We arrived in Comunidad Neuva Alianza 10 days ago as I'm writing this. I'm just taking a well deserved late afternoon break from jobs like building trails in the jungle and painting rooms. Pete is still grafting hard in the sun with Kurt, the lovely all-American Peace Corp guy who is based here, building concrete balconies on a new building of private rooms for the communities 'hotel'.
10 days ago we wouldn't have imagined we would be so comfortable here. I had spent the 'chicken bus' journey practicing various useful phrases for our arrival. Our Spanish is getting better but conversations are still a challenge, and we knew that no one in the community would speak any English. We wanted to set off on the right foot. When our truck pulled up in Alianza after a bone rattling journey up the mountain we were greeted by Kevin. At 18 years old, he's the communities only Guatemalan guide and he works with volunteers on various projects on the plantation. He explained things pretty quickly (throwing my 'useful' phrases out) and showed us around the old plantation owners colonial 'house' which now functions as a hostel.
We knew work would start in the morning, so we tried to settle in, work out where things were etc. We met Ryan (Canadian) and Jay (lovely laid back Korean), the only other volunteers here at the time who are good guys.
We were inspired to get in touch with the community because of their history. In brief, the lands had a sole owner until the 90's, then due to awful management and plummeting coffee prices, the people suffered 2 years of non payment.They had no option but to leave the lands they had always worked. But with the help of rural & indigenous rights organisations, the people united 40 families to fight for the money owed and to form a cooperative. They occupied the lands peacefully in 2002, negotiating all the way with the financial group who now owned the land, until Neuva Alianza won the rights in 2004. Alianza now runs their coffee & macadamia plantation, water bottling plant, bio-gas projects, community hydro-electric plant and eco-tourism project. Pretty inspiring stuff!
Sat up on the 1000m's on the hill, surrounded by tropical forest and with views of volcanoes Santa Maria and Santiaguito, Alianza has stunning views and the sunsets. The bird life is also pretty impressive. The reason for two more volunteers pitching up a few days later was because of this, they wanted to help document and take photos of the bird life in order to pull in more visitors to Alianza. Nathan, a 'crackin' welsh lad and his absolutely lovely west country girlfriend Karen had come with top-notch camera equipment, books and a help load of enthusiasm to work with Kevin on this project. As of yet, there haven't been any 'tourists' during our stay, they are really sporadic (usually big school groups) but the community feel that birdwatching tours might just encourage people up the mountain and to stay a little longer...
10 days ago we wouldn't have imagined we would be so comfortable here. I had spent the 'chicken bus' journey practicing various useful phrases for our arrival. Our Spanish is getting better but conversations are still a challenge, and we knew that no one in the community would speak any English. We wanted to set off on the right foot. When our truck pulled up in Alianza after a bone rattling journey up the mountain we were greeted by Kevin. At 18 years old, he's the communities only Guatemalan guide and he works with volunteers on various projects on the plantation. He explained things pretty quickly (throwing my 'useful' phrases out) and showed us around the old plantation owners colonial 'house' which now functions as a hostel.
We knew work would start in the morning, so we tried to settle in, work out where things were etc. We met Ryan (Canadian) and Jay (lovely laid back Korean), the only other volunteers here at the time who are good guys.
We were inspired to get in touch with the community because of their history. In brief, the lands had a sole owner until the 90's, then due to awful management and plummeting coffee prices, the people suffered 2 years of non payment.They had no option but to leave the lands they had always worked. But with the help of rural & indigenous rights organisations, the people united 40 families to fight for the money owed and to form a cooperative. They occupied the lands peacefully in 2002, negotiating all the way with the financial group who now owned the land, until Neuva Alianza won the rights in 2004. Alianza now runs their coffee & macadamia plantation, water bottling plant, bio-gas projects, community hydro-electric plant and eco-tourism project. Pretty inspiring stuff!
Sat up on the 1000m's on the hill, surrounded by tropical forest and with views of volcanoes Santa Maria and Santiaguito, Alianza has stunning views and the sunsets. The bird life is also pretty impressive. The reason for two more volunteers pitching up a few days later was because of this, they wanted to help document and take photos of the bird life in order to pull in more visitors to Alianza. Nathan, a 'crackin' welsh lad and his absolutely lovely west country girlfriend Karen had come with top-notch camera equipment, books and a help load of enthusiasm to work with Kevin on this project. As of yet, there haven't been any 'tourists' during our stay, they are really sporadic (usually big school groups) but the community feel that birdwatching tours might just encourage people up the mountain and to stay a little longer...
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