"Fool me — You can't get fooled again."

The title for this post is from Bush's infamous speech where he says,

There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.

--President George W. Bush, Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002

Well, this phrase comes to mind when I think of how James and I have been fooled again! I guess we aren't as smart as our esteemed president not to get fooled again...

As you may (or may not) know, the safety situation reached a critical mass for us last month when two teachers from my school were assaulted up the road. This, combined with CAG parents' assasination, the general rise of crime on the main boulevard we live on and our zone of the city, and other attempted robberies, have led to major anxieties about where we live. Not just Guatemala in general, though that is a big part of it...

Well, our apartment building, while gorgeous, comfortable, and ultra-nice, does not have a guard like other buildings have...we have a handyman who knows the place and people very well, but he is pretty much helpless to stop someone from coming into the building because he has no gun, and no security measures other than to maybe phone us and warn us. This is not good enough for James and me, especially with the way security has been on a downward spiral lately, so we are moving to a new apartment at the end of July.

ANYWAYS, this anxiety/lack of security background had to be said to set the background for this blog post.

The other background to set is that our good friends from school, Matt and Amy (pregnant and engaged!), live next door to us, and our kitchen windows face each other. We can easily see into their apartment, and visa versa. This is usually fun, because we can leave notes, pictures, and wave hello to each other, too! :) But when can it be a problem to look into your neighbor's apartment? ......hmm.......

The first time we were fooled --"shame on us"-- was in December during winter break. We were in our apartment relaxing when I was at the kitchen sink and I noticed that there were scruffy looking guys - definitely not Matt or Amy - rifling through Matt and Amy's things! I knew for a FACT that Matt and Amy were out of the country, and since most of Guatemala was on Christmas vacation, it struck me as the perfect time for burglars to come in and ransack an apartment (remember: we have no guard!).

The man looked up, and I knew that he knew that we were home, and we had seen him. So I immediately panicked, called the doorman (who did not pick up his phone), and I demanded to James that we leave our apartment as soon as possible and then call the police. I didn't even bother putting clothes on; just left in my PJs with the passports. We called our friend and neighbors who lives on the 3rd floor to tell him that someone was robbing the place. Luis (nickname: Wicho - pronounced Wii-cho) is a quite the gun enthusiast, and so he went down to the doorman "Packing with 2 guns, just in case there is action" to check the scene out.

It turned out that no, the place was not being robbed after all. Amy's sister was traveling around Guatemala, and decided to make a surprise stop for a few days to recoup from her travels, and she had brought a few male friends and her boyfriend along too, which is why they looked so disheveled. They weren't ransacking Matt and Amy's things, they were cleaning their own backpacks and souvenirs out! Whew! It was one of the scariest moments in Guate for me because I knew they had seen me, and I thought the 'burglars' would certainly come to kill any witness to their crime! Wicho, James, our doorman, and I all had a good laugh about it afterwards. :)

This Monday we got "fooled again"!

A bit of background for this false alarm: Our apartment in sandwiched between two other apartments: Matt and Amy on one side, in the building, and across the street out of the other side of our place lives an infamous guilty-of-genocide ex-General and Guatemala leader's family. He-who-shall-not-be-named. So, we are constantly looked out of the other side of our apartment at the goings-on of clandestine meetings, bodyguard watching, and creating our own stories of what goes on behind those closed doors...

Monday while James and I were making dinner, we noticed that a hand had partially pulled back the blinds at Matt and Amy's place. We assumed they were wanting to tell us something or were looking at us, so James waved hello. Almost immediately, the hand dropped the blind and went away. No one waved back, which we found suspicious...so a few moments later, the hand is back pulling the blinds, and we wave again. Again, no response. By now, I was already panicking, because a) the hand skin looked dark, not like Matt or Amy's b) no one was waving back c) we called the doorman and he said no one else should have been in their apartment d) Matt and Amy were not picking up their phone e) the hand pulling the blinds back never showed a face, and seemed like the person was trying to hide.

Matt was fun enough to reenact the scene for the blog.

In a 15-20 second time span, I had two theories devised.

Theory 1: Burglars. Matt and Amy weren't home, and someone had broken in, and were checking to see if we had seen them.

