Paty: My Guatemalan Super-Mom

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO… MAMá… NO VAYA… NO VAYA.” no Mommy. Don’t go! Don’t go! These words are my 6 A.M. alarm clock almost every day. Little four-year-old Diego Andres is never happy to see his mom, Paty, leave for work. Nevertheless, Paty is up by 5:30 six days a week getting herself ready. By 6:15, she is out the door and on her way to El Nahual. On these mornings lie in bed, swearing to myself that I’m never having kids as I try to fall back asleep. Sometimes I think about how easy it is to be chaste when you’re wrapped up in a 101 Dalmatians comforter, when you have a two foot tall Spongebob cutout watching your every action, and when you have Spanish Blue’s Clues songs providing your wakeup soundtrack. Honestly, it is very possible that I am asexual now. Sometimes I’ll think about the world and its problems. I’ll debate with myself inside my head and pretend that I have answers to the unanswerable questions. And sometimes, amidst the din of Diego’s morning screams, I’ll think about my host mom, Paty.

I don’t want to sound like I’m overstating anything, but Paty is an amazing human being. I’ve asked a couple of people – including Paty – what she does for El Nahual and they’ve all given me the same answer: everything. She gets there around 6:30 to make sure the building is clean from top to bottom. She makes the coffee and the tea for all of the students. She is our director Jaime’s secretary. She coordinates where all of the students/volunteers will live. She handles the inscription of new students, Guatemalans and foreigners alike. She cooks Jaime lunch every now and then. She teaches a cooking class every Wednesday. She deals with parents and people in the community with special requests/needs. Like I said, she does everything.

The work continues, however, when she comes home. Not only does she have to cook for me and my two Guatemalan high school-aged housemates, she has to take care of her little ones. Javier and Diego can be the sweetest of kids, but they can also be the biggest little shits. When they’re happy, they’ll run through the kitchen and living room, chasing each other and screaming over Paty’s commands to slow down. Javier doesn’t cry much anymore unless he gets hurt, but, damn, Diego can wail. And he likes to show off his powerful little lungs several times a day.

I can’t help but think of my sisters, especially when they were younger, whenever I hear Diego scream because he wants a snack or because he wants to watch TV. Sometimes it makes me laugh. Other times, it makes me feel for Paty. On the night of Halloween, we – my housemate and I – asked Paty to join us for a bit at the Halloween benefit party for El Nahual. Surprisingly, she said yes. We were both thrilled that Paty would finally get some time to get away from her job and the house and hopefully just be able to relax. I asked her if she was coming in front of Diego and Javier, and, literally, within seconds both of the boys broke into tears. The video does this scene much more justice than my words ever could, so check it out:

Now, you might be asking yourself, “Where’s the dad during all of this?” The answer is simple: in the States. Some time ago, he migrated north. Fearing I’d bring up too sensitive of a subject, I didn’t press too much and I still do not know if his decision to leave was a plan they devised together or if he left unexpectedly, not caring who and what he left behind. Regardless of how it started, it might as well have been the second option. Paty told me he does nothing to help them. Hence she works six days a week and hosts students to make ends meet.

Whenever I see Paty, she always looks like she just finished a race. S

he’s constantly moving. Into the kitchen, out of the house, back home from the school, tending to Diego when he gets hurt – always, always on the go. I always want to help, but I have no idea what to do. After all, the woman had an inflamed ulcer only weeks ago from all the stress. Should I take the kids out to the movies? Or would that just create a whole fiasco and, consequently, more stress for Paty? Should I just have a Styrofoam cup of water ready to give her as she runs by? After all, she needs to hydrate at some point, right?

Despite being possibly the busiest woman I’ve ever met, Paty is also among the warmest. You know how some people who are too busy will give you the half-laugh because their minds too busy worrying about twenty other things and you can tell they really only heard enough of what you said

to realize it was so supposed to be funny? Or how some overworked people have that crazed, desperate, I’m-five-minutes-from-going-postal kind of laugh? Well Paty is miles in the opposite direction of both of those. From the first night I met her at the bus station, I’ve noticed her laugh. It’s so genuine; so free. Somehow – amidst the endless tasks needed to be done at El Nahual, the stress that comes with have two five and under kids to take care of at home, the painful memories of her husband’s abandonment and her father’s tragic death in a factory accident twenty years ago – Paty has not forgotten the art of laughing for the sake of laughing. She will literally stop whatever she’s doing at times if I need to talk to her and, when I mock myself for butchering her language, she will grace me with her beautifully hearty giggle. Despite the toll they take on her, Paty can still stare in wonder and laugh at Javier failing miserably to get his kite to take air or at Diego excitedly playing with his memory card game on the floor, announcing, “Gané!” I won!

