Pedro El Viajero

Monday, May 11, 2009

Writer's block?

I've recently been reminded that I have a blog. I may write in it again, but internet cafés are not conducive to long, contemplative entries. They're not even suitable to short and glib ones.

Take, for example, what I started writing today. I was planning on writing about how aggressive and selfish drivers are in Guatemala. For some reason, I don't feel like describing it in any more detail than that. Yeah, they honk a lot and they deliberately screw up traffic flow because they think that they'll benefit from it, when in fact all they're doing is messing up everyone else when they go into oncoming traffic. It comes from a sense of thinking that they are better than the system, and as a whole, Guatemalans have many good historical reasons to think systems won't help them.

I could also write about how awful the system of education is. The fact that all you have to do to become a certified teacher is finish high school. The lack of preparation by most teachers, and their quickness to blame the poor state of education on the children's poverty or broken family. Teachers' inability or unwillingness to discipline their students or to create interesting, interactive, thought-provoking lessons. The fact that kids seem to not have anyone telling them that homework is important to do. It's frustrating to teach here, and the illiteracy rate is sky-high in this country.

I don't feel like writing about my good times, either. The weekend trip I took with my roommate to Lake Atitlán, a popular vacation spot for Guatemalans. There, in a restaurant on Saturday night, I saw an image that will stick with me for a long time. A seemingly wealthy ladino family was sitting at a table in a restaurant, and indigenous women and girls were walking around the restaurant, trying to sell trinkets and cheap souvenirs. I saw the 10-year-old daughter of the ladino family having colorful string braided into her hair at the table, and the girl who was doing the work was an indigenous girl of the same age. Skin color and social status made it so that the light-skinned girl was on vacation for the weekend, while the dark-skinned girl was working on a Saturday night to support her family. It is statistically probable that one girl will some day graduate from a university, while the other girl will probably be caring a baby on her back, hopefully postponing that inevitability until after she's 16.

These are little thoughts I've had, and they're impossible to refine or gel into cohesive entries while I'm sitting in an internet café. But there they are.