Six unforgettable months in the land of eternal spring - Guatamala

N. Aoto
February 2006

The twentieth of May was my big day. I left the over-civilized world to get to know something else, something that was totally different from places I’d seen before, a third world country.

After almost twenty hours of traveling I arrived exhausted but happy in Guatemala City. Gerhard Bessell and some other people picked me up at the airport and luckily it was only a seven minutes drive to the Peace Embassy. I was shown around the big and beautiful house and then I went to sleep.

I stayed a few days in the Peace Embassy, to get used to the weather and air pressure (Guatemala City is about 1’500m above sea level), to get into Guatemalan time (because of the eight hours time difference to Switzerland) and to have some rest before starting to work. I was going to be a volunteer at a primary school for Mayan children, that was founded eight years ago by the Bessels in Santiago Atitlán.

I remember very well my arrival in Santiago Atitlán. It was around eight in the evening, so everything was dark. I got out of the pickup, which was right away surrounded by many children who were playing in the street. They were all looking at me, asking with their eyes: "What is this rich lady doing here with all that luggage?" Because I was quite tired from the four hours bone-rattling drive, I just wanted to go to bed. That’s why Gaspar, the school director showed me my room and wished me a good night. Before sleeping I just wanted to wash my face and brush my teeth, so I went to the bathroom. The first thing I noticed was, that there was no soap…okay, then only water. I turned on the sink and not a drop of water came out. I ended up sitting in that dark, small room with only two tiny windows and a bed. At that moment my first big doubt started troubling me: "What am I actually doing here in that dark scary place all by myself?" That first weekend wasn’t that easy, because everything was so new to me and I didn’t know anybody. I felt quite lost and lonely.

But on Monday school started and things began looking brighter. I got to know the teachers and pupils and finally I had something to do. My job was to teach English and some music to the kids from second to sixth grade, which turned out to be quite a challenge. It’s hard for the children to concentrate for 40 minutes. Often they start talking to each other or just space out. It would take them weeks to learn the five easy words I gave them as homework. On the other hand they really enjoyed singing and most of them did it with all their heart. That was very nice.

The schools in the village always have to prepare for some kind of activities, like the band competition (our school won), the sports week, the march on the Independence Day etc. It’s all very exciting, but many classes are cancelled. Or sometimes I found myself with only six students in a lesson, because the others had to prepare or train for some upcoming event.

Actually I only stayed the first night at Gaspar’s house and then moved into the school. It was a lot nicer there! I got a wooden room on the second floor that was bright and lovely. Looking out of the window I could see the school entrance, the actual school building with the classrooms and the yard. I even saw the soccer field (a dirt field) on the other side of the road, where the boys and men of the village played every day. The school garden is just marvelous. The first time I saw it I just went: "Wow! It’s so beautiful!" It really is a dream! All the different trees, palms, plants, flowers, animals and at the end of it, the lake and the volcano just in front of it.

The whole village Santiago Atitlán is an amazing place. It has an elevation of 1590m and lies next to one of the world’s most beautiful and fascinating bodies of water, the lake of Atitlán, which is surrounded by volcanoes. I loved to go swimming in the lake or to climb the volcano. The people living there still maintain their traditional Mayan culture. Women weave and wear "huipiles" and "corte", so everyone who saw me knew right away that I was not from there, just because of my clothes. In Santiago the people speak their own Mayan language, which is Tz´utujil and only one fourth of the adults can speak Spanish. That was another challenge for me. Tz’utujil is the weirdest language I’ve ever heard, but towards the end of my stay I even remembered a few words.

Living in Santiago is very exciting. Often the electricity would just turn off or we wouldn’t have any running water for a few days. Living without electricity is not too bad, since you can buy candles, but living without water can be really hard. After some time you start feeling quite dirty and you can imagine how the toilets look. At those times it’s hard to keep positive, but somehow you always survive it. Just imagine the joy when the water finally comes back… I would be living alone in that room at the school; at least I thought so at the beginning. But after a few days I already had flies sharing the room with me. That was horrible!! I always thought mosquitoes were terrible, but flies are a whole lot worse! After one week of suffering I somehow got rid of them. Anyway, I had all kind of animals in my room. From flies to mice, to big spiders, to huge flying grasshoppers and once even a big, black, scary scorpion. But I’m still alive.

