"Writing After the Bus" or "The Dead Goat and the Butcher".

Do you remember the post about the poster with the scary data on migration stuck at the back of a bus? We promised some more thoughts on that, so here we go.

First of all, those stats and the stories connected are so horrific some might wonder how people can even think about trying, but unfortunately it's not so difficult to understand them: good employment is still seemingly unreachable for most of the lowest classes and the image of our rich world is so alluring it's hard to resist the temptation; moreover, the examples of those who make it and can send money back or find a life there, though never easily, are strong arguments, hard to counter.
Surely, it is important to remind people of the dangers of the journey, as information is education and ignorance or lies are certainly to be fought, but we doubt a campaign like this can really work well as a deterrent: as it happens around the Mediterranean, when people can't see any future or suffer from, or are threatened by violence, they feel ready to face everything, to take any risk in order to escape, to try it somewhere else - "a dead goat doesn't fear the butcher's knife", as the saying goes among migrants (we can't remember where from, but that doesn't matter). 

We believe the numbers of those fleeing violence from Central America might be exaggerated, as many might be using that as an excuse, knowing their chances are better if they're seen as refugees, however gang violence is surely a huge factor, given that the countries of the triangulo del norte (Northern triangle, i.e. Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador) suffer from awfully terrible levels of gang activity, with homicide figures similar to those of war torn countries; however, the main problem is, as usual, the economic situation, as it is clearly behind the whole gang issue and because it makes people as desperate as to be willing to try anything. Most people are no way nearer the poverty levels we've seen in Africa and not only those who are in such dire conditions are dreaming of leaving, but again that's understandable, as it's hard to see how they can improve their lives here and they are too close to the rich world, geographically and at mass-media level, not to feel the pull. 

So, what can the answer be and what are we doing about this?

Can teaching English in a primary school help? It could, if that meant to increase the kids' chances of reaching better jobs significantly, but reaching that kind of result would imply much more than adding hours to the timetable: their whole education should be much better and most of all they should move on to secondary schools where they're taught English properly, not just colours, animals and "uoziurnem" (What's your name?), so actually Mattia doesn't feel as having done much on the issue through those months of classes, even though he tried his best to instil a desire for learning and to prove the students that they can actually learn a language and not just the usual 20 words or phrases. 

Teaching English to adults, or young people, makes definitely more sense, so we're glad our dear friends José&Marlene have held an afternoon course here at UPAVIM, still a little thing but a positive one, which we hope they can keep up when they come back in January (they're going back home for the month of December). Their educational activities with the older group of kids at the library holiday programme are good seeds too, as that sort of work can widen the kids' horizons and help them develop critical thinking. 

What else could help? 

Staying in the area of education, our opinion is that training teachers would be the way forward (as Mattia was supposed to do in Rwanda but did very little), but here we are in no position whatsoever to do that. 

Apart from education, another fundamental tool of discouraging migration is to make life at home better, by improving conditions. We can't reshape the economy or create jobs (even though Elena's Paper Furniture would be far from that), yet health, dental and nutrition programmes, which Elena has been working on, are definitely very important too, because if children grow well their lives will be better and if parents see their children taken care of, they've got a better view of their own life too, so she must be proud of what she's done, though she keeps feeling she hasn't been put in the right conditions to do as much as she could and most of all to arrange things so that her projects can have a real, long-lasting impact. 

Being violence such a strong factor, fighting and preventing it are other very worthy efforts; the former is outside our range, as it would require action at higher level (police, government...) or at wider level (the whole community, which we are not such a powerful part of as to be able to move it in that direction), but the latter can be attempted and that's what Mattia has been trying to do (starting from afar, which unfortunately won't work much if there's no way to continue the project for long), first with some input and activities in school, but mostly with his sport programme, which has been going on for over 4 months and picked up a lot in the last 5 weeks, with the creation of a good group of up to 12 kids in their early teens for athletics training 5 days a week and with a bigger group of younger children very happy to play pre-sport games. He's recently added another dimension to this youth project by recovering a relic of his African experience, i.e starting chess lessons/matches in the mornings, sitting on the ground, near the campo: nothing major, but it is encouraging to see how kids like it and how it really helps them put their minds to work, which can mean an awful lot for their lives.

