While the world focuses on the tragedy in Southeast Asia and Squamish rallies to help a village in the tsunami zone, Ueli Liechti is just returning from his continuing mission to help build a better life for villagers in South America.
For the third time in the past 12 months, Liechti, the president of Squamish's Duro Construction, has made the trip from Squamish to Guatemala and back. He returned on Sunday (Jan. 16) from a small village of 25 families called Nuevo Eden (New Eden) where he was preparing a site for the construction of a medical clinic.
"We have roughly 22 villages that we will serve," Liechti said.
The Squamish Rotary Club, as well as American and other 小蓝视频 Rotary Clubs and private donors, are funding the clinic.
People from within the area have been hired to work on the 4,000-square-foot building, which is expected to begin in the middle of February when the dry season starts.
"To do any construction from July to November is pretty hopeless," Liechti said, noting the area gets around 150 inches of rain a year.
The need for a medical facility is pressing.
"It's overwhelming because the government does not have any funding for any type of health care. So there is absolutely at present no help whatsoever."
Liechti said as things currently stand, if a mother with child has complications while giving birth, the mother and child will die."Private clinics are not accessible because of cost."
The construction will also inject some much-needed cash into the local economy.
Between five to eight local workers will be hired for the four to five month construction period, and supplies will be bought locally. In the past four weeks, Liechti spent $10,000US, which goes eight or ten times further than it does here.
The entire fund for the project is $80,000 US.
"An American dollar goes a long way."
The clinic is part of a two-stage project which will eventually result in a fully operational hospital.
The medical clinic involves a partnership between the international community and the people who live the area and speak the local dialect and language. Edmundo Perduo, who is of Mayan descent from the Kanjobal tribe, is one of those people. He is going from village to village collection information.
"He's finding out how many families and children live in each village," Liechti said.
Perduo also has to find midwives and health promoters, whose job it is to find sick people and bring them to the clinic, or notify the clinic about people in need of care.
Liechti said the midwives and health promoters are the "two most important ingredients to the success of the clinic operations."
"We will hire a doctor from Central America that speaks Spanish. We build our medical team from that."
Liechti has been involved with this project for several years because work had to be done before the clinic could be built.
'We needed to acquire land and build a road to the site. There was only trail access to the village," he said.
And although he is committing weeks of time to the project, it has its rewards.
"We always see only friendly happy people even thought their houses have dirt floors.
"There's so much to learn from the indigenous people. The friendliness and the giving that they have that you can't really experience here. They have nothing but they will invite you for dinner. They give their best and sometimes we feel bad taking that invitation."
Liechti said he will probably return to Nuevo Eden in early July.
