'Tis the Season

It's now the rainy season here in Guatemala, and if you're a true EcoLogian, you know what the rainy season really means: Reforestation Season!


I'm writing to you from my apartment after a day of reforesting in Totonicapan, Guatemala. I'll tell you one thing: after spending a week with our field technicians in Honduras and hearing all their stories about planting trees and building fuel efficient stoves, it was really rewarding to get my hands dirty and to -- at least for a few hours -- experience the life of a "tecnico." If you remember from a previous post, EcoLogic manages 5 greenhouses (soon to be 8) in Totonicapan in the central highlands of Guatemala, where we work in partnership with the 48 Cantones to reforest watershed areas to help protect drinking water sources. The last time I blogged about this project, I had just visited the greenhouses and they were full of saplings. Well, this time around, hundreds of trees were gone! They're now planted in the forest, where they belong.

Today the EcoLogic team had the opportunity to participate in a reforestation activity in a community.  Typically, the village water committees schedule special events when a town, neighborhood or specific group commit the day to reforestation activities. Local people participate in part because a family's "payment" to the 48 Cantones for receiving water in their home is to volunteer their time to protect the area's watershed and fresh water resources. EcoLogic provides the trees and technical know-how to help make these efforts as productive and successful as possible. Today 120 young people from a local high school  -- the Escuela Noral Rural del Occidente (or ENRO) in Totonicapan -- came out to plant trees and learn about their watershed. Teachers at the school wanted the students to learn about the benefits of the forests in a hands-on manner. Of course, EcoLogic was happy to support this goal: Fernando, our field technician in Totonicapan, led the day's activities, providing a practical "how-to" session for the teachers and students, and showing them how and where to plant the arbolitos..

Fernando, a tecnico, explaing the process to students.

It was an awesome event. After a couple of hours in the forest, the students, teachers, Don Augustin (our greenhouse manager), Fernando, and I were able to plant about 1,500 saplings. There's another youth reforestation event tomorrow, as well, and Fernando is guiding that one, too. Oh yeah, and Fernando saved the GPS coordinates of the first tree that I planted so I can always know its exact latitude and longitude and come back and visit it, which I hope to do annually for the rest of my life! I named it Chris. You're surprised, right?

Okay, that's all I can manage for now. This is actually my last week working from the office in Xela. Next week I'll be visiting our project in Sarstun and after that I'll be in Honduras for our all staff retreat.

Hasta la proxima!



- Chris Patterson, Program Officer for EcoLogic

Chris collaborates closely with the senior program officer by writing grant proposals and project reports, investigating potential funders, and following trends in philanthropy, conservation, and international development. Chris was a fellow for the Ford Foundation's Difficult Dialogues Project and documented his time working from EcoLogic's regional office in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala from March to June, 2011. 

We gotta fix them holes!

So much has happened this week! I'm back in the office now after a week visiting our project with the 48 Cantones in Totonicapan. Meetings, greenhouses, water sources, stoves, reforestation zones - all this week! Some of this stuff is going to have to wait for some later posts or else you'd be reading a novel. It's been a really great experience - I've been able to learn so much more about the issues facing the Communal Forest of San Miguel and the communities located around it. This is the forest managed by the 48 Cantones which I talked about last week. The forest houses the largest remaining stand of Pinabete (an endangered variety of pine) and is absolutely essential for the delivery of water to over 100 rural communities. The water doesn't come from a stream, river, or well. It literally comes from the forest ground itself.

On Monday, I attended a meeting about logging. This is becoming a major problem in the forest. Gathering wood for household cooking fuel is legal and accepted by everyone in the community including the leadership of the 48 Cantones. And if you ask for permission from the leadership, you can enter the forest to take a few trees to build a house, a pen for your sheep, etc. But over the last 10 to 15 years, high demand for wood and diminishing resources in areas all around the communal forest has created a livelihood opportunity for many people. People enter the forest, cut down trees, sell them to a driver who fills up his pickup truck, takes the wood to nearby towns and cities, like Xela, Huehuetenango, and Solola for profit.

In attendance at the meeting were members of the Natural Resources Committee of the 48 Cantones, two past presidents of this committee, village water board leaders, and two members of the national police department assigned to natural resource protection. EcoLogic arranged this meeting to focus specifically on this subject and create an action plan with multiple stakeholders. We have been building greenhouses and growing trees to reforest around water sources in the area for over 10 years. But it doesn't make sense for us and the community members who support the cause to work so hard to reforest if we're watching 10 times the amount of trees disappear and doing nothing about it. It's like trying to fill a bucket with water that has big holes in the bottom. We gotta fix them holes! From one of the four exits of the forest there are an estimated 50 pickups full of wood leaving per day according to the police. Which translates to 50 meters squared a day of forest. And that's only one exit. This was the first meeting to really talk about the issue in an open and honest way. What's exciting is knowing that once we do come up with a plan and carry it out, it could serve as a model for so many other regions. This issue is certainly not unique to Totonicipan. It's a national and international concern.

We'll keep you posted on what the working group comes up with.  That was Monday.  Then I met with the one and only Don Augustin. This man LOVES TREES!


- Chris Patterson, Program Officer for EcoLogic

Chris collaborates closely with the senior program officer by writing grant proposals and project reports, investigating potential funders, and following trends in philanthropy, conservation, and international development. Chris was a fellow for the Ford Foundation's Difficult Dialogues Project and has documented his time working from EcoLogic's regional office in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala from March to June, 2011. 

