TheBanyanTree: First Day at the Project in Guatemala City

[apmartin at canada.com]

I resurfaced from my dreams to what sounded like
machine guns blasts.  The first time I heard sounds
like this, I was walking along the street at Panajachal
near Lake Atitlan and dove for cover before I realized
I was listening to firecrackers and there was no cause
for alarm.  Guatemalans love firecrackers, whether to
cheer a goal by their favorite soccer team or to
celebrate a birthday.  Bursts of staccato bangs are a
common place any time of day or night occurrence.  

The clock read 4:00 am but I was too excited to sleep. 
I tossed and turned waiting for my alarm to sound at
5:30.  Today was my first day of work at the Camino
Seguro project (the Project) near the Guatemala City
dump.  The Project assists the children whose parents’
livelihood comes from scavenging at the dump.  Until
the formation of Camino Seguro in December 1999, most
of these children did not attend school but worked
alongside their parents breathing the noxious methane
gas produced from rotting garbage and eating scraps of
food they found.  

Hanley Denning, the Project’s founder had offered my
husband Andrew and I an opportunity to attend a family
visit with a social worker and we had jumped at the
chance.  I was keen to confront the realities of the
slums; I wanted to truly understand the children’s
situation. To do that, I had to see for myself.

We left our house in Antigua at 6:30 for the half hour
walk to the bus station.  At that hour, the
roughly-hewn fruit stand across the street awaited the
pineapples, bananas, papayas and watermelons that would
fill its ancient plank shelves. Near the panaderia
(bakery) on the corner, an old woman in an apron swept
the cobblestone road to control the dust that filtered
into all the houses in Antigua.  It was still too early
for the smell of freshly baked bread. 

“Buenos Dios.” We greeted an elderly man who splashed
juice jugs of water onto the road. A man on a bicycle
selling unpasteurized milk in unlabelled plastic jars
waited outside the closest tienda (store).  We shook
our heads at the tuk tuk (a tiny red three-wheeled cab)
driver who swerved toward us and beckoned.

As we neared the bus station, the streets filled with
Guatemalans.  We saw waves of adolescent girls in
pleated plaid skirts, white blouses and red sweaters
file through a massive wooden door to the school court
yard beyond.  We passed two men sleeping on the cement
sidewalk and skirted around them.  Numerous
skeletally-thin dogs searched the street for scraps of
food.  

Closer to the station, bus horns blared and conductors
cried out destinations as they paced back and forth in
front of each idling multi-colored bus.  Massive puffs
of black smoke belched from their exhaust pipes when
they accelerated away from the depot.  The air stank of
diesel.

“Guate, Guate, Guate!” our conductor, a mustachioed man
in his mid-twenties shouted in front of the “Prima
Rosa”, one of the many chicken buses departing from the
depot every morning.  

Thirteen fair-skinned volunteers from around the world
met on the bus and exchanged greetings amidst a sea of
coffee-colored faces.  Camino Seguro required its
volunteers to travel together to the project site in
Guatemala City.  By catching “Prima Rosa” at the
station, we were guaranteed a seat for the hour and a
quarter ride. More importantly, we were part of a large
group for our twenty minute walk through Zone 3, the
most dangerous area of Guatemala City.

When our bus pulled out at 7:15, it was nearly full. 
At our first stop, a man on crutches hopped up the
bus’s stairs and informed everyone in rapid Spanish he
needed money to see a doctor.  A few people reached
into their purses for change.  When the bus began to
move again, he quickly hobbled off to await the next
bus.

Ten minutes later, standing passengers crammed the bus.
 I saw as many as six (three adults and three children)
packed on a seat meant for two.  In Guatemala, the
chicken buses are leased to each driver/conductor team.
 More passengers, means more revenue.  These buses
routinely carry over twice their legal capacity of
fifty-four passengers.

