The Labour Strike That Wasn't

Thursday, February 24, 2011

My age is showing today. We are advised to stay home. Marg and I heed this advise.

Sarah weighs the risks and goes to the "feeding station" nevertheless. She helps Hilmar with the shopping and, once again, offers an art class after lunch.

It is a day off for me.

Guatemala City is under siege today, we are told. It is a labour vs. government face-off. And the risk of violence is real.

Teacher training for "Planting Seeds" was scheduled to take place in the Community House today. it was to be an early start. I was really looking forward to seeing Susan in action, and videoing her teaching style to share with Marlene at the Forest Preschool. I am hoping that it will happen before I leave on Wednesday.

 Observing 24 ECE teachers...most with very little training...would be remarkable for me; me who spent 18 years of her life as a daycare provider, caring for the children of others as if they were my own, loving and worrying about their well-being every day.

I am keen on having the Forest Preschool concept explained/initiated here. I would love to have Marlene and Susan in the same room. I feel a partnership brewing.

Marg goes into town after lunch and picks up our laundry. She runs in to Jackie and Joanie. What are the chances? They have lunch together and catch up on the happenings since we parted company in San Pedro. I, on the other hand, stay home and write. This blog has become very important to me. It is documenting of my days and weeks that I don't want to forget; details that are thick with emotion, reckless hope and loving despair.

Having someone do my laundry is my guilty pleasure. I try not to think about some poor Guatemalan woman scrubbing my unddies and tired old "Salvation Army" jeans in her "peelo".

Sarah, Marg and I make dinner. It's a messy, disorganized last minute affair. Marg takes charge. I'm her sous chef. I try not to over-talk and lose focus...haha. Sarah turns the apples and mangoes into a gooey, sweet concoction, and when all is said and done we practically lick the serving dish clean. We serve rice, chicken and vegetable stir-fry with green beans in an Indonesian peanut sauce. We break from tradition and serve it late. We eat by candle light.

The other guests leave early in the morning. We try to make their last night relaxing.

No news is good news. The strike never happens. The violence is put on hold. We all breathe a sigh of relief and plan to be on the bus to Comino Seguro in Guatemala City at 7:30am.

Comino Seguro: A Safe Passage

Wednesday February 23, 2011

As I stand on the edge of the road, on the edge of Antigua, waiting for our volunteer transport, I feel anxious. It's 7:20am. My stomach is wobbly. It's a feeling I am familiar with. Often throughout my life I have felt "unsettled", uncertain, usually when my imagination couldn't create a clear image of impending events, or when I couldn't conceive of events ending well. It's the way my insides would churn as I entered a new school in a new town. (I went to 4 high schools in three cities in two provinces. As the perpetual new girl my stomach churned alot!)

Curiously, this morning I am on my way to school. And I am afraid of what I might see. I am terrified about how what I am about to see will make me feel, how the bare reality of the situation will change me. I have braced myself for change --painful, positive, hateful and happy change.

A yellow school bus picks us up on the doorstep of the Community House. It isn't one of those colourfully painted buses with Latino men hanging out of every oriface and bags of fruit tied to the roof. The role of this bus is to safely move volunteers through Gautemala City to Safe Passage (http://www.safepassage.org/). The seats have seat belts. I am aghast! They are literally the first examples of well-maintained safety equipment I have seen in Guatemala.

All of the passengers on the bus are volunteerrs at Comino Seguro (Safe Passage). They are American and Austrailian and Canadian on this day. Susan Schmaltz, owner and founder of the ECE program "Planting Seeds" and wife of the newly installed Safe Passage Exectutive Director, Richard Schmaltz, is on board, as are a number of family members; parents and siblings come to experience what their sister and daughter and friend are experiencing. The bus is nearly full to capacity.

Where we go is not pretty. There are no pretty things here. No manicured lawns or pruned flowerbeds or cared for shops or big box outlets with coiffed parking lots. I don't know much about this place, but already I am discovering that life here is haphazard.

