May 18, 2010 • 55 mins
Josh and Chuck share the story of their recent eye-opening trip to Guatemala, which was sponsored by a nonprofit organization called Cooperative for Education, in this very special episode of Stuff You Should Know.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from House Stuff works dot com. This episode of Stuff
you Should Know is brought to you by Go to Meeting.
We all have to meet, but the average cost of
a single business trip is one thousand dollars. With just
(00:21):
one click, you can save time and money and have
your meetings online with affordable and easy to use Go
to Meeting. Use Go to Meeting for sales, presentations, product demos,
training sessions, collaborating on documents and more, and at forty
nine dollars per month for unlimited meetings, it saves time, money,
and travel. Try Go to Meeting free for thirty days.
Visit Go to Meeting dot com slash stuff. That's Go
(00:44):
to meeting dot com slash stuff give me your side podcast.
(01:07):
And what the heck was that? That was not you,
my friend? No, it wasn't. Clearly that was the booming
voice of our buddy that we met down there, who
had such an impressive voice for radio. We said, we've
got to get this guy to record our podcast intro
if we can use it. Yeah, he's ah. He works
at one of the schools we went to and he
was m seeing an event and we're like, holy cow,
(01:30):
he's the the Guatemalan meltor matvelvet. Yeah, and this is
a very special pair of podcasts, right, Chuck, Absolutely our
Guatemalan Adventures. Yes, our Guatemala not there. Yeah, so um
Chuck and I and Jerry went down to Guatemala. As
many of the listeners, no team s y Chuck Um,
(01:54):
and our eyes were open quite a bit, you could
say that, Yeah, we were originally going to go down. Uh,
we should probably tell the back story. Do you want
to take it? Chuck? Chuck loves emailing people back, especially
when they say, do you want to come to Guatemala
with this? Will take exactly? That's pretty much out went down.
We got an email from a fan name and Dempsey
(02:17):
our buddy now yes, and she emailed us so, I
don't know last year last fall and said, hey, I
worked for this nonprofit called Cooperative for Education and we
do work in Guatemala supplying school books and uh computer
centers for rural indigenous poor people in Guatemala. And check
(02:38):
out our video and our website and we'd love it
if you guys came down we'll we'll sponsor you to
come down on this trip and see what you think
about it. No strings attached, of course. We just think
you would enjoy it and you know, having a great experience. Right,
it's pretty much out happened, and we're like, what's the
catch and what's your what's your game here? Right? And
she really was like, no, really, we just want you
(02:59):
to see. I mean, if you guys want to mention
this on the podcast or something, that'd be awesome because
they are donor driven organization like all nonprofits exactly. Um,
because nonprofit can't turn a profit yeah, um. And uh
So we went down there initially with the idea of like, okay,
we can't just completely throw to this organization, let's do
(03:23):
one on can education alleviate poverty? Can it actually happen?
Because that's what CoA does well. Originally she just asked
for us to come down, and then we were like,
wait a minute, why don't we bring Jerry and then
we can record down there and do our first like
on the road, live recording type of deal. That was
your idea. I think I was snacking while you were
thinking of your way down with it though. Yeah, so Chuck,
(03:45):
we never go anywhere unprepared, or I should say, we
never do anything. I don't put on my pants without
doing a little research first to find out if overnight
while I was sleeping, somebody figured out a better way
to do it. And that is true. Um, so we
did some research on Guatemala, and UM, I actually have
a little story for you. The night before we left,
(04:07):
I secretly wrote a note to my dear Yumi, telling
her that I love her in case anything happens to me.
I really wanted to make sure she knew that I
went down thinking that there's a chance I was going
to lose my life in Guatemala. Yeah, here's a little tip.
If you guys are going to travel in some country
that's not you know, like France or Italy, don't go
(04:28):
to the State Department website and that where you found
it to read like the travel warnings and all, because
you got to some of these countries that are a
little off the beaten path, and they do they make
it sound like you will be lucky if you come
back alive. Yeah, and that's exactly what I thought. Um
there's about eighteen paragraphs. You're scared that detail kidnappings, Ransom's beheadings. Um,
(04:49):
straight up murder. Uh. Just it sounds like the country
is just overrun with criminals and disease, all manner of disease.
We got shots at the yin Yang. What do we get?
We got lockjaw, Yeah, I got a It wasn't dip ted,
it was ted something like that. I don't know what
they shot me full of. I just hold my arm
(05:11):
out when somebody presents me at the storringe. Jerry got
sick actually, um from the shots ahead of time and
a little bit of foreshadowing. A little chucky got sick
on the way back. Yeah, I think I ingested some
ice from a rum drink or two. Yeah, there's last
there's some precautions you have to take. Oh and to
finish my story, you we found the secret note within
(05:31):
hours of us leaving, so that worked out well. Yeah,
it's great, Um, all right, Chuck. We also did some
background on the country, and one of the first things
you find out about Guatemala when you look into it
is that it had a pretty serious civil war. Yeah,
for about thirty years thirty six, my friend. Yeah, that's
why I said about Actually that's about forty years. But sure,
(05:56):
internal conflict. Uh formerly end in that's a long time
to be under a civil war. Yeah. And actually, um,
guatemala Is is is kind of this very put upon Latin
American state. Um. It was run by a dictator in
the up to the forties when there was a I
don't know if it was a bloodless revolution, but I
(06:17):
think it was one of the softer revolutions. And there
were some liberals running the show for about ten years,
and Guatemalan still referred to it as uh ten years
of Spring, right, Chuck. They referred to everything in regards
to spring. It's the land of eternal spring. The spring
is like the spring spring. Yeah. Um. It's so they
had this great this area this time of peace. Um.
(06:40):
And part of that was involved taking land from the
United Fruit Company, which owned a bunch of land it
wasn't using, and redistributing it to uh farmers, right. And
the United Fruit Company didn't like this, went to the
CIA and said, hey, you know, you've got some lefties
in your backyard. You should probably supply or to qu
(07:00):
CIA back to coup end of the ten Years of
Spring in the beginning of the civil war, which they
did not refer to you as ten years of summer
that followed the spring. No, No, it was pretty bad.
And we'll get into a couple of stories. We've got
a couple of stories while we were down there. Yeah,
a couple of like bad massacres that happened. Yeah, there were,
(07:20):
um I think a hundred thousand killed and a hundred
thousand disappeared is what they called them, which meant killed
that they didn't find your body, um, and they A
later Truth Commission report concluded that of the atrocities committed
in that in the civil war were done by government
soldiers and actually oftentimes they disguise them like to make
(07:44):
it look like the guerrillas had done it, to drum
up um resentment antipathy towards them. Yeah, it was a
It was a bad thirty six years for Guatemala, and
like you said, it ended in so they're still kind
of coming out of this right, very much. So. I
think more than half of Guatemalans are direct descendants of
(08:05):
the mind people, and they some of them, like you said,
speaking the mind tongue, still church. Some of them don't
speak Spanish, right, many of them, right, Yeah, I mean,
if if you run into a Guatemalan who speaks Spanish.
Likely they're bilingual because they speak their indigenous mind tongue
and Spanish as well. Right, they are one of the
most populous Central American countries. Most of their population is
(08:29):
rural and fifties six percent live below the poverty line.
And that's Guatemala's poverty line. Yeah. Well, that's a very
important thing to point out. None Americans very different and
they are mainly agricultural, uh, labor industry, services industries only
about Yeah, they're their economy. The top three um segments
(08:53):
of their economy are agriculture, remittances, and tourism. Yeah, let's
Remit says this. People that leave the country to go
make a decent wage and then send money back home.
And that's the number two segments of their economy. And
uh with them tourism as well, it's it's number three,
but it's not entirely enormous. I think it makes up
(09:15):
a pretty decent portion, but it's not that big of
a money maker. Again because of things like the State
Department website and the fact that the civil war only
ended fourteen years ago. Yeah, and I tell you, despite uh,
except for Antigua, which we'll get into, that was the
end of our trip. We didn't see any spurs where
we went. No, we went definitely off the beaten pathway. Yeah,
way in in country, weren't We weren't like hanging out
(09:37):
on the beach or anything like that. And check the
educational scene in't exactly happening down there. Yeah, which is
why we went and why ed is there clearly right?
And uh, you mentioned Anne, So here's a clip of
and explaining, Um, a couple of a stat that we
found a little staggering. We know that in rural indigenous
(09:59):
villages in guatemal Uh, three out of four students who
start first grade will drop out of school before they
complete sixth grade. So of the four of us standing here,
only one of us would actually complete sixth grade. That
would be Josh exactly. But that's good to know, Josh,
that you would have been the one to stay in school.
(10:20):
It's possible. I think you're the clear winner. I appreciate
that and seem to get a kick out of it. Yeah,
and um, most students who live in Guatemala, she also
told us during that interview, UM, don't learn to read
until maybe third grade. And um, the teachers don't really
feel it's a problem because they think that kids can't
learn to read until that age, so they don't teach them.
(10:43):
They're finding, thanks to groups like co ED that oh wait,
well kids can actually start to learn to read in
the first grade if they have books, right, which is
a big deal. So that's why they're there, the whole
thing that all of this hinges on. Yeah, but that's
one of their big programs. We'll break that down load
a little bit later, right, Yeah, So that's why co
Ed's there, that's why we got invited to see the
(11:03):
stuff firsthand. And so we begin our trip. So, Josh,
we meet the three of us early early at Heartsfield Jackson.
So early. What a bonus for us is there's a
direct flight to Guatemala from Atlanta, just scant what was
it like three hours maybe three hours? Three hours and
(11:24):
likes for air fair round trip. Yeah, it was a
pretty good deal. So we get on the plane, Jerry
and I are we sit together, Josh, Alex not to
sit with us, because I love the quote you gave
me when I was like, what's up with that? You
said you'd like to leave it to the gods. I'd
like to leave it to fate to determine whether I'm
going to die in an air or not. So Josh
(11:44):
is behind us, and a funny nickname came out of this.
Josh I turned around at one point because we all
know from previous podcasts you don't love to fly. It's
not your favorite thing in the world. No, it's not.
So you actually put the black blanket that kid you.
Jerry is so cracking up right now, the black blanket
that they give you over your entire body and head.
(12:05):
And I was like, Jerry, check it out. And we
started calling you, what the black ghost of the sky,
black Ghost of the skies. Yeah. I went to sleep.
I needed to sleep because I don't like to fly.
It was so funny. Um, and I had um taken
a painkiller right so that that did you right, right.
I didn't wake up until we landed. I think that
(12:27):
was pretty And I remember I, um when we did
land I actually woke up right before we landed. And
as we were coming in to the runway. Um, right
as we were touching down, I noticed there was like
a line of airplanes that had apparently been stripped for parts. Yeah,
it runway, and I just thought, you've got to be
kidding me because I thought I was going to die.
(12:50):
Remember sure you probably thought that when we took off
from the same airport, but that I was gonna die.
Well not from the heading, no, but we're just reminded
when you say like, hey, we need a tire, go
get one off that plane. It was hilarious. So we
get there. The first like ten minutes in the airport
is literally like a three Stooges episode. We're just kind
of like walking in circles. We know we have to
(13:11):
go through uh and shore our passport, we know we
need to exchange some money Combio, we need to go
to Cambio. We eventually get outside and this is when
this is when co Ed shines. They really I can't
stress enough because we're gonna try and get some of
you people out there to go on one of these trips.
