Before breakfast I received a package from friends at Furman. Before lunch we were in the Guatemala City trash dump. Before dinner we visited the office of the Detained and Disappeared. I changed my major to Urban Studies in the van ride leaving the dump. At dinner, we discussed a trip to Moldova and Eastern Europe. This was my perfect twentieth birthday.
We met with a state run organization for children who live in the trash dump, kids riding on their last chance. The school is run for kids who have been kicked out of school - their last shot out of poverty. Who knew behavioral problems would arise while living and working in trash? I couldn’t help compare the Guatemalan dump to the Nicaraguan one - it was organized. The trash was in neat piles and the trucks drove down legit roads. Managua’s dump can only be described as hell on earth. Trash everywhere - neat boundaries are non existent.
FAMDEGUA is an organization for the relatives of the detained and disappeared. They work to find missing relatives, to uncover human rights abuses, like some of the 626 massacres of Mayan villages, and continue to fight for human rights. The day before we arrived a man watched their office all day. They workers have been kidnapped and some killed. Yet, they continue to fight.
I keep wondering why my perfect childhood even allows me to click with this side of life. The messy, dirty part of the third world. When the foreigners have their pictures of dirty kids with swollen bellies, when the food has been given out, and the clothes are being worn, I want to stay.
I desperately needed an intellectual connection to the third world, and I finally have it. The Center for Global Education maintains an experiential learning technique. I asked why the teachers were protesting in Cuernavaca, and I was told to ask them, they would take me. I can give stories of kids living in dirt floor shacks, but I really want to give you an intellectual framework. Those stories are private, not to be used to raise money or garner sympathy.
Why prostitution is used. Why people choose to live in a trash dump. Why the kids sniff glue.
Let me explain. Analyze. Echo their voice, not speak for them. I take these ideas seriously, with extreme sensitivity. The university students kidnapped were not trying to be cool by quoting Che, the lived and died for what they believed. The priests believed the kingdom was now, not to come.
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