In Guatemala City gun-toting men in stern uniforms and harsh faces threaten violence, and metal bars protect the dispenser of toothpaste and shampoo and immodium.

I meet Floriana first. She manages the ECE school called the Guarderia. When the yellow school bus stops everyone gets off. The handful of us going to the Guarderia board a van for the drive deeper into Zone 3, where the streets look like a dump. There has been some trouble with squaters and threatened violence so security is heightened. An armed guard opens the large steel doors revealing a smiling place, cheerful, colourful and -- even more than anything else -- hopeful. It is a place of refuge for little hands and minds and growing bodies, tucked safely away from lives of dust-filled nastiness, unristricted dispair.

For a moment, as we are shown a sports feild that could be in any North American city, I forget that we are surrounded by a dump and barbwire and the people who make a meagre living selling the "stuff" of the dump. But the smell begs to be noticed. It assaults me, waking me up and reminding me.

I am in the Guarderia. Children as young as two years old scamper across play surfaces designed and built by University of Washington students. I watch macho little boys strutting, playing out the life they see in the faces of their fathers.These are tough kids, I think, associating toughness with filthy clothes and faces.

Susan takes me to the top of the playstructure, up traditional ladders and bridges, through a walkway and open space made of carefully crafted wood. Being a writer hungry to tell a story has afforded me this time with Susan and then with Florianna. I am so very grateful.

The playstructure hovers majestically only inches from the hastily constructed tin city that the children of Safe Passage call home; a place where shacks called homes abound.. I stand on the top of it with my feet in my world but my eyes in theirs. It is made of cast-offs, unwated things -- tin and tires, pop bottles and junk food wrappers, and people.

Social workers employed by Safe Passage appeal to parents to educate their children. It is a non-denominational kind of help designed to respect and celebrate the identities and traditions of each child.

Florianna takes me to the building on the other side of the parking lot. On the ground floor is a storage room chalk full of donations -- shampoo, bristol board, pencils, soap, balls and more. Upstairs is a multi-purpose room that is often used as a gymnasium. A class of young teens is just assembling for a game of aapture the Flag. Florianna invites me to join, introduces me to the Guatemalan teacher and leaves. He gives me a pinhey and I carefully watch the goings-ons for cues.

Put pinhey in pocket.
Chase kids to nab as many pinhey's as I can.
Protect my pinhey.
Next, take 2 pinhey's.
Tie the second one around my right ankle. Put the first pinhey in a different pocket.
Try not to get tackled.
Watch for the kids who are on the ground giggling and try to get their pinhey's.

I do pretty well if I do say so myself. The kids are friendly. I try to introduce myself to a couple. They don't laugh at me (outwardly anyway).

When Florianna returns I am still playing, running around like a kid. She smiles. If she only knew how much these moments mean to me. Less than a year ago I could never have done this with such ease. I would have been out of breath. I would have lacked confidence. Today these kids give me more than I give them. When I say muchos gracias they have no idea how much I mean it.

I wash little hands in cold, untreated water, and encourage the use of soap, before lunch. Every child gets a balanced breakfast, lunch and two snacks daily. Most eat seriously. They look around for more. I wash off tables and faces. The children scrape their own plates and deposit them in a big white tub for cleaning (and I use the word "clean" generously.)

Richard is going to be released from the hospital today, and Susan must to leave in the early afternoon to pick him up. She takes Marg and I with her. Sarah elects to stay behind in her class of two-year olds. As we leave she is holding a child in her arms.

Walter drives us through Guatemala City. Susan doesn't drive here. In the early days she was shot at--five gunshots from the window of a car while walking down the street. That was more than a decade ago, but she doesn't tempt fate. I am drawn to Susan. She is a remarkable woman with the energy of someone who gives selflessly for no other reason than to give. I really wish I had more time to spend with her.

We arrive back at the Community House around 1:30pm. We eat leftovers on the terrace for lunch. Noone is home. It fells good to sit leisurely among the flowers with the warm sun bathing the open area between the buildings. I need this time to digest more than the food.

