Travelogue #6 -- Guatemala volunteer work

I have five more weeks of Spanish-language classes, but will be traveling and doing volunteer work over the next few weeks besides studying Spanish on my own.

I will be working as volunteer computer tech. support for http://safepassage.org at their complex for abused children from Guatemala City garbage dump. I still need to fill out the paperwork, but very interesting -- right down the street from where Hermano Pedro used to serve the poor in the 17th century.

Even before this official volunteer job, I've purchased a few planks of wood and have been cutting and sanding wooden block sets for children who don't have toys. Papa Neto has been kind enough to share his carpentry workshop and tools. I'm still looking for non-toxic paint for the wooden blocks.
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About the Program Safe Passage
(“Camino Seguro”)

Program Overview: Hope, Education, Opportunity Safe Passage (“Camino Seguro”) opened its doors in 1999 to provide hope and assistance to the children of the Guatemala City garbage dump. Where others saw a lost cause and lost resources, we saw potential and determination in the eyes of these children. We believe every child should have the opportunity to receive an education and to go as far as they are able in school. Our programs are designed so that each child can gain the skills needed to obtain stable jobs, to be self sufficient and to lead their families out of poverty in a dignified and permanent way.

Formal education is far beyond the reach for many of the children living on the periphery of the Guatemala City garbage dump. They are unable to afford the school uniforms & shoes, enrollment fees, school supplies and books required by the Guatemalan public schools. With financial support from Safe Passage, each child is able to attend a local public school for the half-day term and then come to our center for educational reinforcement, caring and supervision.

At Safe Passage, each child receives assistance with homework and hands-on learning activities designed to reinforce basic primary school concepts through our educational reinforcement program. They also participate in a range of arts, music, sports & recreational activities, English language classes, and computer instruction that provide opportunities to learn valuable life and social skills.

Safe Passage is committed to providing each child with nutritional support, including a daily healthy meal & snack, medical attention from our on-site clinic, vocational training programs, and weekend clubs for girls, boys and mothers.

Additionally, Safe Passage provides services for children 2-3 years old through the early intervention program, adult literacy for our children’s mothers, and residential care for children coming from the most dangerous and unstable living situations.

Safe Passage currently serves more than 550 children ages 2-19 years old. Our staff, consisting of Guatemalan teachers, social workers, and support staff and international volunteers are working to instill within each child a sense of hope and possibility and to provide them with the support, encouragement, and care they need to turn their dreams of an education into a reality.

For more information and pictures of the Guatemala City garbage dump, please visit http://safepassage.org

Love,
William

Guatemala: William's host family photos

Hi,

Some people wanted to see photos of my host family in Ciudad Vieja. We went swimming 2 weekends ago and also went to a shopping mall.

Click here to view them all.

Travelogue #5 -- Guatemalan Volcanoes, Lenten/Easter Activities and a Visit to a Local Coffee Plantation

It's a hot sunny morning and I'm sitting on my balcony outside my bedroom watching white smoke gently float out of Volcano Fuego ("Fire"). It's actually a couple of kilometers from where I live and partially behind the larger Volcano Acatenango. No, I haven't felt any tremors nor heard anything from it, but people say it's definitely more active than usual. I'm now in the habit of checking it every morning to see if anything is seriously spewing from it. I've seen grayish white smoke numerous times and a couple of times columns of blackish smoke with orange red.

Actually the other volcano behind me, Volcano Agua, is more dangerous due to water runoff. A week ago last Tuesday we had torrential rain for a couple of hours in the afternoon/evening and a little town just south of here suffered mudslides, landslides and and flooding. Impoverished people have cut down the trees for firewood for cooking (every afternoon I hear a woman yelling "firewood for sale") and they have also built squatter houses in some of the washouts on the side of the volcano. So when the heavy rains came, the water created a mess across the highway, damaged many people's homes and buildings, and blanketed the local organic macadamia nut farm with boulders and debris. Though this only happened a kilometers south, I didn't even find out about these landslides until a few days later when my family showed me an article in one of the national newspapers. In a way this event isn't completely unexpected. This same Volcano Agua spilled water from its crater in September 1541, enough to overwhelm the then recently founded (now former) capital of Guatemala, Ciudad Vieja, which in turn motivated to citizens to move their capital to Antigua -- which was later destroyed by an earthquake. The fact is is that there is no safe place here on earth.

