Seeds of Help. Getting Started and Stopping........

This is basically a run down of what I have been working at of late and what the plans for next year are.... I am excited anyways......


Right so after much effort we got most of the materials for the sheeps wool project such as chicken wire to keep it up in the roof, black plastic for the wool to dry out on and eventually Borax. Wasn't as easy as I had expected and fair play to Walter taking a bit of a wild chance on a chemist in Huehuetenango a good hour away, or I would still be looking. We have enough for to do a few experiments but need to wait until new year to get more from same chemist or find another source.

Borax Experiments:

First Stage is to try remove the majority or unpurities from the raw sheeps wool. Yes this is normally sheep shit.

Second stage is to wash the sheeps wool with the scrubbers as seen below and then rinse in clean water. This is the bould Roberto by the way.....

This is the apparatus. Wool, Borax and two bits of timber with few nails through them.

Borax and boiling water at a ratio of 1 to 10 for soaking the wool.

This is where the wool dries out. Also going to use chicken wire to keep it in ceiling.

The finished product. Dried wool with good coating of Borax.

Fire test. Normal sheeps wool on left, borax wool on right. Both smoulder but  normal wool actually lights and has flames dropping to floor where as borax does not.

Also tried old newspaper and borax. Worked well in fire test probably similar to untreated wool. Might be a good more readily available substitute in the right situation.  

Still have to do a test as on insect/rodent repellant with both paper and wool.

We have no where near enough wool even for one house but we started to introduce the topic in the womens groups and let them know A) what its all about and B) that we will be buying the wool for 10 cent a pound weight. The interest is pretty good so far and Roberto is quite the haggler. We want to get as much as we can now because it is just after shearing season and it will either be dumped or sold to someone else if we dont act fast. Buying it from somewhere else and transporting it is not an option.
If we end up with too much for one house we go onto the next and so on. We have also discussed a few interesting ideas with wool for the womens groups such as insulated curtains / draft excluders, draft excluder "snakes" / Insect guards for inside of doors (Borax kills or in not pleasant to most creepy crawleys), and wool matresses.



From the 15th of December to the 15th of January pretty much all activities close down here. Pretty much this week besides the sheeps wool we have been having end of year meetings and parties.

The Childrens Party in La Union: 300 people all in all. concert, football, food, Santa, and a few sweets...

"Guate Girls Aloud" Concert at the School in La Union.....

Exclusive after party event. Some attitude I can tell you dont know if the picture does justice. This one is definitely gonna split the group to persue a solo career.

Los Lagunas are the World Champions of Los Cuchumontanas for 2011. First prize a leather football. Hope they dont loose it anytime soon cos I am mad for a go. I am bad enough with a proper football never mind a large wind blowing ping pong. Wanna show off my silky skills ye know...

All hands on deck for the food preperation in a nearby house.

Ho ho ho. Not much need for a slay around here. Santa and helper arrive. Aka Adriana and Dulce (Brenda´s Neice)

Anyone for a photo???

Home made chips double fried on a slice of fried pig fat with ketchup mayonaise and hot sauce all for 20 cents  (euros) how could you say no. And yes it tastes as good as it sounds.... mmmmmmm

Seeds of Help crew plus a few........

Womens groups meeting and award cermonies..............

Brenda speaking to the heads of the womens groups in each community. The idea of this conference is to allow the women themselves have some input into the direction of the weekly womens group seminars for next year. They communicated their concerns and issues that are important to them. They also had a look back over the last year.

Florentina (Middle), a student who recieves a scholarship from Seeds of Help and who is going into her final year to become a bi lingual primary school teacher this year. Walter is especially proud of this girl and to be fair it isnt hard to see why she lights up the room when she walks in. For the summer holidays she was teaching women from local communties the traditional art of weaving. 

Florentina showing one of the bags she thought the other women to make over the last month. The detail in her dress is absolutely amazing. She said that a bag like she is holding takes about 4 or 5 full days I cant imagine how long the dress took.

Florentina with one of her students and two bags top right which  were completed during the month.

Diploma awareded to the students who completed course.

There is not much happening now for the next month so I am going to take a 1 month break and take the opportunity to do some travelling around. I will however be completing a tank project from the 16th to 20th or so and will have a meeting on the 21st and then head back to Santa Lucia for Xmas and week of fun with kids but from new years on I will be on my travels for about 3 weeks. Destination unknown as of yet....
After xmas we will hopefully a have a lot of wool, the moisture meters and thermometers from Ireland and a big supply of Borax. So we should be gung ho into the sheeps wool. There is also a few complete tanks to be built and I still have to take a look at two that arent working properly.
I plan on spending 3 ++++ months from the 21st of January here in La Cumbre. This will get me well into the rainy season a great time to try out some lime rendering as the nights are not so cold and there is plenty of moisture in the air. Both essential for lime to cure properly.
School proper starts back around the end of January along with the womens groups so that will also be interesting stuff.

I am moving into a new house in the new year also. This has nothing to do with Dona Carolina and her family who have been great. I intend to eat with them a lot of the time and hopefully have daily interaction as they are only next door. The reasons I am moving, is for one I want to up grade the volunteer house after Roberto´s and also try out a few other experiments like building pot belly stoves with clay and back boilers which I can get stuck into straight away in the evenings in the new year. Basically a lot os sustainable construction ideas that I am going to take the opportiunity to make reality while I can.

The other reason for this is an experiment on myself. I got the inspiration from Stefan who was up here for last Month volunteering who I have the utmost respect for and who is trying something similar in January. The idea is this, for the month of Febuary I will live on a Euro a day, or 7 euro a week/ 70Q. To be honest I feel like I am a bit of a fake so far as I have been talking the talk but not truely walking the walk as regards money. It is great talking about how the people of Guatemala life, sustainable architecture and sustainable living but unless I truely live like them for a while how would I really know. I love talking about socialism and people living in excess but I have never lived outside capitalism and its excess. According to the World bank, Over 1 billion people worldwide live on less than $1 per day and 2.7 billion people live on less than two dollars per day. This is a little over half the population of the world.
Because of the money restriction and the trying to live a similar lifestyle to other Guatelamalan people in my area I will have a few other self imposed rules. I will not eat meet unless offered it. This is mainly because I wont be able to afford it but it is a pretty big insult not to accept it here because it is such a big deal when people do eat it. Only speak spanish, this is because I need to practise really. I wont leave La Cumbre because I probably wont have bus fair. Not drink alcohol (I know yea..) wont be able to afford it but also its pretty tabboo here. I will also only use the computer on a Sunday to up date blog and possibly speak with family on skype etc. For this I will deduct 4Q per hour from the budget.
Obviously it is not a true reflection of the peoples lives because at the end of the day I can opt out at any time but I am determined to try it and feel what its like. I would like to live sustainably one day and this is hopefully a step in the right direction. I think that everybody including me should live on a lot more than 1 or 2 dollars a day so I dont expect to live like this forever but somewhere in between would be nice. Hopefully after this experiment I will have a better understanding of what I actually need and what I think I need to live happilly. Another point is that things are a good bit cheaper here so its a lot more possible to do it here than it is say in Ireland. How possible I still dont know but sure isnt that half the craic?