This is a post from my dear friend Alaina, who visited me last month with Aaron, and we had an amazing time. But I think she'll do a better job telling you about it :) Read below:
It took an hour via micro (overcrowded van of 20+ people) and then another hour struggling to climb over a 10,000-foot peak, but we finally made it to the small village of Caserio Nueva Union from Cara’s town of Chiantla.
A couple days before, my boyfriend Aaron and I traveled from DC to visit our favorite panda-lover, Cara. We toured Mayan ruins, jogged at sunrise, drank coffee in Huehue, called our moms on Mother’s Day and went to a 17-year-old’s baby shower… all while catching up on life.
While the focus of the trip was spending time with Cara and touring around, I wanted to contribute, somehow, to the projects that Cara has spent the last two years working so hard to build. Through my company, National Geographic, I was able to assemble a number of fun and educational items: inflatable globes, Spanish-language kids magazines, Spanish-language literacy books, and animal stickers! I packed this extra 30 pounds of materials in my backpack (taking up more than half of the space) and let Cara organize a day we could join her on her projects and help out in any way we could. (One note of interest, I had access to really cool animal tattoos, but Cara said “no” to those because tattoos are often associated with gangs in Guatemala).
Our day of volunteering started out in Caserio Nueva Union, where Cara has built up a relationship with the women’s group and overcame many obstacles to bring them a rain-water collection and purification tank. Climbing over the mountain peak to access this town was astounding. The view from the top was breathtaking, but the hike was very difficult (even though I’m an active runner), especially at a high altitude and a loaded backpack! I couldn’t believe that Cara does that hike almost weekly, and women do it with babies on their back and baskets of corn on their head.
The women’s group gathered around the village president’s house dressed in their traditional colorful clothing and bright scarves folded on their head. When we introduced ourselves by throwing around one of the inflatable globes, I was amazed to learn that many of the women had 12 children! Then, I was further astounded when I realized that none of the women could locate Guatemala on the globe – they weren’t even looking in the right hemisphere. Aaron and I have done our fair share of traveling through the developing world, but this was a first for us (I’m sure we’ve met many others who might share this lack of education, but we never knew it). Cara shared that most of the women are illiterate and have never seen a map before. So we had a little geography lesson! They knew that Mexico bordered Guatemala, but they had never seen exactly how it looks. They knew America was further north, but never realized how big it is.
After a healthy eating class (Cara taught them how to make her mom’s banana and oatmeal bread recipe – no lard needed!), we passed out the animal stickers to the women for their kids and taught them the names of the exotic African animals. It was so sweet – when I demonstrated how the stickers worked by putting some on the kids’ shirts, the kids slowly took them off and carefully placed the stickers back on their sheets for safe-keeping.
After we made tortillas over a wood-burning stove (I made one in the shape of my new favorite word estrella, i.e. star –they thought I was crazy) and ate a lunch of black beans, a hard-boiled egg and sweet milk, we hiked back up and over the mountain, got back on a micro, and got off on the side of the road at a school Cara teaches Spanish-literacy to women and teenage girls. In this class, Cara used the Nat Geo Spanish literacy books to teach women how to read and write in Spanish, and used the kids magazines to enhance the literacy skills of the teenage girls. Growing up in almost constant civil war, the older women were not educated, but today their children go to school, however often only until they are 12 years old. While Cara worked with the older women, I worked with the young girls - they taught me how to read Spanish by reading the magazines to me, and I taught them English by describing the pictures to them in English. There were even a couple younger girls, about 11, who came to take notes for their mothers who couldn’t attend class that day. I also laughed inside when I quickly realized that teenage girls are the same all over the world – these girls gossiped with each other during class, experimented with makeup, wore tight clothing, and didn’t want to do their homework. Sounds familiar.
Aaron was crashing at this point of the afternoon, but our day was not over (he had no excuse, as he didn’t go on a morning run with us)! It was mother’s day in Guatemala, so Cara hosted an almond cake party for her friends that she teaches English to at a local NGO. It was pouring rain as we sat under a tin roof drinking orange pop and laughing the entire night… that is, until we went back to Cara’s apartment for some pizza.
We left Cara the next day to head off on the rest of our trip touring around Lake Atitlan and Antigua, but our day of volunteering was the most memorable in my Guatemala travelogue. It opened our eyes to experiences we couldn’t have encountered on our own and allowed us to contribute in our own small way to the larger impact Cara is making in her work. We feel lucky for the opportunity to visit our friend, and now actually understand first-hand what she is referencing when we hear about her crazy life in Guatemala… but we’ll be happy to have her back in DC soon :)
Pics from our day of volunteering: http://ow.ly/4Y9R4
Pics from the rest of our trip: http://ht.ly/4Xge9
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