Religion seems to permeate most aspects of life here. Every Monday night during Lent, the people of Ciudad Vieja walked in little processions, groups of approximately eight to twelve people singing hymns, carrying candles, and stopping in front of different peoples houses. This is the via cruces -- the Stations of the Cross. In advance, many people set out small tables covered with linen on top of which they place one or more candles, a crucifix or religious picture, and perhaps some flowers or greenery. Women in their medium length skirts and men in the groups kneel down on the uneven cobblestones in front of each of these little tables reciting prayers and more or less performing the Roman Catholic Stations of the Cross. My guess is that their knees would be pretty sore by the end of the evening.
I remember three Mondays ago, I walked outside of the house to watch the processions after dinner. I was playing with some of the neighborhood kids (actually grandchildren of Papa Neto) when their mom Angelica came outside to take the children along to participate in the Stations of the Cross. The kids invited me to walk along with them, so I did. After we got to the second house blessing/station, I scanned the crowd and saw another neighbor Don Gabriel smiling at me -- I had shared a few beers with him a few nights before. He invited me not only to watch but to participate, so I did. It brought back memories of going with my parents during Lent to a Catholic church to say the Stations of the Cross, but this of course was different. People would come out of their houses to watch or to accept the house blessings. Children meandered through the groups playing and making me smile, and almost giggle, at their antics. Meanwhile other groups of faithful folks were gathered down the street also doing the same thing. The stars twinkled above in the sky as candles flickered amidst the religious icons and flowers. What I was participating in was very normal here, yet I found it hard to picture such an event happening in Eureka/Arcata or even in the town of Wausau, Wisconsin where I grew up.

If you see my Lenten procession pictures on Kodak Gallery, you can probably appreciate the fact that it takes all night and sometimes longer for a group of people to create one of the marvelous alfombras ("carpets"). I was fortunate enough to be able to work with my Spanish language school, Centro Linguistico La Union, to dye some sawdust and a week later to help create an alfombra from start to finish. Good Friday here is incredible in Guatemala. The tradition here in Guatemala for Good Friday is: no showering, no sex, and no hitting one's children(!). But surprisingly many people do eat red meat on Good Friday, partly so they can have enough energy to walk all day in the processions. I got up before 4 a.m. to take the bus into Antigua so I could start photographing the processions and alfombras. Out of of the 400 plus pictures I took, I selected what I thought were the best to share. On Easter Morning I was also honored to not only walk in one of the processions in Ciudad Vieja, but was invited to help carry one of the andas ("floats") for one block. Later I was invited to a neighbor's house for breakfast. There were no colored Easter eggs, but I did eat plenty of fried eggs with salsa, black beans, freshly made tortillas, mangoes, and instant coffee. The few middle-class and upper-class Guatemalans mostly enjoy freeze-dried instant coffee made from Guatemalan coffee beans. It's ironic that poor Guatemalans have to grind their own beans, but the middle class/rich enjoy Nescafé.

Now that the rains have started, albeit early, the coffee picking season is pretty much over. Last week I went on a bicycle trip with fifteen or so other Spanish-language students from our school to a local coffee plantation which also has a small processing operation. We paid approximately $4 each to rent the school's bicycles and to have a guided tour. There are two main types of coffee grown in the world; Guatemala is known for its shade grown beans. However coffee is not native to the Americas but rather comes from Africa. Coffee was originally grown in Ethiopia where the story is that a priest asked the local shepherds how they stayed awake all night. Supposedly the shepherds learned about coffee from their goats that stayed awake after eating a certain kind seed/bean. The shepherds figured out how to shell the bean and roast in grind it to create a black drink. The priest was so intrigued that he started serving this black drink to his congregation to help them stay awake during his homilies/sermons. As I stated earlier, religion seems to permeate everything here.

The assistant director of the school asked me to be the English translator for our proximately 17-year-old tour guide at the coffee plantation. I was honored, but therefore didn't get to take many pictures. Our young tour guide explained how the coffee is picked by hand, weighed, washed, then de-hulled. Then it is dried, heated, and the inner shell opened, before sorting it. Any beans with blemishes (mold) or not wholly intact beans are removed as part of the final process. Are these beans simply discarded? Of course not; not much is wasted here in Guatemala, at least as far as material things go. These blemished beans are used locally here in Guatemala. All the rest are for export, mostly to North America or to Europe. And as I stated before, in Guatemala the rich get the processed instant coffee, and the poor get the beans, but both rich and poor are treated to the same inferior beans.

