We just finished with our second medical team of the year. The mission was to Huehuetenango and we saw around 1500 patients over five days. However, we, the team coordinators, don’t know what a day off is and have been pretty tired. I got gravely ill for a few days and came down with strep throat, coughing, pink eye, athlete’s foot and a busted knee. Andrew got fleas. But, all in all it was a phenomenal trip. Journal entries and pictures are soon to follow. As soon as I muster up the energy. I can only imagine how old explorers managed through disease. Shackleton, Cook, Lewis and Clark. They must have been made of steel and cojones.
“Q-tip? Here’s a Q-tip. Spend less Q’s.” — Andrew Heiser
I am constantly envious of all the travel blogs and pictures, tweets and stories from people who get to travel around the world. I raid travel sites like Matador and Backpacking, eager for that next fix. The heart of the matter is that while I feel that most travelers are out there on their own time and money, using both in any way they want, I have responsibilities and time constraints. Not that I am complaining. Quite the opposite is true. I have been remarkably lucky. It has just taken a while for me to realize it.
Traveling for me has always been an understated, eventful, yet entirely fun enterprise my entire life. The thing I believe that sets me apart from most travelers and even my compatriots is that I have lived, for several years, in places that people consider travel destinations. Some beaches in Mexico where I spent weekends off from school with my family were considered sparsely populated backpacking paradises by travelers. Snorkeling at “our” island getaway in Belize was another typical weekend for us. And again, back then I had no idea that these white-sand, single-palm spits of land were lusted after by travelers. To me it was just another day. I know I sound like some spoiled ass raving about how great these things are, but the truth is that we weren’t wealthy by any standard. My parents just liked to see what was out there. My dad especially. If he had three days off you could bet your ass we’d be at the beach. Damned if he’d be stuck in the house for three days.
My parents never stayed in resorts or signed us up for tours or took a cruise and I guess I should thank them for it. It’s broadened my sense of awareness of the vastness of amazing things that are off the map and outside the all-inclusive. It has made me aware of the poverty that plagues most of our planet, the immense kindness of people and the smells and sounds of everyday life in towns, markets, beaches and restaurants. It has also made me aware that I am not your average traveler.
In the broadest sense of the term, a traveler leaves home, whatever and/or wherever that may be, to seek out the new in other places. Home is a term I have always struggled to comprehend. In my own experience, I was born in California, but left before I really knew it or even remembered it, I was six when we left. From there my family moved to Belize. We first lived in a large house near a park downtown on the water. Then moved on to a large tract of land outside the city. We stayed for three years. Then it was on to Miami for several years. Then to Mexico for six years. We lived in Guadalajara and my affection for the city has never waned. After that, we settled in North Carolina. Then I went to university in the Blue Ridge mountains and later took a job in Guatemala. The concept of home and hometown then are concepts that I have tried to pin down. Naturally, being foreign, both literally and figuratively, has been something I have learned to live with. Returning to the States from Mexico after six years was more of a culture shock than going to Mexico in the first place. I felt more comfortable sitting with the Latino kids during lunch than my fellow Americans I was expected to integrate with.
And that’s just the thing. Comfort. Levels and degrees of comfort. It’s the thesis of the Economist article linked above. Comfort in foreign lands and mentalities. Where I must disagree with the article is that the author assumes that the traveler identifies with a “home” land in the first place to become a foreigner in lands abroad. But, what if the traveler doesn’t feel at “home” where he is expected to feel at home before ever leaving or ever even realizing the expectations? I believe it is a point well-missed in this article, with the author’s stabs at mentioning our continuing globalization and the trampling of borders. Even the phrase overseas is a bit self-centered. Overseas compared to what? Home? What if one doesn’t identify with any home in the sense of the word. What if every place felt foreign?
Traveling is about that sense of foreignness that makes it appealing in the first place. Then, we decide to return “home,” if we choose to. But, what does the word really mean? A place? A mentality? People? Experiences? A combination of many factors?
