When Eastern Mennonite University students venture out onto cross-culturals, they do so with the invitation to reflect, discuss, journal and process their experiences. One EMU group this semester is journeying in Guatemala and Cuba, and has begun posting to the cross-cultural blog.
The group is currently in Guatemala City, and will visit Cuba April 9-19. Following another 10 days in Guatemala and Xela, they will return to EMU at the end of April.
Following are some blog excerpts from student writers Elizabeth Nisly, Megan Good, Sol Brenneman, Kat Lehman, James Paetkau, Anali North Martin and Clara Weybright:
Elizabeth Nisly (from Bluffton, Ohio) on the U.S.-Mexico border wall:
The wall is 23 feet tall in the town, but out in the desert it peters out into a low vehicle barrier. The Clinton administration hoped to use the lethal deterrent of the desert landscape to lower the rate of illegal immigration. It was lethal, but it wasn’t a deterrent. I’m trying to wrap my mind around the fact that our country’s official policy is that we would rather have migrant people die in the desert than live in our country.
Megan Good (Harrisonburg, Virginia) on Agua Prieta, a Mexican town on the border:
Brightly painted stucco buildings are stacked cozily along the streets, their signs faded and sagging with disrepair. Dogs wander the dusty, trash-strewn streets, and windows and doors gated with intricate ironwork give off an aura of secrecy. The purple silhouettes of the surrounding mountains stand in the distance, past the low roofs and tops of palm trees. In the late afternoon, sunlight glints just above the tops of the mountains, lighting the city in a hazy, golden glow. Agua Prieta. Dark Water. … It is a place with people, people with real lives and real stories.
Sol Brenneman (Goshen, Indiana) on the daily routine of living with a host family:
Every day, I wake up around 6 a.m. to quickly take a shower before my host brother, Jacobo (35), gets out of bed. My breakfast, a bowl of cereal and a cup of instant coffee, is waiting for me on the table thanks to the hospitality of mi madre, Gladys. My sister, Andrea (25), left the house before I got up and won’t return until I am already asleep since she works during the day and goes to the university at night. She barely sleeps.
Kat Lehman (Dover, Ohio) on the contrast of a wealthy cemetery and workers in the city dump nearby:
The city’s working class wasn’t buried in the cemetery; they were living in the city dump, or the basurero, located just outside the cemetery. When we arrived at the edge of the cemetery, we found ourselves looking out over an abyss into which mausoleums crumbled and thousands of vultures swirled in a morbid vigil. I shielded my eyes against the brilliant sun and the wind that carried dust and a putrid odor up from the basurero below.
James Paetkau (Goshen, Indiana) on the picturesque:
We took a trip to Lake Atitlan, which is a large lake nestled between three volcanoes in Southwest Guatemala that lived up to the pictures and praises we had seen and heard before the trip. … We took a tour through an organic coffee farm, learning about the extra labor necessary to grow and harvest coffee, as well as the environmental benefits this type of farming has for the lake and the surrounding area because of the lack of chemical fertilizers used in the farming.
Anali North Martin (Cary, North Carolina) on “jogging” – with her host mother and abuelita:
When I came back down [from changing into my jogging clothes], both my host mom and abuelita were ready, too. Apparently they were coming, too, and were excited to join me on my “run,” which was now a walk to and from the park down the street. I was disappointed…. However, walking through the neighborhood close to dusk, many families were out, strolling to the little tienda nearby to get a staple for dinner, passing each other with friendly waves; there was this small town feel nestled in the midst of a sprawling city, and I didn’t realize how much I had missed greeting acquaintances with pleasantries, like on EMU’s campus.
Clara Weybright (Manheim, Pennsylvania) on visiting a cloud forest conservation organization:
During our five days in the cloud forest, we spent three nights in the Community Cloud Forest Conservation facilities, which are filled with windows, light, and wood…. We got to experience composting toilets, showers heated in pipes that ran through wood cook stoves, and meals featuring ingredients like cloud forest spinach. It felt like there was no boundary between “indoors” and “outdoors.” We got to spend a lot of time outside in the cloud forest. We hiked through the forest two different days, both times reaching caves that were historically places of Mayan worship.