So I figured I’d use this next post to explain what exactly it is that I’m doing down here in Guatemala for 3 months. I’ve gotten a couple of questions form people asking if I’ve ditched my job, or if my job ditched me. I assure you, however, that neither of these happens to be the case… or at least not that I am aware of. As it stands, I’m going to begin working for Bain & Co. out in San Francisco in January. Because of my delayed start date, Bain encouraged me to look into either volunteer work or language immersion options to do something worthwhile with my time off. Since spending a term in college in Spain my sophomore year, I’ve been interested in getting back to Spanish and brushing up on it a bit, but the idea of sitting in a classroom for several hours a day when I could be out doing something real and helping people didn’t seem all that appealing… so I decided to combine the two aspects and volunteer in a Spanish speaking country where I would be able to practice/pick up Spanish just in day-to-day life.
Thus I was left looking for a 501(c)3 organization (in order to qualify for a stipend to defray some costs) that would involve working a minimum of 30 hours per week (another requirement) in a Spanish speaking country. As it happens my mom read an article in the Portland newspaper about an organization called Safe Passage (referred to as Camino Seguro here in Guatemala) that just happened to fit all of the above requirements. Thus a match was born and a few recommendations (thank you again Topher and Prof. Heck) and applications later I was looking for flights to Guatemala City for early September.
As I sat in the Boston airport in the early afternoon on September 4th enjoying my last Sam Adams for the next 3 months, I really had no idea what to expect down here in Guate, though I did have a sneaking suspicion that $20 was going to get me a lot further than an airport Caesar salad and an overpriced, though delicious, beer… at least I didn’t drop all $20 on a margarita like the lady next to me did. When I stepped off the plane in Guatemala City and exited out into the surprisingly night crisp air that I have now become familiar with, it finally dawned on me that I was going to be in a Spanish speaking country for 3 months relying on my mediocre and remarkably rusty Spanish (you’d be surprised at the number of differences between the Spanish in Spain and the Spanish here…). Up until this point I think I had largely brushed this reality under the table by telling myself that I was going to be working with a US-based organization with volunteers from all over the world (primarily from the US and northern Europe). It might have been was that the driver that met me at the airport spoke only a few words of English… and then the ensuing 45 minute car ride with him over the winding mountain highway between Guatemala City and Antigua, swerving in between overstuffed chicken buses (the primary form of public transportation around here… they’re old school buses that have been tricked out with absurd paint jobs and horns and where you will inevitably end up sitting in between two people with your knees wedged in against the seat while still others hang on to the rack on the back of the bus as it careens around the turns) and antiquated cars belching clouds of black smoke as they struggled up the hills (and being swerved around by the occasional new luxury sedan… which hinted at the marked disparity in wealth between the rich and poor that is present in this country) that served to quickly correct the errors in my thinking.
I arrived at the door of my homestay in the middle of the night and the situation couldn’t help but remind me of 2 and a half years earlier when I met my host family in Spain for the first time… where my primary form of communication was smiling and nodding and responding with the word “si” in varying tones to anything that was said to me. In fact, they were more similar than I would have liked.
To be continued…
