And by “home”, I mean Guatemala.
Here I sit in a cafe in Xela, about halfway through my homeward journey. In case we’ve not mentioned it before, the trip between Indiana and our home in Guatemala is a three-day odyssey: a day of plane travel to get to Guatemala, followed by a day and three busses to get to Xela. The last day is three more busses, taking another full day to arrive at our village.
So, what happened during the rest of our American tour? Well, the second half was mostly business: giving speeches to church, civic, and university audiences, describing our experiences and work in Guatemala. But what enjoyable work! The first group was a church group of Guatemalans that live and work in Logansport, Emily’s hometown. The group of about 200 seemed a bit unsure of what to make of us at first, but they warmed up quickly once we started talking in their own language, about people and places they knew. You see, by strange cosmic coincidence, much of the immigrant community in Emily’s hometown comes from a Guatemlan town that is so close to our village that we can see it from our window. Though their Mayan language is Chuj, and not Q’anjob’al, many words are shared between the dialects, and they were tickled to hear white people speaking ancient Mayan. We soon discovered that one of the immigrants used to live about 200 yards from our house! What a small world.
The second lecture we gave was a lunchtime presentation to about 80 businesspeople in the Logansport Rotary club. They have supported Emily before during college, and we spoke to them right before we started Peace Corps, so they already kindof knew who we were. The lecture was fun, and we ran about a half-hour over time. It is Rotary tradition to leave right at the stroke of 1:00 (to go back to work), and they did us the honor of staying the extra 30 minutes until we were finished. I guess they found us interesting!
After the Logansport lectures, we drove to Illinois to get ready for the second lecture series. We stopped to visit our adopted grandparents, Judy & Ed Middleton, and spent a great night chatting with them. They fed us and housed us in their restored Victorian house, and when we woke up it was snowing! Yay; I was worried we’d miss snow entirely this year.
Our third lecture was with the Spanish club at Knox College. There was apparently a misunderstanding about the time, though, and only a handful of people showed up- and we knew all of them! So, the talk was a lot of fun and really informal. Perhaps the best part of Day 3 was spending the evening with the Prado-Ragans while meeting several of Emily’s friends from college (Devin & Melanie), who traveled a long way just to see us. And I got even MORE computer stuff; Devin’s family donated an entire suitcase of stuff, including a pair of desperately needed flat-panel computer monitors.
For our final lecture, we spoke to a general audience at Knox College. About 40 students attended, and it was a blast. They asked probing, insightful questions and the discussion was lively. Instead of our normal presentation, we focused more on the Peace Corps application and training process, and less on the specific aid projects we are working on. Afterwards, several student came up to ask us for personal advice. One girl said to Emily, “You mentioned that you’ve wanted to be in the Peace Corps since you were in high school. I am most of the way through the application process, but this is starting to look kindof scary, and I am not as sure as you are that this is what I want to do. Should I go ahead and finish the application anyways?”
“Well, it was scary for us too,” Emily replied. “But you should stick with it, until you are sure it’s not for you. You can back out at any time, and there is no penalty or anything. Do the application, and when the time to decide to go or not comes up, that is when you make the decision.”
After the lecture, my friend Mark Godsil and his wife took us out to dinner. We had a great time chatting with them about our lives, their lives, the Peace Corps, and all sorts of other stuff. Mark has been very helpful with ideas to advance our projects, and he even expressed interest in coming to Guatemala to see the work we’re doing firsthand. He and his wife have been interested in the Peace Corps for a while, and due to the demands of his business and other complications, it’s not been possible for them to participate. But he is A) a very creative, motivated person, and B) the owner of a flourishing business; so he has a lot of resources at his diposal that could really make a difference to the kind of people we serve.
We then went back to my parents’ house, and spent most of our last day packing. This is normally a snap, as we travel light, but I had to sort, organize, and triage a MOUNTAIN of used computer gear. By the time it was done, I was sweat-soaked and dusty, but had 7 crates with a dozen computing machines and components packed up and ready to go. Now we just have to firm up one of our “maybe” donors on shipping to Guatemala, and we should be in business. I will talk more about this in a post in the near future.
The last few days of our USA tour, from a networking and resources standpoint, have been extremely successful. But to really explain this, I have to talk a little about Mike Richardson, Emily’s dad. Since we arrived, he’s worked tirelessly to get our names out, introduce us to interested resources, and help us set up speaking engagements. While we were travelling, he made calls to people all over the place- he got fliers printed for us, found some more donated computer equipment, found someone interested in helping us transport equipment to Guatemala, found someone with a charity organization that is assembling midwifery kits that wants to collaborate, contaced a Rotary organization that wants to donate water filters… he even found a group that wants to start a factory to build high-efficiency wood stoves with us. Mike did this all of his own accord and energy. I am just so impressed. He even hooked us up with a friend of his cousin who is a successful Guatemalan businessman. “Mario” picked us up from the airport yesterday, and drove us to Antigua in his shiny new leather-interior Volvo, and treated us to a nice meal in a restaurant owned by one of his relatives. Mario wants to help us too, and is buddies with the son of Alvaro Colom, the president of Guatemala. He speaks excellent English, and is concerned with the plight of rural Guatemalans… I will be interested to see where this leads.
And all of this was because of Mike. So, thanks Mike, on behalf of us and a lot of Guatemalans.