On these tours, they're so they really take care of you,
so there's no need to be worried about going to
(13:32):
a foreign scary land. Like the second we got out
to the airport, they had the signs and the bus
waiting for us. We met our cohorts and got on
the bus and went to Guatemala City. Yeah, and Chuck,
I think all three of us. I was um still groggy, uh,
and we we decided that we needed to kind of
um create some intro in the field that we could
(13:55):
use and um. We started drinking gaios, which is the
the national beer of Guatemala, and actually you can get
Guyo here. Guyo is uh rooster, right, yeah, it means rooster. Um,
so they call it famosa here, but it's the exact
(14:15):
same beer, right. Well. Coed hit the ground running, though,
remember they when we first got there. Oh yeah, Holly awesome.
Holly met us at the hotel and it was like,
here's the subway sandwich. We gotta go to our first school.
Do you guys want to go? It's your option, And
we're like, uh, we we want to like record an
intro here, so you guys go ahead and we'll meet
up later. So so that was time well spent because
we were thinking about what to record while we were
(14:36):
drinking gios, and eventually we got to the point where
everything we recorded was just kind of useless. So I
wish we could include some of that because it's really funny.
Jerry was so frustrated with us because we just we
were we were doing a good job. Yeah. So, um,
but it wasn't just that. It was also we didn't
really have a conception yet of what co Ed did
(14:58):
and um, that was about to change actually because we
remember we were still going down on the premise that
we were going to record a podcast, can uh Education
Alleviate Poverty? Um? And and this was about I think
it was in Guatemala City that night where the turning
point began and our eyes started to open more and
more like Holy cow at dinner, at dinner. Yes, So
(15:20):
they took us. They got back. I was setting us
up for a clip. We don't have a clip for that, okay,
so take it sounded very much like an MPR set up,
Thank you. Uh so yeah, we met up. They came
back to the hotel. We um had a couple of
beers at that point and failed miserably with our intro
and they all said, hey, let's uh walk down the
street here to this restaurant and we can talk a
little bit. And I thought, are we going to be
(15:42):
kidnapped at any point during this walk? Yeah? But we weren't. No,
we weren't. And we ended up hanging out with Joe
can I mention real quick our our kidnapping plan that
Jerry and I hatched, Yeah, because we we came up
with a plan. If the three of us were kidnapped,
then we were to tell them that Josh was a
a prince or a very rich man in the United States,
and that we worked for him, we were mere servants.
(16:04):
And I figured that probably would have gotten us off. Yeah,
it would have gotten you too off. Thank you for
the Prince, Josh. Yes. Um, so we hung out with Joe. Yeah,
Joe Burninger is one of the founders, along with his
brother Jeff. Yeah, and they Joe and Jeff used to
go down to Guatemala for spring break, right. Yeah, they
(16:24):
were going down there having a good time. But they
kind of they come from this like fairly uncommon family
where like they had tons of like values instilled in them.
So they're going down hanging out, and it was I
felt like a piece of trash. Jeff was telling us
all about his parents. I was like, wow, yeah, it
sounds like really great people. Yes, so much so that, Um,
(16:45):
I guess they kind of led to the to Joe
and Jeff being inspired to actually go back to Guatemala
and live there, right, to help this country and and
they've done it in a very clever way. Do you
like all this like um teasing that we're doing right? Right?
People like, what did they do? Exactly? Yeah, I told
you it hinges on books. It does. So we had
(17:06):
this awesome dinner Joe and Holly give us this really
really great rundown to where we finally feel like, all right,
we got a really good idea what's going on here,
and we're not ready to share that with you yet.
We're not ready to share that. We go to sleep.
We go Betty by, I watch a little uh Spanish
language signfeld. I watched Um, I think Law and Order
(17:26):
in English was on down there, and I was like, oh,
thank god. So we awake in our was the Radisson
(17:48):
at Guatemala City, and we they have a couple of
busses arranged for us. So it's like Mercedes, the small
sprinter busses, and I know they are not yeah, not
the huge chicken busses, although we saw plenty of those.
Those are rat They're brightly colored and a little aside.
Do you know why chicken busses are painted brightly, vividly
and differently? I do, but you should say so it's
(18:09):
because a significant amount of the Guatemalan population who used
those busses can't read where it's going, so they just know, oh,
this red bus with the Tasmanian devil on it is
going to and that's where I need to go, and
I'm going there. Pretty cool, nice little factive attention. So
we actually that's where we went. We went to uh Santiago, Yeah,
(18:32):
which is where Lake Atiflan is beautiful and actually you
should check out the coolest stuff on the planet, um
cast on lake. Yeah, footage that Jerry took while we
were down there. So we arrived there and it's like
I think it was a few hours by bus. We
got to see some of the countryside, tobacco farms, coffee, coffee, bananas, bananas, agriculture,
(18:54):
poor poor towns. Yeah. So we arrived there at the
lake and this is a volcanic formed a long long
time ago from a volcano, and I think three volcanoes
are surrounded, right, Yeah, those are dormant, but on the
way up we saw a couple of volcanoes that are
um active had smoke coming out of them. Yeah, the
first time for me ever, Yeah, me too, um and yeah,
(19:16):
I t line. I think was formed about eighty thousand
years ago. I learned from the coolest stuff cast Um.
And it was actually ridiculously polluted for many, many years,
which is kind of screwy because it's a major tourist
destination for Guatemala. So they actually bioremediated it and they
said it's all good now. Yeah. I saw people swimming
(19:37):
in chuck and I didn't. We thought maybe after a
couple more years of buyo remediation getting in it. But
it was gorgeous, man, unbelievable, and people um canoe standing up. Yeah,
it's the craziest thing I've ever seen. Very good balance. Yeah,
so we're at this idyllic scene. We go to this
little uh place that this run by this hippie ex
(19:58):
pat American next bat, which is my dream to do
this one day. Yeah, you're jealous of that guy. Yeah,
it going on. And actually there was the resort that
we stayed at was around in the sixties I think,
and it was taken over by the army and they
had to evacuate. The guy's mom had owned it originally, right,
(20:22):
And to call it a resort is like kind of
overstating things. It was really awesome, but there were little
huts like like stone cabanas, kind of peppered, like ten
or twelve of them peppered on the property. It was
called Pasada de Santiago. Yeah, and it was awesome. And
this was that we should point out. This is the
first first time on the trip and only time and
probably only time in our history, that we will all
(20:43):
stay in the same place. We had to share, not
a room. Jerry luckily had could close the door and
had her own room. But you and I were there
like New Hampshire, Vermont, on those little twin beds. Right.
And apparently Chuck confirms something that I've I've been told before,
or that snore really really really loud. Oh wow, yeah,
(21:04):
it's kind of a problem. Actually it sounded like a
sow being murdered with a spoon. Weird. It was bad,
you know. The first person who said that the room
was awesome though a little fireplace was very cool. So
we get there, we set up and had an awesome lunch.
All the food was great the whole trip. It's gonna
(21:25):
get old saying we had an awesome meal because it
was so delicious. Well, I noticed that in the in
the rundown you noted every single one of them. So
those things really stub good. You didn't, I'm all about
the awesome meal mentioned this, so U. One of the
first things we did was we went out. They took
us out for a little tour of the of the
main square in town. I saw a church from like
(21:45):
seventeen thirty or something, the church where Um the lead
I guess, priest, the head priest Um was murdered. He
was an American priest down there, and he was murdered
in the civil warrant. That was kind of a big deal. Yeah,
very big deal. And remember they had like the carpet
made of flowers from the from the doorway to the altar,
(22:08):
which had to be at least fifty sixty yards. And
it wasn't we should say, it wasn't just flat. We're
gonna put pictures of all this on the website, by
the way, so you can check it all out. It
wasn't just flowers. It was an intricate design made of
flower petals the entire way. It was astounding, actually, and
we found that it was It's considered, um, a very
gracious way to welcome people by putting down evergreen straws.
(22:32):
And then you got flowers over there like higher up.
But if you put down evergreen, then your guests feet
never touched the ground. Yeah, and they every school we
went to, they did that for us. And it was
I don't know, I've never had anyone do that before. No,
but I started doing it around my house. Yeah. I
felt very unworthy if I did that. Damily should be
I pick all that stuff up? What kind of invest
(22:53):
is this? So we take a tour around the main
town there, and then they set us up with a
visit to the home of a girl that had been um,
one of the co ed students and still is I
think at the Taxiquoi family. Yeah, and they invited us
into their home. And we've got a clip for this one.
But yeah, today um, we went, um, we did kind
(23:17):
of a tour of the town here, which is very poor,
to say the least. Yeah, very eye opening for guys
like us. And we met a family actually who's daughter
had has benefited from the from the co ed program. Yeah, Maria, Maria,
and they invited us into their home. Yeah. It's a
(23:37):
very small home. You walk in half of it maybe
is roofed. Yeah, we went. We all assembled in this
one room and we found out that it was the
room they sleep in, so I mean, it was obviously
a really big deal for them. They straightened everything up
for these gringo guests to come gawk and take pictures
and ask questions about them, but that you could tell them,
(23:59):
they're very, very grateful, so welcoming to Yeah, and and
the dad too, I mean, to put all of his
kids through school, and he's doing it at his own
detriment because he actually could use these kids to be
productive money makers for the house, but instead they're off
at school, not making any money. And yet this guy
(24:19):
was dedicated, and he didn't look like it to look
at him, he just looked like some normal Guatemalan guy.
But there was something in him that said, you know,
when I'm I'm going to stop this with this generation,
I'm going to send all of my kids to school.
And he has, Yeah, he wants, and that's kind of
the whole thing. And he wants his kids to exceed
their own expectations, even and what do they say, they
(24:44):
the kids want to exceed themselves, exceed themselves. I'm not
sure what that is in Spanish that it sounds a
lot better than that, but the only way to do.
That we're learning is to be educated, because if you
don't have an education in Guatemala and really anywhere, your
option are extremely limited, and here more so than than
most places probably, So that was a real eye opener. Yeah,
(25:09):
it really was. And I just I can't get over
the dad. He was about three ft tall, all smiles.
I don't think he's did they speak Spanish or did
they speak now they're speaking Spanish because we were had
the translation going Okay, I thought was being translated into
like chichiko, wasn't I think I could just be making
that up. But yeah, this guy lives in abject poverty.
(25:32):
They actually rented the house that we visited them, and
they rented a couple of rooms. The whole thing wasn't
even there. Um and instead of like having his kids
go work to to support the family like every other
Guatemalan family, he's making sure all three of his kids
go through school. Yeah, it's it's just really once it
sinks in, you know, the guy is the guy. What
(25:53):
the guy is doing is really amazing. Yeah. That was
very touching. Yeah, and very gracious, actually, book, I like, yeah,
and he hugged you back. It's very nice. So after
that we go back to the main town. They have
set up some we we should set this up. They
have what they haven't Guatemala, these little tiny little Toyota
pickup trucks, the little ones, and they have these little
(26:15):
A frames, wide open A frames built in the beds
of the trucks so they can carry around like twelve
people back there standing up and you just kind of
hold on standing up to this little A frame. So
that they set us up with these trucks. Coed did
so we could go out a little bit on the
outskirts of town and see a couple of cool things.
