grateful for our educational system after all

Well, it's been a while hasn't it?

Mostly I think I feel like I'm not doing much so there isn't much to write about. I went to visit a few different agencies about doing work for them but by the time I was able to set up meetings and go and meet with them, I'm not going to be in Xela for the month minimum that they require so they have declined my offers to help. I understand why they put a minimum, but it is still frustrating.

I am looking at various projects in smaller towns as historically I know that suits me better. I am also not interested in spending another winter so freaking cold. So, the places I'm looking are at least a little lower in altitude and I'm hoping that one of them will be something I enjoy. If not, then I'll do what I did in Peru and look around until I find a town that I like and move there and then look around for ways to be of help.

I was talking for a while with an agency in Antigua that is looking for a volunteer coordinator that I think I would enjoy and be very qualified for but while they pay a (very) small stipend, they are really looking for someone to spend two years though they said they could live with a one year commitment. That wouldn't even start until the beginning of December and I'm sure that my savings wont last me that long. I've told them that I have to pass but maybe with some luck the next time they are looking for a coordinator will be about the same time I'm looking to move back out into the world again. I really think that next time I head out it will be to spend a year or two at this type of level, I think it is just the kind of experience I am looking for. It really is a shame that the orphanage was so awful because their volunteer coordinator just left and that position is open with a six month commitment and at very very very little out of pocket expense. But, I still wont go back there.

I am looking at a fun seeming place in a village on Lake Atitlan that I think I will go and visit this week coming that might be just the thing. The agency itself is in a very small town not at all geared toward tourism but is a short boat ride away from those towns when I felt like I wanted to get away a bit. I will be interested to see what they are all about. The work primarily with physically handicapped kids - they incorporate massage therapy in their programs and it would be fun to use that training in that way.

The other place I am really curious about is an organic coffee plantation near the coast. They are a group of 32 families that were all rebels in the civil war that have come together to buy a plantation. They have the idea that they fought with their lives for the chance at a better life and while they may not live it, they have the chance to give it to their children. So there are schools there that go through sixth grade and it is mandatory that all kids go to school and finish at least this level and they are committed to the schools being the best that they can make them. When kids finish this level, the community jointly sets aside some of the harvest funds to send the brightest on to the city to further their education, hoping they will come back and help the community.

This is pretty amazing in a country that has to pay people to send their kids to school because of the income lost when kids aren't working for the family. The schools here also for the most part of a complete farce. It's amazing how much these kids don't learn. No wonder it doesn't seem worth it to send your kids to school, even if you could afford to (you have to buy various uniforms and books and notebooks and all sorts of other stuff). They often will get through their primary (6th grade) education (often at 15 or 16) still barely able to read or write or do any more than very basic arithmetic and subtraction. There are schools that kids can go to to become teachers (through about 9th grade) and they still aren't being well educated so you've got 18 and 19 year olds who are barely educated, despite spending 9 years in school teaching little (and not so little) kids. It's amazing. I guess they are the growing pains of the developing world but it is just so incredible to watch. Easy to judge with the eyes of someone educated in the developed world. I have to stop and remember that it's only really recently that the government has put these programs into place where they pay families to educate their kids and that they are really trying to change things and that progress comes slowly and painfully.

I was visiting with the man doing some work on the house the other day about this. His parents speak Quiche but wouldn't allow he or his siblings (10) to learn it because it is a backwards language that only the poor people speak. (their words and concept, not mine) But they also wouldn't allow any of these kids to go to school because it would make them uppity. Part of what he does is tile work for example but since he can't read or write or do math, it is difficult for him to know how much material to buy or how much it will cost. He used to have to go to someone who would do these figures for him at a price, but he figured if he sent his kids to school they would be able to help him and he wouldn't have to pay for that fee. That's what it took for him to send his kids to school. His eight year old son is teaching him to read and write and do figures (luckily he ended up in a pretty good school) and he loves so much to feel educated even as an adult but he can't share it with his family because they will accuse him of putting on airs.

Anyway, so that is what makes this community of coffee farmers pretty great sounding. I've written them an email but haven't heard back so tomorrow I will call them and see if I can set up a day next week to come out and visit them to see if there is a match.

