Story about a nice person - We must look out for each other

I shot this photo in Guatemala, a ruggedly beautiful country. Sadly, my photography affliction didn't kick in during the short time I was "in trouble" there and being rescued.  Words alone will have to suffice.

Some travel stories are meant to be shared. Others, not so much. I've tucked this one into my back pocket. Lately, it's been agitating to come out of hiding, so here we go. The episode transpired in Guatemala on February 4, 2020, about a month before COVID 19 shut down borders worldwide.

I was en route to Adopt-a-Village In  Guatemala's remote Maya Jaguar school campus to shoot photos as a volunteer, and at the same time, get a deep look at an organization PK, and I have supported for years. I was honored to be traveling with Frances Dixon, AAV's founder, and president, for 30-some years.

That day, what happened to me was a quick but disconcerting example of what not to do as a stranger traveling in a foreign country, especially if the local language eludes you. 

On the bright side, it resulted in a stellar example of a stranger going out of his way to aid another human—me. Two years later, I still think about this guy. And how to be more like him.

Before I get ahead of myself...I was one of two front-seat passengers in a Toyota 4WD pickup headed to the Maya Jaguar campus. The journey from the international airport in Guatemala City requires three long but scenic and culturally rich days, mostly while bumping along on eroding roads and over sometimes questionable bridges. Thankfully our driver, Juan, possessed the skills to conquer Third World navigation. 

Although Juan was accustomed to the three-day route, this trip also required dropping into Quetzaltenango, a city of nearly a million, to check on a recent Maya Jaguar graduate, Isabela, who was enrolled at a computer skills school there.

Guatemalans in colorful everyday dress overlooking the valley occupied by the country's second-largest city, Quetzaltenango. (Not my photo.)

Like all Maya Jaguar students, Isabela was born in a remote village, raised on dirt floors, gathered firewood for cooking and heating, carried water, and got by on a diet of beans and corn tortillas. She was destined for teenage motherhood and a lifetime of hardships.

Instead, she was among the fortunate young people in Guatemala's remote and impoverished northwest corner whose lives have been, and are being,  transformed through rigorous education at AAV. 

Still, Isabela had never set foot in a teeming city, let alone been on her own. Also, she was the computer school's only female student. Frances, who loves her students, was a tad worried and eager to see how a former star pupil was faring. The two made arrangements to reunite at the computer school.

Frances had the school's address but...no directions.

No maps. I possessed a device to save the day, an iPhone with a Google maps app. Hooray!

I typed in the school's name, and in seconds, Google produced what it does for flummoxed way-finders practically anywhere—laid out a crisp route and offered audio directions. 

Juan, who'd never used such a tool, was giddy. Especially with the audio feature. So. Into the city's bulging belly, we plunged in high spirits.

We didn't have to go far to reach the address. But there was a problem—the school was not there. Juan and Frances consulted strangers who pointed down the traffic-clogged street, saying the school was three blocks away.  

Frances and Juan settled back into the truck. Having been sandwiched between them for several squished hours already, I decided to walk those three blocks.

"I'll see you down there!" I exclaimed cheerfully as I strode off alone, confident that I would locate the school because, you know, it was there. I waved at my companions as they passed, pleased to be on my own. 

That didn't last long. FIVE blocks later, I was still searching. It must be in plain sight, I thought. Hoped. Who can't spot a school, for Pete's sake!  

I couldn't. I looked for a school-like building, something proud, made of bricks, with a sign in front and students congregating. 

And so I threaded through dense crowds—hundreds (thousands?) of people. Block by block, slowly. Scanning both sides of the street for anything school-like. Nada.

My buoyant mood dissolved, and I wondered if my brain would be involved in that process as well.

And where was the Toyota truck? They stick out like crazy in a part of the world where such a valuable vehicle is scarce, coveted, and hard to miss.

No truck. No obvious school. HMMM. 

Unprepared, I'd grabbed my phone for a short solo journey but nothing else. The temperature felt to be in the 80s, and the sun was brutal. I had no hat, no sunscreen, no water, no money, no ID. And my pathetic Spanish language skills were useless. (I could've used a translation app on my phone but didn't think of it.)

