3206 Guatemala VI

Our project consisted of working for an organisation called EBS - El buen Samaritano, a sort of mix of pre-school, after-school homework help, feeding, support for the soul and any other kind of family problem that concerned the 160 children part of it. The ‘school’ is in a poor suburb of rich Antigua called Jocotenango and is run by an extremely energetic, motivated and forceful young Guatemalan lady who lives in the school with her three children. The organisation has at any time between 5 and 10 volunteers mainly working to support the teachers in the different age groups of children.
Volunteering in Antigua
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Unfortunately, after a short week we had to head back to Antigua because our volunteer work would start on the 9th of January. After some arguing about whether we should attempt to go in one day or split it and stay in a town on the way (with a fantastic market) we pushed through and arrived in a small town close to Antigua called Jocotenango in the evening. 뮺붼뾾쇀쏂엄쟆질쯊췌쿎
Kate had this idea already before we started our trip: Working as volunteers somewhere to make the experience for the kids a different one from pure tourism. Getting to know the locals differently from the way it is possible when moving all the time and actually contributing something to some people in need (with the nice side effect that by getting to know an organisation or the people who spend charity money we would not squabble every year over whether and where we should give money to the needy). Therefore, during the months running up to our stay in Guatemala Kate had been in constant contact with a number of organisations in order to find the right project for us. Not an easy task since we were a complicated case: not only did we want to do something where children can be involved (and the organisation we worked with told us this was the first time they had a whole family working here) but also Stefan wanted to use his extraordinary business skills (!!) rather than just cleaning up somewhere. We actually got the former part to work, but not the latter, as you probably could imagine without having gone there. ÿ✀
I have to say that the work was not always tremendous fun. Acting as a "pseudo-carpenter" I had to decide and enact how to repair the roof, the ceiling and some other parts of the building. Crawling under a tin roof in the blazing sun with a layer of dust and dirt several centimeters high, and having about 1 meter between the ceiling and the roof to manoeuver was probably one of the worst jobs I’ve ever done. Breathing in half a ton of dust which shorten my (advanced) life by at least a year I was wondering more than once whether this was really the best way to help these people.
Sending over the salary of a month of work back home would have probably funded a group of 5 skilled (!!) craftsmen for a year. And there I was sweating in the dirt to make a few roof parts progress. Hmmm! But obviously seeing the difficulties of educating children of poor families (it was not the only disaster that we experienced when while we were there a father of a family of five died of alcoholism and left a wife without a job or the guy who had left his family and needed to be found before his wife died of some incurable desease and his children would be sent into an orphanage), the commitment and tenacity of the locals to make it work, the limited resources in human and financial help was an experience that questioned ones own "big" problems and objectives in life. I am not sure that Lili, Anna and Cléo really picked up the situation of the children they played with, but helping (Lili even was made assistant to the teacher of a group of 4-6 year old children) others was clearly a positive experience for them (not to talk about the fun of painting walls with fun pictures).
How was the volunteering experience for Anna? "It was nice for me! I liked it very much! We had to paint in a room for the new school that was used by the doctor. We had to paint medical objects on the wall and a picture of a boy looked at by a doctor. In the old school we had to paint butterflies on the wall of a room that was used for the smallest children in the school. They are 2 to 3 years old. I learned a lot of spanish by speaking with the kids and the boss of the school. There were too some older girls from France, Germany and Portugal who helped repainting the rooms and teaching the children. The painting was important to make the rooms look nice so that the kids felt happy. They had bought two puppies too. We liked playing with them a lot. They were called "Princessa" and "Captain". I went in a class of kids of 5-6 years together with Cléo. We drew pictures and the rest of the time was boring for us. So we came to play with the pups. In the breaks the pups got dragged about by the children. Prunelle, a girl from Belgium, came a couple of times to babysit us while mummy and daddy went to Antigua for an evening out.
How was the volunteering experience for Cléo? We were on the roof of the new school building and I helped Daddy to fill up holes with cement. It was a bit difficult to fill in the holes and to make the edges look nice. There was only a big white dog that was called Osso in the school. We painted with Mummy while Daddy was on the roof. We needed to wash the rooms before we painted them, not all of them, but several. Painting was very fun. I liked rolling the paint on and then I had a lot of little spots on my face and my clothes and my hair, no, my hair was covered by a piece of cloth. In the old the school there are two very sweet pups and one very big black dog. The pups are black and are called "Princessa" and "Capitain". We liked taking them off their trees where they were hung on (?!) and taking them to different places in the school. That was fun!
Our specific task consisted of renovating part of the old school buildings and part of the new ones that the organisation will move in over the course of the year. More specifically, Kate and the children did mainly painting work and Stefan could use his business skills to get the co-workers to buy the right kind of wood and paint to repair the wodden ceiling in the various rooms of the new buildings. After some initial frustration, we had to get used to the Guatemalan way of organising a project like this, i.e. it will always take a few days longer to decide how to paint, to get paint or wood, to find the tools or just the key to the room. After a week we got the rythm (meaning 3-4 hours of work a day rather than the entire day) which allowed us to spend quite a bit of time outside the project on fun family activities.
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Volunteering in Antigua

Unfortunately, after a short week we had to head back to Antigua because our volunteer work would start on the 9th of January. After some arguing about whether we should attempt to go in one day or split it and stay in a town on the way (with a fantastic market) we pushed through and arrived in a small town close to Antigua called Jocotenango in the evening.