If it’s not clear enough yet, I admire Paty about as much as one can admire someone else. I admire her because of how hard she works, of course, but that is not what impresses me most. I respect her for persevering through hardships that could potentially derail many people, but there is something even deeper than that. Somehow through it all – the heartache, the stress, the abbreviated nights of sleep, the cries and the screams – Paty has not forgotten what is most important in life. This Guatemalan superwoman clearly gets herself out of bed each day with the love she has of her family. People like Paty, my teacher Francis, and my Aunt Evey, however, remind me that sometimes when life seems the darkest all we really need to do is open our eyes.

When It Rains, It Pours: Frustrations with Teaching

I had high hopes for this class. There were only six students (originally). They all had learned a lot of the most basic aspects of English. Even better, they were all bright kids who were eager to learn. They behaved. They answered our questions, albeit sometimes shyly. They did what we asked of them. Most importantly, at least for me, we were starting from scratch in this class. Our first day there was also the kids’ first day there. It was a chance to start things on a high note and keep them that way throughout the three-month vacation school period. There wouldn’t be any confusion about what the previous volunteers had taught them. There wouldn’t be the stagnant repeating of “How are you” and the verb “to have.” I would know exactly what these kids did and what they were capable of; I would be the one steering the class. I had high hopes alright, but now I’m scared they may have been washed away with a week’s worth of rain.

Let’s back track a little before I go on. The regular school year in Guatemala ended only a few weeks ago and now most kids have off until mid-January. Realizing that every second of education these kids receive is invaluable, El Nahual offers two vacation school programs: Manos de Colores – English, Art, and math and science reinforcement classes in the actual community centre every day – and La Cuchilla – a two hour, twice-a-week English and Art class in a school outside of the city.

The week before classes ended, I tried leading a class at Telesecondaria, a high school only minutes away from El Nahual by foot. As happens too often down here, I was told what class I was teaching until about a half hour before it was time to leave. I also learned that the lesson plan that I was going to use was done with these classes the week before. Well… Shit, I thought. We scrambled and put together our plan: practicing the verbs “to have” and “to be” with adjectives by having the students draw crazy alien pictures and describing them in English – yeah right – to their partners.

I walked into the class with the two other volunteers that were supposed to be my support, my voice even weaker than usual because of the cold I was fighting to get over. When we got there, we found about thirty-five 13 to 17 year-olds who couldn’t give half a shit less about what we had to say. The girls in the back corner sat in a square chit-chatting, half of them with their backs to us completely. The guys in the front – hair gelled and collars popped – cracked jokes about us, each other, the girls... who knows, I couldn’t understand what they were saying. There were a handful in the class that were actually interested, but with all the commotion and disorder I don’t think we could even reach them that day. The second class was not better.

I had written that the previous Wednesday – the one I spent with the God’s Child project – had been my high point on my trip; this Wednesday at Telescondaria was the exact opposite. I walked out feeling the stress tense up every one of my muscles. I was pissed. I didn’t know why the hell we were there. I couldn’t blame the kids, though. After all, they had a week left in school. If I were in there place, I couldn’t say that I’d give a damn about some incompetent volunteers struggling to teach their own language, especially when I knew that I wouldn’t even be tested on the material I learned. That day, I really believed the kids would be better off without us being there at all.

Things were changing though. School ended for the year. And fortunately, I was not the only volunteer who realized how absurd the whole system had been to date. Far from it. Talks about a creating a curriculum for volunteers to follow, as well as a system to keep the classes progressing and the volunteers supported was well under way. This news gave me hope that maybe we were still just in the early phases; maybe we would finally have a foundation on which to build much better classes. Determined not to let my memory of volun-teaching be a bitter one, I immediately requested to be in charge of the La Cuchilla until I left here in late December.