And it was that's like I felt like it was
(26:36):
a real adventure. Yeah, it was. I mean like we
had the wind blowing our faces and that we were
you know, hip to hip, Yes, hip to hip and
the sexiest camp but well one of the sexiest cap
ris I've ever been. That sounds good. Uh. And we
went to uh the first place we saw we went
to was to see this and I'm gonna let you
set this up because this obviously been a lot to you.
But we went to see someone or something called mushymn right,
(27:05):
and um, we had a choice. We could have either
gone shopping or going to see Mashiman rights, well, Mashimon.
We went to see him actually, because it turns out
he's my patron saint. He is um called the man
in black at the Crossroads or the black Man at
the Crossroads papal Legba and Western African culture. But basically
(27:25):
he's this guy, he's the god of vice. And actually
this is hilarious because I went and I didn't know
this at the time, but they keep him locked up
and every uh definitely every year, but I think like
every couple of months they have a kind of a
ceremony in his honor um and it moves from it's
every year, and it moves from house to house, and
(27:46):
you never really know where Mashamon is. And they keep
him locked up because his sexuality is too much. He's
like the Antonio banderis of like uh gods, Yeah, so
um what what what? What service he offers to his flock.
Me included is that you can come bring him sacrifices
(28:06):
and he'll help alleviate your vices. So we bought some
or Josh paid what like twenty cents for a half
pint of the local swell. They called it rum. No,
it was like sugarcane moonshine. Yeah, but they the local
guys called it rama. That was no wrong. It was
called I looked it up. It's called Guaro. It's actually
(28:29):
Costa Rican. But there's a sugarcane rum, sugarcane moonshine down
there is serious stuff. And actually, so I buy it,
and I'm like, well, Chuck, we should probably try this.
Jerry declined. Chuck and I both tried it. Chuck shuttered.
I didn't, which I think I think made it all
the more reason I should dry out a little bit,
because shutter from you got some cereal? I can pour
(28:52):
this over. So I I I offer a cigarette to
Mashamona is a sacrifice, and the guy takes it from
me and puts it in mashamones off and lights it.
And I'm like, yes, I just knocked the cigar out
of his mouth, and now my cigarettes in there, right,
that's gonna be good for me. And then I go
and get the liquor and then go in there. And
you have to be very quiet. This is quite sincere,
(29:12):
and I was like I was very sincere too. I
was mocking in any ways in perform like I was
really help me. But it's it's this dark, strangely lit barn,
tiny barn you can put maybe a donkey and a
half in it, and there's this acrid incense burning I
think it was frankincense, and this crowded with sweaty people,
(29:33):
and a couple of guys are running the show, and
people are on their knees and like just praying before
manshamone and he's just carved probably three and a half
four ft tall figure pretty much all right, and um
so they put the cigarette in his in his mouth,
and then when I brought the whiskey or the moonshine,
they they actually put a funnel in his mouth, held
(29:57):
a little bandana underneath his carved lip, and it into
his mouth and they didn't pour at all. And another
reason why I know that I needed Mashmon's help was
because I waited around to see if they gave me
the rest of the bottle back and they did not. Well,
that's part of the little not a wank you get
as they take it very seriously. They also collect a
lot of liquor in the process. Yeah, I imagine if
(30:18):
you're running the Mashamone ceremony, you get pretty lit yes, yeah, probably,
so that was a pretty big experience. Yeah, we're gonna
have pictures of that up to Yeah, and um we
left there and that was pretty cool. Yeah, very cool
because I was doing that because I want to be
a debt and I need to get in better health,
you know. So it was cool. I felt good. And
(30:39):
then we go straight to one of the most depressing
places I've ever been in my entire life. Yes, Josh,
the mudslides, uh from Hurricane stand in two thousand five,
devastating to this small town. But yeah, villa, like four
hundred of the people who lived there, people, holy cow died.
(31:00):
Wait and just just the village, Well, now that's all over.
That's an all of Guatemala from the hurricanes. I think
this village is the worst hit though, because it was
like five people that the four d people that died,
and the people in the whole country died from it,
right they recorded they recovered only seventy seven corpses, and
three hundred people are still missing and presumed dead. Basically
(31:23):
where we were standing was what they say, like fifteen
feet higher than it used to be, and below us
was a mass grave of bodies, a village and a
lot of people were um sleeping. It was pretty early
in the morning, and you could actually look up the
mountain and see still the trees hadn't fully grown back.
It was like a swath cut where the mud came.
(31:46):
They came right down right over the village and just
covered it. Man uh. And it was pretty um sobering
because one of the kids that we were talking to
h well, we weren't, but our group was um was
in or whose family was beneath his feet somewhere. And
then to the right there was an old school police
(32:06):
station in hospital and they're gutted and abandoned, but you
could still see the high mud mark. And this kid,
I mean, he was he was all by himself. He
lost all his brothers and sisters and his parents, and
he was now taking care of these other kids. And
he looked to be about like seventeen. I remember they said, like, no,
he's like thirteen. And he lost his parents when he
(32:27):
was like eight, and he's been taking care of these
kids ever since. Unbelievable. It really was very sad, Yes,
And actually so was the next place we visited to, Yes, Josh.
The next sight we went to was the site of
a massacre that happened during the Civil War in nineteen ninety,
the Guatemalan army opened fire on an unarmed crowd of
(32:49):
between two thousand and fourth the four thousand protesters that
had finally kind of had enough. Yeah, the army had
had a garrison in um Lin, and like just about
every other town over the population of ten thousand and
um they used to just basically abuse the population. And
one night these soldiers got drunk beat up some guys
(33:12):
that at a bar started breaking into people's houses and
just basically being jerks and right. So this guy who
was injured in the bar fight, um I guess, went
and told the mayor something and and everybody got woken
up and went to the army garrison demanded that they
stopped abusing the population, and so the the UM I
(33:37):
guess one of the the guys who was heading the
garrison said well, what do you have to say, and
somebody shot into the air, and somebody else just started
firing into the crowd. They ended up killing fourteen people
and the age range from ten to fifty three. Twenty
one others were wounded, and uh, we visited there and
(33:58):
they literally have a sort of a little open plaza
in the woods and they have a little memorial at
each spot where each person was killed. Yeah, they have
the original steps that were there. Yeah, and and you
know there's it's pretty again so brink. They have harry
players um I think once a month or something. Yeah,
and they still do have mass there. But the good
(34:18):
news is out of all that, two weeks later, as
a result of the pressure and outcry over this, the
army vacated the garrison there at least, and Atitlan became
one of the few communities that um didn't have a
military base. Right. Yeah, this one, for some reason, just
stirred up, you know, the anger and resentment of everybody
in Guatemala. Even the people who are running the military
(34:40):
turned down the military for this one. Right. So at
this point we are like in Guatemala, I mean, we
are really feeling like we gotta handle on what's going
on here? After this day, do you remember we were
walking around a Titlan and I was like, look, you know,
like ten twenty years ago there were guerillas sitting here
with a K forty seven shooting it out with Moliss.
Like where we're walking right now, you could feel it's
(35:02):
still had left some sort of impression on the Yeah,
it was very creepy and those little tight alleyways and
I was just trying to like wrap my head around
coming around a corner and seeing a gorilla with a
gun and uh, you know, kids everywhere. It was just awful.
But at the same time it was a really really
nice town too. Oh yeah, you know, like it was
(35:23):
this kind of dual experience. Well, yeah, because Late Alan
is a place where Greeno tourists go because so gorgeous,
it's it was a little weird. So we get back
to the place that our little hippie cabana and I
have a little happy hour by the lake, which was
one of the other great things about these tours is
they believe in unwinding at the end of the day
(35:44):
and fellowshipping with each other and having a cold one
called gayo. So it was just gorgeous setting. We have
a great dinner once again, and we were able to
get co founder Jeff Burninger in the cabin afterward for
a little We lured him in. We lured him in
there with a fire and beer and said come in
here and speak to us. And we got to talk
(36:06):
to him a little bit more about co Ed and
we have a clip here of his thoughts on his
initial inspiration to start this nonprofit. What when did the
first seed of UM I see a need here and
part of me wants to do something about it. When
did that first here? That started? When I was looking
for a volunteer opportunity. I think a lot of us,
(36:27):
you know, we come down and we see a beautiful country,
we backpack, we try to learn a language, and we
see the poverty. So what can I do to help? Right? Well,
what I found out was that with my level of Spanish,
there was very little I could do to help so
except maybe teach English. And I found a school that
I was willing to allow me to come in and
(36:48):
teach English. It was a volunteer opportunity and it was
something I thought I could do. Well. Of course I
learned that later that I learned later that I was
not um really cut out for teaching. But what what
I learned in the classroom was that the kids didn't
have books. And the way that started was since I
didn't know how to teach, I thought, well, the simplest
(37:10):
way to teach would be just to get the book
and follow it. You know, starting chapter one and go
to chapter two, chapter three, UM. But since there was
no books, I'm like, well, you know, I've got to
find books. I'll ask the math teacher and the science
teacher where they get their books, because obviously they being
with books. It's just span speaking country. Well, I found
out the math and science teachers didn't have books either.
(37:32):
I'm like, well, this is an outscite. You know, how
do you teach? So, Josh, Here's how the textbook program works.
And I know you know this, but pretend that I'm
telling you for the first time, everybody in podcast land.
Here's how it works. What they do is it's a
really cool program because it is self sustaining. They realized
at some point that early on that dropping things off
(37:53):
and leaving they called the dropping go that's not the
way to go. I'm sure that people need supplies and
things like that, but in the end they feel like, uh,
just to have something dropped and leaving isn't really doing
them a lot of good. Well, it's not sustainable. And
that's the exactly that's the point of the textbook UM
program is that it is sustainable. Starting out with the
(38:16):
first bit of seed money, exactly. So what happens is, um,
they are able to buy books really cheap in bulk textbooks,
deliver them to these students, and these students, actually these
very very poor poor students, actually pay money to rent
these textbooks for the year. Right and we should probably say, um,
right here, it's like two bucks a year per student,
(38:38):
per student, per book, per book. So what happens is
these kids they rent the books, that money goes into
what they call revolving fund, an escrow account, and in
five years, the money, the collective money has uh grown
to the point where they can now replace the original
set of textbooks, right or if they they we co
(39:00):
ed takes these books to these schools. There's a program.
A part of it is taking care of your textbook, right,
So these kids are taking care of their textbooks. And
we'll hear why in a second. But um, it's so
if their books, if say the math books are in
really good shape still, they can use that money instead
of replacing those they can get another subject or they
(39:23):
will replace those books and then the use textbooks become
part of their used textbook program and can go to
some of the scholarship kids who can't even afford the
two bucks, so it's a self sustaining program. Once these
kids uh rent into the program, they've got textbooks for
life basically or for their entire run of education. And
here's Jeff talking about why he's found the program works.