After lunch I change into my Chi Chi market Guatemalan outfit -- woven wrap skirt and embroidered white cotton top. Cool and comfortable. For the first time all day I feel clean.

We walk into town following a funeral procession. Slow and steady. Here people walk with the coffin to the church. We have seen this more than once. There is no vehicle-parade. No dark-windowed limos driven by dark-suited men.

Dominos Pizza is our landmark. Both Marg and I laugh at this. We trun left towards the ruins. Three quarters of the way down this cobblestone street we find the laundry ladies. they will wash my 6lbs of dirty clothes for about $4. But I make Marg stop before we get there to stare at sweets. There are sweet shops on everyb block it seems. It's not what I am looking for because what I am seeking has local chocolate as a main ingredient.. But  I get 2 cookies anyway. They are yucky tasteless, colourless blobs. Expensive yucky tasteless blobs. I nibble on one and throw the other out.

We are looking for a restaurant called La Pinada Sol. It boasts "safe" food and authentic Latin music. Guy and Shirley have reccommended it and we want to take Sarah there for her last meal in Guatemala. Of course, marg and i hardly need an excuse to test out any kind of food. We wonder the streets until we find the place. Another unimpressive storefront with magic behind its doors.

The owner is a cheerful American from Nashville. His story is by now familiar. "I came here with my wife for a holiday," he tell us. "We never went back."

We try out a dessert and enjoy a tea. I buy apples and mangos for tomorrow's dinner. My bank card works and Marg's doesn't. We have learned to be easygoing about the crazy ATM's here and simply swap Q's back and forth.

The Tuk Tuk ride home could easily dislocate a few vertebrae. But we make it just in time for a down home meal of meatloaf and veggies. The food is comforting. Shirley is a great cook and an attentive hostess.

I worry only momentarily about getting fatter. I know I am eating way too much. But I have other things on my mind!

Food for Religion? Daring to Say What I Feel

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Today is "feeding day" in La Pinada. Sarah, Marg and I ask to spend one more day here to help Guy's group cook and serve lunch to the children of the village. School in Guatemala is only half a day. The younger children go in the morning and on their way home will come to eat.

For many, I am told, this will be their only meal of the day.

Hilmar Avila and his wife Carmen are the founders of Senderes de Luz Ministerio (Path of Light Ministry). They are the Guatemalan partner Guy and Shirley's group works with.

Hilmar imprressed me yesterday and he impresses me today. On our walk up and down the hillside, into people's homes and through their yards, he is greeted with such unabashed warmth by children and adults alike. It doesn't seem to matter that he has this strange posey of blue-eyed gringos tagging along.

We don’t paint this morning. This day is about being with the kids and getting to know their families. No, that’s not totally accurate. We see way more children than families….brothers and sisters and cousins perhaps, but no parents. I only meet three women. They are the cooks.  Mothers and cooks and so much more. Except for the masons and Hilmar, I really don’t see any village men.

Our day begins in the back of the truck again; inhaling exhaust and agonizing over the stark contrasts – unbelievably beautiful scenery surrounding roadways, alleyways and ditches thick with garbage, malnourished children living metres from gated lush gardens, one schoolgirl wearing a Burger King crown (that symbol of so much that is wrong in the “developed” world) while her classmate sports a basket on her head, the way her mother and grandmother carry items from place to place.

Walter drops us at the top of the hill. We wait for Hilmar to escort us into town, where we will shop for the food needed to do todays’  “feeding”.  Hilmar arrives on a motorcycle; a wedding gift given by a benefactor from the London Ontario area. We all walk to the stalls where women sell pineapple and potatoes, onions and avacodos. Shirley, Guy and Hilmar have their trusted vendors. Hilmar explains how he prefers to purchase from the hunched-over old woman on the corner because she needs the business more than the commercial-looking sellers across the street.  Guy and Hilmar buy ground beef and individually wrapped little wieners. (INDIVIDUALLY WRAPPED WIENERS IN A COUNTRY WHERE GARBAGE IS EVERYWHERE AND RECYCLING IS ALL BUT NON-EXISTENT!) Our last stop is for beans and rice. Lots and lots of beans and rice.

