Guatemala Journal – The Silence and the Pain (Part VII)

I traveled to Guatemala on a Saturday with our national senior account executive from Salem Radio, five of my colleagues from Food For The Poor (FFP) and the 13 coolest Christian radio hosts (some also pastors) that one could ever imagine, coming from as close by as the west coast of Florida and as far away as Hawaii...

Part VII: Ruth & Naomi


Maria Macario was a 61-year-old widow. She did everything possible to keep her family of twelve from succumbing to the ravages of poverty. She had, by her own introduction, five daughters and six grandchildren. It was only on further conversation with Adriana, the person that we thought to be her oldest daughter, that I found out that before becoming her daughter she had been her daughter-in-law. Maria was a brave widow who had only one son. He married Adriana and had given Maria four grandchildren. He took up with a mistress, and Maria, uncharacteristically and against all cultural mores, denied her only son and welcomed Adriana and the four children into her heart and home.

“I was ten when I lost my parents,” said Adriana crying, “I had no family but this one, no home to which to return.”

If that household were a drama, sorrow and pain would be the lead characters.

Maria lost her husband to poverty and hunger. They live close to a ravine that becomes a swift river with the areas frequent torrential rains. Often, the animals that perish with the floods are swept downstream in these waters. Maria’s husband, using a pole with a hook, tried to fish one of these animals from the fast moving waters in order to give his family the protein that they needed and could never afford to buy. The current pulled him into the water and he drowned – a good man lost his life for the Guatemalan equivalent to road kill.

The tiny house was divided into two even smaller rooms. Adriana and her four children lived in one, while Maria, her other daughters and grandchildren shared the other. Of all the places we had visited, the humidity here was the worst. Adriana explained that when it rained, the room got filled with slimy slugs. They got in through the many holes in the mud walls. They had used cornhusks to plug them, but it was a losing battle. They had collected some in a plastic cup as evidence of what she was saying. As we looked at the wall and the plugged holes, we saw a large long-legged spider. Adriana spoke about the fear of sleeping on the floor and the horrible sensation of stepping on the slugs at night with bare feet.

Adriana’s pain was palpable. Whether she was expressing appreciation, affection or hurt, the expression of her profoundly haunting sorrowful eyes was unchanged. It was as if she were the gatekeeper of the world’s anguish and her mouth was the floodgate – every time it opened tearfully, it reduced us all to tears.

Everyday, the family goes to the garbage dump, like so many from that area, to search for food. “We are animals,” Adriana said, “we battle the dogs, the pigs and the goats to get the food at the dump away from them for our children to survive.”

When speaking about the constant fear in which she lives that she may lose her children to hunger and to the unhealthy living conditions, she said, “I wake up in the night weeping and I cry out to God, ‘Lord, I know I am not alone, but until when will I suffer without deliverance. Until when Lord?”

Until when Lord? Adriana had imprinted her sorrow deeply unto my heart.

To be continued...

Guatemala Journal – The Silence and the Pain (Part VI)

I traveled to Guatemala on a Saturday with our national senior account executive from Salem Radio, five of my colleagues from Food For The Poor (FFP) and the 13 coolest Christian radio hosts (some also pastors) that one could ever imagine, coming from as close by as the west coast of Florida and as far away as Hawaii...


Part VI: To Market, to Market…

On Tuesday, we once again head out with Hector, our fearless bus driver, who gave us many thrills on narrow mountain roads, riding the edge of a precipice without the benefit of guard rails. Things are different inside the bus – we are all friends now, bound together by the pain and sorrow that we had witnessed in this life-changing experience.

After witnessing the hunger of those visited the day before, we decided to go to the main street market of Quetzaltenango to buy some corn for the families that we were going to visit on that day. It was just my type of place – loud, busy, densely populated, colorful and full of the vibrancy of life. The fruits and vegetables were like jewels in the sunlight; many were recognizable, while others were typical of the Caribbean Basin. My mouth watered for the “zapote,” (also know as Mamey), which brought back memories of my native Cuba.

