Interviews Last Night and This Morning

Suse and Hans Jans, long-time friends of the founders, have been visiting Antigua since Sunday. Retired now, she is trained in occupational therapy and he was a petroleum engineer with Exxon. They traveled first to Honduras, where they are working with a variety of projects (building schools and homes, and initiating a women's knitting project), and then came here to check on Transitions' progress. They have been major donors to Transitions, making possible a property on the edge of town where all of Transitions' various projects will eventually be located in one place. We had the opportunity to interview them for the video. What a delight!

This morning, eight of us went out to that property to shoot B-roll and to interview Adolfo, the technician who fits and makes the prostheses. (He is one of five people in Guatemala trained to
perform this task.) At left, you will see Eric Cuadra on camera and Lydia Bell conducting the interview. The property itself is lush and inviting. In addition to housing for several of the staff and the clinic for the prosthetics, there are fruit trees (orange, lemon, mango, papaya) and coffee plants, as well as numerous flowers. Earlier in the week, a big rain inundated the area and flooded the warehouse on the property. Students from a Quaker high school in Frederick, Maryland, here for a week of service, were able to clean out the ware house. Fortunately, the architect who is drawing up the plans for the property will be able to work with the water issues in planning the buildings.

Ari Sandoval, our audio person, has dreams of gardening. While others were getting B-roll and setting up for the interview, Ari pitched in to help with the composting. Ari is on the right and
Walter, a Transitions staff member who does the gardening, is on the left.