Sharing the Dream

Friday Oct. 26, 2007

Today we are leaving for the lake, so we got up early and had a bite to eat, packed all our supplies for the lake and left in the van with Venicio by 7. We stopped on the way for coffee and banana bread. We hit alot of construction and at one spot waited close to an hour. It was a great stop for me as Rocky gave me a back and neck massage. She promised us all foot massages in the evening... Wow, will we enjoy having her with us.

We arrived in Pana late because of the construction and went directly to the Maya Tradition shop. We bought some items and then put in our January order. We will be doing a big shipment of crafts next April and we want to have our orders in by Jan. This gives the groups plenty of time to make the articles. We are trying very hard to be able to pay 50% when we place an order and the rest when the order is done. This is one of our goals for next year.

We had lunch at MT and Ramona from Oxlajuj Batz gave us an update of this project. This is the group that we work with on medicinal plants. She said the project was very successful and they have more women who want to receive medicinal plants.

After lunch we drove to San Lucas and visited with the spoon group. This is a group of 8 young people who learned to make these beautiful spoons. We have been buying from them since the beginning of their group. We have been encouraging them to get an export license so that we can ship the spoons in our orders but this has been difficult for them. You need a special license to export wood. They said they were really going to work on this so we made a big order and said as soon as they get their license we would pay 50% for the order. This seemed to get them a bit more excited about getting the license. We asked how their sales were going and they said slow. They made a bunch of spoons for a man who said he would take them to the US and sell them for them and they have not heard from him. This is the second time we have heard this story on this trip. North Americans come through and make promises like this and then nothing happens, and in these two cases have actually stolen the merchandise. We visited with the group about hosting a college group in Jan that is coming with Sharing the Dream and have a day of teaching them how to make spoons. They thought this sounded fun. Before leaving San Lucas we went to the Catholic parish and bought coffee and then headed for Santiago.

We arrived in Santiago, took some bags to the senior centre and our personal bags to Chonita's. We had a nice supper that Salvador made for us and then about 8 met with Domingo to look at our jewelry order. When it was time for bed, Rocky gave us foot massages.... what a keeper.

Tomorrow will be a busy day.

Diane, Vikki and Peggy