Walking through the market that was so jam-packed with all types of foods, I thought of my beloved late father telling me stories of the depression. He had told me that the markets were bursting with food, that the food was dirt cheap (a dozen eggs for 5 cents), but that few had the money to buy anything. “On May 17, 1936,” he would say, “the entire family woke up that morning and went to bed that night without eating anything.”

I thought of the poor, who would have to bypass all the attractive stalls with fruit and vegetables, and the butcher stalls with the deep red sides of beef hanging there. Dried corn for tamales and tortillas would be their only purchase and if they came in to a few extra pennies, chicken feet would be the only affordable protein.


To be continued...

Guatemala Journal – The Silence and the Pain (Part V)

I traveled to Guatemala on a Saturday with our national senior account executive from Salem Radio, five of my colleagues from Food For The Poor (FFP) and the 13 coolest Christian radio hosts (some also pastors) that one could ever imagine, coming from as close by as the west coast of Florida and as far away as Hawaii...

Part V:  Juanbi

While we were visiting Josefa Morales, I received a wonderful gift – a surprise.

Five years before I had met a young man, Juanbi, who helped 15 widows with a pig-rearing project in that area. Although he only spoke Quiche (one of the four main Mayan languages) I immediately felt a fatherly affection for him. He was so hardworking and he treated the pigs like pets, naming each one of the ten. He was orphaned from a young age and now he found himself responsible for the care of his three younger siblings.

Whenever I visited Guatemala, I would always try to see him and three years ago, when my wife and I vacationed in Guatemala, we took him shopping for clothes. I was amazed that for someone who had little, he had great dignity, refusing many of the pieces of clothing or shoes that we offered to buy for him. I often commented to him that my one regret was that we could not communicate without a translator.

Aloma with Juanbi

Pastor Chan, one of our partners in Guatemala, arranged for Juanbi to come and see me during our visit to Josefa. It filled me with joy to see him. He said, through Pastor Chan, that he had a surprise for me. Suddenly, he started speaking to me in the most beautiful Spanish that one could imagine. I hugged him and he started crying and so did I. I was moved that he credited me as his inspiration for learning the language, but I also thought that practically this would open job possibilities for him.

I invited him to dinner with us and I marveled at what he told me. Having learned Spanish at the Mayan Institute (a free school for Mayan descendants) he was able to get a job in construction from Monday to Friday. On Saturdays he continued to study all day and had just finished grade school and was about to begin secondary school and had ambitions for going to college. On Sundays he would study and play soccer with nine friends who lived in his tiny village of nine homes.

If this sounds amazing to you, please understand that he walks five hours each day to get to work and back home, and four hours on Saturday to get to school and back. What a great example of discipline, tenacity and will. What a great surprise!

To be continued....

Guatemala Journal – The Silence and the Pain (Part IV)

I traveled to Guatemala on a Saturday with our national senior account executive from Salem Radio, five of my colleagues from Food For The Poor (FFP) and the 13 coolest Christian radio hosts (some also pastors) that one could ever imagine, coming from as close by as the west coast of Florida and as far away as Hawaii...

Part IV: Josefa Morales

Angel Aloma with Josefa Morales and her family

All the people we visited on our first two days had a certain sadness about them, but with Josefa Morales, her sadness and pain was constant and devastating. During our entire visit she never stopped crying for a moment, she seemed inconsolable.

Josefa is alone; her husband abandoned her four years ago and left her with ten children aged 4 to 16. They all live in a mud house with rotten wood and nothing inside. The mountains are cold and the clothing is sparse, so they huddle together at night to keep each other warm on the damp mud floor. Josefa’s oldest daughter, Juana, shares in her mother’s sadness, as she is the only one old enough to understand the reason for it.

Josefa is shamed and hurt that her children live in such poverty and she, as their mother, is not able to do anything to make their lives better. Her eyes always look towards the floor, no matter whom she is addressing. She seems like a person suffering from a broken soul.

Two of Josefa Morales' 10 children.

She talks about her attempts to make things better. She and Juana walk the neighborhood every day, knocking on every door asking for neighbors who are not a lot better off than she is for dirty clothes to wash for them. Even when the neighbors oblige, the most that she and Juana can earn in one day is less than $3.00 and that’s not counting the cost of washing soap and the effort to walk to a suitable source of water.