These factors are things I struggle to put together in my own life and try and define. Travel has led me to a job in Guatemala. While I work everyday in my small way to help the poor of the country I feel the incessant jealousy for the traveler on his own time and money. The ability to see and travel and experience things at one’s leisure. This job, however, has allowed me to travel within the country and to some of the most remote settings here. I certainly would almost never have gone to those places of my own accord. I have to remind myself that I have had opportunities not a lot of people get. Travel for me has been living in one country to the next and never really the backpack-toting type of travel. Although, I have traveled around Mexico on my own, explored Guatemala, and flew unaccompanied at age nine, I don’t expect to be as experienced in solo travel as others. The only thing I can say is that I have had extensive experience traveling in the countries I have lived and not the extensive experience I wish I had on my own in other countries. Soon enough.
The job I have here in Guate is a confluence of all the aspects of travel that I admire. I’m immersed in the culture–business and traditional, I get to see new places all the time and I live here. It’s something I wish for every traveler to enjoy. Though, the prospect of traveling on my own often occupies my thoughts. The clubs in Barca, the beaches of Panama, family in Brazil, the wine of southern Chile, the archipelagos of Mozambique all call to me. And knowing that no matter where I go that I will always be the outsider, is an exciting, if not daunting, experience.
On the other hand, the drain, mentally and physically of constantly immersing and emerging in and out of different cultures, groups and languages is greatly demanding and exhausting, but I feel that the effort is well worth the rewards. Intimately knowing and understanding or at least trying to understand and immerse in a different culture is a truly amazing experience. One that I am accustomed to.
However, I am in no way diminishing the dreams and goals of those travelers who wish to travel to all of their desired destinations and immersing themselves in whatever way they feel they want to. Be that sitting on the beach, drinking, clubbing, eating great street food, music, volunteering or sightseeing. Hell, I want to. On my own time. However, having a great job precludes me from doing a few things until I have a weekend off and can move around. I am very lucky that I get to see as much of Guatemala as I do for work. We travel to some pretty remote highland towns like Nebaj (home to a great Peace Corps R&R spot), Teujtla, Solola and Uspantan, among others. And as much as I have made friends and gotten to know the culture, attitudes, history, lexicon, slang and language of the place, it still doesn’t feel like “home.” I don’t know if it should. I live here. Does that constitute a home? Or do I just reside? Perhaps it may have something to do with my level of immersion, reluctance maybe, or still that feeling of being a foreigner that may never leave me.
In the end, what I wish for is a balance of the work, travel, live lifestyle for all travelers. But, if that’s not what you’re looking for, then I don’t blame you in the least. The combination of all three, I feel, has added to my quest for the significance of home, foreignness, fun, adventure and understanding.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
Every day at one o’clock on the dot we go out and get something to eat. Getting to the office at 7:30 leaves the stomach growling by 10. I usually bring a lunch and sit in the kitchen with the rest of the people that work in my office. We joke around and if I see someone eating something that I’ve never seen, I ask for a bite. Most people are all too eager to tell me how to make it and let me try some.
But, on those days where we like to get out of the office, which happens quite a bit, we head across the street to get some shucos. Shucos are Guatemala City’s answer to the hot dog. It’s a hoagie bun grilled over coals and then filled with sausage or hot dog. They slap on a hefty amount of guacamole, onions, cilantro, mayonnaise, ketchup, slaw and picante. It’s quick, it’s cheap and it’s damn good.
This is not for the faint of heart though. At lunch time it gets packed and the vendors are throwing around prodigious amounts of meat, tortillas and bread. If you are squeamish about street food, don’t even bother. But, for those of you adventurous enough to try one, don’t miss it. You can usually find them on any street corner in Guatemala City but, not anywhere else.
