Here are the pictures from the Saturday meeting of the nutributter people. We had 35 members from our community workers show up. We had to pay transport which added up to $70.00 , but they are distributing the nutributter for free and never get to enjoy this kind of hoopderah so any that wanted to come came.
Dominga and Mario are in the picture with Peter Rololf, the pediatrician from Boston. MA who got the USAID grant for the program. Mario and Dominga surveyed and are working the most communities of any of the NGOs who participated and did the most thorough surveys. We did 24 communities. It was Dominga's first claim to fame and she was so excited.
The program consisted of lots of nutritional info comparing nutributter to mother's milk and incaparina. Of course mother's milk is the best, but if it is not available it is not available. Nutributter won out over incaprina with the vitamin and mineral and calorie count. Plus it requires no water so eliminates the poison water factor.
Then the community workers were showed how to train the parents in giving the butter to their babies.
Then the heads of the NGOs all signed a contract agreeing to certain things. So there is a pciture of me signing and then Dominga and then Mario.
Finally we got to eat lunch in a beautiful location overlooking Lake Atitlan. There were probably 250 to 300 people there.
our table
our view of the Lake from our table.
All in all i think everyone enjoyed themselves and got motivated to do a good job. We received the first of our nutributter last week and started distributing it this week. Mario is having to go with all the community workers in each pueblo and show them exactly what to do so it is still a lot of work and a lot of gas money.
The next day Sunday was our usual, church in Spanish, teach the kids at home in English, rest, go for a walk and watch Ben-Hur.
Monday, Jan. 30 turned out to be pretty exciting. I drove my 17 dau. and 15 year old son to Pana. I dropped the son at school and took the daughter to the Thai rest. where she is doing a culinary arts internship. I wanted to be there when she started because the owner was not going to be and my daughter does not speak Spanish and the regular cooks do not speak English. Soon after we arrived and I had ordered fresh orange juice and blue corn pancakes my son called. All the schools in Pana were canceled as the vigilantes and the police were in a battle. The main bridge was blocked by vigilantes with hugh rocks and fires and they were there with their machetes and what guns they had and the police were there with their guns drawn. I told Caleb to get to where I was asap and Scotia that we would start her internship another day, called the owner, collected the two kids and headed home. We were nervous they had closed off the yellow bridge we have to cross to get home as they had closed of the road from Pana to Solola. There were no cars on the roads and the kids and I were speeding as fast as the Mitsubishi would go. The yellow bridge was being kept open by 35 police officers ready to fight. We made it across and raced home. We heard later that they were fighting because the vigilantes wanted to partol their own neighborhoods at night as the police were not arresting the criminals. The police were instead arresting the patroling vigilantes and the vigilantes were at the end of their tolerance.
Tuesday was calm and we worked all day with our homeschooling kids and getting the 38 student scholarships straightened out. It is a lot of work.
Wednesday Scotia started her internship and and she loves it and the Mayan women love her. She does the waiting on the gringoes and prepares liquidos and breakfasts and everyone is happy.
Thurs. Jan. 30 , was our day off and after much work with the programs[ getting the scholarships worked out and paid for 38 kids is a lot of work.] and the kids we were ready for it.
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