Last Post

Hola a todos,

This is my last blog post since tomorrow is my last day in Xela. Thanks for reading my blog and supporting over the past 4 and half months!

I have been doing a lot of wrap-up stuff which has gotten me a little bit more in the mindset of leaving. Some of the activities that we have been up to at the Guarderia include: a two-day leadership workshop series, a Sex Ed. class with our youth, lots of soccer games since the rains are letting up a bit, arts and crafts with the little ones, and a big reforestation day…we planted 200 trees! Being at the Guarderia for the past 4 and a half month has been the time of my life. This community has taught me so much about life, love, and service. It will be hard to say good-bye tomorrow.

Sean and I paid a visit to all of our favorite Xela spots this weekend to bid the city adieu. We had one last scrabble game with our host parents over a bottle of wine. Starting on Friday, Sean and I are going to be traveling around Guatemala for a week. We hope to make it to Semuc Champey and Rio Dulce, two natural gems of this land.

See you state-side!

Carrie Ray

Carolina ready to plant trees!

Sean and I tutoring at the Guarderia

Sarita

Joy and I right before she left Pop Wuj

Adios Xela

Just Coordinating Away

Hola!

My sincerest discuplas for the blog-neglect. This final chapter of my Guate life has been full of activity. I am starting to prepare myself for the good-byes because it is coming on quick. Two weeks left in Xela…not enough time.

                All is well at the Guarderia. In these past few weeks we have had number of workshops/classes with the kids and other fun happenings. We are collaborating with another organization called Soluciones Comunitarias/Social Entrepreneur Corps  (http://www.socialentrepreneurcorps.com/guatemala.html) to teach a series of classes on personal finance, saving, and smart spending. Their coordinator, James, took into account the fact that these topics could potentially leave the youth yawning so he turned the curriculum into a board game called ¡AHORRA AHORA! (Save Now!) which is a culturally-relevant mix of Monopoly and LIFE… and maybe a little PAYDAY. This group will continue to come to the Guarderia once a week for the rest of the summer to work with the youth. In a country where people are accustomed to spending money right when they get it, even if there is some left over to save, a class of personal finance is a novel idea.

We also have started a five week series on nutrition with the medianos (middle age group). In the first class, we discussed the food pyramid and had a junk food vs health food group activity. I think the kids enjoyed the nutritional peanut butter and banana snack more than the class. Can you blame them?  The lack of proper nutrition is a big issue here in Guatemala. Junk food is cheap and widespread. It’s ironic and unfortunate that many people in rural areas grow plots and plots of vegetables to sell at the market, but then buy pork rinds and ice cream and lots of soda in the street. I was pretty shocked the first time I saw a baby drinking Coca Cola out of his baby bottle. We also had a nutrition discussion with the all of the mothers of the kids at the Guarderia just a few weeks ago. Our goal was to show them that it is possible to eat healthy on a tight budget, especially when most of them grow their own vegetables.

Last Friday we had our first ever Father’s Day celebration at the Guarderia. Many of us were holding our breath beforehand because we weren’t sure if any Dad’s were going to show up. Every kid has a different story at the Guarderia, but many include strained father-child relationships. This can be due to alcohol abuse, lack of emotional and financial support, indifference about education, or even a history of interpersonal violence in the home. Also, there are a few kids whose dad’s have passed away or have abandoned the family. Needless to say, you do not see many men hanging out at the Guarderia, except for Gringo volunteers, which serve as important role models for some of the boys. BUT, we had 10 dads/grandpas/uncles come which was beyond our wildest dreams. Ronnie, one of the directors of Pop Wuj, spoke with the dads for a while (it was men only, so I didn’t get to sit in) and then the kids performed a little dance and recited some poems. While we ate, I got to talk to some of the dads and granddads who said they were happy they came and appreciate what the Guarderia does.

In other news, two weekends ago Sean and I went to Lake Atitlan for a serene lake-side retreat. We stayed in Santa Cruz, a tiny pueblo on the water. We ate some incredible meals, met some people from Duke, hopped over to San Marcos to say hey to the hippies, and kayaked on a crisp Sunday morning. Last weekend we paid a visit to Las Fuentes Georginas, in a town just outside of Xela. The ride on the back of a pickup truck was beautiful, the springs were muy caliente, and the rain kept everyone else from crowding our pool; ‘twas perfect.

Thanks for reading,

Adios!

Carrie

Andres and a little friend

James and the older kids playing AHORRA AHORA!

Lesly, Evelyn, Carmencita, and Arturo

Sean in San Marcos trying to blend in

A great place to Kayak!

Kayaking around Santa Cruz

Announcement!

The Guarderia Cow gave birth last week! Wahoo. She is two days old in the photo above.

-Carrie

The countdown is on

Hola!

My last month in Guatemala is fast-approaching so time is starting vuela (fly).

Right now Pop Wuj is full of students and eager volunteers so things have been a beautiful relajo (mess) of activities. Amy, our wonderful Guarderia Coordinator left today, so I will be taking over as coordinator for the final month. Between repairing the playground, organizing a second photography class, a salsa class, a nutrition workshop series, yoga classes, first-aid class, orienting volunteers, and day-to-day activities, I think I might have my hands full at the Guarderia! But I am excited!

