Doug Goes to Guatemala (Quailman Makes Mysterious Appearance, Eats Twenty Fajitas)

Okay, I know this is ridiculously late, and I’d say that I had a good reason for the delay, but let’s be honest, I don’t. I’m lazy, y’all know that. So, anyway, for those of you who don’t know, I went to Guatemala with the Cornell Catholic Community (a dismal, sorry excuse for a “community,” but what are you going to do? We are the “Godless University, after all…”). Guatemala was… well, poor… as this was a service trip, we went to the crappy, not-touristy part of the country, and saw how people actually live.



Live they barely do, Tiny, one-room houses made out of sticks, hiking many miles up a mountain to farm their tiny parcel of land, eating nothing but tortillas and beans day in and day out. The service I did was mainly survey out land (“surveying” here means hiking around the perimeter of an arbitrarily shaped section of forest with a GPS and climbing trees to get a signal) and building stoves so that the women do not have to cook on a dirt floor. These are brick stoves, by the way, not like ovens or anything. Granted, we mostly got in the way when we “built” the stoves, and the Guatemalan who was supervising us had to redo everything we did, so I decided to play with the village kids instead. I was kinda boring until I realized that I can pick them up and spin them over my head, but after being sick and not sleeping the night before, I tired easily.



Exchange rates are awesome, and I brought a bona fide tienda back with me. So much stuff… so cheap and so Hispanic…. Just like Ian! Also, really amazing coffee… dark and strong… just like…Ian! (Sorry for the horrible joke, but I haven’t seen Ian in oh-so-long…) It is all humanitarian and stuff, so that’s sweet. The farmers actually get a decent, livable wage, which helps them make realllly good coffee. One of the things that I took away from the whole thing is a profound respect for the Church and those that serve in it. The priest there, Fr. Greg, has done so much for the community, it’s ridiculous. For instance, concerning the land that I was surveying, the mission raised the money and bought the land for the people. If the church wasn’t involved, and say, the government did it for them, violence would break out, driving the poor off the land. Only through the Church can any progress be made in peace. The country is beautiful, you just need to make sure you aren’t looking at anything that shows any evidence of human activity, ‘cause the cities and stuff are mostly dirty and poor. Anyway, had a good time, and apparently I was such a good Catholic that the Community is sending me to France at the end of May, so while I WILL BE HOME FOR SUMMER, I may not be in PDX until mid-June, as I’ll probably go from school to Bend to Paris.




PS: The weather was absolutely amazing. Especially considering that it’s snowing right now. Yes, snowing. Over a foot in mid-April. Ithaca is *******