Earlier I said, "picked by hand." Please understand what this means. During harvest season, December to April, Dad will probably get up at 3:30 a.m. to start working by 4:00 in the morning. Mom and perhaps five to seven kids will start helping pick coffee beans at 6:00 a.m. No, there is no school for those kids even though the government says education is mandatory. Besides, families of plantation workers can't afford the necessary uniforms, pencils, books, etc. even though the government claims that education here is "free." The fact is is that the family must pick at least 100 pounds of red coffee beans before 7 p.m. or they will not be paid anything. How much are they paid for all those hours of work? 30 quetzales, approximately $4 -- the same we each paid to use the bikes and to tour the plantation. Please understand that this was one of the better plantations; they had bathrooms, running water, etc. And this is not $4 per person, this is for the entire family. Just enough to buy tortillas, salt, and hopefully some black beans each day. Of course, if they accidentally pick any green coffee beans instead of the red ones, their "salary" is reduced. I'm not telling you this to make you feel guilty, but if at all possible, please pay extra for your coffee and purchase "fair trade" coffee. The extra money you will pay can go a long way here (and in other coffee producing countries) so that the workers can be paid a more just wage so perhaps the kids can eat better, wear some better clothes, and perhaps attend school. Children in Guatemala often start drinking coffee when they are six months old or when they are weaned. We were told by the guide that caffeine does not stunt the growth of children. This is one reason why farm workers down here have so many children, because if they all work hard enough, perhaps they could pick 200 pounds of coffee in a day. Realize that if they pick 199 pounds, they are only paid for 100 pounds. By the way, how much does an espresso cost in Starbucks nowadays? The coffee plantation workers are normally only paid a very small fraction of what we North Americans usually pay for coffee. Remember: BUY FAIR TRADE.

Okay, I'll get off my soapbox and start working on my homework again. Monday through Friday I have Spanish-language class from eight till noon, and I've had usually 4, and sometimes 6 hours of Spanish reading, writing, and grammar homework. It hasn't left me a whole lot of time to get in trouble, but I have started doing some volunteer work which I'll tell you about later. Thank you to all the people who have written kind and generous words of encouragement regarding these travelogues. They usually take me approximately five plus hours to write as I am not the world's fastest writer.

Other news: I finally found a place to buy tofu. My host family finally changed the calendar from January to April 2007 in the dining room. Mom and Dad are coming 6 June and staying until 24 June, nine days of which we will be in El Salvador.
By the way, if you no longer want to receive these travelogues, please let me know. I try to get on the Internet at least twice a week, although it is slow, I pay by the quarter hour, and the computers are not in the best shape regarding viruses and such.

Blessings and peace from America, Central America that is,
William Straub

Travelogue #4 -- More Guatemalan Travels: the Beach, Caves, Comestibles and My New Adopted Family

It's Saturday morning, and I just got back from a 3.5 mile run on this beautiful sunny day. After showering and eating breakfast of mango, and granola and corn flakes with skim milk from a box, I'm sitting in my room using Dragon NaturallySpeaking to type this travelogue. I finished two weeks of Spanish-language classes and have quite a bit of Spanish homework to do before the end of this weekend.

Two weekends ago I was lucky enough to go to with a group of ten female gringa students on a school sponsored trip up north. After traveling through the outskirts of the capital, we traveled through various climates within a couple of hours: semiarid fields, desert strewn with cacti, pine forests on steep hills, and later through semi-tropical rain forest. We were heading to the city of Copan and then beyond and to tour some caves and beautiful waterfalls and pools where the Rio Cahabón flows through a 300 meter tunnel before reappearing in a series of waterfalls at the national park called "Semuc Champey." I'll send you a link to my photos, but I didn't take photos during the best part of the trip when I traveled with two young women and a native indigenous K'ekchi guide swimming and wading 2 kilometers into a cave holding candles in our hands. It was an incredible experience climbing ropes and slippery ladders to traverse the flowing river in the cave and to see the natural stalagmites and mineral deposit formations. Yes, there is life after age 40!

