7/6 -- Explore Guatemala City

We started off driving down the Avenue of the Americas, which is a boulevard with a lovely park between the lanes of traffic. Each block featured one or two nations in the western hemisphere. The people in the rest of the Americas sometimes take issue with us calling our selves Americans because actually the inhabitants of the two continents are all Americans. Most of the countries represented themselves with a statue of a famous person, but the USA had a most unusual presentation -- it was three large sculptures: A ball, a square archway, and a pyramid in what looked like light gray granite.

Along the way, we stopped at Berlin Plaza, where three sections of the Berlin wall were on display, one of which was tipped over.

Three Berlin Wall segments, one intentionally sideways.

Our main visit for the morning was a group called Camino Seguro (Safe Passage) a non-profit dedicated to improving the lives of children and their parents who make their living scavenging at Guatemala City's huge central dump. It was founded by a young woman, Hanley Demming, who came here to learn Spanish in 1997 and a friend took her to the city dump in 1999 where she saw thousands of people, including little kids, scavenging to try to make a living. She asked her parents to sell her car and computer and raised $5000 to start a program to improve their  lives. She was wildly successful. although she didn't live to see how far her idea progressed as she was killed in a car accident in early 2007.

The program currently supplements public education for 600 children from age 1.5 to 6th grade with scholarships to support them through high school. They also created  programs, initially for the mothers, but now fathers are also taking advantage of them, to give them a basic education and to help them become more self-sufficient so that they don't have to work at the dump.

The jars holding materials come from the dump to demonstrate
the value of reuse/recycling.

The program is Montessori like and this girl was practicing
washing things. Activities are self-selected and sharing is
emphasized by limiting the number of students who can do
something at the same time.

This girl was filling used water bottles with
sand and then letting it run out the spout.

This is a class of the youngest students, who start at 1.5 years.

One of the programs to do this is called Creamos (Create). It was originally part of Camino Seguro, but broke off because its efforts to help the women make and sell handicrafts would have more flexibility as a separate entity. The two  programs work together, as the participants have to attend the educational program for 6 months to get the basic reading and math skills to create a business. Another focus is to find ways to make materials from the dump into handicrafts. There were interesting beads made of paper and several hanging flower pots made from horizontal plastic bottles.

After lunch, we headed down Reforma Avenue to the oldest section of the city, known as Zone 1. This boulevard park and different zoo animal sculptures along the way to highlight the nearby zoo. We also stopped to look at an amazing church.

A man promised to build the most elaborate
church in Guatemala City and here it is.

We mounted a plaza by the main road with a good view of a Spanish aqueduct built on top of the  previous Mayan aqueduct, a large banking company (mortgage rates start at 16%), the equivalent of our Federal Bank, a court, and a peace fountain erected at the end of the civil war.

Old Spanish aqueduct

This shows two left hands (closer to the  heart) holding a dove.

The central plaza featured the Metropolitan Cathedral which had a wonderful marble altar piece that was moved from the previous Metropolitan Cathedral in Antigua, a former capitol abandoned  in the 1776 due to repeated earthquakes and their destruction. We also walked in the central plaza and looked at the National Palace before heading back to our  hotel and dinner.

The front of the Metropolitan Cathedral is interesting because
the side bell towers are short. Typically, they are much taller,
but builders discovered they were hazardous in earthquakes.

This marble arch over the altar table moved
from Antigua.

The National Palace is built of greenish stone The tower on
the left has been destroyed and rebuilt twice.