Travel, Relationships, and The New Twenty

The big day has finally arrived! I am officially thirty. But before I talk about my brand new age (or really in order to talk about it), I’d like to write about the volunteer work Lacey and I are doing with Manos de Colores (a.k.a. El Nahual), and then invite everyone who can to donate something — even as little as $5 — to the organization. If you can make a donation in honor of my thirtieth birthday, that would be awesome, or if you become inspired to give something regardless, even better. This post should give you a good idea of what you’d be giving to; feel free to read straight through or use the links below to browse everything from the situation of public education here in Guatemala to more information about the kids we teach, the schools they attend, the Manos de Colores organization, and even my personal take on volunteering and “The New Thirty.”

The Background | The Ninos | Manos de Colores and the Schools it Serves | The New Thirty | More about making donations to Manos de Colores

The Background

First, some background. Government funding for public education in Guatemala is low and falling. Much like in the US, the government has begun to deal with the problem by shifting emphasis to private education, unaffordable for the vast majority of Guatemalan families living near or below the poverty level. Statistically, given a random group of one hundred Guatemalan children entering the public school system in first grade, only forty will complete three years of school; thirty to thirty-five will reach secondary school. Of these, perhaps ten will be able to attend university, at great expense (even Guatemala’s single public university requires entrants to pay for books, food, housing, etc., making it all but impossible for even the brightest candidates to attend if they don’t have the financial resources). In other words, the situation of Guatemala’s education system is dire at best.

The Ninos

The ninos (kids, in Spanish) are what it’s all about. The majority of the kids we teach may be impoverished, malnourished, dirty, or have problems at home, but they’re just kids, beautiful and brilliant, funny, curious, friendly, weird. They grin at the smallest jokes in our broken Spanish and kiss us goodbye after class. They raise their hands even when they don’t know the answer; they fight over the pieces of scrap paper with the most interesting pictures on the reverse side. Laura is a teacher’s pet and Donald a young rebel; Maria is a tiny shy girl who must be asked three times to speak, while eager Juan leaps up out of his seat to shout the answer first. The most macho of the boys will become engrossed in the making of a paper-bead necklace. Sometimes the ninos try to teach us curse words in Spanish, slyly, so that we’ll repeat the words without knowing what we’re saying. They sing our bilingual songs at the top of their voices, stand up and follow our stupid dances with inexhuastible gusto. They demand the right color marker, a pencil that’s not broken, a pen that works. Some of them learn English at light speed. Most importantly, though, they don’t look like poor kids, hungry kids, or kids in poverty — they look just like kids, any kids, kids who want to score a goal in playground soccer, who want to get the right answer and a “muy bien” from their teacher, who want to color their pictures inside the lines, who want to learn even when they don’t know it. They will make you frustrated and euphoric, but like any kids you spend a lot of time with, they will not break your heart, not on their own; for that you need the statistics, the surrounding environment, the cold facts that could doom them to be anything less than they’re capable of.

Manos de Colores and the Schools it Serves

Manos de Colores serves over two hundred children, teenagers and young adults at the western edge of Quetzaltenango in a variety of ways. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, for instance, Lacey and I bike past the edges of the city to two different schools to teach English and Art: La Candalaria in the morning and La Cuchilla in the afternoon, each with a unique story.

La Candalaria was founded and built by a community an hour’s walk from downtown Xela. A few years ago, this community of subsistence farmers, mostly living below the poverty level, recognized that the condition of their families and children would not improve without a local school (sending children to schools in the city, even public ones, was prohibitively expensive). With astonishing hard work and cooperation the community acquired the necessary land, built a school, staffed it with teachers, and now keeps it running. Although the school itself is in a gorgeous setting, perched in a cornfield beneath the ragged jungle and rearing cliffs of an ancient volcanic cone (and not far from another pyramid-perfect volcano), the needs of the community are still desperate: for instance, Lacey teaches one class with about 50 students (and only one full-time teacher), while one of my classes is held in a shed and another in the tarp-covered courtyard of a nearby family’s house.