Last Sunday I was invited to go to the beach at Puerto San José with the father of the family: Papa Neto and some of his friends and workers. We left early in the morning and drove down the highway past the three cloud shrouded volcanoes near where I live. I had never been south except for running a few kilometers. Soon vistas of flat land stretching towards the ocean could be seen, and off in the distance Pacaya, a volcano south of Guatemala City. It was amazing to see how I really lived in the hilly Altiplano and we were heading into the tropical flatlands filled with sugar cane. The temperature rose noticeably as we dropped down from the Altiplano. Double length trailers brimming full with sugar cane were everywhere, and the air was thick with the smell of burning cane. After harvest, I suppose they have to burn the cane fields before they can replant. We passed a number of small towns and some amusement parks with waterslides. Outside of one park, a couple guys were walking with an elephant. Yes, an actual full-size elephant, and I joked with Papa Neto that I appreciated him driving me all the way to Africa. Apparently one of the tourist traps has an "African safari zoo" with tigers and everything.
Puerto San José is a small sandy ocean side town where local Guatemalans go. I didn't see any other gringos all day -- they go to other beaches. Unfortunately in typical Guatemalan style, they don't have garbage collection so there is an incredible amount of litter, but that was easy for me to overlook by instead being grateful for all the beautiful palm trees, smiling people, coconut and fruit stands, and multicolored stores and restaurants. We parked at one of the many humble (North Americans would probably use the word "ramshackle") hotels, "Viña del Mar." Breakfast consisted of a picnic lunch of toasted French bread with black beans smeared in between, some cheese, and an orange that the daughter Evelyn had packed earlier in the morning.

I will never forget sitting on the beach, while Indigenous Mayan women were wading in the water and simply enjoying themselves. They were fully dressed in their beautiful huipiles (blouses) and full length skirts which are supposedly six meters long when unwrapped. Their cotton clothes must have weighed a ton after being soaked with salt water. Sometimes Indigenous Mayan women wear their beautiful clothing as part of their jobs to "entertain" tourists. As I stated earlier, other than myself, I didn't see another gringo all day. These women certainly weren't doing anything except laughing smiling and enjoying themselves on the black sand beaches.

We sat in the shade watching kids and teenagers play around in the hotel swimming pool, while vendors try to sell us bootleg music CDs, shell jewelry, and other artesania. After wading in the water (beware the strong undercurrents further offshore) and enjoying a few "Gallos" (Guatemalan beers) during the morning, Papa Neto invited me to eat lunch: Guatemalan fish stew, which consisted of a 7-inch fish (head and all), one and a half palm sized complete crabs, and eight jumbo shrimp with a slightly spicy vegetables broth. Later when I told Evelyn (daughter) about it, she thought it was funny that in the U.S. we only serve shrimp with the heads removed. I was a little concerned about how my stomach would react, but my friend David later reminded me that Papa Neto knows where it's safe to eat, even for vegetarian gringos.

The fact is that I have been befriended by Papa Neto -- what an honor. And while drinking cheap Guatemalan booze the other evening, he told me about his wife dying 1-1/2 years ago. Although Papa Neto chases the cats out of the small dining room and harasses the noisy parrot on a regular basis, he really does have a heart of gold. After Holy Week, one of the weekends he has invited me to travel with him to Totonicpan in the Western Guatemala Highlands to deliver some coffins (empty of course) and procure some lumber to make another dozen or so for the upcoming week. Papa Neto (actually his name is Ernesto) and I are bachelors together. The first week I was here he took me walking around to the stores at night to try to get access to a phone that would take one of my North American calling cards, but to no avail. So instead I bought a Guatemalan calling card, and he allowed me to use his cell phone to call Mom and Dad. In the evening, he'll say "let's go down to the corner" or "let's head to the store." The fact is that after dark, it's not the safest for a gringo to be wandering around the town alone, so I appreciate his company, besides his great sense of humor. The other day he even showed me his personal small living room and bedroom with a small LCD TV that helps him fall asleep. Papa Neto is a fairly successful businessman/carpenter who employs a group of approximately six to eight guys who helped him build beautiful caskets. Some of the caskets look like they are metal or bronze. I consider him to be an artist who in the tradition of European guilds has a group of apprentices under him. In his kindness, Papa Neto has even hired Julio, a young man who is developmentally delayed, to help work in his workshop.

