Unfortunately, here in Guatemala women don’t get much respect. I talked a little bit about it in India and here it is much the same. One of the biggest problems is that they are often abused. Sometimes the husband has too much too drink, which is a whole different problem, and he comes home and abuses the wife and children. They also take out their anger by hitting. For some men, any time they are angry they let it out by hitting their wives, which is not the way to do it. Other than abuse, in some places, women are just not thought of as important, which is not true. A lot of times the women are left to take care of the house and the kids. Now don’t get me wrong, that’s a very hard important job, but they’re not really recognized for it. Sometimes they are not thought worthy or capable of having another job. Here, the women are expected to do everything at home, usually the men don’t do anything. In Guatemala there’s usually more household chores than back home. They cook, they wash clothes by hand, they have to fetch water(usually pretty far away,) they take care of their smaller siblings, they clean the house, etc. With the family, the girls usually get less preference with education. If for any reason at all the parents have to stop sending the one kid to school, whether because they need help in the house or because they can’t afford it, it will usually be the girl, which is unfair. With the Young Dreamers we’ve started group meetings just for girls and just for boys talking about these problems, among other things. We are talking about what the problems are and to how we can help fix them. It’s not cool at all that some women are treated in this way, but it can get better.
Last weekend we went to a beach called Monterico on the Pacific coast. I think it was nice nice relaxing weekend where we all got to just hang-out. We left on Saturday morning and got there about midday. We had lunch and then immediately hit the beach. I loved it because the waves in Monterico were huge and you could get thrown around like you were in a washing machine. One time a wave even took my shirt off! We all had a great time at the beach but we got out around 4:00 to go on a tour of a river that lead to the ocean that was pretty close. The tour was really nice. We got to see all kinds of awesome birds, one time we even saw one dive for a fish. My favorite part was when we saw hundreds and hundreds of white pelicans all in the same spot, it looked like the river had turned white. After the tour we got presented by an cool surprise, we got to free baby sea turtles to the ocean. All of us, among many other were each given a baby turtle to set on the sand and watch it make it’s way to the water. At once there were tons of little turtles slowly walking to their home. A lot of the turtles had trouble getting there but eventually all of them got swept away by the waves. By that time the sky was getting lit up in splendid colors as the sun started going down. There was blue, yellow, orange, pink, purple and even though I’ve seen a lot of beach sunsets they’re still beautiful. We slept in Monterico that night and awoke for being by the beach the whole day. This time I had even more fun since the waves were even bigger. Back home I go to the beach quite a few times a year and I’ve missed going this year, so this was awesome, a weekend at the beach.
A few days ago we went on a trip to a dump. Actually we went to a community living in a dump, they call it Dump City. When I first heard about it I thought people would literally be living in trash. When I got there I was very surprised to see what was basically a small town. There were tons of houses made of tin as well as paved roads. What we found out later is that it used to be covered in trash but they cleared it to the side and live next to the actual trash dump. There are three leaders that volunteer to help run the town. The story that one of them told was incredible. She was the third person to get there and had come with her two kids. When she got there it was all a dump but it was space where she could live since she didn’t have anywhere else. Life was hard for them. They had to live in trash. In the night they could hear rodents running around. One time she woke up and saw a giant rat about to bite her daughter. They had to work all day, every day to try to clear away the trash and earn a little bit of money. The people living there paid 10 Quetzales ($1.40) a day for dump trucks to come and help them take away the trash. After two years they finally managed to move the trash and have space for 136 families. Almost everyone there works in the dump, finding and scavenging things that could still be used and selling them. Everybody, well most everybody, volunteers to help the community with different tasks to make it better and keep it up. The leaders had a list of who volunteered and who didn’t. When donations came in the people who volunteered got something as a reward but the ones who didn’t work, didn’t get anything. One thing I found really cool was that there was pretty much no crime or major conflicts. There was a mutual respect for one another there. Another thing that I find amazing that happens there (or rather doesn’t happen there) is abuse of women, which I talked about earlier. There have only been a few cases there which is amazing in a community like theirs. The organization and sense of togetherness there is incredible. Our group came out of it being thoroughly impressed that they could have a system that works so well. If it was like that in all the other poor areas in the world I think we would have a lot less problems. It was really, really great to learn about this community.
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