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 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 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...