What a trip. I just came back from a week-long service trip to Antigua, Guatemala with one of my grad school's student clubs, ALAS. About 12 of us went down for spring break to work with a coffee farmer co-op called As Green As It Gets and learn about and interact with the diverse small and successful business models in developing countries. I think it was a really eye-opening trip on many fronts, both professionally and personally.But those are things that would make this far longer...
Some notes before I dive into the trip's details:
1. I never really drank coffee before this trip.
2. The air in Guatemala smelled a lot different. It actually smelled really lovely to me. I enjoyed waking up to the rather smokey, natural odors. Smoking wood? Smoking incense? What was that smell? Whatever it was, it smelled more natural and earthy than what we've got going on in the city...
3. The farmers and their families provided the majority of our meals while working over there. They would provide for us their celebratory meals, really. It's called Papion. Chicken (mind you I'm a vegetarian), rice, and a picante-tomato sauce. With tortillas, lots and lots of homemade tortillas. And....I don't think I will ever eat corn again. The diet made me feel like my digestive system was being ripped apart, and I think I must have gained about 14 pounds from the food (though I'm afraid to look). I craved vegetables a lot. But the homemade food WAS very good....
4. Almost everybody on the trip got sick. Was it the food? Was it the water contamination? Was it that we were over-exhausted and not able to take full care of our bodies? Who knows, but we hugged porcelain and talked about movements almost daily. I'm still with a tender stomach. I hope I don't have anything serious...
5. We stayed at this really great Minnesotan-based project called Common Hope (La Foundacion Con Familias de Esperanza). Kind of luxe, if you ask me. But the dormitory space was open to the outside and we had a great layout. And we could flush the toilet paper down.
6. I forgot that developing countries have different infrastructures! Something you don't remember unless you experience it, I guess. They don't flush toilet paper down the septic system. I actually thought, though, that it was a better idea. Their systems are actually organic and have an easier at potential purifying the water without paper crap blocking passageways. Who decided to throw the paper in the system, anyways?
7. I love sitting in the back of trucks while driving. It was our means of transportation (as with all of the other Guatemalans), and the weather was nice enough that sitting and bumping in the back while watching the lovely landscape whiz by us was nice and refreshing.
8. The landscape was absolutely breathtaking. Antigua is nestled right in the valley of volcanoes. And what a beautiful chain they make. The pictures don't even hold a flame to what you experience when looking down a mountain at the land. The way the light hits the crevices and how the clouds skim over the volcanoes is something majestic and awesome.
9. I was impressed to see how some of the people living in shacks were still living fairly alright and were pretty contented with life. Poverty does not always mean destitute life. I think this is a key aspect that everyone should know and remember. I like to think of it as the "Be satisfied" rule.
10. My dreams were almost all about my former lovers in my life. Some of them were like reliving the relationships. Other ones were me tying loose ends with a few of them. One specifically I chewed out in my dream and I remember waking up with venom in my mouth still. It was odd to have such a strong theme going on in my dreams that week, but there it was.
11. I picked up on Spanish quite a bit while down there. Some of the people in the group translated constantly for us silly infidels, but by the end of the trip I felt like I could understand them for the most part....and I could almost formulate real sentences (though they were few and far between) to say to them. One guy, Stephen (we called him Esteban appropriately), and I spoke to each other in French because we both shared the language and not Spanish. I think I would have picked it up a lot more if I had stayed there a month. Fluent even, perhaps.
12. Gringos (aka white people) and a large sum of expats really do a disservice to people from developing countries. They build these really fancy and grand houses in gated communities that do little for the community outside except maybe hiring a few of them as servants. No wonder why people in "Southern" countries look at Americans with disgust and this feeling of elitism; a lot of us are. I have decided if/when I move to developing countries, I will live as the locals do as much as I can physically do. What's the point of being there if you are going to do the same thing you'd do in your hometown? Lame, people. Lame.