Fortunately, a construction project to add four new classrooms, also supported by Manos de Colores, is underway. To break up the harder work of teaching, I head up to the site with other volunteers at least twice a week to help move earth, mix cement, haul materials, or do whatever else is needed. Our help accounts in part for single mothers or other families who are unable to send a worker, since families must provide a certain number of man-hours to keep sending their kids to the school. Still, even when the new wing is completed in December, most of the kids attending La Candalaria will face an uphill battle: on the way to help with construction after school I see younger children sorting through trash by the side of the road, girls pulverizing rock with hammers, boys struggling to pull their goats into town. At moments like this secondary school looks like a pipe dream.

La Cuchilla’s beginnings were with an inspired director, who recognized the need within her impoverished community and undertook the unlikely task of fundraising and start-up work to create a school. Although a little closer to the city and somewhat better equipped physically to handle the needs of its students than Candalaria, La Cuchilla (basically a row of classrooms opening onto a sidewalk) is still without lights in many classrooms, without textbooks for its students, and without many other resources that we take for granted in schools in the US. Also, like the students at Candalaria and all public schools, the kids at La Cuchilla must buy and bring their own uniforms, notebooks and pencils to class, which means many come without them. Still, the students in our after-school program are bright-eyed and energetic; the rowdiest students still amaze me when I sit down next to them — just to calm them down — and they reveal themselves as the most eager learners of all.

An unfortunate quirk of Guatemala’s public school system is that, although primary education is theoretically mandatory, children are prevented from enrolling in school after a certain age. This impacts the rural poor in particular, where children’s work is often required to sustain their families. When these children “miss” their window to enter school, they miss out on an education altogether. In an attempt to serve part of this population, Manos de Colores runs a Saturday school for teenagers and adults who were unable to attend school at the usual age. Lacey teaches English for an hour every weekend as part of this “equivalency” program at Manos de Colores’ center. Lacey also teaches English on Wednesdays at Telesecondaria, a high school that is a government experiment in cutting education costs (much of the teaching is done by television). Only the very poorest students — those unable to attend the public high schools downtown — go to school at Telesecondaria. So once a week, Manos de Colores provides a few more live faces like Lacey’s to deliver supplementary education in English, a subject critical to success in secondary school and beyond.

Finally, Manos de Colores also runs its own educational after-school program every day in-house, mostly serving kids from yet another nearby school. Thanks to our willingness to ride bikes up long hills (or maybe we were conned into it?), Lacey and I only volunteer at the center to fill in occasionally, usually heading out to the other schools. But like our other destinations the center at Manos de Colores is bursting with children (on some days almost a hundred) who all need to learn. During the upcoming three-month school vacation, Manos de Colores will expand its coverage, hiring Guatemalan teachers to cover math and other subjects while volunteers continue to teach art and English at all schools. Art is taught because otherwise it isn’t part of the school curriculum, meaning children miss the satisfaction and confidence that comes with beginning and finishing a creative project and taking it home. English, as I mentioned above, is key to advancement here, both in the school system and in Guatemalan society in general.

The New Thirty

While I did write the bulk of this post on my birthday, I’ve left this last part for now, several days later. In reality this is because Lacey whisked me away to a birthday weekend at Lago de Atitlan (Lake Atitlan — look for pictures soon!) and because I now spend my evenings glued to the computer under the illusion that the Phillies will actually make the playoffs, but theoretically it has also better prepared me to answer everyone’s favorite birthday question: do you feel any different now that you’re thirty?