Amidst tears, she talks of her pain at having to feed her children only corn tamales, or broth “made from bullion, not real meat,” or weak coffee to try and “kill the hunger.” She cries because her children never get to taste meat; because a couple boiled potatoes are considered a full meal; because sometimes she is forced to fry leaves and grasses and give that to her children as dinner; because sometimes she has no food and no money and she has to listen to their cries of hunger.

How can we abandon this woman to her sorrow and her pain?


To be continued...

Guatemala Journal – The Silence and the Pain (Part III)

I traveled to Guatemala on a Saturday with our national senior account executive from Salem Radio, five of my colleagues from Food For The Poor (FFP) and the 13 coolest Christian radio hosts (some also pastors) that one could ever imagine, coming from as close by as the west coast of Florida and as far away as Hawaii...

Part III: Santiago and Marta

Santiago, Marta and their children.

 We climbed further up the mountain and visited another couple, Santiago and Marta, both 25 years old. The living conditions were almost identical to those of Martin and Isabela – mud hut (even smaller), handloom, no steady income, three hungry, malnourished children, including an infant swaddled on Marta’s back, ratty clothes and shoes on the kids, profound sadness and shame in their eyes.

Like Martin, Santiago spent long hours every day bent over his loom, weaving his cloths one thread at a time. Because he was less experienced than Martin, it actually took him twice the time to produce the same size cloth. Marta and the children took daily trips to the garbage dump to find food, clothes or recyclable materials that they could sell for a small amount of money.

There was a sweetness, humility and dignity about this couple that immediately drew me in emotionally. I think they had the same effect on the rest of the group that accompanied me on this visit.

Santiago's loom

It broke our hearts when, with embarrassment, he told me that his family was being evicted from that health trap because they could not keep up with the $7.00 a month rent. His shame broke our hearts. Marta explained that they could not feed their children properly or send them to school and their dreams for them were so different to the reality they were living.

In an attempt to help, we asked him if he had any of his cloths ready for sale. He had two. When we were paying him the price that we had paid Martin for his, he asked us to pay him less because he was less experienced than Martin. This from a man who had little more than nothing – we would not be bargained down! More tears… from the entire group.

As the mattresses we brought for them arrived, I was telling him that we were going to pay the next four months of his rent so as to take away his worry of eviction. The relief was so overwhelming for him that he fell immediately on his knees to thank us. I grabbed his outstretched arms and raised him from the ground and gave him a huge hug, totally humbled by his own humility. And again, group tears…

I told Santiago that he had the name of my birth city in Cuba and the patron saint of Spain (St. James) and I told Marta that there was a well known namesake in the New Testament that worked as hard as she did, but who was somewhat quarrelsome. I asked her if she was quarrelsome with Santiago – finally… a smile!

The family's "kitchen."

 Their little 5-year-old son was very serious the entire visit and I had heard from others who had visited before that he was very gregarious. I asked him why he was so sad, he responded, “My daddy doesn’t have any work.”


To be continued...

Guatemala Journal – The Silence and the Pain (Part II)

I traveled to Guatemala on a Saturday with our national senior account executive from Salem Radio, five of my colleagues from Food For The Poor (FFP) and the 13 coolest Christian radio hosts (some also pastors) that one could ever imagine, coming from as close by as the west coast of Florida and as far away as Hawaii...

PART II: Martin and Isabela

As soon as we got to Quetzaltenango (also known as Xela (pronounced Chela) we traveled to the mountains just outside the city and visited our first family in the town of Nimasac.

Martin, Isabela and their daughter

Martin and Isabela are a young couple that are not able to make ends meet. I was shocked to learn that they actually had to pay rent for the mud hut that they call home – dark, dank, moist crowded area with no furniture other than a handloom. They have four children, ages 9 months to 11 years old.

They sleep on the damp dirt floor, which worries Isabella as she realizes the danger to her children’s health, particularly since their immune systems are already compromised by severe malnutrition. That afternoon, the only food they had consumed all day was three small corn tamales shared among all six family members – less than a hundred calories each, minimal protein.