About a half-hour had transpired. My companions would be looking for me at some point. But I couldn't duck into the shade for fear they'd miss me.

As far as they knew, I was a capable adult. A seasoned traveler. The last thing I wanted was to be a stinking burden, some tender know-nothing,  requiring constant attention, let alone rescue!  

I staked out my alarmed self on a 4-way intersection with sharp visibility from all directions—a tall, pale flower wilting in the sun, craning her skinny old neck this way and that above a sea of curious brown faces. 

In the meantime, Frances, bless her heart, was joyfully reunited with Isabela at the school, which was, as we'd been advised, precisely three blocks from where we'd started. Juan hadn't located a parking spot and was waiting elsewhere for a signal from Frances. 

By then, I'd been "lost" for (guessing here) 40 minutes. I was sweating, thirsty, and concerned. Embarrassed. To say the least.

Suddenly a car materialized beside me, alarmingly close. The driver, a young Caucasian man, shouted over traffic clamor, "Do you need help!?"

Holy moly! Yes!!

He stretched to open the passenger door and urged me to get in! I saw he needed to move with the traffic. So. OMG. I vaulted into this stranger's car, and off we inched. 

But not far. He wasn't nefarious but decent, kind, honorable, and confident. He parked near the school, which was hiding on the second story of an unremarkable building with another enterprise on the ground floor facing the street. The school's modest signage was hidden on the side of the building.

No wonder I didn't see it. 

"Why did you stop for me?" I asked in wonder.

"You looked lost and worried," he said. "I drove around the block to see if I could help."

He was a South Carolina missionary, and said he was a "shepherd." That worked for me.

I was a sheep in obvious distress, an older white ewe searching the cityscape with frantic eyes. I told him my embarrassing I-could-not-find-the-school story.

He quickly located the school's phone number and called to ask if Frances was there with Isabela. She was.

Flooded with relief, I realized I had been rescued by perhaps the ONLY person in the city who could have come to my aid. What incredible serendipity! And luck.

Had he not stopped, Frances and Juan would have located me. Eventually. But I was so grateful they didn't have to do that. We were only a couple days into our time together, and I was spared from a possible ball-and-chain designation. Whew!

I asked the Shepard why he made this considerable effort for a stranger.   

He didn't hesitate—We all need to look out for each other.

With that, I leaned over and threw my arms around his young neck, tearfully thanking him for saving the day. I didn't get his name. 

 

Maybe Gabriel?

He delivered me to the school, and I sprinted to the second story, where Frances was starting to wonder about me.

And I was beginning to have a good time watching her and Isabela as they reminisced (in Espanol), with evident caring for one another. I've known Frances for about 10+ years. She LOVES her students and has a deep respect for Maya. You can see the pride and satisfaction in her eyes, below. 

Frances and Isabela shared proud moments as they reunited
at the computer school. Isabela demonstrated that she was 
succeeding in post-graduate work and was deftly
navigating life in a huge city. Two years later, this young
woman is the computer instructor at the Maya Jaguar school. 

I happily snapped photos, making light of my tardy entrance. But thinking, at the same time, that what the young missionary did for me, Frances does every day, for Maya youth to whom she's devoted her life since the 1990s. 

Thanks to the missionary, to Frances, and all humans who exemplify kindness, caring, and generosity for others. And go out of their way to do it.

Me? I am humbly attempting to be one of them.

An earlier Ordinary Life post about my life-shifting time in Guatemala -

Surprise and Inspiration in Guatemala

A post I wrote for the Adopt-a-Village in Guatemala website - 

Moved by a Mission 

https://www.adoptavillage.com/single-post/moved-by-a-mission

Surprise and Inspiration in Guatemala

     I spent a brain-bending and heart-shaking couple of weeks in prepandemic NW Guatemala, February 2020, at the Maya Jaguar Educational Center (MJ). The school is an outreach of Adopt-a-Village in Guatemala (AAV). This singular organization has a dizzying but beautiful vision of restoring the Maya to self-sufficiency and self-respect through excellent education and health-giving nutrition. My time there was at once fascinating, frustrating, frightening, fun, and inspirational. 