Much more could and should be done on such sensitive issues, but we're doing the little we can and in order to do more we'd need more support from the organisation or better we should work for an organisation dedicated to all this, while UPAVIM's priorities are others, which is the main reason for our troubles, but more on this another time.

12th of October 2016 (2) / Weapon of choice

In order to keep going for full 524 years of conquest, you need plenty of variety in your arsenal, don't you?

Never mind, we did have it: first it was muskets and viruses, then slavery-like exploitation of indigenous labour, later damaging use of the land and management of local produce (coffee and fruit) by foreign companies which profited hugely and crippled the local economy, and finally, in the second half of the last century, political and military support for right-wing repressive governments. And don't worry, five centuries later, we still have that variety...

Clothes', and shoes', charity, which destroys the local textile and shoemaking industries, buries beautiful local dress tradition under a pile of ridiculous t-shirts' wordings, deprives whole peoples of part of their precious identity and lulls Westerners in the damn-false impression of being doing good.

Globalization, which brings in every possible society disease, from TV addiction to videogames-induced brain damage and violent habits, from junk food to shopping mania, from costly cellphones' and internet overuse to misplaced dreams of emigration, from excess of car traffic to horribly out-of-place and money-wasting Christmas silly traditions; globalization, which threatens healthier, more sustainable and economically wiser food traditions and pushes whole countries on a dangerous slope towards overweight and obesity thanks to the introduction of the wonders of McDonald's&friends.

Advertisement and the distribution of stuff to be bought, which replaces people's natural will to improve their lives with a sick drive to spend, spend, spend, for products which are not necessary, or more expensive or less healthy than their traditional alternatives.

Neo-liberism, which cuts welfare, privatises services and cuts down import tariffs to flood countries with cheap products which prevent viable local industries to develop.

Fakeducation, the local version of what should be the main way of give poor people a future and instead, when cynically observed, looks like a repressive tool: keep low classes in school years and years without teaching them anything about history, ensure they won't be able to properly read, write and count, make good efforts to prevent them from developing any sort of critical thinking (which is quite easy when you've kept their brains inactive and avoided giving them the aforementioned necessary tools of reading&co.) and you'll be sure you won't get any more dangerous revolutions. Actually, Guatemalans surprised many last year, when they got out on the streets to oust their top two politicians due to corruptions issues, but that's still a long way from a real revolution, like the one attempted 50 years ago and quashed through over 30 years of genocidal massacres by the army... 

The Continuous Conquistadores seem also to have learnt the Romans' lesson well, as can be seen in the modern local version of the "panem et circenses" (bread and circus) strategy, i.e. "risitos y pista de hielo" (packed-crisps and ice-rink): don't give them development, welfare or proper jobs, just keep them fed (or at least offer them plenty of something-which-looks-like-food available everywhere at very affordable prices) and entertained with expensive foolish shows whose costs could be better used somewhere else, like an ice-skating installation on the main square of Guatemala City, of course in their cold season, (invierno-winter!), when the daytime temperatures won't ever go below 20 degrees... By the way, just for the sake of connecting thoughts, did you know the current president is a former comedian, not a protest-style comedian, just a mere showman?

A final note on food, the focus on which might seem as a picky exaggeration of ours, but we believe is instead quite fundamental, as the current nutrition habits are so damaging, not only health wise, but even financially, since poor people are spending the precious little money they have on something not necessary for their wellbeing (a packet of chemicals-covered crisps has no nutritional value) instead of saving for health expenses or to invest in education or home-improvements. 

A picture should be enough: in the middle of a local, small but not tiny shop on a secondary road of the city centre, you spot a large shelf-unit nearly collapsing under the weight of so many ripe, vivid yellow bananas, a feast of taste and nutritional wonders; the sight makes you not only hungry, but also happy for all these Central and South American countries, blessed with the low cost and easy availability of fruit... if it weren't for that damn tendency of your eyes to keep looking around, which makes you take in the rest of the shop: the wall behind the shelf-unit, which now looks quite small, is completely covered by those ubiquitous hanging stacks of crisp-packets of any possible kind ("taste" doesn't seem the proper word), which cost just as much as one or two of those delicious, filling, healthy bananas, while the wall on the left boasts two full-height fridges full of sodas or sugary drinks, the other nutritional plague of these areas.