The answer is not so straightforward. I really don’t feel much different now than I did a week ago. On the other hand, I’m in Guatemala, trying to figure out how to teach kids in a new language before I bargain for my dinnertime tomatoes at the outdoor market. This feels a lot different than designing websites in Philadelphia or visiting swimming holes in Vermont. I know a lot more about the present-tense basics of Spanish, the socio-political situation in Guatemala, the best place to buy donuts in Quetzaltenango. I know a little more about teaching, and I know that it’s hard, hard work. But I guess what we’re really asking, when we ask each other this stupid, stupid birthday question, is: do you know yourself any better now than you did before?

In volunteering I have one answer. Not because I am discovering a more altruistic side of myself; volunteering, as many have observed, is as much a transaction as it is a service, at its best involving giving and receiving in equal measure. In fact, our original plan wasn’t even to volunteer in Guatemala; this was just a place we decided to come stay for awhile where we couldn’t really make money. But here we are, teaching, playing, shoveling, wheelbarrowing. Some days it just feels like work. But doing this work gives me a greater and greater awareness of the grand and simple human equation, the equation through which we are all giving to each other, all the time, in our smiles and greetings, in our hugs and grins and kindnesses and friendships, in our teaching and learning, our efforts to understand each other — in all the myriad ways that we give and give and give meaning to each other’s lives. This is the greatest lesson of these first, fresh days of my new thirty: that although Lacey and I have transplanted ourselves to a new country and culture, we are still part of this same equation, this human equation, the unending cycle of generosity that most of us are hardly aware of, but that we take part in every day.

More About Making Donations to Manos de Colores

So, if you are able to make a donation to Manos de Colores, what will your money go toward? It could go directly to the simplest imaginable things: dry erase markers, pencils, notebooks, construction paper. All are really easy to buy with a few US dollars, and you can’t teach a roomful of underserved children if they don’t have pencils and notebooks. Lacey and I give in this way weekly, copying worksheets, buying markers, stickers, and other small things to improve our classrooms. A slightly larger donation could go to buying shoes for students at La Candelaria who don’t have them. Or your donation could go to expanding Manos de Colores’ programs by hiring Guatemalan teachers to teach math and other subjects during fall vacation (supplementing our English and art teaching and providing a huge educational boost for hundreds of students, as well as an income boost for underpaid teachers). Your donation could even go toward funding Manos de Colores’ new scholarship program, starting up in the next month, a program which will fund the education of 20 students who couldn’t otherwise afford to study beyond sixth grade, providing everything from school supplies to supplemental income for their families to a nutritious lunch that they would not eat otherwise. It only takes $250 to fund a year of education for these children, a year they absolutely could not afford on their own. Most importantly, whatever you are able to give, 100% of it will go directly to Manos de Colores’ programs, since no one at Manos de Colores, from the director and the board to the volunteer program coordinators and teachers, makes a penny from any operations.

DONATE TO MANOS DE COLORES

Among friends and family I’m known for an especially healthy appetite; my brother even chuckles out the nickname “tapeworm” when he sees me in front of an elephant-sized bowl of cereal or a third helping at dinner (as in “hey, tapeworm, slow down there”). So one of the hardest things for me to adjust to, when Lacey and I arrived in Guatemala, was the sudden, drastic reduction in food intake.

The first meal of the day is usually my favorite, but during our first two weeks in Guatemala, our economical, middle-class host family served just one of two breakfasts at the metal table in their small kitchen: a bowl of very watery oatmeal (called “mosh”) or a pair of (tasty but small) pancakes. I bought a carton of whole milk each week and left it in the refrigerator at our Spanish school, chugging at it like a desperate newborn before class started every morning. Still, by the time our 10:30 break rolled around and fried-food vending Indigena women coasted into the courtyard in saintly procession, I was ready to fall at their feet. Three hours later, lunchtime came too late to avoid sharp stomach pains, and the dent made by almuerzo was usually temporary. By the time dinner rolled around (typically smaller than lunch here) I was feeling lightheaded and sometimes dizzy. It’s important to note that this wasn’t all due to my appetite; we were also adjusting to life above 8,000 feet, attending brain-bursting one-on-one Spanish lessons for 5 hours each morning, trekking uphill on foot and bicycle for an hour most afternoons to teach small rowdy children in a different language, and hiking in the hills or trekking around the city on the weekends (and yes, in retrospect we should have attempted only about half of this for the first week or two). Still, for two weeks, hunger was a more frequent companion than I can ever remember it being in my life. And this without accounting for thirst, which mounted its attack more subtly; early on, our host family quietly warned us away from the water jug with any kind of bottle or screw-top receptacle, since the potable water (agua pura) was too expensive to drink outside meals and bedtime.

