We went from one home in Quetzaltenango to another in Comalapa: Long Way Home, an organization I had worked for nearly a decade ago. I couldn’t believe how much had changed, how much had improved, how much it had grown, how many people were working, how many children were at the school. We were welcomed at the volunteer house by Alex, latest official employee of the program, and he took us up to the school, 6-week pup Pistolera in tow.

Click here for a look at a typical day of work for us during our week at Long Way Home 

We walked up to the school, a 15-minute picturesque trek on a dirt path through corn and strawberry fields. All the buildings at the school are made up of concrete, tires, and garbage “bricks”, either plastic bottles filled with plastic wrappers or trash compacted into uniform rectangles (Wall-E style). The result is stunning buildings, constructed of disposed garbage, and expansive tire-terraces that, with their uniformity made for surprisingly beautiful terracing material.

Future administrative quarters with huge sceptic cisterns in front of it, plastic-bottle bricks still visible.

Tire terracing and stairs

Zelda guarding the classrooms

The backside of a tire-classroom, and paint-testing chunk of wall; over 90 students are currently at the school.

Long Way Home

Glass bottles being arranged to make for a beautiful glass ceiling and lighting (as in the cover photo of this blog entry)

Tire terracing

This was our view as we compacted garbage into bricks. Here Volcán de Fuego was erupting next to Volcán Acatenango. Not a bad view for working!

Classrooms

A glass-bottle ceiling

A man and his pup

Off to town to the food-market, always accompanied by the dogs.

A pup in a freshly tilled field.

Views on the way to town

A most beautiful landfill

An “earthship”, a completely self-sustainable house built for a local woman and her family.

The view from the kitchen

The view from the top of the earthship looked over Comalapa

Headed into town to visit the art gallery of Oscar Perén

We ended up leaving with two paintings from the great Oscar Perén, amazing painter and storyteller.

Oscar was a master of both the fantastic and realistic; the upper painting is filled with color, meteors, witches, legends, and Oscar himself while the lower painting looked like an extremely high quality photo of the landscape around Lake Atitlán.

The center-painting is one of his most popular sells, a typical chicken bus scene.

Morning at the volunteer house

Later in the week, to switch up from making garbage bricks, we were put to work cleaning the labels and glue off beer bottles. A favorite moment was when Mateo, the creator of this whole project, reprimanded a paid worker for doing this same work stating (in his perfect Spanish with an unapologetic American accent), “I don’t mind that they are cleaning bottles, we aren’t paying them, but you, we are paying you way too much money to just clean bottles!”

Me and Mathilde, a French volunteer who was at Long Way Home for two weeks, having a grand ole time cleaning bottles.

Our garbage compactor, i.e. our work-place for a few days.

On our way to town again, following ladies with goodies balanced on their heads.

Comalapa

Central Square

We returned to Oscar Perén’s gallery the next day to pick up our paintings, and we saw he was working on another painting called “El Carcel”, The Jail. I had mentioned Julien enjoyed painting the previous day, and Oscar invited Julien to do some detailing on the wall.

This additional message on the wall-graffiti in our bedroom always made me laugh.

At the end of the week we headed out to see a bit more of the country, our packs half-size thanks to Mateo allowing us to stash the belongings we would not need the next three weeks at his place. The landscape as we walked to town, impressive as always.

Last ones on the bus means we had to stand up, pulling off a move I like to refer to as bus-surfing.

If you are interested in supporting Long Way Home, consider volunteering or making a donation; more information at http://www.lwhome.org/