LAughter, death, and a hard life in the Mountains
By: Admin on Friday, April 24th, 2015 in Uncategorized
By Grant LaFleche:
It was at once a beautiful and utterly arresting scene.
The woman’s body laid out upon the table was covered from feet to neck with flowers. Bright, vibrant blooms of red, yellow and green.
Her face was covered in a thin green veil with white flowers embroidered on it. Only candlelight illuminated the room.
Outside, torrential rain that soaked the Santa Maria Xalapan mountains in Jalapa, Guatemala had finally exhausted itself.
The woman’s brother, whose name I was never told, led me to her side.
On the other side of the table, members of his family stood in a row. There were no tears, just stoic faces. No one spoke.
The brother pulled back the veil to show me her face.
She appeared to have been in her late 40s when she died. Her face was like many of the indigenous women in Jalapa. Her beauty was obvious, but its full measure was stolen by the hard, unforgiving life in the mountains.
I looked for a moment, then turned and shook the brother’s hand.
His grip was light, and he touched my shoulder with his other hand. Then I left as others entered the room to pay their respects.
Visiting the woman in repose punctuated a day marked by struggling to build a home while being pounded by a monsoon, trudging through a sea of mud and embracing a laughter so hard our sides hurt. The sight of her, resting under flowers and surrounded by her family, was a cold splash of reality for the Wells of Hope volunteer team I have been working with.
Days begin early here.
Wells of Hope often has several projects on the go beside the wells it sinks to provide clean water to a region that has so little of it, and it takes hours to travel between the communities tucked away in the mountains.
On this particular day, we began by delivering school supplies donated by students in Niagara to Jalapa children who attend classes in tiny school rooms that are little more than sheds.
It was hard, at first, to not get caught up in the joy of children delighting in pencils, notebooks and a few items of new clothing they were given. Eyes light up and they smile so big one might think their faces could break.
The donations do not change the crushing poverty they are born into, but they do make their lives a little brighter for a short time.
But that poverty is impossible to escape. At the El Quetzal school, the rooms are tin shacks bursting with students. Resources for teachers are scarce.
On one side of the yard, two women stir a massive pot over a roaring fire. They are preparing a rice stew called atol, to ensure the students have something warm in their bellies during the day.
The schools are funded by the local government, and in Jalapa children attend classes until about Grade 6.
They will learn basic literacy and math, but after that most will go to work with their families, helping them eke out a living. There are some middle schools, but most families cannot afford to send their children.
Even the schoolhouses of better construction, such as Parque Educativo, are in dire need of repair or refreshment. So after handing out supplies to another group of grateful students, we painted the schoolhouse for them.
Like the donations, it doesn’t alter the economic dynamics of Guatemala, but it does make the everyday lives of students and teachers a little bright.
After that we returned to our primary task of the week — construction of a house for a single mother named Carmen and her three children.
We had to transport another load of mud bricks from the quarry to the construction site — simple, if laborious and back-breaking work made more difficult by the vicious rain that swept through the mountains.
The monsoon season is still a few weeks away, but every night we’ve been able to watch lightning flickering in the distance from the Wells of Hope compound. On Wednesday, nature decided to provide us with a preview of what was to come.
The rain is unlike anything I have experienced in Canada.
The raindrops are fat and come down in sheets that will soak you to your bones in moments. The already cratered dirt roads of Jalapa become nearly impassable in minutes.
The Wells of Hope truck we loaded with hundreds of bricks became stuck in slick muck, forcing us to push it free. Even then, most of us had to hike behind the truck in case human muscle was needed to keep it moving.
In the heavy rain, the mud bricks became slick and brittle. Now frozen, muddy and tired, we sang and shouted encouragement at each other to keep the tedious process of unloading the bricks moving, lest they be destroyed by the rain.
Unknown to us, some 500 feet away and well within earshot of our awful rendition of rock ’n’ roll classics, Carmen’s cousin was mourning his sister.
He came to the work site while we were cleaning up and asked our Wells of Hope foreman Norm Hauer for help.
He could not afford his sister’s burial.
Hauer gave some money to the man, who insisted we come to his house to pay our respects.
Inasmuch as we were proud of ourselves for overcoming obstacles to complete our work, the death of this woman brought the hard reality of life in Jalapa back into focus.
Too many people scratch out an existence with next to nothing here. They live too hard, and die too young.
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