I took a break from shoveling today and set off for Sumpongo, a town 2 bus rides away, in order to meet with Avivara’s scholarship students and their parents. The bus ride was an adventure in itself. I walked to the bus stop located behind the big open market. The dirt parking lot is a busy place full of colorful buses, the shouting of bus destinations (Guate, Guate, Guate! for going to Guatemala City always drowns out the rest) and the occasional vender selling chicklets, dried banana chips, or a variety of other sorts through the aisles of the buses. I boarded a bus for Chimaltenango (every town either has a long name or 3 names like San Miguel Escobar or San Pedro Las Huertas to make it as confusing as possible) and sat right behind the bus driver so that the ayudante (the guy who collects money and usually hangs out the side of the bus door while we are driving) could tell me when we had reached my stop.
What a wild ride! Bus drivers here are crazy. At one point our bus passed another bus in the oncoming lane while a bus was headed our direction. Up one stretch in the mountains there was only one lane. We would speed along, even around corners and then the bus driver would jerk the breaks when he saw a car coming towards us and the approaching car would do the same. I sat on the same seat with a mother, her young baby, her toddler, and her husband. Around the corners I held on tight to the bar in front of me to keep from knocking them off of the bench. So, of course, I had to look up bus death statistics when I got home. In the US there are on average 23 deaths per year due to bus-related accidents. Here I couldn’t find the average per year, but this last Saturday 55 died in a bus crash and I read that Guatemala has the highest bus death toll of any Latin American country. This is not counting the 512 bus drivers that have died since 2006 due to gang-related violence. Around 200 just last year!
After switching busses at the middle of a busy intersection and running into some Peace Corps members from Seattle, I made it to Sumpongo, my final destination. The meeting had already started in a restaurant with a tin roof, cement floors, and sparse wood walls.
When I walked in, Senora Ana was telling her life story about what she had to go through to get an education and just how much difference it made in her life to the scholarship students. She wore a blouse with embroidered flowers and a beautiful skirt with a cloth belt, as most Indigenous do here. The mothers and female students in attendance wore similar looking clothes. A male teacher, Senor Luis, told his story as well. With the average amount of schooling being only a couple of years in their villages and poverty being so high, getting a good education is a huge struggle here. There are numerous factors that can keep people in the cycle of poverty with little hope of opportunity. Here’s a few:
• Villages are isolated and transportation to adequate schools is expensive
• The government gives little (or no) support to schools
• Parents often would rather have their kids sell chicklets or work in the farms because they can get money desperately needed now
• A high birth rate makes it difficult for parents to fully support all of their children
• With illiteracy rates high and years in school low, it’s hard for kids who are getting an education to get help on school work at home
I am constantly humbled here. These scholarship students, who each have amazing stories full of tragedy, poverty, and determination, will have to make long treks to reach their schools, battle with parents who may not support their education, and fight a system that functions to further oppress and exploit rather than to elevate. Avivara passed out money to each student for uniforms, transportation, books, and other school-related costs. Parents and students gave eloquent thank you speeches. After the meeting families left the restaurant in the rain, many to walk long distances home.
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