Sarah Higginbotham: Student Report from 2017 Alternative Spring Break in Guatemala
In hindsight, I probably should have brushed up on my Spanish a bit before traveling to Guatemala. But, you know what they say, hindsight is 20/20.
On our first day in Guatemala, we flew in to Guatemala City and met with Fredy and Nigel, our guide and driver, before heading to the city of Antigua. While in Antigua, we got to experience some wonderful food, but my favorite part was walking around the city at night, just people-watching and looking at the architecture. The next morning, we left Antigua and began to make our way to Quetzaltenango, which is where we would spend most of our time. On our way, we made a couple of stops to learn more about the culture and history of Guatemala and the Mayan people.
At our first stop, we met women whose livelihood is making textiles. They taught us about the process, with the help of Fredy who served as our translator. The women also taught us about the tradition of the Mayan people, focusing on the wedding traditions. To teach us, the women chose to do a demonstration, and I was dressed up as a bride. The customs are different from our own for weddings but have similar aspects. For example, the bride does not wear a special white dress, but she does wear a white veil. It was intriguing to learn about what my life would have been like in the Mayan culture, and for all I know, I may be married in Guatemala. The ceremony was in a different language, after all.
After another stop, this time at Mayan ruins, we made it to Quetzaltenango. There, we went to the base camp, which was the house we would be staying at for the next three days. We got to meet other people involved with Discover Corps, which is the organization that our project was through. We then learned about what our project would be for the next three days, and the next morning, we began work.
We worked at Escuela Oficial Rural Mixta Pacajá, which is a school for children in kindergarten through sixth grade. There were two main projects while we were there, but the main one I worked on was the construction of a dividing wall between a classroom and a storage closet. I had never built a wall before this, so this was a learning experience, with the added challenge that Nigel, who served as our ‘foreman’ for the project, only spoke Spanish, and we only spoke English. Thankfully, we were able to understand just enough to get the main point, and we formed a broken system of communication that involved a mix of Spanish and English. At the end of our time at the school, we had completed the majority of the wall, but I felt the most sense of accomplishment in the bond that we had gained with Nigel and the ease of communication that we had reached.
After leaving Quetzaltenango, we went to Lake Atitlan, but on the way, we stopped at a large market. We were surrounded by handmade goods, and all of us stocked up on souvenirs. Part of the fun of this experience was haggling, but for us, that normally meant a lot of conversations trying to remember what certain numbers were in Spanish. After leaving the market, we went to the lake, which is surrounded by three volcanos. We got to take an awesome boat ride across the lake and explore one of the towns there, before coming back across and exploring the town that our hotel was in. One of my favorite things to do on this trip was just to walk around and people-watch, so this time at the lake was really great for seeing the culture.
I really enjoyed my trip to Guatemala, and I loved learning about the culture and the people. We were able to experience so many amazing things, too many to mention in a short post. It was great to see how service can unite people from all walks of life and that through service, you can overcome language barriers.