13. The people I went with were amazing! We didn't have any real drama, no "Real World" re-inactments, no slutty story-lines (though only 3 of the people were men; one was gay and another was taken), no real tension, no gossip. We actually all got along genuinely! We laughed a lot, and were comfortable with each other enough to deal with sicknesses and failures. I'm so glad I met all of them and got time to make real quality connections that will hopefully turn into future somethings.
That said...
Friday: It took me roughly 17 hours to get to Guatemala from NYC. I got to the airport early (4am) to meet up with my group. I didn't realize that I actually knew a few people on the trip until I got to the airport. Ok, maybe just 2, but that was a lot better than 0. One of the guys, Casey, ran into me in the check-in line, and we giggled at the surprise of seeing each other there, not knowing either of us were going on the trip.
I couldn't get on their earlier connecting flight to Miami (where I had a 6 hour layover anyways), so I ended up staying in LGA for hours and hours. When ready to get on my flight, they asked me to give up my seat for a later plane in exchange of a $300 flight voucher. Considering the later flight still gave me ample time in Miami, I lovingly took the voucher and napped on a seat for a few more hours.
Miami is a horrible airport behind security. Absolutely nothing to do there but sit and wait, and eat Southern food. Starving for a salad is unheard of in that airport.
This is where I started to have my existential crisis. Here I was bored and sleep-deprived, sitting in Miami ready to go to a developing country for some volunteer work, while the rest of the passerby's were heading off to Cancun and Cabo to drink themselves into a coma. Who the hell am I?! Who the hell are these people?! Is life really all about partying and looking forward to the next vodka martini? Is it the point to go to other countries for their diverse alcohol? I don't get it.
I got into the airport in Guatemala late a bit disheveled and delirious. My cab driver spoke wonderful English and taught me Spanish while driving an hour out to Common Hope, where I was meeting my group 7 hours late. We joked a lot about Hooters, the Latino chain stores and restaurants, etc. He even took time out to drive me around Antigua (the city) and show me where he lives and what areas are famous and what to avoid.
I landed into bed immediately upon arrival.
Saturday: We woke up early to hike in San Miguel. ...Not exactly what you want to do after a long day in airports. But anyways, we went. I just met this group of people, and we were already joking while hiking up this "mountain" (actually, I believe it was the volcano Agua...) to the area called the Corona where we were picking Don Felix and Alberto's (men in the co-op) coffee fruit. I think it was a 2-hour hike up. We took a lot of breaks, two people were on horses. The view was super.
When we got to the corona, we picked coffee fruit off of young bushes. Never thought it was actually look like little cherries! And taste like cherries, for that matter... it was kind of neat. The farmers were explaining to all of us the history of coffee, the plants, the agriculture, a day in the life....it was a lot of information.
When we crawled back to the town, we gobbled up lunch and headed off to learn about shucking coffee fruit, drying the beans, and then we actually got to grind, sort, and roast the coffee. We got to drink our successful production. So cool! And I actually liked it, for the most part. When there was sugar in it, that is...
We ate dinner with farmer Don Filberto, where for hours he told us about the war and gorillas and a lot of problems with the government and people in Guatemala. And Franklin (the founder of As Green As It Gets, AGAIG) kept donning us with interesting viewpoints on the US government's interactions with most other countries and products/services. We got back wiped out and slept promptly.
Sunday: We split up as a group and half of us worked on construction while the rest of us went to some artisans. I was grouped with Chris (the last guy to be named) and Jen (a leader), and we started off in San Juan del Osbispo with lovely Roberto and his family, where they do carpentry work.
Roberto and his wife Yolanda were fabulous! So much fun! They showed us pictures of their past carpentry work, then taught us how to make an ossefottay (? not a clue to its spelling), a coffee tray. From scraps of wood! And this is where I learned that I am no carpenter. I would look at Roberto and smile as my efforts, and he would smile back with a "...bueno..." and completely fix my work. I got more frustrated with the tools and how I was struggling with the fine features. I seared on the back of the tray "Robert made this. Kim helped."
