CoLors of Life

In the lowest points of Escuintla, Guatemala, piles of trash create mountains and valleys that rival the volcanoes of the highlands.

Just like the volcanoes of Agua and Fuego, these monsters are erupting. Due to the burning properties of methanol, heaps of garbage flame relentlessly, blanketing the mountains of filth in thick smoke. For the workers that operate the dump, the landfill of Escuintla, Guatemala is home.

As I walk through the dump, I see only in gray. Smoke, soot, and dust obscure the colors of clothing, the colors of skin, even the colors of wrappers and bottles that form the trash mountains. My breath catches with every inhale of dust and smoke, cooked by 100 degrees of sun. Since garbage makes for poor soil, food and water are scarce. Small children soar down slides made of trash, smiling widely, to grasp a small bag of water being offered at the bottom. They are also offered an invitation to La Tierra de Esperanza, the Land of Hope, a small community close by with a water well, sturdily-built homes, and operating restrooms.

After returning from the formidable trash dump, the Land of Hope looks like a heaven on earth. Sixteen cinderblock homes painted in bright colors contrast against the washed-out grays of the smoldering garbage. Children with glistening skin, amber and hazel eyes, and clean, colorful clothing enjoy a playground painted in vibrant red, green, and blue. A group of ladies chop fresh carrots, tomatoes, and chili peppers and serve soup in blue, pink, and yellow plastic bowls. The amphitheater that serves as both community center and church boasts a crisp coat of white

CoLors of Life Jessie Kieffer

paint, with the opposing walls covered in gorgeous murals of flowing rivers, flourishing trees, purple mountains, rich sunsets, and scripture. The newest mural reads, “¡Hemos encontrado agua!”, we have found water! The Land of Hope has indeed found physical water, with two active wells that deliver fresh water for drinking, bathing, and cooking. They also have found living water.

Kimberly is just like any other seventeen-year-old girl. She hates waking up early, so she is enrolled in the second half of the school day, which starts at two o’clock. She complains about the stifling heat, saying “¡Mucho, mucho, MUCHO calor!” She writes short love poems to her boyfriend about kisses and dreams, and she stresses over homework. When I spent time with her, she was working on a large color map of the community surrounding her school. As we shaded greens, blues, and reds onto white papers taped together, Kimberly told me about her life. Her boyfriend is twenty-eight, and they have been together for three years. About twice a month or so, she makes the four-mile walk into a nearby town to see him.

Kimberly lives with her mother and two younger sisters. Her older sister, Stephanie, who is nineteen, left the Land of Hope last year due to a dispute with her mother. She now works in a brothel in Escuintla. The final member of the family is Alex, the eighteen-month-old son of Stephanie. Though the mother recently went into the darkest places of Escuintla to bring him back to the Land of Hope, the baby is largely rejected as a part of the family. Alex’s pants are always a little too big and fall down his legs. His hobbies include going down the red slide at the Land of Hope and playing with sticks in the sand. Though Alex is often seen yelling and grunting angrily, he is a sweet baby, mostly showing his affections to Salome and Brenda, his twelve and nine-year-old aunts, by giving little besitos.

Majo is thirteen. She usually wears her thick, dark hair in a loose bun on top of her head, and her round eyes are full of mischief. On most days, she can be seen wearing a shade of red. “Majo” is not her birth name; it is short for “Maria Jose.” I first met Majo on a Wednesday. She was mindlessly twirling her small hand around a metal fence and chatting with Catalina, who is twenty. With black smoke floating above us, we exchanged names and ages. I was introduced to Jack, Catalina’s four-year-old-son, while his dusty fingers clutched tightly to his mother’s seafoam green shirt. Creative Essay

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Creative Essay

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The following day, a few other girls on the team and I were painting the playground at Land of Hope. Even though it had only stood there a year, the red, yellow, and blue had chipped and rusted. Someone was playing worship music in English. Every twenty minutes or so, Majo walked by us, sat under the large tree overlooking the land, and asked me what the song was saying since she didn’t understand the English. The phrases I remember translating for her are “You make us come alive” and “I will look for you in the darkness.” I realized that those phrases might sound strange on their own, so I ended by saying “the singer is speaking to God,” hoping that she wouldn’t think the song was about a stalker. She never commented on the songs; she would only nod her head thoughtfully, then stroll away.

Jaquelin is a very sweet girl. She is eleven but looks only eight or nine. When she smiles, her tiny square teeth form a line that slants slightly upward on the left side. She is usually wearing pink, and she enjoys taking pictures, jumping rope, and playing la gorra mágica, a game where one special hat is a “magic hat” that gives magical powers to the wearer. Jaquelin is a flash of color. She is energetic and can run around, jump rope, climb trees, and yell playfully for hours. Jaquelin has a younger sister, Flor, who is seven. Unlike Jaquelin, Flor is very quiet and likes to keep to herself much of the time. The moments that I remember with her consist of us sitting quietly on the ground, making a little volcano out of sand, dried leaves, and a plastic water bottle.

“What do you call this?” I asked, lightly tapping the sand.

“La arena,” she replied, letting the sand slip between her fingers and onto her faded purple shirt.

“La arena,” I repeated.

After a minute or so of very focused volcano building, I said, “Sand.”

“Sand,” she said softly, not taking her eyes off of her project.

We followed this pattern with every ingredient for the little volcano.

Jaquelin and Flor’s baby brother, Samuel, is maybe two or three years old. He usually wears a teeny orange shirt. His language skills are still very much in progress; I learned his name and the family he belonged to from his grandfather after we had already been playing for three days. Though he doesn’t speak, Samuel communicates with his smile of only a few teeth and the creases around his chocolate eyes. He enjoys bouncing up and down, helping the older boys shovel sand, and giving hugs.

On Thursday, my team and I went into the nearby dump to share water and to invite people to the Land of Hope. There, I met another girl named Flor, who lives in the dump. She is sixteen. The soft, pretty features of her face were partially hidden under the blanket of gray soot that coats the entire landfill. We invited her to come to the Land of Hope the next day to have her nails painted.

On Friday, all the girls at the Land of Hope were crowded around three white folding tables in a plain concrete-walled room. There were blues, pinks, reds, purples, greens; nail polishes in every color of the rainbow. Jaquelin was the first one there, and she had her nails painted bright red. Brenda told me that her teacher did not allow her to have nail polish, so she tried several different colors, scraping the polish off after each time. Ruth, a quiet girl with hearing aids on both ears, painted my nails green with purple stripes. Little Samuel knocked over several bottles of nail polish onto the table, staining the white plastic with pink and blue. David, another boy of eight or nine, painted a girl’s nail with every single color. The color of paints and the color of life flushing in faces flashed everywhere in the room. Flor, our friend whom we met in the trash dump, came to join us. She picked a bold shade of coral blue.

Against the faded hues of her clothing and the dust on her skin, the blazing blue flowed through each graceful movement of her strong arms and gentle hands.