The first week was shaky, but the class definitely had potential. We showed up the first day not sure if we’d have three students or twenty-three students. There were five of us volunteers on the first two days; there were only six students. As I said before, these kids were/are amazing. You call on them to answer a question, and they answer it. You tell them we’re going to play a game and all of their eyes light up, even though we all know that it’s going to be a semi-lame English practice game. It doesn’t matter. These kids’ enthusiasm is reason enough to make the half hour trip to the school twice a week.

The second week was even better. My friend Eleni – who had also been pretty frustrated with the volunteering thus far – wanted to help out with this class as much as she could. With both of us focused on making this class legit it seemed like we would finally be able to avoid the usual disorganization and confusion.

Unfortunately, however, the rains came this week. In Guatemala, it is supposed to rain essentially non-stop from April/May through September. October is wish-washy and November is the start of the dry season. This year was an exception to that rule. The country suffered a horrible drought, causing crop yields to plummet. Ironical in an almost cruel manner, it rained almost non-stop the first week in November when it was harvest time.

This past Tuesday, Eleni and I made the half hour bike ride to La Cuchilla. We rode uphill, inhaling the dust and fumes spewed by the endless train of freight trucks and chicken buses roaring to our left. I had a bad feeling, and it wasn’t the usual tightening of the throat from inhaling the dirty air nor was it the usual fear that my bike – which sporadically forgets to dig its teeth into the chain – would hurl my body in front of a delivery truck; no it was something else that day. Did I feel unprepared? Did I feel insecure about teaching the material we had prepared? Did I just feel tired and cranky and did I not want to teach that day? I don’t know, but it didn’t feel right.

Every time we rolled up to the school, we always found all of the kids outside waiting for us, sometimes as much as fifteen minutes early. Today there were only two of them. Marta and Rosario – two sisters who have been the most ambitious and eager to learn in class – told us that the others were not coming. They also told us they thought class would be boring without more people, and we could tell that they did not want to be there. Eleni and I were lost. It would be boring, we both thought, but maybe we should teach them anyway. I don’t know if it was fear or laziness, but we ended up giving in to the girls’ wishes. “We’ll see you Thursday,” we told them in Spanish.

Thursday came and I hoped that this time would be better. I had a new teaching partner this time and she was a bit scared to ride on the bikes through Xela, which – especially in the rain – I can’t blame her for. So after walking literally forty-five minutes, uphill in the cold rain, we got to the school fifteen minutes early and the kids were not there yet. They probably didn’t want to be stuck out in the rain. They’ll show up, I thought to myself. Three o’clock arrived, but it didn’t bring any students with it. Five minutes passed and no one showed up. Ten minutes and still no one. At 3:15, Abby and I decided it was time to walk back with our heads bowed and tails tucked in shame.

Nothing comes easy here: not the volunteering, not the language, not the digestion. After this past Thursday, I couldn’t help but doubt myself. Maybe Eleni and I did something wrong. Maybe we lost our credibility by not having class. Maybe the parents thought the class was a waste of time. Whatever. Such thinking will leave you stuck in the past, and I’d rather keep moving forward. Going up the hill to La Cuchilla is challenge enough in itself, but every time I climb it there always seems to be another mountain waiting. I’ll keep climbing, though; sometimes that’s all you can do.

Dia de los Muertos

One of the biggest differences between foreigners here and local Guatemalans – you know, aside from height, skin color, and the ability to balance objects on their heads – is the way they dress. Backpackers, with a few exceptions, tend to travel light, bringing only a week or so’s worth of clothing. Things get dirty quickly and stay dirty for a very long time. The majority of Guatemalans, however, always dress to impress. My Guatemalan house mom gets up at 4:30 every morning to get ready to leave by 6. Men mixing cement by hand will often wear slacks and dress shoes. Rural women vending tortillas, chicken or veggies on the street will have their ornate traditional Mayan dress on display. Despite having limited resources, the Guatemalans still seem to value their appearance.

This past weekend, Day of the Dead celebrations were in full force. My Guate-family invited me to join them in their annual trip to clean and adorn the graves of lost ones in the cemetery. I thought that if there was one day for me to dress up in Guatemala then this must surely be it. After all, we were going to pay respects to the dead; I might as well look respectable.

