Archive for Children
Guatemala With Kids
Posted by: | CommentsI wanted to post about taking children to Guatemala because I found it hard to find information, particularly all in one place. This will be one of at least two posts so look up my other one for a list of useful hints. Here are my thoughts on our experience with our almost 9 and almost 11 year olds. For what it’s worth, my husband and I are able to communicate well with our Spanish.
Despite what I had read on the boards and in the newspaper, we never once felt unsafe (although the open air truck and chicken bus rides did worry me while we were driving over tropical storm-ravaged roads around Lake Atitlan, as well as the crazy Ferris wheel ride my kids convinced me to take). Locals will definitely tell you of places to avoid if you ask. We also didn’t stray far off the beaten path like we would have without kids, but this didn’t cut at all into our enjoyment of the trip.
First, we had a terrific time and found almost everyone (with the exception of one of the town drunks) to be delightful, open for frank discussions about things, friendly and helpful. Having children with us helped. Because we practiced slow travel and used one town as a home base for 3 of the 4 weeks we were there, we ran into townspeople regularly and established friendly relations with various business owners (eg the laundry washwomen, grocers, market vendors, restaurants, etc). I highly recommend this form of travel. Our kids thrived with the routines established from staying put and had plenty of great experiences as a result. We then spent the last 5 days in Antigua (3 would have been plenty for us but we hoped to climb Pacaya which erupted a second time this summer while we were in Antigua).
There are families traveling with children in Guatemala. Many either had babies/toddlers or teens. I noticed quite a few visibly pregnant travelers as well. It seemed that most rented apartments. It’s very easy to stay a few days in a hotel and ask around about apartments for rent. We met another family also staying for a month in San Pedro who was going to class for about 2 weeks as well at the Cooperativa. Their children were a bit younger, 5 and 8. They rented an apartment for their whole stay because they knew they would probably like more privacy.
The town we settled in was…. (continue reading)
Kids In the Trees
Posted by: | CommentsReaders may recall that when I lived in my first house in Antigua, we were in a fancy neighborhood and neighbors and gardeners greatly objected to kids running and playing on grass or climbing trees. They even put barbed wire on all the trees. So when we moved to a bigger house in a neighborhood a little closer to the economic mean, I looked around and commented to the Wife, “Heh…I don’t think anyone here is going to complain about our kids climbing the trees.”
In fact, the first week we were in this house I noticed a guy from the neighborhood walk up to the public/common area and start chopping off branches. I guess he was out of carbon. Anyway, I felt confident that if you could chop off limbs for firewood, no one would complain about kids in the trees. So you can imagine my surprise when the kids came in one day covered in what looked a lot like motor oil. I couldn’t imagine how this could happen until I inspected the trees and determined that someone had poured motor oil all over the trees, presumably to prevent their being climbed.
I know who it is; the same drunk I have to pay my Q900 monthly water bill to, the same guy who screams in a drunken rage at the children if they laugh too loudly while running up and down the callejon in front of his house. It’s the same guy I suspect is behind the slingshot attacks, but what can you do with the guy who has the key to your water supply? Answer: nothing. At least, that is, until you’re moved out. If it’s warm enough, concrete can dry overnight, after all.
Face of Hunger
Posted by: | CommentsI was impatiently waiting for my cappucino and complaining out loud that yet another ‘abundance of bacteria’ report from the lab was going to put my war/famine/disease-proof weight plan at risk when I read this:
they were the last patients of the day… a young little teenage mama and a little bundle wrapped up in her lap which i assumed to be her baby. and to be honest, i look one look at them and thought, “this should be an easy one… another tired new mama with a baby that cries…” however, as sally unwrapped the little one, i was unprepared for what i saw. before us lay a tiny little two week old baby, skin and bones, very dehydrated, that barely had the strength to move, let alone cry or eat.
diagnosing their child with diarrhea, these two young parents had done the only thing they could think of and gone to the local pharmacy and bought up some commonly used adult cold and cough medicine, and another medicine commonly used here for diarrhea. further aggravating the situation, this poor little baby now oozed from all the trauma done to her young stomach. as we searched for a car to take them to the hospital where they would hopefully get the help needed to get their baby better (if the equipment to do so is there) and further exams and labs done, i watched the baby…
continue reading at Walking On
Kids in Guatemala
Posted by: | CommentsI’m frequently asked what life in Guatemala is like for gringo kids. It’s a difficult question to answer, in part because life in the capital-where most gringo kids live-is so different than Antigua. Out here we are living in what you liberals derisively refer to in the US as ‘flyover country’ (for the uninformed that means all the ‘red’ states between the east and left coast). The capitalinos look at Antigua the same way, kind of like country bumpkins that are neat to visit occasionally and to watch their quaint little traditions on holidays.
