Friday July 24th 2009

Today started like any other day: we woke up, had a rousing devotional led by Keenan and Eddy, ate breakfast, then made our way into our spanish classes.
Next, after a quick snack, we settled into our seats and awaited Carmen's arrival.

Carmen is a human rights activist from Guatemala. She discussed with us the current situation and was full of hope for the times ahead. She told us that social change takes time and that already children and youth are demanding social justices and rights that would have been distant dreams in the 70's or 80's. Although people are still suffering from political injustice the main difference today is that people have the freedom to speak out against it. She told us that in Canada we don't think about human rights because they are not tested, whereas in Guatemala they don't think about human rights beacuse they are to distant. This was hard to hear.

Carmen was a great speaker, despite the estrangement of translation, she really challenged us. She told us not be ashamed of what we have back in Canada but hopes instead that we remeber the feelings and emotions that touched our hearts while in Guatemala. She encouraged us to keep faith and not to loose hope, to tell others and to educate them about the situations we have encountered thorughout our time here.

This lecture was to be a lead into the afternoon's activity; we were to visit a local human rights NGO named HIJOS which is led by young men and women working to ensure that Guatemalan history does not repeat itself. Unfourtunatly, both for the NGO and for us this was not possible because of death threats. It seems that HIJOS' work is headed in the right direction because it seems to have drawn attention from some fairly powerful people. The group has been forced into keeping a low profile and is constantly moving around to keep themselves safe, therefore difficult to get in contact with. It is a shame beacuse these people have achieved a temporary victory for HIJOS cannot share their work with us, but at least they continue to persevere in their fight for human rights.

Luckily things have a way of working themselves out for it seems that even with last minute timing we were able to squeeze a visit in with a local cooperastive named UPAVIM. UPAVIM is a fairtrade cooperative which employs Indigenious women, many widowed surviors from the violencia, whom make hand crafts (many which are sold to Ten Thousand Villages), provide an offordable montessori school for the community, run their own tasty bakery (I can personally voche for the "tasty"), and even manage their own local pharmacy. We had the opportunity to chat with some of the leading women, take a personal tour of the facility, and had the chance to purcahse some awesome hand made teasures.

The women at UPAVIM volunteer two hours of work each week and use the pharmacy to rasie enough money to keep prices low and wages fair. It was great to recieve a first hand cooperative experience. It was trully inspiring to see a successful organization not only providing businesses like MCC with great hand made crafts, but also supporting local women with fair wages and a community with affordable social institutions.

On a much sadder note we returned home today to hear that Ruth's Great Aunt has passed away. Death is always a difficult time but Ruth is especially feeling the sting of loosing a loved one because she was not only very close to her Great Aunt but she will also not be able to attend the funeral. Please keep Ruth and the entire Wright-Gedcke family in your thoughts and prayers.

That's all for now, thanks for tuning in and please continue praying for our health as some of us are running off to the bathroom more than we would like to.

Much love,
John Wideman