Where is the Adopt-A-Village school?

The campus crowns a mountaintop in remote and rugged NW Guatemala an hour from the nearest village—and three full travel days from the airport in Guatemala City. It is close to the Mexican border. This aerial view includes some of the 200 acres of pristine rainforest upon which the campus has evolved for over three decades. Pristine because Founder/President Frances Dixon fenced the property and installed a locked gate at the only entry, saving the rainforest from the fate of the surrounding area where coffee plantations, cardamom fields, and wood gathering have all but destroyed the natural landscape.  

She wanted students to learn in a natural environment filled with bird songs and rainforest fragrances. Classrooms and administration buildings are on the right side of the photo, along with teachers' cabins. On the left, boys' cabins, the girls' dorm, a cafeteria/kitchen, numerous raised-bed gardens, rainwater collection tanks, outhouses, greenhouses, and a coop with 50-some chickens. 

The school's prized Toyota 4WD pick-up works as hard as any student. A driver picks up students at meeting points on roads to deliver them to the campus, where they will study for 18 consecutive days before going back to their villages for 10-12 days. In the meantime, the truck is in continuous use doing necessary bumpy and long trips to school and village operations. The truck must be replaced every two years!

Education on the Mountain

 Learning is a life-altering practice at Maya Jaguar (MJ). Although having a visitor on campus is unusual, students paid rapt attention to their biology teacher. These are older students who accept that the work they're doing in two years requires four years in public schools.

MJ's curriculum significantly surpasses educational standards established by the Guatemalan government. Regardless, these teens are committed to an education that can deliver them from poverty and servitude. So far, graduates have become nurses, teachers, and computer experts, rather than life-long field workers and 14-year-old mothers. 

 This group may look rowdy, but it's not. I was a wacky stranger encouraging     them to smile and wave for the camera as they arrived on campus for 18 days.   

Eighteen consecutive days!? Yes. Then back for 10-12 days in villages helping their parents, who initially were reluctant to release their hard-working teens for days on end. A compromise was reached; students are released to study 18 days (without a break) at MJ then return to their often distant (between a one-hour and 10-hour drive) to help the family in the coffee and cardamom fields, fetch water, gather wood, tend cooking fires, watch younger children. On and on it goes. Endless work. The same is true at the school, except the focus is on academics, plus a couple hours of chores. They rise at 5:30 a.m. and lights out at 10 p.m. 

You'd never know that the Maya Jaguar students were (or had been) disadvantaged. If I could make but one remark about the school's boarding students? 

They are the hardest-working teenagers I've ever met and the most cheerful, polite, and unjaded. And well-groomed.

Vidalia Marli Ortiz Domingo is one of them. She's wearing red in the photo below. PK and I help sponsor her education. Click here for information about donating or sponsoring.

This was Vidalia's first day at school and may have been the first time she'd slept in a sturdy building with wooden floors, flush toilets, and sinks with running water just down the hall. The dorm also has limited generator-produced electricity, but lights are on until 10 during evening study time in a commons room. Each student is supplied a solar-powered flashlight if further illumination is required. 

Vidalia and I had commonalities. Neither of us wore the traditional colorful embroidered Guatemalan clothing sported by the two other girls pictured. Me? I wore standard USA jeans and a T-shirt covered by a shawl. Plus, my usual hide-horrible-hair bandana. Vidalia wore used clothing, a boy's shirt, a plain navy skirt, and ragged ill-fitting flip-flops. She wore the same things every day. Not that any student arrived with a bag crammed with outfits. 

Other things in common? The day we arrived on campus was the first either of us had seen what is officially called the Maya Education and Developmental Center, a place I'd envisioned and longed to visit during years of volunteering for AAV.

Also, we both sucked at speaking Spanish. 

Vidalia is a native of Guatemala, a Latin American country, and she can't speak Spanish? Well, no. As a U.S. citizen attending public schools, I had more opportunities than she did to learn Spanish. Which I neglected to do, much to my regret. 