(39:47):
Many people have told us that it did, it would
never work. They won't return the books. Um. And that's
actually a key piece of the of the of the
reason why that there's a the fee program works because
we've seen it the school principles tell us that this
is the case that when someone has to pay, even
if it's a small fee, that they that they respect
(40:08):
what they receive a lot more. If someone hands you
something in the street, a piece of paper, a small
publication for free, the likelihood of you keeping it or
valuing it versus tossing in the garbage can it is
much higher, and it's much higher that you will not
read it because you've not put anything into it. But
(40:32):
if you have to pay a small fee for it,
it's much more likely that you're going to read it
or keep it and chuck um. Two bucks two bucks
a year per books, say three books six bucks a year.
It's paltry, but at times how many kids sometimes though, right,
But but you want to make sure that you're not
thinking it as an American like, is it really paltry?
(40:53):
So just said that coed Um did his study to
find out how expensive it was to these families. Yeah,
whether or not they could actually afford it. They struggle
with that for a long time. That's the question we've
been asking ourselves for for the last twelve years. And
we started by simply asking the school officials, and they
said the principle and the and the teachers and everything,
(41:15):
and they clearly believe that yes they can. But we're
concerned about that because some people in the development community
believe that if there's any cost to education or the
benefit that someone's receiving, that it becomes a barrier of
entry into education, that you're keeping kids out of school
because you're raising the costs of them going to school.
(41:36):
But we've we've actually found that not to be the case.
With textbooks. We've gone so far as to interview the students.
UM we've through a third party organization through one of
the universities in Clatamala City. UM interviewed the students receiving
the textbooks after they graduated from the program and asking
them on a simple scale, I'm one to five, are
they are the books very affordable? Kind of affordable, mediocre
(41:59):
ex sense of you know, on that scale and and
basically the results came back saying that the books were
either either cheap or or or affordable. So that's good news.
They put a lot of work into researching this, and
they did find that, you know, they were validated and
that the parents can't afford it, and that they believe
(42:20):
in paying for it. And that's what really blew me
away about this whole thing is that something earned is
much more important than something given to you, right, And
then that's why the program has been so successful. Chuck,
So what we found this is this is when our
eyes were really starting to open to Jerry's too, Like
she was walking around there's like a little crusty drool
(42:41):
on the cydber mouth, Like she's like, what is going
on here? But what we found is this group that
we're with UM goes down to Guatemala. They rustle up
American money. By they identify schools that say, yes, we
want to be part of your textbook program. It's contractual, UM,
and they buy these books, take them down to donate them,
(43:05):
and uh, the kids rent these books. All this money
is putting in an escrow account for the school, and
then after X number of years they can replace the
books or add new books, and it's self sustaining because
those new books are rented and rented and rented and rented.
So this bit of seed money that buys these two
books at first ends up spreading um throughout the community.
(43:27):
And you know what, I just want to go ahead
and say, now, five dollars is what it costs to
buy textbooks for one kid for a full school year.
And you will have your opportunity to give just five
dollars later on little teaser. You are going to take
over after Jerry Lewis retires for the telephone. Yeah I should. Uh.
So we had a great talk with Jeff. It was awesome,
(43:50):
filled us, filled us in and we were really felt
like we knew what we were in in for. At
the end of day two, our first really big day
out and uh, we had a up some more gayos
and tumbled into slumber and it was time to go
to sleep, and it was time to go to sleep.
(44:15):
So the next morning, dude, we wake up and uh,
we have a boat ride in store for us across
the lake, which we're pretty excited about because, you know,
just being on a boat on an awesome lake's exciting
for me. Like a seat line which we described, and
actually no one has any idea how deep it actually is.
Oh really yeah, yeah, I think some say it's like
(44:35):
as deep as it is at its widest point, but
it's like loer it sounds like lor right, so we uh,
take off in the lake is actually much bigger than
what we were seeing from our our little cabania there.
So it's like a thirty minute boat ride to a
village called h I know we're gonna butcher this one.
You're gonna butcher this one. I'm not even trying pan
(44:56):
panah nice. I think that's it. That's we're gonna go Pana.
And you pointed out that it looked like the little
village in the movie Popeye. And if you look on
the internet under this, if you google that P A
and A J A C H E L, I think
you might agree. Yes, it was very cool looking. Yeah
it was. And we disembarked. We disembarked. Uh, that wasn't
actually where we were going. That was just where we landed.
(45:18):
Now I get the impression they just kind of wanted
to show off because we we went across the lake
by boat and then got off and then got on buses. Yeah,
so I think they're just like, hey, the factor. Yeah,
well it work And it did work for sure. And
we took pictures on the boat. Those will be up
on the website as well. Uh, we load up on
the buses again and we set out for the peach
(45:39):
abaj Cooperative School. Yeah, because we were talking about how
they come down with the textbooks to to donate to
a school that agreed to enter into this program, and uh,
we got this is our first donation we got to
see because they make up big to do out of it.
Oh yeah, it's like that's that's the main point of
these tours that you go on, is you got to
the different school rules and they you know, you're welcome
(46:03):
with open arms, you're welcome with dance and song. And
uh we danced with you know, some of the little
girls there, they would come and grab our hands and dancing.
It's a lot of fun, but you really feel special
and they really roll out the in this case evergreen carpet.
I guess for you and at this school we were
able to learn about the Corpse program, the culture of
(46:25):
Reading program right in Chuck. First, let me say this
was the poorest of the poor as far as the
schools in the areas we saw. There wasn't a discernible
town because this is like the highest highlands that we
entered into, and it was like road mountain stepped farming
on the mountain, which is really cool. Exactly, there wasn't
really a town. It was all along this road. It
(46:45):
was wide rather than condensed in any way. UM. But
the people were very very gracious and very very happy
to see us. Yeah. So when we say poor school,
let's set up a mental image. I think, uh, cender
block rooms, kind of this rantid smell in the air,
dust everywhere, dust everywhere. Uh, desks that look like they
(47:07):
were donated from like you know, some of the atomic
experiments in New Mexico in the forties. Yeah, and uh,
it's just like beyond poor what you would think of
as poor. It is. But again, the people came from
all over the community for this this UM donation. UM
and the kids actually were with the young kids in
(47:29):
the early hours, and we were also there for when
class is transferred because it's young kids in the same school.
Young kids in the morning, older kids in the afternoon.
And it's because number one, they only have one school,
but number two because the older kids get up and
work in the fields in the morning and then go
to school. And when we say in the morning, they
get up at like four am to make the tortillas
(47:52):
and then to work in the fields so they can
attend school. Yeah, unbelievable. Uh. The kids we got to
give out and pencils, which Jerry also brought some like
stickers and things. But she brought like seven stickers. I remember,
like a hundred kids off the I said, off the
day loose. Yeah. I grabbed one of the kids and
(48:14):
pointed and then pointed to like what Jerry was holding,
and she just went over and all of a sudden,
they all just flocked. Jerry was hilarious. She took to
it though she was kind of like trying to instill
some order. She was like, all right, all right, everyone
calmed down, let's let's get this done. Which is funny
too because a lot of these kids are a mono
lingual and just spoken their Mayan dialects. So Jerry is
sitting there speaking broken Spanish to them, and even if
(48:36):
they spoke in Spanish, they wouldn't know what she was saying.
That they definitely had note to what she was saying,
and yet they still formed a line. Yeah, they did
the universal language line up. So uh. But I just
on a personal note, to see these kids clamoring over
these pens and pencils like it was a an xbox
made me want to slap American kids a little bit,
(48:57):
to be honest, what the kids are playing with these things?
That's what they're playing with, or that the p S three,
I don't know the iPhone, but they were treating these
pins and pencils like they were, you know, precious and
then they are. So they had a little ceremony like
they did at all the schools, a little traditional symbolic
dancing and uh performing of uh you know what kind
(49:17):
of ceremony did there was the corn dance that they preferred.
The corn dance. Yeah, it was about how the corn
was given to them by the gods, right, and it's
pretty cool. And actually by the last school we went to, Chuck,
Jerry and I could have performed the corn dance every
single one. Yeah, I think I could probably roughly perform it, yea,
(49:40):
but you should uh. And then we got to meet
a lady named Caroline Johnson. She's in Portland, Maine's pretty
cool lifelong educator, principal school principle that went on a
co ed tour and went back and said, I'm going
to quit my job. I'm gonna go to Guatemala because
they're not snotting. Those little brats, they don't have apreciate
things down there. This, this is the experience of Guatemala,
(50:03):
really alled you to disdain American kids. Didn't. Now that's
not true, but um, Caroline obviously didn't say anything like that.
She's like one of the sweetest ladies I ever met.
She's very kind and soft spoken, but with it and sharp.
Actually went down on a tour like we were on
and joined up and actually ended up creating an entirely
(50:23):
new program that co had institutes right, And we asked
her what you know inspired her to leave her life
behind and go to Guatemala. And here's what she had
to say. I think the thing that that really that
really spoke to me. And we went to an elementary
school just to deliver some some pencils and books and
miscellaneous kinds of things, and the principal found out that
(50:45):
I was also a principal in the US and came
up to me and said, can you help the teachers
don't know how to teach reading. Um, we appreciate all
this stuff, but we don't know what to do. So
I started talking to Joe and Jeff and they said, oh,
we've looked into getting into education all kinds of things,
but BASI, we're not educating or something. We need somebody
to help us. So I started volunteering with them, and
(51:07):
at one point decided, you know, working down here and
working with these kids would be a lot more fun
than continue to be a school administrator in the United States.
And so here I am. So how awesome was she?
She's very cool, very cool lady doing great work. And
how cool did the little birds in the background sound? Yeah,
you could actually kind of hear how beautiful a day
it was thanks to the birds. That wasn't sound designed
(51:28):
by Jerry, although it could have been. It could have been.
So she works with the court the Culture of Reading program,
and we why don't we get her to tell us
about what CORE is instead of us doing it? So
what does um, CORP stand for and what we are
the basic fundamentals of the program corpus Culture of Reading program. UM.
That culture of reading was something really important to us.
(51:50):
We we came to the schools and we saw that
if you gave a second grader a third grader of
a short piece of text, they could read the words
off the page. They essentially had no comprehension. They the
words didn't have meaning. And without books in their homes,
without books in those schools, reading is not something they
do for enjoyment, and it's not something they see as valuable. UM.
(52:13):
They don't see picking up a newspaper as as something
that will help them, that will assist them, or going
to look for information and texts. So developing that culture
of reading, so we want the kids not only to
be able to read and develop those critical thinking skills,
we want them to want to read. The want them
to see that reading is something you do for pleasure
and it's something that you do that will enrichually. So Chuck.
(52:37):
What Caroline and UM the Cooperative for Education figured out
was that UM teachers were teaching kids to read basically
just writing their assignments on the board and then kids
had to scribble them down real quick before they were erased,
and there was no comprehension whatsoever. So the court program
that Carolyn created UM is part teaching kids to read,
(52:59):
but it's also a part teaching teachers how to teach
kids to read. So instead of just standing there and
reading very quickly from a book, it involves like reading
in a very big voice and like like you read
to kids, and then showing them the pictures so they're comprehending.
There's not just a string of letters. There's comprehension to
the word. Sure. I mean, I wasn't any impression. It's
(53:20):
more for the teachers because they had never seen books either. Well, no,
it's part for the kids too, because remember the books
get translated into a UM a picture book, and then
a play and then I think another big book. So
technically this one book that they start off with, by
the end of the week they have three books and
(53:40):
they've made a play out of it. So they have
a book down flat in in in a week. Pretty awesome. Again.
