The Children of Guatemala are Starving

The Children of Guatemala are Starving - From the Tico-Times.net


Paulina Noj sits with three of her eight children.


.CUYUTA, GUATEMALA – Children in Guatemala are starving. But like their parents, one might not notice.

There are few bones jutting out, few oversize heads and bellies. But a slow, deep hunger has been building in Guatemala for decades. And now it’s destroying a generation.

In the drab-sounding hamlet of Lote 14 (Lot 14), 100 kilometers south of the capital in the department of Escuintla, 2-year-old María sits still on her mother’s lap, her twig-like arms dangling limply. Weighing a third less than she should, María looks frighteningly small. Staring at the mud floor of their empty kitchen, her mother, Paulina Noj, explains the daily struggle to feed María and her other seven children.

Her husband is lucky – despite rampant unemployment, he has a job, but he only earns $40 a week. Before, that was just enough for them to buy the basics – corn and beans. But rising food prices have doubled the cost of corn over the past year and they can no longer get enough to feed all 10 in the family.

“Everything is so expensive now that sometimes we just can’t buy corn,” Noj said. “There isn’t always enough to feed the kids.”

Clearly hungry herself, Noj can’t produce breast milk to feed her little girl, and has helplessly watched her get “very skinny.”

But skinny, small children are so normal here that it took Noj months to understand there was a serious problem. In fact, few Guatemalans find it odd that 4- and 7-year-olds will often look the same age.

Almost half of Guatemalan children suffer from chronic malnutrition; in rural Mayan areas it’s worse. And this slow hunger means that physical growth is being stunted as bodies are deprived of vital proteins. Malnutrition also has an invisible effect on the mind in the form of diminished brain development.

Malnourished children like María, who suffer physical and cerebral starvation in their early years, will never recover. Willem van Milink Paz, a representative for the World Food Program in Guatemala, calls chronic malnutrition a “life sentence” that condemns generation after generation.

The dimensions of the problem are already immense, and they continue to grow. According to UNICEF, Guatemala has the fourth-highest rate of chronic malnutrition in the world, lagging behind just a few arid countries, including Afghanistan.

Looking around Guatemala’s lush landscape – dominated by plantations of bananas, sugar cane, coffee, and corn – this seems impossible. But historic inequality means that half this land is owned by only 2 percent of Guatemala’s 14 million people. Wealth is similarly concentrated, making Guatemala one of the least-equal societies in the world. And with the region’s lowest tax rate of 11 percent, change is unlikely soon. The result is that the majority of Guatemalans live in miserable poverty, struggling to access land, jobs, education, health care, and now food.

In the last few years, climate change has brought a series of natural disasters and erratic rainfalls that destroyed small plots of land many subsistence farmers depend on to feed their families. No longer able to grow crops, more Guatemalans have to buy food.

Religious and cultural beliefs have made family planning unpopular, so rural couples often try to feed six or seven children on incomes that can barely feed two.

Aid workers weigh Arazeli, a dangerously malnourished 2-year-old Guatemalan girl.

Natasha Pizzey-Siegert Rising food prices globally and locally have made life even harder for many Guatemalans. “We are talking about a 60 or 70 percent rise in food prices since January last year. That’s basic food. … Corn is at the highest [price] in history right now”, said Van Milink Paz.

“Last year we could buy six corn tortillas for 12 cents; now we get three or four,” said Noj. Even beans are out of her reach now, and luxuries like eggs and meat are unthinkable.

It’s hard to imagine her daughter María making it to school. But if she does, she will likely find that up to eight in 10 of her classmates will be malnourished too. Their stunted brains will struggle to keep up in class, and many will fall years behind in school.

They will be sick often with diarrhea and respiratory disorders that will make them lose even more weight. Some may die.

Those who live will grow up to be weak adults with a reduced physical and mental capacity. Ultimately, they will start the cycle again: malnourished parents producing malnourished babies.

Inevitably, this cycle is stunting Guatemala’s development. Billy Estrada, undersecretary of food security for the Guatemalan government, admits, “We can’t even guess how much this is costing [the state] because it’s just so big.”

The costs of repeated school years, emergency health care and food handouts can be estimated, but the earnings lost because Guatemalans have been malnourished en masse are immeasurable.

“When these malnourished children are men, … maybe they will work the land, but they won’t be able to fully develop. … It will be hard for them to come up with ideas to start their own business and so on,” Estrada said.

