I’ve already touched on why I’m here and how I got down here… albeit a month after the fact. So I suppose it’s time now to go ahead and write a bit about what it is that I’m actually doing down here… I’ve already had my one month anniversary of being here in Antigua.
Entonces… as I think I mentioned in Getting Here I’m volunteering for a NGO called Safe Passage. The program itself was founded by a Bowdoin grad named Hanley Denning 10 years ago (we’re actually celebrating the 10 year anniversary next week) when she was invited by a friend of hers to visit the Guatemala City dump. Motivated by the site of children living and working in the dump Hanley founded this program which works to provide with these kids, the poorest of the poor, with an opportunity at a better life. Initially it began with an annual budget of under $10,000 that rented out space in a local church and aimed simply to provide the children with a place to go rather than to work in the dump alongside their parents or in the streets. Ten years later, however, the annual budget exceeds $2 million and provides an impressively comprehensive that provides its students with educational reinforcement (it’s not a school… school runs 1/2 days here in Guatemala… and they come to us the other 1/2 of the day), meals, showers, financial support (pays for them to attend schools, transportation, materials needed for classes and academic projects, as well as to compensate the families accordingly for the loss of income from kids that would have been working in the dump or elsewhere), it has evolved to include sports and community outreach programs, and a daycare center (the guarderia). There are also educational programs for the mothers as well as one that just recently began to help fathers with becoming literate.
So what do I do here? I work as a teachers assistant… which, aside from being a glorified nanny, entails helping with homework (particularly math), english… basically anything they need. It’s pretty neat and has given me an opportunity to learn a lot along the way. It also gives me an excuse to sit down with a coloring book and color away for a few hours. One thing that has surprised is how tiring and time consuming the work is. Each day is 10 hours… from getting on the bus in Antigua at 7:20 to arriving at the project in the city at 8:30 to work until 4:30 and then arriving back home in Antigua around 5:30… so that’s work, a lot of it. Though I do get weekends off to explore and travel (need to get back after that).
As I mentioned previously I moved into a homestay when I got here (good times). I spent about 6 days there before finding myself an apartment on Avenida Primera… right across the street from the famous Cafe No Se. It’s a pretty solid place, 2 bedrooms (my roommate is another volunteer from Germany… where she was a police officer… pretty interesting) and works out well. We’ve also got a rooftop terrace that looks across the street at Cafe Sky (can read all about it in your Lonely Planet guidebook if you’re curious… great place to watch the sunset and whatnot) and has an incredible view of Volcan Agua (I’ve been meaning to take a picture… I’ll see if I can make that happen and update this post with it when it does). Also, rent is cheap… we each pay 1500Q per month… plus another 50Q or so each for utilities and trash… which works out to a shade under $200/month… moving to San Francisco in January is going to be quite a shock to the system. So this frees up enough extra cash to eat out when I don’t feel like cooking… which is most evenings. There’s a little place across the street called La Fondita owned by this guy named Luis who moved down here after 30 years of living in LA… serves up a great 15Q breakfast special (that’s about $2) and an even better dinner special that’s 25Q… tough to beat dinner for $3… life’s been good.
So that’s all for now it’s Friday night and some other volunteers are in town looking to have a food time… time to shower, shave, grab dinner and hang out.
Hope everyone is well. More later… hopefully on the sooner side… but we’ll see. Life just tends to happen down here.
Chris
Can’t wait to read more, very interesting and fun to know what you are doing. Keep sharing the photos too – they are amazing! ($3.00 dinners? hmmm maybe retirement is still possible.)