A small classroom is now used as a makeshift kitchen. Cement blocks are used to hold wood for fire built on the floor.
The school prepares a very simple but hot lunch for the students each day. For many, this may be the most nutrition they will get all day. One classroom is used as a kitchen. But they desperately need an actual, outfitted kitchen. At this point the women, used to rural ways, sometimes prepare the food (chopping, cutting, peeling) on the cement floor! The new kitchen will have lots of clean counter space.
The women start a fire on the floor and cook over it and the room gets filled with heavy smoke. But, why aren’t they using the gas stove or the wood burning stove with a chimney which are beside the fire on the floor?
Greg meets on-site to layout drains, counters and electric for the new kitchen. Rocio, project coordinator, is the young lady who helps make it all possible.
Well, they don’t have money for propane gas, so they can’t use the gas stove. Besides it is too high for them to reach the tall pots they must use. The wood stove has a door to insert wood, but the wood they have is too big for the door. And, that stove is also too high for them to use with the tall pots.
On top of this, the school needs to use that classroom right away.
So the school and municipality are building a small kitchen, about 18 feet by 18 feet, where four ladies will prepare and cook the food for 112 students each school day. We’re going to cut 11″ off the legs of that gas stove, so they can more easily use it.
Thanks to a fundraiser held by Mike & Kim Bartolotti and Family & Friends, New York State, USA, we have the funds to help in a big way! The approximately $1,000 that was raised is being used by Hands of Hope to buy a new and different style woodburning stove, some pots and knives and steel beams for the roof and help with the purchase of other construction materials to help make this new kitchen a reality. The school is very thankful, because they have run out of funds of their own.
Rocio G. is the energetic young lady who is coordinating all the efforts and trying to raise funds. She is really wonderful and cares for the people. She works with a large mission called http://www.CommonHope.org in Antigua, Guatemala. We’ve known Common Hope for many years and in the last few years, we have been working closely with them to provide health care for the children who are in the Common Hope educational sponsored program.
More later, as construction progresses.