It is with a heavy heart I write this final entry. I miss my kids and I'm ready to go home, but not without leaving a huge chunk of my heart here in Guatemala, in the mountains and cornfields of Comalapa, in the family home that has served as a warm, cozy place for me to settle in after a long day of work, at the school where I have labored, learned, and loved in every thing I have done, and with the people I have met along the way who have all touched my life in the most refreshing, uplifting and positive way. I have thought a lot the last few days about all the volunteers who have rolled through here working for just a brief moment in time with Long Way Home. I'm not certain how many volunteers they have per year but I do know it's a fairly steady stream of individuals and at least a few large groups of 20-30 people per year. It's cool to think of all the different people who have laid hands on this project and in some small way made it a success. I have to think a small effort from millions of people and the community that is being built as a result, in the end is a greater, stronger product than a huge effort from 2-3 people. I asked Robin the other day if she ever tires of making friends with people for 2 weeks, saying goodbye, and then having to do it all over again week after week after week. I would imagine that has to be incredibly draining and she did admit that it has its ups and downs, but the one thing she can say is that the people who are willing to come spend their time volunteering for a project like this, assuredly are going to be the kind of people she is going to want to get to know. Likewise, every week or two, the construction crew has a new round of starry-eyed, eager and interested individuals with which to contend, many college aged, most trained in everything but construction and with varying levels of Spanish skills. Never once did they make me feel dumb for not knowing what to do. Never once did I sense judgement, frustration, or exasperation with my frequent lack of understanding or experience. On the contrary, they made me feel welcome. They made me feel like a part of their tight little team. They made me feel like I was truly a part, albeit extremely small, of something really amazing and radical. They made me feel loved.
This morning, Ana makes a delicious breakfast of black beans and huevos al patatas, fried tortillas, topped with fried ham and fried eggs and perfectly salted. The bottomless pit that has been my stomach for the last 2 weeks finally feels satisfied. Afterwards, I take one last stroll around Comalapa as Saturday morning gets into full swing. I head down my street toward town and the looming volcanoes beyond, past the tortillerias where the woman inside fire up their pans and their hands pitter patter the dough into perfectly flat, round discs, past tienda after tienda seemingly all the same from the outside but all with their own identities once inside, past the stray dogs, past the elderly women in full traje as colorful, textural, gritty, and well-aged as the storefronts, past the speedy tuk-tuk taxis and motorcycles carrying full families, past the crazy chicken busses, past the omnipresent roosters who I can always hear and yet never see, past the street food stands and market stalls coming to life, past the community laundry pila where the women come with wheelbarrows full of dirty laundry and babies wrapped around their body to spend the morning chatting and scrubbing their clothes. The poverty is visible, jarring, and heartbreaking at times, but the life and soul of this place is palpable. And a part of me now. I haven't run a marathon, but it feels like maybe I have. I have pushed my body until I didn't think it could go any further. And then I pushed it some more. Over and over and over again. This is really what I came here to experience. When life serves us shit sandwiches, we have to be strong and keep going. We have to lean into the fear, the anxiety, the discomfort, the unknown. We have to climb a mountain with our heavy loads until we think we can't do it one more time, and then do it again. We have to channel our inner Adelina and push through all of it with love in our hearts, regardless of the shoes on our feet. We have to lean on the people that surround us because we can't build a community alone. We have to push past the pain, because always, always there is something much greater the pain is giving way to. I am incredibly grateful to Long Way Home for the opportunity to work here in San Juan Comalapa, Guatemala. I don't know if I'll ever come back. I know I want to. If I could bring my kids . . . hell, if I could send for my kids . . . and know they would be happy, I could/would/should work here for a lot longer. Just not in construction . . . and certainly not until they get some goats to eat their grass!