In the capital the wealthy/gringo kids live a life very much like that in the US, and most of the local kids they associate with will be similarly pampered, spoiled and culturally the same. Here the kids live in ‘real Guatemala’ (except that Antigua isn’t real Guatemala), and so instead of sharing the same interests as foreign kids, they tend to resent them. That manifests itself in rock throwing, assault, etc (infamously known as ‘GuateGrudge’). Tough to sell perky gringo soccer moms on that, ain’t it?
So anyway recently a pretty blond mommy from Wisconsin knocked on our door with her two young daughters and wanted to introduce herself to our kids and see if anyone could ‘play’. She remarked how her host family had promised her the neighborhood was perfectly safe and so, couldn’t they come out and play? I wasn’t going to say anything about the attempted assassinations of my children in said neighborhood until she said, “Yeah, you know, it’s like, so neat that we’re here in Guatemala and it’s supposed to be so dangerous and yet I can just let the girls out to run around the neighborhood by themselves.”
Now, some expats are a little more free with their kids. ExpatMom takes her kids out, but they look local and sound local. The kids are not likely to get stoned just because their mommy is a Canuck. (Although that should earn any kid a little ribbing). But even before the slingshot attacks, when we lived in an exclusive, uppity, gated community filled with ex-Presidents (and their brothers) and ex-Vice Presidents (and their brothers), and the like, I wouldn’t dream of letting my pretty blonde daughters roam the neighborhood alone, and I certainly wouldn’t in a neighborhood where a little blond girl draws as much attention as a flipped armored car with money (or sugar?), pouring out.
So I had to break it to her as gently as I could. “So you don’t mind if your daughters are kidnapped, gang-raped, strangled and tossed into the creek?” Actually, that’s what I wanted to say, to try to give her a sense of the danger, but instead I said, “Perhaps you should reconsider” followed by, “Our kids go outside only under our supervision, during the morning hours when local kids are most likely to be in school, with a guard dog we don’t feed until after play time, and we always have one person scanning the surrounding area for threats.”
She no doubt thought, as many of you who aren’t raising children here likely think, that such an approach is unreasonable. This isn’t lilly white, Lutheran Wisconsin, honey. I would have characterized it similarly had my two year old not been felled by a slingshot and my eldest daughter recently escaping by mere inches from a similar projectile.
So what’s the answer to the question about kids in Guatemala? Well, if they don’t look and sound like locals, you need to live in an upscale gated community. My local friends here have said as much-always hushed and making sure no other Chapins can overhear-and a few pragmatic white liberals have begrudgingly admitted they would do the same if they had children, and it’s unfortunate but true. Those gates and walls-much maligned by romanticists-do keep the riffraff out, although the gates generally open for anyone who works in the neighborhood, is related to someone who works in the neighborhood, or who has a plausible-sounding reason for being there, so even under those circumstances I urge great caution. So mommy, move to a gated community, get yourself a great big protective dog, and tie him to your daughter’s chastity belt whenever they leave the house.
Welcome to GuateLiving.
Nursing in Guate, Part 2
Posted by: | CommentsReaders may remember my entry ‘Nursing in Guate‘ whereby I explained how different cultural attitudes are here regarding one
The traditional Mayan Traje is really spectacular, isn't it?
of my favorite parts of the female anatomy, viz., breasts. Breasts, like beer, are proof that there is a God and he loves us. (You see atheists, it really is quite simple). Here in Guate a nursing mother’s breast is in the public domain and draws no particular attention, except from the hungry baby and passing extranjeros. Or when a wet nipple is rubbing against your thigh. I’ll never forget how that thing just stared at me, taunting me. I wanted to grab it and jam it in the kid’s face, which fortunately a tumulo took care of for me, just a few seconds later.
