If you are reading this, chances are that you are not Guatemalan. Or, at least, that you did not spend your formative years in Guatemala. What do I mean by this? Simple. Guatemala has a huge literacy problem. We witnessed it first hand on the plane coming home. To give credit where credit is due, my wife picked up on it first and clued me in.

A substantial number of people boarding the plane to NY in Guatemala City could not read their boarding passes. The crew, knowing this, had to tell them where they were sitting by either leading the passengers to their seats, almost taking them by their hands, or by pointing to exactly which seat they had. One of the crew confirmed to my wife that a lot of people boarding in Guatemala could not read and needed the crew to fill out all of their immigration and customs forms. The crew did say that some of the passengers asked them to do it out of laziness and not because they couldn't read, but still. The crew came from El Salvador, by the way.

Can you imagine what that must be like? Navigating the rocks and shoals of modern life without being able to make sense of the world around you? Or, maybe you compensate, like where one sense gets stronger when another when gets weaker. Beats me. But to be deprived of reading poetry.

The literacy rates are very poor, according to the research I've done. Actually, one UNESCO graph is particularly interesting because it casts the information in the form of illiteracy percentages. If you click on the link, you will see that almost 4 out of every 10 Guatemalan women are illiterate and about 2.5 out of every 10 men are illiterate. Those numbers tower over all of the other countries UNESCO includes in their graph.

One aspect of the literacy problem fairly leaps off the page: the disparity between literacy rates for men and for women. This suggests that women have much more restricted access to formal education than the men do. It also suggests that women have it much tougher in general in Guatemalan society. Or, at least, maybe they do. I don't really know enough to fully draw that last conclusion. But is does suggest that, ipso facto, fewer opportunities exist for women as we in the developed world understand those opportunities.

No matter how you look at it, it's a total mess.

Still, I don't want to leave this topic with the implication that there is no hope. Since 1980, some 25 years ago, the rate of adult illiteracy has dropped from 47% of the population to 29.5%. That suggests hope, right?

Posted by: Random Penseur at 04:04 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 468 words, total size 3 kb.

I am back from Guatemala, arriving home at a little after 1:00 this morning. I lack the coherence to give a full and reflective report, so, instead, I'm going to sort of sum up in a series of stand alone vignettes and random thoughts:

*They should just admit that the country is humid and that central air conditioning is helpful.

*I'm sure I've said this before, but Guatemala is an exciting, vibrant, lovely, dirty, sometimes scary place, filled with kind and gentle people who carry lots of guns, all the time, all over the place.

*Driving behind a pickup truck in which six National Policemen were sitting in the open bed of the truck, on the walls of the bed, was scary enough but when one of them started playing with his Uzi, I wanted to throw myself over the children and close my eyes. All we needed was a pothole. Big sigh of relief when they turned off the road.

*The National Zoo in Guatemala City is a friendly place and we were there on a day when the place was filled with children from outside the city. They were mostly indigenous peoples and we dressed, many of them, in traditional clothes. They were flat out fascinated by my blond haired blue eyes kids and spent a lot of time looking at them and talking about them. The Girl Child became uncomfortable with being stared at for so long and by so many. The Boy Child was oblivious. My mother in law explained that these children had probably never seen anyone who looked like my children.

*Marimba, when played for the locals and not the tourists, can be a lot of fun. It must have something to do with the vibe of the people listening and dancing to it.

*I know I've written about fruit in Guatemala before, but it is so damn good. We also had some other cool things:

pacaya: A vegetable, the initial blossom of a variety of date palm tree; has a slight bitter taste. Used in salads; deep fried in egg batter or served in a tomato based sauce. Most appreciated by Guatemalans and Salvadorians. Consumed year round in particular during Holy Week and November 1 (All Souls/Dia de los Difuntos).

and

Huiquil (which I am spelling wrong and which we had in a soup.

*More later on a couple of other topics from the trip.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 11:33 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 408 words, total size 2 kb.

1 Welcome back and congrats a completing a safe trip. Hope ya had fun!

Posted by: Tuning Spork at May 09, 2005 10:06 PM (GLq2P)

2 I am glad to see you are back safely. I read your accounts with great interest and a little sadness. I miss that part of the world.

Posted by: Alex at May 10, 2005 02:59 AM (yIfpp)

3 My blonde neices and nephews went through something similar in Hong Kong, a little unsettling, esp when large groups of mainland tourists tried to pick them up to pose with for photos.

Posted by: Mia at May 10, 2005 03:15 AM (jdu1C)

4 Fascinating! Sounds like an amazing little excursion. The whole 'police truck' part would have terrified me as well. My world is so much different. I had a friend from Guatamala. He was very fiery. Did you see that is the people there? Did they appear to get easily worked up about things?

Posted by: dr Pants at May 10, 2005 03:16 AM (ZnZYY)

5 Hah! - Gotcha! Welcome back.

Posted by: Mark at May 10, 2005 10:44 AM (wdk9M)

6 Welcome back! Looking forward to some more Guatemala pictures.

Posted by: Jim at May 10, 2005 12:05 PM (tyQ8y)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

The newspaper headline this morning here in Guatemala City was stark: 50% of Guatemalan Children Are Chronically Malnourished. It came with a helpful photograph of three small children sitting by the side of the road eating some meager looking tortillas. The poverty in Guatemala is breathtaking, as I'm sure poverty is anywhere. But when you put that statistic to it, it becomes much smaller and more immediate, the scope of the poverty, that is. Poverty becomes a hungry child, it's really that simple.

The consequences, it seems to me, are much graver than simply a child without enough to eat, a child who goes to bed hungry. Chronic malnutrition will stunt brain growth and will make it easier for disease to grab ahold. The malnourished child today, assuming he lives, will be the burden to society later, unable to earn more than a subsistence wage, if that. This seems fairly obvious. Solve the hunger problem and you give society as a whole a fighting chance.

The problem is that I don't see it changing in the near future.

Pity the hungry children in Guatemala. They deserve at least that.

I feel totally helpless.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 05:09 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 205 words, total size 1 kb.