My Grandfather always used to say; 'If your complacent with what you have,

take a trip
somewhere else'- So we did.

My Grandparents were missionaries who had traveled extensively. one of their

favorite,s
places was Guatemala they had been there six times in
total by the time I was eleven and

my grand father passed away- I remembered him telling me many wann

and inspirational

stories about its people. Olivia had been at school for two years
and already I had started

to notice the effects of Capitalist consumer mentality in my seven year

old daughter, even
though I had spent of her pre- school years trying to develop a nature
that wasn,t

consumer based, supremacist and competitive. Olivia and most

of her peers were by the

age of seven hooked on the pre adolescent version of 'keeping up with the Jones,s

mentality of who had the latest sketchers, who wore the nicest clothes
and who had a

mobile phone with Bluetooth at seven years old! Whose parents were
the prettiest and

drove the best cars.

I decided to go to Guatemala in order to inject some seeds of world reality

and balance

into her young impressionable but already pressurized and influenced

life. I had always
said I would take my children to different parts of the world as I found urban life to be

said;
lacking in cultural capital and one day when Olivia arrived home from school and

.Mum you know what Georgina said to me at school today, she said "I'm not being rude

you look prettier

or anything. .. but I think that when you look at yourself in the mirror

than when I look at you". what does she mean? I knew then that the journey of self value

for my sweet little chocolate daughter would begin here'

and to
I decided on my 4 weeks stay because I wanted Olivia to learn about her Diaspora

I felt in schools in England children seemed to

learn to speak Spanish, and because

measure their worth in Goods and beauty- I wanted her to know how children from

her
different cultures, (parts of which were, and still should be very much apart of

culture) lived.

quarters tn
We settled into our tiny new home "clubhouse on the hilf'that was to be our

meals a day
the home of Senora Gloria and her family. For f,45 a week, we received three

a dozen
Monday- Friday. Senora Gloria, her husband and three children, and more than

that we
of their relatives who all live with them and speak little or no English, meaning

and focuses
have to improve on our Spanish quickly. Ironically nothing builds language

the mind quicker than having to negotiate bathroom times and food.

Spanish
Our days quickly developed into an easy and pleasant routine. Olivia attended

schools,
school (morning classes) at one of Antigua's inexpensive language- immersion

whilst I had private lesson with a private tutor. However it is not the lessons that really
built Olivia's Spanish, but playing with Gevaldo Senora Gloria's 7 year old son which

provides Olivia's most engaging interaction. It is apparent that Senora Gloria's family do

not have many toys or the best clothes or gadgets, but by the second evening Olivia is

professing love for Guatemala. Playing with the roosters and learning to play games that

require no gadgets like; Amarillo a version of 'It' where anything yellow is a safe base.

After dinner, usually a light meatless meal with corn tortillas and frijoles (beans) or some

kind of pepper or tomatoes soup, we sit on the little wooden bench in the courtyard

enjoying the fresh air, and looking at pictures we have taken on our Polaroid that day.

The first time we go to the bank, we meet Lorena; a small, indigenous girl aged about 5

whose face is smudged with grit. We are standing in line waiting to change pounds into

quetzals; so is Lorena. I am struck by both, her independence and her patience. When she

is finished, I give her some quetzals for reminding me of my own child, and she smiles

sweetly before disappearing down a narrow street.

At the weekend we visited the market which was full of women, their colorful woven

clothes indicating their tribe or village, selling jellerrvry, trinkets, pottery, and tapestry.

Some of the women would often call out "que! inda tu nina" how pretty your daughter

they were enchanted by Olivia's black beauty and kinky hair and helped to sanction a

truth that I would have to enforce, in order for my daughter to understand and believe that

although a minority and not a typified beauty in the country of her birth of residence she

was never the less beautiful.

I had explained to Olivia that Guatemala was a poor country before we had embarked on

the trip but she seemed to have forgotten, until we came across a young boy asleep on the
 street, "Is he poor, mummy?" she asked as we passed him by, ,,Look
at he,s feet,,, I tell
her. "If you see someone with no shoes or clothes, it,s usually because they are

struggling".

On weekend two we travel to Chichi- castenango home to largest Indian

market in

Guatemala. The contemporary experience of the indigenous Guatemalans,

was black in

many ways Guatemala is a poor country, many are shoeless income

less and homeless. It
was important for her to recognize and for me to remember that there
were lots of clich6s

about dignity in poverty, which in my mind were wrong poverty is

desperate, cynical in

search of the next meal, and every sunday and rhursday when
thousands of Mayan

artisans display their wares in Chichiastenango, tourist are the meal

ticket. o,Compre
algo" (buy something!) Sellers often out numbered buyers easily, something
neither I nor

my daughter had ever witnesses before in England. Bartering was the process
but who,s

soul could really be in that? It felt like robbery and exploitation of people
who

economically had less and were more dependant on and hopeful that
kind hearted humans
would help them by buying what they had for sale- So I paid full wack
for a beautiful
painting which now sits neatly above my fire place to the admiration
of my friends and
family, and cost me less than the price of my morning caramel macchiato
from
Starbucks. There is really no getting taken advantage of from someone
who genuinely

has no shoes! Never the less It seemed fair to say often as westerners (even the

enlightened and ethical ones) we travel to these beautiful but poverty

stricken countries

ourselves exploiting the indigenous groups and bartering (for l0 minutes, if we can be

bothered) to get what to us, transpires to be 10p discount! if we can,t just

be bothered

moving on.to the next man who is standing aproximatleyl cm away,who

will without a
doubt give it to us 15p cheaper one of the biggest realities for me was that where 10p in

Britain can no longer buy a packet of matches to light Your box of Benson and Hedges,

(which could cost the amount of a Guatemalans weekly wage)

In markets in Guatemala you can buy home grown bananas or if you choose bananas

from Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia, but to mention a few, Then there,s coffee

sold from Cuba, Dominica, Brazil, and Guatemala but to mention a few! I'm sure you

catch my drift! And can imagine the array of seemingly same like produce being sold.

What was evident to me was the fact that so many countries with so many products had

so little money? Or such poor economic power. It was important for me to highlight to

my only child (some might say somewhat early) that we in the western world are every

day consumers of coffee, exotic fruit, sugar, chocolate, (I bet if you asked the average

school child where chocolate came from they would reply the chocolate factory) and cola

is another product who's origin they have little interest in. I felt it was important early on,

that children recognized that on a whole the average western consumer has little interest

in where the things we consume came from, how they were produced and what we paid

for them. That as a society we just want to consume people and products.

As my daughter witnessed my choice to pay full price for my painting and listened to the

reasons why, I hoped a difference had been made. I asked her; can you imagine if I paid
less for my painting, than the price of my weekly morning coffee fix, the rate the

international buyers purchase their goods at! She looks at me bewildered, and I remember

she is only 7.
The Experience was life changing and character building for both myself and my seven

year old, and on the last day of our trip we travel to the market to buy some gifts and we

see Lorena again, she runs towards us and although I am flattered by her affection I am

dubious of any tricks that she may have up her sleeve, but it is Olivia that surprises me,

naturally quite a reserve child she embraces Lorena with a hug and I use my last Polaroid

to take a picture of them both, Lorena looks on in astonishment perhaps she hasn't seen a

Polaroid before, the picture is beautiful and we all smile in agreement, then Olivia's takes

the photo and hands it to Lorena, here you have it she says. I'm shocked an only child

who although kind, not one for giving away treasure to others, particularly her own age.

"I thought give it to her mum as she doesn't have much". My mission had been

accomplished.

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