GUATEMALA

We spent a total of six weeks in Guatemala, almost all of which was in the beautiful city of Antigua, a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site about an hour and a half outside of Guatemala City. The former capital, it is a stunning, old, colonial city 5000ft above sea level and surrounded by volcanoes. The city is home to a mix of indigenous and ladino Guatemaltecans, foreigners (Europeans, North Americans and Canadians) who have settled or retired there and numerous students and volunteers from all over the world.

               

 

We spent the first two days running around getting ourselves organised and very quickly found ourselves some great accommodation living with the super hospitable Dona Carolina Jaguau, (USD 65 for a week's accommodation including 3 excellent meals a day, 6 days a week). Her beautiful house, was right in the centre  two blocks off the Parque Central and within walking distance of everything. She lived with her two little dogs and there was always a stream of Spanish students staying with her so the house was always busy!

E-J immediately signed up to a Spanish course at Ixchel Spanish School (www.ixchelschool.com) for USD 80 / week for 20 hours of one to one tuition and begun her Spanish learning in earnest!! As well as learning Spanish she was able to learn a lot about Guatemaltecans and their lives in difficult economic conditions through talking to her teacher who was 33 yrs old with a family and living in the town of Ciudad Vieja, about 10km outside of Antigua. There are many Spanish schools in Antigua  as it is reputed to be the cheapest place in the world to learn the language - hence the many students who desend on the city all year round.  We also signed up to the local gym - 'Antigua Gym' - as well as Salsa classes - 'Salsa with Gloria' - making our immersion into Antiguan life complete!

.

 

Through the Spanish school, living at Carolina's and our volunteering work, we met some cool people (that means you Rahul, Sam, Erin, Anne et al) and with them sampled some of Antigua's nightlife.... Monoloco, Sin Ventura, Ricky's Bar, Cafe No Se and La Sala...

 

.

 

As well as for E-J to learn Spanish, the main reason we were here in Antigua was to do some volunteering work at one of the many projects situated in and around the area. Therefore in addition to settling in to life in Antigua, we spent a couple of days right at the beginning investigating the various what possibilities we had. Visiting three fantastic organisations, we finally settled on a school project 'Bendicion de Dios' based in the town of Alotenango, about 15km outside of Antigua.

ALOTENANGO

The project, Bendicion de Dios, was set up three years ago by the Dutch foundation, 'Fundacion Los Ninos' with the aim to provide an education for local children from families unable to afford to send them to normal public school. Although the government claims to provide free education for all, the reality is that clothes, books and activities are onerously expensive to a family earning $2 / day by working the fields or selling crafts and market produce. In its short life, the school has grown to accommodate nearly 300 children – half of which attend in the morning and half in the afternoon. They range in age from 5 – 12yrs old although a few children are as old as 17yrs. Without the school and its handful of full-time teachers and various volunteers, many of its children would grow up illiterate and with no education at all. In addition to basic academic subjects they are also taught carpentry, sewing and P.E., and any other skills volunteers might bring with them.

In addition to working with the children, the director of the school Julio, works hard to maintain good contact with the families. For instance he tries to get all the mothers together once a month to discuss various issues. These include things like hygiene and sanitation and nutrition - essential knowledge which we take for granted as things we know about and understand the importance of but not well understood here. Nutrition is a huge problem here, the majority of kids at the school have malnutrition - the pictures do not convey this very well but believe me, it is obvious when you are with them. - and live on extremely poor diets. it is not uncommon to be working with a child and to find out that he or she has not eaten for 24hrs and the snack they are given at school is the only 'meal' he or she will eat all day.

A little should be said about the conditions in which the families live in Aloetenango. Firstly, it is an extremely poor area. This is painfully obvious the second you arrive there - plenty of starving dogs wandering the streets, underfed working horses, rubbish littered absolutely everywhere, people doing their washing by the side of the road, dirty clothed kids etc. We were lucky enough to be able to have the opportunity to visit some of the families who lived in the area to gain a greater understanding of the difficulties they face and were shocked to see the conditions in which the majority of people in Alotenango live. One family we visited was a family of six living in a room the size of an average London bathroom built with bamboo, corrugated iron and plastic. 4 children slept on a mattressless bed on top of rotting clothes and the 2 parents slept on the mud floor surrounded by rubbish.  There was no way this 'house' was in any way waterproof and time and time again we thought back to this family when the torrential rain started in Guatemala eventually leading to landslides and the deaths of many people.

However despite all the above, the children are extremely affectionate, loving and happy and were a joy to work with. Michael spent most of the week teaching the children kung fu and also helping some older kids with their maths. Even given the limited time, visible progress made it a very rewarding experience. He found it impressive how quickly some of the children have grasped the spirit of kung fu: during maths class, he would occasionally hear a student shout over in a whisper, “Hey Profe Miguel, KUNG FU!!” and would turn to see him hitting himself in the chest or head as hard as he can.

E-Jwas working with the youngest children helping them, amongst other things, to learn to count and read letters through games and fun activities.
 

.

 

LAGO ATITLAN

Although the rains were still intermittent, we managed a great weekend in our duplex room in San Marcos, Lake Atitlan with a bunch of friends playing cards and drinking rum as it drizzled away outside.  Three weeks later the lake was flooded with the devastating rains of Hurricane Stan, wiping out a number of the small indigenous villages around the lake which were later declared mass-graves by the government. In addition, back in Alotenango, many families whose children attended the school, lost their houses to the landslides including the director Julio.

.

 

 

GUATEMALA thoughts

For a primer on Guatemala, pls click here, which will take you to a copy of notes from a talk by Sue Patterson, the lady behind the organisation WINGS, an excellent organisation concerned with reproductive health for women and men in Guatemala.  Although it is heavily laden with socio economic indicators it does give a good background, and helps explain why the country is in such a state.  An amazing fact that stood out for us is that over half the population is under the age of 15.  When they become sexually active within a near contraception-less environment, the already accelerating population growth is going to explode.  After Brazil, Guatemala has the greatest disparity between rich and poor in Latin America.  The future is not bright, but we are convinced that projects like Bendicion de Dios are providing both immediate relief, and are also an effective long term method through which to break the poverty circle.

Although we didn't really get time to see the other famous landmarks Guatemala has to offer such as Tikal, Chichicastenango, Shamul Chepek etc., we loved our time in Antigua.  and made friends we expect to keep.  The apparent happy co-existence of gringos and locals generally works, although there is an underlying layer of violent crime that surfaces after dark, and a number of people we knew were robbed with guns or knives returning home from bars at night.  We were involved in an incident where a couple of fraudsters tried to get a copy of our credit card with a fake swipe card reader placed on the exit of an ATM booth, but we spotted it and MG was instructed by E-J to meditate for 5 minutes for subsidence of rage and to overcome irrational desire for revenge.

Despite that incident, we loved our time here and hope to return in the not too distant future.