Heather Craft, 16, is entering her junior year at Cape Elizabeth High School and from June 20 to 28, is doing volunteer work for the Safe Passage program in Guatemala.

Craft has agreed to be the Sentry’s guest correspondent for the trip. Follow her travels by reading her blog this week and next week as she posts new entries to: mainetospain.blogspot.com.

“I am very much looking forward to this,” Craft said.

The trip is led by Susan Dana, a Spanish teacher at Cape Elizabeth Middle School; 18 Cape High School students and five adult chaperones are participating. 

Founded by a Maine native and based in Yarmouth, Safe Passage is an organization that provides educational opportunities to underprivileged children in Guatemala City, Dana said.

The Safe Passage experience is a student service learning opportunity approved last year by the Cape Elizabeth School Board.

In her proposal to the school board, Dana said the trip would give students an opportunity to see another part of the world and use their Spanish in a practical setting while doing community service.

“They will use their language skills while they interact with and instruct the children in Spanish. It’s a mission trip that benefits the students of both Guatemala City and Cape Elizabeth; they will learn from one another during our week of volunteering,” Dana said in an e-mail.

Eye Opening

Tuesday, June 22, 12:28 a.m.

There is no such thing as “rights of way” in Guatemala – just one of the many different things that I have observed, along with all the super cute stray dogs.

These past two days have felt like the never-ending week. You know that feeling, when one day seems to go on forever ... well yesterday was extremely long.

We got on a school bus around 2 a.m. to travel to Logan airport to catch our plane, and then arrived in Antigua, which is where we are staying, around 3 p.m. here, which would be 5 p.m. Maine time. And to make the situation less than satisfactory, I am under the weather. Well actually I was, now I’m feeling roaring and ready to go.

Today was the first “real” day of our trip. We didn’t volunteer today, however we visited the Guatemala city dump. The dump here really embodies the difficulties and lives of a large majority of the city’s population. 

A large portion of the city’s citizens work at the dump to collect various profitable items such as cardboard, plastic and aluminum cans and bottles. 

Approximately one-third of the items brought to the dump are recyclable items, and with the help of the people who work in the dump, close to two-thirds of those recyclable items are actually recycled. 

The average income of a person who works at the dump is around 10 to 20 Quetzales, which is less than $3. Many of these people live on $3 a day per household, which usually consists of 10 to 15 people to a one-room house.

While watching the many trucks arrive and dump trash, we noticed that as the trucks backed up people would put their hands on the sides of the trucks, almost seeming to guide them to the correct location.

Anyone want to take a guess why they were doing this? By putting their hand against the side of the truck they were claiming its contents. We also found out that many of the people know the route of many of the trucks and would claim certain trucks because of their routes. The trucks that pick up trash at McDonald’s are very popular because many people, while looking for profitable items, also look for food either for themselves or their families. 

After visiting the dump we got tours of both the main Safe Passage building as well as the guarderia, which is the Safe Passage building for children 2 months to 6 years old.

When we entered the Safe Passage facility through its gates, the contrast from outside the walls to inside was dramatic. The guarderia is surrounded by a slum of Guatemala City. A slum is a vast area populated by the very poor citizens, many of whom work in the city dump. 

The slums appear overnight – one day it’s a large field, the next it becomes a heavily populated area filled with houses constructed out of just about anything to block wind and rain.

All of the kids we saw or met are super sweet and adorable, however policies state that we are unable to post pictures of these children due to privacy issues, so you’ll just have to imagine.

It has only been two days, yet already my eyes have been opened wide to a way of life much different from that I have witnessed in the states. As one of the Safe Passage employees said, “you are not only changing lives, you are saving them.”