But if my hunger (and thirst) taught me one thing, it was to keep my mouth shut and be deeply thankful for the privilege of my appetite. Malnutrition here is pervasive, especially among children. An estimated 50% of children under 5 in Guatemala are under-height for their age, and a tragic 70% of indigenous children suffer from malnutrition, accounting for a large part of the 24% of the country’s overall population who are malnourished. Many rural kids especially are simply too poor to get enough food; closer to urban centers, children in poverty are given small food allowances by overworked parents, which the kids spend quickly on the chips and candy that are a staple of local stalls and tiendas (shops). Many of the children Lacey and I teach — sweet, crazy, and very bright kids — have visible rot at the roots of their teeth. Not a single one is overweight. The water problem doesn’t help, either; those too poor to buy agua pura or enough gas to boil must bombard their bodies with unhealthy bacteria from the tap.

Just over a week ago, the day after we left our homestay, Lacey and I visited a family outside Momostenango, a rural pueblo and major center of wool production about an hour and a half by bus from Xela. We had scheduled the visit to get a firsthand look at the family’s small fourth-generation weaving business and, presumably, to buy something. In order to meet us at 8 a.m., Alma rode the bus an hour and a half into the city before riding right back with us to her house. There we were treated to a comprehensive look at the family’s all-natural weaving business, now in its third generation: four looms under a large tin awning, basic, well-worn carding and spinning tools nearby, spools of colorful wool hanging from the wall, a display of the berries, bark, leaves and other natural materials used to dye the yarn (unlike some others, the Alvarados use no chemical dyes), and several healthy-looking children working the looms. Luis proudly explained that half the children went to school in the morning and the others in the afternoons; although he can read and write little, he is determined to put all his children through school (and two are now about to enter high school, not a common feat here).

When we had gotten to spin a little wool, try the looms, take pictures of each other, and buy a gorgeous rug and wall hanging, we were treated to lunch. I wasn’t used to this kind of meal: served in a cozy kitchen of mud bricks and cooked over a small wood fire, I was encouraged to take second, third, and fourth helpings. Our offer to pay for the food was waved away; in fact, we were subsequently treated to a tour of town, invited to come back and stay for a weekend, and loaded onto the bus with smiles and waves by Luis and two of his sons. It’s hard to know what our purchases accounted for, but there is no doubt that the kindness of the Alvarados was genuine.

Like our host family in Xela, the Alvarados aren’t wealthy, and clearly they also think carefully about food. But in the rural setting outside Momostenango, this care took on a different aspect: ten or fifteen years ago the Alvarados had to build a new house further down the hill from the road, because their chickens (now running through the yard and in and out of the kitchen) were being killed by buses careening into town. The whole family and some extended family pitched in to help build, and the new house is really a small complex that includes a couple bedrooms, a family room, the weaving pavilion, an outdoor courtyard, and the kitchen. And this, as much as anything, may explain why we were able to eat so heartily here: the Alvarados’ generosity seemed to come from a sense of family, from the assumption that those in the house were meant to be provided for, first and foremost.

