One child at a time

We are really excited to report that over the holidays over $2,400 came into our scholarship fund from family, friends, coworkers and people we have never met. There is more on the way too and this year is looking like a good year to send some kids to school. Right now we have 14 children ranging from 5 to 17 enrolled in our program. It has been difficult to cooridinate all the things that they need to get started in school. The school system in Guatemala is not nearly as organized as we are used to at home. Often times it has involved Corby or I making late night trips to the store to buy materials for the next day. A full scholarship includes yearly tuition, all the school supplies for the year, uniforms and shoes. We will also be supporting them in their yearly activites that require money to participate in.



Our efforts to choose students were mostly placed on kids that were not planning on going to school this year for reasons they could not control. A large percentage of them do not have fathers and their mothers do not work outside the house. It is nearly imposible to come up with money to live, let alone go to school. Each day we learn that the need is endless. We literally have had a line of people at our door nightly asking us for help. We hope that we can make a difference with this money and begin to stop the cycle of poverty that exists. Through education this can be done.



We now see some of the kids running to school to get there early. The enormous sense of self-confidence and pride they have in carrying a backpack, wearing new shoes or having the school supplies that are requested is amazing. We only wish that all of you that gave could be here to see what an impact you have made. Thank you for your generousity. We will continue to update about the program.

A brief...or not so brief update

A flood in our office at the end of November has taken us out of communication with the outside world until now. We finally have our internet back up and running and are excited to report all of our activities over the last 2 months.
Thanksgiving found us in the city awaiting the arrival of Kari's sister and her boyfriend. Our first visitors from the states! We did a jam packed tour of Guatemala with Katie and Kristoff, which included a couple days in Salacuim, a visit to Semuc Champey, Lake Atitlan, Antigua and the longest zipline in Central America. We were really grateful to be able to spend time with the two of them, especially around the holidays.





The beginning of December started off with us celebrating our 29th birthdays in Guatemala, as well as taking a road trip to Livingston and Tikal with our office before everyone left for Christmas vacation. With Christmas quickly approaching we headed to Antigua and spent Christmas Eve with our host family in Santo Tomas. We took part in their traditional celebration of mass at 11pm and dinner at midnight. The family of 40 stayed up until 5am celebrating. We were glad to have people that we consider good friends to spend the holidays with.



A couple days after Christmas we were fortunate to have our friends Tim and Julie pay us a visit as well. We took off for Honduras for a 5 day trip to the Bay Islands, where we enjoyed island life and New Years Eve on Utila. We ended our trip with a few days in Guatemala and enough time to take in Antigua, the market in Chichicastenango and a trip to Panajachel on Lake Atitlan.



The last couple months have been full of travel and time with family and friends, which we are so grateful for. It really is an amazing experience to have people come and see what we've been up to for the last year. The newly uploaded pictures say it all.

Thank You

A big thank you to all that have donated to our scholarship fund. We appreciate all the support that we are receiving on behalf of the kids from our community. A special thanks to our friends in Northeast for organizing the benefit party and to all that attended. What an amazing group of people we know.
We have exciting to news to report. Mario Rax, one of the older children on our scholarship page, has been awarded a scholarship from the NGO we are working with to attend a three year school in Rio Dulce where he will be studying ecotourism.

For those of you who are still interested in donating, there is still almost a month left before school starts. We'd love to be able to give a few more children a chance.

Donations can be made directly to:

Friends of Guatemala • P.O. Box 33018 • Washington, D.C. 20033

be sure to place Corby and Kari Lewis- Cat. II in the memo section of your check to ensure that it is earmarked for our project.

Happy Holidays!

Meet our Neighbor

On a daily basis we get to hang and with all kinds of interesting Guatemalans. We thought it would be kind of interesting to introduce some of the people we spend time with. Kind of a "who are the people in your neighborhood" series.



