Boston College Athletics
WBB's Manager Gains New Perspective in Guatemala
January 31, 2012 | Women's Basketball
Jan. 31, 2012
Senior women's basketball manager Genevieve Dusing traveled to Guatemala with other Boston College students through the Arrupe International Immersion Program. She shared her experiences and the lessons she learned when visiting the country.
Since the spring of my junior year, I have been very blessed to be a participant in the Pedro Arrupe program at Boston College. Each winter break, the Arrupe International Immersion Program sends groups of students, student leaders and mentors to nine different locations in Mexico, Central America and South America.
 Genevieve (blue sweatshirt) and classmate Tatiana with their host family.  |
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The first two days of our trip were spent in Guatemala City, the nation's capital. The first speaker we heard was Victor Ayala, who gave us a brief overview of the violent history of Latin American, including Guatemala. The most powerful message he conveyed was in order for the country to recover and move forward from its bloody history, the Guatemalan people have to accept they are a violent people since the era of the Spanish Conquest.
The following day we got our first glimpse of the realities of Guatemalan life. In our visit to the military school, we learned about the changes the military has made since the signing of the Peace Accords in 1996. We always witnessed how it affected the lives of the students who attend the school. We met with a representative of the Catholic Archdiocese Human Rights Office named Nery Rodenas. He told us about the work the Human Rights Office does, especially its efforts to identify the thousands of people who lost their lives during the civil war. Most interestingly, we watched a documentary on a priest who was murdered three days after releasing an investigative report claiming that almost all of the deaths in the 36-year civil war had happened at the hands of the military and not guerilla revolutionary fighters.
Our third and final stop of the day was probably the most difficult for our group; we visited a public hospital. We had a brief talk with a fourth-year surgical resident, who also happened to be the hospital's most experienced surgeon on staff. We stood in the emergency room where we witnessed patients undergoing procedures out in the open, as groups of medical students scurried from bed to bed to observe the patients and their treatments. Needless to say, it was quite an eye-opening experience.
The following day we drove to San Lucas Toliman, a small community located on the southeastern shore of Lake Atitlan. We were given a tour of many community projects that included a women's center, a health clinic and a coffee processing center. The next day we took a boat across the lake and visited Santiago Atitlan, where we were led by a Mayan woman names Dolores. She took us to a house where we witnessed healing ceremonies before Mayan god statues. Then we visited a peace park where the military killed a group of unarmed people, including a young boy who was fetching food for his mother. After returning to San Lucas, we visited Andrés, a Mayan man, who spoke to us about his life in his home. Until he was about 20 years old, Andrés was a slave on a coffee plantation. However, since then he has received countless honors and diplomas for his efforts to preserve Mayan culture and improve the life of the community in which he lives. He is currently working on a project that involves water relocation so hundreds of families in nearby communities can have indoor plumbing.
 Genevieve (maroon shirt) playing soccer with local youth. |
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After Mass the next morning, we traveled three hours into the country's western highlands to the small community of San Anita. The community consists of 35 families, all of whose relatives fought in the guerilla movement during the civil war and fled to Chiapas, Mexico, for refuge. Our group of 16 split into pairs, and each pair was assigned a family to live with for three days. Tatiana and I lived with Mariola and her four sons, Jainir, Klecín, Kevin and Alejandro. Her husband left soon after our arrival to travel to
On the last day of our stay in San Anita, we hiked to a waterfall about 30 minutes outside of the community. We had to climb down mountain sides where the walking paths consisted of muddy slopes and occasional rocks for grip and support. Although it may not have been the Amazon, even the smallest of rain forests can be quite a challenge to explore. Later that day, the young people of the community hosted a cultural night that taught about Guatemalan culture, including dances, songs, holiday traditions and seasonal harvest celebrations.
The next morning our group battled through a 6 a.m. wakeup call to watch the sunrise behind the volcanoes. Then there were many hugs, kisses and tears as we said goodbye to our host families. They not only had shared their homes and their food with us, but they had also shared personal stories of struggle, suffering and death, as well as their hopes for the future of their families and their country.
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We spent the last day of our trip in Antigua where we met a man named Hector Argueta, a university professor and a member of a committee founded to preserve the historical memory of