Theory 2: Assassins. Someone was using Matt and Amy's place to check across the street where the ex-general's family was, and they were going to use the place for a Book Depository Style killing. Either way, we knew they had spotted us, and I had again entered panic mode.

But because we were wrong about burglars in December (and slightly embarrassed to have caused such a fuss), this time I kept my voice a bit calmer on the phone to Wicho when I explained the situation. He and the doorman promptly came up packing 'heat' (Wicho gave the doorman a gun too, just in case!), and they were quiet as mice checking the situation out from our kitchen. Meanwhile, I did start to panic! In case there was a shootout, I did not want to be there for it, so I basically made James leave with me immediately so they could use our apartment for whatever. I have to give James kudos for remaining super calm in both of these situations.

As we were in the elevator headed to leave the building, Wicho and the doorman went to Matt and Amy's and knocked....imagine Wicho knocking with one hand, loaded and poised gun in the other hand...Amy is 6 months pregnant....

And Matt opened the door! It was him the whole time! His hand just looked dark (hairy, I guess?) and he did not see us waving at him because he was too busy trying to discern if the tortilla lady across the street (yes, next door to the ex-general's family) was still making tortillas at that time. Crisis averted! Again, we were more than happy that there weren't any burglars there and of course we were able to laugh about it afterward, but at the time I was so scared!

But these incidents merely reinforce why I'm glad we are moving apartments. I wouldn't feel so bad knowing that someone is checking IDs and there is an armed guard at the building 24/7, which our current apartment lacks. We move next week, and we are both so excited! I'm sure our doorman and Wicho both think we are the most paranoid gringos around.

El Paraíso Service Project

This weekend we were part of a group of teachers who went into the Zone 18 "El Paraíso" neighborhood to help work on a mission project that our friend Kelly works with, Global Soccer Ministries. It was a wonderful day full of hard manual labor, experiencing a bit of how the majority of Guatemala City residents live, and doing some great work in the name of Jesus!

The soccer field with part of El Paraíso on the hill in the background

Safety

The "El Paraíso" (ironically means paradise) neighborhood is in one of the more dangerous and gritty areas of an already gritty and dangerous city. Zone 18 is known for its gang activity, corrugated iron sided "houses," and extremely impoverished conditions. While there, we were instructed to stay together as a group, take no belongings with us we weren't prepared to have "walk off," and we were not allowed to walk down the streets, even in a group, without a man known by the community.

We knew it was going to be a worthwhile experience and we would be doing helpful work, but we had some reservations about entering such an unsafe part of the city. However, we decided our personal safety would not be too terribly jeopardized (in comparison to other service projects) because many mission groups have been down from the U.S. that our friend Kelly works with, and the man in charge of this ongoing (since 2005) project is a close family friend of Kelly's as well. Not that any one's safety can ever be guaranteed, but we were with people who were knowledgeable of the area and people, and they were known by the locals, also, who knew we were there to help, not hurt, and it is fairly usual for the community to see a group of gringos working away on the soccer field.

The Service Project

Many of the teachers at CAG have expressed a desire to get involved and do something truly helpful, yet have been hindered by 1) not knowing who to contact to volunteer 2) not wanting to go by themselves into a potentially unsafe and unknown area, and 3) not getting ourselves into gear due to laziness in general, as happens often no matter where you live. Good intentions, right? So when Kelly offered a service project to work on building a soccer stadium in a very needy area where there was already a built-in infrastructure of volunteer workers and an ongoing project, this seemed like a great chance to do something useful!

Our task for the day was two-fold: First, we were helping to complete some soccer stadium seating, and second, we were starting the process of building a house for a 9-person family that is currently living in a one bedroom tin shack.

The soccer field was a GREAT service project! We loved working on it because it seems like for a community that has nothing to claim as its own, let alone a nice, open area to join together, this was something that would serve many, many people - the entire community! Also, Guatemalans are fanatical about soccer. It is one of the few things everyone takes an interest and joy in, so to give them something they are passionate about seems like a great idea!

