The Death of a Friend and the Beginning of an Adventure
Distributed to an email list and published online (2010)
Iwasn’t even aware that the bus had stopped to pick up another passenger. Maybe it didn’t. But suddenly there was a man in the aisle talking to me in Spanish, asking if the seat next to me was taken. His eyes were the distant eyes of a blind person, otherwise he may have caught the slightly panicked expression on my face. He had caught me in the very moment I was congratulating myself on that empty seat. Twenty minutes earlier, as I boarded the bus, I had eyed the foreign men warily, hoping and praying that one would not sit next to me. I had heard stories about ‘gringo’ women being bothered by curious and amorous men on local buses. I had only a split second to decide what to do. Somehow, I couldn’t lie to this man, even out of self-preservation.
As I gestured to the seat and told him it was not taken, he smiled at me. It was a vacant smile, as if he wasn’t exactly sure who he was thanking. He just directed it at the female voice in front of him. I took in his eyes in the moments before he felt his way down to the seat. They were framed in a pinkish-white face, whiter than mine. It brought up many questions in my mind. Was this albino man Guatemalan or was he a traveler? His dirty clothes and the smell emanating from them told me he was probably homeless.
I inwardly groaned about having to sit next to this man for a six-hour bus ride. I had my headphones on and was looking out the window, trying to take in the scenery and avoid a long conversation. I moved a little closer to the window, trying to maintain some of my own space. But this new stranger picked up on none of my signals. Not only did he move closer when I moved towards the window, he began asking me question after question. He wanted to know where I was from, what I was doing in Guatemala. He wanted to know all about my family, where I went to school. I answered him in my broken Spanish, trying to be vague about my plans for getting off the bus in Rio Dulce. He told me he was going to Morales to look for work.
Slowly, I began to let my guard down and be friendly. I asked him all about his life and he told me about his family and how he was born in Rio Dulce, the town I was traveling to. And then the show-and-tell began. He pulled out a tattered bag and searched through it with his fingers, identifying his meager possessions by touch. Nothing was too insignificant to show me. He pulled out his national identity cards and his grandmother’s work permit. He was proud to tell me his name and show me his address, although to read them from the documents he had to hold them an inch from his eyes. It was a sorrowful sight, this simple man with no working eyes. He looked haggard and I took him to be in his 40’s but his documents said he was in his early 20’s. I oohed and ahead over his documents and his grandmother’s photo, knowing they were some of his most prized possessions.
Like a magician, he put his fingers back in his bag and pulled out a dirty white handkerchief. It was knotted closed and when he unwrapped it he had several coins on display. He wanted me to touch each one, passing them lovingly to me. He showed me a coin from Honduras, where he was coming from, and then a Quetzal, the local Guatemalan currency. I passed them back to him but he closed my fingers on them, smiling a joyful, boyish smile. I was touched and very humbled. I had not even wanted this man to sit down in the empty seat beside me and here he was giving me something that was precious to him.
The show and tell continued as he searched for things in his bag. I saw his rock collection and the two small, perfectly white stones that he said were best friends. I admired everything and we continued to talk about our lives. Eventually, we both grew tired and were lulled to sleep by the heat of the day and the roar of the bus as it wound its way in and out of mountains. I put my head against the window and he slept in place. There was no personal space anymore. At one point I woke up and his leg was touching my leg, his head was creeping toward my shoulder.
When I woke up it was to my seat mate’s wheezing, labored breathing. Still groggy, I looked over at him to see what was wrong. He was fumbling for his bag and quickly popped a pill that he found inside. I was alarmed at both the breaths coming from his body and the thought that he might be a drug addict and that was why he looked so haggard. I watched his fingers search for a small opaque bottle. There was some sort of liquid inside and he struggled to pour the contents into a clear plastic lid. The bus was dark and he couldn’t hold the bottle and lid close enough to his eyes to see. Suddenly, without realizing what I was doing, my hands were taking the bottle and lid from him. I poured him a full cap of the liquid and handed it back, watching as he drank it quickly.
