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Published: December 12th 2007
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As soon as I got off the bus from Xela, I went to go find the school where I wanted to try my luck at teaching English. One of the kids at the school led me to Oseas' house, who was the contact I got in Xela from a friend. I found Oseas and he filled me in on the situation at the school. Basically, the government wanted to tear down the school (which is built adjacent to a small market) to expand the market which would supposedly bring in more tourism and money to San Pedro- a decision in which the town would vote on Sept 7. He said the school receives no funding from the government and is run entirely by volunteers- and desperately needs English teachers
(anyone reading this feel free to write me a message if you are interested in volunteering). If the school were to be demolished, the kids would have to walk 5 km all the way across town to an understaffed school in a dangerous area of town. He said they were in the process of fighting to keep the school in place to oppose the construction of the market. Every night teachers and
town residents were sleeping on the hallway floors of the school in order to protest against constructing a larger market in its place. I told him I really wanted to help out with "la lucha" (the fight) and was willing to teach as many English classes as I could.
Oseas offered me a couch to sleep on in his family's house for free and gave me the option to stay with his aunt's family as they would feed me and give me a place to stay for the week or of course I could sleep in the school with the protesters. I opted to stay with his aunt for $10 a night after seeing what a nice place she had, but I think smelling her home cooked meals was really what won me over. Oseas also gave me a copy of his favorite book- El Senor Presidente- by Miguel Angel Asturias (a Nobel prize winning Guatemalan author) and offered to help me with my Spanish if I ever wanted it. I felt extremely welcomed and was overwhelmed with the hospitality that is so common in the Guatemalan culture. So that night I went with Oseas to check out his
futbol game and then tried to prepare for my first teaching experience the next morning.
The next day I taught about five classes of varying age groups. As I went over numbers, colors and basic conversation in English I quickly realized that the toughest part of my job was acting as a police officer for the younger kids (5-10 year olds) as they would climb up on their desks or hit each other while I was trying to teach. I found it much easier to teach the teen and adult classes as they were much more interested in learning a new language. It was probably helpful that San Pedro was such a large gringo tourist destination so at least they knew they could apply their English skills with the gringos that came around. Teaching was such a rewarding experience as I would often see some of my students around town yelling things at me in Engish that I had taught them in class.
Teaching was such an amazing experience and I would recommend it to anyone looking for volunteer work in Guatemala. I learned that the average teacher in Guatemala earns about $1.50 per hour long class- this
being a salary in a good private school assuming the teacher has excellent qualifications. There is no doubt that the cost of living in Guatemala is extremely cheap and a single person with no children could probably find a way to scrape by on about $8 per day but the average Guatemalan has more than a few kids that he must feed. I think one of the hardest parts of my trip is answering people when they would ask me how much money I made as an engineer back in the US or how much my plane ticket to Mexico was. Few people in Guatemala could even begin to fathom coming up with $300 for a plane ticket or even going by land through Mexico to enter the US (and I had met a few who had done this). You quickly gain a new found appreciation and have such a greater sense of gratitude towards the things we often take for granted. The only possible way I could answer this question was by saying that I had worked extremely hard to save the money to travel to their country and that finally getting there has been like a dream come
true due to how much I have learned from their people.
One of the nights I attended a political rally called a "fonduha" in support of keeping the school in place. They had music and games in between the political candidates' speeches on how they were going to make the pueblo a better place to live. One of the games was a banana eating contest and my friend Jose got called up to participate against another town resident in front of a crowd of about 500 people. Once he was full he signaled for me to come up and help him out so I ran out to finish his last three bananas so that he could be crowned banana champ. Afterwards, I could not help grabbing the mic and shouting "estoy muriendo de hambre, dame otro banano, estoy tan flaco!" (I am dying of hunger, give me another banana, I am way too skinny). Great times!!
For those of you wondering whatever happened to the school, the market proposal never came to fruition due to opposition from school supporters!! Ganabamos la lucha!!
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Sheena
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What is the name of the school?!
Hello! I found your article while looking up volunteer opportunities online. I am currently in San Pedro and I'd love it if you could email me and let me know the name of the school so that I can get involved? Thank you!