In the mean time, Xela is still a pretty nice city to be passing some time in. I love to go to the markets and walk around and ride buses to wherever they go, then pay my fair again to come back and the drivers think I'm crazy. It helps to be a foreigner, you always have an excuse for doing crazy things.

I did get to see people today dressed in traditional costume performing a folkloric dance to a Spanish version of "Hotel California". That was pretty great.

missing autumn,
and central heating,
and you all,
em

a picture of Lake Atitlan

three! balls in a row!

As suspected, I am enjoying Xela.

Today we took a bus to some hot baths - water heated by the volcano to fill up private tubs - 10q for one hour. ($1.25) and it was heavenly. Today was even sunny and relatively warm. I can't wait to go when it's really cold and there's no way to actually be warm and then you can go get in a hot bath. When I was in Peru I craved that even more than a hot shower. Xela is only about 500 meters lower in altitude than Ollantaytambo was and we are coming into cold season. Will I never learn?

I bought a sweatshirt today which pleases me as I brought clothes for the jungle, not thinking I would end up back in the mountains. Should have known better.

The house I'm living in is cool. There are a few different NGO offices here and five different bedrooms. Showers, a kitchen, courtyards, it's pretty nice. The people staying here are fun.

There's a guy in his mid 60's who was a commercial fisherman for years and now teaches juggling at a summer camp and is learning to ride a unicycle. He travels during the winter. He spends time in the dumps in Nicaragua and to be honest I'm feeling a little tempted to go with him for a while when he heads down there in six weeks. He's also teaching me to juggle and it's fun to be learning. Finally today I was able to throw all three balls once each and catch them. I am hoping for some more progress tomorrow and to actually be able to juggle for a few throws in a row.

There is a girl in her early thirties from Japan who has been traveling around the world for the last four years or so and her boyfriend lives in Eugene doing coding for a video game. Small world. She has been here for a few weeks and loves to explore so she's been showing me around town, it's really nice to have someone who knows which buses to take and where to find things.

There is a guy in his mid twenties who came here to learn Spanish and has been living in Xela for about eleven weeks. He was living with a host family but things went terribly wrong, as they so often do, so he found himself here at Entremundos. He has asked me to speak only Spanish with him so he can continue to learn and I try to remember.

A girl from Australia arrives tomorrow and the five of us will all be here for the next month or so at least. None of the rest of them play cards or drink at all so I have high hopes for the girl from Australia. Perhaps she will like to play some cards or dice and have a beer once in a while. That would be grand.

On Monday I have an appointment to meet with an agency doing childcare in a domestic violence shelter here. One of only two or three in all of Guatemala. Seems like it could be a really great way to spend my days and feel like I've done something useful to someone with my days.

Hope all is well with you,
em

unpacking is so great

I am in Xela! (Quetzaltenango) and I think I am really going to like it here. I have rented a room for a month in a place called Entremundos(.org) where they organize different volunteer agencies and people who want to work with them and they rent rooms in their building. I think it will be a fun mix of having a room of my own and being around people with similar mindsets. I look forward to visiting with the volunteer coordinator tomorrow about what types of projects there are and what kinds of things might be a good fit.

I suspect that I will spend a month here as I just needed somewhere to unpack finally and do some short term volunteering in the city then after my month here is up go to a village somewhere nearby (in the mountains again wouldn't you know, I think I am just going to have to give in and understand that in my heart I belong in the mountains – I am always drawn here)

I spent a couple of days in Antigua, met some friends of a friend and they were lovely people. The organization they are involved in sounds fantastic but Antigua is just too expensive to live in. And it's hard to get out of the city and into the country somewhere. I am really aching for a couple of hours next to a body of water or in front of some mountains. I spent a couple of days in San Pedro on Lake Atitlan but never found a peaceful spot to just sit by the lake. I'm sure they exist, I just didn't find it in the day I was there. Now here I am in the city again but by all accounts, it's very easy to get out of the city here and safe to walk around so in the next couple of days I will make sure that I get the chance to just sit somewhere and look at the mountains.

Hope everyone is great, I'm glad to be back in a more positive frame of mind and looking forward to what then next few days will find me.

