Going on this Guatemala trip, I had no clue what to expect. We had all heard stories from our professors in class about their experiences in Guatemala and Chajul, but it wasn’t until we got to Guatemala that we got a feel for the country and culture for ourselves.

The culture shock was quite real once we got to Chajul. Experiencing how most of these families live by being invited to lunch at their homes was an eye-opener. Many of the homes that we went to had dirt flooring, and only one or two beds for an entire family to sleep on, all in the same room. There wasn’t any indoor plumbing in most of the houses, which made me think that sanitation practices were probably not a number one priority. Many of the meals that they ate were just comprised of corn tortillas and salsa. We talked to a couple people that said that when times were hard, they would have to go to the mountains to pick herbs for their meal that day. I can’t imagine that a diet like that has the proper amount of nutrients needed by the human body for healthy living.

Another shocking experience was that the stoves that most people used to cook are just a couple of cinder blocks and some fire wood. The walls of the houses were all dyed black from the amount of smoke that passes through them daily. I can imagine that the people’s lungs must look like the walls from inhaling that much smoke throughout their lives.

This is box bul (bush bol) which is a famous dish in the Ixil region of Guatemala. Its made of corn masa and leaves with a soup type liquid. Most families eat it three times weekly.

A shocking observation that I had was the amount of pollution that goes into the water sources there. People often do all of their laundry in the river, which causes soap chemicals to pollute their water. The river was filled with trash thrown into it. The slaughter house in town has a pipe going down into the river that all of the blood from the animals would run into after slaughter. The water from this river is the same water that people get in their pipes and use to cook, drink and clean with.

Some mothers doing laundry in the river.

The slaughter house where the pipe leads into the river. All of the stray dogs in the neighborhood sit around at slaughter time in hopes of getting some scraps to eat.

Even though living conditions are not the best and food access is very limited, people in Chajul have an amazing sense of community and family. It amazed me to see how many people that we talked to say that if they had the opportunity to get a job outside of the village, they wouldn’t take it so they can be close to their home and family. It’s such a strange concept to me, because in America we all leave home at the age of 18, and usually don’t go back.

This experience made me think about how much we take for granted in our lives. I value things like clean water, protein-filled diets and every other luxury that we have a whole lot more now.

Georgia Arrindell

There are no pets in Guatemala, but there are thousands of dogs. Far from domesticated, these skeletal dogs roamed the streets of Chajul looking for scraps of food. Admittedly, I cringed at the sight of every sickly, homeless dog I saw. I pitied the puppies whose rib cages were easily visible from meters away and whose fur was dirty and marked with scratches and scars. Albeit a little flee-infested, they were often quite adorable: I cannot count the number of times I wanted to reach out and pet the dogs or pick them up and take them home with me.

And yet every time I found myself pitying the lives of these animals, I subsequently thought of the even larger number of men, women, and children in Guatemala who suffered from the same problems. These people do not have the luxury of worrying about the needs of a dog when they are merely trying to ensure the basic needs of their families are met. For every mangy mutt I passed by on the streets of Chajul, there was at least one family likewise suffering from hunger. While I had known that hunger and malnutrition were endemic in the Western Highlands of Guatemala, I did not have a grasp on what this truly meant until I saw the plight of the Ixil people of Chajul.

Hunger and malnutrition are not always physically visible in humans. There was one thing, however, that made the malnourishment of the people of Chajul particularly evident: their height. At 5’4″, I’m not very tall, yet in Guatemala there were several occasions in which I was the tallest person in the room. The phenomenon of “stunting” is extremely noticeable in the more rural, mountainous regions of Guatemala, where people’s diets consist of very little protein or essential vitamins and other nutrients. Over the span of their life, these people simply do not attain the nutrients necessary to grow at a normal rate and are much shorter as a result.

Never have I been so exposed to hunger in the way that I was in Chajul. As is often said of development, you never can truly understand the problems facing our world today until you see and experience them for yourself.

Seeing hunger through my own eyes is an experience I will not easily forget; it has helped me to better understand the crucial importance of doing everything in our power to find sustainable solutions for world hunger. I encourage everyone to travel and see things for yourself so that you can have a better understanding of the world around you.

There are so many things that we take for granted as Americans. We wash our clothes in a washer, dry them in a dryer, rinse our mouth with tap water, eat food in variety, and take warm showers. There is nothing like experiencing this simple lifestyle to make you realize what you’ve really got. Although we did stay in Hotel San Gaspar, one of the nicer places in the town of Chajul, we nonetheless had to deal with all of these issues. We did as much as we could to immerse ourselves in the lifestyle of a Chajulense; we learned how to make tortillas, attempted some Ixil, weaved pieces of cloth, ate lunch with families, and walked the steep path to the hill of San Andres.

There was no day that was the same; we were always doing at least one new thing every day. We may have worked on a raised garden for three days, but every day was a new opportunity to interact with different people in Chajul. Whether they were older people by the market or little kids in the library, they each had an interesting story to tell, after you broke their shy barrier of course. Although all their stories were interesting and exciting to listen to, I wanted to imagine what it would be like to walk in their shoes. Every day I walked in the street, to the market, or up the hills I tried to immerse myself in the environment and take it all in.