Sean is here now which has been so great! He is here to take Spanish classes and work in Pop Wuj’s clinic, as well as help with a new pilot program to help combat acute malnutrition in infants in the Xela area. This past weekend, Katie came for a whirlwind weekend trip, so the three of us headed to Antigua. We dined fine, strolled along the quaint, historic streets of the city, visited an organic macadamia nut farm owned and operated by a crazy old hippie couple, hiked up to a look -out point of the city, and even found time to do a shift at Casa Jackson, a rehabilitative center for malnourished babies.

Hasta luego!

Carrie

El Dia de Arbol

Planting some trees at the Guarderia for El Dia del Arbol 

She is pumped about El Dia del Arbol

That one on the left going to give birth any day now!

The Foolishness of Volunteerism

Hola y gracias por visitar mi blog.

A series of small events started to wear on me little bit by the end of the week (a day-long fever, a mouse infestation, broken shower, power outage).

On a more significant note, I had a couple unwelcomed moments of feeling overwhelmed with the great need around me. While there are countless moments of joy here, there are other times when the complex social and economic issues of this country leave me feeling disenchanted.   I have noticed that there is a difference between traveling to the developing world and staying here long enough to see the good, the bad, and the ugly. My modest 3 month stay so far puts me somewhere between a traveling-gringa-tourist and a long-termer. I have been here long enough to see how foolish volunteer work can be. That quote I posted early on during my trip by Lila Watson has never been so relevant:

“If you have come here to help, you are wasting your time; but if you are here because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

For me, I think real change come from relationships. As I look back on the past 90 days, the relationships I have built with the kids at the Guarderia have had quite an impact on me. I can assure you that after all of my “public health talks,” field trips around town, tutoring sessions, safe stove projects, gringa-sounding ideas for change,  etc., the only impactful thing that I may have done is tried to entered in to their world and love them. Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, poet, and social activist wrote “A Letter to a Young Activist.”  His wise words give me hope.

“Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the truth of the work itself. And there, too, a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.”

-adios

Carrie

Something Different

Hola a todos,

Life has been a whirlwind of wonderful things.

This past week I decided to change things up a bit by going to Antigua for a week to volunteer at Casa Jackson (casajackson.org/). Before getting there, I enjoyed another weekend with good friends and good food at Lake Atitlan. Apparently, I wasn’t in the picture-taking mood, so I have no photos to share. We passed our time in the typical Atitlan manner: blissful boat rides, tasty lake-side eats, and a leisurely afternoon of kayaking along the pueblo of San Pedro.

Before we knew it was time for some of us to head onward to Antigua while the rest headed back to Xela. Four chicken bus transfers later, Brittany and I (and our backpacks which were carelessly flung on the roof) successfully made it to our destination. We stayed with a friendly Guatemalan couple, Esperanza and Jose, in their beautiful home, complete with a patio filled with tropical plants, a great rooftop view of the city, and real shower (love those). Esperanza’s cooking was top notch and I even got some recipes for my future life as “a person that may actually cook some.” Antigua is a remarkable little town. Very historic. Very beautiful. Very Gringo. We did a little sight-seeing and indulged in some of our favorite American-tastes-like-home snacks like bagels and cheesecake.

                 During our week, Brittany, who is a friend I met at Pop Wuj, and I volunteered at Casa Jackson, a recovery center for malnourished children. There were 13 cuties there, all with their own personality quirks. Their ages ranged from 2 months to 4 years. Malnutrition is a major issue in Guatemala, and especially for infants, it can have irreversible consequences. All of the toddlers are developmentally delayed in terms of motor skills, language, and cognitive skills as a direct result of malnutrition. As heartbreaking as their reason for being at Casa Jackson is, it is a sunshiny-kind-of-place staffed with nurses, a nutritionist, and doctor, with volunteers as well. The kids stay until they are100% healthy again. Also, Casa Jackson focuses a lot of time and energy on prevention, through providing mobile clinics to communities with limited access to health care, educating families on ways to attain a nutritional diet with modest resources, and working with the families to combat the underlying problems of malnourishment. My shift work consisted of changing diapers, feeding the babies, changing their clothes, playing with them, giggling a lot, doing laundry, disinfecting and cleaning the floors, etc.  I walked away from the experience with a lot of thoughts and questions. The worldwide issue of hunger became much more real when you are holding a 12 pound 3-year-old girl. People (in this case little people) can grab hold of your heart in a much more transformative way than statistics ever could.

I said my farewells, with hopes of returning soon and hopped on a chicken bus for Xela. I learned firsthand why they are called chicken buses that day. It is not because there are actual chickens on the bus (which there actually were), it is because it can get so packed inside that you feel a chicken smashed together with tons of other chicken. Fortunately I have no issues with claustrophobia because sitting four to a seat with another kid asleep on my lap, zipping around sharp mountain turns on a school bus older than me is no task for the fainted-hearted.

The end of my weekend was spent remembering how much of love Xela weather (comfortable dry Xela > hot humid Antigua), playing soccer with my host brother and his friends, playing (and losing) at Scrabble with Jenny, and countless humorous talked with my 85 year old abuelito.

It is back to work this week with all sorts of activities going on at the Guarderia.

Stay tuned!

Carrie