Wearing the only button down shirt that I brought and my khaki-ish pants, I walked out of my room moments before we would leave. I was shocked. Paty’s two sons – Javier, 6, and Diego, 3 – were dressed in t-shirts and board shorts. Even Paty was dressed down to jeans, sneaks, and an OK t-shirt. Her sister wore stylishly torn jeans and a white top and her brother-in-law wore a label tee and jeans as well. Abuelita, Paty’s mom, wore her long skirt and beige old lady stockings, but I’m pretty sure she wears that same outfit to sleep. I couldn’t believe it; for the first time since I arrived in Guatemala, I was the most dressed-up person in the room.

We walked outside and there was joyous pandemonium in the streets. The Cemeterio General is just across the Cuarto Calle and today the usually fast-moving street was turned into a parking lot. We joined in with the crowd and headed towards the gate. There were ice cream vendors navigating through the heaps of people, ringing his cow bell. Vendors sold mixed packages of fresh fruit. Everyone seemed to be dressed as casually as my Guate-family. Kids smiled and ran around in the streets. Their parents and relatives appeared light-hearted as well. For a day that I thought would be somber and tranquil, spirits were incredibly high.

The Parque Calvario sits at the entrance to the cemetery and it is a sad excuse for a park. It is a small triangle island in a sea of heavily trafficked streets. There is a run-down basketball court that is now used to hold nightly soccer matches and a few aged pieces of playground equipment. This weekend, however, the streets were blocked. In place of the cars and chicken buses that would be passing through, there was an entire street fair. Vendors peddled burnt MP3 CDs of Michael Jackson and pirated DVDs, there were churro and fried chicken stands filling the air with their delicious, oily scents, and there were even small, motor-less, hand-moved carnival rides. Everywhere you looked there were flowers and wreaths, beautifully colorful and colorfully beautiful.

Inside the cemetery, the grounds are broken up into three sections: upper, middle, and lower class. Yes, that’s right. Even after death there are still class distinctions. When you walk into the cemetery, you feel like you are walking into a tiny city of the dead. The huge above-ground tombs are meant to hold entire families, but a few exceptionally rich individuals have a micro-temple all to themselves. The graves in this first section are ornate with pillars and columns and all sorts of other extravagant features to make sure you know that, even in death, they are still richer than you. I forgot the exact number, but to keep your body in this part you have to pay upwards of Q10,000 every 12 months. Fail to pay and you will be evicted. Yes, I’m serious.

We skipped right through the upper class section with Paty’s family. Instead, we headed to the grave of Paty’s father who was killed twenty years ago in a car accident; he was 51. Like theother graves in this section, his grave was nice and simple. No bells and whistles here; just standard cement box with a nice plaque on the front (missing two letters from his last name).Javier and Diego tugged on Paty’s leg until she gave them a couple Q to get two ice cream cones. As they ran down the hill, you could see the sadness on Paty’s face. Her eyes seemed lost inside her head, replaying memories that I could not possibly imagine. Before long, however, she was smiling and laughing again as she watched her boys play with Hannah, my American housemate.

After Paty’s family finished cleaning the grave and decorating it with flowers and candles, we moved on to the grave of Abuelita’s father. As we walked along, the cheerful sounds of a live Marrimba band accompanied our steps and filled the entire cemetery with its warm tones. As the family paid tribute to another family member, I sat down and tried to make sense of the scene around me. Kites filled the sky like a school of jellyfish, their tentacles squiggling in the water. The specter-looking pieces of paper peacefully floated and watched over the kids who were holding their strings, some standing on the ground and others on top of 10 ft tall grave stacks. Vendors walked by offering water, ice cream, and other little snacks; it felt more like a music fest than a celebration of the dead.

We had one more stop to make in the cemetery before going back home to feast. We walked away from the middle class area into the lower class section. The difference was immediate. Whereas the land in the two higher-class areas was level and well kept, the land in this last section was illogically hilly and overgrown with weeds. The people we passed carried machetes to clear away the brush covering their deceased loved ones and their clothes were farm-worker dirty. The graves themselves were nothing more than a little tombstone head and a small concrete casket halfway burred in the ground. We headed to about as far and remote as you can get in the cemetery and found a grave that was well out of sight from the nearest pathway.

