Update: Gregoria Xalut Perez

(A-57) Gregoria is now sponsored to be part of our Elderly Feeding Care Program! Thank you to Project Spark, who is here volunteering with us this week, Gregoria will be able to eat each day. She was so happy to meet her sponsors today, who visited her house and shared a meal with her at the Program. We'll continue to provide updates on Gregoria's situation. 

A link to Gregoria's story can be found here.

If you would like to sponsor an Elderly person to eat once a day for a month, check out the biographies on the sidebar. Then go to www.mayanfamilies.org/donatenow to begin a subscription. You may also make a one-time donation or donate to the General Program Fund. Just write a note in the "Other" box on the donation page. 

Thank you, gracias and mat'iosh to Project Spark from Gregoria, and all of us at Mayan Families!

Teresa Palax

(A-78) Status: Not Sponsored
Needs: a bed and mattress, blankets, water filter, Onil stove, pila, table

Teresa works, cooks and sleeps in the same room, on a dirt floor with a tin roof.
She spends all day threading bracelets: for a bunch she gets $4.
Her bathroom is a hole in the dirt.
There is no water to drink, no water to wash. She goes to the community pila, a concrete basin, to
wash her dishes and clothes.
To have something to drink she'll carry dirty water in large jugs, far from her house.
Seven months ago she dislocated her shoulder, and now she feels pressure everywhere: her head, the sockets of her eyes, her stomach, her arms.
The doctor didn't cure her, she says, she has to go back.
She feels her bones swelling through her skin.

Update: Rosa Guit Ramos

Rosa is now sponsored to be part of our Elderly Feeding Program! She will be able to receive food each day, thank you to a generous donor. This comes as a huge relief for her and her family. We will continue to update you on what is happening with Rosa in the future. A link to Rosa's story can be found here.

If you would like to sponsor an Elderly person to eat once a day for a month, check out the biographies on the sidebar. Then go to www.mayanfamilies.org/donatenow to begin a subscription.

A link to a story about the situation faced by elderly Guatemalan indigenous can be found here.

(A-32) Status: Sponsored!

Medical Needs for Ancianos

We are still seeking donations, especially monthly sponsorship, for our Elderly Care program. For most, the meal they get with Mayan Families is the only meal they get per day. Please consider sponsoring an elderly person to eat at least once a day, five days a week. A monthly sponsorship costs $35. 

Even by their own families, the elderly are ignored, thought to have lived out their need to be cared for. Their sons and daughters are often so poor they must choose between feeding their parents or feeding their children. Please help us to provide this small but necessary contribution to their lives.

There are several more who need more than just one meal, of course, and if you would like to make a one-time donation or consider sponsoring an elderly person's medical costs, please review the extra needs below. Remember that these costs are in addition to the cost of their lunch per month, at $35.

A-2 Tereso Ajcojon needs vitamins monthly, at $13.

A-10 Maria Lucas needs a monthly supply of Ensure, at $32.

A-70 Dolores Leja needs medicine and milk each month, which cost $78.

A-85 Casimiro Leja needs a monthly supply of Ensure, at $32.

A-75 Santiago Bocel needs medicine and Ensure at $104.35 a month.

A-79 Adrian Motta needs Ensure at $32 a month.

A-82 Fidelia Pinzon needs medicine and diapers at $62 a month.

A-88 Petrona Pablo needs medicine at $10 a month.

and A-84 Felipa Xingo needs medicine at $4 a month.






Go to www.mayanfamilies.org/donatenow and write "Elderly Care Sponsorship" or list the number and need (for example A-91, vitamins $13) in the Other box. For any questions you may have, or for more information on a particular Anciano, please email familyaid@mayanfamilies.org.

Thank you so much for your help! A link to more information can be found here.

The Blind Sisters

Maria and Guatelupe Xalcut Garcia
(A-55, A-61) Status: Sponsored as of Dec 18, 2012!
Needs:  food, maize (corn), home repairs
UPDATE: Dec 7, 2012: Maria and Guatelupe have recieved a large basket of food!

UPDATE: Dec 18, 2012:  They have received 2 new mattresses, 2 beds, 2 pillows & 2 blankets!