Why was Vidalia, or any other Maya youth entering the school, unable to speak the national language?

Like all the school's students, Vidalia grew up in a village speaking only Mam, one of three Mayan dialects in the area. The free public schools available to villagers do not teach the Spanish language, and teachers, by all accounts, rarely show up. Few Maya children make it through sixth grade. If they do, families must pay for mandatory school uniforms for junior and high school, which is out of the question. So Maya kids are done with any hope of schooling past age 12. Into the fields, they go. And for too many girls, on to early childbearing. Most drop out by grade three.

Learning Spanish is the first order of business and Vidalia looks as perplexed as the other newbies experiencing their initial Spanish language lesson. All classes are taught in Spanish. Talk about immersion!

It turns out that Vidalia was fortunate to be at MJ at all. Her family, more destitute than most, was in crisis. Her father had been forced off a small plot of land he believed he'd purchased with a handshake years ago. Handshake deals are common in villages where illiteracy is rampant. With scant notice, his impoverished family, including three children, was forced to vacate. He pleaded with AAV founder and president Frances Dixon to delay Vidalia's school start so the girl could help the family relocate. 

Frances said absolutely not. Not much trumps a child's needs in her view, especially a girl's urgency to be present on her first day of a real education. Frances will go off big time on the fate of uneducated indigenous females, including early childbearing, domestic violence, and life-long servitude. She's seen it all.

But Frances has a great big heart. Instead, she arranged temporary help for the family. Vidalia arrived with other students in time for her first day which included three nutritious meals packed with veggies, beans, and flavor.

           Food Matters on the Mountain

Every meal at MJ is a nutritional powerhouse. Everything on the plate was grown on campus or AAV's Educational Farm two hours distant. Every meal is homemade, and each vegetable is chopped by students during their 6 a.m. rotating chores. Every morsel is eaten, as I learned the hard way when I was late to dinner. Once.

E

The nutrient-packed meals are integral to AAV's mission. According to UNESCO and USAID, the Huehuetenango Department (state), where AAV is located, is the sixth-worst in the world for chronic child malnutrition, with 70 percent of young children stunted and malnourished in many villages. AAV is changing that statistic, which likely worsened during

the pandemic and the terrible storms and floods of 2020.

Below, Frances consults with master gardener Pasqual and driver Juan, not far from student housing. The raised beds and greenhouses are interspersed with boys' cabins and the girl's dorm. Every student is engaged in organic gardening.

A certificate of Organic Gardening is awarded to graduates, in addition to an academic diploma and a certificate of computer science. Perhaps best of all, students carry horticultural knowledge back to their home villages where gardens are becoming the norm. (Adult villagers may also benefit from gardening instruction at AAV's Educational Farm.)

A gardener myself, I was delighted to see all this cultivation and witness students caring for plants, including a young man using his solar flashlight to weed tomatoes around sunrise one morning. All students perform chores daily, including the hour between 6 a.m. and 7 a.m. No sleeping in for these teens.

Washing your own dishes after a meal and then returning them to the kitchen to dry is just what you do. See Vidalia learning the ropes?  A cook employee takes responsibility for the large pots required to feed 50+ people, but students are assigned to other kitchen chores, including cleaning. These are but three of 40 rainwater tanks on campus. 

Want more information about AAV? 

Please click the link and enjoy.

         Next up - Mountain education thrives during the Pandemic. Visiting Vidalia.

Giving the Endless Gift - Education

PK and I spent most of November 2014 in Nepal with longtime friend Catherine Wood and a half dozen other US citizens, all committed to providing a rigorous well balanced education to impoverished Nepalese kids. Starting a decade ago with children in the early grades, each sponsor pledged to stick with one student until he or she graduated from high school. 

I'd also been to Nepal with Catherine in 2002, soon after she started the student sponsorships by sponsoring a spunky little kid named Samip. 

A highlight in 2002 was spending a morning with Samip and his parents in their humble home, eating a delicious meal prepared with love for a woman who had changed their world. 

