This post was written during a mission trip to Coban, Guatemala. It was composed as an entry on www.mattblumphotography.com, but has not been posted yet.
The other day, we stood on broken glass and crushed candy boxes, our eyes squinting through sunglasses from the bright sunlight. Our feet were of course protected by our tennis shoes, probably not our best, because of course we didn’t want to soil our nicer footwear. Some of the people who live there at Coban’s garbage dump weren’t so lucky to have anything to protect their feet. One little toddler boy wasn’t wearing pants.
There are several Guatemalans living there in shacks and they pick through mounds of trash that seem to stretch for miles (or weeks of searching) among mangy dogs and a sea of vultures fighting over pieces of raw meat.
We all were unsettled, if not haunted by our own selfish feelings; we worried about our belongings in the car, we applied our sunscreen and drank bottled water. Those who live here have to wait for weeks to have potable water delivered through a happenstance connection between a local priest and some firemen.
We talked to a government employee asking many questions about the dump and the inhabitants here. Matt Blum translated for the other nine of us, as has become his unofficial job on this trip. The employee in the official blue cap answered many of our questions. Earlier, Blum told us the dump has improved very much since the group from St. Pats visited last year, and the employee’s answers explained these improvements. The mayor of Coban has offered free school to the kids living in the dump given that they are not permitted to search through garbage. The government has also provided land for the people to live on and room to sort recycling to sell--all small but meaningful steps to improve a desperate lifestyle. Most adults living at the dump only speak the Mayan dialect of Q’ecqhi’, making it difficult to find any other job. But now their children will speak Spanish, hopefully improving their chance in the future to gain employment away from this place.
After handing out bread, juice and candy to the children, we jumped back into the back of a pickup truck to make our way back to the monastery. A day later, I continue to be haunted by those images and thoughts, hoping for a brighter tomorrow for those children.
Every night on this trip we have sang several songs, one of which is Open the Eyes of my Heart. Certainly that visit opened our eyes. At the dump, we assisted those children and some of the adults by providing some small sustenance. But I think as we stood there in our clean clothes and sunglassed faces juxtaposed against a landfill and a desperate group of people, the real benefit that came from today was our eyes have opened at least a tiny bit more.