A strange thing for me to see was women washing their clothes, themselves or even the dishes in the lake. I never saw a washing machine or a vacuum cleaner in the village. There, everything is done by hand. Men walk around with huge knifes to work in the fields and others paddle around in their small, simple, not very stable looking canoes on the water and go fishing.

People in Santiago are very religious. There are over sixty churches in that village and especially on Sundays they make a lot of noise with all their singing, shouting, dancing, jumping, praying, and crying…everyone becomes so emotional. It’s fun to go to different churches and watch a sermon. The only difficulty is, that the priest usually speaks in Tz’utujil mixed with only a few words of Spanish. So if you don’t stand Tz’utujil you have no idea what the priest is talking about.

In the early morning of the 5th of October 2005 something horrible happened in Santiago. My day started at 7.30 am. I was lying in bed in a bad mood. It was raining again! For a few days we hadn’t had any sunshine in Santiago and everybody was getting quite depressed. I didn’t want to get out of bed. There was nothing to do, anyway. Because of the heavy rain we didn’t give classes, the school was empty. Suddenly someone knocked on the door. I just ignored it. I didn’t want to leave my warm bed. After a few minutes they knocked again and the school guard said: "N., you should get up. A mudslide is coming down. The street in front of the school gate is already covered with mud. One can’t pass there anymore. The neighbors are coming to our school, because mud has already entered into their houses and they have nowhere to go to." Hearing that, I jumped out of bed to see what was going on. It was a frightening scene: all that heavy, dark mud everywhere, people leaving their houses. One family climbed on top of the roof because their house was full of mud. Some tourists were walking through the half-meter high mud carrying their luggage to leave that place. After a short time we were told to leave the school, because more mud could come down and it was dangerous to stay there. So I went to my room and packed my backpack with the most important things. I didn’t know if I would ever see the other things I left in the room again. Since we couldn’t open the entrance gate we had to climb through some bushes. I slipped and scratched my knee and it started bleeding. We made it to the road and fought our way through the heavy mud. As we finally made it out of the mud I walked to Gaspar’s, since I didn’t know where else to go. So that was my first experience with a mudslide, but it was only the beginning.

Later on we were told that Panabaj, a part of Santiago Atitlán where the poorer people were living, disappeared totally under the mud. The landslide came down in the middle of the night, when everyone was sleeping and just at that time there was no electricity. Guillermo, a teacher who worked at the same school as I did, lived in Panabaj. He told us that his parents woke up because of the strong smell of earth. Then they saw that already 30 cm of mud had entered their house. They quickly woke everyone up, took a few important things and left the house. So they had to walk in the dark through the mud a long way. They were very lucky and survived it, but hundreds of people lost their lives that night and five thousand people lost their homes and all their belongings. All the people who survived the catastrophe started living in the schools and churches in the village. From that day on the teachers had a new job: to sort out and distribute clothes and food to those people. It was a very hard work, from early morning to late at night and what we saw and stories we heard were heartbreaking: many injured, many children who lost their parents, fathers who saw members of their family one by one carried away by the mud until they were left all alone…

During those days of catastrophe we were totally isolated. There was no way out or into the village, because the roads were destroyed. Neither the regular phones nor the cell phones worked. We were totally blocked from the outside world and no one out there knew what the situation was in Santiago Atitlán. On top of it, the rain didn’t stop and everyone in the village was depressed. Luckily the rain stopped one day, but the people were depressed for many weeks. Everyone started cleaning up, shoveling mud. But the situation in Panabaj was too bad. Most of the houses were buried under the mud and not even all the dead bodies could be found. The place was closed and declared a cemetery.

That was quite a dramatic experience. Often we see these kinds of natural catastrophes on TV, but they are too far away from us and we can’t really connect with them emotionally. Experiencing this life and being there with the victims I could feel the pain of the people and understand what they were and still are going through.

The six months I got to spend in Guatemala are a wonderful blessing to me. I learned an amazing amount of new things I could never learn in Switzerland. For me it was an unforgettable lifetime experience in which I could open my eyes to something new, something different, but something so wonderful! I built up many deep friendships with some special people I met in Santiago Atitlán and to say "good bye" wasn’t an easy thing, but I truly believe that I’m going to see my friends again someday.

Thank you, dear family Bessell, for investing so much heart in Guatemala and for giving me the chance to work in your school. Thank you Mum and Dad for that great opportunity you gave to me to grow and thank you Heavenly Father for your abundant blessings!

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