Wednesday was yet another near-death experience, but I needed one after being in the orphanage for 2 weeks. We drove an hour and a half to a bus stop in the middle of nowhere. At this stop we met Maximum, who was the only English speaking villager Panamache. He learned because his wife, who was a short-term missionary from Iowa, taught him. She decided to become a long-term missionary when she married him. This wasn’t the first time we heard of a missionary falling in love with a native and deciding to stay here.
Panamache was relocated to land given by the Guatemalan government because of mudslides, and was renamed Los Victorales. We parked the van that we had rented when we first got here in the middle of nowhere, and walked down the street to the “bus stop”—a curb on the side of the road, in front of a steep cliff. It was only 10:30, but we decided to eat our lunch there instead of in front of the kids. We got out our bread, and jar of Goober—the fancy stuff that has peanut butter and jelly in it—and realized we had no knife. So being the resourceful person that I am, I thoroughly sanitized my hand, stuck it in the jar, and made everyone’s sandwiches. Meanwhile, Leister and Shane were scheming up ideas for how to make a ski lift or zip-line to get down there.
Instead, we went the old-fashioned Guatemalan way—piling in the back of a truck and wobbling down the steep drop off on the other (guardrails don’t exist in this country). For some reason, we had to drive down the mountain, and then back up the other side to reach Panamache, instead of driving around. Apparently the unsafe way cuts off a lot of time.
Jill, one of the new volunteers, had panic attacks, while Shane sang “Living on A Prayer” by Bon Jovi and every song having to do with a mountain; “she’ll be comin’ round the mountain when she comes, she’ll be comin’ round the mountain when she comes!” I was a bit nervous so I prayed in my head, contrary to Leister’s prays that could be heard from the other side of the valley, as he’s nearly deaf. What really made us nervous were the dark clouds; so we prayed for God to blow them the way we had come. And He did.
And as we prayed, Shane sang Miley Cyrus; “There’s always gonna be another mountain! I’m always gonna wanna make it move! There’s always gonna be an uphill battle, sometimes I’m gonna have to move!”
When we got there, we put our 8 suitcases into the church-er, concrete building with a tin roof and the only locked doors in the village-and took the ones with the stuffed animals and hats to the school, which was a concrete building with a lopsided tin roof and no doors. We had Maximum translate to them who we were and why we were here-friends from America, here to give you gifts-and distributed the donated animals and hats to the individual kids as they sat in their desks. Some said “gracias” but most eagerly took the gift and stared at it before smiling and hugging it or putting it on. I don’t think they knew what most of the animals were.
The kids’ clothes were as dirty as their faces and were obviously donated: t-shirts with Spongebob and Dora hanging off their boney shoulders, jeans that were either too big or too small, or skirts tied to their malnourished waists with rope. Some of them had donated backpacks, and they carried mugs to get water from the village well.
When we were done at the school, we weaved through the maze of shacks and little concrete huts to find little bambinos to give McDonalds beanie babies (they were all we had left) and hats to. The hats were pink or blue and were a Safari style, and were pretty ugly for American fashion, but the mothers went nuts over them. They were so happy to have something to keep their heads from burning. We also brought care packages filled with necessities: thread, deodorant, soap, band-aids, and shampoo, meant to be given to every family (70 families resided in Los Victorales), but since we were there at midday and most parents and eligible children were in the fields, they’ll be distributed on Sunday. We wished we could be there. Maximum said “you saw the mothers’ smiles when we gave their children stuffed animals—you should see their tears when they receive necessities!” When Leister was here last year, he saw a woman washing her clothes in a pot of water. He reached in a bag and pulled out a bar of soap to give to her, but a woman grabbed it from him, literally breaking a finger and bending three back. Reading what I’ve written about these people dressed in dirty clothes and living without electricity or sanitized water, speaking a Mayan language, might paint a picture of savages living in a tribe in rough terrain. At the orphanage, even though showers are limited to 10 minutes, we’re allowed to shower every day. Could you imagine not being able to shower, ever? Could you imagine taking off your sweaty clothes that you worked in the field in all day, sitting your bare butt in a bucket of water filled up by last night’s rain and scrubbing yourself with your hands, with no sweet smelling lather to reassure yourself that your body is free from ringworm, rashes, infection—and then putting your dirty clothes back on? Just like the Holocaust’s concentration camps where people stole from each other and fought their fathers to the death for a piece of bread, this is a Holocaust of poverty—and I think most of my friends would break a finger for a bar of soap too.
On the way back, we realized we had a few stuffed animals left; Jill and Shane took a lot of joy from their game of “toss the donated stuffed animal to the starving Guatemalan child in the field.”
Well, that was my heart-wrenching story of the week. The orphanage is nice and the kids here aren’t starving, so I often forget I’m in a third-world country; but this place really is a life saver for 19 people. However, to save these lives, two permanently sacrificed the comfort, luxuries, and safety provided by the U.S. They were lounging on the couch together when the babies were in bed, playing Mario like normal 20-something year olds. I felt a mix of sympathy and admiration for them.
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