Nourish Goes to Guatemala

- Carlos Toriello

I spent the majority of our early morning bus ride staring into the eyes of a young girl. While our group has spent a fair amount of time out in the field and traveling across Guatemala, we have spent the majority of our time with each other. Chapel Hill, Durham, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Boston and even Guatemala City have very different eyes from those of La Pista. Not to say that our group is in any way homogeneous; on the contrary, we are a very diverse bunch but we have had the time to understand one another in different situations. We are still getting to know each other but there is no doubt when you see us shoveling tons of dirt, uprooting trees and even unearthing forgotten pottery that Nourish Guatemala has become a team. Our group is a functioning unit with outcomes and goals in mind for the next couple of weeks that directly impact the community we are working with. And yet, we are very far away from understanding Nebaj, and even more so, from understanding La Pista.

Intelligent development, one of the ways that Nourish chooses to describe its projects, involves an in-depth understanding of the contextual reality surrounding the community and the “developers.” I don’t think you can do development work without it, which is why you see our team carrying around 250 page course packs on top of their water purifiers and Cipro (this massive antibiotic has made its debut. How is that for contextual reality?). Our last discussion featured one of my favorite, must-read, service articles “To hell with good intentions” by Ivan Illich. I have never read a more direct opposition to the kind of work that we are doing. The words “do not come to help,” in reference to service work in Latin America, have a particular sting when you just spent the entire day moving wood around a construction site to aid local masons. On the ground we have successfully gained the respect of the team of construction workers and are asked if we are coming back tomorrow. They are only a small part of the community but if they want us there, I will easily choose to ignore Mr. Ivan’s advice.

When I stared into that little girl’s eyes I could not find any common ground to stand on and understand her. We just looked at each other for endless minutes in that unabashed silence that you rarely achieve with adults, but there was a gap between us. I know that the community was not so long ago entrenched in civil war and that presently her village, a former refugee camp, has dust streets and little running water, not to mention minimal access to modern communication or a formidable medical service. This little girl and I were sharing the same bumpy ride but the distance between us was still great. Ideally the next few weeks of work and homestays with families in Nebaj and La Pista will help bridge that distance, but for now it is still very present. If we are unable to understand each other, even a little bit, then should we be involved in this kind of work? As the leader of this team, am I just paving our road to Illich’s hell? Or are we successfully avoiding it and achieving something “good?”

I don’t know, but I’d love to hear what you have to say…