DANGER
I’m taking online Spanish lessons from a wonderful teacher (Juan from Polytripper — I highly encourage you to use him if you’re seeking that kind of thing).
Juan helped me with a different project last week than the usual worksheet homework I do. I had a letter to write to the child my family sponsors in El Salvador. It’s helpful if we sponsors can write our letters in Spanish (because then the organization, Unbound, doesn’t have to use resources to translate them).
I wrote a draft in Spanish, and Juan and I spent part of the lesson fixing it.
In the course of the half hour, I talked a bit about the sponsorship program, and how I have been to Guatemala (2011) and El Salvador (2014), meeting our sponsored children both times.
“Would you go back again?” Juan asked.
“OH YES!” I answered, with no hesitation.
Then I said I would like to go back to those countries in a situation that was less bound by rules. He asked me what I meant, and I explained how the structure of the trips (understandably) was very rigid. We couldn’t take off on our own. Once we checked in to our hotel in Guatemala City the first day before traveling to Unbound’s center in a different area the next, we were not allowed to leave the hotel. I noticed guards with guns standing outside the bank next-door to the hotel.
On our way back to Guatemala City as the trip was winding down, our driver made sure all of the van’s doors were locked. “A van full of Americans is a target for a robbery,” he said.
At a midpoint in the trip, there was a discussion among the Unbound staff members accompanying us and our group about “chicken buses.”
“Chicken buses” are recycled US school buses that have second lives in Guatemala. Many are decorated very colorfully. It’s not unusual for live chickens to be part of the cargo (hence the name).
This post is a good introduction to chicken buses. And the couple that made this video took an interesting ride on one!
My memory and my daughter’s is a little fuzzy, but there had been a really bad accident along one of the roads we traveled frequently during that trip. A chicken bus had crashed; to my recollection, it had fallen into some type of ravine and there was at least one death.
*** End of Five Minutes ***
There’s still a bit of a language barrier between my teacher and me. (His English is great, but my Spanish is still “progressing,” so it takes a few tries for me to get my point across sometimes if I don’t want to lapse into English.
Everything I was saying to him (the warnings from our hosts about not venturing out without guides, being locked into our van to prevent being robbed, the scary stories about the danger of riding in chicken buses (from the erratic driving, to the hazard of being robbed, and more) implied that it must be dangerous to be in Central America, his home.
I watched his reactions to my comments in real time. I looked for resources on the internet to show him (the blog and video I shared above). We came to the conclusion that Guatemalan chicken buses are similar to Colombian chiva buses.
Whether they are chicken buses or chiva buses, and wherever they are, my conversation with my teacher led me to question some of the assumptions of danger I have absorbed since 2011, when I took my first trip to Central America.
I don’t know when I’ll make it back to Guatemala again (but hello universe, I’m here mentioning it to try to manifest it!), but if I do, I hope to arrange a trip that has a different balance of rules intended to protect hapless Americans and experiences that are more true to what people living there experience day-to-day.
It may even involve a trip on a chicken bus.
Welcome to this week’s Five Minute Friday. Our instructions, via coordinator Kate Motaung: “Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation.” (But I can’t resist spell checking, as you can imagine.)
Wife of one, Mom of two, Friend of many. My pronouns are she/her/hers.
leannelc says
It’s hard going into a foreign country where things are so different to what we take for granted. I admire the fact that you want to try it with less rules next time – I think I’d be too scared to venture too far out of the accepted “norm”.
Paula Kiger (Big Green Pen) says
Well — I’m not sure if my plan is courageous. And I truly understand why the sponsorship organization had so many rules. They were responsible for our safety, and many of us had very little international travel experience. // It’s hard to squeeze into one blog comment, but … the communities truly treated us as royalty (literally with paths of flowers for us to walk on, bands, presentations, etc.). That was lovely and I know it was meaningful to them to greet us, but it also would have been so rewarding to be able to just sit and talk with these people rather than being treated as someone so ……. deserving of such grandeur.
Lee Ann L. says
What awesome experiences you had despite the restrictions and danger. Thank you for the glimpse into these parts of the world.
Paula Kiger (Big Green Pen) says
Oh yes. It was only two weeks of my life, but changed so much about my perspective (and that of my daughter, who was with me during the 2011 trip — she was 15).
elizabethhavey says
I too admire your instinct to go, see how things work, learn about life in this country. Benefit, you can use your Spanish, you can write about your experiences. I have a friend whose son married a woman from Guatemala and thus he has traveled there often. Depending on where you go in the country, it is vastly different.
Paula Kiger (Big Green Pen) says
Yes you are so right about that (and I have only been to a limited number of places in the country, so I shouldn’t put it all in one “bucket.” Every American should spend even 24 hours in a developing country. Period.
Rena McDaniel says
I think it’s amazing that you offer that much support. To actually learn a new language for your sponsored child is amazing and something most people wouldn’t do!
Paula Kiger (Big Green Pen) says
I don’t want to misrepresent. I’ve been working on my Spanish since kindergarten (I went to school at a military base in Puerto Rico). 52 years later and I’m still not fluent, which frustrates the heck out of me! But it’ll be SUCH a bonus to be able to communicate more directly with Anderson and his family.
Laurie Stone says
I admire your moxie. I’m afraid I would want every rule possible, just to feel safe. It looks like an interesting, colorful country.
Paula Kiger (Big Green Pen) says
Ha I hear you!! I didn’t have time to go into it, but I have a neighbor who spent 17 years on a sailboat with her husband. One of their extended stops was in Guatemala, where they lived with a Guatemalan family briefly and took Spanish lessons. I didn’t specifically ask her if she took a chicken bus (not sure why), but I had this conversation with her recently (about my admiration of her spending time there with “less rules”). It’s definitely a balance to stay safe yet really experience the country.
Diane Tolley says
I am in awe.
I am a really ‘chicken’ traveller. (Without the bus!) We rode a bus in Mexico that had no floor in the back and few shocks. And the driver never slowed for potholes, etc. I remember one particular bump that launched all the Canadians sitting in the back almost to the roof! (And those were recently-fed Canadians with bellies full of shrimp…)
But any experience we survive is a good experience, right?
Paula Kiger (Big Green Pen) says
Ha! The way you tell your story, I feel like I’m on that bus!
Currumbin Valley Bus and Coaches says
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