Kate had this idea already before we started our trip: Working as volunteers somewhere to make the experience for the kids a different one from pure tourism. Getting to know the locals differently from the way it is possible when moving all the time and actually contributing something to some people in need (with the nice side effect that by getting to know an organisation or the people who spend charity money we would not squabble every year over whether and where we should give money to the needy). Therefore, during the months running up to our stay in Guatemala Kate had been in constant contact with a number of organisations in order to find the right project for us. Not an easy task since we were a complicated case: not only did we want to do something where children can be involved (and the organisation we worked with told us this was the first time they had a whole family working here) but also Stefan wanted to use his extraordinary business skills (!!) rather than just cleaning up somewhere. We actually got the former part to work, but not the latter, as you probably could imagine without having gone there.

I have to say that the work was not always tremendous fun. Acting as a "pseudo-carpenter" I had to decide and enact how to repair the roof, the ceiling and some other parts of the building. Crawling under a tin roof in the blazing sun with a layer of dust and dirt several centimeters high, and having about 1 meter between the ceiling and the roof to manoeuver was probably one of the worst jobs I’ve ever done. Breathing in half a ton of dust which shorten my (advanced) life by at least a year I was wondering more than once whether this was really the best way to help these people.

Sending over the salary of a month of work back home would have probably funded a group of 5 skilled (!!) craftsmen for a year. And there I was sweating in the dirt to make a few roof parts progress. Hmmm! But obviously seeing the difficulties of educating children of poor families (it was not the only disaster that we experienced when while we were there a father of a family of five died of alcoholism and left a wife without a job or the guy who had left his family and needed to be found before his wife died of some incurable desease and his children would be sent into an orphanage), the commitment and tenacity of the locals to make it work, the limited resources in human and financial help was an experience that questioned ones own "big" problems and objectives in life. I am not sure that Lili, Anna and Cléo really picked up the situation of the children they played with, but helping (Lili even was made assistant to the teacher of a group of 4-6 year old children) others was clearly a positive experience for them (not to talk about the fun of painting walls with fun pictures).

How was the volunteering experience for Anna?

"It was nice for me! I liked it very much! We had to paint in a room for the new school that was used by the doctor. We had to paint medical objects on the wall and a picture of a boy looked at by a doctor. In the old school we had to paint butterflies on the wall of a room that was used for the smallest children in the school. They are 2 to 3 years old. I learned a lot of spanish by speaking with the kids and the boss of the school. There were too some older girls from France, Germany and Portugal who helped repainting the rooms and teaching the children. The painting was important to make the rooms look nice so that the kids felt happy.
They had bought two puppies too. We liked playing with them a lot. They were called "Princessa" and "Captain".
I went in a class of kids of 5-6 years together with Cléo. We drew pictures and the rest of the time was boring for us. So we came to play with the pups. In the breaks the pups got dragged about by the children.
Prunelle, a girl from Belgium, came a couple of times to babysit us while mummy and daddy went to Antigua for an evening out.

How was the volunteering experience for Cléo?

We were on the roof of the new school building and I helped Daddy to fill up holes with cement. It was a bit difficult to fill in the holes and to make the edges look nice.
There was only a big white dog that was called Osso in the school.
We painted with Mummy while Daddy was on the roof. We needed to wash the rooms before we painted them, not all of them, but several. Painting was very fun. I liked rolling the paint on and then I had a lot of little spots on my face and my clothes and my hair, no, my hair was covered by a piece of cloth. In the old the school there are two very sweet pups and one very big black dog. The pups are black and are called "Princessa" and "Capitain". We liked taking them off their trees where they were hung on (?!) and taking them to different places in the school. That was fun!

Our specific task consisted of renovating part of the old school buildings and part of the new ones that the organisation will move in over the course of the year. More specifically, Kate and the children did mainly painting work and Stefan could use his business skills to get the co- workers to buy the right kind of wood and paint to repair the wodden ceiling in the various rooms of the new buildings.
After some initial frustration, we had to get used to the Guatemalan way of organising a project like this, i.e. it will always take a few days longer to decide how to paint, to get paint or wood, to find the tools or just the key to the room. After a week we got the rythm (meaning 3-4 hours of work a day rather than the entire day) which allowed us to spend quite a bit of time outside the project on fun family activities.