a little more substance

alright, so i feel sometimes that i'm just not blogging about what might be a little more important than a picture of my machete (although, don't bet on not seeing another picture), which would be what i'm doing, how things seem, interesting things that happen that might give you a glimpse into the culture of this country. so...

Through one of my host country agencies, ive been able to see some pretty impressive things going on. they work in a bunch of different communities, which are very small and don't resemble what we would consider "communities". they are really just rural areas that have names. anyways. so, there are all these groups. in every one there is a group organized that has a president, a secretary, and other people with titles (don't understand them well). and, what they are doing is planting trees, white pines for the majority (there are tons of white pine and other evergreen trees in guatemala), also cyprus, avocado, peach, and melocoton. some of the trees that they plant are for selling, but they don't sell for much, so a lot just go for reforestation. and i'm not talking about a few pine trees planted, some have a couple thousand trees! kind of blows my mind, but what i find most impressive is that they are organized as they are. there's a lot of social capital going on here (now if there were some more of the garden variety capital, things would be very different). so, they meet weekly and work on their trees. these are people that work extremely hard, life is not easy for them. however, they make time to come and work on trees that they won't be getting much of any direct monetary return on.