During the Fall of my freshman year of college, I was given the opportunity to go on a trip through Lander University for mostly education majors to Guatemala. At first, I was hesitant. I wasn’t sure about the money or about traveling out of the country for the first time with a group of people that I would barely know by the time we went. Over the next couple months, my Teaching Fellows advisor, who is in charge of the trip, convinced me to go. I filled out the application, went to the meetings, and started making my payments. Starting in Spring 2016, the other seven students and I attended meetings to discuss what we read in our Guatemala Reader a couple times a month and we started to get excited about going. I still had no idea what to expect. Two weeks away from my friends and family while speaking another language seemed a little scary at the time.
As soon as we got off the plane and spent a couple days walking around Antigua and in the surrounding countryside, I knew I was in love. The people of Guatemala have such kind and humble spirits. I got to know so many awesome people and I can’t put into words how blessed I am to have experienced them. After the first week, speaking and communicating in Spanish came easier than speaking in English almost. Also, the need to survive made ordering food and asking for directions a huge incentive to want to learn! Once we went to the school the first Tuesday, I knew how much it meant to myself and to the children at the school that I was there.
This trip and this country changed my life in so many ways. Every single day since I got back, I think of the beauty of the country and the people in it and I can’t wait to go back. I can relate a lot of things in my daily life in the United States to something that impacted me while I was in Guatemala. Over my next few posts I would love to share some small stories that changed me and my view of things.
The purpose of the trip was to volunteer our time in a local school that is run by a non-profit organization called the Phoenix Projects. The organization was started in Guatemala by Dom and Doreen. They want to help children become educated, feed the students’ families and give them employment opportunities. They achieve these goals in many ways that I am still learning about. Not only do they have schools in Guatemala, but also in Honduras, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Peru. For our trip through Lander University, we volunteered our time for two weeks in May of 2016. Our home base where everyone slept and shopped was Antigua but our school was about a thirty-minute drive to the small village of Santa Maria de Jesus.
Every day in the United States we waste a lot of water. Whether it be taking a really long shower, letting the water run while we brush our teeth, or dumping a bottle of water out somewhere, everyone is just a little guilty of this waste. My experiences in Guatemala made me reflect on whether I needed to take that long shower or whether I need to put so much water in my water bottle if I know I won’t drink it all.
The two biggest reasons for my reflections and change in my lifestyle are that students in the class I helped in only got one little mouth full of water to drink the whole time they were at school and that many of them didn’t bathe the whole two weeks we were there. Although it was only a couple hours in the morning, these little kids need more water than that. However, the circumstances in the area of the country doesn’t allow for that. When my fellow travelers or I would need a sip of our large bottles of water that we could afford, we had to go in a separate room and close the door so the children couldn’t see us. When we would eat a snack, we had to go in the room and when the little boys and girls would try to peek in the crack to see what we were doing, we had to hide it. Every day I take at least one shower and before going to Guatemala, I never thought about the disadvantages other people have. After this trip, I found myself taking the shortest shower possible. I know that what I don’t use won’t be used in Guatemala but it’s the point of not being so wasteful that means something to me.
During my time in my class, I got close to a little boy named Edgar. He is seven years old but he was in the five to six-year-old class because of his educational level. For over a week and a half, he came to school with the same outfit on and a smudge of dirt on his face. It broke my heart to see him and compare him to myself. I have clean clothes every day and I get to bathe any time I want to. Edgar is not the only student at the school or even in the area or country that is like this. Many students in my class and in the other two classes were in the same boat. It was hard to see every day for two weeks.
Even with this obstacle, the kids don’t let it stop them. They honestly don’t know any different, anyway. The kids have so much hope and excitement for life that a simple thing like bathing wouldn’t hold them back. Although I will miss them dearly, I hope some of my students will get to move on to another school by the time I get to go back. Education is the only way for these kids to get anywhere in life and some of them are on their way. I am so lucky to have been a part of their lives and I can’t wait to be impacted by more of their sweet smiles and kind hearts when I make my way back.