Same thing in 2014, but even better because Samip was all grown up and graduated and love and gratitude were thick and sweet in the air. And the food prepared for our visit, in Catherine's honor, was the best we had in Nepal. 

Samip, now in his twenties,  reads aloud a  heartfelt message from his proud father, Raju, left, written to Catherine, who made Samip's education and ongoing success possible. Not a dry eye in the house!  Raju's message is below.  Jeff Bossler, photo.

Samip, age 8, on the day
he met Catherine Wood.
.

When Catherine Wood looked into young Samip's bright eyes 15 years ago, she saw his future. As a child of loving but poor parents, he was condemned to receive only the most basic public education. After grade six, because his parents lacked funds for school uniforms and supplies, he'd be working the streets and markets to help his family score the basic rice and lentils.

But one fateful day in 2000, the then-small boy was on a bus trip, which had been organized by a non profit organization. He had the great good fortune to sit next to Catherine, who was in Nepal fulfilling a Rotary initiative to re-establish a village health clinic.

Samip captured Catherine's heart. It killed her to realize that within a few years, Samip's education would trail into oblivion. Like hundreds, thousands, millions of poor children in the third world, he would subsist on a few dollars a day, his dreams would die, and those bright eyes would dull.

Free universal quality education is not happening in much of the third world.  In myriad countries populated by millions of children, quality education is available ONLY to children whose families can pay. Aside from an outlier here or there whose brilliance and hard work—and at least one piece of providential luck— elevate them, education is the key to escaping the hand-to-mouth routine.

                   Samip's parents devote a wall in their tiny home to honor their
                   only child's academic achievements. This shrine (partially pictured)
                   dominates their combined bedroom/living room.

Samip is a blessed man. He's bright. motivated, and much loved. But he also enjoyed once-in-a-lifetime good fortune when he caught Catherine's eye.




Raju's letter to Catherine. Didi is a term of endearment, meaning roughly, "sister".

Didi, I feel so happy, welcoming all BFF’s members to my small house. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you for always standing next to my family and especially Samip.
It was 2000 when Catherine didi first visited Nepal, and didi visited our house too. She saw everything and felt our pain. After a month I got an email from her and didi decided to give scholarship to Samip. Didi, you became father and mother to Samip. You actually cared and loved him like your own son. We just gave him birth; you are the one who raised him up. My salary was not enough even to run my family. It was like a dream for me, seeing Samip going to good school and achieving good education. It was very hard for me to pay Samip’s tuition fee. Sometimes I borrowed it from my friend. My life was going through darkness until you came like a god. You took all our darkness and spread happiness into us.

Samip continued his education in the Phillipines and graduated with a BS in aeronautical engineering. Catherine and her husband, Michael, attended the ceremony and also paid expenses for Samip's proud parents to attend.

Didi, we never rode an airplane. Me and Anita were out of this world when you said, "Raju and Anita, you’ll attend Samip’s graduation ceremony." Didi, I don’t have any word to express my happiness. I think god for sending an angel who took care of everything. Thank you so much didi and Michael for always being there for us and Samip.

Samip, now employed by a Nepalese airline, donated his first paycheck, all of it, to the Bright Futures Foundation.

Samip shares a photo book Catherine created to chronicle his educational odyssey. He's surrounded by student sponsors from the USA and, on the right, Keshav Thapa, the Nepalese who manages the sponsored students. A number of sponsors have pooled resources to make sure Keshav's six-year-old son also receives a quality education. Others pictured, left to right, Kathy Kraus, Charla Rolph  and Jeff Bossler.

There's more. As a result of encountering Samip, Catherine founded the Bright Futures Foundation (BFF) to sponsor poor Nepalese kids at the Galaxy school in Kathmandu. The foundation also supported, with Rotary International for a time, a health clinic in Bhotechaur, a mountain village not far from Kathmandu.

Her 2014 Nepal visit was bittersweet, marking the end of a 10-year run with the clinic, which was always planned to become self-sustaining. The remaining 10 BFF scholarship students will continue to be supported by their individual sponsors until the last one graduates in 2021.