Then of course you have your fruits for dessert. You can get a bag of mixed fruit like apples, mango, pineapple and melon. Add some salt, lime, picante, and chili powder and you have a great afternoon snack to munch on in the office. Either that or the lime, salt and chili peanuts. Just don’t come running to me when you get heartburn–that’s what the micheladas are for.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
THANKSGIVING ARRIVES EARLY IN GUATEMALA
Prosthetics team gifts patients with new limbs and hope, delivers smiles
Robert Dirksen fitting one of many prosthetic limbs during his three days in Guatemala
By Tony de Lima
Nov. 25, 2009
Guatemala City, Guatemala. – Robert Dirksen, a CPO from California and his team, fitted 14 patients with prosthetic limbs in just three days. Volunteering with HELPS International, Dirksen traveled to Guatemala last May on a medical mission trip and took measurements from patients in the small town of Joyabaj in the Guatemalan highlands. He vowed to return to Guatemala in November to fit his patients with brand new prosthetic limbs, some of whom have never walked before.
Dirksen took measurements of a very special boy, Juan Castro, in Joyabaj in May. Juan Castro became an icon and an inspiration for many after a San Diego news crew shared his story in a short documentary called “10 Days in Guatemala.” Juan Castro arrived at the national hospital in Joyabaj on an old plastic tricycle pulled along with a rope by his father. With his legs badly infected and unable to walk since birth due to spina bifida, the HELPS International medical team decided to amputate both his legs and give him a second chance at life.
Dirksen returned, as promised, to Guatemala on November 23 and spent three full days casting molds, taking measurements and building legs and arms for 14 patients, including Juan Castro. He took molds and casts for eight patients to be fitted in May 2010 and repaired nine more prosthetic limbs. Juan Castro spent the three days with Dirksen as he worked on making limbs, waiting eagerly for his turn.
Mardoqueo, a precocious eight year-old, was fitted with two brand-new, carbon fiber and titanium legs. Born without lower legs, Mardoqueo learned to walk, and even run, on his stubs. “I’ve never, ever seen that before,” Dirksen said, after having worked in the prosthetics field for over 20 years.
The day before Thanksgiving, HELPS International hosted an event in their Guatemala office and warehouse to introduce the prosthetics team and patients. Among invited guests were lawmakers, corporate executives, doctors and the national press. Steve Miller, president and founder of HELPS International, was on hand to meet the patients and guests.
Miller thanked Dirksen and his team and said that “they represent all HELPS volunteers.” He thanked his staff for their hard work and urged the national media to commit themselves to covering the “good news” and to give hope and instill pride in all Guatemalans. Miller praised the patients for their courage, determination and hope.
The event concluded with the patients showing off their new limbs. Juan Castro, surrounded by national press, volunteers and guests, took his first steps ever in what was the culmination of months of planning, building and patience. It was a very emotional experience for everyone. The smile on Juan Castro’s face was wide and unwavering. “This is what we came back for. That smile. This is why I do what I do,” Dirksen said, his eyes watering. “We will see him again in May. By then, he’ll be walking to see us.”
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
One of the reasons I travel, and I suppose many others, is to gain perspective on things. What things? I couldn’t tell you. Each man, woman, kid, grandma, hippie, backpacker and seaman has their reasons. Are we even conscious of these explorations? Are we actively searching? Or are we going along, picking up dust along the way? Bits of pieces of people, places, food and quick brushes on the sidewalk. Whether conscious in our search for perspective, identity, meaning and purpose in our travels we all share the same drive: seeking the new. The unseen. The un-thought-of. And, in the new and completely un-thought-of, we seek our own answers. Barry Hannah’s ‘Even Greenland’ is a masterpiece of short fiction that shows us the meaning of true experience.
Something new means something to all travelers, in a physical sense of travel and emotional sense. One of the things that I have come across in many diaries and journals of travelers is the search for identity. The search for the facets that make up the colorful array of the people we are. Part of the concept of identity in travel is how one is perceived and how ones perceives oneself. One then may beg the question of the validity or necessity of identity after all if it is nothing but a perception. But, cultivating one’s perception into a reality, a concrete set of values, beliefs and actions is the real work and most rewarding and I believe is the reason most travel.
After reading about the fragile sense of belonging and being entertained by the hierarchies and perceptions in travel and the contempt we travelers can have in our hearts for others trampling on our turf, I couldn’t help but think what a bunch of self-serving, ego-centric bunch we are. We travel mostly for our own gain. Traveling in and of itself, for the sheer purpose of traveling, regardless of our mission, i.e. reworking our worldview, embracing new cultures, people, ideas–caresses our egos and makes little reasonable sense.