We carry our purchases back and give them to the three women. They are efficient on their big "estufa". Unfortunately, the stove is not nearly as efficient as they are. Throughout the morning I try to explain the workings of this stove, why the smoke is so dangerous, and what they can do to protect themselves from the smoke. Hilmar helps translate. I tell the women using my frustratingly limited Spanish. I tell Guy. I plead with them all to have the stove fixed.
The primary difference between the stove where pots of beans and burger, potatos, rice, onions and carrots are simmering is the stove pipe. A visiting Ontarioan had the stove built for this community.  The problem is that whoever built it did not ensure that the stove pipe, which vents the smoke to the outside, was properly affixed. The women popke and prodd at the base of the pipe, trying to get the smoke to exit. Indeed, most of the smoke is escaping from open burners and the open window. I explain that the burners must be kept covered, that the planchat (metal stovetop) should get hot enough without putting the pots directly over the flame. The women have jammed long peices of wood in to  the front window, so that it can't be closed. The window creates the draft, When it is closed the fire will burn hot and use less wood. I ask Hilmar to tell the women that the men of the village will provide them with smaller peices of wood to burn. He laughs and then they laugh.

Sarah works with them to peel tiny new potatos. They don't really need to be peeled, but we don't have the words to explain this so we say nothing. Guy has provided the women with 5L jugs of clean water. I help pour it as they make the tortilla mix.  Then Sarah, Marg and I join the women and another volunteer, in a huge tortilla-forming extravaganza!

The village women are incredibly patient with us. Actually, we provide them with more than a few laughs. Their tortillas are perfectly formed, smooth-edged, paper thin. Mine are big, clunky, thick and jagged edged. 

The kids start arriving just before 1pm. As they enter their hands are inspected. Shirley sends the obviously dirty ones to wash up. The water isn't running today so not everyone is sent. This is still a huge improvement. Hand washing doesn't seem to be a skill taught to Guatemalan children. Wendy puts a multi-vitamin in each little mouth and watches as it is chewed. Just under 70 children show up. My guess is that they are between two and 12 years old.

We have set the kitchen up with long tables, 10 plastic stools at each, and a serving table stacked with red and green plastic cups and utensils. Hilmar's boundless energy illicits everyone's attention. Our clumbsy movements accompanied by awkward Spanish singing entertains the kids, who belt out the songs with us. At first, I haven't a clue what I am singing. But then it hits me. They are "god" songs. Probably, they are songs sung at Sunday school's around the world.

Is this food for religion, I ask myself...

Clearly, though, there isn't time for my philosophical musings. These kids are hungry. And the reality of their hunger, their painful lack of nutrition, is what's really important. Because of the work of Hilmar, Guy, Shirley and a truck load of volunteers these children won't go to bed hungry today. Perhaps that is all that's really important.

The three village women dish out the food as fast as we present the bowls. I take trays and trays of bowls to the tables. The kids don't complain. They grab for the bowls, pleading to be first. Many eat with their fingers. They aren't accustomed to using utensils. I saw this in Penimaquim, where we were provided with spoons but  community members scooped up their beans with a tortilla or their hands. Others fill the cups with a kool aid type juice.

What I see next shocks me, but it shouldn't surprise me. At first I notice a little boy trying to descretely pour the remainder of his meal into a plastic bag he is holding under the table. Then I see a girl carefully and methodically filling a red plastic container. They are bringing food home for their families.

Sarah is excited about today. Like me she has been struggling with the religious undertones of this project. However, she is an artist and she chooses to focus on that. Hilmar tells us that these kids have never had an art lesson. Imagine! These kids have never had an art lesson!

 The kids exit after lunch and once the tables and floors are clean about half re-appear, anxious to participate in an activity. I have brought crayons and pencils from the Carp Ridge Learning Centre. Sarah went into Antigua after work yesterday and bought art paper. She distributes paint and markers and ideas.Each school aged child begins by putting their name at the top of the page. Later I learn that the Guatemalan school system doesn't encourage creativity. There are as many as 70 kids in each class. Rote memorization is what school is all about here. Like the country, the Guatemalan educational system is still a work in progress.

