Chris Skellenger‘s Safe Passage to Guatamala

Many of us living in Northern Michigan plan southern vacations during the winter but few, if any, have plans on par with Chris Skellenger. The Empire-based musician and landscaper plans to spend the next two weeks in Guatemala City, helping families and children who scavenge for a living in the city dump.
“This is a case of throwing my hat over the fence and then going to get it,” Skellenger said at a benefit for his trip held last week at the Village Inn in Empire. “I’m going to spend some time with Safe Passage, an organization that rescues children from the dump in Guatemala City and offers them food, education, safety and self-esteem.”
Hundreds of children live in the Guatemala City dump -- some with their families and some entirely on their own. According to www.safepassage.org, it’s a place rife with drug abuse and crime that mirrors many such dump communities throughout the third world. Safe Passage is establishing a school at the dump in Guatemala, in addition to working on food, health and housing projects.

A GOOD FIT
Long noted as a singer and guitarist with the Third Coast band, and now a group called Three Hour Tour, Skellenger’s day job is in landscaping with the North Coast Nursery in Empire, which he owns with his wife, Susan.
While reading a copy of “Guideposts” magazine last summer, he read an article called “God’s Gardener,” about Richard Chapin, 88, the “father of drip irrigation.”
Drip, or trickle, irrigation involves supplying simple bucket irrigation kits to people who live in drought areas where it does not rain for months, or even years at a time.
“I thought this is exactly what I should be doing with my background in landscaping and it snowballed from there,” Skellenger says.
Coincidentally, he was also in touch with a new group called the Great Lakes Friends of Safe Passage. Several members of the group traveled to Guatemala City last fall to lend a hand in the impoverished Central American country. At their suggestion, he decided to spend 10 days at the dump in Guatemala City, helping to establish community gardens. He’ll also spend several days in the Santa Barbara region of Honduras conducting demonstrations of the bucket irrigation method.
Joining him for part of the trip will be Jacob Wheeler, founder of the Glen Arbor Sun newspaper, who is reportedly writing a book on Americans who have adopted Guatemalan children. Looking on is the community service board of the Rotary Club in Traverse City, which is considering sponsorship of the local Safe Passage group.
For Skellenger, the trip is the worthy fruit of a long-held desire to get out of town during the winter months when not much is happening in the landscape business. Next year, his wife Susan plans to join him in the project. “In the time made available to us by the cold northern climate we will be replacing our winter proces
sion of fun but unprofitable jobs with missions in subsistence agriculture,” he said.


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