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6 a.m. was our departure from the Casa Retiros. To work backwards, that meant that breakfast began at 5:30, and wake up, 4:30. My earliest meetings, at home in the States, start at 10 am—that’s a stretch for me. My favorite time of day is morning, where I ease in—often with the same routine: skinny coffee and a book in my pajamas; an hour later, breakfast; then gather and prep for the day. I had no coffee with me, and …
To finish up our first day, let me tell you about our visit to Santa Clara and Paso a Paso . Santa Clara is the nursery that International Samaritan runs in cooperation with the city of Guatemala. There we met Sonia La Roche, a small but strong woman, who runs the nursery; she has worked at Santa Clara for years, since she met Fr. Vettesse. She shared with us that the people in the area told her she had to talk with “the crazy gringo …
Before I proceed further into the adventure, I want to show you (and share with you about) our guides for the week: Juan Carlos and Andres. Juan Carlos, our driver, and Andres, our translator/guide extraordinaire, were a team–like Batman and Robin, or Ozzie and Harriet–and they expertly walked our group through the week. Here are some visuals, so you can see them. I love this picture of Andres laughing. He laughed the whole week. Especially at dinner where the teens …
To clarify, for the readers, when I use the term “garbage dump communities” I speak specifically about the people who live in and near gigantic garbage dumps. “Garbage dump dwellers,” as International Samaritan refers to them, spend much of their time foraging for recyclable items from the garbage. Many of them eat food that they find there, or take it home for their families to eat. Homes in the garbage dump communities tend to be crafted from aluminum, tin, cardboard, and other …
Before we ate lunch, we drove to the cemetery. Why the cemetery? Because from the cemetery we could walk to an overlook and see the garbage dump from above– it was inside a crater-esque area. For our bus to enter the cemetery, Juan Carlos had to pay as we drove through a gate. We navigated to a spot far back, and he parked the bus. All of us hustled out and followed Andres and Juan Carlos, police officer in front …