Love,
em

photos - one sweet orphan and some ruins in the jungle

This is one of the temples in Tikal. I bribed a guard to enter the park at 3:30am - he was nice enough to walk with me to the temple in the dark or I would never never have found it and would probably still be lost in the jungle. I got to hang out for about an hour with the howler monkeys and jaguars whoofing before another three people came to share the morning with me. It was pretty amazing and I wish I'd had hours more up there.

I organized a day of field games a couple of weekends ago and paid for the winning team to go to Backpackers hotel for ice cream sundaes - This is Edi - he wouldn't leave my side all day in case he might miss the boat. Except when I promised promised that he had enough time to go and change into his best clothes because he wanted to look nice. Heartbreakingly sweet.

Up close of part of a carving in Tikal

in front of one of the ruins in Tikal

. 

Here is a good example of how most of the ruins in Tikal were found - they have been being restored for many many years and most of the photos you will see are only the front facades restored and the backs are still piles of dirt. This is the back of a beautifully restored front. Pretty amazing to see what they've done.

For better or for worse

Okay,

Well, here I am out of Casa Guatemala. I have mixed feelings about choosing to go but in the end decided that I was too tired of being mad and frustrated to stay. I wont rule out the chance of heading back if some things seem better but that just might be to ease my conscious about walking away and leaving the rest of the volunteers with more work and my whole group of girls with no one to take care of them. They are capable of taking care of themselves, but we all want to feel like somebody cares about where we are and where we´ve been and how our days were.

For better or worse, the decision has been made and I´m at a hostel in Rio Dulce.

There is a huge tropical storm off the coast of Honduras and we are getting rain from that and it is indeed impressive. The worst of it is supposed to come tonight so I´m hoping that the roads don´t wash out and I´ll be able to get out of Rio Dulce. I´m sure I´ll be able to get somewhere as this is a crossroads, I just don´t know where yet. And there wont likely be reports  on the roads by tomorrow morning when I plan to leave so I may end up stuck in a river somewhere. Part of the adventure!

I haven´t decided where to go next even. North toward Tikal? Over to the highlands - Antigua and Lake Atitlan? To the Pacific Coast? Don´t know yet.

Anyway, just thought I´d write and tell what I´d decided. I know that place and those kids will likely haunt me always. I will always wonder if I should have stayed. If I could have found a way to fight through the corruption and the absolute lack of interest in change. If I could have miraculously started to get through to the girls that no one else has been able to. To wonder if I ran away from somewhere I should have stayed. I have to trust that when I was in the middle of it I knew the only solution was to get out of it.

I´ll write again when I find myself somewhere new-
em

cuteness

Felix racing around on his motorcycle - he does stunts that are awesome

looking at monkeys with Chana. Sometimes the howler monkeys that usually live out behind the houses come to the trees in the patio. I love those days.

favorite favorite favorite activity

Marisol, Jossi and Clara Luz - some of "my" girls

Erick playing in my room - somehow the upload squished the photo all weird - he's cute, not an alien

should i stay or should i go?

warning - long one! trying to work out my head. this is a letter I sent to geoff since i haven't been able to figure out what to say here.

I think I'm going to leave here. I just had a moment of realization. I've got a permanent scowl on my face that try as I might I can't get rid of. I'm ready with a yell for any child that may happen to cross my path. I even have a necklace of key hanging around me jingle-jangling every time I walk. I'm HER! The cross matron. It's not really true, I'm more patient than anyone else here, but sometimes I feel like I'm being her.

Then, a child is crying because she got hit in the mouth swimming but all she really needed was to lay in my arms and be held for ten minutes. It's also what I needed. I think that is where my heartache lies more than anything. What these kids really need is some love but what they get are volunteers stretched too thin to have the patience to love them. Every last one of us at our last straw. I believe the kids to be at risk. 6 people are in charge of the health and safety and well-being of 250 kids. No one in charge of us. No one else looking out. We have a coordinator but she is worthless at best. Actually harmful most of the time. Absent a great deal of time.

