Digging my fingers in between the squishy heel of a pair of Nike tennis shoes and the tiny brown foot of an 85 year old Guatemalan woman, I heaved with tearful, uncontrollable laughter. The heel of the shoe kept bending over and rejecting her poor foot - coated with dried mud from the day's activities and wrinkly with experience. And the woman's reaction? The loudest, most genuinely adorable laugh I have heard in a while - causing me to immediately join in. I kept telling her in Spanish, "I hope I'm not hurting you!" or "Almost there!" and she would just hit me on the back, flat-out cracking up. She hugged me when we finally got it, saying how thankful she was for her new shoes, and then continued to crack herself up, blabbering incomprehensible Spanish to all of us and then bursting in laughter. Seeing me laughing with her, Kait asked, "What is she saying?" I replied, "I literally have no idea." That was at the last village we visited, when I had already found out what it was like to make someone's day with an article of clothing or create a lasting connection in one precious moment. Before that, we spent a few days returning to the village Pueblo Modelo, getting to know the children there, providing medical and dental care, building bookshelves, bunk beds and chicken coops, and donating clothing and supplies. Pueblo Modelo was my first peek into the poverty of Guatemala - and what a shock it was. Some "nice" houses were made out of cement, others just had the dirt ground as their flooring. Some were made out of pure trash or sheet metal, and the contents were just nothing. These people don't have toothpaste, they don't have refrigerators, they don't have socks. But they show us their houses with the most genuine pride and contentment. In one of our group discussions we talked about how these people are experiencing poverty of material things, but they aren't lacking in very much else - spiritual and emotional wellness, community, family strength. Their pure admirable happiness and pride makes them richer than most of us. There was one little girl at Pueblo Modelo, Iris, who became my friend for the next few days. She would hold my hand and ride on my back, she'd make me swing her up in the air. And she'd look at me with the sweetest eyes and tell me what she wanted: a house. She said (in Spanish of course) that her dad died and she looked over her younger brother and sister while her mom was working. "Work" for them meant manual labor...most likely outside of the village, in coffee bean fields or elsewhere. When she told me she wanted a house I felt like a failure, like a Santa Claus phony denying a child's one wish. I hugged her and told her she could show me where she lived tomorrow, and we were attached at the hip from that point on. If the living conditions of Pueblo Modelo were saddening, those of the next village were sickening - just inhumane. Families' "houses," made of straw, tarp, sticks, mud and trash bags, surrounded one heaping trash dump. We watched silently and solemnly as truckloads of garbage added to the pile, and Guatemalan families scavenged through the mess - as they did everyday - to pick out recyclables that they could later trade for coins. I walked around, taking in the scene - the kids laughing in the trash pile having a blast, unashamed. The mothers walking their kids back to their houses, satisfied with the new clothes we had just given them. The breathtaking mountains in the background - which we all had to comment on at some point, whether it was here or a different village. If this land were under a different government, like America, we'd say...it would be worth millions! In our arrogance we imagined the billion dollar homes and the restaurants. It just further proves our American consumerism. For these people, this is life. This heap of trash is constantly on fire to create space, filling their lungs with smoke in and outside of their homes. And here we see mountains and think, "What a beautiful place for happy hour." I started talking with one little boy at the dump, who was throwing a circular piece of cardboard up in the air as hard as he could, then running to grab it and doing it again. It looked like a mix between fetch and ultimate frisbee, but he was having the time of his life. I got him to pass it with me a little bit, trying to teach him to throw it like a frisbee, and he was loving it. I realized this piece of trash was his new toy for the day and the whole idea made my stomach turn a bit. When we got back to the bus, Danny Howe was standing in the bus door with one last duffel bag of donations for the kids, holding up a brand new highlighter yellow soccer ball. I watched the cardboard frisbee-throwing boy catch it and his eyes light up like it was the best day of his life. The third village we we went to seemed a little more developed, although they still didn't have much "stuff." Everything was so intelligently and resourcefully built, using the little materials they had - from the door hinges made of sheet metal to the dish-drying racks hanging from trees. The houses were built with patterns of sticks and mud patted down to create a strong foundation. It all made me feel pretty dumb to be honest - if I was left with sticks and mud to build a home I'd be utterly screwed. We distributed water filters to several families around that village and showed them how to use it, supplying them with clean water for the next ten years. Before the filter, they had to stock up on clean water from outside villages and use extremely sparingly before they could fill up again. Each family was incredibly grateful. At this village, like the other ones, we set up medical and dental