Since then I’ve had more than one chance to get a picture of a kid nursing on the back of a motorcycle, of a kid nursing from the shopping cart in la bodegona, and my all time favorite, the kid who was running around the water fountain at the park and suddenly stopped, staring at the woman on the fountain intently, glancing back at his mother (sitting on the park bench, breast exposed), then looking back at the fountain, and then running back to the bench for a pit stop, nursing standing up while the mother carried on her conversation with other women enjoying the shade.
Anyway, Shelley recently had her own encounter with a local breast:
Last night we were at a wake in Santa Rita. It was dark with only a few candles around. For this story we will say that I had Baby A and Jimmy was in charge of Baby B. We were sitting with some of our friends when I turned around and realized one of them was holding Baby B and NURSING him! This may sound humorous if it is not YOUR child, but it is actually pretty dangerous. You can catch all kinds of infectious diseases that way. While our friend looks healthy and has 2 healthy children, I don’t know her history… and it is not that she is Guatemalan, it is that she is anyone other than me. Baby B had just been fed, so I am hoping he was only pacifying. He wasn’t hungry. Our boys get held a lot in Santa Rita. The indigenous believe that if you look at a baby and don’t touch and hold it you could give them the “evil eye”… plus Jonah and Silas are completely adorable! Before I hand any woman my child I always think, “do you have milk?” because I knew this could be a possibility. Well Jimmy did not think anyone would ever do that. He was sitting right beside her, but to his defense a representative from the family had come to talk to him about trying to get the son’s body back to SR for burial (story here) so he was distracted. Jimmy called our pediatrician in Guatemala City last night, which is a different world from here by the way, and his first response was, “Why did she DO that?!” He said there is a small chance that he could have caught something and to keep an eye on him and her.
What Jimmy should do is what I do (not a bad strategy in general). Whenever I am with the family and some woman looks like she’s about to whip it out and service the kid I just explain, “You’ve probably heard before that we gringos are a little different. Fijese, in the US we have a tradition whereby the father tests all of the food or milk before the children eat it…” and this usually brings things to an abrupt stop. Once word spreads you will find you don’t have to explain this bizarre NorteAmericano tradition to anyone else.
School in Guate
Posted by: | CommentsNo, I’m not referring to government schools, I’m talking about homeschooling here in Guate. Apparently it’s an unheard of practice, with many children dropping out of school altogether, some going to government schools, and the affluent attending private school. In the US, homeschooling has become so common and homeschool students dominating so many academic contests and even achieving prominence in sports (such as Tim Tebow), it’s unusual to get a strange look when you talk about homeschooling, but whether from locals or expats here I get that quizzical, “Why would you do that?!” response when explaining that the Wife and I homeschool.
I resist the urge to say, “Because we don’t want them to grow up to be idiots”, and usually give a longer explanation that the interrogator (or probably most readers) really want. The question, naturally, presumes that government schools are the norm and that anything outside that would be unusual, even weird. As if some of the greatest men (and women) of modernity weren’t homeschooled, including some of the top names in their fields. Presumably they weren’t all social misfits either.
I don’t want my kids to be ‘average’, I don’t want them to spend their days among kids with whom the only thing they have in common is a similar birth date and whose parents care so little for their formation that they abandon them to a system which excels only at mediocrity. If my kid wants to become a car mechanic, that’s fine, but I want him to live a rich and fulfilling life where nothing beyond his desire and potential is out of his reach.
But the real point, as Butler Shaffer observes, is:
“There is nothing so disruptive to the status quo as a society of self-directed, independent-minded people both capable of and insistent on informed, analytical thought. It has been the purpose of government schools to assure that such conditions do not arise; to continue to produce a society of capable workers but who, nonetheless, have passive and contented minds.”
I’ve noticed the same here, even among the upper classes, where students do not seem to be taught critical thinking, problem solving, logic or ethics. All you libs who want government to manage our entire lives should take one look at the system which government has dominated for the last three generations-education-and ask yourself if you really want them doing to your health what they do to kids’ characters and brains.
It’s For the Children
Posted by: | CommentsLast month I got the opportunity to meet long-time reader, blogger and recent resident of Guatemala Kerry Smith. Kerry blogs at ¿Dónde están mis pantalones? and is working at La Limonada in the capital. Kerry is coming into this opportunity with her eyes wide open and has what I think is a healthy perspective.