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There is either a monkey or a cat giving birth literally right outside my window this morning at 515am. Omg, can someone please tell me where the snooze button is on a rooster?! These last two days I have been working with another full time female laborer at the school named Marta. Marta is just as amazing as Adelina, tireless, strong, kind, but quieter and more on the shy side. Today, Adam is giving her a long list in Spanish of things for us to do. The only thing I catch is “limpia,” which means we will be cleaning. Cool, I’m down with that, although I do know better than to think it means an "easy" day. Marta tells me to grab a machete and follow her. Machete?? Did I hear her right? I thought we were going to clean. The prospect of using a machete grabs my attention either way and I quickly oblige. We walk over to a tire staircase leading down to the guest house that is completely overgrown and Marta starts whacking away at the long weeds. Ok, now this is awesome. A machete?! Seriously?! This is what I have been missing in my home maintenance tool box for sure. Little did I know I have been weeding completely wrong all these years. I dive in machete first and lose myself in this task. Anger management supreme. An hour or so goes by and as I finish up, I notice Marta has vanished. Feeling that zen feeling that comes from a clean, manicured look, eagerly ready to take on whatever lies around the corner with machete in hand, I find Marta kneeling on the lawn in front of the administration buildings literally cutting grass by hand . . . with her machete. There goes my weed whacking high . . . tee hee. No lawn mower. Right. We’re going to mow the grass with a freaking machete. Every day at work is different, but never ever has it been easy. Like, I’m talking the most hardcore boot camp ever . . . for 2 weeks straight. I seriously have a new appreciation for the saying, “builds character.” Indeed. My character cup overfloweth at this point. Begrudgingly, I kneel down next to Marta. Just when I think my body could not possibly be stretched any further, I find some new muscle group to torment. We work on this until lunchtime and I just keep channeling my inner Adelina. So many things are on the tip of my tongue and many of them I even work out how to say in Spanish, but I bite my lip. Who am I to rain on these beautiful people with my sour attitude? I look up at Marta and we lock gazes. I can tell by the look on her face, she is tired too. I finally can’t help myself any longer and say very quietly and sheepishly, “Marta?? Es un poco loco, no??” She smiles, shakes her head and says in reply, “No . . . es muy loco!!” Ok, phew. Now, I know they aren’t actually superhuman. Close, but not. I feel a little better about my mortal abilities. Not a moment too soon, we break for lunch.
And on that topic, no journal of a travel abroad experience would be complete without describing all the different foods available. First things first, this is not a gluten-free country, nor is it vegetarian or vegan. That being said, I don’t think I’ve ever eaten as many black beans, avocadoes, and tortillas, (which ironically could maybe pass as gluten-free, vegetarian, and vegan if it weren’t for what I assume is animal lard in the beans . . . SO good) in my entire life as I have in the 2 weeks I have been here. Black beans are extremely versatile as a meal, on tortillas, on tostados, on sandwiches, and my personal favorite, spread on a deep fried plantain with sugar on top. They are also pretty damn good straight out of the can here I’ve discovered. They have a large selection of bread products in their “panaderias” or bakeries. It has become a part of my routine to stop in one on my commute to work in the morning (I pass by at least one per block) to grab some kind of bun for breakfast. The tortillas are insane. Handmade fresh three times a day at “las tortillerias” equally ubiquitous as the panaderias. If they weren’t good enough steaming hot off the large circular pan used to cook them, they also have these lovely little treats called, dobladas, a folded tortilla stuffed with potato, deep fried, and then topped with black bean spread, some kind of crumbly cheese, and a little chopped cabbage. Equally as ridiculous, their empanadas are puffy, doughy, fried donuts, covered with sugar, and filled with a warm, gooey pineapple filling. I have not skimped on eating at all because again I will say, I am mowing grass with a freaking machete . . . Of all the times in my life, I am confident this is the time I can say I’ve earned it. Day 7 of full on construction work. Luckily, I seem to have adjusted to the noises of the night here. I am sleeping much better, but the constant strain of maximum physical output is definitely taking its toll. I take a page from Adelina’s book who never stops smiling and has the most positive outlook. I dig deep. We pick up where we left off late in the afternoon yesterday to work on the entrance wall to the tire structure guest house bathroom. It consists of a framed doorway and on either side a sidelight of sorts made up of recycled glass bottles, the bottom half of two bottles taped