Want to help? Please click here.
Links to previous stories about Cayetana and her daughters can be found here

Cayetana, left, and Maria, the eldest

Cayetana died in the bed she’d shared with her daughter the whole duration of the daughter’s life. It had been a gift in the house where the old woman lived with her two blind daughters, one who also cannot speak, nor walk. The other daughter sleeps on some cardboard laid on bedsprings.

Some years ago they’d lost their father after he’d been hit by a car. Then they lost their house in a mudslide, and along with this, their possessions. They are glad to have a place to sleep that is not boards atop the earth, nor the earth itself.

The new house has two rooms whose doors face each other in a corner, where the sun, the only light, comes in. The kitchen is some pieces of tin sheeting around a stove, whose fire is put out each time it rains, when the ground becomes a pool where bowls and bottles float. Behind this, a closet with a tarp for one wall covers a hole meant for using the bathroom.

Above the bed hangs a portrait of Christ, next to a mirror that would be ordinary except for the knowledge that only one of the three women has ever seen her reflection in it. In the corner sits a wheelchair, unused. 

The mother made money sitting in front of a waterfall, begging from tourists who wanted to take her photo. She’d bring back loads of wood to use to cook and her earnings, and in this way the women lived. She became famously photographed. She led the blind to lunch each day. She dressed and washed the one who could not do it for herself.  

The day Cayetana said she could not breathe, and left the lunchroom, she led her daughters home, who pinched her sleeves, following. People came to visit: first the doctor, then others who came to say goodbye. Cayetana complained of pain and of not wanting to die, while one daughter banged two small teddy bears together and the other cried at her side. Sometime later she left her body in the bed and her two blind daughters waiting, for days, for help to remove it.

It was the daughter’s bed too, where the doctor said Cayetana would die of the swelling from her enlarged heart, and where she did die, bleeding through the mattress. The daughters, who did not have another, turned it over.  

What will we do for maiz? says the older sister, what will we do for food? My sister, she says, she can’t go out. She can’t walk. The two sit in the doorway and blink in the sun like those who have been underground awhile must adjust to new light, as if the gesture might allow them to see. They wait for something or someone to happen to them. They wait for a hand to lead them to eat. They wait for a hand to dress them. They wait for time to pass.

Gregoria Xalut Perez

(A-57) Status: Not Sponsored
UPDATE Jan 2, 2013: Gregoria received a bed & mattress!

Gregoria climbs too many steps to her wooden house.
She talks about the eight children who have left her on the hill, who never come to visit.
When I ask her what her life was like before, she asks before? before? 
Before what? She used to spend her days cilmbing mountains, pinching coffee seeds from their branches.
Today she spends her days climbing mountains, picking up sticks.
She carries the load on her back.
Sometimes she will rinse and peel onions in the fields for a few cents.
Sometimes a neighbor will have an extra tortilla for her.

Juana Buch Chumil

Juana's eye began to whiten, clouding so there was no light.
She went to a doctor, who hemmed and hawed.
He said I will charge you more than you have to save your eye.
She did not have the money to save her eye. The eye closed.
Now she sees with just the one; a white cloud is beginning to form over the color.


(A-47) Status: Sponsored as of March 20, 2013! Thank you!
Needs: food assistance (apart from lunch,) chairs, table, mattress, electricity, ceiling repairs
To help, click here.
For more stories and photos of the ancianos in the Feeding Program, please consider purchasing a book compiled of our participants. All profits go to the Elderly. You can preview the book here.  
UPDATE June 19, 2013:

Her two adolescent grandchildren and one daughter are living with Juana in the small space. Juana shares a bed with the granddaughter; they prop it up with a board because it is broken, and they have no mattress on the bed. Juana has been vomiting and experiencing dizziness. She is taking medications for colic.
Because it is now the rainy season, and because their roof is ill-constructed lamina, water is entering the house. They have hung a small tarp between the bed and ceiling so the bed will not get soaked, but this does not help much. The dirt floors turn to mud when this happens.
Despite her age, poor eyesight and other health issues, Juana is the only one making an income in the house, as her son-in-law left the family. He sends money occasionally, but Juana's weaving, which she sells in the market, is what sustains them.