I am standing in line with 23 people ahead of me at the local Banrural at 8:30 a.m. waiting for the bank to open and it is already hot. I am making a deposit for one of our workers who sends money each week to his children’s school expenses. He is presently cleaning out our latrine and I agreed to do this favor for him. I think I made the better choice though I know my sense of justice will get tested this morning as some people will push or cut in front of those patiently waiting in line. Today Agustino is sending extra money he earned to cover the cost of tamales. The tamales are eaten for special occasions, like birthdays, baptisms, funerals and weddings. In Agustino’s case, his family is finishing up a prayer novena of eight days for their oldest daughter who will make her final religious vows in a convent in Coban, AltaVerapaz. The whole family will go to attend the ceremony even though the cost will be substantial. Where is all this happening? In Guatemala.
I am a former SRJC instructor who retired in 2011, after 23 years teaching in the English as a Second Language program. While my degrees are in English Literature and Creative Writing, I started teaching ESL in honor of my immigrant parents who came to the United States from the Ukraine and struggled with the language and the culture. I fell in love with the dedication of both ESL instructors and students so eager to learn that I stayed in the ESL program.
Now I am a volunteer in my second year of service for Concern America, a California- based non-profit dedicated to empowering poor Guatemalans in the field of health. The program trains locals interested in helping their communities to be health practitioners. They serve the people in their “aldeas” or villages and work in our town clinic. The Guatemalan government has a health center in the town of Las Cruces where I live and work, but it is only open four days a week. Frequently, it does not have medicine and only takes a limited number of patients. As a result, our clinic is very busy.
Many of my friends have asked me to describe what it is like to live for an extended period of time in Central America. Even though a whole year has passed, there are many aspects of life which remain fresh as the first day when I had arrived. This is my first experience in the Peten region of Guatemala. I used to know it as the “breathing lung” for Central America because of its dense rainforests. Not any more. A good part of the Peten has been cleared for land parcels sold to the poor for farming. Las Cruces is denuded of trees – hot as hades this time of year – with intense traffic and pollution. An asphalted road is an artery to the north and the capital of Peten, Flores, and on to Tikal, the famous Mayan ruins.
To the south, this road connects with roads to other departments or states: Ixcan, El Quiche; AltaVerapaz and Guatemala City. Since the road’s appearance, life has changed dramatically with more commerce, more debris and garbage, and every rainy season, flooding of certain zones of the town. Our Casa de Estudio and clinic are in Zone 1 that has flooded every year since 2008. When I first arrived, I was advised to be ready to evacuate at a moment’s notice, which we did – three times – as the yard, clinic and houses filled with dirty water, contaminated by the flooded latrines, garbage in the streets, and feces of the stray dogs, wandering pigs and chickens. This rainy season, we are practicing prevention; most of our warehouse of medicines, medical reference books and some furniture are presently in a rented house in another zone. In addition, a new clinic is being built on higher ground, thanks to California donors.
My main job here is as bookkeeper. I am responsible for intake of money through our clinic and the sale of medicines, and payment to the health promoters when they work in our clinic or do programs, such as the application of fluoride on the teeth of more than 2000 school children in the town and surrounding communities. There are also health promoters who work with the midwives, giving courses that help the women in their important work here. Although there are hospitals in the Peten region, most women go to a “comadrona” or midwife for the birth of their babies. According to a 2011 report by National Geographic, Guatemalan women have more babies per person than any other country in our hemisphere, including Haiti, Dominican Republic and even the U. S.
The sexual act is a past time here that has little to do with marriage. Most families all sleep in one room, so children learn early about copulation. However, no one talks about it. Young girls, 12-14 years old, many just starting their menstruation, come into the clinic pregnant, sometimes raped by their father, older brother or uncle. Some of these girls are thrown out of the house to be taken in by a grandmother or aunt. In most cases, no one seems to mind that an unmarried girl gets pregnant.
Babies are born like flowers – beautiful. Even those born with a cleft palate from a lack of folic acid in the diet of the young mom are lovely. We help get some of these infants with this problem to surgeons who volunteer their services in one of the hospitals in Antigua. It is a challenge to respect the culture of a host country and yet raise consciousness about the cold reality of having children as a result of a romp in bed, or the burden of raising a large family without interfering with mores or religious values.
I reach out to the very young children 3to8yearsold.We work on respect for each other, especially boys for girls, sharing, kindness instead of hitting, no killing of birds or stripping trees of their precious leaves and flowers. Many of the children are from Evangelist families who believe in the teachings of Jesus Christ, so it is easy to use Jesus as a model for them. Although every day is different here, some things are constant, such as sounds. Dogs bark into the night. Sometimes at 2 a.m., there are “cohetes” or fireworks for someone’s birthday; I haven’t yet been able to figure why it usually happens at this early hour; sometimes loud music wakes up the celebrant as well.