together. To fill the spaces in between the bottles we, for lack of better word, schlop a mixture of sand, dirt, and slurry all around the bottles and sculpt the wall by hand. I’ve had a brief conversation with Robin about building codes they are required to meet here. I’m sure it’s more complicated, but it seems like anything goes. Most of the building methods they use here wouldn’t fly in the States, unfortunately. Not long after we start, Adam comes along and notices the framed opening for the door is not flush with the supporting beam above and asks us to do it again. I can’t help but feel a sharp stab of dismay at the prospect of taking down a wall we worked really hard on. Once again, Adelina lights up my life. “Es bueno, no problemo Sarah!!” I give it some more thought. Yes, we spent time and energy building something, but it wasn’t going to work no matter how much we wanted it to. In the end, it would’ve been all kinds of wonky, and just plain wrong. We start again, this time more carefully and more thoughtfully and with a little love, laughter, and togetherness by the end of the day we finish. Nosotros podemos! (This is my new motto) The wall, rebuilt properly, is now stronger, more sound, and more beautiful. This scenario feels all too familiar. Who knew construction work could be so metaphoric?? In the afternoon, a young gentleman named Julio comes up to visit. Julio is around eighteen or so and is very busy studying English in town in order to get a job in a call center. He comes up to the school once or twice a week to practice speaking English with the volunteers . . . And maybe to flirt with Adelina a little I observe. Julio wastes no time learning some new vocabulary from me . . . impeachment, electoral college, investigation, lawsuits. He is fascinated by this topic. Without going into too much detail, he tells me about some family members and friends who have tried to immigrate to the US never to be heard from again. They died trying. I cannot even begin to fathom losing someone I love dearly because they wanted a better life in a different country so desperately. I do know from experience though how easy it is to take down a wall built without care though so maybe just maybe someday will be different.
Bright and early Monday morning. I approach the school and as soon as Adelina sees me she gives me a huge hug. I needed that. How did she know?! Adam directs me to la bibliotheca which is currently serving as la carpinteria, and I take up where Jesse left off sanding some boards to be used in the guest quarters of the school. The boards are rough, dirty, and old and countless indentations give away years and years of hard use. With each pass of the sander however, a smoother, more finished layer is revealed and before long the board is ready to take its place in the intricate web of framing. It’s not perfect and many indentations still remain, but it’s beautiful and worthy of standing strong as one piece, supporting the whole. I feel a certain affinity toward the soul of this wood. Later, as I am washing up for lunch at the hose, 6-7 sixteen year old female students from the school approach me to chat. They’re adorable and eager. They seem to be politely suppressing their giggles, which I appreciate, but I’m still quite aware that I am an oddity to them. They want to know how old I am and when I ask them what they think, they say 20. Hah. You must have me confused with some of them other volunteers, ladies. But muchas gracias anyhow!! Interacting with the locals here has been one of my favorite parts of this experience. I want so desperately to photograph every single person I have passed on the street or met at school. Their bodies, their posture, their clothes, their skin have beautiful stories to tell, but somehow it always feels so incredibly invasive so I just live in the moment and enjoy to its fullest every interaction I have. Again, my Spanish handicap allows for a basic conversation, but there seems to be so much more happening in those moments. Some random 40 year old (who looks 20 obviously) in the middle of a life crisis thousands of miles from home just casually shooting the shit with a group of Guatemalan school girls in the middle of corn fields. Crossing languages, cultures, generations, countries. I guess all the magic happens at the water cooler in any country. In the afternoon, Adelina and I work together to cut some boards to length. In a short amount of time, we get straight to our respective romantic sagas. She has heartbreak to share too. Apparently matters of the heart have their own language. As I bend over to hold a board she is cutting, I notice for the first time her shoes. This amazing, extremely strong woman who is probably half my age and works her ass off, 5 days a week, without complaint in construction is wearing a pair of Asics that are about to rip in two. I offer to give her my boots when I leave. Her eyes get wide and she breaks into a huge grin. She needed that. How did I know?! When we’ve finished cutting the boards and sharing our own rough layers, she looks me straight in the eye, shaking her head defiantly and says, “Nosotros podemos!!” We can do it. Yes Adelina, mi amiga, we can indeed.
