the casual side of SG

Guatemala is considered a third world country and when I declared that I was going there for 16 days on a volunteer mission, many expressed concern. WHY? Why there? Why now?

It has been a rough couple of years running a business in a depressed economy. A roller coaster ride of wins, losses, frustrations and lessons learned. In the midst of this challenge, I realized how lucky I am. I work with a great team of talented people who I can also call my friends. I have a supportive and loving husband and a smart and snuggly 6 year old who thinks I am the coolest person on earth (for now). I love my house, I love my City and I have it pretty good.

At Studio Graphique, when we embark on a new project, we start by writing a Purpose Statement. This helps us clarify and stay focused on the project goals… it reminds us of WHY we are doing the work we do. Here is my Purpose Statement:
Rachel needs a mindset shift. She also has a desire to give back to the world in a way that is individual and profound. In this journey, she will challenge herself in new ways, and will come back with a broadened perspective and a deeper appreciation for what she has and what she can do.

To summarize the experience, I have written four short stories that share some moments along my journey that have altered me forever. They are titled as follows:
Story 1, Heaven on Earth – the experience of a lifetime climbing an active volcano
Story 2, Ascension – a challenging day of adventure in middle Guatemala
Story 3, Revelation – reflecting on the ancient Mayan civilization and their so-called 2012 predictions
Story 4, Grounding – building stoves for indigenous Mayan living in extreme poverty

If you’d like to see the photos, go here.
If you’d like to see the videos, go here.

I sincerely hope you enjoy these stories and welcome your feedback and questions.
-Rachel

Antigua from Cerra de la Cruz, Fuego and Acatenango, On Pacaya

I was not in shape. Having an acceptable BMI does not mean I can walk up my driveway without getting winded. So in December, shortly after signing up for the volunteer project in Guatemala, I joined a gym. This was going to be the first time I exercised on my own volition in my adult life. One of the reasons I chose Guatemala was because I was going to climb an active volcano. Pacaya has been oozing lava since a violent eruption in 1965 and visitors can hike about 5000 vertical feet to stand next to the floe. The peak of the cone is at an elevation of over 8300 feet, but the place to go is to a pit crater that was blown out of the side at a slightly lower elevation. It is a ridiculously dangerous and difficult climb. I had to get in shape.

I arrived in Guatemala City on Saturday and was picked up and taken to Antigua, the place that I would call home for the next 2 weeks. Antigua is beautiful – an old Spanish colonial town preserved in time and spirit by its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The city is surrounded by volcanos, both dormant and active. Fuego to the west spews smoke day and night and on one evening during my stay, even had a sizeable (and loud) eruption. Agua is directly to the south and is the focal point of the city; it has laid quiet for about 450 years. Pacaya is behind Agua and cannot be seen from the city.

On Monday, I climbed Cerra de la Cruz (Cross in the Hill), a decent hill on the north side of Antigua that tested my training. I got a C+. I made it but it was an effort. I spent two hours up there, overlooking the city and staring right at Agua. Reflecting on all the work it took me to get to Guatemala – the paperwork, the immunizations, the coordination, the anguish at leaving my husband and son – I was in tears. I made it!

Tuesday I was sore. Luckily my doc had given me 500mg Ibuprophen so I began my habit of taking it every day. In addition to the climb, you couldn’t go anywhere without walking on terrifically uneven cobblestone streets and sidewalks that twisted your calves into knots as they compensated. From my host family house in the North to Parc Central, it was a 15 minute hike. And who could go direct with so many interesting shops and nooks to explore. I’d guess I logged 5-7 miles a day.

I went to the outfitter – the one that was recommended by my volunteer project and where the guides spoke English. (The American in me was surprised at how many people in the tourist trade did not speak English. I was embarrassed by my utter lack of Spanish. Besides cheese and a bathroom, I couldn’t ask for much.) Renzo set me up with an evening tour to climb Pacaya – on Wednesday. Welp, ok.

