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Three papermakers and 14 nice people help a Guatemalan family

The three guys dubbed "papermakers" were Luis Henao, Jim Thompson and Chuck Swann. Henao is an executive of Pratt Industries, currently on sabbatical. Thompson is president and CEO of Paperitalo Publications. Swann is senior editor of Paperitalo Pubs. The three papermaker all hail from Georgia.

The 14 nice people were a church-related delegation from North Carolina. We all flew down to Guatemala City and then motored onward another 60 miles to the town of Panajachel, in Guatemala's southern highlands. Our group's mission was to help build a small house for a family of poor--very poor--people of Mayan Indian descent.

This project was under the sponsorship and supervision of a charitable enterprise named Solomon's Porch--or in Spanish, Porch de Salomon. Why the name? It is mentioned three times in the Christian Testament as a gathering place where first-century people met to talk. Historically, it actually was a colonnade beside the great temple in Jerusalem before the temple was destroyed by the Romans. An Internet search for the term will yield a number of "Solomon's Porch" web sites around the US, where people are invited for coffee and conversation.

Solomon's Porch in Panajachel, Guatemala, began 15 years ago in the minds of an American practicing attorney and his wife and has steadily grown and branched out into a variety of humanitarian services for indigenous families. These services include medical, dental and eye clinics; medicine and surgeries; dispensing vitamins to malnourished people; a monthly nutrition program; a school scholarship program and drug and alcohol rehabilitation assistance. Its café, located on the main street of Panajachel, serves coffee, food and beverages. Live music on Saturday nights draws many tourists and expatriates.

In addition to most of our group of volunteers being occupied in mixing mortar, laying concrete blocks and pouring concrete floors by the bucketful, some members of our group with medical/dental training conducted three free clinics in three days in nearby villages, seeing 120 or more people at each event.

Corn grows abundantly in the region and people eat corn tortillas, often with beans, at every meal. Many of the indigenous people cannot afford meat or a variety of vegetables, fruits and other foods. Their forced reliance on corn tortillas and beans has caused the world's 4th worst chronic malnutrition rate in Guatemala. The Solomon's Porch clinics accordingly dispense vitamin tablets to clinic patients.

Solomon's Porch has, so far, built 87 small, concrete-block, tin-roofed homes for families such as the one with whom we quickly became acquainted. The tiny plot of land for the 500 sq.ft. house we helped to build was bought with a collection taken up by a local church.

Who are the people who will live in the house we helped to build? They are members of the Guatemalan Mayan Indian social and economic underclass. The father, Pablo Bocel, works as a farm hand during the week and goes into town to shine shoes on weekends. Maria, the mother, does beadwork and, when Pablo is around to look after the children, goes into town to sell her beaded bracelets and small beaded change purses on the street. Their combined incomes amount to about $150 per month. (The women in our group bought practically all of Maria's stock.)

Their children are Juan (8), Micaela (5), Rosario (3) and Maria (1). Juan is in the first grade of school and Micaela is in pre-school. Rosario suffers from asthma issues and a chronic form of pneumonia. Her parents cannot afford the medicine Rosario needs.

The rented structure which currently houses the family can be described only as a one-room, tin-roofed shed. Inside it, strips of paperboard cover the seams and joints in its wooden plank walls, so that wind and rain cannot blow through them. It would be impossible for any but the most deprived to live in this hovel, if it were not for the temperate climate at an altitude of more than 7,000 feet and year-round temperatures of 70° to 80° F. The family had no furniture except for a kind of foam-padded sleeping platform used by the whole family. Maria eagerly accepted some wooden shelving units that we assembled at the site and began immediately to fold and place the family's clothing on them.

Maria currently prepares the family's food in a small open but covered annex to the main shed, where a metal sheet on blocks serves as a cooking top with a wood fire beneath it. She expressed her gratitude for our help by boiling a pot of water and providing a small jar of instant coffee for us. This was all she could give us.

At the end of our week of hard work, we flew home to our land of prosperity and plenty--but we will never have the same understandings and mind sets we had before we went to Guatemala.

Jim Thompson will lead another group to Guatemala in 2017. More information will be available later this year.


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