Yolanda put me in a huipil and traje and I looked like a little Guatemalan woman! Roberto danced with me the marimba, and it was very cute. They took lots of pictures of me, and we all laughed at how well the dress fit me. I looked pretty good in it, if I do say so myself...
They ended up making us lunch (papion again) and dessert! It was this thing that was like a wet honeyed cream doughnut. So good!!!!!! I felt over-stuffed afterwards though.
Chris, Jen, and I walked over to Don Francisco. Also called by us the Buddha of Guatemala. He is a jade hunter; he goes up the volcanoes and gets hundreds of jade pieces. Such a wonderful man, such a calm man, so full of love! His house is covered in beautiful vine flowers and orchids. He has an adorable little puppy with his wife, named Regalo (gift), but they called Gordo (fat). I really enjoyed being with Don Francisco! We got to pick our own pieces of jade and made jewelry out of it. My stone has black spots on them. His wife then served us hot chocolate and cookies.
We met up with the rest of the group after a sad departure from Don Francisco. We ended up heading into another village and ate street food with the locals in front of a lit church. I don't know what exactly it was I was eating, but it was pretty good.
Monday: I went with Esteban, Theresa, and Oriana (the other leader) to work on metal art with Carlos. I made an owl. It's pretty difficult, and it wears out your forearms to cut and chop and hammer away at the metal so that you actually make what you aim for. I swore a bit under my breath. Again, Carlos would come over and fix our projects continuously. I took a lot of dance breaks, and Carlos turned up his music so that I could dance more. Theresa and I then started to try to teach Esteban how to dance. He's actually got moves for a white guy, but the coordination on some of the moves were a little too intense for him at the moment. We filmed him dancing and howled for a good long time. Even Carlos filmed him.
We met up with the other group and ate at La Taverna (which apparently a lot of Gringos eat in, but it was still good). I ate nachos con chorizo, and I won't apologize for it. So so good.
Half of us broke off then and went for a nature hike with Don Vedal, who taught us about plants and trees (especially Nispero) and the history of his area. The guy was so adorable, he made a classroom in his yard for us and talked for hours and hours while we all faded away from food coma. He even passed around photos for us to look at while he talked. The hike itself was really informative and beautiful, as always. And there were a few times during the hike that some of us would stop and say, "Doesn't this kind of look like Switzerland right now?" It did. And then there was one part of the hike where we were in a little mountain chasm that had a narrow passage way, softy hugging a straight drop down, that we had to walk through. Enter vertigo. I hyperventilated a bit. I had to take Chris's hand for a second before we got back to solid ground.
We got back to the project for dinner and had real vegetables! Thank goodness. Some women from a local organization, WINGS, came and talked to us about reproductive problems in Guatemala.
And then I massaged people all night. Everyone seemed to be impressed with my massaging skills and my breadth of knowledge that I keep locked away in the old ticker. Apparently I'm intelligent, or something.
Tuesday: My turn for construction (YES!). A bunch of us got to the site and started building some concrete walls and mixing cement.
You know, as a side note, it took me 4 years in a prestigious college to realize how much I actually like manual labor. I really would have rather building the entire trip, but alas it was not so. Maybe this is what I should be doing for my life....using my hands more often....
Anyways, for about an hour I was designated the "iron curler"; I had to curl roughly 100 rebar cubes to reinforce the wall. And then I helped Timoteo and Kevin (who's actually from Minnesota and pretty cute while totally reminding me of the guy in "Into the Wild") put bricks in a line, with only understanding Timoteo a little bit and him repeating simple phrases like "Otro mas!" We got along very well.
His wife came with lunch for us, and it was really quite good. Chris and Theresa were being hilarious and I nearly had an emergency during lunch because I was laughing so hard. Even though it was all in English, Timoteo laughed a lot, too.
Kevin, Theresa, and I went for a walk to a town next door (long long walk....) to buy a specific birthday cake for Jen's birthday that day. Theresa kept cracking us up about her Vietnamese heritage with her ebonic droll. One of the local kids walked us over there, and I could have sworn he was just taking us for a ride until we actually found ourselves in a pastry shop looking at loads of cookies and cakes. Thank goodness everything in Guatemala is relatively cheap....
