If you’d have asked me when I first got to Antigua how I felt about Guatemala, I would have told you that I’d found heaven on earth. For the first two months, the sun shone, I learnt the present tense in Spanish and drank Moza on the roof of Cafe Sky. I climbed some volcanoes, swam in some lakes and generally ‘did some good’, volunteering with a local NGO.
But this is exactly it. I anxiously admit to having perhaps romanticized a world about which I have really had very little understanding. After crashing out of the whole new country honeymoon phase thing, the past four or five months have been a process of trying to get my head around the reality of poverty, desperation, and actual stomach-wrenching fear; of quietly reassessing my well-rehearsed arguments relating to ‘the developing world’ and grappling with a creeping resentment and suspicion towards a country which before had been a benign Eden of natural beauty, Mayan textiles and precious cultural difference.
Since I got back from mincing around Mexico and other such exotic locations over the summer, I have once again failed in quite spectacular, although now trademark fashion, to blog. I am perhaps rather predictably going to blame the fact that I have been busy, but it's definitely more to do with not knowing where to start.
I am currently working in a organization based in Zona 3 of Guatemala City, and it's tough... I’m not gonna lie to you, it's tough. And it smells of Methane. All the time. ALL the time.
That's because Camino Seguro, or 'Safe Passage', serves the Basurero community; the people who live and work on the rubbish landfill - the largest in Central America where, for over half a century, over 500 tons of waste has been dumped daily.
Every day, about 650 kids and women attend the project, an educational reinforcement center set up in 1999 in a bid to create opportunity and hope within a desperate area, providing a secure environment for the most at-risk youth and addressing issues such as malnutrition, illiteracy and mental health problems.
There aren’t many days that go past without a shooting/rape/robbery/horrendously terrifying incident in the neighborhood, yet, within the inoffensively pastel tinted walls of the organization, it is possible to forget exactly where the children who attend Camino Seguro are coming from and how old they really are. As inner city kids living in a slum, growing up in a culture of gang violence, they are tough guys and cool dudes, all ‘Que onda voz’ this and ‘hey sexy’ that, giving you enough crap to make you doubt your ability to execute some of the most basic of human functions, let alone someone capable of imparting any sort of usable information to anybody else.
It's only when you see them ambling their way homeward through a post-apocalyptic landscape of grey concrete and carefully sifted garbage, or sitting on the side of the road next a father who has just drowned his second bottle of Quetzaltecca, or a recurring black eye that just refuses to be masked under a layer of crudely applied makeup, that you remember their vulnerability, that you remember the desperate sadness of a youth rudely stolen.
Before I left home, an incredibly wise lady said to me: ''Guatemala: It's wonderful, it's terrible, it will capture you and it will break your heart.''
I had no idea how absolutely and completely this statement would resonate with me. From the climate, to the security issues, to the scenery, to emotions, everything seems to operate more intensely and with greater significance here. I change how I feel about Guatemala on an almost hourly basis. I love this place whilst simultaneously hating it, I want to stick my neck out and scream and stamp my feet, but I also want to shove my head in the sand and admit defeat. I have experienced moments of such intense joy and beauty, brought into relief by a sense of incredible sadness.
Ah Guate, Guate, Guate...Tomorrow is another day.
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