One Laptop Per Child is a project that has been in the making for 40 years. The concept involves a sophisticated, economical, durable laptop that can be placed in the hands of every child on earth. The current laptop prototype: costs $100 366 Mhz processor built-in video camera/mic/speaker 1 megapixel swivel screen flash hard drive … [Read more…]
Last April, while a group from Calgary were helping us construct a new school in Mocohan, accross the field a group of seniors from a Vancouver public high school were inaugurating a project they had spent 5 days working on. Their project was a communal chicken coop for women of the community to raise chickens … [Read more…]
I was hiking up a beautiful mountainside burrough of Tactic yesterday afternoon with Walter. Every fifth house was raising its roof with Mexican “yip-yip” cowboy music thus sharing their advanced sound system with the neighbours (vecinos). Walter explained that it was more important to many Guatemalans to have big speakers (vozinos) than to have pretty … [Read more…]
A woman knocked on our door this late afternoon. She was selling bean tamales with a nice hot salsa. How could I resist at a mere $0.16 each! Her husband was at the end of our driveway waiting with the vehicle (a bicycle) in the rain with the food goods. Since we’ve lived here, the … [Read more…]
There is a dog, split in two, stretched across one lane. I answer the door in my pajamas at 7 A.M. to a man wanting to know why I needed to see his son. The bank teller still asks me how my film is coming. I eat 4 meals. My 2 o’clock appointment with Oscar … [Read more…]
It is not uncommon to see some startling sights from my car. Here are a few recollections from the past week. As I wait for cattle to cross the road returning from San Antonio, I watch from from my car as a bull attempts repeatedly to mount a cow in the middle of the street, … [Read more…]