Roberto is kind enough to offer us a ride in his pick up truck for the hour and a half drive to Antigua Saturday morning. Once again, I escape the chicken bus experience. Jesse and Jaysa who both have experience riding the chicken bus assure me sprawling seatbelt-less on the rusty, wet, dirty truck bed floor down a mountain, over crumbling streets and endless speed bumps inhaling all kinds of black colored smog from other motorists is a luxury compared to the hot, stuffy, cramped, crowded and stinky chicken bus alternative. I am skeptical, but I take their word for it. We arrive in Antigua exhausted and famished, but ready to take on the larger, more developed and varied amenities of the town. We check into a hostel and pay 69 quetzales for the night which is equivalent to $9.00. I haven’t stayed in a hostel in about 20 years and I’m not too excited about it, but it’s nice to have some companions to chill with and show me the ropes in town. Jesse shows me where to drop my laundry and I pay 54 quetzales for a proper laundromat to wrestle with the heavy bag of clothes caked in dirt. The alternative is hand washing them myself in the “pila” so I shell out the $7 happily and pick them up 2 hours later. I would’ve paid three times that. Guatemalan laundry experience not a box I need to check. Antigua is the perfect place to find some killer Guatemalan coffee so we waste no time in making that our next stop. We spend the rest of the day lazily walking the cobble stone streets and shopping all the local artisan goods. In Comalapa, I have yet to pass by another white person, or “gringo” as the Guatemalans so lovingly refer to us, but here, they are everywhere. On one hand, it makes me feel just ever so slightly more at home, but incredibly thankful that is not what my experience in Guatemala has been like on a daily basis. We grab some huge burritos for dinner and some cervezas and live music at some horrible pub called the Londoner afterwards. Ironic, yes. Sitting there surrounded by British paraphernalia, third or fourth beer in, having spent the day with three people half my age with their entire lives in front of them, I start to feel emotional. Later, laying painfully awake for hours in the hostel bunk bed, listening to the never ending sounds of hostel life (our room is about five feet away from the receptionist’s desk who doesn’t stop talking or coughing until at least midnight), my thoughts catch up with me. It’s one thing when you’re pounding dirt into tires, shoveling millions of rocks, schlepping loads of wood up a mountain not to mention also taking in and trying to understand a completely different culture, but it’s quite another thing when all that distraction suddenly quiets and what remains is all of the shit you’ve left behind for a moment raining down in your brain. Hanging with twenty year olds all week has been, for better or worse, like a mirror to my past, full circle back to that moment when I could’ve made about a zillion other choices than the ones I made when I graduated college. So many things I could’ve done. So many things I could have accomplished. Where would I be now if I hadn’t done x,y, or z? What kind of impact could I have made? Would’ve, could’ve, should’ve is a bitch and nothing to dwell on, but sometimes it‘s inevitable, especially when life as I knew it for 16 years just exploded. In the morning, I say goodbye to Jaysa, Aaron, and Jesse and finally accept my fate on the chicken bus to return back to Comalapa. I’ve heard so many horror stories by this point. A large, older man almost sits in my lap (which I gather is fair game), but he finally finds another seat and it all goes way more smoothly than I expect. With the other volunteers off, this coming week I have a feeling will be much different. I feel settled now. I think the deer in the headlights look is finally gone. I know for the most part how things work and what is going on at least in terms of being a volunteer here in Comalapa at Long Way Home. The week will be little lonely perhaps but in turn more introspective. I embrace it. On the chicken bus, as the unbelievable grit of some of the larger towns gives way to lush green rolling hills and my beloved fields of maiz, I breathe a sigh of relief to return to the simplicity of Comalapa. It will be nice to get back to work.
