Where has time gone? I mentioned recently to some friends from home that it had been a month since I left the States. They said, wow, it feels like so much longer. I said, what?? I feel like I left yesterday. There is so much I haven’t seen, so much I still want to learn and explore and master here. How is it nearly March? And what have I been doing all this time?
Well, I worked with my first volunteer group at the end of
January. They were high schoolers from Maine, almost all girls. In them, I saw
my high school classmates, and my own teenage self. When they had to say
good-bye to the kids they’d worked with that week, emotions swept over them
like I never expected. So many tears. But I understood. I remember the first
time I felt that way, the first time I bonded with someone and then had to
leave them behind to live out the hand they’d been dealt in life, while I
returned to my world of privilege and excess. I saw those girls’ hearts
break at the painful discovery of a whole different reality than what they
had known before. I have felt that pain, and I know how it molds you. And I
know what it can do when you let it. If I had any doubts before about what I’m
doing here, that first group washed them away with those tears. This work is
invaluable.
During the same week, reality bit me, too. I experienced
my first heightened security situation in Guatemala City. In the middle of the
day, a violent encounter erupted between a local gang and the police. It was
not closeby necessarily but near enough to work that we were instructed to stay
inside for the entire afternoon (We have guards at all doors, as standard
practice). Ultimately, it was more of an inconvenience than a threat to our
safety, but the proximity of the event, and the scale of it (yes, some people
died) reminded us that the safety we feel within our building does not extend
to the community around us. Nor does it extend to our students when they leave
our building. They experience much more in this world than I would like to
imagine.
Two weeks after that memorable first group, I took the
plunge and led a group on my own. In contrast with the first bunch, this team
was comprised of some long-time “Friends” of Safe Passage, all near my parents’
age. I witnessed my favorite moments with them in their interactions with their sponsor children. Each
sponsor parent contributes a monthly donation to their chosen student’s
education, but what clearly matters most to them is this once-a-year visit. I
watched one graying team member light up after a morning playing math games
with his sponsor daughter and her tutor. Her shy smile ignited a noticeable
boost to his already cheerful composure, and that short hour was all he talked
about for the rest of the day. “She never had a real father figure,” he told
me later. “I know I’m nowhere near an adequate substitute, but…” But positive
personal interactions like this, even in small doses, can do wonders for a child. And for an aging gentleman with a big heart.
At work, I found insight and fulfillment. In Antigua, I
finally found a home. Last week, I moved, again and for the last time, to a
house that I intend to settle in. I live now in the northeast section of the city, in a
quieter, more residential-like neighborhood. I have two roommates instead of
seven, in a two-story house that includes a (frequently) candlelit rooftop
terrace. A cleaning lady named Lucia comes three times a week and has become a
joy to chat with after work. Thanks to her, I can walk around barefoot here
(the true measure of feeling at home). I can cook a proper meal and lounge on
the couch watching bootleg DVDs from the market. I can relax. I can have
friends visit and offer a comfortable place to rest. This is my place.
With Antigua as my home, I have learned a few other
norms of living here:
- Greet friends with a kiss on the cheek.
- Never expect anything to happen on time, or on the day it was scheduled.
- Learn to give and follow directions according to landmarks and estimated walking distance, not street names. No one knows the street names in Antigua. And house numbers? Good luck.
- Get used to stares and cat-calls, and try to ignore. No matter how many foreigners flood Antigua, white girls will forever draw indecent attention from local men, regardless of how modestly the girl is dressed or how long it’s been since her last shower.
- Don’t walk alone at night if you’re a woman. Guy friends know how unfair your life is and will usually walk with you as courtesy. Resist your long-engraved, self-empowered feminism and just let them walk you. It really is safer. If you’re guy, you can walk alone, but try to look passively tough while doing it. You should be wearing pants and sneakers, with a hood pulled up to cover most of your face, hands in your pockets. Eyes downward, but alert.
- When you go out, be ready to visit the same haunts, often. If you want to find the ex-pat crowd on a Friday/Saturday night, hit one of these spots: The Irish Bar, the Illegal Mezcal “café,” the salsa place, or the late-night bar. During the day, check the smoothie joint, the outdoor market, or the Ultimate Frisbee field (which is really a soccer field, but that’s not what the ex-pats are playing). On Sunday/weekday evenings, the “sports bar,” and for happy hour, the rooftop terrace bar. In most of these places, don’t bother with Spanish. The employees are probably ex-pats, too.
- Don’t wear high heels in Antigua. They don’t mix with cobblestones. This goes without saying among most ex-pats, but many Guatemalan girls have yet to get the memo. These same Guatemalan girls may be just the distraction that causes you to lose your guy friend/escort home before the night is up. Así es la vida. So who is the empowered one?