We ended the construction early and headed into Antigua (having showered, thank you) for dinner with the rest of the group at this fabulously gourmet, swanky resto called Hector's. We feasted on sangria and creme brulée and the like until I thought that I was going to pass out from gluttony. Esteban and I also shared one of our sick comrade's meal together, so that didn't help us any...the group finished up and we head over to a bar for a drink.
Mind you, I was the youngest person on our trip (most people closer towards 30-something...), so we all seemed to agree that we just wanted a few drinks to relax and then go home. Much to our ignorance, however, the young little undergrads had quickly followed us into a random bar and our quiet night was taken over by kids who apparently missed the flight to Cancun and Cabo and settled for our bar in Antigua. A group of Brazilians came in and started banging drums and dancing. I joined them with Oriana for a song or two, but quickly became bored with it all and our group left to go back to the project for another night of slumber.
Wednesday: I went with a bunch of the women to learn about all-natural and organic cosmetics. We actually learned quite a bit about the process, and we ended up making nice-smelling lotions with avocado oil that we took home to show off (and somehow I managed to get them through customs, too). It was a pleasant, quiet (and much needed) day.
We met up with the rest of the group, who were making bags. Yes, I bought a bag. We ate a nice lunch.
This is around the time where my body started to get grumpy.
But after lunch we went over to a nearby soccer field to play girls' soccer with the little ones from all over the village. The boys in the village tend to kick the girls off of the field so that they're not able to actually play at all. So our group leaders had put together a day where the girls were allowed to take over the field and play soccer. The little girls were so excited to be on the field, though, that a lot of them just stood there excited and didn't actually play. Whenever the ball moved or went in the air, you would hear a large roar of squealing on the field.. Esteban was chosen by the little girls to ref our "game", and we had a fun little time.
Jen was the goalie on the other side. It was hilarious; every time I would look over to her, she would have about 3 more teeny tiny girls standing next to her in the goal. They didn't do much; just stood there cute and covered in dirt, shoeless. (Oh right, and there was a lot of poverty on our trip.) Jen started to look like Mother Goose with a flock of baby geese behind her because they would follow right on her heel whenever she moved. By the end she couldn't even get into the goal.
Dinner was something somewhere. It was the one house that actually smelled not so great. Kind of like urine. But the food was decent. We were all pretty wiped out though, clearly, so our conversation was slow.
Thursday: We woke up and headed off to Valhalla, the magnificent Macadamia Nut Farm. Owned by an expat Larry from San Francisco. Really is a little oasis. His wife is phenomenal! And the nuts are amazing. He served us macadamia pancakes with nut butter and blueberries, all fresh and more organic and natural than anything else I think I have ever eaten. We all shared hours of laughing and listening to Larry's interesting and different perceptions on life and the world and his macadamias. It was almost like a slightly religious experience, being there. He told us also all about the healing aspects of macadamias and offered us to come back whenever. I got to talking to him about coming back as a worker, and he looked at me seriously and said that if I wanted to help run a blueberry farm similar to his nut farm, only in the rain-forest on the other side of Guatemala, then we should talk more. He then said, "If something happens, come back home. Here. I'm seriously thinking about taking him up on that offer someday....
Then we head over to an indigenous women group, where we watched them perform a traditional dance. They then led us through the process of weaving their textiles and designs. And THEN we got to weave our own fans! I could do it again, I think....it was interesting to be there and watch them speak in their original tongue (which I can't spell), but I was starting to feel a bit funky around then, so I don't recall a lot of the conversation there. There fabrics were beautiful, though.
We left the commune to be split up again, and I went to hike up the mountain and dig holes for future trees. Hard work, damnit! My wrist was giving out, and I was ready to throw up, but I kept on working. I must admit, Guatemalans are really hard workers, from what I've seen. We had a little bit of hard labor before we came back down the mountain.
