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From Guatemala: Local connections, working to restore Lake Atitlan

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

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