I feel the content, safe, and accepted here within this family. One daughter lives a block and a half away with her husband and eight-year-old daughter. One son who works for a local bank lives with his wife and 18 month old son across the street, another son who works in the coffin workshop, lives right next door with his wife and two children. Papa Neto's youngest daughter Evelyn still lives at home. The fiancée of my friend David, pretty Evelyn is in her early twenties, and prepares most of my meals herself. I'm actually not sure why she does it, because my host family is well off enough to employ an indigenous Mayan maid, Clara, but I think that Evelyn actually enjoys making salads and other vegetarian fare for me. However, she does think it's totally unreasonable to put black beans in Tupperware for me to take to school for lunch. She is afraid that the other students/staff will see me eating beans and tortillas for lunch and incorrectly think that my host family isn't feeding me well. I tried to explain to her that I've been a vegetarian for years, and I really enjoy beans. She explained to me that Guatemalans eat beans sometimes for breakfast, and sometimes for dinner, but not for lunch, the big meal of the day. Black beans for lunch are simply “fodder” for our laughter filled conversations. By the way, Evelyn is one of my better Spanish-language "teachers," because she laughs and corrects me almost every time I misspeak.

So you may be wondering, what have I been eating? Tortillas and different types of non whole-grain bread are always available. Beside cereal and milk or yogurt for breakfast, sometimes I get pancakes made with a little bit of powdered macadamia nuts. Sometimes I get black beans with scrambled eggs, or fried sweet plantains. The coffee is local Guatemalan Antiguan, but I'm told that the best handpick Guatemalan coffee beans are exported to the United States (Starbucks is a major importer of Guatemalan Antiguan beans). Juice is usually "fruit nectar" juice with lots of Guatemalan sugar and FDC red and yellow dye. For lunch it depends upon whether I take a lunch to school or come back on the bus to eat with the family. Lunch at school is often veggies with cilantro, pasta with cheese, tortillas and apple, and a can of juice. If I return home, I'll probably be served a large bowl of rice vegetable soup (minus the chicken), with chunks of vegetables on the side: corn on the cob, a boiled potato, and two local starchy vegetables: guicoy and güisquil, fresh handmade tortillas from the local corner store, and to drink either horchada (blended rice, water, sugar, and cinnamon) or un liquado (blended papaya, mango, watermelon, etc). Dinner is a smaller meal than lunch and is usually served between 7:30 - 8:30 p.m. I might eat sweet peppers or green beans dipped in egg batter (sort of like chile rellenos but without the spiciness), fried plantains smothered in honey type sauce, or black beans and rice with tortillas and stir fried vegetables, tostadas with guacamole, or vegetarian chow mien from a local "restaurant." Saturday evenings we always have tamales. But these are different from Mexican tamales, they are corn mush wrapped in banana leaves instead of corn. I of course, get the ones without meat. Thanks to Evelyn, my digestive system has been in great shape except for one day when I had a cold and ate guacamole tostada and atole (corn mush, cinnamon, and chile drink) from a street vendor near school and later regretted it.

The calendar on the wall in the dining room still says January 2007 (sometimes it seems as if time stands still here). I sit at the dinner table wonder why so many rooms including this dining room are painted aquamarine green -- is it because people miss living where the forests have been cut down? Perhaps Papa Neto will turn on a black-and-white TV in the dining room during dinner to watch one of the Mexican telenovelas (soap operas) or to watch a fútbol (soccer) game. Even still, there is lots of laughter and discussion of what happened during the day. My comings and goings are often topics of great interest to the other family members: What funny thing happened to Guillermo after classes today in the central park? What the heck is "tofu" and why is that funny gringo unsuccessfully searching for it around Antigua? Yes, the gringo wants more black beans!, etc. It's all very enjoyable. Approximately a week ago I finally started being able to understand enough Guatemalan slang and shortened Spanish phrases to understand most of the mealtime conversation even when it doesn't pertain to me. Halfway through dinner, my friend David walks in after a very long day's work delivering crates of beer, purified water, and soft drinks for a local bottling company. He kisses and teases Evelyn and relates some funny story about his job that starts at approximately 6:30 a.m. and often doesn't finish until 7:30 p.m. In the almost 4 weeks that I've been here, David hasn't been able to get a day off from work even on the weekends. Supposedly after Holy Week he can get a Sunday off. Not only does he help support his aging mom in a nearby town with whom he lives, but he also financially helps his fiancée (they're not married yet because weddings cost a lot here compared to people's salaries).

I have a number of other friends here and many more stories to tell in future travelogues. But now, I have more Spanish words to memorize, and I'm trying to get through the second chapter of the renowned Guatemalan Miguel Angel Asturias’ novel "Hombres de Maiz." I hope you are all well and also enjoying time with your friends and family, whether they are "adopted family" or blood relatives. Blessings and peace.
William (Guillermo) Straub