The next day I would ask Jaime, the El Nahual director, if he thought the Day of the Dead was a happy day and he would immediately say yes; in fact, he would not really seem to get why I didn’t understand that. I don’t know what I expected. Maybe I was imagining something like afuneral procession, everyone dressed in black and a reverent silence. I don’t know. But whatever it was, it was not what I found.

It was a day to remember the dead, but it was not a day for mourning. After Abuelita and Lorena, Paty’s sister, finished cleaning the remote grave, Javier and Diego finally got to have a go with their newly acquired kites. As the kids failed miserably to get their kites to take flight, the entire family broke out into a roaring laughter. Every time the kites would dive bomb into a bush, the laughs came pouring in more and more. It was amazing. It was amazing to watch Paty’s attitude change so drastically in only an hour, to watch her go from reliving probably the most painful memory of her life to living so fully in this moment with her children. It was impossible to avoid the inevitability of death on this day, but it was also as if that didn’t matter. It was as if everyone standing in that cemetery, flying kites and decorating graves only let the bitterness of loss made life taste that much sweeter. It was as if that everyone believed that life was something worth celebrating, even in the face of death.

La Santa Anita Finca: Connections through Coffee

“Now, this land is ours. Every day the work is hard, but now we have something worth struggling for,” Rigo, our nine-fingered Guatemalan guide for the day told us as we stood in front of the coffee toasting house and under a hanging bundle of bananas. This was two weekends ago and my three friends and I went for a two-day visit to the La Santa Anita Finca, a fair trade and organic coffee and banana plantation founded and maintained by a community of 31 families of ex-guerrillas. We walked through a jungle of coffee plants with their sweet, caffeinated beans, banana trees with their huge leaves and their phallic bundles, and trees wrapped in vibrant vines, hoping to learn about the farmers, the history of Guatemala and their role in it, and about how we all fit together into the big picture of the world.

Of the many things this trip has made abundantly clear to me is that we do not live in a vacuum, isolated from one another. Our choices and actions reverberate in the complex matrix of relations in which we exist. In my high school days, I saw how one man’s choice to abuse alcohol and drugs and then to get behind the wheel of a car led to the death of a 17 year-old young man with a very bright future. I saw how an entire community of students and faculty were devastated when two members – one student and the other our dean of students – decided to take their own lives. In my family, I still watch helplessly as my grandmother’s inability to deal with her depression and addictions has visibly aged my aunt and has kept my mother only a phone call away from tears. Whether we like it or not, our actions affect others; there’s no denying it.

What is less clear for me, however, is when the people we are affecting cannot be seen; our choices of the products we buy and the companies that we support. For example, currently I’m wearing a plain-white Levi’s t-shirt that was made in India. I have done absolutely no research on the treatment of Levi’s factory workers in India, but we all know that the worker(s) who made my shirt is not getting that great of a wage, probably barely enough to survive day-to-day. Nevertheless, I unconsciously supported this system with my purchase. Lately, I have been wondering much more about these choices that I make. The meat industry is ugly. The large producers overuse land, feed their animals their own shit, and – worst of all – treat their workers – especially the illegal immigrants they recruit – like they were faceless pawns, expendable and plentiful. Should I be a vegetarian? I’ve asked myself, wondering how much personal responsibility I have in perpetuating a system that clearly can be much better than we currently let it be, both for the workers and for the world as a whole.

I’m not going to get into an argument about economics and the morality of capitalism; such discussions have no real answers and tend to reduce people into large hypothetical numbers. Instead, I’d rather continue with my story with an oversimplified history of Guatemala’s 20^th century.

In the several centuries since the Spanish’s first conquest of Latin America, Guatemala has seen only ten years of legitimate independence – 1944 until 1954. Fifty years prior to 1944, the president of Guatemala indefinitely closed all schools to be able to pay for an extravagant party like the heads of state in Europe were able to have. The un-development continued in the early 20^th century as another president sold the rights to own the power industry in Guatemala to a US company. The US based United Fruit Company was also able to buy humongous tracts of land throughout the country, roughly 80% of which were unused. In the early ‘30s, yet another president chose to screw the people by imposing a law that required all people who could not afford to pay a new tax to work for 20 days without pay on a large plantation. The walk to the plantation averaged five days, and the workers were forced to bring enough food to last them the 30 days they would be gone. Of course, that was essentially impossible. They needed to buy food to survive, but that would cost them another twenty days of labor. Essentially, slavery was re-legalized.