It’s Friday. I am so thankful. It came not a moment too soon. This work is hard. Really effing hard. But completely fulfilling . . . I swear. Today’s rhythm at the site is this: fill wheelbarrow full of scrap wood, move wheelbarrow up a huge hill and down the length of the school, unload scrap wood, carry scrap wood up a steep tire staircase of at least thirty steps, hurl scrap wood to the top of a 10 ft wide x 5 ft tall pile. Repeat. Again and again and again. I couldn’t make this up. I do this from about 730 am until lunch at 12 pm. I should count how many times I push the wheelbarrow up the hill. It’s at least 30. It’s like a bizarre Guatemalan Olympic event. It’s called schlepping. In any language. And I can now add this skill to my resume. As my fellow volunteers and I are doing this, we pass by students at the school. They like to giggle at us. They don’t try to hide it either. It’s cute. Jaysa puts it best when she says, “We are just all kinds of weird to them . . .” White skin, girls doing work, girls wearing boy clothes, girls unashamedly sweaty and dirty, etc. I begin to take deep pleasure in stacking the wood just so, in the most intricate overlapping, tetris-like patterns to be as efficient as possible about unloading the wheelbarrow. This is how I engage my mind. If I sound a little loopy, its because I am. Am I to blame really?? I will say while I am completing this task, I become inspired by all of the random shapes and sizes of the wood, the non-stop breathtaking view I am looking at, and the most wonderfully creative ways they use materials at the school. An art project comes to mind that I want to complete as a gift to the school when I leave. More on that later. Today is the last day of the other volunteers’ time here. They've been really great to work with . . . bright, caring, hardworking, and supportive. I am happy for them that they have had this experience early in their lives. As for me, A. It’s a good job I didn’t wait another 10 years to do something like this and B. It has made me realize I really probably should’ve joined the Peace Corps when I graduated to figure out who the hell I wanted to be before starting a life together with someone else. I think it would’ve become a lot clearer a lot quicker. The last few months for me have been at best an incredibly rude slap in the face, but the flip side is I am certainly wide awake now. And while on some level I have known this for some time, I can be completely honest and blunt about saying out loud, the reality of my previous life was that I was never ever really going to be able to live the life I wanted to live, to really truly be the person I wanted to be in the marriage that I was in. That’s sad and I feel a certain amount of shame in not somehow being a stronger individual throughout the marriage, but the good news is it doesn’t have to be that way anymore. It shouldn’t have ever been that way and it’s not going to be that way anymore. At any rate, my compadres and I meet for dinner to celebrate the end of their time here. Huge pizza and two cervezas. I haven’t had a drop of alcohol since I’ve been here. That first sip of ice cold beer after a 40 hour work week doing construction . . . I can’t even put into words. The whole meal comes to a whopping total of about $7.80. Tomorrow, we are all heading to Antigua for the weekend.