Wednesday, I packed my Camelbak with loads of water, warm clothes, snacks, a camera and more Ibuprophen. We met at the outfitter at 4pm and loaded in the van with Oscar, our outfitter guide. We passed the poorest of homes and Guatemala’s 5 star golf course on the way to Pacaya, a 45 minute ride. We drove past tobacco and sugarcane farms and the Mayan women carrying loads on their head on the edge of the too-narrow roads.

At the base of Pacaya, we picked up our local guide, Yorkie. A 13 year old boy, still in his school uniform and oversized mens dress shoes; he was responsible for us that day. We drove a bit further up to the starting point and bought walking sticks from the local children for 5 quetzals (about 60 cents). The village was shockingly poor. A few boys were entertained by an arcade game with the words “Hi-Tech” on the side that looked like it was from 1980. The children were often shoeless, the horses were emaciated and the dogs were near starvation. In fact, most of the animals in Guatemala look like that. One dog chose to join our group and follow us up.

The first 20 minutes of the hike is very steep. The path is paved which actually makes it more difficult as rocks and dirt make it slippy. The rest of the hike is still grueling and very, very long. Oscar stopped often and shared a lot of the history, struggles and the plight of the Hormigo tree, which is the only tree used to make the marimba, the national instrument of Guatemala. New rules are in effect to ensure that this tree does not become extinct.

After 2.5 hours, about 7:30pm, we break out of the woods. We can see Guatemala City, the villages that dot the mountain slopes and a row of three volcanos in the distance including the spewing Fuego. It is sunset. Living on Lake Erie, where we have arguably the most consistently spectacular sunsets, I have high standards. It is hard to compare to standing on the top of a volcano, above the puffy clouds, looking at Mother Nature’s tens of thousands of years of creation. It was humbling.

Still not to the floe, we now begin the most trecherous and technical part of the climb… over razor-sharp igneous lava rock. The foreign landscape of black waves of rock makes you feel as if you have landed on the moon. It is precarious at best and absolutely necessary to use your walking stick as the lava is the texture of heavy styrofoam and crumbles and crunches under your feet. There is a poorly marked path that Yorkie leads us along single-file, up and down and up and down. We are the only group heading in our direction, but hundreds of people are navigating in their single-file line, back the way we came. One guy remarked, “you better hurry, it is getting dark.” I couldn’t agree more. The thought of climbing back over this in the dark was making me uncomfortable.

We finally make it to the floe and everything is worth it. We are standing next to it, above it, way too close to it and roasting marshmallows on it. It is HOT. Some people’s shoes melted. Yorkie is telling us where we can go and where we can’t and watching it move under our feet as we stand on the few cooled inches of rock above the molten river. This is one of the only places in the world you can have this experience. No insurance companies to tell you otherwise. It is up to you to not put your foot in the damn stuff.

Soon, it is pitch black and I realize that we are entirely alone. Eight of us including our two guides and two stray dogs (we picked up another when we hit the lava field). We are the ONLY humans on the planet on top of this volcano right now and we can see a glimpse of the world. The cool, moist clouds start lowering down on top of us and they are moving fast, skitting along our feet. The water vapor is reflecting the hot lava and the sky around us is glowing an eerie red. At the same time, if you look up you can see between the scattered cloudforms to every star in our hemisphere. Tears come again. Places like this exist; I exist. Thank you.

For all of Renzo’s trying, he could not get me on a trip to Tikal that first weekend. I only have two weekends here and seeing the Mayan ruins were another reason I chose Guatemala for my excellent adventure. I hung out at the coffee shop that Friday and waited for the volunteers to come back from their day in the village. Aaron told me that several of them were going to Semuc Champey. Except I had no idea what actual words he said. Nor did I have any idea what was there. But I wasn’t going to miss my chance to go somewhere so he walked me over to a different outfitter and helped me sign up (Aaron and virtually everyone else could speak at least some Spanish. Most of the volunteers had taken High School Spanish and most of the volunteers were just out of High School. Aaron was 18.)

