On Tuesday I accompanied 3 Guatemaltecos,(what Guatemalans call themselves) Mario, Aurelio, and Caesar from the organization Global Visionaries, on an adventure to discover whether a village at the top of a mountain had the proper infrastructure to educate the children in their community. Before we drove up the mountain, we had to get permission from armed guards standing at an elaborate entrance for Finca Filadelfia, a enormous private coffee plantation, to use their private road to access the village. Once a guard questioned us and radioed to someone, he granted us access. I thought it was a little strange that the only way to access this community was though the coffee farm. We proceeded to drive straight up the mountain. The car teetered back and forth in 4-wheel drive as we climbed. I looked out over the edge. It was a long way down, but gorgeously green with an amazing view around every turn.
We finally arrived at a gate and realized we would have to walk the rest of the way to the village. The village was nestled in a bit of a canyon on the other side of the gate. Mario, one of the staff members, broke his leg in a car accident a few weeks back and somehow managed to descend the steep dirt path to the village on his crutches. From the road, we could see smoke rising from several tin roofs. I imagine women were busy making tortillas and the morning breakfast. We could see what looked like a school from a distance, but we were unsure.
Once we approached the structure, Mario and Aurelio, stuck their heads in. The elders were having a meeting. Within minutes I think half of the town was standing on the cement porch outside the door, staring at us. The village had a very authentic Indigenous appearance (or what I thought appeared to be). I felt like I could go back in time 200 years and little would look different from how it was at that moment. One mother stood close to hear our conversation. She wore a beautiful Mayan skirt and had a large wrap of cloth around her midsection with her baby bundled inside. She nursed her baby and nodded her head at the same time to let us know she was listening. She was missing a few teeth and looked a little rough, but I found her beautiful, maybe not in the standard way we (Americans) think of beauty, but because she represented the living of life (not the main women in this picture).
I wondered several times what they did in this village when someone is sick. One child had an abnormally large belly, which I believe happens from malnutrition (amongst other things). One child stared at me with his crossed eyes. I remember being cross-eyed when I was young, but my parents were able to take me to get glasses. They don’t have that luxury here. I’m sure to him I was pretty unique looking with my light skin, non-brown eyes, and freckled face.
Mario did an excellent job of explaining that Global Visionaries is an organization that builds schools. He asked the only teacher there about the village. Mario got interrupted a few times by an older man that Mario said had already had his “morning Irish coffee (which isn’t rare to find.)” The teacher told us that there were 13 families in the village. The structure we were standing outside of had 2 classrooms. They didn’t need any more classrooms, but they had no bathrooms for the students. The village also had only one source for water, from a nearby river, and no electricity.
Mario told the teacher that if Global Visionaries was to take on a project within the community, they would need the community’s support with the project. I could feel the energy rise as several community members nodded their heads and stepped closer to Mario. After our chat and a few pages full of notes, we thanked the village for their time and they thanked us too and we headed back up the dirt road. If Global Visionaries can’t build bathrooms for the community, they will pass this project on to another NGO in Guatemala.
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