I cannot tell you how many blogs I have read where the traveler meets someone, usually in the third-world, where the concept of travel for travel is incomprehensible. Why? they say. What do you seek? Work? No. A wife? No. food? No. What do you seek? And the explanation becomes a difficult one. We are then left with explaining our travels as one can interpret as reasonable as far as reason goes. Something easy. Something that makes sense in the logical order of things. A concrete answer.
John Steinbeck summed it up nicely in his book, Log From the Sea of Cortez.
“‘Then what do you search for?’ And this is an embarrassing question. We search for something that will seem like truth to us; we search for understanding; we search for that principle which keys us deeply into the pattern of all life; we search for the relations of things, one to another, as this young man searches for a warm light in his wife’s eyes and that one for the hot warmth of fighting. These little boys and young men on the tide flat do not even know that they search for such things too. We say to them, ‘We are looking for curios, for certain small animals.’”
And to the people they are speaking to, this seems reasonable or at the least, logical.
Here one feels the struggle of understanding. We must always understand that the search for meaning is not simply that of the traveler but to understand, to truly feel, the man that lives, breathes, sweats his cultures, his heritage, his sons, his daughters, his life, his pains and joys.
One of the most ignorant things a traveler can say about a third-world citizen is that they do not want. That they are happy with what they have. Of course they want. Their wants may not be our wants, but they want. Humans want. To survive and to say to their fellow man, here it is, the thing that will make us better. And what is the want? Is it health? Is it children? The ability to bear children? The plow with which to sow? For many travelers these may seem like basic needs. From my experience, especially in regards to health, they are wants. They want to be healthy but, working, making money to feed the family is a priority, sickness be damned. Many want and seek the health of their children. Who does not want this? This is an ingrained basic human instinct. They too, are searching.
Conversely, in travel, what can we make of the volunteer, the social worker, the service-learning members? The difference here with volunteers and travelers is a knife-edge thin divide. To seek true purpose and meaning one must look into oneself about the nature of the endeavor. For the volunteer who seeks out the deepest reaches of the jungle to join a tribe and deliver to them fresh drinking water, walks out of the jungle and never breathes a word about his service to anyone is different from the volunteer who puts on his display of work for man to behold, not for the benefit of the served, but his own. These are of course starkly black and white, because the volunteer who publicizes for the benefit of the people and works with his hands buried, figuratively but often literally, in the dirt, falls obviously in the middle somewhere. It is then very important to determine within oneself the true reason for helping. And hopefully, in helping, in volunteering, the understanding and respect becomes mutual.
Understand the ego in oneself. What is the want from the soul? The heart? Understand what it is that one searches. Travel is a thing which to most man does not make sense. And, for something to not make sense, makes the traveler unreasonable and sometimes appear, unfortunately, completely loco.
We seek the new, the wild, the experience. For what? For whom? Whom do you wish to understand? Is it oneself? Or the man with the crutches sowing seeds on the mountainside raising his son who has lost his legs to infection? Or both?
Do we change our way of life when we return home? If at all. Change the definition of home? Do we take in to consideration the lives of the people we sought to understand, to relate to? There are questions and there are always answers hiding in the remotest of villages, the saddest faces of children, the joy in a midnight dance in a plaza, the satisfaction of catching the fish that becomes dinner and the simplicity of being in awe. Seek and find. If there’s nothing to be found, then there’s no one or anything to blame. We are all different, and that, fellow travelers, is the beauty of it all.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
After more than a month of not having cut my hair I finally decided to seek out a hair cut place. I really didn’t want to spend a lot or spend my time in a salon with a bunch of yapping women. And, it gets hot here in Guate and my hair just gets thick so I just wanted a simple cut. No shampoo, no gel, no spray, nada.
I left my apartment and stepped out into blinding sunshine that after a week of misting rain and fog it was great to sweat again. I asked the ladies in my house where I could get a haircut and as soon as I did I regretted my decision and I should have known better, really.
