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

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 X:  The Good News

When Jesus first started His public ministry, He was given the scrolls of the prophet Isaiah. He chose to read the section that spoke of the good news for the poor.

FFP Videographer Ian Wood with some new friends

This trip was not lacking in good news for the poor.

We visited a thriving animal husbandry project (pigs and chickens) for widows. We played with the children of El Chulin Feeding Center, having bought the food at the market earlier and helped in the kitchen to prepare this special meal for them. We visited a successful tilapia-farming project for a community of 75 homes, both funded through the generosity of our donors. Here we were treated to freshly caught, nicely seasoned, fried tilapia. We were also treated to a delicious meal at the “pelibuey” project. Pelilbueys are a special cross-breed between goats and sheep, and the community had already increased their stock from 50 to more than 80 animals.

But there was also good news that was more intimately connected to the emotional content of our trip. Besides bringing food, clothing, shoes, mattresses and hope for the families we visited, our local partners in Guatemala managed to procure land for all those we visited who were renting from others. This means that, again, through the caring of our beloved donors, we will begin to build homes for all families visited on this trip. In particular, Catarina Sacrohope owned the land by the cliff, but we could not build there. However, during our visit, a kind neighbor decided that she would give Catarina a piece of land further up the mountain and away from the edge of the precipice.

The greatest gift that we can share with the poor is our gift of presence. It comes with a feeling of brotherhood, of caring, of walking the extra mile, of coming out of our very comfortable worlds daring to understand their world of suffering and sorrow – it comes with an offer of love and hope.

THE END

 

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

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 IX: The Silence

On Sundays, I have my immediate family to our home for dinner. I cook for 21 people (four generations of us) including six wonderful grandchildren (by next Sunday there will be seven!). There is always the noise of children at play – laughing, crying, shouting, running, music, television, video games, and more. I love that beautiful noise – it is the noise of immortality, of legacy, of the future.

I noticed that there were many children at all the homes we visited; yet the only noise we heard was the sad sound of crying. The silence of the children was almost unbearable, for each of us knew from whence it came. It was the silence of hunger, the silence of deprivation, the silence of malnourishment, the silence of lethargy – in short, the silence of poverty!

Another generation robbed of its childhood simply because they lost the lottery of life – born in a poor country to destitute parents.

To be continued...

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

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 VIII: A Widow on the Edge

We then visited Catarina Sacrohope, a 27-year-old woman with four young children. At first sight, Catarina’s predicament has much in common with many of the other destitute families we had visited: she is a widow; she is very poor; she lives in a cramped, wretched hovel; she and her children scavenges for food at garbage dumps; she has no means of support for her family; her children are malnourished (the youngest did not stop crying until we gave him some food); their clothing is ragged and threadbare.

Angel with Catarina and her family

Yet her sadness was different for the others we had seen – it was more distracted, more desperate, more urgent; more intense. As we walked down the treacherous, slippery, rocky, narrow pathway that sloped sharply downhill towards her house, I understood why.

You see, Catarina lives with her family on the edge of a cliff, literally one foot away from a hundred-foot drop down a ravine that people use to dump their useless garbage, debris and human waste. There is slow but chronic erosion, as the shack is directly in the path of frequent mudslides caused by the heavy rainfall and the area is further afflicted by earth tremors.

Catarina is a woman who lives in constant fear – not only of long-term consequences of malnourishment, contaminated water and other scourges of poverty, but of an instant and immediate danger to the life of her children and her own. She is a woman living on the edge of a cliff that has her teetering always between life and death, robbing her of anything even remotely resembling peace of mind.

To be continued...

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 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 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...

Guatemala -- After the floods

In early June 2010, after severe flooding occurred in Guatemala, a small team from Food For The Poor (FFP) – including Alice Marino, Director of Marketing, and Mark Khouri, Director of Goods In Kind - traveled with me there to meet with our partners, Caritas Arquediocesana. The purpose of our trip was to visit some of our joint programs in the country. Traveling at the same time was a team from a very large and reputable (not to mention generous and charitable) corporate leader in the food industry, which included their president. This giant U.S. corporation with a heart of gold has been developing a vitamin and iron enriched, turkey based, protein product to help combat the frightening incidence of malnutrition, which often results in death or stunted growth.  FFP and Caritas have partnered with this corporation in order to help with testing and distribution of the nutritional product in Guatemala City and its environs. This is successfully accomplished through nearly 30 Mother and Child (M & C) programs administered by Caritas and supported by FFP through its USDA McGovern-Dole Food For Education Program.

This canned turkey product, together with our rice, beans and oil received from the USDA, has been distributed over recent months to all eligible mothers in the program. In addition to the food, the Caritas staff has trained community leaders in each of these centers to educate women in the program about proper nutrition and care of their children, including teaching them about aspects of their growth and development. We witnessed some of these educational sessions and the Caritas staff  is to be congratulated for a job well done.

During our visit to the centers, the weight and height of each child was recorded, and the level of hemoglobin in the blood was measured in order to compare current information with data that had been captured when the program began. While the research and development (R & D) people were busy taking measurements, some of us visited homes, which proved to be very educational and moving experiences.