Travel Logs: Talquezal, Guatemala | Action Against Hunger

How One Guatemalan Village Overcame Natural Disaster with Community Gardening

By: Farida Gadzhimirzaeva

9:00am – Travel 

As I am riding in the car on the way to Talquezal, I am once again struck by how different Guatemala’s Dry Corridor is to the rest of Guatemala. Here, there is no lush vegetation, no hardware store, or doctor’s office, not even a stoplight as I drive down this dusty, winding road. The parched ground crunching beneath the tires is a clear indicator that the area has not felt any relief from its harsh heat for months.

All of Central America feels the effects of a changing El Niño (a cyclically recurring weather pattern of dry and wet seasons), but Guatemala’s Dry Corridor is one of the areas most affected. Guatemala ranks first in Central America and sixth in the world for rates of malnutrition, and its Dry Corridor faces exceptional environmental challenges in fighting hunger. This region has drought periods so severe that every kind of crop is impacted, from cassava to chatate (a nutritious vegetable native to Guatemala). For the 25-50% of the population living here that rely on agriculture to eat, the loss of crops has been devastating.

Talquezal is a village in the Dry Corridor that has been slammed with one natural disaster after another: torrential rains caused by tropical storms Eta and Iota, landslides, and extreme droughts. With weather conditions continuously ruining the soil, and with no resources to rebuild what was lost to the landslides, the people of Talquezal have been ripped of their ability to grow the simple grains including corn, rice, and beans that have fed their families for generations. Hunger rates have soared, and children have died from malnutrition. Many men have felt no choice but to leave their homes in pursuit of better opportunities elsewhere, putting women in newfound positions as the farmers in the community.

These women are trying to learn how to farm while battling some of the most challenging growing conditions in the world, and the lives of them and their children depend on it.
This is why I, Farida Gadzhimirzaeva, Deputy Regional Director of Central America for Action Against Hunger, am going to Talquezal today; to see firsthand if their community garden is surviving. Watching angry clouds of dust billow up behind the car, I feel daunted by what I might find.

11:00am – Meeting Alicia

I arrive at a yellow house nestled into the plateau of a mountain where Alicia Suchita Ramírez is waiting for me.

Alicia greets me with a shy smile and one of her grandchildren runs up to say hello, closely chased after by a clucking chicken who has darted out from a coop that was installed by Action Against Hunger a few months ago.

Over the years, Action Against Hunger has worked with the community of Talquezal on several projects, including reforestation, improving health and hygiene, and improving household conditions. Now, Action Against Hunger is attempting the enormous feat of hydrating some of Earth’s most sunbaked soil with its’ Árbol de Lluvia (Rain Tree) project. Action Against Hunger partnered with the University of Jaen for this project to create a sustainable irrigation device, the “Rain Tree”, which traps rainwater and delivers it directly to the roots of plants. It is meant to withstand months without rainfall and keep plants healthy in otherwise deadly circumstances.

While the Rain Tree has shown great success in a lab setting, Action Against Hunger needs to see how the device withstands the harsh reality of Guatemala’s Dry Corridor. Gloria Coy, Action Against Hunger’s Project Manager of the Rain Tree Project, has said that, “…what we [Action Against Hunger] want to do is that the communities can see the results, because it is not only an evaluation of the universities that are working, but also that the communities can see the results and can replicate the use of these devices in their homes.”

Alicia is a participant in the project and is testing the Rain Tree device in her community garden. It is the Rain Tree’s most important evaluation of all, and I am anxious to hear from Alicia how the device’s effects and Action Against Hunger’s support are taking shape in her lived experience.

12:00 – Garden Tour  

Through the sweltering heat, Alicia leads me to the community garden. Miraculously, there is a thriving variety of crops growing in neat rows. Onions, radishes, and even coffee plants totaling over 700 in number, all looking vibrantly green against their stark landscape.

Action Against Hunger helped Alicia plant these crops and supplied her with the tools needed to keep them alive. Action Against Hunger also provided training sessions on water resource management, crop diversification, and distribution of agricultural inputs for climate-resilient farming. These new techniques are effective for managing the pests and diseases that often ruin crops during the dry seasons.

Alicia shows me how the locally made Rain Tree devices feed water to the roots of the plants and keep them healthy in the sun-blistered soil around us. She proudly tells me that even when coffee plants are lost to the heat, she captures their seeds and replants them, meaning she does not need to rely on aid for future crops.

The Rain Tree project targets places where natural disasters have ruined the land, forcing people to go without food and to fear how long it will be until they can eat again. The goal is that, with this new Rain Tree device, crops will be able to grow in even the dryest conditions, and families like Alicia’s will be able to consistently put food on the table.
The Rain Tree has shown a 16% increase in cassava production. In Guatemala, where one out of every two children under five years old suffers from chronic malnutrition, crop yield increases like this are crucial for survival.

Alicia tells me that her garden has flourished since the addition of the Rain Tree, and she not only has enough food for her family, but she has a surplus that she can sell.

14:00 – Coffee Break 

Alicia invites me back to her home for a cup of coffee made from the plants in her garden. The house’s walls were whitewashed by Action Against Hunger to provide insulation, as well as protection from bugs and scorpions that used to hide in cracks, and they are now offering us much-needed shelter from the sun.

I watch Alicia confidently breeze around the kitchen as she sets to work. Grinding the coffee beans, she tells me the different ways women in her community have stepped up to manage the garden and ownership they take over their work. Alicia has been a teacher to these women, passing on the training that Action Against Hunger gave her. She laughs as she tells me that the women always want her to come to the garden with them.

I ask her if the women are happy to work in the garden, and she says, “They are. When the time comes, and they come to work, I tell them to be responsible because what they take is for themselves. What there is of onion, radish or something else…you are now distributing it, and you don’t buy it. Since I started working here, I don’t buy any more, and I can invest that money in other things [like] a pound of sugar, a pound of salt, soap…”

Delighted, she tells me how Action Against Hunger helped her find access to local markets to sell her surplus crops and equipped her with training in financial and management skills. She now leads a cooperative program for women and passes on those skills, teaching the women to be financial managers in their homes. This program has been replicated in other departments of Guatemala, where rural women adapt and promote climate-smart agricultural practices, becoming change agents towards sustainable development.

I sip the steaming coffee Alicia hands me, and it tastes delicious. The warm mug in my hands is liquid proof that, with Action Against Hunger’s support, change is possible even in places as severely impacted by drought as Talquezal. Looking out of Alica’s open window, I don’t feel daunted by the dusty ground anymore. Now, it looks like the soil of a strong community that has overcome the odds and will only continue to grow stronger.