Guatemala

Well.  Here I am in Guatemala.  Trying to figure out how to navigate the internet in Spanish and find the correct keys on a Spanish key board.  I am traveling for the next few months in Gutatemala and Ecuador, about one month in each place. I will be spending most of my time in Guatemala studying Spanish and learning about the lives and struggles of the locals.  The community that I am living in used to all live and work on a coffee plantation, when they attempted to unionize they were fired from the coffee plantation without being payed.  They were also black listed so they were unable to get work at any of the other coffee fincas.  After a long legal battle they eventually were able to receive some of their back pay which they used to buy the land that they are living on now.  Many of the people still work the coffee harvest when it is happening, but the pay is very low, often they are paid less than the Guatemalan minimum wage (which as you can imagine is already extremely low).  Women are paid half of what the men get for the same work.  The rest of the year the men travel to the larger cities to look for work.  Sometimes they find it, and sometimes they have just wasted the precious Quetzales (the local currency) on bus fare only to have not found work for the day. I have only been here a few days, so I still have a lot to learn and stories to hear.  I look forward to sharing my stories and adventures with you.