Ultimately, the urban and rural families who took us in are much better off than most, which makes my own hunger all the more telling. In Guatemala, malnutrition and poverty (the latter sometimes unofficially estimated closer to 80% than the official 60% figure I mentioned in a previous post) go hand in hand. Those who do not have land to farm, chickens to raise, or city work that puts food on the table are hurt further by the rising price of corn, a critical staple here that is now being exported more and more frequently to “green” western nations eager to meet emissions targets. Markets like the giant San Francisco El Alto, located halfway between Xela and Momostenango, are a gorgeous press of smell, sound, and color, but they also reveal the hunger problem in new ways: mothers and barefoot children ride buses for hours to set up camp between the larger stalls and sell from two or three baskets of dusty peaches or peppers, or from cartons of candy and cigarettes, while many of the animals for sale in the livestock area display their bones at sharp angles through their skin.

Still, it is in these markets, and in tiny businesses like the Alvarados’, that some feel the hopes of Guatemala’s rural poor and malnourished lie: fair trade co-ops, fincas (shared farms) and exporting businesses could bypass profit-hungry middlemen and better connect Guatemalan tradespeople both to the outside world and to each other. This hope is visionary, especially in the context of rule by a wealthy minority, but among the Maya especially there is a conviction that eventual progress will come only from below. For now, there is a sense of urgency to this dream: if a tipping point can be reached before another decade goes by, the children of Guatemala’s children may no longer have to go hungry.

Today is Guatemala’s election day: new deputies, congressional-level representatives, a vice president, and a president (if receiving over 50% of the popular vote) will be chosen in open elections around the country. This is no small event for a country that has been ruled by non-representative military dicatorships for much of its history, and whose present democracy is barely 20 years old. With the 1996 peace accords (signed between the army and guerilla forces) still only partially implemented and an estimated 60 percent of Guatemala’s population living in poverty, a lot is at stake. In fact, the 4-year elections are still sensitive enough that selling or serving alcohol is prohibited beginning at noon the day before. And if what Lacey and I saw around town today is any indication, long lines and armed guards are also a standard part of the process. So what does this vote mean for the lives of ordinary Guatemalans?

A week ago Lacey and I witnessed a different election, that of the tongue-twisting Princesa Indígena Nacional de la Independencia. With the approach of Central America’s September 15th Independence Day (celebrated right here in Xela by people from all over Central America, in a huge multi-day fiesta), Princesas de la Independencia are being chosen at every level, from local pre-schoolers on up to the Princesa Nacional herself. But the Princesa Indígena Nacional is a little bit different, chosen from a group of over 30 young indigenous women from Mayan tribes around the country. The winner of Princesa Indígena must display impressive traditional costume typical of her tribe, must demonstrate knowledge of her native language (over 20 Mayan languages are spoken in Guatemala), and most importantly, must deliver a convincing speech about her plan to help improve the status of the indigenous people.

Held at Xela’s beautiful Teatro Municipal, the nationally televised event began with an hour of entrances, introductions, and traditional music and dance numbers. Then came the announcement of the five finalists, chosen following a previous stage of competition. Finally, each of the finalists moved forward one by one and responded to a question posed by the judges about the future of her indigenous people and her country. Although I understood little of what was said, each young woman spoke with passion and pathos, referring to the sober situation of both Guatemala and its indigenous people. My Spanish teacher later told me that this passionate mode of speech is common to many indigenous women, although he thought the pageant finalists were especially gifted. In a time when the momentum of the 1996 peace accords has faded to an appalling status quo for the indigenous population (an estimated 70-80% live in poverty), the passion of these young women is a precious commodity. The crowd certainly appreciated it, and Lacey and I applauded loudly along with everyone else when the winner was announced, before ducking out early for a quiet cab ride home.

In many ways, Guatemala’s official elections are complicated beyond the scope of a traditional understanding of democracy. Economically, the country is ruled by seven or eight wealthy families, who control most national industry and finance. Many of these families have connections within the armed forces, connections who maintain semi-private security forces to protect their interests. Political campaigns are also run with the support of these families, although the leading presidential candidate in this year’s election has not disclosed where any of his enormous campaign treasury came from, sparking fears among some that the Guatemalan people will be the ones to pay him back for his campaign if he wins. The other leading candidate is running under the motto “Mano Dura,” or “Strong Hand,” a response to the country’s pervasive fears about violence. A Republican campaign adviser from the US is purportedly backing this conservative, military candidate. The “Mano Dura” motto touches a tender nerve in Guatemala, given the weak judiciary system that has made vigilante justice more and more common, the extreme focus of national media on violent events, and the shared cultural memory of over thirty years of violence and repression.