Despite the obvious and urgent need for the government to tackle this problem, lack of political will and fiscal constraints have held back progress. The latest aid programs run by outgoing President Álvaro Colom were widely accused of being vote-buying schemes for their lack of transparency.

Estrada insists that the real problem has been a lack of consistency in programs. Turning them into a long-term strategy protected from politics is essential. But with a new government coming in January likely to overhaul all existing programs, underdeveloped children with underdeveloped brains look set to be Guatemala’s destiny.

http://www.mayanfamilies.org/

From Mayan Families, an NGO in Panajachel, Guatemala

Christmas Spirit

This is a family that we visited this week.
As you can see their home is very humble and they are in desperate need of stove to be able to cook over and have many other needs.
But what struck us most was the Christmas spirit they showed with this very sweet little Christmas tree in their home. There were no presents to put under the tree and not much food in the house but they had this little tree to be able to celebrate Christmas.
For those of us who were lucky enough to have all the comforts of a home, a refrigerator full of food, a tree laden with decorations and lots of presents underneath.......we should spare a moment to think about this family ( and so many like them ) and what it takes to still have the spirit of Christmas with so very little, at this time of year.

www.mayanfamilies.org



The kitchen. Its outside in the usual one room home.
The Christmas tree.

Repairs have to be put off when there is hardly any money for food.

This family was fortunate enough to receive a Tamale Basket for the Christmas festivities.

Lighting the stove.

Debora at Mayan Families

As many of you know I am a big fan and big supporter of Mayan Families, a wonderful NGO located in Panajachel, Guatemala. I don't usually talk about them all that much (I feel people need to find their own organizations to work with) but I thought this was a wonderful story.

Debora's news!

We at Mayan Families are always surprised and amazed by some of the stories we hear every day. Debora's is one of those stories that make us reflect on our own lives and how we, sometimes, make a big deal of minor problems.
Debora is 9 years old. She lives in Panajachel with her mother, father and five siblings. She had a problem at birth and the doctor told the family that they had to make a choice to either have Debora's head grow to a very large proportions or to cut her spine and she would have a normal size head but not be able to walk. With this agonizing decision, the family decided that their daughter would have a more normal life if they cut their spinal chord.
Debora is only a child, but she is doing the best she can to live a normal life. Luckily for her, she has a very supportive family and her mother Ramona dedicates almost all of her time to take care of her. When she was only four, her mother took her to the pool at a hotel in Panajachel and Debora loved every minute of her time there, so her mother decided, despite her scarce financial resources, to enroll her in the swimming classes and soon the girl was competing. Debora's eyes shine when she speaks about swimming. She has been to several competitions some of them in other cities; she has won 9 medals and she told us with pride that she even competed with kids without any disability and won.

Her mother told us that Debora loves to be outside; she likes to see people on the street, go to the supermarket, sit near the lake and watch other kids play. Mayan Families sponsored her to go to school, at first, we had to encourage the school to accept Debora but then they saw how much Debora loves to go to school and she was accepted. Her favorite thing is to read and write, she already wrote some poems but she is too shy to show them to us. When asked about what makes her sad, she told us that is the fact that she doesn't have many friends, she said that her classmates don't like to play with her because she cannot walk, but she loves her siblings and she has 2 good friends that play with her all the time.
Life in a wheelchair is not easy, especially when the financial resources are very limited, but Debora is an example to be followed. She is persistent and according to her mother, she always gets what she wants. She is determined to live a joyful life and to become a swimming teacher and we at Mayan Families, together with our donors, are glad to be helping her to have a good education and follow her dreams. Debora touched our hearts and we hope she touches yours too!

If you are interested in more information :

www.mayanfamilies.org.

Mayan Families in Panajachel, Guatemala

Lake Atitlan is one of the most beautiful places in the world. But up in the hills, where the Indians live, some of the most terrible poverty still exists. Mayan Families, a wonderful NGO works with these families and helps find scholarships for many of their children to attend school and have a better life. Here is the story of one volunteer who is working with Mayan Families:

Carmen's Trip to Tierra Linda.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Tierra Linda

We arrived in Panajachel on Saturday and soon it started to rain. It rained all day Sunday and when we woke up on Monday we saw that it was cloudy once again. It was an inconvenience for us, only because we would need to wear our raincoats and the kids were not going to be able to use the hotel pool. What I did not imagine was the misery it really brings to some people here.