Keshav Thapa, BFF's man-on-the-ground in Kathmandu, has the full attention of Mark Minnis, Kathy Kraus, and Jeff Bossler, who sponsor, or have sponsored, BFF students at the Galaxy School.

The bottom line is that 22 bright young people have been given the opportunity, though a rigorous education, to move beyond poverty. They have options. They have futures to create rather than sliding into a vast underclass. 

In return, each sponsored student has pledged to:

•  study hard and earn good grades
•  never abuse a woman or child 
•  help support a girl's education.

As everywhere in the third world, and even in so-called advanced countries, girls are often denied education in favor of boys, or shut out just because they're girls. Eight of the ten BFF sponsored students still in school are girls. 

More than a decade later, Catherine is still engaged in Samip's
future, which may include earning a master's degree in the USA. 

The takeaway of our magical morning with Samip and his parents:

It took one person to take the plunge to support a child's education. Whether Catherine envisioned it or not, that led to her forming a non profit organization that eventually financed an excellent education for 22 youngsters, many plucked from remote villages, some of which had sold girls into human trafficking.

Just 22? Yes. Just 22 young people whose lives have been taken off the poverty track and elevated to where they can choose from options where few, if any, existed before. 

Catherine at the Bhotechaur clinic with one of her many admirers.

The Bhotechaur Health Clinic, initially a Rotary project, also benefitted, as Catherine and the BFF board felt an obligation and a desire to see the clinic continue to develop beyond the Rotary commitment. The rural clinic now serves an area that is home to about 50,000.

But the longtime big winners are the sponsored students and their families. And thanks to the pay-it-forward clause in student sponsorship, other disadvantaged young people are also bound for glory. All because 15 years ago, Catherine visited Nepal and left part of her heart in Kathmandu.

A BFF sponsored student comes forward to accept an academic award at the Galaxy School.

Several mothers of sponsored students traveled from distant villages to attend a meeting with Catherine and BFF members to see their children receive academic awards. None of them speak English, so one of their daughters translated the ceremonies. That girl's delighted mother is on the left. One of the mothers here learned that her son is not up to snuff, and unless his performance improves, his sponsorship will end. The mother cried later, knowing that her 13-year-old boy may end up on the streets like his older brother.

What does it take to sponsor a child's education in the third world? 

• A big generous heart
• Understanding that educating young people is critical to improving developing countries and, hence, the world.
• Believing that one person, or a group pooling their funds, can lift a child out of poverty and hopelessness. This child could be the next Ghandi or Nelson Mandela or Malala. Or Samip. 
• Sponsoring also requires connecting with a reputable non profit organization (NGO) that provides a conduit between the sponsored child and the sponsor, as BFF  will continue to do until the last of the foundation's sponsored kids graduates in 2021. 

I know there must be hundreds of worthy NGOs managing educational sponsorships, but the only two I know personally are the BFF and another whose founder I have come to know, admire and respect over the past couple of years. That would be Frances Dixon founder and executive director of Adopt-a-Village in Guatemala

What about the financial commitment?

BFF sponsors committed to $2,000 annually, some for as many as 10 years. When tuition increased by $500 at the Galaxy school, the foundation made up the difference with fundraising.

Adopt-a-Village in Guatemala has sponsorships starting at as little as $250 a year for primary and elementary students still in public school, and up to $2,500 annually for students in the two-year Maya Jaguar high school in the northern highlands of Guatemala. (This compared with an annual average $12,000 per pupil cost of public education or more in the USA.) 

PK and I were the only members of our small traveling group in Nepal who were not student sponsors. Meeting the kids and some parents, seeing the benefits, experiencing the students' gratitude and the pure joy of their accomplishments, converted us. We're now sponsoring a young Mayan through Adopt a Village in Guatemala.

I'll be writing more about this as PK and I are planning to drive to Guatemala late this year to visit the remote Maya Jaguar High School and the Adopt a Village "headquarters" in a remote mountainous region accessible by 4X drive only.

We have a Toyota truck and a Four Wheel camper. We're going.  I can't wait.

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If you want to know more about sponsoring, please contact Frances at Adopt a Village in Guatemala.