La Limonada is a Christian organization that works to take children from the worst slums of the capital and provide them food, clothes, an education, in short, a better life. For you libs, this is real ‘hope and change’, the kind that actually makes a difference in the life of someone who is suffering. Yes, I know some of you won’t want to have anything to do with a Christian organization and believe both the kids and society would be better off had they just been aborted, but they’re here now and these people are doing good things, so….
I want to encourage you to make a tax-deductible donation to support Kerry’s work and the children at La Lemonada by going here. You can click on monthly donation, select the team member (Kerry Smith), and contribute by credit card or check.
A New Low in Guate
Posted by: | CommentsA few months back when I reported about the attorneys going around town telling people that the Wife and I had stolen our children, I was pretty upset. It’s a small town and when you’re trying to do business and people are willing to touch on an issue that is as hot and sensitive as adoptions/stolen children, well, I was pretty hot about it.
Today brought me to the worst feelings I’ve had about this place in 15 months. Let me give you some background; on a frequent basis the Wife or I take the kids out into the neighborhood or in the empty lot next door and they kick the soccer ball around, climb trees and basically do harmless, old-fashioned kid stuff. One of us always accompanies them for their own safety and to make sure everyone is well-behaved.
Over the last few weeks, there have been some strange happenings. One of the kids told me that he thought someone had thrown a rock at him. I didn’t pay it much attention since he couldn’t actually point a finger, but the next day he had a huge bruise on his leg. It’s hard to place blame when you’re a rough and tumble kid and you have a mysterious bruise.
Well, a few days later the Wife was sitting with the kids and got hit by another mysterious flying rock. She looked around and wasn’t able to place where the rock had come from or who might have thrown it.
Today the Wife and kids were outside playing when the two year-old suddenly dropped to the ground and after those long seconds of silence which preface an outburst, began screaming wildly. We wouldn’t have had any clue except that at the exact same instant the Wife was hit by a small piece of brick which presumably ricocheted off the baby or originated from the same place.
The impact left a gash and a huge knot, not bad enough for an emergency room trip but pretty severe. I surveyed the scene with a neighbor and we quickly ruled out about 270 degrees of the field as an origin for the rock based on the wall that separates the neighborhood from the street, dense trees and our own house. The severity of the impact on the baby’s head and the substantial bruising left by the previous projectiles pointed toward a device, unless Nolan Ryan is hiding behind a tree and throwing 90 mph rocks and broken bricks.
We found nothing, but my suspicion was immediately centered on a kid with a slingshot. Regrettably, we didn’t find such a kid, in fact, we found nothing at all suspicious, there are only a handful of houses around that could shield an assailant and the lay of the land is such that there just aren’t that many angles that would work. However, it was obvious to me that someone has noticed a pattern of the gringo kids playing outside in the afternoons and has decided to use them for target practice.
I shared the story with Santiago, concluding, “I can’t believe it”, to which he replied, “Dude, that’s the way it works here. They hate you because you have money and white skin and they’ll attack the weakest, most defenseless member of your family with a slingshot and then slip back into the shadows. Even if you caught them red handed their parents wouldn’t do anything; they probably know about it and approve. You’re lucky they weren’t using marbles, which is their favorite weapon.”
So, I hung up the phone and counted to 10. I don’t lose my temper easily, but neither do I take kindly to people attacking my family. The kids on the soccer fields who responded to gringo goals by throwing rocks was bad, the licensiados lying about my family around town was pretty bad, but this stuff is deadly. A small child hit with a brick could be fatal, and I know better than to imagine that anyone here would care if a gringo toddler was blinded, impaired or killed by a Guatemalan kid with a slingshot.
It’s not that kids around the world aren’t bad and don’t throw rocks or use BB guns, but realizing that someone has staked us out and is methodically taking shots at little kids…and who knows how many attempts there have been that have gone unnoticed? It makes sense that if you’re armed with a slingshot or some other device that you’re going to miss more often than hit, so somebody has been working hard at this.
So, I’m kind of down on life beyond the gated community at the moment. It’s sinking in that it doesn’t matter how safe I feel around town if the moment my baby steps outside the door he’s target practice for would-be snipers. I know some of you readers will laugh at my concern over what is undoubtedly nothing compared to the violence some experience regularly, but when I think about how close we came today to losing a child, I get sick to my stomach and wonder what my hand in it would have been since I am the one who brought my children into this culture.
Loading ...