That could be me.

I live in one of the most unequal countries in the world.  Of all the seemingly useless information I learned studying International Development, the Gini coefficient is unfortunately seared in my brain – one of the endless nifty ways nerdy statisticians have created to measure a country’s worth.  For what its worth, on a scale of 0-100 (0 being perfectly equal, 100 being perfectly unequal), Guatemala comes in at a shocking 61 - the highest in Latin America and topped only by Namibia and Botswana in the world.  While numbers are interesting and incredibly useful for research papers in grad school, now I live in this number. So where exactly do I lay and how do my ideals line up with my (temporary?) home on the spectrum?

I am privileged. Period.  Born somewhere in the middle class range, I take residence with the majority of my fellow Americans who own cars, eat out when they want, take an occasional roadtrip down to camp in the great outdoors, and generally have some (if even minimal) amount of dispensable income.  Guatemala on the other hand, struggles to define a middle class, mostly because there is none. Money is not the problem, Guatemala holds the highest GDP in Central America believe it or not (another one of those silly statistician marvels of simplifying an overly complex idea) Yet even so, nearly 70% of the population lives below the poverty line.   Another 10% own over half of the entire wealth of Guatemala, either relaxing in their mega coffee farm haciendas or crusing through town in their pimped out hummers payed for by the drug trade. I guess this is where that mysterious and undefinable middle class is, somewhere in that remaining 20% of the population.  And I guess I am somewhere in there as well. 

I have an exceptional portrait of this question of class, living in diversified and progressive Xela. Recycled US school busses tote Mayan women in every morning from the highlands to sell produce, shoeless and shirtless children shine boots in the park for 20 cents, twenty-something hipsters walk from university to organic coffee shop to dance club, a healthy population of expats take a break from first-class stature back home to ride in coach for a while, and wealthy lawyers send their kids to private grade schools more expensive than my university – talk about a spectrum.  I don’t have a closet, a dresser or an oven, but I have a warm comforter for cold nights in the mountains.  My bedroom walls are made of plywood, but I can splurge on a $3 box of wine for nights out with the girls.  My office is an old concrete house with one desk for the entire operation, but I am paid 10 times more than the tortilla vender the next door over. 

 “Here are people of all classes and stages of rank. From all countries of the globe. Every hue of ignorance and learning, morality and vice, wealth and want, fashion and coarseness, breeding and brutality, elevation and degradation, impudence and modesty.” I keep looking out thinking, That could be me.  And that could be me. Why am I not indigenously dawned in bright colors with produce overflowing a thatch basket?  Why wasn't I born as a shoeshiner?  What is it that separates any of us?

About the leaning and loafing...

Walt Whitman started what would become one of the most loved and hated collections of poetry in American history with the words, “I loafe and invite my soul.”  Right now, I am leaning and loafing.... at my ease observing a green-covered hillside backlit by one of the bluest skies I have ever seen.  What is in front of me is not necessarily beauty.  These rusted tin roofs, broken electrical lines and the colorful array of ragged clothes hanging on a clothesline would never make the cover of National Geographic.  But something about the smoke from the tortillerias, the ominous clouds carrying earth’s most precious assets, and the unfinished buildings of shotty concrete construction across from me… something about these things makes me feel alive.  I invited my soul – or maybe my soul invited me – into this world, and now that I’m here I just feel so alive. Maybe that’s what true living is, checking the RSVP box on your soul’s invitation to life, saying yes to sinking, drowning in a world of your soul and your self.  Leaning and loafing in there, that’s what I’m living. 

When the art is not lost

I want to see things more.  I want to see more things.  In places where there is not enough municipal clout to incessantly paint over graffiti, its easy to notice art that has not been lost in the mix.  In the age of facebook, tumblr and a million options for wigging out on some narcissistic advertisement of your art, its refreshing to absorb someone's work of which I will never know the artist's name.  They do this without recognition or respect, and their art is not lost.   

About leaning and loafing

Walt Whitman started what would become one of the most loved and hated collections of poetry in American history with the words, “I loafe and invite my soul.”  Right now, I am leaning and loafing.... at my ease observing a green-covered hillside backlit by one of the bluest skies I have ever seen.  What is in front of me is not necessarily beauty.  These rusted tin roofs, broken electrical lines and the colorful array of ragged clothes hanging on a clothesline would never make the cover of National Geographic.  But something about the smoke from the tortillerias, the ominous clouds carrying earth’s most precious assets, and the unfinished buildings of shotty concrete construction across from me… something about these things makes me feel alive.  I invited my soul – or maybe my soul invited me – into this world, and now that I’m here I just feel so alive. Maybe that’s what true living is, checking the RSVP box on your soul’s invitation to life, saying yes to sinking, drowning in a world of your soul and your self.  Leaning and loafing in there, that’s what I’m living. 

