By Nelson Reed

 

Today we drove for about 20 minutes to El Hato in order to meet the kids and teachers.  Observing the less-than-sufficient conditions of the school's facilities, I was deeply struck by the happy faces on each student.   After greeting a child, he/she would reply with a shy but sincere "Hola," looking up with big eyes filled with awe and wonder at us, their new and tall American friends.  

 

The principle called the students to an assembly, and after each grade had lined up in an orderly fashion, we took off our baseball caps to hear the singing of Guatemala's national anthem.  My first impression of this assembly was that Guatemala had the longest national anthem I had ever heard.  Second, the kids sung so proudly, professing strong love for their country, a country which had not and probably will not provide them with much opportunity or support in their humble lives.  Needless to say, the kids sung their hearts out through the endless anthem and marched back to class in single-file lines.  

 

After visiting the school, we departed for a journey through the village of El Hato, which had only one beaten path, one source of water, one church, and one medical center (if one could call it a medical center).  While it felt like a long trek to us Americans, the kids had endless amounts of energy, climbing trees to pass the time as they waited for us to catch up.  

 

These kids have to walk this far twice a day!  It makes me feel bad that I usually drive everyday to school when I could walk a far shorter distance than the distance the kids in El Hato have to walk.  We stopped by at a few houses of the children, which were more or less metal shacks with a few beds and firewood.  How can these kids survive, let alone be happy all the time?

 

Next we went to the village's cemetery, where we saw an open grave for a woman who had died just the day before.  It is scary to think that such events happened regularly, that life is so fragile and cheap.  A few graves away from the unfilled pit stood a grave, merely a mound of dirt, of a boy who had attended the school at El Hato and had drowned on a field trip to Lake Atitlan last year.  He was 17 years old.  As if we had seen enough death for one day, we received news of a man who had been killed today while visiting a famous cross near to El Hato.  This event took place so close to us it sent shivers down our spines.  

 

Today definitely made me realize how lucky we are to have things back home, not only material things, but security and hope.