Four days in!

Its been as crazy as could be expected, perhaps even more so. On Monday the whole community gathered, and we waited together for the trucks to start rolling in. Of course they were a little late, but that was a shock to no one. There are some great pictures of everyone getting involved, from grandmothers to small children. Things went relatively smoothly, with lots of phone calls back and forth with the hardware store. Monday afternoon I left the health promotors in charge while I traveled to El Quiche to fix things at the bank. I took every possible form of identification and all of my bank documents, but, unbeknownst to me, you must have an electricity bill or they will not make any changes to the account. I nearly wept; it was less than an hour until closing time and there was no way I could make it back to Quiche anytime this week. I called all the people who might have been able to fax it to me and no one was picking up. Finally I got through to my landlord's neice who lives next door and, crazily enough, she was in Quiche a short tuk-tuk ride away with a copy of the electric bill. Dispite the setbacks and times where I felt pending disaster, things always have a way of working out, usually by getting the right person on the phone. It doesn't come very naturally to call people up and ask for help, but when I do I am always surprised at how willing people are to go out of their way to help. It's a good reminder that "sticking it out" isn't always the most effective way to get things done, even though it feels like the stronger thing to do.
Since then we've all been working hard and getting stoves built. I've kept my health promotors extremely busy visiting houses and making sure the families are working side by side with the professional builders to get maximum learing and also keep up their end of the deal with the community contribution. With the majority of families we don't even need to remind them because they're so excited the stoves are here that they want to pitch in and get the stoves built.
The top left picture is the first stove nearing completion, top right is what we're replacing-- for this woman it was an open fire on an adobe platform, for many families it's an open fire on the floor. Then there are the community members moving materials and laying down the stove's foundation.