Katherine Pepper: A Visit to a Remote School in the Highlands of Guatemala (Spring 2006)
We start our day at 6:20 with a hot atol from the morning drink stand at the main cross roads in Comitancillo. Our bus arrives: people inside, baskets of fruit, bundles of firewood and tires on top. The ayudante climbs down off the roof rack as the bus gets into gear and enter through the back door as the bus crests the town's main hill. We leave town to the north as the sun rises.
It’s difficult to describe this landscape. These Highlands are certainly not mountains if you’re used to the Coastal Range or the Rockies, but they are bigger than hills. And they’re not foothills as they don’t ease into anything else. Everything is high up with steep valleys between. Comitancillo, an ancient Mayan site, spreads across a plateau at about 2300 feet. It’s not uncommon to see a field of corn or beans planted on a 50 or 60 degree face. Apparently there’s local lore about farmers who fall out of their milpa fields. This rural myth is less and less amusing as our bus climbs and climbs and at each switch-back is more and more imbued with the spirit of mountain goat. The bus trip is dusty, but not hot. We still wear our vests and gloves.
There are five of us: Robert and me; Rebekah Shoop, a former Malaspina nursing student and founder of the Alianza - Guatemalan Rural Health Care Project; Freddy and Maribel, teachers at school to which we are headed. Both Freddy and Maribel speak Mam, on of the 21 Mayan languages, and Spanish. Their students comes from traditional Mam families which means many children and small subsistence and market garden farms.
After an half an hour the bus stops at Funerarias y Tienda Arturo (site of later adventures!) and we being the walking portion of our trek to the Tuixoquel Community School. Occasionally our path is along a narrow road but mostly we walk in single file along ledges, through pine forests, and lots of up and down hillsides that make vertical look like the leaning Tower of Pisa. We pass cliffs that collapsed last fall during Hurricane Stan.
Forty-five minutes later we arrive at the one room cinder block school. It’s 8 am and today the Parents' Committee serves a special breakfast for the three vegetarian Canadians: beans, salad, tortillas and everything is delicious. We eat in a small adobe house. Light comes through the door way and from the cooking fire. Freddy and Maribel's teaching contracts include daily breakfast and lunch.
We finish and I wander over to the school to take some photos before the students enter. The school is one room, the size of an average BC classroom, divided by a stack of tables, desks and cabinets which separates Freddy’s Gr. 1, 2, and 3s (and a number of younger brothers and sisters) from Maribel’s Gr. 4 & 5s. The school opened 3 years ago. The first year Freddy taught 30 children in a 10 x 12 wooden lean-to structure with a tin roof. It is now used for storage and the only opening is the narrow doorway. In the second year, Freddy taught 40 children in the current cinderblock room and this year, two teachers share the responsibility for teaching 60 students. All at the same time! Imagine metal desks jammed together, cement floor, cinderblock walls and sixty students climbing over their desks or scraping them on the floor in order to move around.
Of course the energy and noise level continues to rise as we 'deliver' the lessons Rebeka had promised. The one for the younger group focuses on animals and is meant to reinforce the Spanish alphabet. The lesson for the older group is based upon a shopping role play and written word recognition. A little competitive, but prizes for all. Believe me, if I did anything correctly during this intense morning, I give complete credit to my former EDTE 614 students. A belated thank you!
During these Spanish 'lessons,' Moms in traditional Mayan corte and huipil , with babies strapped to their backs, peer in through the broken windows. The entire doorway section between the two classrooms is also full of parents sitting on the floor or on low student stools. My hope is that their faith in education remains intact.
At recess the Parents' Committee provides Incaparina - a drink developed by the National Institute of Central America and Panama to feed malnourished children. Katrina ladles the drink out of a big cauldron for everyone. Her husband, Trinidad, President of the Parents´Committee, donated the land for the current school. He conveys to us how important it is that all children become educated, including his eleven. We calculate that is this aldea of about 90 families there are between 300 and 400 school aged children. Recently Rebekah´s Alianza Project has played a major role in securing enough money to build another classroom. The parents hope the building material (more cinder blocks) will be delivered to the site before the onset of the rainy season in May.
Our visit ends with thank you speeches in Spanish and Mam and a promise from us of a return visit to work with the older students. The Grade Fours want a combination Art and Spanish lesson and the Grade Fives, a blend of Geography and Spanish. Any and all ideas are welcome!! But please note, that there are almost no supplies in the school and we will have to pack in any resources or material.
The 45 minute walk back is so hot and dusty that I actually look forward to the death-defying bus ride. I’m exhausted, simultaneously spent and nourished. Moved, as you’ve all experienced, by the brightness and intelligence of the young eager students and by the commitment of their hard-working parents and teachers.
Freddy and Maribel make this trip five days a week, through the dry and wet season. They each have a young child and earn about $350.00 a month. At night Freddy takes an English and Computers class and is teaching Mam to Rebekah.
Thank you for taking the time to read about our trip and our time with this group of gracious parents, teachers and students. If you have any questions or would like more information please email me (kitpepper@viu.ca) or check out the Alianza website. If there is interest, I’ll be happy to share pictures and other experiences when I return to Canada. All the best to everyone.
NB. Alianza´s mandate includes a medical clinic in Comitancillo that provides health care to people from the surrounding 52 aldeas, education through a Mam speaking women’s group, a nursing scholarship to one student, workshops to volunteer health promoters, collaboration with a least two local NGOs, and as much financial support to the school at Tuixoquel as possible.
Katherine Pepper is a professor in the Faculty of Education at Vancouver Island University.