That night, we went out to the bars and walked back to the neighborhood where the host families live. At midnight, we were sitting on the street, waiting for a shuttle to arrive. At 12:20, it did and we were surprised to see another couple already inside. The nine of us piled into the van with our stuff and scrunched into ridiculously contorted positions to attempt to get some sleep during this seven hour journey. Josué (not José) informed us that he would have the music very loud so that he could stay awake during this drive. I would have probably been less grouchy about that if I knew then what I learned on the drive home — driving in middle Guatemala is trecherous. The country is made of mountains, range after range, and they have somehow opted to never build a single bridge. The roads are generally two lanes, clinging their way up and down mountains with hairpin turns and blind passes. Guard rails are few and far between.

My contortion trick was to sit on my bent legs, a shoe and water bottle on the floor and put my head on the seat with headphones blaring in my ears. Every 30 minutes a leg or hip would fall asleep and I would have to shift my butt to the other side. I did not really sleep. I couldn’t tell if Stephanie had it better or worse… she was laying down along the door with six or eight lumpy backpacks as a bed or torture devise, wasn’t sure.

At 7am, we hit dirt and all groggily looked out the window. We were above the clouds and the sun was rising. We drove along in silence and eventually wound our way down into the valley.

The hotel was included in our 540Q ($67) as was our transportation, guides and day of adventure. Let’s break those things down. The hotel was not what I call a hotel. If they would have said cabin, I would have had different expectations and had been pleasantly surprised. Instead we got two to a room, shared bathrooms with no water pressure or hot water and a giant scary spider. The local guide, who we sort of met a few miles back when he climbed on the TOP of the van was Chris, and he was 12 years old. Morgan, my roommate, successfully smashed him in the face when she opened the van door and he repaid her by hitting on her with older-than-12-year-old comments the whole day.

All I wanted to do was lay on the bed, but we had to be back at the van in 20 minutes to start our Day of Adventure. Since we psuedo-slept the whole way and no one had talked in 7 hours, I really didn’t know what a DOA was, but I am in Guatemala, so here we go!

We enjoy an awesome pancake breakfast (Guatemala has very delicious pancakes – denser than ours) in nice little village. Then we had to drive 10KM into the heart of the valley… by pick-up truck. We clambored in and stood along the rails that were designed to keep you in and picked our way through the bumpy dirt road. Josue told us about this plant that protects you from bug bites and sun burn and picked a pod mass off a tree as we drove. He broke it open and smeared the pasty orange gunk on each of our faces tribal-paint style.

We had been instructed to wear swimsuits under our clothes and tennis shoes. The van dropped us off and we passed two Mayan children selling chocolate cookies, “coco latie? coco latie?” We are instructed to strip down and the guys in a little hut take all of our belongings. You just gotta trust for the best. I figure out that we are about to go spelunking (caving) which I have done before in Mammoth Cave, KY. One critical difference, however, is that there is water in this cave. Right before I left, there was a Man vs. Wild episode filmed in Guatemala and one of the things Bear Grylls “demonstrated” was getting through and out of a water cave. I laughed to Jason, “I won’t be doing that. No way in hell.”

So, we are wading into the water cave. As we step in, we are each handed a 6″ candle. The guide gets in front of us and starts moving into the darkness. As we walk, the water rises up our legs, and then our bodies. Finally, it hits our chest and it is cold so we are gasping and screaming (besides Aaron, the rest of us are girls.) Then, we can’t touch bottom anymore and we are swimming, one hand holding a candle out of the water and one hand paddling for dear life.

As our lined-up troupe of warrior-painted thrill-seekers push forward in the echoing glow of candlelight, the guide encourages us to climb ladders to higher reaches as water rushes down the rungs. Sometimes he wants us to go under waterfalls or pick our way across potholed pools where one wrong step plunges you into water (in my case, two wrong steps and I suffered this startling event twice). The guide, by the way, is only speaking Spanish as my fellow adventurers understand it.

We get to a dark room and the guide wants us to climb up a rock wall to jump into the deep (I hope) pool in the middle. We take turns climbing, getting our feet positioned just right and taking the leap of faith into the spot on the water where the guide is shining his head lamp. This plunge from 10 feet up in a deep and deeply enclosed cave room was terrifying and exhilarating.

