Kico’s Story

Madison Rotarian brings medical service to his homeland

Guatemala City, Guatemala – A tired and disheveled medical team of about 30 people shuffles off the United Airlines flight from O’Hare International Airport to the baggage claim area.

As they pull the 20 bags of medical supplies off the carousel and count them, two organizers give a shout of relief to the group as they see Enrique Gándara happily make his way into the airport.

“Kico,” as he known to his friends, has a smile and a hug for everyone. He asks for their baggage claim tickets, waves over a man wheeling a huge baggage cart, then starts all of the travelers on a parade into the customs area. In a matter of minutes, all of the visitors are standing on the parkway waiting to board the colorful “chicken bus” that will take them to Kico’s ranch in Oliveros, where they will be staying.

Brian Jensen, on his fourth stint with the Rotary Guatemala Medical Resources Partnership, leans over to say this process used to take the group hours. Kico, however, has considerable ambassadorial clout in this his native country.

Kico was born in Guatemala, educated in the United States and currently lives and works in Madison. He is an ambassador for the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture and travels the world touting Wisconsin products to increase the state’s economic development through exporting products made in the Dairy State.

A member of a Madison Rotary Club, Kico, has been instrumental in making the GMRP project successful for the last 10 years. He has also served as the Rotaty District Governor for Guatemala, Belize and Honduras.

For about two weeks, Kico will be hosting Rotarians, medical professionals and volunteers who set up and carry out the weeklong medical mission. If any international project is to be successful, it needs someone on the ground in the country to understand the people, the culture and the needs. Here, Kico is the man.

Kico is highly respected in the country, as evidenced by the group’s quick exit from the airport. Guatemala Tourist Police escort the bus over the three-and-a-half hour trip to the ranch in Oliveros. They will stay with the group the entire week to ensure safety, which can be an issue in a region where drug runners from Columbia and Honduras try to infiltrate the fields of Guatemala.

A few days into the medical mission, Kico talks about his involvement.

“My daddy was not the best businessman,” he says. He farmed all of this land, but did not always have the business savvy to make it what it could be,” he says, waving his arms toward the fields. In 1980, Kico returned to Oliveros to make the ranch productive.

It is mostly a cattle ranch, with 1,200 acres of gently rolling fields that have sugar cane, mango groves and grazing areas. He hired the people he played with as a child to help him manage and care for his cattle, land and visitors.

At least once a year, the ranch is overrun with volunteers who are part of this medical mission. They stay in cabanas and sleep in bunks. His staff laboriously prepares three meals a day and cleans up after the group.

There is no hot-running water here. But it is safe to drink from a deep, huge well that serves the Oliveros community, thanks to a Rotary project that helped to build the infrastructure to provide chlorinated, fluoridated water in the area.

Kico is a storyteller, who entertains his guests with tales about the land and people. But above all, he is clearly a passionate man with a gigantic heart for his native country.

“My dream,” he says one night under the thatched roof of the outdoor dining room, “is to retire and bring groups of Rotarians to the surrounding villages, and one at a time get them the water, electricity, the infrastructure they need to grow.”

He is also involved in helping his neighboring Guatemalans increase their education.

His dear friend and fellow Rotarian Jeannine Desautels spearheaded the creation of Oliveros Scholarship Fund, a 501(c)3 charitable organization that sprouted from the GMRP mission.

After meeting children who came to the mission for medical service, Jeannine, a retired nurse, learned that they often dropped out of school once they completed the fifth grade at the local grade school. The rural areas of Guatemala are so sparsely populated, it is impractical for each community to have a middle and high school. If someone wishes to continue, they must travel each day out of the village to the next level of schooling, pay for daily transportation, uniforms and books.

By consulting with Kico, Jeannine created the fund. Kico serves on the board of directors. On Tuesday, the final day of the mission, more than 100 parents and children gathered in the nearby corner establishment to see if they would be so lucky as to procure a scholarship. This particular week, the Fund distributed 69 scholarships for the school year, which begins in January.

This is just one way Kico has marshaled the kind of compassion and resources it will take to support his dream — that the people of Guatemala be all they can be to live a sustainable, descent life.