I have been working with a women's group in Pachaj, Cantel for the past 3 months with another volunteer, Marissa. The group of women was started over ten years ago and has done various projects, the last of which was a literacy course through the Guatemalan agency CONALFA. Marissa and I were asked to help them with their next venture, a medicinal garden. I was really excited about the prospect until I remembered that I don't know anything about medicinal plants and even less about gardening... However, with a little Internet research you can "seem" like an expert on just about anything. The group meets every Friday and we've done a mixture of nutritious cooking classes and preparing the land for planting. We've made some fun stuff like homemade peanut butter (made by grinding the peanuts on the hand stone grinder), lentils and stir fry on the wood stove, home made jam and no-bake cookies with oatmeal. We were purposely stalling with the garden because we were having a hard time finding seeds or starter plants for medicinal plants. A couple of weeks ago after we had churned the ground, disinfected the soil and built a fence around the garden we decided to go a head and plant some "winter" plants, squash, carrots and such until spring when we will have the resources to start the medicinal garden.
One of the great things about Peace Corps is that since there are over 180 volunteers in Guatemala there is usually someone that has experience with a project that you might be working on. During training I met another volunteer, Olivia, who is working with an association of women that has a medicinal garden on Lake Atitlan. After contacting her she invited us to bring our women to her group to learn about what they are doing with medicinal plants. Our group was very excited about the trip. Many of the women had never been to the lake, which is only about 3 hours from Cantel. We rented 2 micro buses and left at 4:30 am with 20 women and their children. We did introductions and they gave us a tour of the garden. We had lunch on the lake and played in the water. The trip ended up being a huge success with both groups excited about the cultural exchange (the groups speak different dialects of Mayan, our women speak K'iche and the women in Olivia's group speak Sutuhil) and being able to share knowledge of the medicinal plants. Olivia's group is going to help us get seeds for our garden and send someone up to Cantel to help us get started. My experiences with this group of women have been some of my best times in Peace Corps! Here are some of the pictures of our field trip.
One of the great things about Peace Corps is that since there are over 180 volunteers in Guatemala there is usually someone that has experience with a project that you might be working on. During training I met another volunteer, Olivia, who is working with an association of women that has a medicinal garden on Lake Atitlan. After contacting her she invited us to bring our women to her group to learn about what they are doing with medicinal plants. Our group was very excited about the trip. Many of the women had never been to the lake, which is only about 3 hours from Cantel. We rented 2 micro buses and left at 4:30 am with 20 women and their children. We did introductions and they gave us a tour of the garden. We had lunch on the lake and played in the water. The trip ended up being a huge success with both groups excited about the cultural exchange (the groups speak different dialects of Mayan, our women speak K'iche and the women in Olivia's group speak Sutuhil) and being able to share knowledge of the medicinal plants. Olivia's group is going to help us get seeds for our garden and send someone up to Cantel to help us get started. My experiences with this group of women have been some of my best times in Peace Corps! Here are some of the pictures of our field trip.
Group picture
Marissa and I with women from our group
Charla
Garden tour
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