Sunglasses Always Fit

“So, what brought you here?” 

Here being a town of 11,000 on a lake in the middle of Guatemala? Four hours from an airport? Not knowing a single soul?

“Yeah. Here.”

Mm, yeah, Valid question. One I ask myself often. Like when I walk into my classroom at 7:15am, still sipping on the first cup of coffee, and encounter a hybrid spider/scorpion so large I can hear it crawling across the floor. Or when another power outage rolls through, or another earthquake shakes the ground. Or my landlord’s creepy husband accosts me in the hallway after watching me on the security cameras. Or another student is out sick for weeks with dengue, and the mosquito bites that decorate my elbows and ankles and knees start to scratch all the more. 

The long answer? I was running from the let down and I’m FULL of feelings and unmatched expectations and plans that God laughed at.

The short answer – I’m meant to be here now.

Background – In 2008, mid world-wide recession, writing columns for the Santa Barbara Independent and waiting tables at Natural Cafe, my two Summa cum Laude degrees useless, I fell deep into a public heartbreak and consequential humiliation and realized the only solution was to sell all I owned (it wasn’t much) and travel the world. 

After an announcement on Facebook, I recruited two friends and we journeyed through Central and South America together with only our wits and charm and smiles to get us through. We created memories and friendships to last a lifetime.

I was dramatically shaped by all I’d seen and experienced on that trip. I knew that I wanted to work in a meaningful field, with languages and kids. That set me on a path to become a teacher. 

Fast forward 15 years and now I’m back in one of the spots we partied hardest in on our backpacking adventure. In fact, on a recent weekend away to get our hair cut across the lake by some British guy in a basement with dreds and pants lower than his man-bits, I found the hostel I stayed at so long ago, where I had a bad run-in with both edibles and bedbugs and earned the nickname “Brownie.” 

While there is a surreality to being back here to find myself where I lost myself, teaching can also make life feel very “normal.” Fourteen weeks in, we’ve hit a sort of sweet spot in the classroom that fellow educators will understand – routines finally seem to be clear, kids are policing each other for you, grades start to matter to them, I’ve found my own groove in the curriculum and expectations of a new situation. 

Don’t get me wrong – the usual suspects that lead teachers to an early grave and lots of grey hair continue to drive me up the wall. For example: parents in full denial of their child’s extra needs or disruptive actions, the lazy colleagues’ behaviour that provokes an email and a meeting from admin because they’re too chicken sh*t to have one hard conversation, the whisperings of colleagues leaving, the effing PRINTER never working when I’m in a hurry or have to pee SOS Jesus, etc. 

And fifth graders are a rough crowd. Our bathrooms are actually outhouses, with plywood walls that students can easily and often scratch awful gossip into, which my pre-teen girls love to do. Calling each other “gay” as an insult is popular, despite how overly affectionate and obsessed with each other the boys seem to be. Soccer games at each recess are a source of yells, cheers, tears, heartbreak. Someone is always “stealing” an eraser, or copying work, or being accused of cheating. 

It’s a kind of familiar comfort to watch kids go through the same painful growth spurts, voice changes, odor activations, and self-discoveries in each country I’ve taught this age group in. Adolescence is intensely painful for everyone, regardless of socioeconomic status, location, language, race, etc. What a burden of a bond humanity shares.

I have been teaching for 15 years, but currently I am here as a volunteer. This means I get paid a living stipend of $1,100 USD a month. In Guatemala, this is actually going to pay my rent, buy the groceries, allow some indulgences, like a weekend away now and then, if I use the money from Hong Kong that was meant to be my retirement. 

I’m finding it not too hard to manage – in the four months I’ve been here, the only clothes I’ve purchased have been a sweatshirt from Walmart and a six-pack of socks from the Dollar Store. And I mostly just eat crackers for dinner. I get paid in cash every month and I break it all up into envelopes labeled with my needs – rent, water, gas, laundry, and emergency savings (300Q, which is about $40USD). After that, I split the rest evenly among four weeks, and then just try to stick to it.  

