Our Trash

I think I can honestly say I decided to come to Guatemala for a year because last March I heard one woman's story. Her name is Alta Gracia and she currently works at the Francisco Coll School. Yesterday I went back to the Francisco Coll School and was able to hear her story again, with a few additions. Many of you who read this blog have already heard her story, because I often refer to it. But I am going to tell it again.

The Francisco Coll School is located at the edge of the Guatemalan City dump. All the garbage from Guatemala City goes into this dump. Parts of the dump have been covered over the years, and that is where the school and homes of the students is located. Over a dump. The school is privately funded by International Samaritans and the Presbyterian Church, Canada. The school has 302 students and goes from 1st grade to 6th grade. Guatemalan law is that if you are behind in school by more than two years, you can't be in lower grades in public schools. Francisco Coll has permission to allow older students in younger grades. All the parents of the children work in the dump, and many of the children work in the dump too. The school also has a program for adults and teenagers to learn how to read.

Alta Gracia makes the snack at the school at has been working there since it opened, 15 years ago. Before she worked at the school she worked in the dump for 12 years. From the dump she would obtain all of her family's furniture, clothing, and food. Everything they had came from the dump. Working in the dump means that you dig through the garabage looking for items you can use, but also for items that can be recycled. People take those items to a recycling plant right next door to the dump, and are give money. Alta Gracia made 5 quetzales a day or 55 cents a day. This money went to buy powder to make tortillas, but there was none left over to even buy manzanilla tea to drink. They had to drink dirty water. One day Alta Gracia found a piece of meat in the dump and brought it home and cooked it. She and her three children ate it, not realizing it had been posioned. Her children were hospitalized for 3 months, and she was hospitalized for 6 months. She was pregnant at the time and gave birth in the hospital. It is truly a miracle that her family survived, and they she got the job at Franciso Coll. All of her children went to Francisco Coll and now two of her daughters are about to graduate from school to be teachers, and one of her sons is a mechanic.

While we were walking around Alta Gracia also showed us a tent village in front of her community and even closer to the entrance of the dump. She said 1 or 2 days ago people moved into this empty land and set up makeshift tent homes. The rule in Guatemala is that if people occupy a space for 2 or 3 years then it is their's permanently. People have to organize and move into a place all at once so the police can't move them out without causing a huge riot. The new community had set up homes with some tarps and sacks hanging over a few poles. It looked like, and essentially is, a refugee camp.

Alta Gracia has an amazing story and it is easy to see how God has worked in her life. What made me mad last March, and what still makes me mad today, is how her story is an exception. There are still so many people who depend on the dump for less than subsistence survival. Their family members die from eating bad food or not having access to care. They don't get new jobs and their children never finish the 6th grade. That is the story of most people who work in the dump. I feel angry at the economic systems in place that force people to live these lives. Economic systems that were put in place by "the first world" or the USA and Europe. Economic systems that developed countries refuse to change because it benefits them, without caring about the consequences. I am angry.

I Want to Believe

I do not believe in the right of
the one who is stronger;
In the language of weapons,
Or in the strength of the powerful.
I want to believe in the rights
of the people,
In the open hand,
In the power of non-violence.
I do not believe in race, in wealth,
in privilege,
In the established order.
I want to believe that
all people are people;
And that the order of power
and injustice
Are in fact disorder.

I do not believe that war
and famine are inevtiable,
And that peace in unreachable.
I want to believe in the simple act,
In the love symbolized
by the joining of hands,
In peace upon the earth.
I do not believe that
the dreams of humanity
will reamin merely a dream,
And that death will be the end
I dare the believe the opposite.
Always and in spite of everything
I dare to believe in the new humanity.
I dare to believe in the dream of God:
A new heaven; a new earth
where justice will exist.
~ Waldensian Church Rio De la Plata (translated)