I sit down with an older group and make big, colourful shapes. They catch they eye of a girl across from me and she carefully mimics them. Next to me a boy, perhaps 5 years old, discovers paint. His eyes light up! I show him how he can mix colours to create a new colour (much to the dismay of the others using the paint). He dives into his painting. As he finishes, Sarah hangs them. Before long the white pillars we painted yesterday are full of colourful creations. And the room suddenly has the feeling of a Canadian classroom.

Sarah makes me smile today.

I'm tired when we get home, physically and emotionally.

 My observations of the day are these:

1.   It is nearly impossible for a well-fed Gringo to accurately guess the age of a Guatemalan (man, woman or child). Lucia looks 60ish. Her hands work quickly, minding a memory all their own. But her eyes are tired. She has perfectly formed a million little corn tortillas in her lifetime. Her friend Rosie—a wannabe American if ever I saw one—relays Lucia’s age as 37. They give a look of disbelief when I tell them my age. I would be a senior with few years left if I had been born into their world.

2.       Calling the place where children go twice a week for a free lunch “The Feeding Centre” really irks me. It seems condescending somehow.  I know that it‘s a commonly used term among those who work with the poor, but that doesn’t make it any more appealing to me. These youngsters are not animals being brought to a trough to fatten them up …or at least they shouldn’t be…They are little kids and they are here because their basic human needs are not being met.  It’s shameful that in a world with so much excess that children should be this hungry.

If I had a say in the matter, what would I call the “feeding”? How about something as simple as (translated into Spanish of course), “Fit and Fun” or  “Nourishing Me” or “The Together Station”?…they could eat and do some guided, fun exercises…sing about their bodies and health and the importance of good hygiene.

3.       But something about the singing bothers me as well. Hilmar is a bright, cheerful young man who is obviously much-loved and respected in this community. My sense is that people here look to him for guidance and support. He is one of them. He truly understands their struggles and their accomplishments.  I am hoping beyond hope that he is not just a vehicle for others to push their own agendas forward.

Before the children arrive and lunch is served Hilmar grabs his guitar and gathers the gringos around. He wants to teach us a few songs. I like the idea that we are the entertainment for the kids. This will surely make them laugh. And a good belly laugh would be good for everyone.
4.  The human need for creativity is universal.

There is more. I'm sure there is much much more.

Man, I am happy!

On Being Flexible yet Questioning: Confrontingt the Religion Factor

Monday, February 20, 2011

The next two days are all about figuring things out. They are spent in mostly thoughtful pursuit of the truth—my own, theirs and society’s. (As if I could even imagine solving the problems of the world, let alone mine, in a couple of days!)

In order to exercise this unexpected time of self-examination I do what I always do when I find myself floundering in pockets of doubt or happiness or sadness. I talk. Communicate. Ask questions.

Admittedly, I didn’t know much about the Community House or Safe Passage or Oneness before I knocked on their door last evening, was graciously received and fed.Even with this pathetic "pouch" for a food sack the way to my heart is still good food. 

I knew what I had read on the websites. I knew what Margaurite had told me via her friend, Carol, another committed Canadian volunteer. I knew by conversations I had had with Community House owners and Oneness founders, Richard and Susan Schmaltz, that volunteering with them would be inspiring.

Richard and Susan Schmatz are visionaries. They are the kind of people who make a difference in the lives of others. I admired them before I met them. I admire them more now.

However, what I didn’t know when the big steel door at 13 Santa Inez, on the edge of Antigua, swung shut behind me was that there would be another project to consider and perhaps participate in. The five other people in the house are part of an Evangelical church group from Arnprior brought here by Shirley and Guy, our Community House hosts, to “serve” in the village of La Pinada.

Richard is so ill that he has been admitted to the hospital in Antigua. There is no need for Susan to worry about placing us at the dump school. Sarah, Marg and I happily join Shirley and Guy’s project, eager to both help out and learn more.