Going back to the project for dinner, we listened to some people come talk to us about their attempts to improve the education system in the country.
Once they left, a few of us stayed up and started video taping ourselves about the trip. Danielle took over the tape and became "Oprah", and we progressed to laugh for hours and hours at her witty banter and the guys' funny comebacks on the tape. I hope something was salvageable for our project...
Oh yeah, and then an earthquake occurred. The girls got nervous, the guys got excited ("That was awesome!"). I've been in those before, didn't bother me, but I wondered if that meant the volcano was erupting soon...
Friday: I woke up feeling not so hot. Last day, and I didn't know if I was going to get through it. I took a nap on the couch while half of us learned how to coffee cup (aka become coffee snobs).
They woke me up to go on our last hike up to Volcano Pacaya. Half of the group was pretty sick and couldn't make it, so only 6 of us took the hour-long drive to the volcano. We packed lunch items to picnic with on the volcano. I had no idea what to expect.
The car-ride wasn't bad at all. We talked, gawked at the still-amazing landscape and peaks. We finally made it to the base of the volcano path. Another Don Felix came and escorted us up the volcano. We had a nice quiet time up the hill. Men with horses followed us. I didn't understand that at first.....
It was really grueling on my body to be hiking again with a shoddy immune system. I had a hard enough time hiking up the day before. I was still a little gross feeling. And about halfway up the volcano I stopped, not understanding if I was going to throw up, run into the trees, or pass out. I got hard of breath, and I felt ashen, couldn't stand still. Jessica, one of the women who led us all week, asked me if I wanted to go back down, and I didn't know if I was going to make it. Great, here I am in Guatemala in the middle of a volcano where no emergency helicopter could ever come and save me. Then someone told me to get on a horse. And then it all made sense.
This was the first time I ever rode a horse, and it was up a volcano. Talk about hitting two birds with one stone...
I felt really bad that i couldn't make it up the trail without assistance, but my group kept telling me that it was OK, there was nothing I could have done about it.
Remember that vertigo? Well, riding a horse on a volcano also with a straight drop down isn't much better....but my horse leader was nice and kept saying in thick Guatemalan "No problem, no problem, lean back." The horse riding was easy actually, but the look down....
When we got to the top of the volcano, it reminded me of the moon. Lots of dark dark rocks all over the place. No plants. Kind of an eerie feeling. We kept climbing up the volcano. And then we finally stopped.
It sounded like light hale behind silence. The rocks were moving, pushing, falling, tumbling. The rocks were smoking. And then I noticed that in the middle of the black were patches of red. As in, molten lava. As yes, there I was by a lava river watching the lava petrify into rocks right before my eyes. Yeah, it was hot. By our area an emaciated dog waited placidly for us to come and give him a treat. The animals seemed calm.
We stayed up there on the top of the volcano for a little bit. Admiring the view, and oggling at the lava petrifying. Chris geeked out when he was able to light his cigarette with the lava rocks.
The hike back down was somber for me, on my horse. My life has so many peaks and extraordinary parts that I sometimes wonder what I would do with a life any different.
We head straight into Antigua, where Danielle, Esteban, Chris, and I took a few drinks and reflected by ourselves about the trip. I walked alone for an hour taking pictures of the city before the sun went down, and stopped at a cafe called Cookies Etc. to buy a dozen cookies for the group. We went for a little walk together afterward to find a pub and stumbled for a second on what seemed like a cafe that showed funny (extremely funny, actually) film clips. We ended up in a little local bar and talked until it was time to get a cab back to the projects for our reflection. I napped a few hours before heading to the airport in our group's vans.
Saturday: I went through customs twice. I slept on the plain rides. The national security check in Miami wanted to take my liquids from Guatemala, and I suaded them to just give me a warning, saying "Are you serious? I just got through Guatemalan and Miami international security with this all, and you want to stop me in the domestic airport?". We all bonded while waiting for the planes. In Miami, we ate at a Chilli's, and I struggled with my salad because it had corn on it.
The group and I got back around 10pm, and I crashed.
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