Ultimately, many Guatemalans seem to feel that none of the leading choices for President presents a good option. In some cases there is more hope for local candidates, but pervasive corruption make these hopes tenuous, too. As a result, the officials who are elected this year may do little to uplift a nation that desperately needs uplifting. But hope still remains, and the Princesa Indígena Nacional de la Independencia is evidence of this. In a country whose people are surprisingly tolerant of varying religions and cultures (Catholics, Evangelical Christians, and Indigenous Mayans live side-by-side with relatively little culturally motivated friction — and in fact, every political party fields Mayan candidates at various levels), a woman with a young, strong voice could be just the kind of hero that the country will need in the years to come. Guatemala will likely need more than just one champion, but an election of this kind provides a glimmer of hope for those present, reflected in the burning eyes of the Princesa Indígena Nacional de la Independencia.

“Dog I don’t speak English very well!” Apparently the word for “but” only has one r, which I found out after writing my first composition on Thursday. Spanish is hard.

A week ago today we arrived safely in Xela, Guatemala. So far the bulk of my energy, and in some ways my time, has been spent learning and practicing Spanish. It´s amazing how quickly you can learn in twenty-five hours a week of one-on-one classes, with a patient teacher giving you his full attention. I can now ask my host mother if she would like me to turn off the light, talk to the kids in my art class about their favorite colors, and negotiate transactions at Xela’s endless tiendas (tiny window-shops) with reasonable efficiency (if not aplomb). My teacher, a 21-year old university student with an endless stock of bromas (jokes), is willing to converse about anything from American comedies (I´ve already loaned him my “Best of Will Ferrell / Saturday Night Live” and “Wedding Crashers” DVDs) to religion and politics in Guatemala, this despite the limitations of the present tense and my limited, though rapidly expanding, vocabulary.

I am also forced to learn Spanish at home with our family, where the 7- and 9- year-olds who act as our hosts (click here for more details in Lacey’s first blog post) have taken to telling me the wrong meanings of words, an apparently hilarious joke usually joined in on by Lacey. In general, however, the kids are incredibly fun and well-behaved, and have made our stay as an unmarried couple in an evangelical home many times better than it might have been otherwise.

I practice more Spanish at the school where Lacey and I have begun volunteering as art and English teachers. There I´ve learned the words for paper, scissors, glue, markers, and crayons, scored a few goodbye hugs and kisses at the end of the day (but not as many as Lacey), received my first signed painting, and am working on becoming a legend on the recess football (soccer) field. I’ll write more about our teaching soon, but for now suffice it to say that the greatest motivation for learning Spanish is to try to gain a semblance of control in a class of 20 wonderful but rowdy Guatemalan 5-11 year-olds.

And Xela, finally, is a wonderful place to be. Surrounded by mountains and volcanoes, with skies that change personality by the minute and hour, its natural beauty defies the exhaust and grit of its streets, although these are softened considerably by the city’s winding character, its many parks and churches, and the regular smiles and greetings of its residents. Lacey and I took a gorgeous hike today up “La Muela” (the tooth), a promontory of hardened lava and ash that juts from the side of an old overgrown volcano. We saw only one other person on the unsigned dirt path, which left a small road about a mile out of town. We passed behind lovely swaying acres of corn and beans (and a few tied-up horses) before heading up to the rocks, the sky alternating characteristically between cool towering thunderheads and hot equatorial sun. We sweated, ate cookies, and spoke Spanish only when we felt like it. It’s been a good week!