Poco a Poco

I watched Anita march her fair-skinned, ruby-haired self into that kitchen with confidence and open arms.  As flies buzzed hungrily over the rusted pot of gallo pinto, billowing smoke enveloped this small outdoor cooking fest resembling a campfire more than a kitchen, Anita didn’t flinch.  There is something instilled in your fellow human when you approach them with unconditional positive regard.  Something is instilled in these women every time Anita travels to these communities as something far from a gringa or an foreign aid worker.  She enters like an old friend ready to share laughter and spoons, tickle babies and taunt little brothers, and dig her hands right into the masa with which we will be making the day’s tortillas. 

Me?  I was scared.  I was intimidated both by the power of my colleague’s “work” and by the intensity of the Guatemalan women surrounding me.  My brain fatigued on Spanish failures struggled to express a single sentence.  My heart fatigued on an explosion of philosophical questions of human dignity struggled to control its emotions.  My well-oiled machine of pride told me to be strong and feign confidence and professionalism. But questions flooded in to that private space about my right to be here, sitting on this mud floor trying to connect with this corner of the great Universe.  This is different than all of my past internships or volunteer experiences – this is my job now.  I should be doing something, I should be speaking better Spanish, I should be funnier, smarter, better with the women, more educated on nutrition, more comfortable with eating beans out of a rusted bowl… Within two hours of reaching my first community visit of my first real development job, I was in full break-down mode with passionate pangs of self-loathing insecurities.

But break-downs are necessary and welcomed in the world of change.  Break-downs bring revolutions.  Trini, our Guatemalan Agronomist, was fortuitously placed in my path that afternoon to hold my hand, ease my pain, and whisk my worries away.  It seems my pride had somehow forgotten that this was in fact my first day of my first week in a collision of incredible amounts of change in my life. I guess people are right when they say I’m hard on myself. 

Trinidad Recinos, the heart and sould of Semilla Nueva

And the masses were right when they told me that Trini is the heart and soul of this organization.  Of all the wisdoms whispered to me on that thatch bench overlooking endless rows of Maize glistening in the sunlight, he repeated a memorable phrase that has come to define my first week here: poco a poco.  I have been bursting at the seams with an overload of new things: new language, new city, new friends, new food, new work, new cultures, new sleeping patterns and new challenges.  No matter how well I thought I prepared for this step in my life, all these new things require new commitments. In order to rise to the occasion of this endeavor I have desired for so long, I must take these things poco a poco. Little by little, I must cultivate a spirit of patience, humility and dedication.

Over the next few days in the field, Trini illuminated the spirit of the work of Semilla Nueva, transforming a simple categorization of agricultural development into a dynamic interplay of community, relationships, trust, open minds and open hearts, equal exchanges and mutual development.   The beautiful Spanish phrases that so eloquently and liberally roll of the tongue of this man are incredible.  He expressed confidence in my “clean heart” and belief in my ability to be that confident, loving, smart, funny gringa comfortably working with women in the kitchen someday; it will just be poco a poco. He finished with a phrase I scribbled on the back of a bus ticket as the truck navigated the terrifying terrain of potholes along the highway – luckily, it came out legible:

“Mantenga expectivas buenas cada dia; No pierda la illusion.  Cada dia trae cosas nuevas.  Cada dia sembramos una Semilla nueva”

“Keep good expectations every day.  Don’t lose the illusion.  Every day, brings new things.  Every day, we grow a New Seed.”

He llegado

To borrow poignant words from one of America’s greatest thinkers: “Since I wrote before, I know something more of the grounds of hope and fear of what is to come.  But if my knowledge is greater, so is my courage.  I know that I know next to nothing, but I know too that the amount of probabilities is vast, both in mind and in morals.”  Today, waiting in the Spirit lounge of the Miami airport (which already feels like I’m in Latin America), I am reminded of the last time I packed my life into a bag and decided to venture around the globe.  That day, waiting for a thunderstorm to pass over the Oklahoma City airport (which resembled nothing of Latin America), I was full of angst and anguish, anxiety and audacity, I couldn’t stop staring out the emblematic window of my heart to the rest of my future.  Today, I am an entirely different being than I was then.  Today, I am shockingly void of butterflies.  Today, I have waited patiently sans tears and sans sentimental stares out windows (emblematic or literal).  I don’t feel like I’m holding my breath for the next moment of my life, and that feels good.  Today, my knowledge is greater and so is my courage.  Today, I know that I know next to nothing, but I know too that the road ahead of me is full of opportunities for which I have the courage and knowledge to enjoy. 

There is something sweet about my moment right now, where my mind lays in this calm haze.  I take pleasure in knowing that this absence of fear, this ease of anguish based on a past of dreams of achieved, this moment is peculiar and unrivaled in all of the whole universe.  This is my emotion.  This is my life that I am living.  I am homesteading new ground, uninhabited ground, because it is new and uninhabited to me.