After an hour or more, we emerge. Next item on the Day of Adventure: an innertube float down the Cahabón River, lazy-river style. Apparently this idyllic river changes in perceptible color and on this day it was a stunning emerald green. Deeply cut into the lush valley, it was like being in a postcard. To make it even more magical, we drift past a Mayan family comprised of a watchful father, nude and playful children and bare-chested mother waist-high in water washing clothes on the riverbank. The indigenous Maya women are beautiful, whether clothed in their traditional and brightly colored traje or hanging out on river’s edge, au naturel.

But the day is not over yet. A lunch break at a little outdoor restaurant of sorts afforded one option on the menu – chicken, spaghetti, black refried beans and rice. We ate our very fresh chicken as more chickens who’s-day-has-not-yet-come fluttered and clucked around us.

After our quick energy boost, we had more climbing to do… this time the very steep Mirador path, 2000 feet up jungle-covered cliffs. Some sections offered steps or ladders, but sometimes a particularly difficult step would have a post stuck in the ground for you to grab onto and hoist yourself to the next level. While the ascent was shorter, it was leagues more challenging that climbing Pacaya. Chris was moving us at a very quick clip up the forested mountain, which when combined with little sleep, high altitude and high humidity, added to the difficulty and compounded the exhaustion we felt.

As with everything in Guatemala, the effort was worth it and we reached a look-out platform, clinging to the edge of the jungle mountain and overlooking the spectacular natural pools. These are a series of five cascading tiers of nature-made pools, flowing with translucent turquoise mountain spring water. After a long day of adventure, this was to be our last stop. We traversed down the other side of the mountain and excitedly stripped back down to our bathing suits. After picking our way across the painful tree roots that owned every inch of the bank, we took the plunge. Chris instructed us on how to semi-safely move down each level although slipping on algae-coated rock and landing on sharp rock was common. More fun was simply sun- and water-bathing in a comfortable spot, letting the fresh water soothe our aching and bruised bodies.

That night, after a shower, dinner and a couple Gallo cerveza, I slept deeply and gratefully.

Even though morning came, our Day of Adventure was not over. We had one more challenge ahead of us before we started our 7 hour journey back to Antigua. And this challenge required not only physical endurance (including another 1000 vertical feet; there isn’t a thing you can do in Guatemala that doesn’t require climbing), but mental strength as well.

We were going zip-lining.

This is crazy. I know that we need some gravity for this task but to be 1000/1200 feet up, looking at that wire stretching 1500 feet over a valley located in the heart of a third world country just screamed crazy. They only owned 10 harnesses and there were 9 of us so we only got one guide. After some instruction, in Spanish, he linked on and coasted to the other side, leaving us to figure it out how to follow his lead. Luckily Morgan had done this once before and helped each of us hook and go.

The worst part is stepping off that platform. But holy shit it is an amazing feeling, listening to that zinging-zipping sound, flying through the air with your feet kicking the tippy-tops of trees. You have to use your gloved had to slow down as you reach the other side and Deepa had the unfortunate experience of stopping too soon, dangling over air 40 feet from the ledge where we stood. She had to climb hand-over-hand until she got close enough for our guide to grab her. Once free from the line, she shook and trembled until it was time to link onto the next line and do it all over again. I felt terrible for her.

As we worked our way down in elevation, we moved from cliff ledges into tree canopies, standing on rickety metal platforms with our harnesses attached to a wire that wrapped around the tree. Somehow this was worse for me as I looked past my shoes through the grates and imagined the visage of the metal failing and ten bodies dropping and banging against the trunk.

However, as we got lower, we got more comfortable, no longer waiting for our guide and just keeping the flow of zipping, climbing, hooking, zipping. By the time we reached solid ground, my internal power and confidence had ascended to new heights. I can do just about anything.

It took until Friday afternoon to book my trip to Tikal. The shuttle was to pick me up at 4am, just 12 hours away. It was critically important that I get to the Mayan ruins… my mild obsession with 2012 and its originations in the Maya calendar required that for this to be a truly transformative experience, I needed to feel the energy of the site where these ancient people made their life from the Heavens.

