We left Guatemala in July. Our last twenty month stretch there was packed with experiences ranging from the crazy to mundane. I divided my time between three NGOs, sang in a band, joined a choir, travelled inside and outside the country, experienced earthquakes, hurricanes, flash flooding, yoga, meditation, cooking classes, joined the gym, got all crazy fit, made significant friendships, and had a social life I never imagined possible. I was dug in, in. During that time I didn’t write much, just happily overwhelmed with living.
Socially, it felt like I’d staggered out of the Sahara all dusty and disoriented…no, more like I’d awakened from the time-to-harvest-them-organs stage of a vegetative coma. Let’s just say post-college I wasn’t exactly tripping over my piles of close girlfriends. Yet in one village in the highlands of Guatemala, I connected with people effortlessly. I clicked with not only one person, but many. While there I made five significant friendships, not en masse, but individually. Had we stayed I have no doubt I would have made more. I know, right? Insane number for me! This was the burst of simultaneous friendship forging others experienced in college. Mine was just a few decades later.
Squirreled away in this little corner of the world were my kindred spirits–amazing, adventurous, vibrant, independent, fierce women whose life stories were book worthy. They had a warmth and lack of judgement I found rare, while still wielding strong opinions a plenty, in case you were short of your own. Fun was had and lots of it, for big occasions, scraped together paltry reasons, or none at all. They had this way of letting loose with wreckless abandon that I swear could only be learned in the 60s, while maintaining a thin veil of responsibility that comes with maturity… or decades of partying. I was the young punk among them by 5-10 yrs. Felt like I’d always known them. I was having the time of my life. They got me. I had peeps. I fit somewhere. Unexpected!
We lived in Guate for three years over a six year timespan. Regardless of the miraculous resurrection of my social life, there were other factors at play. Like so many, I’m of the sandwich generation, with older parents and kids to consider.
Ma’kids
It’s one thing to take a major midlife detour with kids in tow, it’s another to make sure the adventure doesn’t derail their future. For the girls the benefits of living in Guatemala were many. A drawback in the smaller town we’d chosen, was the limited choice of American curriculum based schools. The school our girls attended was a new start-up, still finding its feet. That first year they had trouble finding and keeping teachers and staff and principals and buildings. It wasn’t unusual for a teacher to quit in the middle of the night and skip town. Why not? Even the principal was doing it. We knew the school would be a huge success (and it is), but we didn’t have time to wait for the maturation. We needed more consistency for middle kid’s remaining high school years. A change was necessary.
Ma’rents
Simply put, my mom is 91 and my dad 84. I wanted to live closer so I could see them more. I also wanted the girls to have significant relationships with their grandparents, which requires actually seeing them.
In addition to these two time sensitive sandwich realities, my Guate-smitten haze was dissipating to reveal some barriers to permanent patriation.
Poverty
When we moved to Guatemala, it’s true, I was smitten. Clearly I was cut from expat cloth. I thought there was nothing I couldn’t live with long term. It took years to acknowledge the growing dissonance I was feeling. When I walked outside our walled-in oasis, I saw hungry people, starving, abused dogs, a corrupt and crippled infrastructure. One could rarely have a coffee and bagel without women or street kids’ hungry stares or open hands present. As time passed, I found the disparity of being a person with means in a community loaded with significant poverty, less and less palpable. I thought I could counteract this by chipping away and making a difference. I worked with three organzations; The Porch (building houses and other humanitarian efforts), Mayan Families (with their school sponsorship program), and Ayuda (helping the street dog situation, spaying/neutering, fostering). Despite being part of these three amazing organizations, I couldn’t get out from under the heaviness of the overall context.
Basics
I was raised on the two B’s, the basics plus books. Needswise I’m a simple person. But I realized there are some lifestyle luxuries not only have I grown accustomed to, but want to keep being acccustomed to. Such as being able to eat and drink without getting amoebas, being able to shower and get water in my mouth without getting parasites, washing around my eyes without getting an eye infection or my butt without getting a UTI, access to good medical services when needed. Being sick was never fun, but generally I’m a hearty old bugger. But having the girls constantly battle those adventure-related ailments, paired with the difficulty of getting them properly diagnosed and treated, not fun at all.
Culure mio
No matter how much I enjoyed my newly adopted culture, I missed parts of my own. I missed living around others who have a similar economic reality (or opportunity), eleviating the constant and often severe inequalities. Clearly, a saint, I’m not. I missed going out to eat without the fear of bringing home amoebas (which can take up to a month to get rid of or longer) or to a movie (without a four hour drive to the city). I even missed the familiarity of my own disfunctional political and governing system. I missed how we celebrate holidays, cut down Christmas trees, colored eggs, celebrated birthdays, Halloween. Shallow? Perhaps. The truth often is.
It’s more clear to me now, who I am and who I am not. Permanent expat living is off the table, at least for now.