Ed Thompson spent 3 months in Guatemala after graduating in 2005.

You couldn’t believe that such a large family could fit in such a small ‘house’. The dank structure was essentially just one crammed room, made from corrugated iron, on a steep, muddy slope in the hills of central Guatemala. As part of a team from Fundación Familias de Esperanza, or ‘Families of Hope’, I was spending the afternoon with two American volunteers and several Guatemalan builders, constructing a relief wall for this family’s home following weeks of dangerous rainfall and mudslides brought on by ‘Hurricane Stan’. There seemed a very real danger that the house itself could begin to slide down the hill – thus we were hard at work, on a hot afternoon, attempting to ensure that all would be well. Interspersing dragging heavy sacks of sand up the hill, laying cement (however ineptly!) and playing with the numerous children of the family in question, it was a tiring but fascinating and fun afternoon in Guatemala. We left as the sun started to fall with the wall well underway, and most importantly with a grateful, appreciative family feeling considerably more secure.

I never had any reason to think that I would go to Guatemala. Having finished my degree in the summer of 2005, and having worked very hard for the previous six months, I had no idea about a career or any ambition to go straight into work at that point. Instead, I was very keen to travel, somewhere where I could combine practicing my (dormant) Spanish with volunteer work and new experiences. On researching possible destinations, Guatemala sounded like it would tick my boxes. In particular, I heard that there was a small, attractive town called Antigua, full of Spanish schools and language students of all ages and from all over the world. It sounded like a good place to start – so I booked my tickets, for a three month stay, with no further plans than that….

I arrived in Antigua after dark, and when I woke up the next morning I was completely taken aback by just what a stunning place it is. I had looked at photos on the internet, but nothing prepared me for this colourful warren of small colonial-style buildings, ringed by steep, lush hills and three towering volcanoes (see picture). Not only is Antigua attractive, it is also friendly and safe; a far cry from the high crime rates and daily violence of the capital, Guatemala City. Undoubtedly Antigua is something of a ‘bubble’; not the ‘real’ Guatemala, sneered some purist travellers, who soon made their way on to other towns…. Yet it is not ‘unreal’ in any way – just a friendly place full of locals going about their business and language students, young and old, heading back and forth from Spanish lessons in shaded colonial courtyards. It’s a manageable size too – smaller than the West End of London – so you can get the measure of it very quickly, yet still amble around feeling you have much to explore.

I quickly got myself a place at a Spanish school. The schools all offer accommodation with a host family, which I was keen to take up – so before too long I had settled into the agreeable pattern of four hours one-to-one Spanish lessons at school in the mornings, followed by lunch back with my Guatemalan family. The school provided organised mini-trips and activities in the afternoon, to take or leave, and I got involved with a trip to a coffee plantation, climbing a volcano, another trip to a textile workshop run by extraordinarily imaginative and creative indigenous women, and a few games of five-a-side football; ‘gringos’ vs amused locals in the villages in the hills surrounding Antigua. Having afternoons to do such trips or to just read and relax in the many cafes and squares in Antigua was fantastic especially given that I had been in the middle of my finals such a short time before.

Once I had established a pattern in this way and got myself settled, I was keen to explore volunteering possibilities as soon as possible. The poverty of Guatemala was evident all around – Antigua may have attractive cafes and restaurants, and lively bars full of interesting travellers, but it was clear that much of the local population live on very little. The family I stayed with were relatively wealthy – the father was the head of my Spanish school, and thus took his income in dollars – this immediately put him into that bracket. Many travellers were there enjoying the good side of Guatemala yet without any wish to do anything about the bad, which I thought was a bit of a shame. I really wanted to do something worthwhile and feel like I was giving something back to a place I was really starting to fall for….

One afternoon activity with my school was to visit the headquarters of Fundación Familias de Esperanza, an American-funded, efficiently-managed volunteer project just south of Antigua. It is an exceptional organisation; in a series of smart buildings in well-managed grounds, they provide education and medical care for the regions poorest families. They also have a large construction team, with whom I was soon to work. On the school trip, we spent the afternoon translating thank-you letters written in Spanish by some of the kids at the project to their American sponsor-families in the U.S. The letters were all to thank the sponsors for gifts received the Christmas before – better late than never I suppose! – and we got through a large pile in the afternoon. After chatting with some of the staff, I decided to offer my services on other afternoons, and soon found myself heading down the road to the organisation most days after my Spanish lessons. I continued with the translation work for several days, resisting the considerable temptation to use some creative freedom in the letters to American sponsors....

Given that the sun was beating down outside, I soon got itchy feet sitting in the office translating the letters. Plus, I felt I wanted to do something where the positive results would be a little more tangible. So I volunteered to help with the construction and logistics side of the operation – and this was where I stayed for the rest of my time at the Fundación. In addition to specific afternoon missions like that mentioned above, one of the main tasks in which I was involved was building the foundations of a new classroom for special-needs children in Antigua. This was a complex operation – especially for me given my complete ignorance of construction processes – but I followed everyone else in clearing earth, ferrying wheelbarrows around and mixing cement. This was the largest team in which I had been involved, comprising around 40 people. It was directed by the full-time Guatemalans who worked at the project (and who actually knew what they were doing!), and also comprised American visitors to the organisation, and people like me and some of my new friends from the Spanish school. Working in such a big team was fun – lots of progress was being made, and each person felt like they were a part of it. Gradually seeing the foundations take shape, over a few weeks, felt really satisfying.

Not all the volunteering I did was quite so carefree. In the wake of Hurricane Stan, numerous villages around Antigua were hit by mudslides and exceptional rainfall. With a lack of drainage and emergency services, there were tens of fatalities. My Spanish school organised volunteer trips to the affected villages, on which I went; this involved spending 5 or 6 hours clearing liquid mud often from inside people’s living rooms and bedrooms…. some houses were almost impenetrable. In one house near where I worked, a later volunteer team found a dead body – an extremely sobering thought. You could not help but feel intensely sorry for the villagers who had lost many of their (limited) possessions, and whose life had become so much harder, so quickly, through no fault of their own. Yet also it was fantastic to see volunteers from all over the world coming together and working constructively with the locals to clear away the piles of mud and dirt. One day that I remember I was working to create a trench, to clear mud from the houses, with a Costa Rican, a Dane, two Dutch girls and my English friend from the school. We were conscious that we were only scraping at the surface – literally – but it was great to be able to help at all. Much as it was tiring and depressing at times, afternoons like that were exactly why I had wanted to volunteer in Guatemala.