The city and trips

Hola hola! I hope Canada is doing well…I hear it’s really warm in Ontario…actually warmer than I’ve been for the past couple of days. If you’d believe that…

Last week was a pretty crazy week. It started off with a trip to Guatemala City. I’d been putting off going to the city because I was really nervous. You hear all these stories about buses getting robbed and gang activity in the city, and I really did not want to go. But Meghan, Krysten and I found an NGO in the city that we really wanted to visit for our NGO class, so last Monday, we hopped on a bus. The city is about 45 minutes away from Antigua when it isn’t rush hour, then it’s about 2 hours. But it was a quick drive on a full chicken bus (painted school bus) with three person to each seat. We stopped off at the mall, because Deanna was with us and wanted to spend the morning looking for a lab coat. Deanna is the token science student in the group and has been volunteering at the National hospital, and thought she may be able to get her uniform at the mall, which I think she found at some medical supply store. Meghan, Krysten and I grabbed a cab from the mall to the house where the NGO is run out of. It was in a really nice neighbourhood in Zone 13. The NGO is incredible. It’s called “fotokids”, and is aimed at giving education to kids from neighbourhoods where they wouldn’t normally get an opportunity. But it does it in a very creative way. 15 years ago Nancy McGirr, an American photographer, was doing a story on the families who live and work in the Guatemala City dump (there are over 4000 families who make their homes in the dump). She noticed the kids were interested in her camera and let them take a couple pictures. When the pictures they took were actually really good, Nancy wrote to Kodak in Japan and they donated I think 8 cameras with film for the kids. The kids went around their homes taking pictures, and Nancy sold some print cards to tourists. With the money from the print cards, she bought backpacks, notebooks, pens and paper and started to send the kids to school. In 15 years, the program has grown immensely. Over 150 kids have been involved, no longer from the dump, but from other underdeveloped neighbourhoods in the city. They have been given donations of top quality photography equipment, and these kids have done incredible things. Some have traveled the world (Japan, USA, Holland…) showing their photos at international exhibitions. Through photography connections, Nancy has found every kid a photography sponsor and a school sponsor, and every kid is in school with at least a 70% grade average. At least 6 kids have completed their university education, one being an indigenous woman who is now pursuing her masters in education. The kids also gain the opportunity to be employed by the NGO, as all the photography teachers are the older group of kids. So it’s pretty incredible. I’d say it was worth it for a trip to the city.

We met Deanna back at the mall and looked around for a bit. I had Subway for lunch, and it was incredible. I think it’s funny how given the choice to eat at a taco place in the food court, or a Subway, I chose a subway. Familiarity is nice. There is a McDonalds in Antigua, and every couple of weeks I’ll go get a McFlurry or some fries. When we’re surrounded by a totally different culture, we really do cling to things that remind us of home…even if they are a fast food restaurant…

Friday was a sad, and exciting day. The sad part was Alicia leaving. Alicia was one of my Korean roommates. We had three of them, Alicia, Kim and Min, and Alicia was the first to leave. She’s in Guatemala until November learning Spanish, but her sister lives in the city and is just about to give birth, so Alicia left to take care of her nephew. The amount of Korean people living in Guatemala City is incredible. I asked Min about why there are so many. He said that there aren’t very many jobs in Korea, but a lot qualified people. It’s a lot easier to get a job as a foreigner in the city here, so a lot of Koreans come here and work while they wait for the market to pick up back home. Since the 80s, the South Korean economy has been thriving, and everyone is very well educated there. But about 7 or 8 years ago, the South East Asian economy had a crash and they’ve been trying to recuperate. I’m so glad that they are here though. Koreans are amazing people. The softest, kindest group you will ever meet. I go volunteering with Min, Kim and Alicia every Thursday night. There is a Korean woman who comes in the from city once a week with a bunch of food. Anywhere between 7 and 20 volunteers show up, we prepare sandwiches and warm milk, and then we go hand it out around the city to people living in the streets.

Min and I with the food

Every Thursday night is an incredible experience for me. To see poverty in a city that seems so well off. It is hidden, but definitely exists. There is one home, across the street from McDonalds, that is hidden behind a jewelry store. It’s a whole bunch of tiny rooms with whole families living in them. We just go and give them something to eat once a week. It’s a pretty humbling experience. And the Koreans are just so kind. And last Thursday was Alicia’s last night, so Katie, Laurel and I went out with Min, Alicia and Kim, and their other Korean friends, Eric and Min#2. It was some of the most fun I’ve had since being here. They are just wonderful people.

Min, Alicia, Laurel, Me, Katy, Kim

On Friday, we went to the city again as a geography field trip. Our professor showed up Lake Amatitlan, a beautiful lake in the city that also serves as a huge garbage can for the residents nearby. It is so polluted and gross, and we were learning about AMSAs attempt to clean it up. We visited a landfill nearby (which was the most foul place I have smelt in my life) and a natural wetlands, which is an attempt to filter the community’s sewage water before it enters the lake. It was a really sad experience, because we saw the efforts of people who were trying so hard to clean up their lake and their city, but it seemed so useless. The residents of the city don’t understand the health and environmental implications of their practices and really don’t care. They’d rather not have a sewage treatment plant because the smell is bothersome. But this lake will have to become a major source of drinking water in the near future, and it is disgusting. There is such an inability to see future consequences here. And efforts to fix things seem futile. It can just be a little bit discouraging. I think we’re going to the city again tomorrow for a politics field trip. Our professor wants to take us to a housing development project. I’m hoping it pans out.