I met some employees from Mayan Families early on Monday morning and we left Panajachel to deliver food and supplies to the preschools that Mayan Families runs in San Jorge, El Barranco and Tierra Linda. On the way to San Jorge we saw that there had been a huge mudslide earlier in the day and huge boulders were blocking one lane. Some municipals workers were trying to clear the road but it was obvious it would take a long time and more equipment to move all those huge rocks. Buses were not allowed on the road, only smaller vehicles. I am sure that affected a lot of people that were counting on the buses to transport them.

When we arrived in Tierra Linda we delivered the supplies and then left to visit some families, guided by the preschool teacher. She brought us to the most remote homes in the village. The road was blocked by a fallen tree and we had to walk. It was extremely muddy but it got worse once we took the small pathways and it started to rain. We first visited the home of Rolando, a sponsored student by Mayan Families. He was taking a bath next to a tank where they collect water. It was cold and he was trying to do it quickly. We visited his home and I was shocked to see the state of the walls. They were made of mud bricks and there were cracks all over. The floor was made of dirt and it was starting to get wet. I am sure it would soon turn to mud. It was a very small room. There were two small beds and only one had a thin mattress. They showed us another room where the grandmother and the two smaller kids slept. It was just wooden boards on top of some blocks and it did not have a mattress. They only had a couple of blankets.

We visited other homes nearby and they seemed to be even worse. I have been to Guatemala 4 times but these were the worst living conditions I had ever seen. The houses were made of mud brick that was falling apart. The walls had pieces of mud missing in some places and the owners had put plastic to try to cover the holes but you could still see light coming through them. These homes seemed like they could fall down any minute. Some of them were right on the edge of the clif and they were in danger of falling down all the way to the bottom of the mountain. There rooms were very dark and some homes did not have electricity connected so they would stay that way day and night. Some had Onil stoves donated by Mayan Families and their supporters and thankfully, there was no smoke in the rooms. There was mud everywhere and most of the kids were barefoot. I felt like crying and I was mad. I could not believe those were their homes and they had to be there every day.

I thought I had seen the worst and then we got to the home of Rudy, Yesica and Josue, also sponsored to attend school. The mother was boiling some water and there was smoke all over the room they use as kitchen. They showed us the rest of the house, a room with space for a small cot and a small bed. The cot did not have a mattress and a very thin blanket of top. You could feel the wires and I could not imagine having to sleep on top of that. The other bed did not have a mattress either. The walls were covered with plastic in some places to cover the holes on the mud brick. It looked like it could fall any minute. The mother told us the husband had left 3 weeks before and she did not have any money to buy food for her children. She had only been able to get a couple of jobs cleaning onions but it was very difficult to find jobs. There was no food at the home and I mean nothing, not one potato or beans, or corn. I felt so powerless. I looked in my pockets and I only had 25 quetzals to give her. I had forgotten to exchange money and I had nothing else to give her. She was very grateful and said she would buy corn flour to make tortillas for her children. It was raining very heavy, the closest store was in the center of town which meant she either had to leave the kids home alone while she tried to walk in the mud and rain or one of children would have to make the trip to buy the flour.
We had to leave but promised to try to do something for her. She was crying saying she was desperate, that she wished she could take poison to end it all. It broke my heart to hear her say that because her children where right there. All the way down the mountain I was mad and I stayed mad all day. Life is so unfair to some people. I don't understand why and it makes me mad. I just hope I will stay mad long enough to do something for her and the other families.


If you are interested in the work which Mayan Families does check them out at:

www.mayanfamilies.org

Distributing Tamale Baskets & Toys, Panajachel, Guatemala

Mayan Family workers and volunteers have had busy days assembling the food for the Tamale Baskets to be distributed this week.

The finished baskets, all wrapped and ready. The last ingredient, a chicken, will be distributed separately closer to Christmas as almost no one has any access to refrigeration.

Long lines began forming early in the morning.

Numbers had previously been given out for people who had been designated for a gift by the donor. But many others waited for hours and days hoping there would be some extra ones with no designation.

Staff and volunteers sorting vegetables.

A young boy clutches the toy he was given as part of the celebration...donated by people in the US who send boxes of clothes and gifts several times during the year. It is also possible to donate money so that toys can be bought locally for children in need.

It is very cold in the mountains in the winter and this baby has a new blanket.

And this little girl found some warm slippers.

