Environment

As the sun emerges from the gray brown smog that hangs over Guatemala City's wet streets, we board our plane and are inundated by the sounds of English words, and babies crying — for the most part a universal language of frustration.

Our time here is ended (for now) and I point the Blackberry in different directions while on the plane with the hopes that I'll be able to send at least one text or one blog entry while in the clouds. I am a horrible role model when it comes to connectivity politeness; make no mistake, it's a life line and it can get Hobbesian quickly.

Michael Stoll, for the Pulitzer Center
Uaxactun, Guatemala

Everyone in this village down a muddy, rutted road, 23 km past the world-famous Maya archaeological site of Tikal, knows how to "xatear."

The verb, which would stump most Guatemalans, means "to cut xate," a decorative plant used in floral arrangements in the United States and elsewhere. But as obscure as the word may sound to outside ears, it's a core activity for most of this village of fewer than 1,000 people ...

Michael Stoll, for the Pulitzer Center
Guatemala City, Guatemala

This morning I flew to Guatemala City with half a dozen officials and NGO representatives from the Guatemalan state of Petén.

Michael Stoll, for the Pulitzer Center
Flores, Guatemala

Yesterday we completed our two-day return hike from El Mirador to Carmelita. The bajos again felt muddy and endless, but with the help of an early start and a mule ride, we made it out. On our own, without the archaeologists for the first time in many days, our group of four felt small.

We came to northern Guatemala, and slogged through the mud for two days straight, to find out whether there was anything to the claims that archaeology could help save a Rhode Island-size chunk of roadless tropical forest.

ON A FRAYED MAT ON ONE of the dusty streets of Kibera — Africa's largest slums — in Nairobi, Sophia Mohamed sells her wares: two mangoes, five oranges, a half-dozen calcium-based chewing stones and a pan brimming with bhajia (a potato snack).

By: Nadia Sussman

This is an area that, someday, must accommodate thousands of tourists a year if it is to realize its potential as an economic engine for the Peten region.

We've been in Guatemala City for four days, running around nonstop. I slept for 45 minutes after our red-eye Tuesday night and managed to motor through the following day. We spent Wednesday through Friday interviewing a variety of experts and government officials. During that time, we managed to hook up with a group of archaeologists traveling to El Mirador starting on Monday. So tomorrow we board a minibus bound for Flores, Petén, and Monday we start walking north.

In a small shack made of iron sheets and pieces of clothing in the slums of Addis Ababa live the Alemu family - Abiy, Marasit Bishaw, and the couple's three-year-old son and 25-day-old baby daughter Yanit.

And just a few metres from their one-room home is a mass of sewage and garbage, mixed with the carcasses of dead chickens and cow and goat skulls.

The Alemus live near the gully where the Kabena river used to meander gracefully through the Ethiopian capital.

But the river is now full of the city's waste, and a stench of sewage is the first thing that hits.

As day breaks over the rusty tin roofs and makeshift homes of the sprawling Kibera slum in Nairobi, the water sellers are already at their water tanks, waiting for their first customers.

Selling water in one of the world's largest slums is a good business. On most days the vendors charge 5 cents for five gallons, 100 times the cost of piped water provided by the city. But the city does not send water to the residents of Kibera--at any price.