逐夢 Day 63-82: 慢活Guatemala – 在高山湖邊當義工

Posted On 05/06/2014

Days in Antigua has been relaxing. Playing with the lazy fluffy cat in the hostel, admiring my CS Host's 'work-from-home' lifestyle, finding a local dish...

Joined a half day guided tour to climb Volcano Pacaya. The so called 'English Speaking' guide only spoke 'Hello, who can understand Spanish?' then ignored those few who can't and continue the tour in Spanish. (Later realised that sentence is the best he can speak in English). Without understanding a thing, I guess it'd be better to do the trip independently.

There's public bus to the bottom of the Volcano, marked trails, and plenty of guided tourist group to show the correct way. To my further disappointment, there's ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to see on the top of the volcano. All drowned in thick white fog. It's cold and windy I can hardly keep my feet on the rocky slope. Did some funny marshmallow roasting and saw someone roasting much tastier veggies. Wish I've brought my bread and some chicken legs, haha.

Planned to study Spanish next the the beautiful Lake Atitlan but decided not to due to laziness... haha. Instead I wanted to find some volunteering work.

San Pedro is one of the small towns around the huge crater lake Atitlan.

It's water level varies with the weather and amount of water inflow. It has risen 6 meters for the past few years and it's predicted that it will rise 6 more meters. More and more of the lake shore properties will be under water. The funny thing is, those soaked property are mostly foreign owned. Not knowing the history of the lake, everyone fight for the land nearest to the beach, while the locals are well aware of the engulfing power of the lake, they build their properties on the safe highlands.

Finding volunteer work is no easy task. With my broken Spanish and the numerous profit making agencies in the area, I was only able to find Rising Minds after 1 week running around the whole town and sending many email enquiries.

Rising Minds is a small NGO with minimal resources trying to help the indigenous people in the area. Mainly run by volunteers, I'm surprised by how much workload that falls on Z, a girl from UK, one year younger than me, but is already the Regional Director of RM - still, she's a volunteer). It is impressive to see their determination and make me think about how do I make my life more meaningful as they did.

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Volunteering for Rising Minds involves a lot of different work. From discussion on upcoming projects, setting up fundraising website, collecting seeds for community garden, picking up waste plastic bottles for building green house, etc. From back office to kind of front line, not a single word of Spanish is necessary (which make life much easier for me, haha) Of course, I might have thought of volunteering work that give me opportunity to meet with the locals, learning speaking Spanish. But what I've done is seeing how the young and competent leaders of RM organise and take care of every single activities, holding meetings with random travelling volunteers that have different interests and strength and to run an NGO all by themselves. This experience worth way more than a few Spanish vocabularies.

There are more tourist in San Pedro then I've expected and what the guide book had said. Z told me that different people stay in different towns around Lake Atitlan. E.g. Rich hippies stay in San Marcos, while San Pedro is famous for freaks and drug-addicted backpackers.

Ooops, not a positive thing to know, but these so-called freaks mostly mind their own business without interfering others. So, who am I to judge others?

Besides, where I live is a little bit uphill from the main tourist area. My time in San Pedro is relaxing. Climbing up the 'Indian Nose' for sunrise, walking pass the hardworking workers shaping rocks for a road (which I witnessed the completion of a pavement from scratch in 3 weeks), and walking side by side with lots of indigenous ladies buying and selling in the market.

I like here, quiet, and beautiful!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEWYvJqbImc

I didn't want to leave San Pedro. There were still a lot of things to help out in RM. Volunteers staying in the same place and can shout across to the adjacent RM office. I have got uses to this new routine and it does took some effort get moving again.

Plus I'm not good at saying goodbye. Planned to leave quietly in the break of dawn for the 5am chicken bus. I couldn't believe it when someone actually set and alarm clock to get up and say goodbye. Oh no I almost cried...