Home Sweet Home

It's Tuesday here in Xela (too easy to type to not go with Xela), and I'm sitting outside on the patio of our office. Don't get all that jealous just yet, with visions of a hammock, palm trees, and tropical birds on my

La Oficina

shoulder. It's more of a utility patio where there's a sink, trash and recycling cans, and cleaning supplies. I was actually told that there is no way to recycle here in Xela and that the program was eliminated several years ago. But we've at least got recycling bins here in our office. You can count on the environmental NGO to know how to pull it off! I just need to figure out how to recycle at my apartment.

I had a great first full weekend in Xela. Gaby, our Regional Director of Programs here at EcoLogic, took us on an afternoon-long tour of the city, which included lots of insider info - she was born and raised here! The parque central is so beautiful and there are a lot of great lookouts over the city because it's really hilly. One of the things I love the most about traveling/living in Latin America, and Xela is keeping the passion burning, are the local markets. There are several here - full of people, energy, and everything people with energy would want to buy: baskets, fresh produce, clothes, tortas and pupusas, toothpaste, baby supplies, auto parts, soccer balls, off the wall souvenirs, you name it. Gaby also took us to buy cell phones. Rest assured, cell phone madness is not limited to the States.

Flowers for sale in Xela

There are endless plans, phones, features, and deals to navigate through. My Spanish is totally fine if all I needed to do was get a phone and learn how the system works. But when they start trying to sell me all the promotions and deals, I'm lost. Come to think of it, I'm lost when it comes to stuff like that in English.

Besides the tour, we were able to spend a lot of time Skyping and calling people through Google. Which I still hardly understand but you should check it out - I think it's called Gtalk or Gcall. We've talked to all sorts of people in the States and even in Spain and haven't paid a cent yet. Really quite amazing to think about the ease of communication these days.

This week we've got several visitors here in the EcoLogic office from the States. And I'm having fun welcoming them to my country as if I've been living here my whole life. We have an intern, Sarah, who is currently in the Municipality of Huehuetenango to the north of Xela with Francisco, our Guatemala Program Officer. She's doing a study for her graduate work, focusing on our agroforestry work with our partner, the Mancomunidad de la Frontera Norte. And Melissa, our Director of Finance and Administration is in town as well for a series of meetings with our regional staff regarding budgeting and other administrative things that fortunately my job doesn't require me to know about in any great detail.

Hasta la proxima!


- Chris Patterson, Program Officer for EcoLogic

Chris collaborates closely with the senior program officer by writing grant proposals and project reports, investigating potential funders, and following trends in philanthropy, conservation, and international development. Chris was a fellow for the Ford Foundation's Difficult Dialogues Project and has documented his time working from EcoLogic's regional office in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala from March to June, 2011. 

Welcome to town!




Photo: Steve Winter
National Geographic

 So I am a few hours away from the end of Week 1 working in our Quetzaltenango, I mean Xela, office. Wait, I mean Quetzaltenango. If you didn't know, Guatemala's second largest city has two names - the original Mayan name, Xela (shortened from Xelaju), and the more official name, Quetzaltenango. Don't worry, this brief history/etymology lesson has all been confirmed by Wikipedia. I haven't decided which name I'm going to stick with yet; you pretty much hear both of them used equally. Xela is easier, but with the other one you get to say "Quetzal" which makes you think of the majestic bird, and that makes you happy. I'm still looking all over the place for a quetzal. They wouldn't have named it Quetzaltenango without there being quetzals hanging out in every tree, right? Ooh, be right back, I heard a bird chirping outside! (this is foreshadowing for an inexplicable quetzal-obsessed theme that may or may not run throughout this entire blog)

Anyways, I'm really excited to have started working down here and I'm really appreciative of the opportunity. I'll be working out of this office for about four months, taking occasional field trips to sites where EcoLogic implements its projects. My main role at EcoLogic is to write about our work - what we do, what we're planning on doing, and what we've done. It's actually really exciting for me because I like what we do. I like knowing that we're addressing complex issues; issues that arise when you're concerned with both protecting unique ecosystems and improving people's lives. I like knowing we're tackling them head on. But usually, I'm writing at my desk in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Even though down here I'm still at a desk, in front of a computer, it feels different. There's something different about writing about our work from one of the countries where we actually do the work, being surrounded by my colleagues that make it happen on the ground. Being here makes our work come alive even more. More of that to come later, when I visit our project sites...

So overall, settling in here as been quite easy. Sara, my wife, and I have a great apartment, which is in walking distance to her language school and EcoLogic's office. And Skype and Logmein make working in another country a cinch. And wireless internet abounds. Pretty amazing. I'm really excited for what the next four months hold, and hope you enjoy following me along the journey. Even if the journey for now is me typing at a desk in an office. And occasionally running outside in search of quetzals. I'll have some photos coming your way soon, too!

Hasta luego!


- Chris Patterson, Program Officer for EcoLogic

Chris collaborates closely with the senior program officer by writing grant proposals and project reports, investigating potential funders, and following trends in philanthropy, conservation, and international development. Chris was a fellow for the Ford Foundation's Difficult Dialogues Project and has documented his time working from EcoLogic's regional office in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala from March to June, 2011.