There are two sides to every story...

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This week has been eye-opening. After being here for nearly a month, I'm only now really experiencing the two sides of life that I had heard about. The dichotomy between rich and poor is very evident here, as I talked about in my former blog. This week I had first-hand experiences with both sides. On Monday, we visited the Popol Vuh, a Mayan museum at a the fancy, private university here in the city. We had an interesting tour with the docent, and then afterward had a little pottery activity to practice making pottery like the Maya. During this time, I had an opportunity to speak more with our docent. It turns out that she had gone to high school in America during the early 1980s in Pennsylvania at a boarding school which cost $1,500 a month! One of her classmates included the daughter of the founder of Johnson & Johnson. Obviously, she had a very privileged upbringing. She also lived in Germany for a time and married an American citizen. She listed off the dual citizenships of all of her family members, which sounded like a meeting of the European Union (she herself held German citizenship). Her daughter is currently studying English at Cambridge. From her perspective, everyone in Guatemala speaks English and she even attends an English-speaking church. It was just so interesting talking to her and getting her perspective on Guatemala, which obviously was very slanted. Most of what she said, was just the opposite of what I had experienced during my time here. I rarely encounter anyone who speaks even a little English in my day to day life here. She also held the idea that anyone can make it out of poverty if they're determined and the ones who do are the smart, hardworking ones. She has obviously never visited Zone 3, near the dump where my school is. I had heard of the elite 2% in Guatemala City who control most of the revenue, but now I had met one of them.

On Wednesday, I experienced the other end of the spectrum. The last two weeks, school has been somewhat difficult because they have random seminars with adults and those days, the kids don't come to school. Obviously they don't tell us when this will happen, so we show up prepared, and oh...no kids today. This has happened twice in the last two weeks (we're only having class once this week for this reason and because today was Labor Day so it's a holiday). Well yesterday was such a day. After spending the first two hours helping a bit in the office, they ran out of things for us to do. So the Principal suggested that we accompany the teachers into the surrounding neighborhood to talk with the parents of children who went to school in the afternoon who had not been attending school lately. We agreed to go. Last week we drove through the neighborhood, but this was different. More personal. We could smell the garbage, feel the flies buzzing around, see all of the dogs wandering the streets. We walked up the individual "houses" which were nothing more than sheet metal leaned against a small wooden frame. Some of the houses had interiors, but other did not. The last house we visited was absolutely heartbreaking. It was at the end of an alleyway, with a large wood door. When the door was swung open, we could see into the "house." It was all dirt and mostly outside, with piles of trash everywhere. The mother whom the teachers were speaking with also had three small children at her feet. They were filthy and in dirty clothes. One of the girls who was probably about four years old, picked up an old container of ice cream off the ground and started licking it. The smell and flies around the place were almost overwhelming. It was hard to stand there and think that this was their daily life. But the strangest thing was, everyone seemed happy. The kids wore smiles on their dirty faces and found some cards to play with. Even the dogs wandering around seemed happy as they hunted in packs for dropped food. I couldn't help but think about all of the spoiled children in America who whine and cry if they don't get the right toy, but here these children have nothing and still manage to find joy in their lives. It was heartbreaking and inspiring at the same time. It made it real that our students live here in this place and face these same issues. Education really is their only way out. This is a kind of poverty I never really imagined. You see images on tv or in magazines, but actually walking through the streets was a completely different sensory experience. I will never forget it. But the thing I will really take away is how people can do with so little and still find a way to not just survive, but find some joy in their lives. It makes the problems we all face seem very petty. I hope this is a lesson I can keep with me throughout my life. When I get down doing the day to day things, I will just picture that little girl sitting in the dirt smiling.

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