“By tomorrow, you will have a new family.”

This is what my driver told me Sunday night, on my first ride to Antigua. After a long day of flight delays and hanging out in the Houston airport, I finally made it to Guatemala and arrived at my homestay just in time to pass out in the room they so wonderfully prepared for me.

I am living in the home of a couple, Jose and Lucky (pronounced, Loo-key) Morales, which turned out to be more of a mini-hostel – at least six other international travelers occupy the place. This is to my liking. I do not feel like a stranger interrupting the family’s daily routine. I feel like one of many guests who support their business and enjoy their hospitality. Jose laughs a LOT, and Lucky is sweet, motherly, and a fabulous cook. (Photo = the street the house is on, with a view of one of Antigua's surrounding volcanoes, called Agua - I think)

Yesterday was my first day with Camino Seguro (Safe Passage), and I couldn’t help but think back to Camp Lakewood. In my many years as a counselor there, I was a veteran camp person. I returned every summer and immediately rejoined a long-established circle of friends. Brand new counselors took time to find their place there, and we veterans took time to see them as “camp people” like ourselves.

On my first day, I got a taste of how that felt. I met a troop of about fifteen returning Camino Seguro volunteers, who hopped on the bus, eagerly greeting each other, chatting about work and recounting recent weekends together. They welcomed me and two other newbies warmly, and I have no doubt that I will soon find my place in this Camino Seguro family, but I know it will take a little time. So things go.

With my rookie counterparts, I got a mini tour of the site in Guatemala City, including office/admin building (“Casa de Hogar”), educational reinforcement center (“CRE” for the Spanish acronym), and preschool (“Escuelita”). Highlights included sitting in the warm, sunlit garden of the CRE for lunch, and assisting one of the preschool classes. My office is located inside the preschool, and I was advised to take a break every now and again to spend time with the kids. “It keeps you grounded,” said Leigh Ellen, whose job I am essentially taking over. It reminds you why you are ultimately here.

Why we are ultimately here... Well, you can read the official description, but on day one alone I experienced a great reason to be here. The three-year-olds in the classroom I visited were practicing writing their names. Each child was given a paper with his or her name at the top and told to write it fifteen times. One little boy, concentrating so hard that he poked several holes in the paper, got to fifteen and asked to write more. He practiced writing his name until well after all his peers had moved on to other distractions (as three-year-olds do), and each time he finished the name, he held the paper up to show me. I would say, yes, perfect, that’s very good, and he would return to the page to repeat it. A kid that diligent, even so young, already has the mindset to go way beyond the conditions in which he’s living. We're here not only to provide him the skills he needs, but to show him the support and respect he may not experience elsewhere. This boy is worth something, and with Camino, he will grow up knowing that.

Where DID I Put My Passport?

Last night I bought a ticket to Guatemala. I will be leaving the country for the first time in over 18 months, and it is about damn time.

If you know me at all, you know I don't stay in one place for very long. Travel, especially international travel, is among my top passions in life. When I go to catch up with someone I haven't seen in awhile, almost as common as "So, what's new with you? What have you been up to?" is the question, "So, do you have any travel plans coming up?" It's the equivalent of my asking my best friend the music buff and former tour manager if she's seen any good shows lately. The answer will be yes, because just as travel is my passion, music is hers.

For a long time now, my answer was a downtrodden "No." I have had to accept my adulthood with a heavy dose of reality. There are student loans to pay, insurance, credit scores, and a budding career to think about. No more are the multiple part-time jobs through which I save just enough money to blow on an island excursion. This is growing up. This is responsibility.

But. What good is a life without passion?

Thus, in this next phase of my life I have to find a way to combine responsibility with risk, the "real world" with my dreams. I have sought out the advice of others who I believe have done so, and I have searched for opportunities that appear to put me on the right path. And I have landed here, with a ticket to Central America scheduled to depart in one month.

On January 13th, I begin a position as a Support Teams Coordinator for Safe Passage (in Spanish, Camino Seguro), a non-profit that runs an Educational Reinforcement Center, Early Education Program, and Adult Literacy Program in one of Guatemala City's most disadvantaged neighborhoods. I will coordinate volunteer groups who come to Safe Passage for a week at a time to do service projects with the students.

