A Child to Quell my Fear

It takes about forty minutes for the bus holding me and a year's worth of my belongings to break out of the dirty air of Guatemala City. From here, I pull open my window and much to the amusement of my guides Edy and Daniel, stick my head out and close my eyes, feeling the wind separate my eyelashes and whip my curls around my head. Air thinned of oxygen must be my body’s favorite type. In the city, I pulled thick air into my lungs begrudgingly, submitting to its pollutants and gases that I must breathe to stay alive. But now, Guatemalan mountain air slips easily into my lungs; it tastes like swaying green leaves thick as card stock and lemons not yet ripe. Black tires on the van spin along the grey road until you can see the lake, the bluest blue in a sea of green trees and vines and weeds. There are mountains thickly shrouded in trees on either side of me. The valley in between is like a 3D patchwork quilt, each tile a different crop. If I look hard enough I can see hunched backs trailing through perfectly straight lines of maize and green onion.

For a while everything is grey and blue and green and my head bobs sleepily to the radio. Panajachel sneaks up on me, the way it always does after a lulling car ride with a jolt of color. Oranges, reds and purples, lime greens and yellows burst off traditional trajes worn by bronze-skinned women with shiny hair so brown my untrained eye sees it as black. “La gringa” they’ll call me here, to reflect my white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes.

Being here again feels like home. I have a responsibility to it, as people feel they do to their hometowns. I was not born here, rather I slipped into a world unprepared for me, months early on the southside of Indianapolis. Minutes after her water broke, my mother waddled through the aisles at Walmart to pick up Pampers for me, afraid the hospital wouldn’t allow her to take me home without a starter supply of diapers. Later that next afternoon, I was lifted into her arms screaming. A scream, she said, that didn’t die down until I learned to speak, then my scream became an incessant babble. Babbling became arguing, arguing became questioning.

I learned quickly that the people I grew up around did not appreciate the continuous questionings of a seven year old as much as I did, so my babbles became writings that I stored in little notebooks pressed like drying flowers between my mattress and box spring. In the hometown of my birth I learned when not to do things. When not to speak too loudly, when not to kiss a boy, when not to question, when not to share. Guatemala taught me something different. Guatemala taught me when to reach out and touch a hand, when to ask how to eat something, when to listen. Moments here are dense. In many ways, this became the birthplace of my soul.

“Start with why you came here,” someone said. It’s a simple question for someone who took a job with a mission, with a simple answer that I’ve rehearsed well. For some reason though, before I choke out to make a difference, to help people, that question still freezes my tongue and makes me pinch the soft part of my hand between the thumb and pointer finger when I’m asked. Maybe the better question is why I decided to go. There's no easy answer. I think one day I will look back and say “Had I known then why I came, I wouldn’t have had to come.” After the first time I came upon it by happenstance something inside of me has always pulled me back to Guatemala. While many things in my life have happened haphazardly, this, I believe, did not. It was planned from the beginning, transcribed into my bones by the universe.

When the notion of Guatemala was sold to me the first time, I was a college freshman looking for a warm place for Spring Break. All of my friends claimed to have no money to travel with, so I stumbled into a call out meeting for a service trip to Central America at 11am on a Thursday still a little hungover from wine Wednesday held religiously in the musty basement of my dorm room. I knew immediately I was not the type of person they were looking for. These people had A) shown up on time to the meeting, and B) had pens and paper ready to take notes. But, as a master of imitation, I put on my biggest, most endearing smile and sat right in the front row, determined to make them notice me.

One of the leaders on the trip, to whom I am most indebted, went around the room asking each person why they were interested going. Years of academia elicited eloquent responses from upperclassmen sitting in the rows above me. But when Dr. Sharon’s grey-blue eyes smiled towards the still-green, younger me, I froze at the question. No one asked me why I did things because I typically did expected things: high school swim team, honors classes, church on Sunday, family dinners, college. A split second before I told the truth and said, to get out of Evansville and see the sun, I changed my mind and told the whole group, “to learn.”

The universe must have been listening quite intently to room 173 of the Schroeder Family Building that day because it quickly set out a minefield of lessons for me that pushed, prodded, and sometimes dragged me to a deeper understanding of myself and the world than I had ever even known to ask for.

As I navigated my first, second, third, fourth, and fifth trips to Guatemala as well as all the time in between, this analogy of a minefield would become unwelcomely accurate. During parts of those four years, I would tiptoe around lessons, praying to avoid the pain of growth and learning. Other times I would have a lesson blow up in my face unexpectedly and leave me reeling from the impact. Still other times experts who had traversed this same minefield would guide me gently through the territory that they coached me to simply call “life.” Never, until this moment, this decision, did I go willingly into the minefield.

Now here I am. I would love to say I’m standing tall, courageous, face pointed towards the sun I originally followed here, ready to conquer the hunger, the poverty, the injustice that appear to be a birthright of the Guatemalan people that I’ve encountered. But, Guatemala begs, from its inhabitants and guests, an honesty uncharacteristic of my American upbringing.

Truthfully, I imagine that this is the time when people who allow themselves regrets have them. Curled on my big bed in my little room, the purest of Guatemalan rain thundering against my window, I am scared. I'm scared that I won’t be everything I promised I could be, everything I convinced donors and friends and family I could be. I’ve lived my entire life under a delicate combination of determination and fear. Determined to make them notice me, and fearful of what would happen if they didn’t. But now, they have. People are looking. The screaming baby, the arguing child, the questioning high schooler, the college freshman puffing her chest in the front row of the classroom are all are having their day. A day for which they are unprepared. So I find myself again in the middle of the minefield, a thousand lessons ready to unleash their healing and challenging power over me the second I make a move.

To the hometown listed on my birth certificate, I owe an ever-present gratitude that I carry as close as the laugh lines on my face for the people who helped put those lines there. The people who used their hands and hearts to turn out a daughter of the south side whose eyes point at the sun. But, to the hometown of my soul I owe the responsibility of movement. To this place that first elicited my truth; this place that taught me to listen; this place that taught me to feel a story with my heart and my ears, the place that taught me gently of my ignorance. To this place I owe my best try.

I know, however, that my best try will not be enough to fill the big dreams my soul cultivated during the in-between times when minds wander waiting for buses or examining ice cream flavors. I am but one. I need your support. Selfishly, in words and prayers and love. And unselfishly, in money and time.

In January, school starts back up in Guatemala, and though it is mandated by the government, not every student will be able to attend without financial backing from donors. It is my first task to find donors for each of the students who are hoping to return to school in the community of Choquec.

In my life, I have had the distinct and uncommon pleasure of rarely being failed. The children in Guatemala, though, have been consistently failed by a government that sees no point in their education, or in their emotional or physical development. Despite this, they are quick with a dimpled smile and unhesitating to touch an arm in concern or excitement. To say I have been blessed to be put in a position to work with them is a gross understatement. My confidence in their abilities and talents is enough to quell my darkest fears of disappointment. These children are worth investing in a thousand times over. They’ve made me look outside of myself, my fears, my concerns, and even my country. There are 41 students who still need sponsored for this upcoming school year. Your sponsorship will help us provide nutritious, daily lunches for the children in the community of Choquec, as well as access to Mission Guatemala's medical clinic, and much-needed school supplies.

My two hometowns, I so desperately want you to know one another. Sponsors and students will be able to exchange letters and photos and I will be posting updates about what we are learning during my time at the school. If you would like the opportunity to get to know one of these students please follow the link below to read about their interests and sign up to sponsor.

http://missionguatemala.com/how-to-help/children-awaiting-sponsors.html