Letter I wrote for the Long Way Home

http://www.longwayhomeinc.org

What a wonderful week and a half it has been. I have been with Mateo in Comalapa for the last ten days and we have done so much work on the house and with the kids that I really don't know where to start.

The first thing we did when I made it to Chimiya was to get the full tour of the property, and I must say how beautiful everything looks in the rainy season. We are nestled in the mountains outside of Comalapa, and between the rains Mateo and Adam work in he gardens which are overflowing at the moment with tons of lettuce and other vegetables. The lettuce which is ready for harvest is used for dinners and also given to families in the community. Every time we walk into town Mateo always takes extra extra lettuce and stops by people's houses offering them some of the bounty. Once we pass through the gardens we head up to the two houses we are now furnishing with the bunk beds we bought in Chimal Tenango and cleaned up armours (roperos) that were donated to us by Chuwi Tinamit. From there we cross the soccer field that was recently leveled and although there is not yet grass many of the local Comalapenses are already beginning to play on the field. This is also where we do exercises and play with the children. Pass the soccer fields and you will often find children on the playground... have I mentioned this is picturesque... and head into the protected forest.

A few days later we were in the back of a truck heading down the road to Chimal to meet up with another friend of Mateo's, Mike Dougherty, he is here to help mold the internship program and meet with many of the NGO's Mateo has started working with. We take advantage of being in Chimal to look for beds that will be used to sleep for the interns and staff. After a relatively short search we find a store that will make us the bunk beds we are looking for, they will be delivered in 4 weeks. We are so excited we can hardly stand it, things are really starting to happen.

On Wednesdays the children come out to the property to play and learn. Mateo let me know the children were on their way and I walked outside right as the kids were coming up the road. Upon seeing Mateo walk out the gate the children began to run towards him at full speed and dog piling him with abrazos(hugs). All these tiny little voices screaming Don Mateo at the top of their lungs. We headed up to the soccer fields for stretches and a few rounds of Lobo, a game similar to duck duck goose mixed with tag. After that I went down to the porch to work on some art projects while other kids worked in the garden with Mateo and Adam. They planted the yellow rose I bought in the market and named her flor Marta. Then they made me sing the Yellow Rose of Texas, and although I cannot sing very well I obliged while they laughed. The children put together bunches of flowers and herbs from the garden to take home to their families and one of the boys gave me his. If ever I felt that everything Mateo was doing was worth it it was in this moment, the children just love being out on the property. As they were about to leave I yelled at the top of my lungs ABRAZOS POR TODOS and they all dog piled me.

Over the next few days, Mateo and Mike had meetings with some of the groups they will be working with and end up setting up a few more meetings with different groups and a woman that is head of the group A.I.R.E.S. It is in one of those meetings that we were offered the broken roperos. We jumped at the thought of free dressers, so that the money we were planning on spending could go to other projects. We woke up early the next morning and picked them up, or rather hired 3 men to drive them out to the property. Mike and I then headed to town to look for paint. We took all the broken pieces of glass out of the roperos, painted the moulding on the roperos, and placed telas behind the open spaces. Telas are the woven fabrics made in Chimiya by the local weavers, and when I say local I mean a five minute walk up the hill to the adobe structures right past the tienda. We were able to pick the colors and lengths we wanted. The rest of that day was spent painting walls, roperos, desks and the trim around the doors. Every moment is so productive.

The next day Mateo and Mike headed back to Chimal for another meeting and Adam and I finished working on the furniture. When Mateo returns that afternoon the guys head to the fields to work in the gardens while I put together dinner. I haven't even begun to talk about the dinners. Every night we all sit at the communal table and enjoy each others company. After working it is so relaxing to sit down and discuss the day and sometimes the conversations linger and we move to the hammocks.

I think all that happened in the first week.

This weekend we traveled to Hue Hue to meet up with some other friends of Mateo's, visit a despedida for a Peace Corps worker and to play a soccer game at 10,000 feet. It was gorgeous and productive at the same time, Mateo was introduced to a woman, Brenda Velasquez, that his friend, another Mateo, works with. Her organization Seeds of Change is in the process of legalizing their NGO in the country of Guatemala and the she and Mateo had many ideas to discuss. A secondary benifit is that her organization focuses on organic farming and children. At the end of the day we hiked for 45 minutes down to Siete Pinos and Mateo II's house. It was there that Adam and Norm began discussing what they wanted to accomplish over the next few months. Adam and his fiance Liz will be the two staff members for the winter term.

So now it is today and this moment where I am typing this letter. When Mateo first asked me to sit on the board of directors I was very honored, over the next few months of power point presentations and mass e-mails I began to have an idea of what it was he wanted to do, but it was not until I saw it with my own eyes that I began to understand the beauty of the project and the impact it has in this community and with these children.

Kelly (Kila) Phillips