This job is perfect for me, in almost every way. Not only will I continue to develop professionally (read: build that resume), but I get to incorporate everything that I love: international exchange, child/youth development, Spanish, and volunteer service (while on the side, entertaining a healthy internal debate on the strategies of "voluntourism" vs local, grassroots development). I feel, in short, that this is an excellent fit. While I'm sad to leave and once again distance myself from friends and family, I am beyond excited about what's to come.

I will write here, as I did before, to keep everyone updated on my experience, and to record the memories that I will undoubtedly wish to look back on later.

I can't believe it's really happening. But here we go.

Returning to Our Lands (Please watch!)

Four months after returning to the States, it's easy for me to forget a lot of what I experienced last year. Fortunately, yesterday I found this video on a friend's facebook wall. It features the communities I visited in Colombia and explains their situation probably far better than I ever have. The places shown here are still fresh enough in my memory that watching this video puts me right back in them. I remember details of being there that I thought had long escaped me, like the feel of the air, the taste of the coffee, the way some people laughed, the wrinkles on their faces. Many of the speakers in the video were people I worked with directly as well, and I know they speak on behalf of hundreds more. They tell their stories with the hope that someone will listen and actually care, that their struggles won't go unnoticed in the wider world.

Which is why videos like this, small and short as they are, are so important:
Returning to Our Lands

I'm so grateful for this reminder of a place and people close to my heart!

The Colombia Finale

Hard to believe, but I’m finally home in Saint Louis. But before I get going in the new year, I’m putting the travel log, and Colombia, to a close. For now.

My last two weeks in Colombia were like another round of the Amazing Race. First, a trip to the upper Caribbean coast, not too far from our adventure to La Guajira. Two co-workers, Melissa and Candice, and I began with a few days in La Jagua, a small town overrun in recent years by large coal mining projects. Picture the movie October Sky, except Jake Gyllenhaal and all his friends are black/hispanic and live in the tropics. Days were filled with meetings about the mines’ contaminating the environment and monopolizing the job market, discussions on the richness of Afro-Colombian culture, listening to A LOT of Vallenato, and eating every meal possible at our favorite roast chicken restaurant/fruit juice stand/bakery (Jugo de nispero = wow).

We moved then from La Jagua to Santa Marta, this time feeling more like tourists. Of course, the dead body (read: shooting victim) on the sidewalk in broad daylight a block from our hotel didn’t make the best first impression, but since we aren’t drug addicts or thieves, we were told, we needn’t worry about such things. By the afternoon, everyone was pretending the guy hadn’t even existed. Eerie. But we knew they were right about us. On the coast, tourists aren’t the ones getting shot.

We took advantage of our open schedule to catch some sun on the beach. Relaxed under a palm tree, took a dip in the warm Caribbean waters, and one by one got conned into buying ice cream and potato chips for this little six-year-old who was clearly an expert in the art of acting cute for money. She also turned my legs into her own personal sandcastle masterpiece and “taught” me to count in Spanish. Her grandma and brother were soda vendors somewhere nearby, she said. What a life. Anyway she got her ice cream feast, and later we got our own feast in the form of some amazing seafood. For once, a pretty legit vacation.

We pampered ourselves in Santa Marta because we knew the roughest part was yet to come. After a few days, we left for Urabá, essentially the opposite of a tourist attraction. Although probably the most beautiful of anywhere we’d been, the region is extremely rural (primarily banana growers), extremely difficult to travel in (muddy, uneven dirt/gravel roads, traversable only by motorcycle or Jeep Wrangler-esque Russian WAS), and above all, still a hotspot of heavy internal conflict. Not a place to wander haphazardly around taking photos and speaking broken Spanish. But we came not as tourists, but to visit the communities that we accompany there.

The history here, very basically, is that the people we work with in Urabá (most of them Afro-Colombian and indigenous) previously lived on this land for generations and generations, as simple farmers. Until, in more or less the 80’s and 90’s, they were forcibly displaced by the conflict (paramilitary and guerrilla violence). They left for several years, wandering the country and finding work where they could. While they were gone, large companies, most with close ties to paramilitary groups, took over the land and replaced the former collective farmland and vibrant forests with agricultural megaprojects (lots of cattle ranches and palm and banana plantations). In recent years, however, the land’s original inhabitants and rightful owners under Colombian law, a.k.a. our partners, have returned to live on their land again, as they had done for centuries before the conflict. But confronting the big businesses that moved in in their absence, as well as collaborating paramilitaries, puts them at high risk of violent backlash. To protect themselves and their land, they have established what are called humanitarian zones – civilian-only communities recognized under international law – and biodiversity zones – established to preserve and cultivate the area’s traditional plant and animal life. So, we came to accompany these zones, to learn of the people’s situation, and to raise their profile, to show that they continue to receive international attention.