I wake at 5:30 am this morning. I can hear Ana, the lady of the house where I am staying, fervently scrubbing a load of laundry. She told me she does it every single day. She must get up, not before the extremely gregarious roosters (that would be impossible of course since they never ever stop) but before the sun for sure. Every. Single. Day. I lay in bed for another 45 minutes, not taking for granted one extra minute I have to rest my aching muscles before the 8 hour work day starts all over again. I finally make it down to the pila to wash up. Ana is hanging the laundry to dry now with her 18 month old adorable little girl wrapped around her back, contentedly snug and supervising progress. This, I gather, is the morning ritual. I feel a sharp stab of homesickness for my littles. At the work site, Jesse and I set to work on our pathway. We fall into a nice rhythm of filling buckets of rocks, taking them down the twenty tire stairs to the house, dumping them, climbing back up the twenty tire stairs, and repeating. Once this is finished we complete the same process only with buckets of gravel for the final layer. We finish the path by school-wide snack time at 10 am. It is an incredibly satisfying feeling to have started and completed a project already. We are very proud, however I shall not get too confident because Adam hasn’t seen it yet. My girl Adelina and my boy Romero, (another local worker) say it’s “muy bien,” so for now I’m going with that. At lunchtime, 2 of the other volunteers go home vomiting from food poisoning. It’s a very common thing and we have been sufficiently warned about washing all food thoroughly with drinking water, cooking all vegetables, and eating any local meats, street food, or local restaurant fare at our own risk. I have been very conservative and still I have been battling a mild case of something, but thanks to a strict diet of bread, cereal, and noodles for the past 24 hours, my traveler’s tummy has subsided. The pale faces of the fallen volunteers raises my caution, however so I opt for cup o noodles and packaged cookies for lunch. There is something about manual labor that makes you feel famished all day long and it really doesn‘t matter what it is when you finally do eat, it all tastes good. Needless to say, cup o noodles hits the spot. We spend the rest of the day taking some wood scaffolding down. It’s an extra slow walk back into town and home today. I am spent. Absolutely spent. My back aches, my feet ache, my arms ache, my hands have blisters, there are scratches all up and down my arms from carrying buckets of rocks, there is dirt in every crack and crevice of my body and in my bra, and my clothes and hair are stiff with dust and mud. And yet, I don’t even want to think about leaving. I'm sure I haven't quite reaped all there is to sow yet. I take a different way home, down a quiet street and take it all in. The residential streets are lined with colorful ramshackled facades and occasionally a glimpse inside an open door reveals women knitting their traditional textiles, making the most amazing tortillas I have ever eaten in my life, or breastfeeding their babies. The infrastructure is beyond dilapated and yet the moments within, beyond beautiful. On every block there is at least one residence, sometimes more, that owns a “tienda” in the front of their home as well. The elderly community is so prevalent here. It kind of blows my mind. Weathered and wrinkled salt of the earth walking to work, biking with tools, running market stalls, escorting children. Completely integral to the daily landscape and so different from home. Generation after generation raise their children here and rarely does anyone leave. And if they do leave, according to Roberto, there is a legend that says a spirit will come to you in a dream and tell you when it’s time to return. They don’t have a lot in life, and to me it seems a hard life, but it’s a simple life. They have each other and they have, it seems to me, a lot of happiness as well. Today I wake up with traveler’s tummy. Bleh. That combined with a constant stream of thousands of stray dogs barking, roosters crowing, coyotes howling and babies crying trickling in and out of my dreams all night long made for a rough sleep. I do not exaggerate. During the day these sounds give way to tuk-tuks (the local taxi), horns beeping which I swear is their third language, the propane gas guy who races around town on his motorcycle with a megaphone announcing his existence and I guess advertising his gas. Although I’ve never actually seen anyone buy anything from him. Seems a strange way to do business . . . in my very American opinion of course. Oh and Guatemalan music. Always Guatemalan music playing. From anywhere, at anytime, you can hear it. It feels like the fiesta that never stops. Not to miss out on that party, I power through the traveller’s tummy and make it up to the job site. Today, Jesse and I follow Adam who is basically the mastermind, visionary, designer, engineer, and architect behind the whole joint, to work on the guest quarters at the school, which is currently serving as his home. This is a very welcome break from the “caca” shoveling (although as an aside I have to say I had gotten quite skilled at digging through loads of shit before I arrived so nothing new there. . . just saying) While I certainly had no expectation of engaging my intellectual brain while working construction here, Adam explains his vision of a sloped path and an 8” high bamboo retaining wall leading from the kitchen to the bathroom and then leaves for the day and lets us go to town. That definitely keeps us more on our toes, which is a nice change. Although I have a sinking feeling when he sees it in the morning, we may have to do it all over again since that is what happened the second day on the job. Just in case my body forgot I hated it, there is still some back