed stones from trucks and wheeled it to fill trenches and sub floors. He was there every day except two where he had to go and pick coffee with his family deep in a valley on a small piece of land he has. He makes less than $ 2000.00 a year.

His wife Alba, 6 years older is a woman of real strength, like all the women of this community. They are the child bearers and care givers. They work very hard to provide home and food for their family. They walk many kilometers to search for and carry home ; fire wood, water, food. They do all of the typical work at home ; washing clothes at the water hole on the white detergent stained rocks, cooking, taking care of the animals, making tortillas. They also work to harvest what is in season ; corn, fruit, coffee etc. and do so on steep mountain slopes and valleys traversing long mountain trails that crisscross this harsh landscape.

Most of the men work on jobs where they can earn some cash and many have gone into the city to do so. This means leaving their families for periods of a week or more at a time. They work as taxi drivers, or waiters in hotels and restaurants. They also work in the fields planting, tending and harvesting their crops. These people have a toughness few of us have ever seen. They are tough mentally and physically.Their family values and strength are exemplary. Their children and elders are respected and taken care of.
By our standards, Roberto and his family have very little. A small dimly lit adobe brick house, a few light bulbs hang from the rafters. Openings around the eves, windows, and doors provide the ventilation. A few sparse pieces of furniture and two beds partly fill the main room. When we asked Alba who sleeps where, she said she sleeps with the baby and Jocelyne, and Roberto sleeps with the boys, to keep them warm on the cold mountain nights.

The kitchen, a lean to off the main room is dominated by an open pit fire covered partly by the old top from a wood stove, the kind that you lift the rings from with a handle. Roberto must have found that somewhere. Old black smoked pots and pans hang on the wall poles, a few dishes, cups & glasses are stacked on an old shelf.
In the main room, the kids are watching an old black and white tv, a snowy picture is showing cartoons and the music is lively.The kids get up and start dancing and laughing as happy as any children I have ever seen.

Roberto's house is 3 houses over from our camp. All of the houses on each side of our camp and the camp itself are on the land owned by Don Marguarito Jimenez and his wife Cecilia. Roberto's wife is Marguarito's oldest daughter. His other sons and daughters have also built houses on this property and all work growing and harvesting crops and raising animals on The “ family Farm “

The Children

The children are everywhere and criss-cross the camp and come to visit us all the time. They take care of each other and you don't hear crying, complaining, whining or arguing. They all dress from second hand clothes shipped from North America – nice clean clothing. Shoes always seem to be missing or in poor shape but who needs shoes in this climate.
The older children 7-8-9 work in the field with their parents and learn early to work hard. They also go to school ( most of the time ) usually to about grade 6 or 7 so you would hope that most of them are literate and can work with numbers. The truth is that only 30% of the children enrolled in grade 1 will complete grade 6. The young ones are often taken care of by the older ones. The babies ride on mom's hip or back in a sling and seem to take it as natural while mom works picking coffee, washing clothes, or walking long distances in search of water or firewood.

You often see the kids getting their scrub down in the wash tub type sink that everyone seems to have in their backyard. Stripped, splashed, soaped, and rinsed, some scream as the cold water hits them the older ones just stand there and take it. They are "clean" people. Their diet is fairly restricted with corn and corn products, some meat, veggies and fruit. They look healthy, very few are overweight. Their greatest health issues are related to polluted water they are forced to use and the horrible smoke in their homes from the open pit cooking fires that slowly drift out of the openings in the eves. Women and children all seem to have runny noses and eye problems from the smoke. Lung infections are common.

We are only in Guatemala during the dry season, Oct to May, and find it very hard to visualize what life must be like during the wet season when it pours every day. The mud roads, the steep mountain mud trails and their drafty muddy houses must make life very very much more difficult than we already see it.

1.Lunch break, chicken
and tortillas.		 2. Coffee ready to be picked. 3. Laundry drying in the warm breeze
Ken and Lyse Edwards volunteer workers 05-06-07
BACK TO TABLE OF CONTENTS