So that's the end of part one of S Y
s K is Guatemalan Adventure. Uh, the exciting conclusion is
coming up on Thursday, and stick around after these words
(54:01):
to hear how you can buy student textbooks for life
with just a five dollar text donation. This episode of
Stuff you should know. It's brought to you by go
to Meeting, the affordable way to meet with clients and
colleagues for your free thirty day trial is it go
to meeting dot com slash stock. Okay, folks, if you
(54:23):
like what you've heard so far about the co Opera
for Education and you want to support them, you can
do so with just a five dollar text donation. And
here's how it works. Just text the words stuff stuff
to two zero two to two and you will donate
five dollars to help put a textbook into the hands
of a Guatemalan child. You will receive a text back
(54:46):
asking you to confirm the donation and just reply with
the word yes to complete the donation, and you will
see a one time five dollar charge on your wireless
bill or deducted from your prepaid balance. Message and data
rates may apply. And if you st up and change
your mind before confirming the donation, which you shouldn't do,
you can reply the word s t O P stop
(55:07):
the two zero two two two, or if you need help,
reply with the Word Help h e LP donations are
collected by the Mobile Giving Foundation. For more info, you
can call eight six six eight one oh one two
zero three or go to h m g F dot
org slash t so tune in Thursday for for the
(55:27):
conclusion the exciting conclusion of s Y s k's Guatemalan adventure. Audios.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
com home page. Brought to you by the reinvented two
(55:50):
thousand twelve Camray. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from House Stuff works dot com. This episode of Stuff
you Should Know is brought to you by Go to Meeting.
We all have to meet, but the average cost of
a single business trip is one thousand dollars. With just
(00:21):
one click, you can save time and money and have
your meetings online with affordable and easy to use Go
to Meeting. Use Go to Meeting for sales, presentations, product demos,
training sessions, collaborating on documents and more, and at forty
nine dollars per month for unlimited meetings, it saves time, money,
and travel. Try Go to Meeting free for thirty days.
Visit Go to Meeting dot com slash stuff. That's Go
(00:44):
to meeting dot com slash stuff give me your side podcast.
(01:07):
And what the heck was that? That was not you,
my friend? No, it wasn't. Clearly that was the booming
voice of our buddy that we met down there, who
had such an impressive voice for radio. We said, we've
got to get this guy to record our podcast intro
if we can use it. Yeah, he's ah. He works
at one of the schools we went to and he
was m seeing an event and we're like, holy cow,
(01:30):
he's the the Guatemalan meltor matvelvet. Yeah, and this is
a very special pair of podcasts, right, Chuck, Absolutely our
Guatemalan Adventures. Yes, our Guatemala not there. Yeah, so um
Chuck and I and Jerry went down to Guatemala. As
many of the listeners, no team s y Chuck Um,
(01:54):
and our eyes were open quite a bit, you could
say that, Yeah, we were originally going to go down. Uh,
we should probably tell the back story. Do you want
to take it? Chuck? Chuck loves emailing people back, especially
when they say, do you want to come to Guatemala
with this? Will take exactly? That's pretty much out went down.
We got an email from a fan name and Dempsey
(02:17):
our buddy now yes, and she emailed us so, I
don't know last year last fall and said, hey, I
worked for this nonprofit called Cooperative for Education and we
do work in Guatemala supplying school books and uh computer
centers for rural indigenous poor people in Guatemala. And check
(02:38):
out our video and our website and we'd love it
if you guys came down we'll we'll sponsor you to
come down on this trip and see what you think
about it. No strings attached, of course. We just think
you would enjoy it and you know, having a great experience. Right,
it's pretty much out happened, and we're like, what's the
catch and what's your what's your game here? Right? And
she really was like, no, really, we just want you
(02:59):
to see. I mean, if you guys want to mention
this on the podcast or something, that'd be awesome because
they are donor driven organization like all nonprofits exactly. Um,
because nonprofit can't turn a profit yeah, um. And uh
So we went down there initially with the idea of like, okay,
we can't just completely throw to this organization, let's do
(03:23):
one on can education alleviate poverty? Can it actually happen?
Because that's what CoA does well. Originally she just asked
for us to come down, and then we were like,
wait a minute, why don't we bring Jerry and then
we can record down there and do our first like
on the road, live recording type of deal. That was
your idea. I think I was snacking while you were
thinking of your way down with it though. Yeah, so Chuck,
(03:45):
we never go anywhere unprepared, or I should say, we
never do anything. I don't put on my pants without
doing a little research first to find out if overnight
while I was sleeping, somebody figured out a better way
to do it. And that is true. Um, so we
did some research on Guatemala, and UM, I actually have
a little story for you. The night before we left,
(04:07):
I secretly wrote a note to my dear Yumi, telling
her that I love her in case anything happens to me.
I really wanted to make sure she knew that I
went down thinking that there's a chance I was going
to lose my life in Guatemala. Yeah, here's a little tip.
If you guys are going to travel in some country
that's not you know, like France or Italy, don't go
(04:28):
to the State Department website and that where you found
it to read like the travel warnings and all, because
you got to some of these countries that are a
little off the beaten path, and they do they make
it sound like you will be lucky if you come
back alive. Yeah, and that's exactly what I thought. Um
there's about eighteen paragraphs. You're scared that detail kidnappings, Ransom's beheadings. Um,
(04:49):
straight up murder. Uh. Just it sounds like the country
is just overrun with criminals and disease, all manner of disease.
We got shots at the yin Yang. What do we get?
We got lockjaw, Yeah, I got a It wasn't dip ted,
it was ted something like that. I don't know what
they shot me full of. I just hold my arm
(05:11):
out when somebody presents me at the storringe. Jerry got
sick actually, um from the shots ahead of time and
a little bit of foreshadowing. A little chucky got sick
on the way back. Yeah, I think I ingested some
ice from a rum drink or two. Yeah, there's last
there's some precautions you have to take. Oh and to
finish my story, you we found the secret note within
(05:31):
hours of us leaving, so that worked out well. Yeah,
it's great, Um, all right, Chuck. We also did some
background on the country, and one of the first things
you find out about Guatemala when you look into it
is that it had a pretty serious civil war. Yeah,
for about thirty years thirty six, my friend. Yeah, that's
why I said about Actually that's about forty years. But sure,
(05:56):
internal conflict. Uh formerly end in that's a long time
to be under a civil war. Yeah. And actually, um,
guatemala Is is is kind of this very put upon Latin
American state. Um. It was run by a dictator in
the up to the forties when there was a I
don't know if it was a bloodless revolution, but I
(06:17):
think it was one of the softer revolutions. And there
were some liberals running the show for about ten years,
and Guatemalan still referred to it as uh ten years
of Spring, right, Chuck. They referred to everything in regards
to spring. It's the land of eternal spring. The spring
is like the spring spring. Yeah. Um. It's so they
had this great this area this time of peace. Um.
(06:40):
And part of that was involved taking land from the
United Fruit Company, which owned a bunch of land it
wasn't using, and redistributing it to uh farmers, right. And
the United Fruit Company didn't like this, went to the
CIA and said, hey, you know, you've got some lefties
in your backyard. You should probably supply or to qu
(07:00):
CIA back to coup end of the ten Years of
Spring in the beginning of the civil war, which they
did not refer to you as ten years of summer
that followed the spring. No, No, it was pretty bad.
And we'll get into a couple of stories. We've got
a couple of stories while we were down there. Yeah,
a couple of like bad massacres that happened. Yeah, there were,
(07:20):
um I think a hundred thousand killed and a hundred
thousand disappeared is what they called them, which meant killed
that they didn't find your body, um, and they A
later Truth Commission report concluded that of the atrocities committed
in that in the civil war were done by government
soldiers and actually oftentimes they disguise them like to make
(07:44):
it look like the guerrillas had done it, to drum
up um resentment antipathy towards them. Yeah, it was a
It was a bad thirty six years for Guatemala, and
like you said, it ended in so they're still kind
of coming out of this right, very much. So. I
think more than half of Guatemalans are direct descendants of
(08:05):
the mind people, and they some of them, like you said,
speaking the mind tongue, still church. Some of them don't
speak Spanish, right, many of them, right, Yeah, I mean,
if if you run into a Guatemalan who speaks Spanish.
Likely they're bilingual because they speak their indigenous mind tongue
and Spanish as well. Right, they are one of the
most populous Central American countries. Most of their population is
(08:29):
rural and fifties six percent live below the poverty line.
And that's Guatemala's poverty line. Yeah. Well, that's a very
important thing to point out. None Americans very different and
they are mainly agricultural, uh, labor industry, services industries only
about Yeah, they're their economy. The top three um segments
(08:53):
of their economy are agriculture, remittances, and tourism. Yeah, let's
Remit says this. People that leave the country to go
make a decent wage and then send money back home.
And that's the number two segments of their economy. And
uh with them tourism as well, it's it's number three,
but it's not entirely enormous. I think it makes up
(09:15):
a pretty decent portion, but it's not that big of
a money maker. Again because of things like the State
Department website and the fact that the civil war only
ended fourteen years ago. Yeah, and I tell you, despite uh,
except for Antigua, which we'll get into, that was the
end of our trip. We didn't see any spurs where
we went. No, we went definitely off the beaten pathway. Yeah,
way in in country, weren't We weren't like hanging out
(09:37):
on the beach or anything like that. And check the
educational scene in't exactly happening down there. Yeah, which is
why we went and why ed is there clearly right?
And uh, you mentioned Anne, So here's a clip of
and explaining, Um, a couple of a stat that we
found a little staggering. We know that in rural indigenous
(09:59):
villages in guatemal Uh, three out of four students who
start first grade will drop out of school before they
complete sixth grade. So of the four of us standing here,
only one of us would actually complete sixth grade. That
would be Josh exactly. But that's good to know, Josh,
that you would have been the one to stay in school.
(10:20):
It's possible. I think you're the clear winner. I appreciate
that and seem to get a kick out of it. Yeah,
and um, most students who live in Guatemala, she also
told us during that interview, UM, don't learn to read
until maybe third grade. And um, the teachers don't really
feel it's a problem because they think that kids can't
learn to read until that age, so they don't teach them.
(10:43):
They're finding, thanks to groups like co ED that oh wait,
well kids can actually start to learn to read in
the first grade if they have books, right, which is
a big deal. So that's why they're there, the whole
thing that all of this hinges on. Yeah, but that's
one of their big programs. We'll break that down load
a little bit later, right, Yeah, So that's why co
Ed's there, that's why we got invited to see the
(11:03):
stuff firsthand. And so we begin our trip. So, Josh,
we meet the three of us early early at Heartsfield Jackson.
So early. What a bonus for us is there's a
direct flight to Guatemala from Atlanta, just scant what was
it like three hours maybe three hours? Three hours and
(11:24):
likes for air fair round trip. Yeah, it was a
pretty good deal. So we get on the plane, Jerry
and I are we sit together, Josh, Alex not to
sit with us, because I love the quote you gave
me when I was like, what's up with that? You
said you'd like to leave it to the gods. I'd
like to leave it to fate to determine whether I'm
going to die in an air or not. So Josh
(11:44):
is behind us, and a funny nickname came out of this.
