Books are Life: day 1 with child aid

Sitting in the early morning sun overlooking the roofscape of Antigua de Guatemala, a cobbled celebration of the aesthetic drive, I am overlooked by volcanoes on every side, occasional spurts of smoke from one, forest covering the dormant remains of others, and third so high, it is only some days we see the picture perfect classic dipped cone of the crown.

Below,the town is waking, the market filling with Mayan women in traditional dress come to sell fruits, vegetables and fresh flowers, alongside the nearly branded clothes, steaming bread and tamales and stalls full of exercise books and plastic containers. Within the historic town, the sun is creeping down the many many remains of conquistadorial architecture that punctuate in their more or less elegantly dishevelled forms the lines of colour washed streets, castillion doors and ironwork the norm among Antigua’s houses.

And within the buildings a townful of people dedicated to doing things beautifully and enjoying all that is good in cafe society, the arts, fine foods and the pleasures of friends and family is getting underway.

Yesterday was a landmark day for the privilege of being involved in some truly useful and specialist volunteering for a project (or set of projects) buzzing with life and enthusiasm , rightly proud of a great track record, and clearly focused on strategising and implementing well-planned developments in the future.

Bill and I are working as a team to take photographs and interviews with beneficiaries of Child Aid’s involvement in books and education programmes in Guatemala. These will then go as a slideshow of personal stories on the revamped charity web site, to inform web readers and hopefully inspire donors and volunteers. Want a good story? One of their fairly low paid ex-office workers inherited some money and gave $100,000 to the organisation on the basis of what she had seen of their work, with a promise of the same amount next year if it seemed to be well spent. That feels quite a testimony.

The day: it was a huge privilege to spend a day at a Montessori style preschool in a dusty local brick making town on the Pan American highway, interviewing teachers, students, the school director, parents and other staff, including an ex student now becoming a teacher herself. We were told lots about how the school and an associated grant scheme benefits local families and create hope for the future. Most of these children will not have to make bricks in cottage industries at $200 a month, or work in vast textiles sweatshops producing expensive clothes very cheaply without toilets, meal breaks, or security in an industry where contraception is compulsory for women workers and rape is frequent.

These children, we heard over and over again, enter their schooling with already enquiring minds, a love of learning and the self motivation and self sufficiency to thrive educationally, even when the schools themselves may be struggling with lack of resources , or the illiterate parents, who want so much for their children to pursue their studies, become professionals and escape the poverty trap, are perhaps unable to support them in their hours of home work with much more than encouragement and simple basic meals.

Getting photos and interviews with 3 to 6 years olds was quite a challenge! But we both found our way in and gradually came to ways of sensing how the other was doing and therefore which people to focus on. Kristen, Child Aid’s superlatively friendly and lively volunteer-turned-employed worker, got into doing a double act with me, so that between us we were able to keep reasonably natural conversations going, and take notes on the interviews. We heard some fabulous stories, and as I’ll be spending plenty of the weekend writing those up for Child Aid, I’ll not go into them deeply here.

We also narrowly missed photoing the unloading of a shipment of 25,000 new books in Spanish for the various libraries Child Aid supports here, all brought in by arrangement with publishers remaindering books in Spanish, so that library stock can be planned and of good quality.