In 1944, however, the people struck back. The masses had united and, somehow without bloodshed, power was turned over to Jose Arevalo. He remained in office for six years until 1950 when, for the first time in the country’s history, power was peacefully transferred in a legitimate election to Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. Arbenz was a true reformer and sought to reinvigorate his country and raise it to its potential. Unfortunately, one of his reforms pissed off the US enough to incite the CIA to organize a coup and kick him out of office four years later. While in office, he purchased all of the unused farmlands in the country to be redistributed to the peasants. Remember the United Fruit Company? Well they valued their land at around $600,000 when they had to pay taxes on it, so Arbenz gave them $600,000 and divided up the land to be given to the poor, landless peasants comprising much of the country. The UFC demanded $13 million for it, and, when Arbenz said no, they went to the US government screaming that there was a Communist in office. Hearing the word “communist” sparked them to immediately take action and, in 1954, the Carlos Castillo Armas was carried into office on the back of the CIA. He undid everything that the previous ten years had accomplished and it was back to business as usual in Guatemala. In 1960, the people finally said, “Enough of this shit,” and took to the mountains with guns and machetes in hand. The civil war would last 36 years.

In 1996, the Peace Accords were signed, though essentially nothing changed. The families with the poder (the power) maintained it, and those without it – especially the indigenous rural peoples – would continue struggling.

The people at Santa Anita, however, were not about to let the previous 36 years of struggle go to waste. They took out a loan for $300,000 in order to buy the beautiful tract of land that is now their coffee and banana plantation. They organized their own, self-sustaining community where they have their own school and they grow and produce all of their own food. The company Just Coffee buys all of the coffee that they can produce and pays them a “fair” price (fair meaning it meets fair trade specifications. It is much better than most coffee producers would earn, but that is not saying much). Now they still find themselves struggling every day, but now without weapons in hand. It is a price they are willing to pay.

We heard much of this story directly from the mouths of the people who are still living it. With our 17 year-old guide Guillermo, we walked through the winding paths of coffee bushes, up and down the narrow mud paths surrounded by green, vivid and verdant. That Sunday morning I tried imagining being able to make this trek every day to pick coffee beans by hand. Within minutes, the heat and humidity had me drenched in my own sweat. I tried to think about my choices. Are they supporting companies like the United Fruit Company who have ruined the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands in the name of a better bottom line? We heard the distant sound of rushing water and continued hiking. Is it my – or our – responsibility to support companies like Just Coffee that strive to do business in a way that benefits both sides of the table? After all, it’s easy to call the actions of a select few ‘evil’ but isn’t laziness the greatest and most insidious evil of man? We reached the waterfall – the goal of our hike this morning. In front of me 18 ft of water crashed into the rocks in front of me, slowly yet steadily changing the shape of the unmovable earth. I decided to strip down to my bathing suit and let the water wash over me. As it pummeled my back, knocking my breath out of me, I hoped that I could be part of its steady stream doing the impossible, moving the unmovable.

Tribute to the Chicken Bus

If you want the most authentic Guatemalan experience you can get for less than 10 Quetzales then you have to ride a chicken bus. Just like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates, you really never know what you are going to get. These beasts of the bus world would be demobilized and deconstructed on the spot if they had to pass inspection in the US. Nevertheless, these school buses from hell live on to spew their black fumes and carry their low-budgeted passengers through the streets of Guatemala.

You may find yourself standing in an aisle wedged between a family of five on each side. You will gain a whole new definition of personal space as you reconcile your crotch resting on someone’s shoulder and your butt cheeks cushioning somebody else’s face. You will realize that your feet are almost useless as you fail to find a stance that provides a modicum of balance. Your hands cling to poles greasy enough to make the biggest non-germophobe douse his hands in sanitizer. Standing somehow becomes a full body exercise as your arms flex to keep you upright as the bus plows over bump after bump, tightly hugging the winding mountain roads.

