Contradictions and Juxtapositions.

Guatemala is a country full of contradictions and juxtapositions. As a person who has been told often that she is a walking contradiction, I can't help but to notice them. This is a country that is full of fear and hope, of love and violence, of tradition and technology. And it keeps me always in a state of limbo, not sure which to abide by and believe in.

We spent the last four days in the Northeast region of Guatemala, a very, very poor region surrounding Lake Izabal, which is the largest lake in the country, if I am not mistaken. And in this region, I found all of these contradictions to be very present. The women still wear the traditional Mayan costume, but have cell phones, drive cars, and use computers. As I am writing this right now, I can hear roosters crowing. It is an unusual mix of thousand year old traditions and the modern world which is at the same time to be expected, and a surprise. The police force here consists of men who look like they are twelve standing in the streets with uzis, in front of stores, post offices, banks. Many women are beaten by their husbands. We even saw a guy relaxing with his friends by the lake who had a pistol stuck in the back pocket of his swim trunks! And yet despite all this fear and violence, there is so much love and hope. You see it in the faces of the children, and in the way that mothers take care of their children. It's in the way that the kids are communally parented, and in the way that old Mayan women hug me and call me their daughter.

And yes, you can't have hope without fear or love without violence. I suppose that to have such hope and love, there must be the same amount of the contridiction. But my goodness, do you need that much? However, it does make the good very good, and the bad very, very bad. And don't get me wrong, there are these exact same contradictions in the U.S. I guess it is either more pronounced here, or at home, I am living it, and just don't notice. It is everywhere, which just blows my mind. I cannot fathom living in a situation like theirs and being able to still believe that life is good. But they do. And I pray that I will still be able to believe that life is good after living here for the next 10 months and seeing how life treats them.