Car Seats

Dejah and I have always tried to maintain a simple lifestyle. This does not mean that we grow our own strawberries and shop for vintage clothing. Rather, we live a non-glamorous sort of lifestyle that often involves clipping coupons on Sunday mornings and buying clothes at Walgreens.

As we attempt to translate our definition of a “simple lifestyle” into a home that will soon include another human being, I am reminded of how my desire to live a simple lifestyle has its limits. To highlight this point, I offer the following description of my attempt to find the right car seat for my future child:

While registering for baby stuff at Target, Dejah and I enter into the car seat aisle. Our entry point just so happens to be where most of the budget car seats are displayed. As we make our way down the aisle, we hardly even glance at the budget car seats. Eventually, we come to the section of the aisle where I will make my selection. It just so happens that this section is on the opposite end from where the budget car seats are located. I glance down at the opposite end of the to see a woman and her two young children checking out the cheaper car seats. I feel convicted about my ability to purchase an elaborate and expensive car seat, but not enough to do anything about it. In fact, I am not completely satisfied with what I see, so I go home and do some car seat research. Fortunately for me, an uncle is willing to share his Consumer Reports membership so that I can get access to some of the best and most recent car seat reports made. Finally, I make my decision: a $200 car seat.

Learning To Learn

In between teaching English classes one day, I made my way into the teacher’s area and sat down at a wooden desk that was way too small for me.  Seizing the tranquility of the mid-morning, I cracked open a book I set out to read during my time here in Guatemala.  The title of the book was “Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World”.  For anyone who might be interested, the book mostly explores the impact of development on most of the world’s population since WWII (It has not been a good thing).  I was sure that this book would help me learn why the public school I am volunteering at still does not have electricity, or why we sometimes spend the first hour of school sweeping mud and water out of the classrooms.   

What?

As I made my way through the introduction of my book, clouds gathered over the school.  Eventually there was not a sufficient amount of light coming through the windows.  This caused me to struggle with my reading, and since I could not turn on a light, I was forced to put down the book.  However, it was not long before I was learning again.

Since I have arrived here in Guatemala I have been asked a lot of questions.  People want to learn, so they ask questions.  Some of the questions make me uncomfortable, but most are appropriate.  Meanwhile, I go off and shut myself in a room to learn from a book.  Sounds kind of ridiculous.  Don’t get me wrong; there is absolutely nothing wrong with learning from books.  However, there is something wrong with the mindset that says I have more to learn from a book than from the person sitting directly across from me.

Unable to continue reading, I got up from the wooden desk that was way too small for me and began asking questions to the teachers sitting around me.  “What is it going to take to get electricity?”  “Who will pay for it?”  “Do you have a girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse?”  I had to be cautious not to be too selfish with their time.  After all, they are getting paid to teach students in a rural village, not a gringo who somehow ended up volunteering in a remote Guatemalan village.

Mealtime however, offers up a perfect opportunity for learning.  I love mealtime where I am staying because most of the time the whole family is present.  Sitting around the table, there is so much to learn including, but not limited to: education, agriculture, nursing, cooking, Kaqchikel, and Spanish.

I cannot wait to take this desire to learn back to the U.S.  What are you doing for dinner this July?   

 

Be Ready

While attending a church service the other day, I kept pouring over a handmade banner that said “Be Ready”.  Such a phrase could be interpreted a number of ways.  Where I was sitting this phrase obviously referred to Christ’s second coming.  Christ’s second coming is an extremely controversial issue.  Churches have split over it and many people have been labeled crazy for believing in it.  While I don’t have the theological background to cause a schism, I am just enough of a Jesus freak to be labeled crazy.

My initial reaction to seeing the banner that read “Be Ready” was one of disdain.  “Just what Guatemalans need”, I thought, “more fatalistic thinking.”  However, as my eyes struggled to peel away from the banner, the words “Be” and “Ready” moved into my mind and settled in for good.  Eventually, these words were breeding thoughts that God would use to teach me.             

