Taking different turns at crossroads

(Sunday, 15 March 2009)

One of the NGOs I investigated before coming here – La Cambalacha (www.lacambalacha.org) – is based in San Marcos de la Laguna. I walked by the place yesterday. Checked it out. Almost no-one was around, as they were performing at the festival taking place in the opposite shore of the lake, in Santiago Atitlán.

It’s based a bit further up in the mountains, where you are half-way outside San Marcos already. I walked the path that leads to the centre of the village looking at some random details. A tree. A few stones painted by the kids to signal the way. The view of the village from there.

I was thinking how, if I had decided differently – and joined La Cambalacha, instead of UPAVIM, all those random details would be by now so familiar to me. They would be the walk I’d walk everyday, the same way it happens in La Esperanza zone 12, Guatemala City, now that I’m at UPAVIM.

It was nothing more than that. No reflection on how things could have been better or worse otherwise. I’m preparing to leave UPAVIM end of this month (yes - to go and travel south the continent!), but I’m in fact fully thankful for the experience thus far and what I’ve learnt with it. I’m pleased by my decisions and where they’ve taken me. So it was just more like a purely philosophical thought, without checks and balances attached.

It was a thought that everything you’ve experienced, everything you are today is result of an infinity of decisions you’ve taken every single day of your life. And that those around you have taken and that have affected you. And that those before you have taken, and that have affected you. Or that have affected others that have affected you… Yep – just like the butterfly wings’ effect, which is so often used to illustrate chaos theory.

It was a thought of how your life could be so different if at some points you had turned left instead of right.

That makes of where you are and who you are now so much more precious, I think.