clinics, put together soccer goals, donated clothing and played with the kids. I spent a lot of time in medical and became a little pharmacist that day, handing Dr. Montgomery and Dr. Rios baggies of Ibuprofren, vitamins and other medications left and right. People of all ages were coming in with all kinds of problems. A mother wanted medicine for her sick toddler, an older man had pain in his chest, a pregnant woman wanted to know if her unborn baby was still alive. The simple medical attention and over-the-counter medicines that we take for granted were groundbreaking for these families - HUGE thank you to our doctors (and translators) for making all those smiles possible. Besides playing pharmacist, I also got to play dentist back at Pueblo Modelo. Actually, I was more of a combination between dentist and kindergarten teacher - explaining to a "class" of five kids at a time how to brush their teeth in Spanish, then giving toothbrushes and toothpaste and applying dental varnish to their teeth, marking the names of kids whose teeth were "really bad" - which turned out to be a whole lot of names. I saw teeth that were crumbling, black and jagged. When I was their age, I had already been going to an orthodontist for years with a mouthful of braces and rubber bands. That realization made me feel both privileged and disgusted by what my teeth would look like by now if I were in their shoes. On our last day at Pueblo Modelo, we gave backpacks filled with school supplies to the preschool children and donated hundreds of books to create a school library, which was just so awesome and rewarding to see how excited the kids, parents and teachers were. The school even had a little assembly to thank Kristin Halford for making it all possible...It was so special. Leaving the school with lots of happy kids and their new backpacks, I saw my little friend Iris looking upset. She told me she wasn't "technically" enrolled in the school so she didn't get a backpack, and all she wanted was one book. I told her the new library would have hundreds of books for her to choose from, but she wasn't satisfied...So I took my colorful bracelet from Tomorrowworld and put it on her wrist, and took my cheap tribal sunglasses and put them on her face. She looked like a mini Guatemalan Renee with new jewelry of her very own... I think we were equally ecstatic. The last project we did there was what we liked to call the "life-changing concrete slab." One ten-year-old boy in the village has muscular dystrophy in his legs, which has increasingly gotten worse to the point where it is very difficult for him to stand or walk on uneven surfaces. He spends majority of his time standing on his neighbors sidewalk because it is the only flat concrete nearby. So using rocks, water, dust, and shovels, the group of us created a concrete mixture that was then spread flat to create a big foundation right outside the little boy's home. When we finished, his dad thanked us, telling us there was no way he could ever repay us...there were tears in his eyes. I gave the boy a hug on my way out...he's only expected to live two more years, and we helped make those two years a little bit easier. Seeing the emotional gratitude in that father's eyes, creating a special bond with Iris and sharing the most hilarious moments with that 85 year-old woman made me realize one simple truth. Even with how incredible the mission work is on a trip like this, it's so much more about the genuine, lasting connections made and the new outlook we have as we come back and continue to live our lives. Some say that mission trips don't really do that much...that they're just short-term immediate help and can't even begin to solve the problems at hand. After getting to know the Guatemalans and seeing what they (and we) are capable of, I completely disagree. We may not be able to do it all, but at least now we've seen what needs to be done. We've gained an understanding that couldn't be obtained any other way, and made the most beautiful friendships while doing it. Traveling is learning, learning is understanding, and understanding is peace. By traveling to Zacapa and holding the hands of the children there, I feel connected to them...and that's never going to go away. Of course, we owe everything we were able to accomplish in Guatemala to the awesome program Hearts in Motion. The HIM staff were some of the most inspiring and humble people I have ever met, and I only was with them for a few days. They showed us what the program is all about and the facilities they have around Zacapa right now: an orphanage, a physical therapy center, a daycare, a medical clinic where they make prosthetic arms and legs in a pizza oven (really)... It was beyond impressive how far they have come and what a significant difference they've made in Zacapa. On the first day, the founder Karen told us that for her, working for Hearts in Motion was working for HIM but it's also working for Him - I really loved that, and have never been more sure in my life that I was working for Him all week.
5 Comments
Stephen Fleddermann
1/22/2015 08:47:31 am
Home run on the description, babe. Thanks for sharing. I hope you're sending a copy to H.I.M.
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Tom Halford
1/23/2015 03:41:14 am
Renee,
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2/15/2015 09:32:37 am
Renee,
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2/15/2015 10:03:35 am
Thank you Kathryn - for your kind words and especially for your donations! It is so great to know what a difference the dental supplies made for those hundreds of Guatemalan children.
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