Gifts That Keep Giving

I love how things just fall into place here in Guatemala. During our visit to San Antonio des Aguas Calientes, the grandmother -- Abuella -- heard we were going the next day to Santa Maria de Jesus and said she wanted to come too. We assumed she knew people in SMDJ, and wanted to visit. We arranged that she would meet us in the Parque Central -- the central square of Antigua.

At noon on Sunday, we drove up to the central square, and sure enough, there she was. In the winding car ride up Volcan Agua, it turned out that she didn't know anyone in SMDJ. But she had never been in a car before (she's 61) and wanted to get out for the day! Then, as we drove up, the driver asked us if we knew how to get to either Edgar's or our other family's house. We didn't, but had faith that somehow it would work out. As we rounded the turn from the mountainside into SMDJ, there was Edgar, leaning against a concrete post, waiting for us with his bicycle, wearing his Gas Lamp Players' "Show Me The Beast" t-shirt! And we followed him to his family's house.

It is hard to explain the deprivation in which Edgar's family lives. Edgar's mother is nursing her 11th child, who is only 3 months younger than Edgar's baby, and our godson, Elmer. Edgar has two older sisters who are married and live nearby with their husbands; the other 8 children are 14 and under. For a while, the entire family was homeless because Edgar's father had a drinking problem and stopped working. But he stopped and now works seasonally on a coffee plantation picking and sorting beans, for which he makes $4 a day. Off season, he tries to find construction work at $2 - $3 a day.

Edgar supports his wife and son, and supplements his father's income with his work for "From Houses to Homes," (FHTH) for which he is immensely grateful. He and his parents each live in homes built by FHTH and the other children sleep in a cornstalk shack between the two cinderblock houses. The families have two "kitchens" -- cornstalk enclosures with a fire inside. They all share one outhouse -- a hole in the ground with a bottomless toilet on top of it. The compound is enclosed by cornstalk "walls," and, except for the concrete floors of the FHTH homes, the "floors" are dirt. It is incredibly dusty. All of the children are covered with layers of grime that they wash off with rainwater collected in big drums.

Edgar's younger siblings' shoes are worn and cracked. One of the pairs of sneakers that we brought (thank you Annie Bayne) fit his youngest brother and you can not imagine how excited he was to receive them. When we were leaving, kids from the neighboring alleys came running up to admire them, getting down on their knees in the dirt to trace their fingers over them. And Edgar's brother was as proud of them as Dorothy her ruby slippers. It was that exciting.

On Saturdays, Edgar supplements his FHTH income with other construction work or coffee bean sorting. On Sundays, he rests and also tries to learn English. He proudly showed us a tape he is using to teach himself. I noticed that his English is much improved since we were here in February. None of Edgar's siblings go to school -- the family simply can't afford the meager school supplies that Guatemalan children are expected to provide for themselves. But Edgar is determined that his son's life will be different. And so it shall.

After visiting for about 1/2 hour, we went to see our "first family" we built for last February -- Flore, Tomas, Blanca, little Tomas and Jessica. They are well, and I am happy to say that the 3 chickens we bought last time we were here have not been consumed! They are each sitting on 10 eggs apiece, which will bring a nice income to the family.

Throughout or visit, Abuella kept a keen eye on all that was going on. It seemed perfectly natural to everyone that our "grandmother" from another family would be visiting our other families. When we brought her back home at the end of the day, she bestowed many blessings upon us. She is quite a woman -- I think that with education, there would have been no stopping her.