Lucky traveller

(Sunday, 22 March 2009)

I’ve seen more of Guatemala than most of the women at UPAVIM. Than any of them, I’d risk to say.

The other day I was on my laptop when one of the women I’ve been working with the most asked me to see some of my travel pictures. She found the places beautiful. She knew very very few of them.

People do live very locally here. They know La Esperanza – born and raised; it’s where they spend their lives, day in day out. They go to the city centre. They’ve been perhaps to Antígua, once or twice. They may make the occasional trip to the village where their families come from. And, most of the times, that’s it.

Even primary school teachers have a very partial knowledge of the world. Europe can be a somehow unknown quantity – even in a map. That Portugal shares a boarder with Spain doesn’t help me explain where I come from.

The random Guatemalan man I spoke tonight on my way to Guatemala City was right.

We were coming from Monterrico to Antígua. The trip should have taken 2h30 – just in time to get the last bus to Guatemala City, at 19h00. It took 3h30, with a painfully slow driver, and we miss the bus. Plenty of locals – majority women – are still waiting at the bus stop, looking for a driver to give them a paid-for lift. A 7-seat car drops by and takes in everyone – 24 people in total, me included. The fact that there are no seats left in the back helps accommodate everyone. The private car is converted into a public bus – a common thing around here. It stinks of gasoline, and it's crowded in there. But most faces are smiley, so there we go.

One of the riders is a young talkative man. Education above average, from what I could tell. He talks proudly of Guatemala to me. He wants me to get to know it well, and mentions several places I should not miss. He reflects on how little Guatemalans know of the beauty of their own land. Of how people don’t travel, don’t read about it. Of how people would make a stronger effort not to emigrate if they did. That’s the reason that keeps him around, he argued.

Yes, he’s right on one thing. I’m lucky: I can travel. And I can always leave. Going back to something, instead of running away from.

Yes. We – volunteers, tourists, foreigners – can always leave…