El Remate and La Biblioteca

There are also some photographs of El Remarte and La Biblioteca on my flickr stream .

We have now been in El Remate for three weeks. It is a village of maybe 2,500 people spread back into the jungle alongside the road from Santa Elena, the nearest town 30 km away, to Tikal. It lies on the eastern edge of the mighty Lake Peten Itza, the largest lake in the region. Tikal is nearly 30k in the other direction, and the border with Belize 60km to the east. We stay in a cabana in the lakeside garden of a house. We swim in the constantly warm lake almost every day and watch the sun set over the water.

There are details of La Biblioteca under the IxCanaan link, along with the other initiatives supported by the Project.

Georgia spends each weekday afternoon leading activity sessions for about 25 children between 4 and 12. Other volunteers she has worked with include Eva from Poland and Marilyn from Chile. I have helped suggest ways of packaging an event run by the project to celebrate the Mayan solstice. Called Unificacion Maya it is a week of events designed to bring tourists into the village to participate in ceremonies and go on other activities from horse riding and boat trips to learning about Mayan cooking, medicine and their calendar. I also designed the leaflet and have installed a common suite of applications on the library computers including much-needed anti-virus software along with Word, Excel and Firefox. The computers are used by older children for internet research, when not browsing porn!, and hopefully future volunteers can teach various computer skills including word-processing, spreadsheets, web design and picture editing. I have been hoping to take high quality photographs of carved wood ornaments women make for tourists but despite the enthusiasm of the president of the women’s group nothing has appeared to photograph yet. Mañana, Mañana!