We first visited two zones in the more jungle-y Jiguamiandó region of Urabá, both accessible only by skinny wooden canoe. We spent our days traipsing around in big rubber boots, checking in on families and community leaders, and fending off a constant barrage of relentless biting insects. Most eventful experience was a run-in with a few Colombian military, who appeared out of the woods one day (NOT a normal occurrence) and called out to our boat from the riverbank. I did not appreciate the proximity of the guy’s assault rifle to my face, and no one appreciated the unprecedentedly strange questions he was asking, or the soldiers’ oddly shabby uniforms, but eventually they sent us on our way. Have a nice day…

The most important part of the trip, for me, came last, when we finally made it to the Llano Rico humanitarian zone, in the Curvaradó region. This was the community we helped establish during my trip to Colombia in March, but I couldn’t believe how much it’d changed. Their yucca fields, mere dirt before, had grown up taller than me, what was once a ditch was now a small man-made pond, they’d begun raising chickens and pigs, and they had even wired in electricity. Not to mention how much all the kids had grown, too. We sat and talked with Guillermo, who founded the zone, about the death threats recently made against him and the rising numbers of armed groups in the area. His wife welled up in tears describing her fear for his life, meanwhile her 2- and 4-year-old are in the background, running barefoot through the banana trees, laughing these adorable, carefree little laughs. It was the most bittersweet picture you could imagine, a perfect manifestation of the crazy reality they live every day. I will never forget it.

In a way, what I saw in Urabá was just what I saw in Santa Marta, in the Candelaria and all over the country. It’s simultaneously beauty and horror, devastation in paradise. It’s fascinating, sometimes depressing, and above all, quickly changing. I can only pray that in years to come, Colombia will change for the better.

Keep on the Sunny Side, Always on the Sunny Side

I have never seen so much rain in my life. President Santos declared a “state of calamity” for nearly the entire country for how much it’s been raining here. It never stops. Even just when you think maybe, maaaybe it will stay clear today, you feel that first drop. Shoot me.

Yesterday I ran into Raz, my Israeli neighbor who I hadn’t seen since he got kicked out of the house across the street because his dog “bothered” other tenants. He told me he’s leaving Bogotá. Me too, I said. And he’s like, yeah this place will pull on you like that. And I said, yeah, it really does.

The thing is, the Candelaria is a mixture of beautiful and disgusting. Every day I open my door and I’m surrounded by these gorgeous old buildings, so colorful, with the mountains towering over them, clouds here and there (or sometimes everywhere). But well, then I keep walking, and the whole place is scattered with dog crap and homeless people and addicts with glue still dripping from their noses who rip open every trash bag they can find looking for food. Sometimes you can track them by the trail of trash they leave. And my neighbors, they are wonderful, warm, friendly people who have always taken care of me. But they are almost all coke addicts. The foreign ones, mostly, not many of the Colombians. The Colombia=cocaine stereotype can be really offensive because it’s usually the foreigners who are using the drugs. But regardless, the drugs change everything; they change relationships, and it’s hard to watch.

Two of my favorite neighbors, who have also left now, were this old Iranian couple, Mo and Rita, who said they saw the same problems in Iran with opium and they do here with cocaine. They would make me and Andres coffee every day and we’d listen to their stories. They had traveled literally all over the world and had fascinating stories, like one about getting stuck in a tempest-sized storm for three days in like, slave ship conditions on this boat in the Philippines. They also said Iran has one of the most generous cultures in the world, and I should visit.

Mo also once lived in Kansas City, and loved it. He was always telling me what a great time he had there, and how pretty Missouri was. And he’s right, of course! Never hurts to have an extremely seasoned world traveler give your homeland so much praise.

I have definitely been homesick here. Especially on Thanksgiving last week. Of course we got together, all the gringas and some unknowing Colombians, and we cooked A LOT and ate A LOT and rounded off the night with Christmas music. It was lovely, but it was not the same. I’m so looking forward to being home for Christmas.