At 3:45, I awoke to my iPhone alarm and by 4:20, the shuttle had arrived. The reliability of people and processes in Guatemala never ceased to amaze me. The systems were consistently loose and seemingly disorganized, and yet they always worked.

A great example of this was my plane ticket. The only inter-country flight in Guatemala is from Guatemala City to Flores and back. It took Renzo many, many tries to book me a flight, a hotel, all the shuttles and park admission, all together. Many tries. Part of me was doubtful that all the pieces were in place. He was delighted when he got it to work and took a carbon copy book out his drawer to write me my plane ticket. Repeat, he wrote my plane ticket, in his own hand, on a piece of paper.

The shuttle drops everyone in my van at the International Airport. But not me. The driver takes me through the darkness of Guatemala City another few miles to a little door in a warehouse of a building. I take my overstuffed backpack and sit in the empty waiting area and over the next hour, it fills. To bursting. The flight crew arrives and starts directing people, in Spanish. haha. I can’t believe I am managing so well on my own in a country where I don’t speak the language, but always still on edge, wondering when I will screw up and end up in the wrong place at the wrong time, doing exactly the wrong thing.

They take my backpack, send me downstairs and we wait some more. On TV, the first TV I have seen since I arrived in Guatemala that wasn’t for sale on the black market, is news of the earthquake in Chile. It is frightening since just four days earlier we had had two in Guatemala. Small and short-lived, but there is no doubting that the plates in this area of the world are on the move. In fact, in orientation on my first day, I was duly warned by Emmy that volcanic eruptions were not the worry of Antigua, but that they were well overdue for a significant earthquake. In the likely event of this happening, my instructions are to stand in a doorway.

Finally, without any security efforts, the boarding begins and I look out on the tarmak to see three prop planes. As I follow a file of people that have the same number on their ticket as I do, I realize I am on the smallest of the three. We lift off at sunrise and I begin the most terrifying 45 minutes of my life.

Locked inside this tiny tube with 14 people, the child who held the string that dangled my plane would not stop jumping around. We swung and tipped from side to side. Having a nice view through the cockpit to the sky beyond, I would grip my seat every time I saw a cloud approaching that I knew we would enter and bounce through. I wrote an entire will in my head with full awareness that nothing would survive our crash, including my brains.

When we landed in Flores, I was medicated with the one Ativan I found in my purse and more grateful to be alive then any previous Guatemalan experience had left me.

Spotting the Jungle Lodge sign, Carlos put me off to the side and collected two more women. We were off to Tikal. We entered the National Park through a gate that I later learned to be the Mayan arch, a very ineffective angled arch that the ancient Maya used but would invariably collapse over time. We drove through the lush tropical jungle, keeping an eye out for the jaguar that the driver had spotted there some days earlier.

The Jungle Lodge was awesome. Because we were early we couldn’t check in so we dropped our bags and got ready for our walking tour of the park. We picked up this cool older couple who were dressed in a full hiking ensemble like they were straight out of a magazine. Binoculars, bucket hats, and belts with several carabinered attachments. The gentleman had had knee surgery just a few weeks earlier which granted us a truck ride into the jungle to Temple V.

Echoing the attitude that I found elsewhere in Guatemala – that you are responsible for yourself and your safety – visitors are welcome to climb virtually anything they want in Tikal. Besides the one or two temples that were deemed especially crumbly and dangerous, you were invited to journey up the stair-stepped ruins. An exception was Temple IV, the tallest and under restoration. Here, the park had built a switch back wood stair to get to the main plateau. We climbed then stood, well over the top of the rainforest, looking out at the other temples poking out of the canopy and doing our best to not look down over the edge. Oh my god, I am standing on top of an ancient Mayan pyramid!

Semuc Champey is considered a cloud forest but this is a tropical jungle. Dense with trees and vines, the wildlife knows to stay out of the path of people, but were you to venture in just a few feet, you would surely meet something that would scare the bejesus out of you. The view from above the canopy in this protected National Park really gives you a sense of the world gone wild; the world as it was.

