I recently traveled to Guatemala. An amazing country with a rich culture and incredible people. The woman you see in the picture above was the mother of 5 children from a small village in the mountains of Chiquimula, Guatemala. Poverty stricken, the local government brought us in to help the village's school which is where we found her working in a poorly ventilated kitchen stirring a giant pot of rice and beans (the lunch all the school children eat on a daily basis).
My friend on the trip named Mike had a polaroid camera with him and began taking pictures of the children at the school. Suddenly, like watching magic, the children watched their image appear on the small polaroid film paper.
At that moment everyone on the trip (a group of 18) began to realize that many if not all of these children had never seen a photo of themselves. In a way our heartbeats began to intensify as we watched all the kids from around the schoolyard slowly stop what they were doing, flock to Mike, and gesture for their picture to be taken. To them this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Sadly though, Mike only had a few polaroid films left in his camera and had to reluctantly tell the children he was sorry and couldn't take eveyone's picture.
Shortly after, the woman you see in the photo above approached Mike quietly off to the side and asked if he would photograph her and her family. He agreed but told her they needed to be subtle. So she gathered her children, one by one, pulling them out of their classrooms. They went behind the school and took the photo. While the actual photograph print was small and not very clear as you can see, the woman had tears streaming down her face out of pure gratitude. The photo to her was as valuable as gold. It was a moment I'll never forget.
Please let me know if you'd like to see more photos or hear more about my trip. I traveled around for 10 days. We renovated a school, helped a local village gain access to plumbing and clean water. On top of that we spent a lot of time with local children. We traveled to Antigua, I saw a volcanic eruption for the first time, traveled to an island off of Belize, and went zip-lining through the Guatemalan forest to name a few things.
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