Standing there, sometimes for as long as an hour and a half before you can find a seat, you don’t have much else to do but look around. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you’ll get an animal show. You’ll hear what sounds like a baby screaming only to look up at the luggage rack and find an orange cat squeezing its way out of a beat-up and poorly tied cardboard box. He’ll climb above you, confused and frightened, before his own comes along and sweeps him into their arms. Amidst the crowds, sometimes the clucks of chickens will be audible and you’ll look over to find a woman casually holding a hen in her arms as the bus roars onward. Other times as you’re boarding you’ll hear a pig squealing. You’ll think you’re crazy. After all, you’re in the middle of the city. But then you’ll look up, and sure enough, you’ll see a pig scared shitless tied to the luggage rack on top of the bus.

If you are Christian and feel bad about missing mass one weekend, board a chicken bus. About one out of every three rides you will receive a complimentary sermon. A man, who will be sitting in his seat, looking just like everyone else, will prove to be far from it. He will stand and face his captive congregation. For thirty minutes straight, his lungs will bellow syllables that pierce through the deafening noise of the bus’s engine. He’ll speak of salvation. He’ll speak of bettering the world. He’ll speak of God’s love. And – just like with free city tours – if you think he did a good job, he’ll ask for a little tip afterwards.

At the least, you’re guaranteed a live action show as the bus driver’s partner risks life and limb to herd a couple more patrons on. He’ll hang from the open bus door with one hand, using his other to amplify his shout: “Guate! Guate!” or “Antigua! Antigua!” He’ll grab your oversized luggage – be it a large sack full of fresh produce or a duffel bag full of clothes – rest it on his neck, scurry up the back ladder of the bus, and toss it on the roof in under 3 seconds total. Sometimes he’ll jump back onto the front door of the moving bus. Sometimes, if he is too slow, he’ll simply hang from the ladder in the back like a Guatemalan Spiderman. Damn impressive, if you ask me.

Call them loud. Call them dirty and overcrowded. Call them threats to the environment and your physical well being alike. Call them whatever you please. You will not stop the chicken buses, or even slow them down. Things work differently down here. In a country where infrastructure is nonexistent, where personal space is a luxury, and where people make do with the little that they have, these monsters of the road get the job done.

Let´s Get El Nahual on Its Feet

Money isn’t everything… but sometimes it makes things a hell of a lot easier.

Last week when I went to Antigua, I volunteered for a couple days with the God’s Child Project. The Antigua that most foreigners know has cobblestone streets that intersect each other perpendicularly. It has lots of European looking churches and lots of European looking people. There are police on almost every corner and traffic laws are actually enforced. There are no street dogs and there is no street food. Every other store is a travel agency. It feels like more Guatemala, Disney Epcot style than actual Guatemala.

The God’s Child Project, however, is situated away from the cobblestone streets and away from the eyes of most foreigners. You have to walk up a winding dusty street with a few corner shops, a cantina or two, and some small houses. It is bleak. It is certainly not a road people would walk down for the sake of walking down. The entrance to GCP is modest enough – just a gate and a small mural on the brick wall outside. Once you walk through the gate, however, you enter into a completely different world. To your right, there are medical and dental clinics offering low-cost (oftentimes free) services to the poor families in the area. The building is made of stone – not brick or cinderblocks – and has full windows overlooking the rest of the property. In the same two-story building, there are classrooms that are nicer than many in the States and spacious offices with people wearing button-down shirts and dresses working on new computers. Everywhere you look – on the walls, lining the walkways, and designated patches on the ground – there are flowers, beautifully colorful and exotic. If there aren’t kids running around cheerfully, you can hear the soothing sounds of fountains gently running. On the opposite side, there is another classroom building, made of the same ornate stone. A deliberately spacious stone staircase leads you upstairs where the ceiling is comprised of panels colored by the local kids. There are playgrounds. There is a large cafeteria. There are well-groomed mini-soccer fields. There is a huge outdoor theater with a stage as big as Nova’s auditorium. There are more offices. It’s almost impossible to believe that everything there has been made possible through donations.