Sponsoring a Child in a Guatemala School

This is an excellent short video on the difference sponsorship can make on the life of a Guatemalan child:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AxNbelwjNU

A note on the film from Sharon Smart-Poage, the director of Mayan Families:

"I would like to share this video with you all. It was done earlier this year and it is a professional video that is being entered into a competition , I believe. We were very fortunate that we were chosen to be the subject of two of their videos.....one is about our school sponsorship program and it focuses on one of our students from San Jorge, Claudia.
Claudia holds a special place in my heart. She has been through so much. Her mother committed suicide when she was only around 18yrs old. She already had Claudia who was 2yrs old and she had a new born baby and the father left her. I guess she felt that there was no hope for her. The father's family took the baby and Claudia was left with her grandmother. The rest of the extended family seem to resent Claudia, probably because of the extra work load that was put on the grandmother and because she took up much needed food in the family. As she has become older, they really do not have much to do with her and she gets no support. The house that she and her grandmother live in is crumbling. It is an old mud brick house...one room only.
Claudia was so excited to go to school. I knew that going to school had changed her life but till we did this video...I had no idea how much. It was a complete surprise to me the emotions that came from Claudia, she became too emotional to talk in Spanish and we had to use a Kakchiquel translator. It was very emotional for all of us who were with her and there was not a dry eye amongst us.

Claudia's story is just one of the stories of the over, 1,500 children sponsored by Mayan Families now, there are lots of children who have had their lives changed by their sponsors giving them the opportunity to go to school.

I hope you watch this video and enjoy it. Please share it if you are able to....you never know when it may change the life of another child. It is filmed in San Jorge la laguna. "

Sharon

Guatemalan Poverty

The poverty in the Guatemalan Highlands is so incredible  and  so pervasive that after awhile you  unfortunately become a bit immune to it.  But this was one of the worst cases I have seen in quite awhile. 

This family is living in one of the worst houses the local Mayan Families NGO has seen in some time...and that is saying a lot.  The children sleep on beds with wire mattresses or on the muddy floor under a leaking roof. 

Mayan Families is a wonderful group which I have personally checked out and highly recommend .  Take a look at their blog and web site if you are at all interested.  They arrange  sponsors for  literally hundreds of children to be able to attend school in the surrounding towns. 

Take a look for yourself

http://mayanfamilies-sharon.blogspot.com/

Read more »

Back to Mayan Families and Olgas in Panajachel

Then it was time to go back to Mayan Families.

They were having a meeting with many of the parents of sponsored students. They explained the situation that they do not know if all the students will be sponsored for the coming year.
They also told them that, sadly, we do not have many donations for the Christmas/ Holiday Tamale Baskets and that they will not be able to give them to all the sponsored students.

They also talked to them about the construction in Tierra Linda. How everyone is working very hard to be able to bring a junior high school to the village. The lower level school is currently finished except for the roof and they are looking for funds to complete it.

Later we went back to Olgas's house. They needed a new set of filters for their Water Filtering System and that was something we could do right away.


Installing the new filters.




Olgas's number is #1049.

The stove the family cooks tamales on.
Tamale baskets are beginning to be distributed and this will continue over many more days. If you would like to contribute $35 for a basket go to:

http://mayanfamilies.org/donateonline

You can make it for the general fund for some worthy family or for Olga's family #1049

Panajachel Guatemala Tamale Baskets

This week I was fortunate enough to visit Mayan Families, an NGO in Panajachel, Guatemala. I have been sponsoring a child in school through their organization, bringing fabric for their sewing classes and wanted to see more of their organization for myself. It turned out to be one of the best NGO's I have ever run across and is doing wonderful work in an area with hunger and a huge poverty rate.

www.mayanfamilies.org

Christmas Tamale Basket Fundraiser 2009

IT IS THE SEASON FOR SHARING.

At midnight on Christmas Eve 2005, two of our sponsored students went door to door hoping someone would give them a tamale to eat.

This is the traditional meal at Christmas in Guatemala. Their single mother could not afford to buy the ingredients to make Tamales.

When we found out about this we wondered how many other families could not afford to celebrate Christmas and how many other children were sad and hungry at this time of the year.

It turned out there were a lot of people who could not afford to celebrate Christmas.

In 2006 we started the Christmas Tamale Basket Program. We gave out 215 baskets of food. In 2007 we gave out 650 baskets. In 2008 we gave out more than 1,000.