Cheer up, the next post in this series won't be about conquest but about resistance.

October news round-up (with pictures)

We've already reported on the end of the school year, so we can just add that the marks were good for both boys, so congratz once again to them, even though the level was quite low (without any reason for it to be so, as there are all the physical conditions, as to number of students, facilities and material, to push for much higher), so we'll have to help them regain knowledge and skills they've been losing, but they're ready and willing and we're already doing something, though slowly, to let them recover after those 14 months...

Mattia tried to organize a post-school trip to the relief map with 6th grade, as he promised them earlier, but after the end of the lessons it was hard to keep in touch with many and some had left for the vacation period, so in the end the turnout was low, only 4, but José, Oswaldo, Joshua and Angel really enjoyed the map, the park where they played later with Michele and Sam (who also got to have a little cycle on rented bikes) the journey on many buses and the Italian home-made pizza which José cooked with Elena in our kitchen on the roof, at 6.00 in the morning. 

One evening we took another long trip (especially coming back, with two very tired kids) to the city centre, to enjoy a concert by an orchestra of wind instruments which includes, on sax, Pato, the boyfriend of one of the volunteer-teachers (who are by now all gone, after a farewell party on the roof with many women of the organisation, as you can see in October's pictures).

On a public holiday, with a family of the boys' friends, we went to a park with miniature replicas of national monuments, where the boys had a good time playing away from here, in a green space.

During the normal days, in the morning the boys have started to attend the library's reading programme (and to play chess or lego with daddy), while in the afternoon they keep going to the pool (unless they're a bit sick due to the windy season and the lower temperatures) or to join daddy's sport&games at the dusty football pitch.

As to our work, Elena keeps being quite busy with nursery kids, management help for the pharmacy, early age developmental checks and more, including a home visit, while Mattia every afternoon organises one hour of games&races for kids from 5 to 10 and the next hour trains a group of 8 older ones, who are now forming a good group and putting some commitment. At times he's joined by our dear friend José (when he's not busy with the English classes, he's recently launched with his wife Marlene), which is a very good thing as this way they can either split the kids in groups or the younger ones can then keep playing in a more organised way while Mattia trains the older group.                                                                                                                              

Sunset gift (from last Saturday)

In "The Mask" Jim Carry praised the wonderful colours of pollution sunset, in the States they boast Sunset Boulevard, here we beat all that with a priceless "sunset eruption" (click on it to view it larger)!

Geo-sociology on the back of a bus, or at school...

"DON'T BE ONE MORE FIGURE! 

In the last 6 months there were: 

269 dead, 33140 deported, 385,357 arrested 

and 70% of women were sexually assaulted. 

DON'T TRAVEL ILLEGALLY TO THE NORTH"

(campaign funded by the US)

From Africa and the Middle East they migrate to Europe, from South and Central America, and in great numbers from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, they look for a future, and/or a way of out of gang violence, in the States. Not only the chances of finding a good life are slim, as living as an undocumented migrant is not easy at all, but the journey itself is extremely hard, probably nearly as dangerous as crossing the Mediterranean on an overcrowded inflatable dingy: lead by reckless agents called coyotes they cross Mexico avoiding all formal ways and means of transport, resorting even to long walks, all the way at the mercy of criminals who prey on these desperate people. As the picture above shows quite clearly, the stats are grim... 

We saw other discouraging posters at the Mexican border, but we found the figures on these particularly strong and it's significant to see this subject brought so close to the real battleground, to the streets of the city, as the message reflects the reality of the lower classes of Guatemala City: the dream, the only future they see, is to leave. Mostly everyone has a family member, neighbour or friend who's living or has lived in the States and characters like the coyotes are nothing far from people's lives either: one Monday morning at school a child told Mattia a coyote was at his house the previous evening, not because his family was planning to leave, but rather because the man was a dear friend of his dad (who, by the way, lived years in the States) and not just a friend: in the past his dad helped him out with the job, getting some good amount of money, by driving people all through Guatemala, from El Salvador to the Mexican border, where they would swim to the other side (across the river we crossed on a bridge walking with our bags just a month ago - see "photo-tales" a few posts below). 

So, what's the reaction to all this? Let's keep that for a future post...