Guatemala and Houston

Guatemala

For me the trip began a little earlier than for Kartik and Sarah, because I had the luck of taking a trip to Guatemala first! This aim of this trip was to check on the advancement of some projects the Dutch foundation I work for, Flor Ayuda (www.florayuda.nl), and my dad’s company support there.
Together with my parents and my oldest brother and his girlfriend I travelled to the suburbs of Guatemala City, Ciudad Quetzal, to see the next phase of the school Instituto Quetzal. This is an amazing project, which started out as a simple primary school and has become a centre for primary, secondary, technical and adult education including a public library and computer centre for the whole town.
This project started out 15 years ago and it’s become more than we could ever imagine. The school’s management have built up a lot of experience in these 15 years and when I asked them whether they would like to share their experience with a school in Ecuador, they immediately said yes! We will still have to work out how this will work exactly, but since Fundecruz is looking to start a secondary / technical school in Piquiucho too, some free advice is always welcome!
The second project we visited was ACOVA, a company that supplies drinking water to the villagers of El Milagro at a low price. This project was set up some 10 years ago and has provided more than 10,000,000 cubic metres of water so far. Due to the success of this project we have been trying to set up a second water company in the area of Sacoj Chiquito, another outskirt of Guatemala City. But because the groundwater level in the area is decreasing, the water companies have to drill deeper and deeper to get to the water. Therefore, the costs for this project are very high, and it has been difficult to find enough funds for it. Now the mayor of the area has guaranteed us he will pay for the drilling and equipment of one of the envisaged pumps. Hopefully this will give us the opportunity to finally provide the people of Sacoj Chiquito with clean and accessible drinking water.
The fourth project discussed was another school, the dr. Theo Bloem school, also in Sacoj Chiquito. In four years time this school has grown from a group of 10 children being taught in the back yard of a local family house to a three story building housing 500 students. They are currently planning to build a secondary / technical school on a terrain nearby. It is just wonderful to see what can be done with a lot of will power and some help from abroad.
The foundation works with a very capable Guatemalan counterpart organisation who keep coming up with new initiatives. (To find out what Flor Ayuda has done so far, check www.florayuda.nl ) If there is one thing I’ve learnt from my experiences with development projects it’s that whether they flourish or fail depends on the people implementing it. Hopefully I can use that insight in our work in Ecuador!!

Houston

To get to Ecuador from Middle America, I had to fly all the way back to Houston to get the connection to Quito. Unfortunately, when I was in Houston, my two day old toothache started getting so bad, that I was in so much pain I wouldn’t survive 6 hours on a plane. Stranded in Houston I found myself a hotel and because all dental clinics were closed already, I spent the rest of the day in the ER of a hospital just to get some painkillers.
Luckily the next day the dental clinic next to my hotel was open and the dentist actually had time to see me! Imagine my surprise when the receptionist told me to take a seat and that they would be right with me, after having called about 20 different clinics who all told me they couldn’t help be before Tuesday! The dentist was really nice and did a good job patching me up for my trip, but unfortunately I will have to get a root canal treatment as soon as I’m home, NOT looking forward to that!!