In with the new (part II)...

Back on February 25th, I wrote about the family in Santa Catarina that we've
known since we lived in that village during the summers of 1977 and 1979.
Our good friend Sra. Petrona died nearly two decades ago, but her daughter,
Susana, and son Luis still reside there.  Susana is a single mother with four
children ranging from 6-18 years old.  Luis never married and lives with his
sister and her kids.  We try to help them out when we can, and recently were
able to arrange the installation of a new stove in their casa overlooking Lake
Atitlan.

I explained in Part I that back in the old days (when we were there), the women
cooked on open fires inside their casitas, the most inconvenient, dangerous
method possible since they had to build these fires from scratch each time they
cooked, and there were always toddlers around and about, accidents just
waiting to happen.

But cooking like this was tradition, all they knew. And of course, few had the
resources to upgrade to a proper wood burner or propane stove. They were so
poor, in fact, that they had to go out and find their wood, almost every day, an
arduous task that meant making their way up the mountain, finding a source,
cutting down a tree or just its branches, trimming, stacking, harnessing, then
transporting it all back down the mountain.  This would take hours, and was
a beastly task.

Linda and I met this muchacho on our way up the mountain
late one morning in the summer of '77.  He had ascended
early in the cool of dawn and collected this supply of
wood-fuel.  It looks like a lot, but actually, his family would
run through this in just a couple of days or so.  Then it would
be back on up to repeat the process.  Linda gave our friend
 here the nickname Adidas (she pronounced it Ah-dee-DAS)
which made him break into a broad smile whenever we'd
run into him. Note his "capri-style" pants woven in the
 Village colors and patterns. They were often worn
with a shirt of identical colors and patterns, but by then,
 western-style clothing, especially t-shirts, had made
 their way into everyday use in the village for many men.

(Stay Tuned for Part III)