Breakfast is served at 7am and we all gather around the wood tables in the dining room. At 8am we climb up into the back of a rusty old pick-up truck driven by the amiable Walter, for the drive to the work site. Luckily, there are benches in the back. I pull my hood over my head and hold on for dear life. It is a pleasant ride over the by now familiar uneven Guatemalan  roads with way too many speed bumps, encased in the stench of rotten exhaust.

Guy (Paster Guy to his flock at the River of Life Christian Fellowship church back in Arnprior, Ontario) and Shirley have built what we believe is a Community Centre in the hillside village—literally a village on the side of a hill. The building has four floors of cement block construction with parged walls. (I consider myself a parging expert after my stove building days. We talk like we've been masons for years. I don't LOVE doing it the way Margaurite does, but that's just plain wierd!).

Our job for the day is to paint the community kitchen my favourite shade of darkish lime green and a Mexican fiesta yellow. The room is really big. The parged walls are, of course, rough. They devour the paint with a ferocious thirst. But we just keep slapping it on. Sarah moves the ladder around the top to do the edging. Marg does the middle section with a long-handled roller. I do the bottom.

The other five volunteers are members of the Arnprior church, here to work as part of Guy and Shirley's "Love Made Real Ministries". The two men work with the masons on the flat soon-to-be- green-featuring-a-chicken-coop roof. They work really hard, carrying cement up stairs and doing other muscle bound things. One of the women paints the four bathroom stalls. Another paints the hall. The third is a 14 year old from VanKleek Hill. She works alongside us for much of this first day.

But it isn't long before the religious dynamic begins to tighten its grip on me. I knew that Richard  had recently taken the Executive Director job at Safe Passage and that he and Susan now lived off site. What I hadn't considered was that religion was now the over-riding volunteerism motivator in the house.  

"...let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth." 1 John 3:18 says the intro to the Love Made Real recruitment/fundraising brochure.

I'm okay with this. After all, my month-long odyssey has been about stepping outside what is predicable and safe, and living a truth that is real. The need for an efficient way to cook food for a family that lives in poverty is the reality. Stoves save lives is the happy truth. They greatly enhance the quality of air in homes where the family often sleeps only feet from the fire, and they prevent incredible human tragedy because the fires are contained. Partnering with a Gautemalan group to build stoves for identified families is a truth. I joined the Guatemala Stove Project because it is grassroots, provides a service that saves lives and people need, and because the local partner decides where the stoves go. They know their people, their communities.

I have a problem with Good Samaritanism when it is more about the giver than the receiver. I have a problem with us coming to another country and assuming that our way is the only way. I have a real problem with giving something and expecting something in return.

This is where my emotions go haywire. My past catches up to me. That damn Catholic upbringing! Even decades after the fact it evokes so much confusion. The intensity of my feelings squishes the blood out of my head. Questions with no answers beg to be answered.

That more religious than all religious words, "FAITH", bounces off the greenness, echoing loudly as it swoons around us.

Why are we all here in this green room with a modern propane cooktop that has yet to connected? Is this about giving a helping hand or is it more about trading "God'isms" for the basics of life? My friend calls it "Religion for Food".

One of the women got on the back of the truck this morning clutching a book she calls, "my daily devotionals". Later in the afternoon, once Sarah and Marg and I have returned from Hilmar's hiking tour of the village, I ask her if she has been into the homes of the people she professes to "serve". I am shocked by the answer I receive.

"No," she says. Then with a stern look, she coninues, "We're going to do a prayer walk."

Whoa doggie! Back up the bus.

Prayer walk?

Sounds suspisciously like preaching.

Then I learn that the "community centre" on the main floor, the one with what I've been calling a "stage" is really a church.

So, to recap, the building consists of two main rooms -- a church as you enter and a kitchen below.

I feel like I have been tricked.

There is no doubt in my mind that this is a community in need. The question is this, "Is religion the tonic that will cleanse their wounds and help to create a better life for the next generation?"