Again, borrowing from Emerson, I make one promise to myself (or three...): Be Silly, Be Honest, Be Kind :)

Viajando Solita

Afternoons on end spent sitting in cafe’s, resting on curbsides and waiting in bus stations with no one to share meaningless cant with, the verb ‘people-watching’ takes on an all new meaning. When stripped of the constant comforts of traveling companions, the mysterious riddle of the the world’s back doors are divulged. I have watched Ecuadorean grandmothers donned in obnoxiously purple bathing suits dance the cumbia, looked on a teenage couple in puppy love walk tandem along the water singing Bob Marley, helped keep score for a boys vs. girls family volleyball game of incessant laughter and trash talk, and observed countless hours of illustrious women behind the stove from a cozy seat at the bar. With butterflies in my stomach, no Lonely Planet to guide me, and no concrete idea as to where I was going to go each day, I traveled alone. And my senses seemed to perk up at the opportunity to notice the less noticeable.

The Unnoticeable

Traveling alone as a woman can also impart some dangerous conditions as well. There are countless moments when my trust is tested. Hot, sunny afternoons waiting on small, dusty streets, being reassured by the old man with a hat on who claims himself the driver that despite the fact no one else seems to be boarding this bus, you should give him your bag and climb aboard; his rusty smile of golden teeth is not too convincing. You can’t really sleep on the buses, unless you have your bag securely wrapped in cavernous space of your lap and you’re not sitting next to a male void of shame. On one bus, a boy of no more than 15 perched himself exceedingly close to me and stared relentlessly as I feigned undisturbed concentration in my book. He finally got up the courage to rest his head, yes like my teenage boyfriend, upon my shoulder and gesture with his hands something to the affect of: Me. Sleep. You. A furious reaction involving the command Muevete! and a facial expression that super-ceded linguisitc differences seemed not to affect him too terribly, although he did finally move.

You also meet strangers, the good ones, a lot. I can’t count the number of people shocked at my presence asking, “Viaja Solita?” (You travel alone?). I found a collection of exceptionally affable strangers eager to assuage my fears, carry my bags, and push passengers aside so I could depart from the buses and hitch rides into town. A vacationing family from the highlands adopted me one day at the beach. The father was a social research professor at a university in Ambato and after rendering a most impressive sales pitch to marry his son, we were off to uncover caves of sea urchins, crabs and the enchantment (as they named it in Spanish) of the tidal waters ebbing and flowing over our feet. The surfer boys at the beach are, of course, more than happy to take up the roll of escort for any lonely gringas passing through that week. Although I had to thankfully decline their perpetual offers (preceded with Mi Amor, Mi Vida, and my favorite Mi Ricurda– like a sweet tasting snack), I couldn’t decline the invitation to a tasty, home-made pasta dinner in their grassy hut one night. Walls covered in surfing posters, a bed draped in a mosquito net, a simple kitchen with no running water crowded with two surf boards, and the one pair of shoes he pulled out only for special occasions, opting for barefoot freedom most days. I hiked 300 m down waterfalls with four girls from the UK, sharing exquisite vistas and refreshing swims. I indulged in some Chicory coffee with five Israeli boys overlooking a babbling river in the afternoon sun. The rainforest birds’ whistles accompanying our conversation, we passed hours discussing obscure topics from mandatory military service to vegetarianism to the what it truly means to have Israeli hutzpah. My hostel owner on the coast, Fabio, left me no chance to decline his extraordinary hospitable nature as well, declaring me his his daughter while I stayed, housing me in my own cabana with a private balcony and toting me away to his organic farm for the day where he offered me a job as administradora de la finca.  A most interesting proposition.

But I remember, eventually, that I am just the cute gringita  passing by, or the sweet American girl to be adopted by a friendly Ecuadorean family for a day. Sooner rather than later I will move on to some new city of locals, and those I once called strangers that I have now shared such intimate moments with will go along with their requisite daily routines, surfing and serving cocktails and sleeping on the shoulder of their loved ones through the long bus home to the highlands. They will cook dinner for another gringa, share their indigenous knowledge with another eager traveler, and eventually forget how they knew me when they look at my facebook page three years from now. I will seep into the busy highways of extra brainspace surfacing again only when the brain dumps its recycle bin in some peculiar, convoluted dream.

Yes, traveling alone affords such pleasantries and yet is so lonely sometimes. Sometimes you have to watch the sun go to sleep over the ocean alone.

A pleasantly lonely sunset...

Sometimes you have to stand agape at the site of a stunning display of Mother Nature’s ferocity alone, thankful to be at a loss for words because you have no one to say them to. But what a thrill, what a gift to know how to spend time by yourself. I’m almost screaming at myself, with some strange sort of joyful burning, Don’t forget this Kristin! Don’t forget these moments, this flavorful feeling of …. loneliness. It teaches me something.