Josh I turned around at one point because we all
know from previous podcasts you don't love to fly. It's
not your favorite thing in the world. No, it's not.
So you actually put the black blanket that kid you.
Jerry is so cracking up right now, the black blanket
that they give you over your entire body and head.
(12:05):
And I was like, Jerry, check it out. And we
started calling you, what the black ghost of the sky,
black Ghost of the skies. Yeah. I went to sleep.
I needed to sleep because I don't like to fly.
It was so funny. Um, and I had um taken
a painkiller right so that that did you right, right.
I didn't wake up until we landed. I think that
(12:27):
was pretty And I remember I, um when we did
land I actually woke up right before we landed. And
as we were coming in to the runway. Um, right
as we were touching down, I noticed there was like
a line of airplanes that had apparently been stripped for parts. Yeah,
it runway, and I just thought, you've got to be
kidding me because I thought I was going to die.
(12:50):
Remember sure you probably thought that when we took off
from the same airport, but that I was gonna die.
Well not from the heading, no, but we're just reminded
when you say like, hey, we need a tire, go
get one off that plane. It was hilarious. So we
get there. The first like ten minutes in the airport
is literally like a three Stooges episode. We're just kind
of like walking in circles. We know we have to
(13:11):
go through uh and shore our passport, we know we
need to exchange some money Combio, we need to go
to Cambio. We eventually get outside and this is when
this is when co Ed shines. They really I can't
stress enough because we're gonna try and get some of
you people out there to go on one of these trips.
On these tours, they're so they really take care of you,
so there's no need to be worried about going to
(13:32):
a foreign scary land. Like the second we got out
to the airport, they had the signs and the bus
waiting for us. We met our cohorts and got on
the bus and went to Guatemala City. Yeah, and Chuck,
I think all three of us. I was um still groggy, uh,
and we we decided that we needed to kind of
um create some intro in the field that we could
(13:55):
use and um. We started drinking gaios, which is the
the national beer of Guatemala, and actually you can get
Guyo here. Guyo is uh rooster, right, yeah, it means rooster. Um,
so they call it famosa here, but it's the exact
(14:15):
same beer, right. Well. Coed hit the ground running, though,
remember they when we first got there. Oh yeah, Holly awesome.
Holly met us at the hotel and it was like,
here's the subway sandwich. We gotta go to our first school.
Do you guys want to go? It's your option, And
we're like, uh, we we want to like record an
intro here, so you guys go ahead and we'll meet
up later. So so that was time well spent because
we were thinking about what to record while we were
(14:36):
drinking gios, and eventually we got to the point where
everything we recorded was just kind of useless. So I
wish we could include some of that because it's really funny.
Jerry was so frustrated with us because we just we
were we were doing a good job. Yeah. So, um,
but it wasn't just that. It was also we didn't
really have a conception yet of what co Ed did
(14:58):
and um, that was about to change actually because we
remember we were still going down on the premise that
we were going to record a podcast, can uh Education
Alleviate Poverty? Um? And and this was about I think
it was in Guatemala City that night where the turning
point began and our eyes started to open more and
more like Holy cow at dinner, at dinner. Yes, So
(15:20):
they took us. They got back. I was setting us
up for a clip. We don't have a clip for that, okay,
so take it sounded very much like an MPR set up,
Thank you. Uh so yeah, we met up. They came
back to the hotel. We um had a couple of
beers at that point and failed miserably with our intro
and they all said, hey, let's uh walk down the
street here to this restaurant and we can talk a
little bit. And I thought, are we going to be
(15:42):
kidnapped at any point during this walk? Yeah? But we weren't. No,
we weren't. And we ended up hanging out with Joe
can I mention real quick our our kidnapping plan that
Jerry and I hatched, Yeah, because we we came up
with a plan. If the three of us were kidnapped,
then we were to tell them that Josh was a
a prince or a very rich man in the United States,
and that we worked for him, we were mere servants.
(16:04):
And I figured that probably would have gotten us off. Yeah,
it would have gotten you too off. Thank you for
the Prince, Josh. Yes. Um, so we hung out with Joe. Yeah,
Joe Burninger is one of the founders, along with his
brother Jeff. Yeah, and they Joe and Jeff used to
go down to Guatemala for spring break, right. Yeah, they
(16:24):
were going down there having a good time. But they
kind of they come from this like fairly uncommon family
where like they had tons of like values instilled in them.
So they're going down hanging out, and it was I
felt like a piece of trash. Jeff was telling us
all about his parents. I was like, wow, yeah, it
sounds like really great people. Yes, so much so that, Um,
(16:45):
I guess they kind of led to the to Joe
and Jeff being inspired to actually go back to Guatemala
and live there, right, to help this country and and
they've done it in a very clever way. Do you
like all this like um teasing that we're doing right? Right?
People like, what did they do? Exactly? Yeah, I told
you it hinges on books. It does. So we had
(17:06):
this awesome dinner Joe and Holly give us this really
really great rundown to where we finally feel like, all right,
we got a really good idea what's going on here,
and we're not ready to share that with you yet.
We're not ready to share that. We go to sleep.
We go Betty by, I watch a little uh Spanish
language signfeld. I watched Um, I think Law and Order
(17:26):
in English was on down there, and I was like, oh,
thank god. So we awake in our was the Radisson
(17:48):
at Guatemala City, and we they have a couple of
busses arranged for us. So it's like Mercedes, the small
sprinter busses, and I know they are not yeah, not
the huge chicken busses, although we saw plenty of those.
Those are rat They're brightly colored and a little aside.
Do you know why chicken busses are painted brightly, vividly
and differently? I do, but you should say so it's
(18:09):
because a significant amount of the Guatemalan population who used
those busses can't read where it's going, so they just know, oh,
this red bus with the Tasmanian devil on it is
going to and that's where I need to go, and
I'm going there. Pretty cool, nice little factive attention. So
we actually that's where we went. We went to uh Santiago, Yeah,
(18:32):
which is where Lake Atiflan is beautiful and actually you
should check out the coolest stuff on the planet, um
cast on lake. Yeah, footage that Jerry took while we
were down there. So we arrived there and it's like
I think it was a few hours by bus. We
got to see some of the countryside, tobacco farms, coffee, coffee, bananas, bananas, agriculture,
(18:54):
poor poor towns. Yeah. So we arrived there at the
lake and this is a volcanic formed a long long
time ago from a volcano, and I think three volcanoes
are surrounded, right, Yeah, those are dormant, but on the
way up we saw a couple of volcanoes that are
um active had smoke coming out of them. Yeah, the
first time for me ever, Yeah, me too, um and yeah,
(19:16):
I t line. I think was formed about eighty thousand
years ago. I learned from the coolest stuff cast Um.
And it was actually ridiculously polluted for many, many years,
which is kind of screwy because it's a major tourist
destination for Guatemala. So they actually bioremediated it and they
said it's all good now. Yeah. I saw people swimming
(19:37):
in chuck and I didn't. We thought maybe after a
couple more years of buyo remediation getting in it. But
it was gorgeous, man, unbelievable, and people um canoe standing up. Yeah,
it's the craziest thing I've ever seen. Very good balance. Yeah,
so we're at this idyllic scene. We go to this
little uh place that this run by this hippie ex
(19:58):
pat American next bat, which is my dream to do
this one day. Yeah, you're jealous of that guy. Yeah,
it going on. And actually there was the resort that
we stayed at was around in the sixties I think,
and it was taken over by the army and they
had to evacuate. The guy's mom had owned it originally, right,
(20:22):
And to call it a resort is like kind of
overstating things. It was really awesome, but there were little
huts like like stone cabanas, kind of peppered, like ten
or twelve of them peppered on the property. It was
called Pasada de Santiago. Yeah, and it was awesome. And
this was that we should point out. This is the
first first time on the trip and only time and
probably only time in our history, that we will all
(20:43):
stay in the same place. We had to share, not
a room. Jerry luckily had could close the door and
had her own room. But you and I were there
like New Hampshire, Vermont, on those little twin beds. Right.
And apparently Chuck confirms something that I've I've been told before,
or that snore really really really loud. Oh wow, yeah,
(21:04):
it's kind of a problem. Actually it sounded like a
sow being murdered with a spoon. Weird. It was bad,
you know. The first person who said that the room
was awesome though a little fireplace was very cool. So
we get there, we set up and had an awesome lunch.
All the food was great the whole trip. It's gonna
(21:25):
get old saying we had an awesome meal because it
was so delicious. Well, I noticed that in the in
the rundown you noted every single one of them. So
those things really stub good. You didn't, I'm all about
the awesome meal mentioned this, so U. One of the
first things we did was we went out. They took
us out for a little tour of the of the
main square in town. I saw a church from like
(21:45):
seventeen thirty or something, the church where Um the lead
I guess, priest, the head priest Um was murdered. He
was an American priest down there, and he was murdered
in the civil warrant. That was kind of a big deal. Yeah,
very big deal. And remember they had like the carpet
made of flowers from the from the doorway to the altar,
(22:08):
which had to be at least fifty sixty yards. And
it wasn't we should say, it wasn't just flat. We're
gonna put pictures of all this on the website, by
the way, so you can check it all out. It
wasn't just flowers. It was an intricate design made of
flower petals the entire way. It was astounding, actually, and
we found that it was It's considered, um, a very
gracious way to welcome people by putting down evergreen straws.
(22:32):
And then you got flowers over there like higher up.
But if you put down evergreen, then your guests feet
never touched the ground. Yeah, and they every school we
went to, they did that for us. And it was
I don't know, I've never had anyone do that before. No,
but I started doing it around my house. Yeah. I
felt very unworthy if I did that. Damily should be
I pick all that stuff up? What kind of invest
(22:53):
is this? So we take a tour around the main
town there, and then they set us up with a
visit to the home of a girl that had been um,
one of the co ed students and still is I
think at the Taxiquoi family. Yeah, and they invited us
into their home. And we've got a clip for this one.
But yeah, today um, we went, um, we did kind
(23:17):
of a tour of the town here, which is very poor,
to say the least. Yeah, very eye opening for guys
like us. And we met a family actually who's daughter
had has benefited from the from the co ed program. Yeah, Maria, Maria,
and they invited us into their home. Yeah. It's a
(23:37):
very small home. You walk in half of it maybe
is roofed. Yeah, we went. We all assembled in this
one room and we found out that it was the
room they sleep in, so I mean, it was obviously
a really big deal for them. They straightened everything up
for these gringo guests to come gawk and take pictures
and ask questions about them, but that you could tell them,
(23:59):
they're very, very grateful, so welcoming to Yeah, and and
the dad too, I mean, to put all of his
kids through school, and he's doing it at his own
detriment because he actually could use these kids to be
productive money makers for the house, but instead they're off
at school, not making any money. And yet this guy
(24:19):
was dedicated, and he didn't look like it to look
at him, he just looked like some normal Guatemalan guy.
But there was something in him that said, you know,
when I'm I'm going to stop this with this generation,
I'm going to send all of my kids to school.
And he has, Yeah, he wants, and that's kind of
the whole thing. And he wants his kids to exceed
their own expectations, even and what do they say, they
(24:44):
the kids want to exceed themselves, exceed themselves. I'm not
sure what that is in Spanish that it sounds a
lot better than that, but the only way to do.