My heart started to pound as his labored breathing only intensified. There were moments when his hand found my knee and squeezed and I could tell that air wasn’t making its way into his lungs, that he was physically trying to hold onto air and force it down. I put everything together and spoke an English word, not knowing the translation in Spanish. It was “asthma” and he violently shook his head yes. My voice getting louder, I asked him for an inhaler and he handed me one from his coat pocket. He shook it, indicating it was empty. His breathing got worse as I started to panic. I screamed for help and an inhaler.
A man in the front of the bus had an inhaler and it was quickly passed back to us. Additionally, a couple of people from further back in the bus came forward speaking accented English. They were doctors living in Belize, a husband and wife. My seat mate suddenly slumped over and then there was a flurry of action. The female doctor forced the inhaler into his mouth and pressed down, releasing medication several times. The man came to slightly but continued to go in and out. The pill, the liquid, the inhaler were all having little to no effect on his body. The sound of him struggling to breathe was one of the worst sounds I have ever heard. I can’t tell you how it tore at me, how the feeling of helplessness enveloped me until all I could do was look at him in complete terror and utter one word, God. Every utterance in my mind, and some that were released into the bus, were prayers. I was watching someone die and it was a gut wrenching feeling.
The lights were on in the bus and people were looking at us in alarm. The doctors communicated the situation to the bus driver. This man simply had to go to a hospital or he was going to die. But the bus drove on through the mountains. We had been passing only small towns with corrugated tin shacks and little restaurants lit by single light bulbs. As this man’s condition got even worse, my fingers found his and we held hands. I rubbed his knee and caressed his hand and spoke to him softly in English, trying to calm him down as I would a crying infant. Everything in me was trying to give him some comfort, some love. There was nothing else I could do.
It seemed like an eternity later when the bus slowed to a stop and I looked out the window to see a small ambulance in the dark. Several men picked up my seat mate, carrying him in their arms because just as he couldn’t breathe; he couldn’t walk or function. They took him out of the bus and I saw him put into the back of the ambulance. Someone grabbed his bag and I jumped out of the bus, not knowing what to do. I watched his thin body on the gurney and willed him to live. I felt extremely torn. Was I supposed to jump in the ambulance and go to the hospital with him, this man I had known for a couple of hours? I had no idea where we were or how I would get where I was going. With a heavy heart, I watched the ambulance drive away.
I boarded the bus and sat in my seat, not hearing, feeling, or seeing much of anything. It was as if my entire body was underwater or in shock. Both of the doctors were kind enough to come talk to me and make sure I was doing alright. My head started to reel with everything that had happened but I enjoyed talking to them very much.
I don’t know what happened to my seat mate. The doctors said he had a 50/50 chance of living or dying. I don’t know the medical explanation, but if your lungs go too long without oxygen they simply give up and won’t open. That is probably why the inhaler didn’t seem to help.
The bus continued its slow roll to Rio Dulce and the coast and I looked out the window in the dark, not seeing what was outside and not seeing how a man’s life can be snuffed out and yet the world keeps spinning. I suppose that is one of the most shocking things about death. It is something incredibly profound and emotional and it scars your heart when you experience it first-hand with someone you know or love. And yet nothing in the big world reflects that agony, that loss of life. The birds keep singing and the sun keeps rising every morning and buses roll on towards their destinations. I had come on this journey to understand more about life and as I sat in that seat, headed for Rio Dulce, all I could think about was that I felt like I knew even less about life than when I started.
The Beginning
The beeping of a cell phone is the music this travel blog is being written to. I listen to the beep, beep every few moments as the power cuts off and comes back on, darkening and brightening my computer screen in turn. Unfortunately, the WIFI, in all its dependency on the electricity, also wavers. This is not the place to download an application on your iPhone or upload a picture to Facebook. I have relegated those tasks to when I leave Casa Guatemala; they may have to wait until I leave the country entirely. If they had another name for internet in Guatemala, it would be “Slow.” I hear that even in the capital, Guatemala City, and the most touristy city, Antigua, the connection does not get much better. Electricity and internet are only two of the challenges in keeping a travel blog from Casa Guatemala. There is only one very slow computer here for volunteers to use and it seems like there is always a line. One of my fellow volunteers, a laid-back Canadian named Byron, has lent me his Mac to type these words to you. He handed the computer over with ceremony, saying he didn’t know anything about computers and he wasn’t even sure it had a program to type with. But I am ready to call this a success.
