A Week with Oakhurst's Youth, Day #3

The Dump in Guatemala City
People Unloading at the Dump

Graves of the Wealthy

Graves of the Poor

At the end of this day, I found myself stuck in a familiar trap of thinking. This trap is a sandpit of doubt and incomprehension regarding the division between the rich and the poor. I know it never does me any good to stay stuck here long, but still I return frequently, especially when I'm traveling and when I'm just observing rather than doing something to help the situation. Part of my love for volunteering stems from this sometimes unconscious but always present knowing that the tremendous gap between the rich and the poor is wrong.

Several events led to this discomfort. We eat at very nice restaurants, averaging about Q80-100 (the current conversion rate between dollars and quetzals is $1 : Q8), or about the price of an average U.S. meal. To put things in perspective, it's possible to buy a huge street meal here for Q15. On the way to the restaurants we pass beggars. Children, adults, blind, singing, crying, sleeping. Also this afternoon, we drove through a graveyard to the dump. At the the graveyard, the wealthiest graves are right next to the poorest. Is social class asserted even in death? What does it mean that the rich and the poor are both buried in the same place instead of separate graveyards?

Probably the event that was most uncomfortable, yet heavily important, was our trip to the largest landfill in Guatemala City, where children and adults work, trying to find the salvageable items in hopes of a future sale. The dump was littered with vultures, a bird often considered dirty and foul because it searches through waste to find it's food. In the dump, children picked through the waste along side of the vultures. I think about the Bible and the verse that says God will clothe and feed the birds and even the least of these. And God has provided us with more than enough for everyone in this world. It's up to us humans to redistribute all God has given more properly. For me, an overwhelming and seemingly unmanageable question is how? One of the youth hit the nail on the head of the answer. During our nightly reflection, he said that he no longer want to make a ton of money if it means that other people will have to live like those in the garbage dump. We all have the power to do just that, to live sustainably and responsibility and if we happen to gain more than we need, we know how to give it away. It's so easy to say that there are so many other things to be done, but that though is a vacuum for action. One simple focus at a time. Small step with a lot of love, as Margaret Mead said in so many words.