Guatemala: Orientation Day

To begin, here's the email sent to parents from Guatemala with a summary of our day:

After a great breakfast we were able to experience the formidable rush hour traffic that is apparently worse on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays. I have no idea why those three days are the worst, but that is what we were told. We picked up two police officers from the city hall who escorted us all day before we headed to the school, Francisco Coll.  
As soon as we arrived the children had a wonderful variety show for us. A skit about life in the garbage dump community, tricks of coordination (somersaults, flips, hula hoops), indigenous dances, and indigenous music rounded out the morning.  Then we were walked through a few of the homes. Many of the residents were generous to not only open their homes to us, but to share their stories. The teens saw that entire families lived in spaces smaller than their bedrooms at home.  A family of seven counted themselves lucky to have the regular income of roughly $5 per day - a small fortune in Zone 7, the garbage dump area.
Once the home tours were completed, we were escorted to the nursery. The babies, age a few months to pre-school, were a great favorite with all the teens. We heard more stories of the creation of the nursery and school.  Then we were walked through the adjacent area of the recycling area.  This is nothing like what you might picture - it is filthy, chaotic, and the overwhelming stench of the garbage dump invades all your sense.
At that point we loaded back on our bus to drive to the cemetery. An odd destination, yes, but as it is on the cliff that gives you a bird's eye view of the garbage dump cavern, it was a good way for the teens to see the magnitude of the dump.
By this time we were all ready for lunch. Several of the kids helped Andres pick out the food that would make up our lunches for the week when we stopped at a supermarket. Then we went across the street to a park where we assembled our lunches of peanut butter sandwiches, chips, apples, cookies and iced tea. 
Our next stop was to return to the area of the garbage dump, this time to the Santa Maria center. There we heard stories from the Paso a Paso program. This is a scholarship program to help the children who finish at Francisco Coll continue on into high school and college. They offer tutoring and trade training. We also heard more about life in Guatemala City in general and the garbage dump community specifically.

As I knew what to expect from a previous trip three years ago, it was a day of memory and seeing what had changed. The nursery had been improved upon and the school was in need of more space. The people were still the most hospitable individuals I ever met. The smell still hit you like a physical force. The children still, like all children, want to sit next to the new people and yearn for their attention.

What was the most beautiful moment of the day was a conversation between one of our teens and the director of the Paso a Paso program. This teen had been adopted from Guatemala. The director asked about her background and over the course of a few minutes was in grateful tears not only that this teen's mother bravely gave her up, but that she was welcomed into a loving home and then felt called to return to offer what she could to her birth nation. The director, who struggles with the teens and young adults fighting for higher education as they emerge from the garbage dump, recognized and named the gifts of faith, education and the love of both the birth and adopted families. For those who witnessed the conversation it was stunningly beautiful.