Knee deep in mud (you think that’s bad?)
As I hope you’ve heard, Guatemala has recently been slammed by flooding and mudslides throughout the entire southwestern part of the country. I first heard about this in terms of the road from Guatemala City to Antigua being out due to a mudslide and thinking, damn, I really wanted to go over there. Well, that road was nothing and I did make it to Antigua. As time went on, I learned more information and that the situation was was graver than just a few roads out. Thousands lost their homes, their families, everything they had to raging rivers and mud. Most of their homes were nothing more than one room shelters, where the whole family ate, slept, lived…it seems as if the smaller the loss, the bigger it really is.
Again, as I learned more information, I became more disappointed in this natural self-centered-now-I can’t-go-there way; more disappointing was the fact that I couldn’t get over to Mexico to visit jolly ol’ Simon for a cold cerveza or 10. But, it’s quite a strain to be disappointed as such in the face of such death and destruction, literally right next door to where I was living. I saw a sign in the central park in Antigua, looking for volunteers to shovel mud in the next town over, and it was pretty obvious I would ome back the next day to help.
That next day was my first day of Spanish class, where I met my Spanish teacher Margarita (Si estás leyendo esto, Margarita, ¿Qué onda, mujer?). She was a pretty fabulous Guatemalan woman, just a few years older than me, and was tons of fun. She took me to the market to buy some rubber boots, a spare t-shirt, and a shovel, all per the recommendation of another student who had already volunteered. After finishing class in the morning and having some lunch at my family’s house, Christina (the Norwegian girl staying with the family) and I went to meet the group. We piled in the backs of pickup trucks and headed into the next town over, Pastores. The trucks dropped us off just outside of town because they couldn’t go any further without the risk of getting stuck. The mud was pretty thick in the streets, and you could see the waterline on the houses, probably 3 feet high. I started out walking pretty carefully though the mud, but that was lost pretty quickly, giving that there was really no point – mud was everywhere, and nothing was going to stop it from continuing in that direction.
We were brought to a school, with a large courtyard in the middle, and were given our instructions. There were something like 20 – 30 people working in there, both volunteers (all travelers from mostly North America and Europe), and some local men. So, we started shoveling mud into wheelbarrows and taking it into the street, where the big shovel-trucks (or whatever they’re called) would take it away. It took us a while to get our rhythm, but once we did, we were the best damn primitive-style mud removal task force there ever was, I’ll tell ya. I learned a lot about mud that day…there’s the watery, soupy kind, the thicker chocolate-pudding kind, and the pure earth, slightly wet mud, which is a real bitch to move; I found it most effective to mix the slightly wet earthy mud with the watery soupy mud to make that middle ground chocolate pudding kind…it’s the most dangerous (how many times did I almost loose my boots?), but the easiest to move and the most effective in terms of progress. Several hours and a few blisters later, I was totally spent and went for a little rest. Just as I walked into the street to see the progress they’d made out there, a bunch of ladies came with sandwhiches, hot soup and fresh water in a bag (yeah – they have bottled water, but they also have bagged water here…strange, but it works. You just rip open a corner, put it in your mouth, and you’ve got nice refreshing ‘agua pura’. Less waste too.) Those ladies couldn’t have come at a better time…we were all totally wiped at that point, and we absolutely demolished that food. At one point some man came up to me, told me that I speak good Spanish, and asked if he could do an interview with me for some University. In Spanish – fabulous, right? So, he starts asking me questions like where am I from and how did I find out about helping and all that, tape recording my answers. I did ok with my spanish, missing some words, and laughing in the middle of it. I must have sounded like a complete idiot with my totally broken Spanish. I was a little nervous, just the test on my Spanish thing. So, we get to the end and he asks me to say something like “Adelante Guatemala” (forward, Guatemala, roughly). So, I’m like, sure I can say Adelante Guatemala. Well, he doesn’t want me to say that, but something in my own words. So, out comes ” Lo siento, buena suerte, y van a vivir”, which translates into I’m sorry, good luck, and you’re going to live.” How utterly dumb. Trust me, it was the big joke at the bar later that night. I’m still laughing about it now as I write this.
I decided to go back to Pastores two days later to help again (and to get my money’s worth on the boots and t-shirt, which I later donated…I had already left the shovel there). I checked out the school we had worked on…they had made remarkable progress in the day and a half since we had been there. I followed the group to our new assignment which was to dig a trench from this house to the river. This work was a lot harder…we all used our shovels, pick axes, hoes, whatever else there was, to dig this trench. I felt like we were in some sort of chain gang, out in the fields, digging a trench. After a while, I started to think about the more technical objectives of this trench in order to determine how to move forward. I guess the plan was to move the mud from the house to the river via this trench. Well, as I thought a little further, the whole idea became more and more dumb and useless (that’s not to say I had an alternative). About then, some uniformed guys from Venezuela showed up, assessing the scene. They pretty much told the organizer of the volunteers the same thing I was thinking, so we stopped working. The work we were doing would take forever to finish if we continued what we were doing; they needed some heavy machinery in there. The whole day was pretty disappointing compared to the previous Monday, where I know our work was helping…the trench we were digging would just fill up again as soon as it rained. I think there were further discussions between the volunteer coordinator (whose forte is not moving mud) and the Venezuelan guys, and I guess the village didn’t want the Venezuelans’ help. We talked to the Venezuelans a little later, and they’d already been to El Salvador and rebuilt a whole village (with big machinery and all that). Not much you can do, though, if your help isn’t wanted.
Tags: Guatemala, Tag Index
Tania
October 19th, 2005 at 8:11 pm
we are glad that you are safe. now we can recall that blue’s legend, the late,great,muddy waters.
go take a shower.
love,
mama&papa.
p.s.may they rest in peace.