Maya Pedal - days 1 and 2

HEY!!!

Alright everyone, so I made it to the town of San Adres Itzapa.  This is where I am volunteering with Maya Pedal. I arrived mid day on Sunday after an interesting ride on a chicken bus from Antigua city.  Luckily for me, I met this little old lady who knew where I wanted to go, and she pretty much walked me there.  Unfortunately, no one was around so I pretty much had a siesta in on the side of the road hoping that someone would show up.  The neighbor told me everyone was gone until the next day, but luckily she was wrong.  I was greeted by 2 guys from Spain who are biking from Alaska down to somewhere in South America.  They showed me around the shop whjich is really a crazy place.  I mean, you gotta picture it. I’m in a mountain town in Guatemala where people still use donkeys to move firewood around, and here’s this VERY basic (by our standards) machine shop that rebuilds bicycles and makes these bicycle powered machines…. 

So we chilled, they made dinner, and I met the rest of the people that are volunteering right now.  Bed time was late… I think 9pm is the standard in this part of the world…. That and I seem to be waking up around 4:30-5:00am for the last couple of days.

Alright, so today, the volunteer work started.  I threw some ideas at them, and they’ve got some great ones too, but tools and organization seems to be sometimes lacking.  There’s great motivation, but direction is something I’m going to get clearer in the time that I am here.

  Let’s see… today I fixed a barbeque lighter, an angle grinder, then proceeded to work on a machine that removes corn from the husk.  It’s good to be cutting metal and figuring things out with hands again!  2 others were working on a bicycle powered washing machine, which seems to be a new prototype as their last one didn’t function.  Another couple were organizing and labeling a parts room (key!  Too many bins with no names on them)

Throughout the day, random kids and locals dropped by to get their soccer balls patched, bicycles fixed, some parts welded together…  It’s amazing but this shop seems to create an affordable ability for people that otherwise would not have access to these repairs.  It seems to be a great intermediate step between 3^rd world situations and our developed world excesses.  The number of times I looked up through the bay doors onto the street to see toothless ladies dressed in brightly colored huipas smiling at me and people walking to fruit plantations with their machetes and carts… damn.  What a world.I am going to propose to Carlos, the guy that runs the place, to make his designs available open source to other locations in the world to give others the inspiration and freedom to make these kinds of positive changes in their own communities.

Anyhow, we finished day with an awesome dinner that Gavin and I cooked for 2 hours…. Beans, mashed potatoes with various fresh herbs (do you pronounce the h?) and a fresh veggie stir fry, topped of with a fresh fruit salad… enough to feed 7 of us, all acquired this morning at 7am at the market for just under 5 dollars.  It’s ridiculous the amount of food you get for what we in North America would call a small amount of money, yet some of the local people can be found living in atrocious poverty.  How can we help?  How can you help?

Alright, it seems that its sleep time for me, actually, I’m gonna study me some more Spanish.  Since I left my good friend and translator April, and the majority of the people in the shop speak Spanish, I have gotten over my fear of talking and am just getting whatever words I can out there into semi-cohesive sentences…

 And the internet seems to work for 4-5 hours a day so I’ll be posting updates regularly  J

PEACE!