breaking, endless rock lugging up and down a hill to be had. After the work day concludes, I walk into the town square area to enjoy some lovely local bread/muffin type of thing from a bakery and a coca-cola from my favorite “tienda” (a tiny convenience store) where the cute, very young Guatemalan boy who works there recognizes me from the last time I bought a coke, and attempts to practice his English with me. The local people are endlessly fascinating. In many ways, it’s like a window into a totally different day and age. The women still wear their “trajes” on a daily basis, many of them with a baby wrapped in beautiful Guatemalan textile around them or carrying some ridiculously heavy load on their heads, including but not limited to a basket of dried beans, bags of produce, and grills with hot charcoals (true story). The laundry is done by hand. In a sink. With a brush. And then hung out to dry. Only, it rains pretty much every single day so it takes weeks for it to dry. Luckily we were forewarned so I brought plenty of socks and underwear. The traditional sink for washing hands, brushing teeth, doing dishes and the laundry is a massive concrete basin called a “pila.” In the home I am staying it is in the center of the large courtyard of their home. The locals are so wonderfully friendly. They won’t say hello first, but we’ve been instructed by Long Way Home when passing neighbors on the street to always say “Buenas Dias,” “Buenas Tardes,” or “Buenas Noches,” depending on the time of day and as soon as you initiate it, they are quick to return the gesture with warm friendly smiles and a “Buenas” in return. On that note, I will say Buenas Noches for now. This fiesta is quickly turning into a siesta.
Day 2 of grueling construction work at the school. I have to find my own way this morning. It’s only a ten minute walk from where I am staying. . . that is, unless you take a wrong turn at the entrance to the school which leads you to a dozen different paths cutting through the endless fields of “maiz.” Luckily not too far in, when I realize my mistake a nice farmer passes by directs me over “la montana” on another barely passable trail that I bush whack through with my boots. I’m not sure how I made it given the pathetic level of my Spanish and how little I understood of what the farmer said, but I breathe a deep sigh of relief when I emerge from the dense overgrowth and see a familiar face, “Adelina” our construction supervisor (and also the first full-time female worker on the construction team) grinning from ear to ear, I’m guessing over my alternative entrance, and waving “HOLA Sarah!!” Later, about 5 buckets of shoveled dirt in, I am already exhausted. Only an hour has passed. We are working on a large tire wall that will serve as the exterior wall of the teacher lounge. The process goes like this: fill bucket of dirt, transport to top of tire wall, pound dirt into tire, repeat. At least 3-4 buckets of dirt get pounded into one tire. The tires buldge, but do NOT budge. Solid as concrete. The monotony of this task is broken up by the occasional mixing of 4 buckets of dry dirt, 4 buckets of wet dirt, and one bucket of manure which then gets pounded into the sugar bags and stacked like Roman arches to make doorways. Again, I feel compelled to mention, there wasn’t any information about shoveling “manure” in the reading materials! The monotony is also broken up by entertaining efforts to converse in Spanish with Adelina who never stops smiling and the radio blasting Guatemalan versions of The Police and Adele on site. Luckily, Tuesday is market day, which means we get two hours for lunch so we can shop for groceries as well and Roberto is giving us a town tour today so we get a nice long break. My lower back is screaming at me. Roberto spends a while walking us through a beautiful mural in Comalapa which apparently is the longest mural in the entire country and depicts the rich history of Guatemala. It is a long torrid history filled with beautiful tradition, but also violence, genocide, civil war and change. The take away as Roberto explains is that the change is good, but not at the expense of forgetting the past and who they are. We continue on our tour into Roberto’s studio where he sells his paintings. His father paints, both his brothers paint, and his young nephews are beginning to paint. He also takes us into his father’s studio. Comalapa is famous for it’s artists. I think Roberto said there are 450 artists or so in town. Next, we head through the market in town which is teeming with all kinds of life. More on the market scene later as I know I will want to spend more time there next week with my real camera and words. Also on our tour, we cover the dump. I tell you, this place is obsessed with trash, but as soon as we get there I realize why it’s a part of the tour. It’s literally the most beautiful dump I’ve ever seen. And yet, heart breaking that it’s a dump at all. Trash and what to do with it and where to put it is a huge problem here. That is what makes working with Long Way Home so amazing. Not only is the school amazing, but they are really committed to infiltrating the community with these ideas and techniques not only by reaching out through educating the local people, but by educating the students at their school in order to create a whole new generation that thinks of environmental stewardship on an entirely different level. It’s been this really exciting combination of so many things that inspire and impassion me . . . architecture, building, design, creativity, working with kids (with a hint of Montessori I must say), education not only in an academic sense but in a larger contextual, out in the community sense, and promoting change. I’m already contemplating how to come back next summer and also certainly having a deeper conversation about what lessons can I bring back as I embark on this next chapter in my life.