Around 3 a.m., roosters start crowing, and soon, the sound of the “molinos,” grinding stations that grind soaked corn into a smooth, wet dough for making tortillas, lets me know women are getting ready for their day. This dough is divided into little balls, patted into cakes which are then cooked on a “comal” or special metal plate heated over a wood fire. A super hot, just-off-the- grill, tortilla is absolutely heavenly! And this is what the majority of men going to work in their field or parcels of land take for their breakfast –leaving before the sun comes up to take advantage of the morning’s freshness. Every female in a family needs to learn how to make a good tortilla; even children become adept at this art at an early age.
At 5:30 a.m. the round of announcements starts; a couple of people go through the neighborhoods with a microphone on their cars, letting everyone know of upcoming events. This wake- up call is accompanied by music, usually Mexican rancheros or Musak. One man also uses an air raid siren similar to what the Graton Fire Department uses to announce fires. Deaths are also announced with dirge like music. Bodies must be buried within 24 hours here, and it is amazing how quickly funeral arrangements are made in such a relatively short period of time.
Here in Las Cruces, there are a lot of deaths, just as there are a lot of births. People die of old age, disease, accidents, suicide, revenge, drugs, robbery, malnutrition and for being poor and/or indigenous. Although there is a police force and a regular presence of the military with the new president, people frequently take matters into their own hand. “Fiestas” parties, sometimes end in drunken fights, with someone’s honor being questioned. Living here is like being in a Clint Eastwood Wild West movie, or a Mexican flick; it doesn’t feel at all like Guatemala, or the one I used to know living in other parts of this country.
People dress in American-style clothes, There are stores and booths to buy a shirt or pants that might have been on a Ross or Marshall’s rack. A new type of “store” is the Hyper-Paca, which sells clothes donated to flood relief in Guatemala, now sold by some budding entrepreneur for a fraction of the cost of something new. The only indigenous people who still wear their traditional dress are the Kechi women – beautiful in their graceful, lace huipil or over blouse, that covers a soft camisole. The skirt contains yards of colorful woven cotton cloth, gathered at the waist like a dirndl. The people speak one of 22 indigenous languages found here – Kechi – a melodious sounding communication that makes English pronunciation fairly easy for them.
A morning routine after breakfast is to sweep, dust and empty trash baskets. If not, nature takes over. It is hard to imagine how anyone could overlook a set of temples such as in Tikal, nestled north in a still remaining part of the Guatemalan rainforest. But over the years, the jungle had taken over this magnificent complex of abandoned pyramids, burial grounds, ball courts and altars so that only the eye of an archaeologist, like Alfred Maudslay, could distinguish the irregular shapes in the growth and know that something awesome was underneath all that brush.
In my daily cleaning ritual, I follow the example of Antoine de Saint Exupery’s Little Prince, who would clean out his three little volcanoes on his planet 612 every day, and root up any foreign looking plant in case it was a Baobab. If allowed to grow, the baobab would absolutely destroy his little planet.
Here, not only plants can be a problem; insects, in particular, can get out of hand: termites, ants, cockroaches, flies, mosquitoes, beetles as well as worms, lizards, spiders, frogs and snakes. Although not a Buddhist, I had tried to practice nonviolence in my life in California, especially regarding people and animals, capturing moths and spiders in the house to release them outdoors. Here, I take great delight in stomping on a large cockroach or sweeping up the webs of countless spiders who try to cohabitate with me in my bedroom.
Vendors come to the door constantly with fresh homemade cheese, bread, brooms, tamales, unpasteurized milk, ice cream, “granizadas” (flavored shaved ice), coconuts, black and red beans or whatever fruit is in season. It is very tempting to buy something from each vendor to help prosper him/her, but I’d be constantly broke. What is admirable about the Guatemalans is their desire to make a Quetzal (around 8 cents American). Almost everyone has a little business: shining shoes, selling bottled water and sodas, a plate of three tortillas and a piece of chicken, fried plantain chips, cut-up fruit in season, toothpaste, sunglasses and books on making smoothies.
Sellers board the public minivans and pursue passengers in the hopes of selling their wares. These are the people who are not yet desperate enough to risk the long, dangerous trip north to the states to get work and provide for their families here. Furthermore, there are very few Guatemalan beggars looking for a handout, both here and what I had seen in Sonoma County; people want to earn their way – something I greatly admire.
I urge readers to think about volunteering if you are not doing so already. It’s very satisfying and it does not have to be in a foreign country, There is plenty to do in Sonoma County. I highly recommend volunteer work with children, helping them read and learn math.
In the Peten, children may be in school but don’t do very well. Here, there are many factors that contribute to this hole in a child’s education. The unfortunate outcome will be a society of young people who will not be able to read and understand the fine print on a bank loan, or know if a vendor is giving them an honest deal or the correct change. With Guatemala’s mean age being 25 years and under, it gives me pause and remorse as an educator to see where this country may be heading. So, volunteer in whatever capacity you can. Don’t wait until you retire from your profession or job; do it now while you have the energy to volunteer. You never know where you will end up or who you will help!
