Nusly
Little Isaac, aged six, sat on the side of the pool sobbing. He was inconsolable, unlike his usual self who would be swimming laps with his pal, Beyker. I sent a photo to his mother who works in the school cafeteria, and she responded that it was because he had an infected tooth and was in a lot of pain. She had taken him to a “dentist” in their rural village who had given her some liquid, charged her two hundred quetzals or twenty-six dollars and said that he could not do anything. I mashed up a Tylenol into a spoonful of honey and gave it to Isaac and messaged my real dentist that I was sending another kid along with the three others that had routine appointments that afternoon.
I am American, raised in Connecticut, educated in New York and California, retired in Guatemala. Although I have never been pregnant, I have ten or eleven kids that I look after in one way or another. The first three are the children of my housekeeper who was, for a while, “married” to Alex. Alex has now been in prison for more than ten years with fifty-eight or so years left to go. Kidnapping, rape, extortion, even murder.
In his days of freedom Alex was quite prolific and had a number of other children, perhaps more than even he knows. Two of those children were by Marielos, one of the many other women. Not long before he was arrested and sent away, Alex brought those two children, then eighteen months and three years old, to meet the gringa, in his view, the Golden Goose. They were adorable. It turned out that Marielos also had another boy, Diego, by a different fellow who, as the story goes, is no longer alive.
Despite the fact that I was keeping them in school, which was supposed to keep them from getting pregnant, Estela’s two daughters both managed to do so in their teens, thus Liam and Beyker were added to my brood. Everyone has been sent to school. The older three have graduated from high school and two are in university. The younger five attend a local school where Isaac’s mom, Nusly, works in the cafeteria.
Often at the school I saw Isaac’s mom in tears whenever she saw Beyker who at sixteen months had already started school. Nusly desperately wanted her son to have the same opportunity, but it was totally out of reach for her financially. The two boys even looked alike and were exactly the same age. Fairly quickly, Isaac was added to my account at the school and Beyker and Isaac have become inseparable.
The school is a private one which offers a decent, bilingual education not normally available to the average Guatemalan child. Some of the students like Beyker and Isaac come from families with few resources and the kids are fortunate enough to be sponsored; other students are from more affluent families. A large majority of the population may or may not end up in a very sub-standard government school that collapsed during the pandemic.
I have the good fortune to have a lap pool, thus during the pandemic I hired an out-of-work swimming coach who continues to make sure that the sponsored kids can compete with their more affluent classmates in a swimming pool, which is how Isaac came to be sitting on the side of the pool sobbing and in pain. Nobody likes to bear witness to a six-year old in pain.
The dentist was able to fit Isaac in and determined that he had a number of cavities, one of which had reached a nerve. He was able to seal the offending teeth and scheduled another appointment for filling the cavities. Isaac was once again a happy little boy. That afternoon I offered to drive Isaac and his mom to their village. It was getting dark and riding on chicken buses, the most economic public transportation system in the dark can be problematic due to the frequency of robberies, assaults, and accidents. Barely thirty minutes from Antigua and my lap pool they live in a small, corrugated metal structure with a dirt floor, no refrigerator and no bed for the nine-year old daughter who shares with one of her brothers. However, family members sharing a bed is quite common in the Latin world. During our drive to their village Isaac, who is a bright, kind little boy who loves school recited the numbers from one to hundred in Spanish for me and from one to twenty in English. In January he will start in the first grade.
Nusly is in her late thirties and is a strikingly attractive woman with a radiant smile who adores her children. Although adept with WhatsApp on her phone as are most Guatemalans it is obvious from her written Spanish that she has had little, if any formal education, likely from a lack of resources. At age thirteen she was abducted in her village and gang raped. Nine months later, at age fourteen she gave birth to a disabled child who is now in his twenties and lives with her parents. She been happily married for eighteen or so years and recently had a modest church wedding which had been her dream for years. Her husband sells tortillas, a low-wage, unsteady job which likely keeps them well below the poverty line.
During our drive, Nusly told me that there are ten coyotes in her town, human traffickers who take people to the US across the Arizona desert. This is not the first time she has mentioned going to the US. She said that one niece went to the States and made it. Another relative was not so fortunate and was shot. He is now back home and is recovering from his injuries. I wanted to tell her all the reasons why she should not go but found myself feeling her sense of hopelessness. No chance to buy a bed for her daughter, a refrigerator or even pay for decent dental care for her son. What little money she makes goes for rent, food and the chicken bus. She desperately wants something better for her children but has no idea where that might come from if she does not leave. Her older boy, Jefferson, is seventeen and an excellent student who wants to go to law school. If she could just hang on until he finishes his education… But will he be able to find the funds for university and finish his degree? If he does, will he be able to find a job?
Like millions of others in Guatemala Nusly, is a kind, gentle, hardworking soul. She has availed herself of a government program to ensure that she has no other children. She giggles and says that she wants to learn how to drive. She worries about how she will feed her children during school vacations when the cafeteria is closed. She and Isaac walk about a mile very early on weekday mornings to get the chicken bus to Antigua where she works, and Isaac goes to school. While she is apparently willing to risk a trip to the United States, she is reluctant to move closer to Antigua where there might be a few more opportunities. San Andrés Itzapa is all she has ever known, and it is where her family is located. And where there is little work, few opportunities and ten coyotes looking for business by telling lies and preying on those with little hope.