As it turns out, Carlos is probably the best guide in all of northern Guatemala. He lived his whole life in this region and was very well read. He studies ancient Mayan civilization and subscribes to the BBC History magazine. He was going to enlighten us on the ways of the Maya and the second most accurate time-keeping system ever created by humans, next to the atomic clock. And not only is he knowledgeable, he is a great story teller and can provide context; he painted a picture of what it was like to live as an ancient Mayan.

After navigating the rocky face of Temple IV, both up and down, we rested under a tree at its base. Carlos started to tell us about the calendar. The Mayan calendar is said to predict the end of the world as we know it, the Apocalype. Countless prophets since them have also seen the date of December 21, 2012 as a moment of Great Change or of Spiritual Transistion, or sometimes simply considered The End.

Carlos demonstrated the counting system of the Maya, that is derived from a base number of 20 (as we use a base of 10 digits). Using lines, dots and shells in specific positions, these three symbols add up to the various numbers. Maya math is actually simple and elegant. These three symbols can even be found, although seldom noticed, on the modern Guatemalan Quetzales.

This exercise in Maya math demonstrated a larger point… the ancient Mayas were NOT prophets. They were mathematicians and astronomers. They studied the sky with incredible detail and devised a remarkably accurate and decidedly complex almanac that described the position of heavenly bodies and their relationships over time. And just as December 31st flips our timekeeping back to January 1st in the modern day Gregorian calendar, the extended movement of entities in the sky forced a very long calendar, called the Long Count, the equivalent of 7,885 solar years. That particular calendar is reaching its flip point in just 2.5 years.

This practical view settled me down some, but I believe (or want to believe) that the end of 2012 will still mark the transition between Ages. There are dozens of theories about what that could mean and I have read about many of them (try The Mystery of 2012: Predictions, Prophecies and Possibilities which is a compilation of essays by experts in the study) but my great hope is that it is an Age of Awakening. A moment we are working toward with the activities and gradual enlightenment of today’s humans toward a more natural and harmonic experience on this Earth.

After a more thorough tour of Tikal, with dozens of stories and revelations about life within this sophisticated civilization, Carlos gave us some options for what we could do next. We three women opted for ziplining. This time we rode wires amongst the leaves and creatures of a tropical rainforest (and much lower than the starting point for my first zipline experience). We chatted with a spyder monkey who looked at us with curiosity and laughed at our guide as he hung upside-down-backwards on his run between trees.

I was awakened the next morning by the very loud jungle life but was so exhausted that not even the real possibility of monkeys outside my door could get me to leave the comfort of my mosquito-net-wrapped bed. Once we were up and fed, Carlos took us on some more adventures before our scheduled 5pm flight. Back in the van, we drove through the sad story of Guatemala ravaged, of politicians giving away land untouched for thousands of years to poor farmers who took away the forest to plant unsuccessful farms. Not yet understanding the necessity to live in balance with the earth that sustains them, we passed mile after mile of stripped land.

Yaxhá-Nakúm-Naranjo National Park or simply Yaxhá, was actually the site of Survivor: Guatemala. Lesser known than Tikal, we virtually had the park to ourselves. On entering, we heard the most hellacious screaming sounds which incited a comical blend of fear and the feeling that Disney put speakers in the bushes to create ambiance. We soon came upon the source – warring tribes of Howler Monkeys. The second loudest animal on Earth after the elephant (although wikipedia says they are the loudest land animal), and said to be heard for 3 miles, the males were growling more than howling in the trees directly above us. It was very unnerving. Check out the video here to hear.

Being relatively alone in this archeological site was very cool. Survivor dropped something to the tune of $4 million to film here and much of that paid for the painstaking excavation of the sites. As in Tikal, you can see hills of earth and trees all around you and only on closer inspection realize that there are pyramids or other structural complexes underneath. It is no surprise these places went undiscovered for so long.

Mayan history is an interesting story of bloodshed and cannibalism and Guatemalans are still hesitant to discuss these details, as if it would somehow reflect badly on them. At the same time, racism against the modern and majority Maya is prevalent and they may have reasons to forget some things of their past. That said, creeping around their homes, seeing where they slept and worshipped and hearing stories of their rise and fall made for a fascinating day.

