First Lesson in Salaguna is Planting Corn, January 2023

Additional details are in this email, The women of Salaguna…and the families of Chajmaic rejoice at our team’s arrival

The other pages of Phase 2 (January 2023) are detailed at these pages: Mini Greenhouses, January-March 2023, Meeting the 30 new families (November 2022), Beginning Phase 2 of the Greenhouses Project, January 2023, and Salaguna Corn in Beginning Phase, January 20, 2023

Our agricultural engineer, Federico Arriola Cuéllar, knowing the extreme need of the women of Salaguna, left to care for their children when their husbands made the dangerous journey north, contacted his engineer colleagues in Brazil, where he had studied, and received corn prepared with an additive that helps the seed to germinate better and stronger.  He made the planting of corn the first step for the women participants of Salaguna.

The women and their children are counting and packaging the corn so each family has an equal amount to plant

Below is an example of how the earth should be already prepared for the planting of corn.  The Engineer prepared it and everyone is taking a look at it, touching it and getting to know it.

Example of how the earth should be prepared for corn

Federico held classes with the women.  Here, he is showing them with hand gestures, the quality and quantity of the products that can be grown with this system.

Speaking of the quality & quantity of the products

Because all of the women of Salaguna are illiterate and none of them speak Spanish, our team relied on the Chajmaic leader, Lety Caal, to translate, as well as gestures and facial expressions.  To measure how deeply or how far apart to plant, Federico taught the women how to use a tape measure and the equivalences in hand measurements, in case they didn’t have a tool available.

Federico teaching the women of Salaguna using hand measurements