When I first stopped in, hoping to catch my friend Meg and her Villanova service group, I was given a full tour by an old man named Frank. Frank was a bit shorter than me, and his long eyelashes made him look younger than his white hair and aging skin. He gave me a tour of the entire compound – and yes, it was a veritable compound – and told me all about its history. It was started about twenty years ago (I believe) by a man who everyone reverently refers to simply as Patrick. Patrick bought the land – a former garbage dump – years and years ago with the intention of creating a paradise for the poorest of the poor children in Antigua. His dream was to give them a place that would inspire them to reach beyond what the world told them they were meant to be. Over the course of some twenty years, he turned a garbage dump into the dream world he envisioned. Now it educates 170 kids between the ages of kindergarten and high school. As an incentive for the parents to send the kids to school – and not send them out to work – it offers low-cost health and dental coverage, food for the families, and even firewood every week (provided that the kids show up to school regularly). When volunteer groups come down, they help build safer one-room houses for some of the families. There is even an office devoted to tracking down children who are victims of child trafficking (not so much sex slavery in Guatemala as much as labor slavery).

As I walked around the GCP, I thought about El Nahual. Every week, our director Jaime gives a “platica” (or a little talk) on a given subject. Three weeks ago, he talked to us about El Nahual’s history. He told us of his days as a younger man and his dream to create a safe place for the most-endangered children of Guatemala. He envisioned a place where they could come to learn and grow; a place that would be a safe haven for them; a place that would give them food, give them friends, and give them purpose. Soon after the civil war ended in Guatemala, Jaime started on his dream. He rented a tiny building with several rooms that would serve as classrooms. He managed to scrap up some desks, some whiteboards, some benches, and so on. Before long, the Manos de Colores (colored hands… think finger-paint covered kids hands) after school program got going to provide free reinforcement classes for kids every afternoon. They started a Spanish school to earn money for the school’s projects and also to invite volunteers to give what they could, when they could. Eventually, Jaime extended El Nahual’s reach to three other schools – La Candelaria elementary school in the countryside outside the city, La Cuchilla elementary school in the city, and Telesecundaria high school only minutes from El Nahual.

El Nahual, however, struggles every month. They are constantly in the reds with their budget. They can only afford to pay a couple full-time employees; the rest – including Jaime who works there full time – work for free. Teaching and office supplies – even the most basic things like tape and paper – are always highly calculated purchases. Volunteers come and go frequently. While most that I’ve met are great people, I’ve realized that it’s impossible to make real, positive, life-changing connections with students in two hours in two weeks. The staff at El Nahual realize this as well, but they lack the resources to offer any incentives to volunteers – free room and board, health benefits, etc – to stay longer. With so much turnover, things can get very disorganized very quickly as well. It is a struggle, but the dream remains kindled.

As I walked around with frank, through the stone tunnels and giant playgrounds, I saw Jaime’s dream come to life. The God’s Child Project, however, has had some twenty years in the making; El Nahual opened a mere five years ago. GCP has already learned to run, but El Nahual is still struggling to find its footing.

Right now, however, there is a light in the distance. El Nahual has almost finished constructing its new school on property that it owns completely. This means that, when El Nahual moves to this new school, they will no longer have to pay rent every month. They will have that much more money to use to better their projects, to grow, and to finally stand strongly on its own two feet.

Now, I’m going to do something out of the ordinary here. About a month ago, the volunteer staff at El Nahual asked us all to e-mail our family and friends and ask them to give what they could to help finish the new school. They need to buy doors, tiles for the floor, pay the workers every day, etc. When they first asked this, I was skeptical. I was not about to ask my friends and family to give money to something if I did not fully believe in that something. After just over a month of being here, I can wholeheartedly say that I believe in El Nahual and its potential to be the sanctuary that far too many kids need here. At the GCP, I’ve seen what can be done when you combine good intentions with the generosity of strangers. It is a beautiful thing. I am now asking you all to give one minute of your time and to click this link http://www.languageselnahual.com/svprogram.htm. If you can give $5 or $500, I’ll leave that decision up to. I swear to you that any little bit you can give will go a long way here and will be appreciated beyond your imagination.

Thank you so much. And don’t worry. This will be the last time I ask you all for money while I’m down here (When I get back home and have none it will be a different story).