We found ourselves upon a site where three temples face in at each other in perfect formation and as with all temples, in perfect northern alignment. It was quickly obvious that the one to ascend was the tallest and after the first few dozen feet, I resorted to hands-and-knees climbing. This temple was different than those in Tikal as you could reach the absolute top. The base, at probably 60 feet across narrowed to a 10 foot square at its peak and we were once again well above the trees. I swelled with gratitude for being able to stand in this spot, contemplating the progression of time, of earth, of humanity as well as the possibility of an earthquake shaking me off this precarious perch. I wish I could have stayed there for hours, or infinity. Perhaps I will. I think it can be a place I take myself when I need a reprieve or a remembrance of perspective gained. It was powerful and tranquil; permanent and weathered; a place of long ago and of a newly discovered today. It was and can be home.

The GVI School, First Family and their Stove

I had a lot of adventures in Guatemala and was challenged and changed in many ways. But my real reason for going was to build stoves. Contrary to popular myth, the Mayans did not vanish – although they abandoned their acropolises when resources grew thin or fighting grew thick. Their descendants live on in modern Guatemala. Despite being the majority population, the indigenous are generally disliked and prejudiced against. The government offers them little to no aid and their children fall into the work trades at very young ages. Parc Central in Antigua is teeming with boys who want to polish your shoes and girls who want to sell you bracelets and other hand-craftings.

The primary belief of GVI, the organization I signed up with for my volunteer project, is that everyone has a right to education. Non-denominational and based out of the UK, they run two schools in Guatemala and dozens around the globe. They provide education through mixed age schooling but more importantly, an opportunity for these children to grow up and better their situation.

The two schools operated in Guatemala are in remote villages; the one I visited was a 45 minute ride from Antigua. These schools are not yet recognized or accredited by the government so children who attend here must also attend government school which is overcrowded and underfocused as an educational experience. Basically, the kids don’t learn much there.

The GVI school was not what I expected. On entering a corrugated metal door, the school is basically one large outdoor space. The center is a dirt floor and I can only imagine the mess of rainy season. Around the perimeter the floors are concrete and have make-shift roofs and brightly colored walls. It is surprisingly cheery and gut-wrenchingly sad at the same time. I had to hold back tears.

In the corner was a wire and mud coop where Elana, the resident of this village who managed the school and fed the volunteer staff, kept her chickens. The neighbors house poured smoke into the school and often choked out the staff; the children were used to it.

I was the only stover that week (we are called stovers and the work we do is called stoving) so one of the staff walked with me to my first house. I was do build two stoves that week with Caesar, the mason who designed/engineered the stoves.

You can’t go anywhere in Guatemala without climbing and this was no exception. A twenty-five minute walk from the school, we labored, in the sun, up a paved hill that was easily a 45° incline. The streets are littered with trash. Poor and uneducated, they don’t know that garbage breeds invisible things that make you ill and I don’t imagine they have pick-up service anyway. They don’t have a lot of things.

We turn off the paved road and start on an up and down, rutted dirt path. Inaccessible to anything but foot or bike, we walk down what I might loosely consider “blocks,” passing tightly packed ramshackle shacks made of what appears to be mud and found objects. We get to the place, pass through the stick fence and it is a total shock. For some reason, I expected them to be poor but tidy. This piece of property is a sloped and grassless dirt yard, with pits and potholes and one large hole that was about two feet deep by two round. There is junk everywhere – wrappers, rotten fruit, discarded shoes, broken toys. Four small and scraggly chickens peck at the dirt.

The house is barely a protective structure. The walls are made of mud and stone and the floors are the same pitted dirt as outside. There are two room, a kitchen and a bedroom. There is no door to the kitchen and no furniture except for a small shelf that any American would have taken to the curb. The pots and dishes are stacked against the exterior wall with a boot intermingled in the pile. The sink is outside.

The bedroom does have a door and from what I can tell, just two beds. This family has three boys, ages 4, 6, and 8 that go to the GVI school and the mother is pregnant with number four. They are not allowed to take birth control.

