Today we visited a nice village, where I had the chance to hang out with some really cool kids in the houses where we were building stoves. First this little girl came up to me amd I showed her what a hi~five was with Janie....she proceeded to demand hi fives for the rest of my time there. eventually her younger siblings came along and I was laughing with three children at once. If theres anything that I'll remember from this trip it will be the three childrem who I got to hamg out with and the mom who let us help her make tortillas on her new stove. I was blessed to have met this small yet incredibly happy Guatemalan family.
The rest of the day was spent buildong stoves, and it was quite tough, but I really do wonder what the value of this service we provide is seeing as it would be fairly easy for the Guatemalan villagers to build these ovens themselves. Don't get me wrong, its been a great experience thus far...I just wonder whether it would be even more empowering if we allowed them to constuct the ovens without foreign help.
just some thoughts. sleep tight keep safe
One thought I had is that sometimes all it takes a nudge to get things to change. The people in these villages probably have always cooked with the same style of fires giving themselves all kinds of health problems because that's how it has always been done. Well, regardless of whether or not someone else could do it, they hadn't yet, and so today we provided some nudges.
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