Guatemalan quandry...

Back from the ten day Guatemala trip.  Not really sure where to start...but I guess I might start with one of my selfish goals for the trip, and that was to get totally ruined by rubbing elbows with the Third World.  I think it was goal attained, I do feel pretty ruined.  We just have no idea how prosperous and spoiled we are in the West and the rest of the world is full of some pretty amazing people.  For three of the days we stayed in the village of San Antonio, about three hours from Guatemala City and a humble farming and ranching community in the foothills. 


Our host family, Emilio and Maria Carranza, were the sweetest people in the world.  We were helping them gather clay so they can build an enclosed kitchen so there is not so much smoke damage to their five children, because Maria cooks over an open flame all day (picture endless camping with no stove).  In order to build walls we needed to make bricks.  In order to make bricks we had to gather clay...from the ground, with a pick and shovel.  We picked and shoveled for three straight days and gathered enough clay for Emilio to make 1,200 bricks.  The girls on the trip shoveled clay in their skirts and completely re-defined beauty.  We slept in our sleeping bags on the dirt floor of their mud home.  The rooster squawked all night, the dogs barked, there was no shower, it was really hot and humid.  They told us not to look at the bottom of the pit in the outhouse, so of course, the first thing I did was looked into the dark abyss of the dirt outhouse only to find an scene from an Indiana Jones movie. The entire waste pit was moving...solid layers of bugs who were happier than pigs in poop.  Makes for a pretty relaxing morning routine of course.  The biggest bonus for the whole day was whether or not we got done in time to jump in the river and wash our socks on the rocks.

The kids were amazing.  They were the classic little bands of barefoot, dirty-faced little kids you might see on a humanitarian aid infomercial.  The amazing thing about them is that they followed us out to "the pit" each day and took every chance they could to help us dig.  I can't tell you how many times I had a five year old bare-footed Guatemalan kid take my pick out of my hand because he couldn't wait to take his swings.  Then they played in the pit like it was a half-pipe at the skatepark, only they werent on skateboards, they were just jumping into it with their bare feet.  It was the biggest event of the month in their lives.  No TV, no video games, no cell phones.  Just a happy band of Third World kids who had no idea what they didn't have.

There was a part of me that was torn.  I want to keep this world of "prosperity" away from them.  I don't want them to be like me.  I don't want them to have a  mortgage, stress about car payments, wonder if they were keeping up with the Jonses and be totally self-conscious about their physical appearance.  I just don't want this for them.  I want them to stay in their humble little village and be content.  But the tide of Western civilization looms over them like a dark cloud.  Cell phone towers continue to expand and the internet is probably next. Sure, all this prosperity can help them immensly...medical procedures, basic health care, better hygeine and agricultural techniques, also better sources of clean, unlimited water.  But all that seems to come at a very costly price.  Is there a way to enjoy the benefits of prosperity and technology without the dark side of the proverbial coin that always seems to go with it?