The Good the Bad and the Ugly

In the last few weeks, I have seen that Guatemala, like the rest of the globe experiences a constant interplay between positive or benevolent members of community, and desperate, ignorant, or selfish people.

In the past few weeks, there have many experiences undergone by those around me that have constantly tested, and then reaffirmed, my faith in humanity as a whole. There are a few events that I will be recounting, that fall on various timelines, but I will write them independently for clarity. These are the preparation for the children’s' festival of Jocotenago, the theft of the boots, and the trying experiences endured by the three Danish volunteers.

THE GOOD: The "First Festival of the Children", was a children’s' festival held on the 23rd of November, at the beginning of Guatemalan school children's longest holiday from school. The preparations for their fair were an impressive cooperation of a number of separate NGOs, the government, and the church. As planned, these organizations brought, for one day, a mountain of activities and entertainment for children, to the otherwise desolate central plaza of Jocotenango (a medium sized municipality outside of Antigua, Guatemala). The festival was a great success: it attracted over a thousand children throughout the day, and gave them avenues of expression (such as painting and writing on various issues affecting Jocotenago) and entertainment (sports competitions, clowns, etc.). This gift to the children was a manifest of the benevolent donors to the various projects, and the hard work and dedication of the various coordinators and volunteers of the esteemed projects.

THE BAD: Before that, however, there was the theft of the boots.... My best friend here, Sasha, had prepared a gumboot performance (for the children’s festival) with a youth group from the Capital. Unfortunately the boots for the performance were stolen out of her car one morning when she forgot to lock the hatch. Hearing of her misfortune a fairly well-off student of hers (she teaches Chinese), who owns the local supermarket, offered to donate boots to her group, so that they would be able to perform for the children at the children’s festival. Sasha was so happy and grateful... we had a great conversation about how humanity has balance between good and bad people...

The next day, while Sasha´s car was parked outside of Los Patojos (the children’s school), a thief pried open the back window of her car and stole the box of boots that had been donated by the owner of the super market. One can imagine how down she was about that...

THE UGLY: A few weeks ago, three new volunteers arrived at the project. They were all Danish girls, travelling through a youth program, and were staying at a hostel in Antigua. There second night in at this hostel, I received a phone call from one of the Danes, because I was the only one in Antigua for whom they had a phone number.

Over the phone... sobbing... she told me that a man had come into their room, which was unlocked. He closed the door and yelled at the three girls, who where sitting in the corner, telling them to be quiet and give them their valuables. Then, after putting their cameras and iPods in his pockets, he came to them and pulled down his pants and told one of them (the one who was talking to me on the phone) that he "wanted her body".

RESOLUTION: Luckily the girls were smart: they lured him to the side of the room closer to the door, then basically attacked him and chased him out. In his escape, he lost his jacket and his pants, which contained the money, two of the cameras, and one of iPods. The remaining valuables were covered by travellers insurance.... In the end no one was hurt in any way, and nothing was really lost materially.

Sasha and I took the girls to another hotel, where they later endured and argument between the owner and his wife, which involved a shotgun... but finally they moved into the same apartment complex as me, where everything was tranquil from then on out.

The boots... were replaced by scratching around, luckily Sasha still had a few left... and the performance was pulled off with a few people missing boots, but it worked.

Basically, the Bad and the Ugly have been scaring us down here, but haven’t been able to harm our bodies or our spirits. Like the children we teach during the day, we are continuing to learn and grow in relative safety, thanks to the Good, the human spirit and… maybe the protection of God.