TIERRA LINDA

A view of Tierra Linda


There are not paved street, just dirt road and foot paths.

Tierra Linda is a very traditional agricultural village. Most of the people in this village do not speak Spanish, nor know how to read and write. It has a population of 826 people – and no real economy. It is at the end of the road, no through traffic. There isn’t enough land and many of the subsistence farmers are forced to rent land at high prices far from the village. The village members live in very small homes, mostly adobe brick that are connected by dirt roads and foot paths. There is no medical clinic, no dentists; the closest medical attention is an hour’s walk to Sololá.

Guatemala is the most populous country in Central America and struggles with some of the lowest social indicators in the hemisphere. It is still suffering the effect of the 36 year old civil war that ended in 1996. It suffers from extreme income inequality — 56 percent of the population lives in poverty, one in five in extreme poverty. Infant mortality is among the worst in the region (39 per 1,000 live births), maternal mortality is extremely high (153 per 100,000 births) and chronic malnutrition remains a serious problem (49 percent)
In the Department of Sololá, where Tierra Linda is located, 76% of the population lives in poverty – living on less than $2 per day. Fifty five% of the children are chronically malnourished.

Malnutrition is a chronic problem. The basic diet for many children is bread and coffee in the morning - this is a very watered down sugary coffee. Tortillas, beans and rice for lunch and often, bread and coffee for dinner again. For many children from poor families their diet often consists of tortillas and salt. Many children go hungry.

View of the lake from Tierra Linda.

PEOPLE AND HOMES OF TIERRA LINDA

MEDICAL AND DENTAL CLINICS

We have organized medical and dental clinics in Tierra Linda. There is one Doctor who comes once a month to Tierra Linda, he is a government Doctor, he has hardly any medicines and he writes prescriptions for people who have no possibility of being able to buy these medicines. There is no clinic there for him and he has to borrow a room in a house to be able to attend the people.

There is no pharmacy in Tierra Linda and it is a two hour round trip walking to Panajachel and at least a two hour round trip to Solola for the closest pharmacies. So if people have babies with a fever, or adults with a toothache, there is no help for them.

We supply the Women’s Committee from Tierra Linda a small amount of over-the-counter medicine, such as Tylenol for infants, children and adults, cough medicines and Ibuprofen for adults for emergency cases.



The students of the Tierra Linda school received flouride treatments.

August 2006. Dental clinic held at the Tierra Linda school

MICRO CREDIT PROGRAM

February 27, 2007.- These 20 women were selected to receive the first micro loans to the women's group in the village of Tierra Linda. They had walked all the way down the mountain carrying their children. We had a meeting and explained the responsibilities of these loans and the women explained what they would like to do with the loans.
Most of them wanted to be able to invest in buying more seeds to be able to plant their fields or in buying vegetables. and fruit to sell at the markets. Some of them wanted to buy chickens to grow and sell. One is investing in materials to be able to do machine embroidery on weavings. Yet two more want the loans to be able to invest in buying beads wholesale for their beading businesses. They are all delighted to receive these loans and were very happy to meet some of the Directors of Paso por Paso who are making these loans possible.

CHICKEN PROJECT

We were able to start a chicken project with the Tierra Linda Women's Group in August 2006.

After almost a year of waiting to have this project come to fruition, it was a very happy group of women who met to discuss the start of the Chicken Project for their village

We arranged to have 20 women receive the first chickens. We received half the amount proposed for this project and so instead of each woman receiving 10 chickens, they will receive 5 chickens each. Hopefully, if the first half of this project is successful funding will come for the second half.

The Women’s Group is very appreciative of this help. We are running this project in the same way that we did the very successful Chicken Project in San Jorge la Laguna.
We choose by lottery, the first group of 20 women to receive their chickens. They have one week to build their chicken cages. We come back the following week and deliver their chickens, a small amount of food for them and inspect the cages. The cages must have water, shade and shelter. If the cages are not built then the women do not receive their chickens. We then hold a lottery for the next group and repeat the whole process.

We do not deliver the chickens all at once to the whole group for two reasons.

1. That 154 women all having 5 or 10 chickens coming of age to be sold at the market at the same time would flood the market of Solola and cause problems for everyone.
If the delivery is staggered then so is the sale of the chickens.

2. The second reason is that we need the social pressure of the group to reinforce that people are taking care of their chickens. If the first groups do not care for their chickens and the chickens die, then we stop the project. So there is a lot of pressure on the first groups to take good care of their chickens and this follows right down through the whole group.

SCHOOL AND STUDENT SPONSORSHIP

Updated pictures July 2008

pictures of kindergarten class July 2008

Tierra Linda Elementary School.
There is one school with 250 children registered. The government has not done any repairs on this school in 13 years. They provide the teachers, and some help with materials, but not enough to support the school and its students. The teachers do not have desks and there are no bookshelves.Seventy children were turned away this year due to lack of space. There are 6 classrooms, 2 of them in the process of being completed and 3 are having their roofs repaired. One of the classrooms has a water tank on the roof that is leaking onto the floor and causing mud.









The Kindergarten classroom





Other classrooms




A festival at the school

Morning Snack

The repairs on some classrooms and the addition of two more classrooms has been funded by private donations. The men in the village have worked on their day off to finish the roof. They are nearly completed but furniture and supplies are still needed to furnish the rooms.

Malnutrition is a chronic problem. The basic diet for many children is bread and coffee in the morning - this is a very watered down sugary coffee. Tortillas, beans and rice for lunch and often, bread and coffee for dinner again. For many children from poor families their diet often consists of tortillas and salt. Many children go hungry.

The director of the Tierra Linda school asked Mayan Families.org (www.mayanfamilies.org) to help supply the children with a snack every day. He explained that most of the children came to school without having eaten breakfast. It is not the custom for children to bring any food to school and probably most of them would have nothing to bring.Mayan Families.org got funding from a Canadian group to provide the whole school with a nutritious cereal snack every morning. It is called Incaparina and it is a mix of cereals, full of vitamins. It is cooked like oatmeal. The mothers take turns cooking the oatmeal and each child brings a piece of wood to school for the fire to cook the oatmeal.

The school had no balls until Mayan Families.org gave them five soccer ballsthat had been donated.

Clean drinking water is not readily available so often the water that they drink causes them to get ill with parasites. These parasites cause stomach pains and diarrhea.
Parents can't afford to take sick children to a doctor or to the dentist when they get a toothache. Mayan Families donated walter filters to the classroom and now for the first time, the children are able to drink clean water.

Most families cannot afford to buy shoes. Some of these children have to walk great distances over dirt roads and in the wet season, the mud rots the shoes.
Mayan Families.org has been organizing help for them and they have supplied at least half of the children with shoes, some backpacks, clothing and school supplies but they still need more. Mayan Families.org also recently organized two days of medical clinics at the school to benefit the whole community. The doctor confirmed that most of the children were malnourished.

The children at this school will greatly benefit from having more printed and educational materials in their classrooms. We are raising funds to build bookcases and to buy more desks and chairs.

The children got very excited when a group of volunteers gave them tennis balls and small toys.