So I struggle with whether to stay or go. I am being a person I dislike more than I can express. I complain, I yell, I'm not fair. I'm the only volunteer that speaks both english and spanish. 4 others that speak only english. one that speaks only spanish but she's in charge
of 22 girls ages 4-8 so I end up being the one paying attention to everything, talking to every kid when they're misbehaving. The authority figure for all of them. Always telling them when they're doing wrong. The one in the middle of disagreements between the volunteer who speaks only spanish and the rest. Then accused of managing by the coordinator. Told that this is not my job and to not do it. But then she is worthless so no one does it. She's at me every
time I turn around. Hates that I think of things she's not thinking of, that the rest of the volunteers come to me with problems or things they need solved then yells at me when I try to do it. I feel like every time I turn around I'm in trouble with someone for something
they should be thanking me for. But then it will be even worse if I go.

Today I lost it. Told my girls I was leaving. Told them mean things, went to my room and cried. Then had to go put on a good face to be the ringmaster of a day of field games that I organized that the kids only complained about. Don't want to be here anymore with these ungrateful
wretched children who are mean and tell me to go home anyway. They are so rude. And I get it. I get it. Everyone who has ever been in charge of them their whole entire lives has left them. Starting with their parents then to this compound in the jungle you can never leave - some
haven't left this piece of land in literally years- then every volunteer that has ever come to be in charge of them, to love them, to teach them to open their hearts. Every single one has left them. Of course they are awful. I get it. I get it. I get it. There is nothing I can do to change it. I will also leave them. Whether it's this week or in December, I will leave them. They will have yet another personality to get to know. Someone else who doesn't know their names, who wants to know their stories, who doesn't even know where to get more shampoo.

How do I reconcile it?

Do I leave, not wanting to support this organization - I haven't even gone into how corrupt the person who runs this place is. Every day I learn more about how much she steals from these children. Not give my support and energy and attention to something that I disagree with so
strongly. Do I leave because I am miserable and feel like no matter what I do, someone is going to let me know how f-ed up it is and there is no support?

Or is this one of those things that will make me stronger if I just stick with it? Am I just being extra emotional because we don't have proper nutrition and there isn't any way to drink enough water and we don't get enough sleep and there is no such thing as a day off? Does it matter if these are the reasons if the end result is the same?

No matter how many times I turn it around in my head I just don't know. I want to leave more than anything. Is it a cop out? I don't know.

I'm curious to find out what I do.

Thanks for emails, it really helps to know that you're out there.

love,
em

today is tomorrow and I feel a little better. I talked with my girls last night though and asked them what to do? How do I manage them better? What would they do if they were me? To a girl they said that the only way is with yelling and punishments. I talked with the useless volunteer coordinator this morning and she said the only way is to detach. To not care what they think of me, to be tough and keep them in line. Well, that is a shitty way to live. She says, you can't help them, your expectations are too high. Well if I don't think I can help any of them, why on earth would I come here? To a compound in the middle of the jungle, completely isolated where the kids are wild beasts?

Now the boat captain is yelling at me that someone is going to tell Snra Angie how everything is going here, that it's completely out of control, as a threat. I just said "please, someone tell someone. How on earth can we possibly keep everything going? He says, keep the computer room door open! I say I've closed it because the boys come in and bother us and wont let us be. Well, kick them out! But they don't listen to me, what can I actually do if eight boys are in here and wont leave when I tell them to? Just kick them out!" Well, thanks for all your help, Don Tocho.

Last night two of the big boys got a hold of one of the little girls and threatened her with a knife, held to her stomach, told her they would kill her, she managed to get away but they said they would come looking for her in the night and get her while she slept. So she slept in my room and they closed the entrance to our house with a lock which is never done and a guard was put outside of our house with a gun. Then today, there has been no punishment for them. The workers are yelling at the volunteers that we aren't doing a good job of keeping things under control, but we aren't workers. This isn't our job. We are here to help, not be in charge. Everything is completely messed up.

But how do you leave knowing that it will just be even worse than it is for everyone left?

Jeez. It's all really stupid right now.

Guess I'll come out of it with some lessons.

thanks for listening/reading. i'll try to have something nicer to say soon. at least post some photos. cause they kids are really cute, i'll have to give them that.