Families who send their children to GVI earn a stove. The better the attendance of the children, the sooner you earn a stove. Since education is not highly valued, this is the incentive to get kids to school. These families, living in extreme poverty, often cook within the home with open fires. That was the case here. In the center of the kitchen was a pile of wood with a metal grate over top and black greasy char climbing up the walls and across the ceiling. This same gunk is in their lungs. Since mothers do the cooking, they go blind early, die young and have terrible respiratory problems their whole lives. Children also inhale this poisonous smoke and are frequently burned by the fire. But this is not why these people are grateful for their stove; they do not necessarily understand the correlation with their health issues. They are glad because Caesar’s stoves are efficient, using 70% less rain forest wood, thereby costing them less money and labor to collect it.

This family’s house was so small that we had to build their stove outside. Caesar had already prepared the earth flat for the footprint and had started laying the cement block. I was to saw bricks, by hand, and then soak them in water. Since the family had to collect the water from some remote location unknown to me, it was something of a precious resource. We used the same water for all of our work and it grew horrifically filthy by the close of day two. I am a baby about doing the dishes and yet I immersed my arms in buckets of this stuff in order to provide this family a stove.

I spent my two days here sawing, mixing concrete and a mud-based gloop, and packing cement between Caesar’s laid bricks. Midday on day one, mom gave us snacks and lemon-lime soda to drink, with cups from the side of the house. This was more than they could afford but a gesture of their appreciation.

I took great care to make a beautiful stove that would live with this growing family for the next 20 years and Caesar takes great pride and care as well. It is fortunate that I live with a perfectionist home-project architect husband because I worked very well alongside the perfectionist Caesar. Despite the language barrier, we could communicate enough for me to do my work. And quickly too… a stove normally takes 2-1/2 days and I did each of mine in two.

Guatemala experienced two earthquakes in one day while I was there. The first was at 4:45am and I was asleep. When you are not accustomed to them, it takes a moment to figure out what is going on. It feels like the motion is coming from within you. While it woke me up, it was over before I knew it and I half-slept until I needed to rise at 6. The second occurred the same day while I was sitting on the bare ground, sawing bricks. The poor house shook and shifted while our stove-in-progress stood firm. It will likely outlast their only refuge from the beating sun and pouring rain.

In addition to this contemplative thought, the earthquake scared the shit out of me. We were in this tiny fenced in yard, working next to a corrugated metal roof that would easily slide off the house and decapitate or otherwise slice me in two. I spent more than a few minutes figuring out where I would run to should another one hit. The scrappy electrical wires crossing the yard limited my options.

On completion of the stove, Caesar spent 15 minutes explaining proper use and care of their new appliance. He must have also explained that they could not use it for 3 weeks until it cured but I did not find that out until later. That would drive me crazy, but I suspect these folks have more patience than North Americans. They actually have a lot of qualities that people in the US have lost.

I meet these three boys, with nothing to do, their mom away half the day, their dad in the fields. They have one outfit apiece – secondhand clothes with superheros on the shirts. No toys, a tiny sad table to do their homework and little food; certainly none nutritious. They live in extreme poverty. And yet, they were happy. All of them. The mom, looking older than her years, smiled as we worked, content to sit in a chair and watch or walk her boys to school up and down that tragic hill, expectant stomach protruding. Dad, who I met on day two was youthful and grateful, nodding at Caesar and smiling at me. I honestly do not think it was only a happy day because they got a stove. They had shelter, each other and enough. They weren’t in want and therefore they were happy.

Coming home from Guatemala, I was overwhelmed with our misery. We are angry about everything and it’s everyone else’s fault. There is a 6 minute segment on the news bitching about potholes in the city. We are suing and hating each other and are often just not very nice. We have little sense of community or appreciation for what we’ve got. In many ways, it was a harder adjustment coming back than it was going there.

This experience gave me a chance to see how life can be and how we can be within it. A little effort can make a big positive impact on someone’s life and a little more can alter the course of our world. We all could use a little grounding and I hope my experience inspires someone to do something for someone else, no matter how small or big. I have learned how to be the change I want to see in the world and my mission now is to live it, to share it and to pass it on.

Thanks for reading. Hasta luego, mis amigos!