Almost two weeks have passed since I left Seattle, Washington, on my quest for a “trip around the world.” This is very much a dream coming true for me. Almost two years ago I set my heart on taking a trip and seeing all of the things I dreamed about in foreign lands. I wanted to live in incredible places that I had seen only in magazines and read about in travel books. More importantly, I wanted to live among people who were different from me, who thought differently and lived differently and believed differently. In October of this past year, I finally made the call that I would leave for my trip in January. January became March as I visited doctors and dentists, trying to cure all of the ailments that seemed to come up as soon as I set my heart on this trip.
Two years ago, when this journey was taking form in my mind, I did indeed have a “trip around the world” in mind. I had heard of people buying greatly-discounted, around-the-world airfare and then taking a year to see all of the destinations they had chosen. When I sat down to brainstorm about what I really wanted out of the experience, though, it became clear that this was not the right option for me. I wanted to live free of time and schedules; I didn’t want to have any commitments or any timetable. I wanted to be available for spontaneous adventures, never having to say no to something exciting because I had a plane or a bus to catch. Additionally, I chose to set no real destinations for this trip. I brainstormed and researched a lot of places I wanted to visit, but I always came back to the fact that I would figure it all out along the way. I even went a step further, setting no time limits for this journey. If I am done traveling after my time in Guatemala, fine. If it takes me two years of wandering the world to scratch this itch, two years it will be.
That being said, I did plan the first leg of my journey. During my research I found an orphanage in Rio Dulce, Guatemala, and decided it would make a good home for 3 months and a good launching pad for the rest of my travels. I figured it would give me time to decide where I want to go and what I want to do, as well as allow me the opportunity to do something I’ve never done, volunteer at an orphanage for an extended period of time.
To say that Casa Guatemala is isolated would be an understatement. In jest, I titled my trip here: Truck, Plane, Plane, Plane, Car, Bus, Boat, Boat, Boat. Getting to Guatemala was only half of the battle. Once I touched down at the airport in Guatemala City I was taken by private taxi to the local bus station where I boarded a six-hour bus to Rio Dulce. From the bus station in Rio Dulce I took three boats to eventually make it to Casa Guatemala.
In my experience, non-profit organizations function a lot like start-up organizations, you are simply placed where you are needed. I came to Casa Guatemala with the intention of teaching English. What a perfect position for me, I thought. They needed teachers and I would be able to show some continuity of profession on my resume. I emailed with Caroline, the director of the orphanage, and everything was set. But on the morning I arrived, it was clear that teaching was not their greatest need. Several of the children’s caretakers, called Orientadores, were at the end of their volunteer stay and were returning to Spain. They were in need of someone, several people in fact, to take over those positions.
Secretly, I was excited. Although I was disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to teach English, I was on this trip for the very experience of trying new things. I had never been a foster mom. I look back now, two weeks later, and I have to laugh at my naiveté. There is a misconception when you volunteer at an orphanage that every child is a shy angel. Surely they never throw tantrums or talk back. In my mind, I thought this would be an easy experience but I am discovering that these children hold the power to melt my heart and make me want to pull out my own hair, all within seconds.
Niñas Pequeñas
Iam currently helping to take care of 23 little girls, ages 5-9. My partner, Eleni, and I are responsible for providing them structure, love, support, and discipline. We wake them up in the morning, get them showered twice a day, take them to meals, direct them in their chores, brush the lice from their hair (it is a chronic ailment down here, no matter how well you fight it), and take care of them in the middle of the night when they awake with nightmares or have an accident in bed. We talk with their teachers and make sure they are doing their homework. It’s definitely as close to being a parent as I’ve ever been, but not all of our girls are complete orphans. Some of them have families who are unable to take care of them full-time but have them visit two weekends out of the month.
From Here On Out
In preparation for this travel blog I have been writing page after page in my journal, trying to record this experience so that I will never forget it. I am so excited to share my stories with you and read your comments. There are moments when I love being here at Casa Guatemala and there are moments when all I want to do is leave. Sometimes I feel like I am living my right life, the one I was always meant to live. Other times I feel like I am not at all the person I thought I was, and I wonder at how you go back to the drawing board to discover yourself all over again. This is my journey. It has already proven itself to be messy and unexpected but it is a chapter I am writing in my life. It is my joy to share it with you.