That we're learning is to be educated, because if you
don't have an education in Guatemala and really anywhere, your
option are extremely limited, and here more so than than
most places probably, So that was a real eye opener. Yeah,
(25:09):
it really was. And I just I can't get over
the dad. He was about three ft tall, all smiles.
I don't think he's did they speak Spanish or did
they speak now they're speaking Spanish because we were had
the translation going Okay, I thought was being translated into
like chichiko, wasn't I think I could just be making
that up. But yeah, this guy lives in abject poverty.
(25:32):
They actually rented the house that we visited them, and
they rented a couple of rooms. The whole thing wasn't
even there. Um and instead of like having his kids
go work to to support the family like every other
Guatemalan family, he's making sure all three of his kids
go through school. Yeah, it's it's just really once it
sinks in, you know, the guy is the guy. What
(25:53):
the guy is doing is really amazing. Yeah. That was
very touching. Yeah, and very gracious, actually, book, I like, yeah,
and he hugged you back. It's very nice. So after
that we go back to the main town. They have
set up some we we should set this up. They
have what they haven't Guatemala, these little tiny little Toyota
pickup trucks, the little ones, and they have these little
(26:15):
A frames, wide open A frames built in the beds
of the trucks so they can carry around like twelve
people back there standing up and you just kind of
hold on standing up to this little A frame. So
that they set us up with these trucks. Coed did
so we could go out a little bit on the
outskirts of town and see a couple of cool things.
And it was that's like I felt like it was
(26:36):
a real adventure. Yeah, it was. I mean like we
had the wind blowing our faces and that we were
you know, hip to hip, Yes, hip to hip and
the sexiest camp but well one of the sexiest cap
ris I've ever been. That sounds good. Uh. And we
went to uh the first place we saw we went
to was to see this and I'm gonna let you
set this up because this obviously been a lot to you.
But we went to see someone or something called mushymn right,
(27:05):
and um, we had a choice. We could have either
gone shopping or going to see Mashiman rights, well, Mashimon.
We went to see him actually, because it turns out
he's my patron saint. He is um called the man
in black at the Crossroads or the black Man at
the Crossroads papal Legba and Western African culture. But basically
(27:25):
he's this guy, he's the god of vice. And actually
this is hilarious because I went and I didn't know
this at the time, but they keep him locked up
and every uh definitely every year, but I think like
every couple of months they have a kind of a
ceremony in his honor um and it moves from it's
every year, and it moves from house to house, and
(27:46):
you never really know where Mashamon is. And they keep
him locked up because his sexuality is too much. He's
like the Antonio banderis of like uh gods, Yeah, so
um what what what? What service he offers to his flock.
Me included is that you can come bring him sacrifices
(28:06):
and he'll help alleviate your vices. So we bought some
or Josh paid what like twenty cents for a half
pint of the local swell. They called it rum. No,
it was like sugarcane moonshine. Yeah, but they the local
guys called it rama. That was no wrong. It was
called I looked it up. It's called Guaro. It's actually
(28:29):
Costa Rican. But there's a sugarcane rum, sugarcane moonshine down
there is serious stuff. And actually, so I buy it,
and I'm like, well, Chuck, we should probably try this.
Jerry declined. Chuck and I both tried it. Chuck shuttered.
I didn't, which I think I think made it all
the more reason I should dry out a little bit,
because shutter from you got some cereal? I can pour
(28:52):
this over. So I I I offer a cigarette to
Mashamona is a sacrifice, and the guy takes it from
me and puts it in mashamones off and lights it.
And I'm like, yes, I just knocked the cigar out
of his mouth, and now my cigarettes in there, right,
that's gonna be good for me. And then I go
and get the liquor and then go in there. And
you have to be very quiet. This is quite sincere,
(29:12):
and I was like I was very sincere too. I
was mocking in any ways in perform like I was
really help me. But it's it's this dark, strangely lit barn,
tiny barn you can put maybe a donkey and a
half in it, and there's this acrid incense burning I
think it was frankincense, and this crowded with sweaty people,
(29:33):
and a couple of guys are running the show, and
people are on their knees and like just praying before
manshamone and he's just carved probably three and a half
four ft tall figure pretty much all right, and um
so they put the cigarette in his in his mouth,
and then when I brought the whiskey or the moonshine,
they they actually put a funnel in his mouth, held
(29:57):
a little bandana underneath his carved lip, and it into
his mouth and they didn't pour at all. And another
reason why I know that I needed Mashmon's help was
because I waited around to see if they gave me
the rest of the bottle back and they did not. Well,
that's part of the little not a wank you get
as they take it very seriously. They also collect a
lot of liquor in the process. Yeah, I imagine if
(30:18):
you're running the Mashamone ceremony, you get pretty lit yes, yeah, probably,
so that was a pretty big experience. Yeah, we're gonna
have pictures of that up to Yeah, and um we
left there and that was pretty cool. Yeah, very cool
because I was doing that because I want to be
a debt and I need to get in better health,
you know. So it was cool. I felt good. And
(30:39):
then we go straight to one of the most depressing
places I've ever been in my entire life. Yes, Josh,
the mudslides, uh from Hurricane stand in two thousand five,
devastating to this small town. But yeah, villa, like four
hundred of the people who lived there, people, holy cow died.
(31:00):
Wait and just just the village, Well, now that's all over.
That's an all of Guatemala from the hurricanes. I think
this village is the worst hit though, because it was
like five people that the four d people that died,
and the people in the whole country died from it,
right they recorded they recovered only seventy seven corpses, and
three hundred people are still missing and presumed dead. Basically
(31:23):
where we were standing was what they say, like fifteen
feet higher than it used to be, and below us
was a mass grave of bodies, a village and a
lot of people were um sleeping. It was pretty early
in the morning, and you could actually look up the
mountain and see still the trees hadn't fully grown back.
It was like a swath cut where the mud came.
(31:46):
They came right down right over the village and just
covered it. Man uh. And it was pretty um sobering
because one of the kids that we were talking to
h well, we weren't, but our group was um was
in or whose family was beneath his feet somewhere. And
then to the right there was an old school police
(32:06):
station in hospital and they're gutted and abandoned, but you
could still see the high mud mark. And this kid,
I mean, he was he was all by himself. He
lost all his brothers and sisters and his parents, and
he was now taking care of these other kids. And
he looked to be about like seventeen. I remember they said, like, no,
he's like thirteen. And he lost his parents when he
(32:27):
was like eight, and he's been taking care of these
kids ever since. Unbelievable. It really was very sad, Yes,
And actually so was the next place we visited to, Yes, Josh.
The next sight we went to was the site of
a massacre that happened during the Civil War in nineteen ninety,
the Guatemalan army opened fire on an unarmed crowd of
(32:49):
between two thousand and fourth the four thousand protesters that
had finally kind of had enough. Yeah, the army had
had a garrison in um Lin, and like just about
every other town over the population of ten thousand and
um they used to just basically abuse the population. And
one night these soldiers got drunk beat up some guys
(33:12):
that at a bar started breaking into people's houses and
just basically being jerks and right. So this guy who
was injured in the bar fight, um I guess, went
and told the mayor something and and everybody got woken
up and went to the army garrison demanded that they
stopped abusing the population, and so the the UM I
(33:37):
guess one of the the guys who was heading the
garrison said well, what do you have to say, and
somebody shot into the air, and somebody else just started
firing into the crowd. They ended up killing fourteen people
and the age range from ten to fifty three. Twenty
one others were wounded, and uh, we visited there and
(33:58):
they literally have a sort of a little open plaza
in the woods and they have a little memorial at
each spot where each person was killed. Yeah, they have
the original steps that were there. Yeah, and and you
know there's it's pretty again so brink. They have harry
players um I think once a month or something. Yeah,
and they still do have mass there. But the good
(34:18):
news is out of all that, two weeks later, as
a result of the pressure and outcry over this, the
army vacated the garrison there at least, and Atitlan became
one of the few communities that um didn't have a
military base. Right. Yeah, this one, for some reason, just
stirred up, you know, the anger and resentment of everybody
in Guatemala. Even the people who are running the military
(34:40):
turned down the military for this one. Right. So at
this point we are like in Guatemala, I mean, we
are really feeling like we gotta handle on what's going
on here? After this day, do you remember we were
walking around a Titlan and I was like, look, you know,
like ten twenty years ago there were guerillas sitting here
with a K forty seven shooting it out with Moliss.
Like where we're walking right now, you could feel it's
(35:02):
still had left some sort of impression on the Yeah,
it was very creepy and those little tight alleyways and
I was just trying to like wrap my head around
coming around a corner and seeing a gorilla with a
gun and uh, you know, kids everywhere. It was just awful.
But at the same time it was a really really
nice town too. Oh yeah, you know, like it was
(35:23):
this kind of dual experience. Well, yeah, because Late Alan
is a place where Greeno tourists go because so gorgeous,
it's it was a little weird. So we get back
to the place that our little hippie cabana and I
have a little happy hour by the lake, which was
one of the other great things about these tours is
they believe in unwinding at the end of the day
(35:44):
and fellowshipping with each other and having a cold one
called gayo. So it was just gorgeous setting. We have
a great dinner once again, and we were able to
get co founder Jeff Burninger in the cabin afterward for
a little We lured him in. We lured him in
there with a fire and beer and said come in
here and speak to us. And we got to talk
(36:06):
to him a little bit more about co Ed and
we have a clip here of his thoughts on his
initial inspiration to start this nonprofit. What when did the
first seed of UM I see a need here and
part of me wants to do something about it. When
did that first here? That started? When I was looking
for a volunteer opportunity. I think a lot of us,
(36:27):
you know, we come down and we see a beautiful country,
we backpack, we try to learn a language, and we
see the poverty. So what can I do to help? Right? Well,
what I found out was that with my level of Spanish,
there was very little I could do to help so
except maybe teach English. And I found a school that
I was willing to allow me to come in and
(36:48):
teach English. It was a volunteer opportunity and it was
something I thought I could do. Well. Of course I
learned that later that I learned later that I was
not um really cut out for teaching. But what what
I learned in the classroom was that the kids didn't
have books. And the way that started was since I
didn't know how to teach, I thought, well, the simplest
(37:10):
way to teach would be just to get the book
and follow it. You know, starting chapter one and go
to chapter two, chapter three, UM. But since there was
no books, I'm like, well, you know, I've got to
find books. I'll ask the math teacher and the science
teacher where they get their books, because obviously they being
with books. It's just span speaking country. Well, I found
out the math and science teachers didn't have books either.
(37:32):
I'm like, well, this is an outscite. You know, how
do you teach? So, Josh, Here's how the textbook program works.
And I know you know this, but pretend that I'm
telling you for the first time, everybody in podcast land.