Something about paying with real money, after years of just tapping my phone, makes it more real. I check prices HARD now, never go out to eat, haven’t joined a gym, and stopped all subscriptions (Netflix, Amazon Prime, canceled all but one credit card, etc.). 

I spent the last seven years at a school that was bursting with resources. We had endless supplies of laminating papers, gluesticks, ziploc bags, markers, etc. If I wanted something for my class, I could buy it and get reimbursed easily. I never worried about the physical wellbeing of my students – I knew 99% of them were being raised in two-parent households with a helper. They were well-fed, well-dressed, their lives full of activities and traveling and tutoring and playdates and extra and all the things.

My students’ lives here are different. We serve a mostly indigenous population on scholarship. We’ve had families pull one child out so another could attend, because they could only afford one tuition. I worry daily about them eating enough, having access to water and clean clothes. Do they have adult role models or just someone at home with them? Do they have time to be kids instead of working to support the family or caring for siblings? One student left at noon on Friday to take care of her sick sister, who is 9 months old. Her mom had to go to work.

I worry about their clothes, their teeth, the holes in their shoes, how at 10 years old they are riding their own moto around town (no helmet, of course), how they drink only coffee and orange soda, how they have to travel an hour alone each way to school by boat and tuktuk and walk in the rain and wind and heat, uphill both ways to get to school. 

I recognize and sometimes feel quite deeply the ways I’m setting myself back financially and professionally by teaching here, but – what a soul and spirit-filling few years I can spend, teaching kids English, science and history and math, letting them play with experiments, hopefully taking them on a field trip, showing them how to use technology, flipping through pictures of my own travels to inspire them, keeping high expectations for them all.

In all of that, and on my current volunteer paycheck, I threw up a teacher wishlist and my Venmo handle, in case anyone in my socials was feeling generous. I was nervous about it, had low expectations, like maybe an aunt or a college friend would throw down $20 bucks and I would have been THRILLED because that kind of money goes far here – pencils, erasers, mosquito spray, etc. I was mostly hoping for some help to cover all the things I buy on Teachers Pay Teachers, since we don’t have any working curriculum at my school.

But then, to spite my cynical heart, and oh – to be a God that laughs at my plans, the donations started to come in. The stickers and books and manipulatives I’d placed on my wishlist were purchased. From all corners and pockets of my life, people I haven’t seen in ages – since high school, college, waiting tables in SB, meeting once and exchanging instagrams. 

I figured out how to see who purchased what, and had to go on a walk and turn off the service on my phone because I was crying too much because . . . I’m struggling to articulate it, but . . . I think the news cycle, the election, and general click bait has conditioned me to think the worst of people. I had subconsciously assumed that no one would click or would donate. So to see names pop up of people I legitimately haven’t spoken to in years, but we’ve stayed in “social media touch” and they leave a little note that says “hope this helps?”

Friends. I can’t even tell you how I felt. But. If you need me, I’ll be in a puddle of “life is worth living, after all.”

It’s so lovely – the only word is ‘lovely’ – to be reminded that people are inherently good, want to help, and will do so, with no expectations in return. Not because it’s a made-up holiday like “giving Tuesday,” but because I officiated a cousin’s wedding at a park in Chicago and we got to talking. Because you knew my mom when I was a baby. Because during college we were counselors at a camp for kids with cancer. Because we were sorority sisters, even though I dropped out to party cheaper. Because you were my babysitter, but we grew up together to be friends. Because you were the secretary at my first teaching job, and then we saved each other over and over.

Because we believe in the power of paying it forward and planting trees, the shade of which we will never sit in. 

This is the long way of saying – why am I here? I’m here to do some good, and it’s a beautiful thing to realize that so many people want to do good with me. Thank you. Thankyouthankyouthankyou. Thank you. And here’s to more moments like these.