Isabela searches the garbage dump for clothing for her children, as the cold in that region can be bitter. Unfortunately, the clothing found in the dump of that area is in horrible condition and those who scavenge at the dump for a living will pick the better of the worst. One of her boys had on a pair of shoes that left most of the front of the feet exposed.

No one would dare say they are lazy.

Martin labors at the backbreaking task of weaving colorful, beautiful cloths at the loom, his back bent over at an almost 90 degree angle for hours on end. It takes him weeks to complete one 8-yard piece. To make matters worse, the retailers, knowing the desperate condition of these poor people, pay them far less than what the cloths are worth and then mark them up by 300-400% when they sell them to the tourists. He barely earns enough to pay the 50 quetzales rent (US$7.00), and at times, not enough even for that. His eyes betray the terrible shame of a man who cannot feed his slowly starving children.

The shoes belonging to Martin & Isabela's son.

Isabela takes all four children with her to the neighboring woods to collect branches and sticks to sell for firewood for only pennies a day. The older three help Isabela, while she bears the weight of the baby on her back all day as she works. On one occasion, the income from one day’s sale of wood was only enough to buy one egg. Isabela cannot help but weep when she speaks of the needs of her family, of the children’s hunger, of their sometimes incessant crying for food.

 We took them clothes and shoes for the children, we bought all four cloths that Martin had completed for a fair market price and we brought them mattresses to put on the floor. They expressed tearful words of appreciation in Quiche, which was translated to Spanish, which I translated into English – there was not a dry eye there.

To be continued...

Guatemala Journal – The Silence and the Pain (Part I)

 Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.

I traveled to Guatemala on a Saturday with our national senior account executive from Salem Radio, five of my colleagues from Food For The Poor (FFP) and the 13 coolest Christian radio hosts (some also pastors) that one could ever imagine, coming from as close by as the west coast of Florida and as far away as Hawaii.

The fellowship that I enjoyed with the group would have made the trip worthwhile by itself, covering topics from the ridiculous, to the poetic, to the sublime; sharing tears and laughter without inhibition or shame; witnessing each other’s sensitivities, vulnerabilities and levels of sympathy and empathy. In short, we bared our souls to each other and gently comforted and loved one another as the circumstance may have required it. All that being said, there was so much more…

PART I: Moments of Sheer Joy

We wasted no time. As soon as we landed we were on our way to visit the Sor Lucia Roge Nutritional Center, where Sister Ana Cristina and her staff have been working miracles for some time. The children brought to her there are an inch away from death – so completely emaciated that some don’t even look human anymore. Some have had multiple death sentences pronounced on them, but Sr. Ana Cristina does not believe in death sentences.

With much efficiency, she provides these starving children with watered down milk, nutritional drinks, broth, pureed foods and lots of love. Eventually, they return to health – all in a day’s work – another life saved!

Aloma in rural Guatemala.

 The older children here were fully recovered; filled with energy, ready to attack all visiting adults with hugs and kisses; wanting to play, to be told stories, to be held… It was great seeing Lester again, a child pulled away from the very jaws of death by the devoted sister and her staff, now an adorable young man.

We met the mother of a little girl there who was so malnourished herself that Sr. Ana Cristina felt it necessary to take her over to the hospital next door, where she received three pints of blood. Now she is staying at the nutritional center until she recovers her strength. She still looked awfully debilitated and her eyes betrayed a fatigue so deep that it was a little frightening.

We left to a loud chorus of shouts of “Adios” from the children.

Sunday

We got up early on Sunday and took the bus for the 5+-hour journey from the capital to Quetzaltenango. Our charming and knowledgeable driver, Hector, tied our luggage on top of the bus and we quickly occupied the interior.

Despite my herniated disks and out-of-joint S.I. joints, I have to admit that our times on the bus were golden. We shared so much, so deeply, so quickly… prayers, laughter, devotionals, laughter, movie/music/TV reviews, laughter, personal stories, laughter.

To be continued...