Working on the field seating was very laborious; everyone got very good at using shovels, hoes, and pick axes. While we did not pour any cement, most of our job was to move dirt to create the space to build more seating, fill dirt in the partially completed seats, and tearing down a hill to create a road for trucks to move sand and cement (currently being done by people with wheelbarrows, a tedious and slow-going way to move land!). There is not much to talk about, except that we worked hard for roughly 5-6 hours. On the positive side, we could definitely see the progress we made by the end of the day!

Part of the fun of the day were the kids that hung around us. They were full of energy and excited we were there. They tested the few English words they had learned on us ("Yes" and "Thank you"), and they really seemed to enjoy using the wheelbarrows and pick axes the most. Bringing them joy and giving them a stimulating and productive day was worth it above all else.

On the other end of the spectrum, working on a house that will directly benefit a family bursting at the seams was also very rewarding for everyone involved. We met the family members whose house was going to be built, and they even joined in on the project. Actually, the family members who were around we extremely helpful, and the little boys were some of the hardest workers of the day! Talk about witnessing a real need. This is a family that has nothing to its name but piles of trash, corrugated iron sides and roofing for the one room "house," and 2 small beds.

Outhouse for the 9-person, single-room housed family

It was very sad to see the living conditions these kids were in. Due to malnutrition (we're assuming), the boys we saw that were 8 and 12 years old looked like they were 4 and 8 years old, respectively. We were told they walk to a nearby school, but who knows. The girl we met looked about 14 and she was still in the elementary grades. It's doubtful she'll be in school much longer. An example of malnutrition: one boy told a teacher that it is easy to stay full. You just drink 2 glasses of water in the morning, 2 at lunch, and 2 glasses of water and dinner. How sad! We were told they get some food, but it is never a certainty. The dad (of the family's house we were working on) was passed out from drinking on 1 of the 2 beds in the 1-room shack, and at one point woke up long enough to come out and directly leer at a blonde female teacher. The mom dropped by briefly and she seemed very kind. According to the man in charge of this project, these are some of the worst living conditions the mission has seen.

The goal of the house-building mission project is to give families a small home with which to start out with -- 2 bedrooms and a bathroom (roughly 1/4 of a typical floor plan of a States house). Families like this with absolutely nothing do not even know how to get started, and they are so overwhelmed with what it takes to build/improve a house, the church mission group comes in, builds a very small house, and the goal is for that to be a jump start for the family to build on -- maybe a few more bedrooms, a kitchen, a 2nd floor, or something. According to the missionary, the plan usually works! Part of how they decide what families to build houses for is whether or not they will continue to improve what they have been given. Obviously the waiting list is long. This family has been waiting for their house for over 5 years.

9 people live in this "house"

One of the funnest parts of the work we did was knocking down a poorly constructed concrete wall to make way for the new, sturdier wall that the mission project will build in the future. We all took a turn with the sledgehammer, and then moved the rubble via assembly-line to create a retaining wall at the edge of the small property.

While knocking the wall down, we had time to look around the area from the confined quarters. The family outhouse looked like it was from a creepy horror movie (so did the dad...), the "streets" were mere iron-sided alleyways (that we figured had to be very hot inside - you would bake alive in there!), and the family's land was also home to a rag-tag mama dog and her 4 puppies, 2 ducks, and plenty of spiders and rat-sized cockroaches. But there was safety and fun in numbers, and we all had a great time doing the work.

The "neighborhood."
These are all houses, and the alleys are the only streets

It is almost impossible to imagine what daily life looks like for this family (and countless others in the same situation). Where do they sleep? How do they sleep? Who gets the bed? The cockroach-encrusted ground? What happens during the rainy season? How do they cook? what do they do for water? How does the outhouse get cleaned--or does it? Where do they do laundry?

When we left (earlier than planned due to sheer physical exhaustion), we all knew that we had done just a little bit to help a lot of people, and hopefully shed some light on their lives. We know the experience also brought us all closer to the realities and poverty that we seem to glide over so easily on a daily basis, living in our Zone 15 and Zone 10 bubbles, which really do not represent the vast majority of the City or country. We will all remember our work at Paraíso the next time we are asked to donate our time or money to such worth causes as helping the impoverished or those many, many souls that are in need.