It took me a couple days to finally realize how hard it must be to walk in some of these people’s shoes. These people weren’t here for ten days enjoying the scenery; they live here and are here to stay. On Tuesday we had a day of relaxation before we started working on the raised garden. This was the day I put all the pieces together and realized how hard some of these people have to work just to LIVE. Some of us stopped in Nebaj to make a trek up and over a hill to the neighboring town of Acul where we would visit a beautiful cheese farm.

Bottom in Nebaj

As we began our hike and climbed higher and got more exhausted, I noticed people walking the same trails and some even working atop the steep slopes on parts of land. This was the moment when it hit me; these people make this exhausting journey more than once a week just to work or get to work. Whether it’s to get to Nebaj, Acul, or just to their horribly placed given plot of land atop the hill, it was unforgiving on the legs.

I started to put pieces together as to why a lot of these people are so malnourished, boys start helping their fathers at around the age of 8 and use up all the little nutrients that they do get climbing atop these hills and working on their land. Then there is the process of having to carry your entire finished crop back down the hilltop. This is hard work that I couldn’t have imagined doing at this age besides having to mow the lawn.

We like to live our comfortable lives on our couches, behind our televisions and computers, oblivious to the fact that other people just like us have to work a hundred times harder to earn a hundred times less. It really helps to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and realize that you’ve got it pretty good. Don’t pass up the opportunities that you’ve been given and remember that we all have to work with what we’ve got.

Everything in life has a start, a culture, and a source of pride. When visiting Chajul, or even Guatemala for that matter, I had no idea what to expect. I went into the trip expecting the worst, such as a community so smokey that I wouldn’t be able to breath, children walking around as malnourished as the ones in the aid to Africa commercials, and half eaten cats and dogs running around in the streets. In reality, though some of those statements were true, what I observed on my trip was something that no one could have even begun to describe to me.

In Chajul there is a source of pride, a passion for their culture that we no longer get to enjoy in the states. From the traditional dresses, weavings, and extreme source of family unity, I was in awe of their entire way of life and how it seemed to start from infancy. Women coming back from their daily trip to the grinder would carry their traditionally dressed infants in a blanket on their backs while carrying maize on their heads. Men would head to the fields early in the morning with their machetes on their belts, hoes over their shoulders, and their sons by their sides. Although everyone had their duties to preform, they always had their children by their sides. This is what stood out to me the most on our trip to Guatemala. Everything I heard before I left prepared me for the worst, which in turn helped me to accept the bad and be blown away by the culture that I didn’t expect.

I am so blessed to have been accepted for this experience. Sure, every culture has their problems, Chajul may even have more than others, but I just wanted to take this small amount of time to focus one the side of Chajul that people rarely get to hear about.

Thanks & Gig ’em

– Brittany Jesson

“From the outside looking in, you can’t understand it. And from the inside looking out, you can’t explain it.”

I’ve been at Texas A&M University for three years and I never truly understood the meaning of this phrase. Although I have many friends here in College Station, they were all bonds that were formed over time.

Study abroad experiences are unique. You are thrown in a new environment with a group of people that you may not know very well or may have just met. With no cell phones or Internet to steal away your attention, you are forced to interact and get to know these new people.

Our newly formed bonds were immediately tested. Early on in our trip, a friendly game of soccer broke out with a few of the local children in Chajul. A full-force kick launched the ball into the air, which landed on a nearby resident’s roof. The impact knocked multiple clay shingles off and they shattered on impact. An upset homeowner quickly came out.

Being a student who couldn’t speak Spanish, I was at a loss for words. That was when my newly formed Aggie Family stepped in. Not just professors, but fellow students were there to help me out in a possibly bad situation. Frowns quickly changed to smiles and anger quickly changed happiness.

The incident quickly became the talk of the village. Interested children rapidly surrounded us, and we spent the rest of the afternoon interacting with them.

by Kesley Fraley

Below are Kesley’s thoughts on yesterday at the market in Chichi, Guatemala.

“It’s Guatemala time, brush your teeth in 30 seconds, not 2 minutes.” –Dr. Lockett

We woke up with a mission (especially Dr. Lockett and I)! We grouped up and headed off to the Chichi market, ready to bargain!

Bargaining with the people of Chichi is an adrenaline rush! I love the feeling of accomplishment when I get a man selling placemats down from 150 Quetzales to a third of the original price.

You can find anything you could ever want at the market. They have machetes, clothes, shoes, placemats, table clothes, carvings, jewelry, and hammocks, just to name a few items.

The group also came out with mini chicken buses, Christmas ornaments, pottery, and chicken potholders (a definite group favorite). I bought so much that I don’t know how I’m going to get it all back to Texas. I made out with quite a bit and spent less than a $70 (Q539) on gifts for my entire family.

The only thing that really bugs me about the market scene is the excessive attention we receive. We become automatic targets when the “GRINGOS” hit the market streets.

To the left is one girl trying to sell potholders and bookmarks, another selling scarfs, and a third selling table clothes. Then to our right is an older women selling shawls, asking for a “good price” and telling me she “needs money for dinner.”  Tables and booths line the crowded streets; as you walk by, people shout at you to buy their merchandise.

It’s all a little overwhelming, but I love it all at the same time.