Sunday to Wednesday was the most incredible four days of traveling that we have done yet. We took a seven hour bus ride to the Eastern Highlands, close to the Mexican border, to a town called Todos Santos. Todos Santos is a Mam indigenous village that was hit incredibly hard by the civil war. I don’t remember the exact numbers, but somewhere around 1000 people from the area were killed in the war years. The village was invaded by both guerrillas and military and just ripped apart. Since the war ended, the community has started to mend itself, but there are still huge scars and they can be noticeable. The most famous recent lynching case in Guatemala took place in that town in 2001, when a Japanese tourist and her bus driver was killed. There had been a rumour going around about a group of Satan worshipers who were coming to take children. This group showed up, and the woman went around dressed all in black, taking pictures of children. The community got scared, and the woman was lynched. There is still a lot of fear in Todos Santos, but that was 6 years ago. It is an amazing community. When we went, they were so kind and so welcoming. We stayed with families in groups of two. I was with Katie, and we were in a home with more than 10 people living under one roof. There were at least 6 kids, though I’m not really sure how many, because at each meal, someone new always seemed to be there. At first they seemed really nervous around us and didn’t really say much. It was a little bit awkward. But on the second day, they just started talking, and were the friendliest, sweetest people. Katie and I were sharing a room that seemed to have just been plopped on the top of the house. It was all wooden, with plastic sheeting tapped around the walls to keep water out. And our little bed had at least 8 woolen blankets. And did we ever need them. It was FREEZING in the highlands, especially at night. And none of the homes had heating. I suppose it’s cheaper to invest in woolen blankets than a heating system. But it was a really cool experience to stay with that family. Very different from my home in Antigua.

Todos Santos in the Mountains

Katie with our many blankets.

On Monday morning, we went for a hike on La Torre, the highest non-volcanic peak in Guatemala. It was a pretty difficult hike, but worth it. We were over 4000 ft. high and the air was really thin and a little hard to breath, but the view was breathtaking. We could see the whole highland volcano range and the Mexican border. It was pretty amazing.

On Tuesday morning, we drove to Xayla (Quetzaltenango), the second largest city in the country. Talk about a change of scenery. I went from sleeping on a hard bed in a little wooden house with a wood pile and an old tire in my room, to staying in a beautiful upper end hotel with fireplaces and balconies and tvs in our rooms. Because there was a huge group of us, we got a giant discount and paid probably an eighth of what it would cost in Canada, but it was such a change from Todos Santos. The city of Xayla was nice, but didn’t seem to have much to offer. We walked around for a really long time and didn’t find a lot to do, so we hung out in the hotel for most of the time. Jesse, Taylor and Jared’s room was huge…it had six beds and four balconies, so it became the place to be. We played cards and a hilarious game of charades, and just relaxed after a physically and emotionally draining trip to Todos Santos.

The Wednesday trip home was long and a little uncomfortable, as my stomach hadn’t agreed with something that I ate the day before, but I made it in one piece. We stopped at a natural hot springs, which was beautiful, and then spent seven hours on a chicken bus (we charter them for most of our trips).

I’d say the highlight of the ride was the nut man. There’s a lot of construction going on for highway re-development, so we would be stopped for 20 minutes at a time. At these stop points, these guys carrying boxes of nuts, chips, fruit and drinks would coming running up to the bus trying to sell us snacks. At one point, we let a man selling nuts onto the bus and started buying from him. Then our bus started moving and couldn’t stop, because we were on the highway with a lot of cars behind us. So the nut man, very happy he’d sold a lot of nuts to us, just sat down, chatted, and stayed on our bus for a good twenty minutes until we hit a gas station. He was so relaxed. I thought that was amazing. At home, anyone would have been freaking out, not knowing how they’d get back to where they were supposed to be. But he just smiled and shrugged, sat down and ate some nuts. That’s a pretty good representation of Guatemala right there.

This has been a really long post, I apologize. I forgot to mention one thing. Adam left last week. He went to Nicaragua to go to a Spanish/surfing school. It was time that he left, as I know he was getting really bored in Antigua. But it kind of felt like we were losing part of our family. So it was a sad morning. It’s really easy to get attached to people here, but they come and go so often.

Sabrina, Laurel, Me, Katy, Adam waiting outside our house for Adam's shuttle to come pick him up.

The man who took Adam’s room is incredible. He is a 70ish year old American from California named John. We all sit at the table for hours after meals, just talking to John about his life. He has done amazing things. He was a high school English teacher, has traveled to over 100 countries (some 15 or 20 times), has written two movies, and is a lifelong bachelor. And he is so kind. I think he’d got me a little addicted to bread though. He bought jam and honey for our dinner rolls and one time bought this amazing, fresh French bread. I feel very blessed to have him living in our house.

Okay, I need to do homework. School is pretty intense right now, so I should get to it. I love you all and I hope you didn’t get too bored reading this really loooooooooong post. Ps. If you see my dad tomorrow, give him a big hug! He’s 53! Happy Birthday Dad!