The road to Guatemala City wound through the mountains.
 Because the bus didn’t slow for curves, it flung its
passengers from side to side. I held my pack on my lap
and crossed my arms over it because I had been warned
that robberies on the buses were common.  The locals, I
noticed, regarded our group with curiosity.  I made a
point of smiling at everyone I caught staring at me. 
Almost always they returned my smile.

Out the window, I saw pigs and horses tethered beside
the road.  I watched road workers hack back brush with
machetes.   We passed villages where Mayan women in
traditional dress stood behind makeshift tables and
sold freshly-squeezed orange juice, tortillas or fried
platanos (similar to bananas).  These people supported
large families on the little bit of money they made
each day.

As we neared the city, the highway widened to four
congested lanes.  A Coca Cola truck passed us.  Two
uniformed guards carrying rifles stood next to the
cases of pop. We started and stopped uncountable times
in bumper-to-bumper traffic.  The air was foul with the
smell of exhaust. We passed an area of relative
affluence with high rises, mirrored windows and clean,
modern buildings.  Ten minutes later, we were traveling
past disintegrating cement structures again.  

“This is it,” Monique, the Volunteer Coordinator called
out as the bus glided to a stop. I fought my way out of
the crowded bus into swarms of pedestrians, street
vendors and shoe shine boys.  “Walk straight across the
overpass.  No stopping.  We’ll regroup on the other
side,” she said when all the volunteers gathered in
front of her.

As we climbed the steps, we passed a sightless man with
his cupped hands outstretched.  A little further, a
one-legged man supported by crutches held a plastic
bowl.  Street vendors with tiny tables or a piece of
fabric on the cement displayed all types of wares
including wallets, clothing, nuts and sunglasses. 
 
Across the highway, Monique counted heads and
emphasized how important it was that we stay together. 
Here, garbage littered the streets.  Some of the
residents narrowed their eyes as they watched us pass
by.  My tentative smiles brought no response.  Had I
not been in a large group, I would have been afraid. 
Zone 3 is rife with alcoholics, drug addicts and street
gangs.  The dogs wandering on the street were not only
starving, but many were diseased.  I saw a mongrel with
one eye that had lost almost all of its hair.  It would
have been kind to put it out of its misery but no one
cared enough to do so.

As we neared the Project, the wind changed and a
nauseating stench stung my nostrils.  The Guatemala
City dump, less than a quarter of a mile away was easy
to pinpoint because of the many vultures circling over
it.  

When we arrived at Camino Seguro, swarms of children
waited outside its locked door.  Amongst the squalor,
the brand new building seemed out of place.  In the
foyer, Monique asked us to wait while she handed out
work assignments.  When she finished, she introduced us
to Julio, one of the Project’s social workers.  Julio
was a short, stocky Guatemalan in his late twenties. 
He wore a bright red jacket and matching baseball cap.  

“How’s your Spanish?” Monique asked.

“It could be better,” I admitted.

“Not too bad,” Andrew said.  

“I’m going to send an interpreter along to translate in
case there’s something you don’t understand,” Monique
said.

A few minutes later, Paco, a volunteer from Belgium
joined us and the four of us set out toward the dump. 
As we neared it, the reek made me question what I was
doing there.  I found it hard to believe that people
tolerated the stink.  

I worked hard to remain stoic as Julio led us into a
narrow dirt alley lined with haphazard shacks of rusty
corrugated metal.  A naked baby crawled on the ground
near a barefoot pregnant woman wearing dirty clothes. 
Her hands rubbed her swollen belly as she gave us a
jack-o-lantern grin.  Many Guatemalan women, I noticed,
were missing their upper front teeth.  These women’s
worries were much more basic than how they looked;
their struggle was one of survival – living through
another day and finding enough food for themselves and
their many children.  

We passed a drunk asleep on the ground, oblivious to
our presence.  Another intoxicated man slumped against
a wall and leered.  

“Is it safe here?” I asked.  As much as I wanted to see
how the children in the Project lived, my instincts
told me we were in danger.  I thought back to the
waiver I had signed, “By visiting or volunteering with
the Guatemalan charity “Camino Seguro”, you are also
accepting there is a risk that you could be hurt, raped
or even killed during your time as a volunteer or
visitor, that you could later become sick as a result
of your time in the garbage dump, or that you could be
robbed or assaulted and lose some or all of your
property.”

