Of the last eighteen days, I have spent ten of them in Antigua, two in Xela. The purposes were both business and pleasure; the first four days in Antigua with my good friend Micah who was visiting, then two days in Xela while Nic was in the hospital with an intestinal bacterial infection; then straight to Antigua upon his release for a week of Spanish classes at the PC office.
Now, don’t get me wrong, an occasional trip to Antigua or Xela is utterly necessary to my mental health. Antigua provides me with a hot shower (with water pressure), a comfy bed, cable TV, a flush toilet (inside the hotel room, nonetheless), a good cupa coffee, the English language and almost any type of meal my stomach might desire. Not to mention cold beer.
The colonial city is a tourist trap, if nothing else. It has charming cobbled streets, brightly painted buildings, ruined churches, a central park with big trees and volcanoes looming in the distance. Locals are friendly and speak proper Spanish. The only people you will see dressed in traditional traje are the women selling cheap jewelry and machine-made scarves, bartering in broken English in the central park. It is a very enjoyable place to pass ten days and it is easy to forget the hardships ever-present in other parts of the country.
I spent yesterday and today in and around my house. After a year here, I decided its time for a ‘spring’ cleaning. I pulled out furniture and swept, cleaned off shelves, organized my books and clothes. I replanted my garden, cleared my drainage ditch of leaves, put some potted plants into the soil. I even baked some sourdough bread from a starter I’d been nurturing. This afternoon I finished the latest book I’ve been working on. By 4:30, I was out of things to do. I decided to go for a run, even with ominous rain clouds creeping over the ridges. I hadn’t shown my face much around Chirijox since I got back into town on Saturday anyway. I took my usual route but on the way back decided to take the long way home.
While walking the dirt paths in the dimming light and a crispness in the air, my eyes were opened once again to the reality of life here: poverty.
Kids, some as little as three years in the streets, barefoot and dirty, dried snot caked in their nostrils and no parent in sight. Young adults staring at me without blinking or saying a word. Houses made of and open to the elements with women cooking over an open fire inside the house. Trash everywhere, particularly in the streams. Foul smelling latrines. Young boys playing with a deflated soccer ball near the hiway. Kids trying to pull down kites wrapped around power lines by their string. Middle-aged women aged beyond their years by hard labor. People of any age, toothless.
This is the reality of life for rural, poor Guatemala. And of course not all are living in poverty and not all things are as bad as they seem. But for me, tonight served as another eye opener. It reminded me that there is still time, I can still due my part, and I still feel a personal obligation to attempt to improve the lives of my brothers and sisters, even with the occasional trip to Antigua.