Until then, though, I’m soaking up as much of Colombia as I still can. I’ve been working hard at my internship and dancing hard on weekends. Slowly discovering I’m not such a terrible salsa dancer. And still unable to shake the light-haired, blue-eyed, bright-neon-light-that-says-hit-on-me-i’m-a-foreigner curse. But at least it’s entertaining.

Finally, today I’m leaving on a two-week adventure with my co-workers to visit a bunch of communities that we work with. First, a week on the upper Caribbean coast, near Santa Marta. The region has a long history of violence + the rape of its natural resources and native populations, often involving the banana industry and now coal and gold mining. But it’s really beautiful. After that, it’s off to Uraba, southwest of Santa Marta but northwest of Medellin, to visit some more rural communities in a more river/jungle landscape. Also a long history of violence and exploitation. Also extremely beautiful. Because that’s what this country is – extreme beauty mixed with extreme wretchedness. You just always have to look on the bright side.

For example, with all this rain, I’ve seen a ton of rainbows. =)

I might as well be on the Amazing Race

Two weekends back now, budget travel landed me on three overnight buses, two muddy pick-up trucks, and one stiff bed in a Colombian whore-tel. But with the money I saved, I got to fly. Worth it.

Andres and I began the adventure with an 18-hour night ride to Santa Marta, a town on the coast, where we hopped buses to Riohacha, the center of transport in La Guajira, Colombia’s northernmost state and “the edge of the world” according to my Lonely Planet guide. After Riohacha, buses weren’t an option. Transportation method of choice instead involved piling into the back of a truck with maybe ten other people, various canisters of water and gasoline, and several other unknown packages. At least we avoided the truck with the goats.

Five hours of bumpy, muddy road later, we arrived in Cabo de la Vela, a remote costal town under the jurisdiction of the indigenous Wayuu people. Pleasantly void of the typical commercialized tacky boardwalk and everything that accompanies a beach vacation spot as we know it. The normal form of accommodation in Cabo is a three-walled hut-and-hammock get-up fifty feet from the waves, but since it rained monsoon-style the ENTIRE time we were there, we splurged for the fourth wall + bed deluxe combo.

Despite the unfathomably unfortunate weather, we did get to talk a little hike through some spectacular scenery. La Guajira is sort of a phenomena – a desert on the Caribbean coast. So picture bright blue seas, giant seashells, peaceful waves, adjacent to crumbly brown earth and sparse, spiky vegetation. Even flooded with so much rain, it was beautiful and unique.

Leaving Cabo wasn’t easy. Not because we didn’t want to, because we almost literally couldn’t. The storm nearly locked us into town, turning the road – there is only ONE road – into a virtually impassible two-foot deep river. But we found one brave driver willing and able to take on the mission. The man was a pro. Miles upon miles of muck, and we only got stuck once.

As if being cramped in the back of a truck for six hours wasn’t enough, we kept going: 1 hour taxi, 3 hour bus, half hour taxi, 15 hour bus, 15 min metro, non-stop all the way to the first cheap hotel we could find in Medellin. We were aiming for a whole new scene, and that is exactly what we got. Only after we accepted a room key and paid that night’s stay did we explore the neighborhood to find that we had comfortably settled amidst a plethora of whores and other sketchballs. We were warned not to wander about after dark. But what else is new.

Outside of that neighborhood, and actually within it if you overlook certain flaws, Medellin was pretty cool. Instead of mountains on one side like Bogotá, Medellin is surrounded by them, making for an amazing view from all angles. We made sure to check out all things paisa (the term for people from Medellin and the region around it): the Pueblito Paisa (tourist trap, but cute), the Plazoleta Botero (really cool sculptures by one of Colombia’s most famous artists), the Parque de la Luz, and another famous work, Monumento a la Raza by a guy named Betancourt. And of course, those were only a fraction of the options.

The best, best, best, part of the whole extended weekend, however, was our introduction to the world of parasailing. Bought a ticket, hiked up on a hill where two tandem pilots were waiting for us. They strapped us each into a chute, strapped themselves to us, and instructed us to run off the side of the cliff. It was the best thrill I’ve ever had – the closest thing to flying I think you could possibly feel. We were alongside the birds, swooping over waterfalls and bright green pastures. Amazing. I’ve found a new hobby.