There is a food crisis in Guatemala now and there will be even more families asking for help.

Food prices have continued to rise and the Food Crisis is taking its toll on children and families. There are lots of families needing help.

Malnutrition is a constant challenge.

Please consider feeding an impoverished family this Holiday Season.

Many families in Guatemala do not have enough food to eat this year. Many of the families that we work with cannot afford to have the traditional meal at midnight on Christmas Eve.

For $35 you can give a Christmas Tamale Basket and feed a family of 12 or more. Our Christmas basket is made of plastic and will be used afterwards by the family to stack and wash dishes, hold food etc. The food items will include: Oil, 15 lbs of Rice to make the tamales, a block of drinking chocolate (this is traditional to drink at midnight), a loaf of bread with which they eat the tamales at midnight, raisins for the tamales, grapes, apples, sugar for the Tamales, 5lbs of meat, tomatoes, one pound of coffee and leaves to wrap the tamales.

To make a contribution for the Christmas Tamale baskets please go to our website http://mayanfamilies.org/DonateOnline and go the General Donation section to send a donation.

If you would like to pay by check please send your donation made out to Mayan Families to: Mayan Families
P.O. Box 52
Claremont, N.C. 28610

If you would like to give this gift in Honor of someone special, please send us an email at dwight@mayanfamilies.org
giving us the details and we will put them on our IN HONOR OF web page.....if you would like to include a photo of your "someone special" we will also post their photo.......to have an e-mail sent to the person you are honoring - please send us their email address.

Thank you for your support.
Best wishes,
Sharon Smart-Poage
MAYAN FAMILIES
Tel: 619-550-2608
Web: www.mayanfamilies.org

ABOUT US:Mayan Families is a small non-profit group working in the Highlands ofGuatemala. We are a registered 501(c)(3) Non Profit Charity of the Internal Revenue Code.
Your donation is tax deductible.

P.S. Please help spread the word by forwarding this e-mail to your community or posting it on your personal blog, web page and your socialnetworks such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Hi5, Ning and any others thatare appropriate.

Please follow Mayan Families on
Blog: http://mayanfamilies-sharon.blogspot.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/mayanfamilies
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1603632323&ref=name
Ning: http://mayanfamiliessocialnetwork.ning.com/

Mayan Families Mothers Day Baskets

I received this email from Mayan Families and thought it was surely worth passing on:

Mayan Families Dia de la Madre - Mothers Day Food Baskets

It is Mothers Day and we would like to celebrate Dia de la Madre in Guatemala by giving as many mothers as possible a basket of food to share with their families.In Guatemala a Mothers work is never done. When they are pregnant they very rarely can afford to see a doctor, when they give birth, it is often at home with an untrained midwife, they usually have more pregnancies than their bodies can cope with.Daily, they often carry either water on their heads or heavy loads of firewood on their backs, walking for long distances, often with a swaddled baby on their bodies and another small child or two by their side. Once home, they chop wood, cook over an open fire, make tortillas by hand while attending to their families needs. At the end of a long day, going to bed often means sleeping on a woven straw mat on a dirt floor.This Mothers Day we would like to make life a little easier for them. Let's support these impoverished Women and their families by donating a Dia de la Madre Food Basket to them. You can donate a basket to the mother of your sponsored family or if you wish, you can donate a basket of food to a needy family ...please make your donation online at the Mayan Families Web site, a simple and safe way to donate.

Please follow this link http://click.icptrack.com/icp/relay.php?r=52260892&msgid=583244&act=FKUS&c=316576&admin=0&destination=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mayanfamilies.org%2FDonateOnline and send your donation of $35 using the Family Aid section and note on it that it is for a Mothers Day Basket. If you would like to nominate a special family or a sponsored student to receive your basket please do so here and include the name or student number.
The mothers in Guatemala need all the help they can get to feed their children and families. Please help them now!If you would like to pay by check please send your donation made out to Mayan Families to:Mayan Families2609 Hartford St.San Diego, California 92110-2315If you would like to give this gift in Honor of someone special, please send us an email to dwight@mayanfamilies.org giving us the details and we will put them on our IN HONOR OF Blog.
Best wishes and Happy Mothers Day,
Sharon Smart-PoageMAYAN FAMILIES
P.S. Please help spread the word by forwarding this e-mail to your community or posting it on your personal blog, web page and your social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Hi5, Ning and any others that are appropriate.