The "In-Between"



Around this time of the year, I’m always running around talking to people about the Run For H2O… I talk to a lot of friends, a lot of schools, a lot of churches. I love these invitations to share stories, because between the Run For H2O in June once a year,  there is so much more: so much sweat, so much work, so much celebration, so much JOY. So... this is some of that "in-between!"

Last year, together with some good friends and my dad, I visited a community called Xejuyup, a desert in the mountains. We heard their stories, walked with them to fetch water from a dirty stream, carried the heavy loads of water with them back to their homes.

We heard their plea, we are suffering; please, help us get access to water. We promised we would do everything in our power. 

And we did.  The 11 of us who heard those stories first-hand, 20 lead volunteers, 360 runners, and about 1,500 generous people… all of us together at the Run For H2O.

And out of the hearts and wallets of all these people came $77,000 for Guatemala! 

That was June 6, 2015. Then, in just 4 months, the community of Xejuyup had build a water system. Each of the 199 families in the community now has access to water in their homes, and their water jugs are now tied up at the back of the kitchen happily collecting dust. And they told us:
"The life and future of our children is right here in this water."

They treated us to tea, made from their new water, and said:
"My heart is beating so fast, because I am so happy that you are here with us.
We are so happy that you came to see our water with your own eyes." 

But even more than that happened. People were even more generous than we had imagined at the Run For H2O. As a result, not only Xejuyup (“Below the mountain”) but also another community Xoljuyup (“Among the mountains”) was able to build a water system too!

So all of the 61 families of this community now also have clean water in their homes, too! They are drinking water that is clean, healthy, and no longer getting sick from waterborne diseases.

The moms and children are brilliantly happy to be in their homes, rather than making the exhausting daily journeys to get water each day.

They are beyond overjoyed to be washing their clothes at home, rather than carrying them down to the river and carrying the heavy loads of wet laundry back home.

The kids are playing, giggling, and going to school.

They are now using their free time to garden, for more food and nutrition...

To sell in the now-vibrant village market...

To weave textiles and mats to earn an income.
Life is so, so different.

These men are celebrating 4 months of hard, hard labour, digging each inch of the few kilometers of trench into the mountain, from 3 small springs all the way into the village; carrying each pipe, each rock, each bag of sand, each sack of concrete on their backs. We are standing on many secrets of their work under this cement!



They have food to share, and water to wash the dishes, which means they are healthier, and proud to be able to be excellent hosts for us as we celebrated with them.



On our last night in Xoljuyup, we gathered for what I thought was an informal goodbye, but ended up being a 1.5hr gathering of thank-you’s from all of the leaders in the community. What we heard over and over from each person as they shared their own words and stories, was:
"We are so, so JOYFUL now.
And so, so THANKFUL.
Without you and your friends in Canada, we never would have realized this dream."

And this is why we run! And why we run around in a circle especially for the Run For H2O.

Because there are still families – women and children in particular – walking 5-10km each day to get water.

Because the water they can get from streams and posits in the mountains are shared by animals, muddied, and contaminated. And people – especially kids – are dying from diarrhea and waterborne illnesses every day.



Because we know that something better is possible, and we can be part of it.

So… would you?

Come be part of the Run For H2O again this year, run 5K or 10K just on June 4, 2016, even though we don’t need to travel that distance every day on our feet, with 15 pounds of water on our head, to survive. But we can, just for one day run/walk that 5 or 10K, give and invite others to, too! And there will be more stories, just like this, but for yet more families. And, it really is fun! Check out photos from last year's Run For H2O!



"We will tell the story of when water came to our community for generations and generations to come."



This really was one of the most profound things I heard in Xoljuyup – and I promised to share this with everyone back home. So for everyone who has been part of the Run For H2O... these thank-you's were for you. THANK YOU. Your gifts - and efforts to invite others to give - have been the beginning of new life and a new course of history, for whole communities, for all of forever.  

And I invite you too, this year, to be part of a new "in-between", and an "ever after", that is more significant, more joyful, more full of life than you and I will ever know.

Sign up at www.runforh2o.ca

Or, read a few more of my own thoughts and help me reach my goal of raising $5,000 to help many more families this year at my.hope-international.com/rainbow2016



Rugged beginnings

I like Guatemala.

Some things that are just the quirks of travel, still make me smile, like a trunk full of carrots.

A gift from the national staff in the capital city to the staff in the province where we work. May as well, since they were picking me up. :)

But long after the novelty of travel has worn off after many years of spending many months of the year around the world, I’m still happy to be here, to be working here.

Hearing the decades of history of communities in the storms of conflicts with the government and private companies.

I like these meetings a lot. Meetings about the current political crisis in Guatemala and the subsequent collapse of the medical system, and how we could possibly help respond by sending medicines and medical supplies to hospitals and clinics run by non-government organizations. Meetings about how we can continue to work with the wonderful staff we know in Guatemala, many of whom spent their childhoods collecting water from dirty rivers, and who now dedicate their lives to helping other communities access clean drinking water, sanitation, and health. Meetings with community leaders from remote villages being threatened to lose their lands and livelihoods to hydroelectric dam and mining projects, who never knew until recently that they stand a chance to keep their homes because of a thing called law and human rights. Long, seemingly boring, but insightfully captivating meetings.

Benito and Benedicto, from a community 12 hours away, deciding how to best spell out my name in their mother tongue after our meeting... after much deliberation, they decided on "Shokoq'aabm" :)

The simple beauties amid and within the complex challenges that people face here are sometimes hard to really appreciate. Life seems to be a struggle for everyone – be it the communities in need, our selfless staff, or the long-time friends here I call family. It's more rugged than quaint, more rough than pretty, and I think the fact that it is sooo cold in this mountainous province adds to that sentiment, so mere survival seems more a reality – at least for the cold blooded being that I am!

But I am happy to be here, to appreciate the people and the depth of stories rooted in decades of resistance and struggle befure, during, and after civil war – those that lived through three decades of armed conflict, fleeing their homes to forge an existence in the mountains, slipping silently from temporary homes to secretly planted patches of corn and beans so as not to be found all those years, until the armies left and they returned to rebuild their lives, and hope for more security for their children. Those children who, now grown, in the same courage, leave their village, one of the few times in their lives, to travel 12 hours to come meet with me, to speak for their fathers and their communities in hope of support to gain title over their land before it is lost to mining companies.  

To appreciate our simple staff, whose wealth of formal education and informal experience and knowledge you would never know, or the hundreds of villages they have befriended and humbly shared their expertise with; who, between available work, migrate to the south coast along with all the other men in their village, to be peasant migrant labourers cutting coffee and sugar cane on large plantations, their young children in tow.

To try to gather something of value to convey this rugged reality to people who don't know it, and to invite them to enter into these rugged stories, and to help make them something a little bit gentler, a little bit smoother, a little bit lighter and easier to hope and to work for better things.

Me; one of my heroes Luisa - Attorney in Land Conflicts, Legal Expert in Guatemalan law and indigenous peoples issues, tireless defender of human rights; community members from two communities facing threats to their land and livelihoods.

And so I am happy to be here. And happy that I know that these rugged beginnings are just the start of good, not simple, sometimes not pretty, but beautiful – things.