So after the two weeks in Jamaica - which still leaves such a sweet feeling - I spent three in Antigua. And I mean Antigua - I didn't leave once except to go to a few pueblas in the surrounding area. I spent a lot of time in my sweet homestay room, with its open, grated window looking out onto orange trees and the volcano in the distance.........I read about 7 novels, each of them rather amazing (and found by my finger-walking method on the used-book shelves.) One about a hurricane in Jamaica that destroyed the family's home. One about two boys living in the "projects" in Chicago (which I once did in L.A. during my first marriage.) Each one always gives me something.........tiny stepping stones on my path.
I checked out my original project "destination" - the chance to volunteer that started me on this whole trip. And was told, "Thank you very much," they already had all the long-term volunteers they needed!
I was shocked, but did as was suggested and talked to the other volunteer coordinator about working in Guatemala City instead of Antigua. I was game for going to counsel some kids who were having problems, and give some ideas to staff, and for working in the brand, new BEAUTIFUL toddler center (tho the coordinator didn't seem to know why one would want to focus on children that young) until I went with the group on the chicken bus to G.C. to take the tour. An hour bus ride each way, each day.........even three days a week is just too much time out of the week for me, after nearly twenty years of one-hour commutes each way to work.
So I put that out of my mind.
Then, on a fluke, I looked up the website for CommonHope and decided to take their tour. Gorgeous new buildings in traditional style, just outside of Antigua; a parenting program, a counseling clinic, and a school for kids who aren't making it in public school, and a social worker who goes up into the pueblos nearby. I arranged to go with her on her rounds, 2 days.....into the corrugated aluminum shacks people around there have to call "Home," into some new concrete block or prefab concrete small buildings which the project has built for some families who have put in enough work hours. Communities on the sides of the volcanoes. BEAUTIFUL setting for some impoverished living, and sweet faces and sweet smiles, even from the kids behind the corrugated aluminum door to their concrete block shack in an alley. While the worker talked to the older boy in her excellent Spanish (the mom was at her 12-hr day job in a factory in town), I played tic-tac-toe in the dirt with the younger ones.
I was hooked. So I talked to them about long-term volunteering, and it looks as though we can work out a plan to contribute in all those areas: parenting, home visiting and classroom behavior.
Wonderful.
Then, on a fluke, I looked up the website for CommonHope and decided to take their tour. Gorgeous new buildings in traditional style, just outside of Antigua; a parenting program, a counseling clinic, and a school for kids who aren't making it in public school, and a social worker who goes up into the pueblos nearby. I arranged to go with her on her rounds, 2 days.....into the corrugated aluminum shacks people around there have to call "Home," into some new concrete block or prefab concrete small buildings which the project has built for some families who have put in enough work hours. Communities on the sides of the volcanoes. BEAUTIFUL setting for some impoverished living, and sweet faces and sweet smiles, even from the kids behind the corrugated aluminum door to their concrete block shack in an alley. While the worker talked to the older boy in her excellent Spanish (the mom was at her 12-hr day job in a factory in town), I played tic-tac-toe in the dirt with the younger ones.
I was hooked. So I talked to them about long-term volunteering, and it looks as though we can work out a plan to contribute in all those areas: parenting, home visiting and classroom behavior.
Wonderful.
So I started looking for apartments. Amazing what you can find, tho everything very expensive (relatively) in Antigua, in part because of the numbers of Americans and Europeans who come there to adopt babies and pay a lot to stay comfortably for a few weeks. And because of gringos like me. I tried to keep the price down by going for the apts at $350......one sweet one in the back of a hotel, but not private enough for me; two were arranged as two separate rooms side by side on rather private balconies; one was a huge room in a colonial house with a fireplace and one lovely window out into the garden, but a kitchen shared with the grande dame of the place. That was $400. And then a small house in one of the nearby pueblos with 3 tiny upstairs rooms and a living room with a little fireplace and a sweet tiny kitchen downstairs, set with 3 other identical houses behind a tall wall (like all Antiguan homes) with a plaza next door where kids play "papi futbol" (a fast, cut-down version of soccer played on concrete) and a big church, whose bells ring out strong at noon on Sunday. I was on my way to put down my deposit for that house when my Spanish teacher (who walks around w/ me to make sure I say things right and understand what's being offered) called my attention to an ad on a door. We checked it out, saw the (incredibly beautiful) house, right next door to my favorite church with a big grassy area where I'd been to sit several times in the last few weeks, and by morning I had plunked down SIX hundred American dollars to secure the place.
And left the next day, AMAZED that I had set my plans in concrete without even intending to!
Originally I thought I'd put $350 down for the little house, come home, and think about Jamaica and Antigua, the different projects and the different possibilities, and if I chose something else, a lost $350 wouldn't kill me. But $600???
So........with a lot of regret, I have accepted that I am not going back to Jamaica.......now..........that I will start volunteering with Common Hope, and live in that beautiful house (fortunately not in a very touristy section of town, and close to the bus for C. H.) and see where things lead from there. I know I will never be satisfied just working inside a clinic, however important the work is. I have to get outside. If the in-home work and maybe parenting classes in the field develop for C. H., that would be pretty satisfying. If I find a little house to live in, safely, in one of the pueblos, that would be good. I think maybe they have other projects up in the hills, too.
I still want to go see Livingston (especially after making a little connection with the Jovenes Garifuna group who came to a restaurant/bar in Antigua one weekend to play) and see if it's true that there are no projects for the street children there.
And in the meantime I have an extra room for friends and family to come visit me, and enough privacy to dance and play music and holler in my living room.
Bastante. (Enough.)
And in the meantime I have an extra room for friends and family to come visit me, and enough privacy to dance and play music and holler in my living room.
Bastante. (Enough.)
The photos above are from a parade I happened across near the Central Park, and a photo of my living room (not QUITE as grande as it looks. There's also lots of tile that I love and a tiny garden.)
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