Recollections from Guatemala

The boys from the orphanage are running ahead of us, zig-zagging their way up the steep incline. All of us—19 EF staffers on a service tour in Guatemala over Thanksgiving—are huffing and puffing, sweating profusely. A couple of people who wore sandals are struggling. We stare incredulously at the barbed wire fence before us. We will either have to wiggle under it or jump over it; neither is particularly appealing, but the boys’ enthusiasm keeps us going.

Lori, who works in EF Foundation for Foreign Study, asks one of the boys how much farther we are planning to go. He points to a tower on the top of the mountain. She laughs, certain that he must be joking. There is no way our nature walk is going to turn into mountain climbing. At the next clearing, the path starts to slant so that it looks almost vertical. A couple of the volunteers can’t hike any farther and decide to wait for the group at the clearing. The rest of us trek onwards, trying to appear moderately graceful, as the crumbly dirt shifts under our feet.