We could have stayed in Medellin a few more days, but time and money drove us back to rainy Bogotá. It is still raining to this day. Now, Andres has left, and I’m back to work, taking videos, translating, keeping up correspondences, and always meeting someone new with a wonderful and worthy cause. I only have one month left now to finish my projects and see what more I can, and I plan to make the most of it.

The Dead, the Living, and the Living Dead

This week was the Day of the Dead, in Mexico. Colombians, however, are more into Halloween. Either way, my experiences of the past couple weeks have allowed me to remember some long-dead Colombian inhabitants, and to experience the country’s ever-fantastic life and spirit.

Took a hint from the Bogotanos two weeks ago and got out of the city, to Villa de Leyva, a small colonial town/popular weekend getaway. Besides its cobblestone streets, wonderfully-preserved 16th century town square, and rows of simple white, clay tile-roofed shops, the town is known, of all things, for fossils. In prehistoric times, the area was covered by ocean, and to this day it’s wrought with fossils, homes are adorned with them, and you can of course see the best ones in museums. The guesthouse we stayed in – I went with Andres – even had one randomly embedded among the stones in the courtyard.

We passed the weekend wandering the streets, embarrassing ourselves trying to fit into a truly talented Saturday night salsa crowd, and falling into tourist traps. We saw what’s know as THE fossil – huge skeleton of some monstrous sea-dwelling dinosaur, a rare find, so we were told. Also checked out a ritual site of the area’s ancient inhabitants the Muisca people. Spanish missionaries named the place “El Infiernito” or “Little Hell,” in an effort to make people afraid of pagan worship. Consists of several stone pillars lined up, which created a sort of calendar for the people to keep track of the growing seasons. It’s advertise as “Colombia’s Stonehenge,” and coming in with that level of expectation, we were disappointed. But take away the comparison and it’s pretty neat. Even more amusing to me were the other ancient remnants surrounding the Infiernito – dozens of 5, 6, 7 feet high, crudely-sculpted, upright-toward-the-sky penises. How could you not giggle at least a little? The Muisca people followed a cult of fertility, hence the statues. For worship, and rituals. But come on. They ought to rent out Colombia’s Stonehenge for bachelorette parties.

Besides a bunch of really old rocks, we got a look at the natural beauty around Villa de Leyva. Saw the Pozos Azules (“Blue Wells”) – amazingly bright blue pools, super out of place in their dry, rocky setting. A thousand times more wonderous though was El Sanctuario de Flora y Fauna de Iguaque, a nature preserve/true fantasy land. Literally a site of mythical beauty. The standard hike – NOT an easy one by any means – takes you up a mountain on a steep, slippery, muddy path, first through thick, wet jungle, until you emerge into the drier, rockier, elevated landscape. But a landscape unlike any I’d ever seen, covered in shallow, pale greenery, with the oddest plantlife, the strangest flowers. And the mountains all around you, farms in the distance below but so far away it seemed they weren’t even connected to this place. If that feeling weren’t enough, the end of the trail brings you to the Lagunas de Iguaque – a series of lakes where Muisca legend says human life originated. It was easy to see why they thought there were gods here. The flowery, plant-covered cliffs dropping to the water’s edge, thick white mist billowing over the tops of them and falling down on us, the peaceful quiet. It really felt magical. One hundred percent worth the hike.

Got back to reality, and then back to Bogotá just in time to throw something together for Halloween. Although head-to-toe costumes were hard to find, street corner wig/animal ear vendors had popped up all over the city, and we went with a Nightmare Before Christmas getup – super fun. Nearly got run over by a parade of zombies Friday night – they terrorized sausages stands and even stormed the transmilenio, stopping it in its tracks. Brilliant. Saturday night was the big party, though, the full costume event. Like in the States, bars and clubs are a nightmare, super crowded, hard to get into, and mad expensive. We went with a party bus option – flat rate, cheap booze, and automatic transport and entry into 4 different places. Madness. Departing from the Candelaria, our bus was mostly a hostel crowd, internationals going nuts on rum/vodka/tequila shots, and the bars of course were what you would expect: lights, loud music, scores of drunks dancing and screaming. We couldn’t have had a better time.

And life couldn’t be more wonderful. =)