I walked down the boulevard near my apartment and down toward the ladies had suggested I go. I walked for a bit and finally, inevitably came upon a large, hairspray-filled salon. I walked past it. I couldn’t do it. They were all watching novelas and laughing really loud. So I walked down to the old shopping center and looked around for a place to get a haircut. More salons. Great. Bummed out and disappointed about not finding a cheap haircut I walked back to the salon on the boulevard. Reluctantly, I passed the threshold. I asked a girl in a white coat with a bottle of spray in one hand and what looked like a wad of aluminum foil in the other what the wait was. Fifteen minutes, she said. The bulletin board said a haircut was Q175! Around 24 bucks. I sneaked outside and ran back to the shopping center convinced I missed something.
I wandered around slowly and out of the corner of my eye I saw a simple sign over a store that said simply barberia. The door was open slightly but from my angle all I could see were children’s booster seats and toys. I walked a few more steps and on the other side of the store were three men getting their haircut by three other guys. And they were watching futbol! And they had car magazines! And it was only Q40!
In about five minutes one of the short barbers nodded at me to have a seat. I sat down in the chair and he spun it around so I could watch the game. I loved this place already. He asked what I wanted. I said, shorter. He went about cutting my hair quickly, efficiently and comfortably. I never felt a rip, tug or pull. He was a pro.
Then, from behind my head somewhere I heard the familiar sound of paper ripping and a package being opened and right in front of my face, the barber asked if this particular razor blade was ok. Yeah, I told him, don’t know what you’re going to do with it because I didn’t ask for a shave. I went back to watching the game. From behind me I heard the scraping ping of a sharpening belt and the barber whipped out a massive straight razor and proceeded to trim all around the edges of my hair. Now, I have never had the, lets say, experience of being trimmed with a straight razor, so I feigned courage. And he was flying. Fzzing, zziing, shhzzzing. In a matter of seconds he was done and I, had nearly pissed myself.
After that was over he pulled out the mirror and showed me the back of my head. Something I always found embarrassing, almost as if he was saying, “Your head resembles a melon from back here.” I said it looked fine. But, he’s the pro. Shouldn’t he know what’s going on back there? He put the mirror away and fired up something with such ferocity and noise that I thought he started up a diesel generator. I looked down and he had fired up a shop-vac. A shop-vac! And he proceeded to suction my head into the nozzle. I felt all the skin on my head being folded in to the hose. The folds in my neck were suctioned in the vacuum and it felt surprisingly good. Better than a shampoo scrub, I’ll say. Before I knew it, it was all over. I paid my 40 Quetzales, thanked the guy and walked back home. Still walking fast past the salon.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
This is the “new” bypass around the San Cristobal Verapaz landslide of January 2009. It had been raining for three days when we started down this “highway.” Unfortunately, the road had been washed out at the landslide and was impassable. This is just a taste of the beauty and ruggedness of the country.
From things I have seen, couldn’t believe and things I have heard.
1. Guatemalans love to honk. They honk at dogs, people, cattle, kids with kites, kids without kites, cyclists, chickens, and basically anything they might run over.
2. Chicken buses like to race each other. Mainly to beat the other guy to a stop and load up on passengers (more mullah).
3. I have yet to actually see a chicken on a chicken bus.
4. If you don’t like picante, you are an outcast.
5. Drivers prefer hand signals over turn signals.
6. A road may exist on a map but, not in reality. That “highway” under construction on the map is really a dirt goat trail going up the mountain. People still use it. Goats, too.
7. Hot water is a luxury and when there’s a widowmaker it’s a great night. A widowmaker is a plastic shower head with electrical heater built in. Yeah, we don’t know what they were thinking either.
8. Hueco does not mean hollow.
9. Guatemalans use lots of speed bumps. They hate them, yet they build more and more in every. Damn. Town.
10. You are either Real Madrid or Barcelona. There is no middle ground. I see their point. In Chapel Hill you are either Carolina or Duke. There is no middle ground–like State, for instance.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