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been working to complete a task that is not going how I thought it would.  This forced me to reevaluate my actions.  “What should I be doing differently?” is the question I kept asking myself.  Upon seeing the words “Be Ready” I realized that I was asking the wrong question.  We live in a world that will frustrate us.  What are we to do then?  Do we curl up and die.   No. We get ourselves ready.  We love, we worship, and we pray.  We follow the passions God has placed in our heart and we seek justice, knowing that justice may never come during our lifetime. 

If Christ were to return tomorrow, what would he find me doing?

Loving.  Loving.  Loving.  

  

6/5/09

Happy Birthday Mom!

I realize it has been a while since my last post.  Perhaps a brief update is needed:

I have been teaching English at a public school in a village located about 45 minutes from where I am staying in San Juan Comalapa.  School only lasts from 7:30 to 12:30, so my afternoons have been free to conduct interviews.  After finally conducting an interview with the local Evangelical pastor, I learned that his church consists of only 24 people.  Of these 24 people, 10 are children and the rest are mostly women.  Of the few men, not a single one had migrated to the U.S.  Soon, it was either time to reevaluate, or get really sick.  I got really sick . . . twice.

Now that I am on the mend (and 10 pounds lighter) I think it is time to do some reevaluating.  The question that I must begin with is “What am I learning?” 

In the following posts, I will explore particular themes.  These themes make up part of what I am learning while here in Guatemala.  They focus heavily on my faith and are therefore very personal.

As always I welcome feedback of any kind.

Priceless

While riding the bus this morning from Los Encuentros to Zaragoza, I put together a little excerpt for a trendy backpacker magazine.  It went something like this:

Flying down the Pan American highway in a chicken bus on a clear Tuesday morning with three volcanoes in view, I am experiencing Guatemala as any foreigner should.  I let the window down to taste the fresh mountain air, which was extra sweet thanks to the heavy rains from last night.  The couple seated in front of me, dressed in their colorful garb, is conversing in a Mayan language while their ten year-old son falls asleep on my shoulder.  Two rows ahead, a beautiful young girl is smiling at me over her mother’s shoulder.  I am about as far away from my normal Tuesday morning commute as I could possibly get.

Eventually my pessimism set in and I realized that I am living a neoliberal nightmare.  These buses I am riding on are severely under regulated.  The faster they go and the more people they cram on to the buses, the more money they make.   The consequences of Guatemala’s crude profit driven transportation sector are disastrous.  People are constantly dying on the buses because of horrendous accidents or violent crimes.  Once the payments to the family members of the deceased are factored into the costs (it’s not very much) the bus companies still come out ahead.  After all, life is cheap in Guatemala.  This is not how Guatemala should be experienced.  Human life is precious and does not deserve to have a price placed on it.       

Enter Loneliness

After only four days am I really feeling lonely?  How can I be surrounded by so many loving people and feel so lonely?  Have I already failed?

These questions have been burning inside of me all day, even after I spent the morning hanging out with students in a remote village outside of Comalapa.  So far I have come up with two reasons for why loneliness has set in.  The first is obvious so I will spend my time on the second:

Reason #2

I was so excited to return to Guatemala after being enlightened for a year in Graduate School.  “Surely everything I learned in a classroom would carry over to my field research,” I thought.  The truth is I have never felt so disconnected to Guatemala.  Over the past year, Latin America has only existed in print and no matter how hard authors have tried to get it right, they always seem to come up short.  While it would be ridiculous for me to try and get it right here, I will say that the United States has never seemed so distant and that God has never seemed so close. 

Enter loneliness: 

I have spent the past year secularizing an environment that is anything but secular.  Without God in a place where so many people depend on him to get through the day, one cannot help but feel lonely.  I began analyzing the people I love in Guatemala through the books I have read and not through the God I worship.  I’m sorry.  I will try my hardest to never again be so petty. 

Reason #1

My wife is not with me.

It Will Not Be The Same

I have been building this trip up with fond memories of my former life in Guatemala.  Over the past few days however, I have begun to realize that it will not be the same.  The most obvious reason being that half of me is still in the United States.  Being away from her is going to be a lot harder than I thought.  Everything I viewed before, I viewed with two sets of eyes because she was at my side.  My vision has been cut in half.