"Grandma" as we affectionately call her, or "Abuela" as all the locals call her, is our next door neighbor. Maria Prado seems to take on the role as the town grandma. She lives in the lot next door and we share a backyard, a well, at times the same path to a latrine, and many fruit trees. Generally if she wants to get bananas out of the tree, she has Corby chop down the entire tree. That's just the way they do it. She's always great about bringing us bananas, oranges and lemons when she has extras.

Most of her day is spent making tortillas that she sells around town. She makes several trips to the molina (corn grinder) starting at 4 am to get a head start on the crowd. Her house is the primary stop for all of the out of town workers that stop in Salacuim to do business. She'll serve them beans, eggs and tortillas at a good price.

One time I asked her how many grandchildren she has and she looked at me sweetly and replied, "bastante". In other words, "enough or lots". She started to count and name them all and got distracted. We made it to about 22 grandkids before we started talking about something else. She recalls that she had 13 children in total, but 6 of them have died. It's hard to ask her about the past and what she recalls because the past is often an undiscussed subject in Guatemala due to the turmoil. We know bits and pieces of the story of her husband being shot near our front yard nearly 25 years ago during the war. But she survived the war and survived Salacuim being burnt to the ground. She still talks about being alone and lonely, although there is rarely a moment in the day when her yard isn't filled with the neighborhood children that seem to adore her.

Although Salacuim is a very safe place to live, she guards our house when we're out of town. I wouldn't mess with her either because at over 70 yrs old, Abuela can still swing a machete with the best of them.

Opportunity to Help the Children of Salacuim

Our new scholarship program is now up and running.  Visit the website for more information.  Please consider supporting the children of Salacuim!

Scholarship Website

Developing Scholarship Program

While living in Salacuim for the last 6 months we've been developing ideas for a program for you all (various blog readers and others) to help us with some type of community based project. We've decided that the most effective way to help right now is to provide scholarships for local childern to do something that most of us take for granted in the US--go to school. In the case of a 1st - 6th grade education about $100 can send a child to school for a year and give them a chance to explore their dreams.

We're planning on posting more details on how to help within a week here on this website. Check back soon!

Corps of Engineers Newlsetter Article

The St. Paul District Corps of Engineers had an article about us in the latest newsletter. Here's a link...

our article: http://www.lachua.org/corbyandkari/corpsofengineers_article.pdf
newsletter: http://www.mvp.usace.army.mil/docs/crosscurrents/2006August-September.pdf

Día de Independencia

The 15th of September marked the 185th anniversary of Guatemalan (as well as Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Costa Rica) independence from Spain in 1821. Our community of Salacuim took the day off to celebrate. The parade reminded me of our own independance day celebrations in Sheyenne, North Dakota...horses, bands, candy, dances, and community togetherness. Also the youth group we work with culminated their 2 month long soccer tournament with a chamionship game that drew what seemed like the whole town to watch. I had a chance to play in the "jovenes vs. ancianos" (translated youth vs. elderly) soccer game, where the ancianos won 2-1.

To get a feel for the celebration, check out our photos @
http://www.flickr.com/photos/corbylewis/sets/72157594295220796/

Maps of Our Area

We wanted to share a basic map of where our site is and where we're located in Guatemala. Aquí es.

La Cantidad de Agua es Increíble

Our Peace Corps site is within an ecosystem known as Selva Tropical Lluviosa (Tropical Rain Forest). We’re in the middle of the rainy season. Guatemalans actually call the season from June-October “winter” and reserve the term “summer” for the drier months during winter in the US. For us the quantity of water has been incredible. This area receives about 175 inches of rain each year! Incredible when you compare it to the 30 inches of precipitation that Minnesota gets, especially this year from the way it sounds.

Although it has meant a few muddy shoes, clean clothes that never dry, and occasionally being trapped under some type of roof between the office and home the rainy season has been enjoyable. Most of the rain is at night, so its possible to stay dry during daytime activities and the sound of 5 inches of rain overnight on your tin roof without any sound insulation is something magical.

I thought a few people might be interested in this average monthly rainfall chart and rainfall data from June of this year….