Roberto, the volunteer coordinator, picks me up in a pick up truck at 7am and tells me to hop in the back with Jaysa and Aaron. Later, I meet Jesse. All three are my fellow volunteer cohorts for the week. I trump all of them by about 20 years which I find annoying, yet comforting and endearing. We take a curvy, bumpy dirt road further up la “montana” to the top where Centro Educativo Tecnico Chixot sits with an amazing view of the village, the valley, miles and miles of more maiz, and the smoking volcanoes beyond. Robin, the outreach coordinator, greets us and begins the tour of la escuela, where we will be spending our time on construction work. The school is built entirely out of sustainable materials and it is completely amazing. Most of the structures are made of earth rammed tires, “organic bricks” which are plastic bottles stuffed with inorganic trash, and large old sugar bags filled with a combination of dirt and manure. The structures are then covered in a smooth finish of “cob” made of dirt, manure and hay and then painted. Waterproof roofs are made of plastic bottle “shingles.” Everywhere there are beautiful decorative carvings in the “cob” walls completed by various volunteers and local laborers who are extremely artistically skilled. Glass bottles are strategically located in the roof to serve as skylights. Every roof is designed to maximize run-off which is stored in an underground cistern underneath the library and then sent through an elaborate filter system donated by an American company. This system collects and stores enough water during the six month “wet” season to provide clean drinking water for the school throughout the entire year. Literally no piece of trash is left behind. It’s all used functionally, creatively, and/or placed inside the rammed-earth tires. Even human waste and urine is composted and then distributed via drip irrigation to their vegetable gardens. As stated on their website, the school along with traditional academics “offers coursework in carpentry, masonry, mechanics, electrical, welding and horticulture . . . business and technology aspects of radically sustainable construction. The project aims to foster a new group of Guatemalan students, environmentalists and entrepreneurs.” Already, I am completely in awe, but then the cutest, happiest little kids begin arriving to school and now I am in love. Our task for today included working on the teacher’s lounge under construction. Ramming tires and sugar bags with dirt. Shovelling manure. Glamorous stuff. I don’t remember reading anything about “caca” on the website. Either way, tough exhausting manual labor. But empowering. At some point during the day, a delivery of new shoes for every single student donated by a friend of a former volunteer arrived. That’s roughly 130 pairs of brand spanking new Nikes. It was like Christmas watching all these little kids run around proudly sporting their new kicks. The highlight of my day hands down was when a group of smiley little girls came to watch me while I was working and sat down to have a conversation with me. I managed to learn their names, their ages, what they like to study. They all started giggling when I told them how old I was. I’m pretty sure the other volunteers did too for that matter but I am unfazed. I am owning 40. The students go home at 12:30 so later in town, after our lunch break, we were walking back up to the school and I hear this little voice call out, “Adios Sarah!!” I looked over and saw one of the little girls from the school. Only one day here and I’m passing locals I know in the street. Totally made my day.
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