Thursday, June 20, 2013
I write my blogs on my cell phone, so bear with me as my grammar may reflect that :P
Wow.
We had meetings with Hugo and Vicky today, two students at universities
in Guatemala City who have been working in Lake Atitlan. We learned so
much.
Hugo was recommended to us by UC Davis aquatic ecologist, Prof. Eliska Rejmankova. Hugo is working on finishing up his thesis on
the lake's ecosystem. He spoke about his experiences and what he knew about the lake. He also suggested a number of contacts we will pursue. We asked questions about the
different communities and we laid out the intentions of Engineers Without Borders-Davis for providing engineering expertise in an effort to help clean up nitrates and phosphates now leaching into the late.
Impromptu we
invited him to lunch where we spoke of things such as the difference in the
educational experience between Guatemala and the USA. He was sporting a
Barcelona shirt so we spoke of the current Confederation Cup standing.
Soccer is a big deal in this country. At the mall where we ate, we took cash from the ATM and also added
minutes to the Guatemalan phone Harold purchased on his last trip here.
Hugo took us back to Villa Toscana and we hung out until Vicky showed up
at 2:30pm.
Vicky was very outgoing and
outspoken on issues regarding her work. I liked her a lot as well. She
saw the system Harold built in Santa Catarina during his last trip and
made contact with Harold to see if he would be willing to provide
expertise in her work in Tzununa.
Tzununa is one of the most poverty ridden towns by the Lake
and Vicky is a part of Guatemalas biggest brewery (Cerveseria) which
has taken it upon themselves to "save the town" (literally that is the
mission statement for their efforts). Cerveseria has several aspects to
their project including reforestation, business modeling, rainwater
collection, river micro hydroelectric systems, wastewater treatment, and
more. They committed to four years to this endeavor and are one year
into the initiative now. Recently, a sector of the municipality of Guatemala
called INFOM also made a commitment to help and created a plan to
save Tzununa as well. The issue here if it's not already apparent is
that these two separate and huge entities have brought separate plans to help a
poor village with tons of money to back them up and they are attempting
to talk about how their plans can be merged. As a result, it seems that
Tzununa has a lot going on and we may not need to spend too much time
there if any.
Vicky also was able to reserve us a rate at our hotel in
Pana (short for Panajachel where we plan on staying for most of the
trip) that's about $10/day. We are going to meet tomorrow with
Ranna, another student, and Folco Beverini, a retired chemical engineer. We anticipate he will be a
goldmine of information and we look forward to meeting him.
For
dinner we are ordering delivery pizza and it boggles my mind that the
medium is U$17 and the large is U$18 dollars. The overall pricing scheme
makes no economic sense. Proof in a picture below. Weird hotel pricing
is weird. I'll also leave you with this picture of our food menu.
Imaan Taghavi, undergraduate, Civil Engineering, UC Davis
Comments
Post a Comment