...AIR STAGNATION ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 1 PM MST
FRIDAY...
* WHAT...An extended period of stagnant air, with light winds
and little vertical mixing.
* WHERE...Portions of south central, southwest and west central
Idaho and northeast and southeast Oregon.
* WHEN...Until 1 PM MST Friday, and this time may be extended.
* IMPACTS...Periods of air stagnation can lead to the buildup of
pollutants near the surface.
* ADDITIONAL DETAILS...Winds will be strong enough today,
Wednesday, and Thursday afternoons in portions of the Upper
Treasure Valley and Western Magic Valley to limit stagnation.
However, parts of the zones will experience stagnant air and
were therefore included in this advisory.
PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
An Air Stagnation Advisory concerns itself with meteorological
conditions only. For more information on air pollution in Idaho,
visit website www.deq.idaho.gov. For Oregon, visit website
www.oregon.gov/deq.
If possible, reduce or eliminate activities that contribute to
air pollution, such as outdoor burning, and the use of
residential wood burning devices. Reduce vehicle trips and
vehicle idling as much as possible.
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Retired educators Tom and Pam Rybus of Boise celebrate after completing another wall in the El Xab “bottle school.”
A new school will be the learning hub for 84 students in a remote Guatemalan village, thanks to a group of 15 volunteers from the Treasure Valley who traveled there in November for a work project.
The group, organized by Pam and Tom Rybus of Boise, spent several days in the highlands village of El Paraiso El Xab to help construct a “bottle school,” so called because of the unique construction method that incorporates plastic bottles filled with inorganic trash into the structure of the building.
The Rybuses and two other couples footed the $25,000 bill for the construction of the school, which covers the cost of workers and building supplies.
The 15 volunteers partnered with the El Xab community and the nonprofit Hug It Forward, an organization with a focus on education and awareness of improved trash management methods through the construction of bottle classrooms, with an emphasis in Guatemala.
Pam Rybus first learned about the bottle schools project from an article in Oprah magazine. She and her husband are retired teachers, having taught in the U.S., Japan, Berlin and the Netherlands, and have a passion for education.
Inspired by Hug It Forward, she organized the first group of people from Boise to make a trip south in 2016. “I read that article and I don’t know why I did it this way, I could have just joined someone else, but I led a trip,” she said. “It was a trip to see if I’d want to do it again.”
She would go on to do the trip again, five more times. This latest trip in mid-November was multi-generational and included retirees and a 15-year-old girl on her first overseas trip.
The community of El Xab prepared for the construction of their school by stuffing plastic bottles, or “eco-bricks,” with trash such as candy wrappers, chip bags and rags. It takes about an hour to stuff one bottle, and about 10,000 bottles are required to build a three-room school like the one the Boise group worked to build.
The volunteers spent the bulk of their time in El Xab sorting bottles and then tying them onto panels of chicken wire, which are later covered with cement by workers in the community.
There’s a bit of an art to tying a bottle onto chicken wire, said Tom Unger, a retired teacher who was on his first trip to Guatemala. “One person works on one side, and another on the other side,” he said. “We work as a team. Once you get it, it’s very simple. It’s just tedious because you do it over and over.”
Unger said he enjoyed the interaction with the local people, and while he can’t speak a lick of Spanish, he still managed to enjoy hanging out with the children who were helping.
“Being side by side with the kids was awesome,” he said. “They’re just sweet kids.”
During their trip, the group learned about the 30-year civil war in Guatemala and how it devastated the area where the school is being built. “This particular area was populated with refugees from the civil war,” Tom Rybus shared.
His wife added, “This was the poorest community we’d ever been in.”
Thus the need for schools, which were destroyed during the war. The local population is indigenous Mayan, and many work in coffee groves nearby. For the children growing up there, there are few options for furthering their education or other job prospects.
Volunteer Bonnie Krafchuk, a retired educator, put her Spanish skills to work as she helped translate for the group. She said she moved by the stories she heard about the civil war and the reality of life in this isolated community. “It’s interesting to see with your own eyes what the culture is like,” she said.
One man she spoke with told her how as indigenous people in Guatemala, they are often overlooked by their government, and they feel like they’re completely on their own. “He said to me, ‘You guys being here makes us feel like we’re not forgotten.’”
Working with the bottle school project and seeing the enormity of the trash problem in El Xad has given Pam Rybus a new perspective on the environmental impact of garbage. “I will never drink out of a plastic water bottle!” she said. “I avoid them. Sometimes I’ll be at Fred Meyer and see cases of water bottles, and I’m like, there’s a bottle school there! It makes you so aware of that issue when you’re sorting all those bottles.”
Unger said the trip gave him a renewed appreciation for life in the U.S. “It just reiterated how well we have it in the United States,” he said. “My other takeaway is these kids have nothing. Most of them are going to stay right there. They have the coffee fields and each other, and this school was a big deal to them … they don’t have anything, yet they’re happy, they’re content.”
When asked if there would be another trip in the future, Pam enthusiastically responded, “Always! We always say this is our last trip then we’ll probably do another one.”