“The people here know me,” Julio said.  “It’s okay.”  

“How many of the kids living here attend the Project?”
Andrew asked.

“About forty-five percent,” Julio said.  “We are
expanding; in January, there will be 415 kids, up from
350.”

We passed some children sorting rags; kids who should
have been in school.  As I looked at the nearby hovels
and tried to imagine living in them, conflicting
emotions flooded through me:  disgust at the squalor
and overwhelming compassion for the children who called
this home.  A heaviness of spirit descended on me. 
Around 3,000 people, many of them children, lived next
to the dump.

Julio stopped a short distance away from a shack of
sagging scrap lumber and odd-shaped pieces of sheet
metal where one woman passed clothes from a grimy
bucket to another woman who hung them on a zigzag of
rope under the eaves.  “The woman who lives here has
five children.  Her husband is an alcoholic and does
not support the family.  She has four children in the
Project,” he said quietly in Spanish, before he led us
forward.

“Buenos Dios,” Julio greeted the women.  They smiled. 
Both women were missing their front teeth too.  As he
explained to them that we were volunteers with the
Project, a small barefoot boy in filthy clothes came
out of the house.  He cowered behind his mother’s legs
but kept peeking at us.  

Julio’s Spanish was so rapid I couldn’t understand much
when he conversed with the women.  Andrew, Paco and I
waited quietly.  I heard Julio ask if we could go
inside.  The woman nodded.  We entered a small room
with a dirt floor that served as a living
space/kitchen.  In the far corner, a huge pot of maize
(corn) simmered over a rudimentary wood stove built of
stones.  Beside it, some tortillas cooked on a sheet of
scrap metal.  There was no sink, no running water, no
table and chairs.  The only furniture was one wooden
bench.

“This woman makes her living by cooking and selling
tortillas,” Julio told us.  “It is very hard for her to
sell enough tortillas to pay the rent of Q300 each
month ($60).

He showed us the only other room in the house, a
sleeping room the size of four mattresses pushed
together on the ground.  

“Her children told me that when it rains, water
sometimes leaks onto the bed,” Julio said.

My eyes were drawn to the waif-like boy who now sat on
the bench, and I went to sit next to him.  I found it
distasteful that he was unwashed and likely had lice,
yet I felt compassion because he was innocent and it
wasn’t his fault.  

“Como se llama?” I asked (What’s your name?)

“Carlos,” he whispered.

Julio spoke to the Carlo’s mother.  She shrugged her
shoulders and rolled her eyes.  

“He doesn’t know his father except from pictures,”
Julio told us.

Carlos’s mother disappeared into the sleeping room and
returned with a small book of photographs.  She handed
it to Carlos who opened it and held it up for me to
look at.  It was a picture of his parent’s wedding.

“Su papa? (your dad),” I asked, and Carlos nodded.  I
sensed he was not used to anyone paying attention to
him. 

“Cuantos anos tienes tu?” (How old are you?) I asked.

“Siete,” (Seven) Carlos responded.

I turned to Julio.  “He’ll be allowed to go to school,
too, won’t he?” I asked.

“Next year,” Julio said. 

When we left, Carlos followed us outside and stood next
to his mother.  His entire body was dirt-smudged, his
hair, uncombed and his clothes unwashed but his eyes, I
saw, had come to life.  I realized that the few minutes
I had spent speaking with him had meant a lot to him. 
When I smiled at him, he beamed.  Amidst the squalor,
the moment was so poignant that my entire body tingled.
 I broke out in goose-bumps.    

On our return to the Project I was quiet as I tried to
come to terms with what I had seen.  It wouldn’t be
easy to express in words, how could I?  How could
anyone?

I had come to Guatemala to help the children; I had
come to offer them love.  There was no doubt I was
right where I needed to be.