Here's how it works. What they do is it's a
really cool program because it is self sustaining. They realized
at some point that early on that dropping things off
(37:53):
and leaving they called the dropping go that's not the
way to go. I'm sure that people need supplies and
things like that, but in the end they feel like, uh,
just to have something dropped and leaving isn't really doing
them a lot of good. Well, it's not sustainable. And
that's the exactly that's the point of the textbook UM
program is that it is sustainable. Starting out with the
(38:16):
first bit of seed money, exactly. So what happens is, um,
they are able to buy books really cheap in bulk textbooks,
deliver them to these students, and these students, actually these
very very poor poor students, actually pay money to rent
these textbooks for the year. Right and we should probably say, um,
right here, it's like two bucks a year per student,
(38:38):
per student, per book, per book. So what happens is
these kids they rent the books, that money goes into
what they call revolving fund, an escrow account, and in
five years, the money, the collective money has uh grown
to the point where they can now replace the original
set of textbooks, right or if they they we co
(39:00):
ed takes these books to these schools. There's a program.
A part of it is taking care of your textbook, right,
So these kids are taking care of their textbooks. And
we'll hear why in a second. But um, it's so
if their books, if say the math books are in
really good shape still, they can use that money instead
of replacing those they can get another subject or they
(39:23):
will replace those books and then the use textbooks become
part of their used textbook program and can go to
some of the scholarship kids who can't even afford the
two bucks, so it's a self sustaining program. Once these
kids uh rent into the program, they've got textbooks for
life basically or for their entire run of education. And
here's Jeff talking about why he's found the program works.
(39:47):
Many people have told us that it did, it would
never work. They won't return the books. Um. And that's
actually a key piece of the of the of the
reason why that there's a the fee program works because
we've seen it the school principles tell us that this
is the case that when someone has to pay, even
if it's a small fee, that they that they respect
(40:08):
what they receive a lot more. If someone hands you
something in the street, a piece of paper, a small
publication for free, the likelihood of you keeping it or
valuing it versus tossing in the garbage can it is
much higher, and it's much higher that you will not
read it because you've not put anything into it. But
(40:32):
if you have to pay a small fee for it,
it's much more likely that you're going to read it
or keep it and chuck um. Two bucks two bucks
a year per books, say three books six bucks a year.
It's paltry, but at times how many kids sometimes though, right,
But but you want to make sure that you're not
thinking it as an American like, is it really paltry?
(40:53):
So just said that coed Um did his study to
find out how expensive it was to these families. Yeah,
whether or not they could actually afford it. They struggle
with that for a long time. That's the question we've
been asking ourselves for for the last twelve years. And
we started by simply asking the school officials, and they
said the principle and the and the teachers and everything,
(41:15):
and they clearly believe that yes they can. But we're
concerned about that because some people in the development community
believe that if there's any cost to education or the
benefit that someone's receiving, that it becomes a barrier of
entry into education, that you're keeping kids out of school
because you're raising the costs of them going to school.
(41:36):
But we've we've actually found that not to be the case.
With textbooks. We've gone so far as to interview the students.
UM we've through a third party organization through one of
the universities in Clatamala City. UM interviewed the students receiving
the textbooks after they graduated from the program and asking
them on a simple scale, I'm one to five, are
they are the books very affordable? Kind of affordable, mediocre
(41:59):
ex sense of you know, on that scale and and
basically the results came back saying that the books were
either either cheap or or or affordable. So that's good news.
They put a lot of work into researching this, and
they did find that, you know, they were validated and
that the parents can't afford it, and that they believe
(42:20):
in paying for it. And that's what really blew me
away about this whole thing is that something earned is
much more important than something given to you, right, And
then that's why the program has been so successful. Chuck,
So what we found this is this is when our
eyes were really starting to open to Jerry's too, Like
she was walking around there's like a little crusty drool
(42:41):
on the cydber mouth, Like she's like, what is going
on here? But what we found is this group that
we're with UM goes down to Guatemala. They rustle up
American money. By they identify schools that say, yes, we
want to be part of your textbook program. It's contractual, UM,
and they buy these books, take them down to donate them,
(43:05):
and uh, the kids rent these books. All this money
is putting in an escrow account for the school, and
then after X number of years they can replace the
books or add new books, and it's self sustaining because
those new books are rented and rented and rented and rented.
So this bit of seed money that buys these two
books at first ends up spreading um throughout the community.
(43:27):
And you know what, I just want to go ahead
and say, now, five dollars is what it costs to
buy textbooks for one kid for a full school year.
And you will have your opportunity to give just five
dollars later on little teaser. You are going to take
over after Jerry Lewis retires for the telephone. Yeah I should. Uh.
So we had a great talk with Jeff. It was awesome,
(43:50):
filled us, filled us in and we were really felt
like we knew what we were in in for. At
the end of day two, our first really big day
out and uh, we had a up some more gayos
and tumbled into slumber and it was time to go
to sleep, and it was time to go to sleep.
(44:15):
So the next morning, dude, we wake up and uh,
we have a boat ride in store for us across
the lake, which we're pretty excited about because, you know,
just being on a boat on an awesome lake's exciting
for me. Like a seat line which we described, and
actually no one has any idea how deep it actually is.
Oh really yeah, yeah, I think some say it's like
(44:35):
as deep as it is at its widest point, but
it's like loer it sounds like lor right, so we uh,
take off in the lake is actually much bigger than
what we were seeing from our our little cabania there.
So it's like a thirty minute boat ride to a
village called h I know we're gonna butcher this one.
You're gonna butcher this one. I'm not even trying pan
(44:56):
panah nice. I think that's it. That's we're gonna go Pana.
And you pointed out that it looked like the little
village in the movie Popeye. And if you look on
the internet under this, if you google that P A
and A J A C H E L, I think
you might agree. Yes, it was very cool looking. Yeah
it was. And we disembarked. We disembarked. Uh, that wasn't
actually where we were going. That was just where we landed.
(45:18):
Now I get the impression they just kind of wanted
to show off because we we went across the lake
by boat and then got off and then got on buses. Yeah,
so I think they're just like, hey, the factor. Yeah,
well it work And it did work for sure. And
we took pictures on the boat. Those will be up
on the website as well. Uh, we load up on
the buses again and we set out for the peach
(45:39):
abaj Cooperative School. Yeah, because we were talking about how
they come down with the textbooks to to donate to
a school that agreed to enter into this program, and uh,
we got this is our first donation we got to
see because they make up big to do out of it.
Oh yeah, it's like that's that's the main point of
these tours that you go on, is you got to
the different school rules and they you know, you're welcome
(46:03):
with open arms, you're welcome with dance and song. And
uh we danced with you know, some of the little
girls there, they would come and grab our hands and dancing.
It's a lot of fun, but you really feel special
and they really roll out the in this case evergreen carpet.
I guess for you and at this school we were
able to learn about the Corpse program, the culture of
(46:25):
Reading program right in Chuck. First, let me say this
was the poorest of the poor as far as the
schools in the areas we saw. There wasn't a discernible
town because this is like the highest highlands that we
entered into, and it was like road mountain stepped farming
on the mountain, which is really cool. Exactly, there wasn't
really a town. It was all along this road. It
(46:45):
was wide rather than condensed in any way. UM. But
the people were very very gracious and very very happy
to see us. Yeah. So when we say poor school,
let's set up a mental image. I think, uh, cender
block rooms, kind of this rantid smell in the air,
dust everywhere, dust everywhere. Uh, desks that look like they
(47:07):
were donated from like you know, some of the atomic
experiments in New Mexico in the forties. Yeah, and uh,
it's just like beyond poor what you would think of
as poor. It is. But again, the people came from
all over the community for this this UM donation. UM
and the kids actually were with the young kids in
(47:29):
the early hours, and we were also there for when
class is transferred because it's young kids in the same school.
Young kids in the morning, older kids in the afternoon.
And it's because number one, they only have one school,
but number two because the older kids get up and
work in the fields in the morning and then go
to school. And when we say in the morning, they
get up at like four am to make the tortillas
(47:52):
and then to work in the fields so they can
attend school. Yeah, unbelievable. Uh. The kids we got to
give out and pencils, which Jerry also brought some like
stickers and things. But she brought like seven stickers. I remember,
like a hundred kids off the I said, off the
day loose. Yeah. I grabbed one of the kids and
(48:14):
pointed and then pointed to like what Jerry was holding,
and she just went over and all of a sudden,
they all just flocked. Jerry was hilarious. She took to
it though she was kind of like trying to instill
some order. She was like, all right, all right, everyone
calmed down, let's let's get this done. Which is funny
too because a lot of these kids are a mono
lingual and just spoken their Mayan dialects. So Jerry is
sitting there speaking broken Spanish to them, and even if
(48:36):
they spoke in Spanish, they wouldn't know what she was saying.
That they definitely had note to what she was saying,
and yet they still formed a line. Yeah, they did
the universal language line up. So uh. But I just
on a personal note, to see these kids clamoring over
these pens and pencils like it was a an xbox
made me want to slap American kids a little bit,
(48:57):
to be honest, what the kids are playing with these things?
That's what they're playing with, or that the p S three,
I don't know the iPhone, but they were treating these
pins and pencils like they were, you know, precious and
then they are. So they had a little ceremony like
they did at all the schools, a little traditional symbolic
dancing and uh performing of uh you know what kind
(49:17):
of ceremony did there was the corn dance that they preferred.
The corn dance. Yeah, it was about how the corn
was given to them by the gods, right, and it's
pretty cool. And actually by the last school we went to, Chuck,
Jerry and I could have performed the corn dance every
single one. Yeah, I think I could probably roughly perform it, yea,
(49:40):
but you should uh. And then we got to meet
a lady named Caroline Johnson. She's in Portland, Maine's pretty
cool lifelong educator, principal school principle that went on a
co ed tour and went back and said, I'm going
to quit my job. I'm gonna go to Guatemala because
they're not snotting. Those little brats, they don't have apreciate
things down there. This, this is the experience of Guatemala,
(50:03):
really alled you to disdain American kids. Didn't. Now that's
not true, but um, Caroline obviously didn't say anything like that.
She's like one of the sweetest ladies I ever met.
She's very kind and soft spoken, but with it and sharp.
Actually went down on a tour like we were on
and joined up and actually ended up creating an entirely
(50:23):
new program that co had institutes right, And we asked
her what you know inspired her to leave her life
behind and go to Guatemala. And here's what she had
to say. I think the thing that that really that
really spoke to me. And we went to an elementary
school just to deliver some some pencils and books and
miscellaneous kinds of things, and the principal found out that
(50:45):
I was also a principal in the US and came
up to me and said, can you help the teachers
don't know how to teach reading. Um, we appreciate all
this stuff, but we don't know what to do. So
I started talking to Joe and Jeff and they said, oh,
we've looked into getting into education all kinds of things,
but BASI, we're not educating or something. We need somebody
to help us. So I started volunteering with them, and
(51:07):
at one point decided, you know, working down here and
working with these kids would be a lot more fun
than continue to be a school administrator in the United States.
And so here I am. So how awesome was she?
She's very cool, very cool lady doing great work. And
how cool did the little birds in the background sound? Yeah,
you could actually kind of hear how beautiful a day
it was thanks to the birds. That wasn't sound designed
(51:28):
by Jerry, although it could have been. It could have been.
So she works with the court the Culture of Reading program,
and we why don't we get her to tell us
about what CORE is instead of us doing it? So
what does um, CORP stand for and what we are
the basic fundamentals of the program corpus Culture of Reading program. UM.
That culture of reading was something really important to us.
(51:50):
We we came to the schools and we saw that
if you gave a second grader a third grader of
a short piece of text, they could read the words
off the page. They essentially had no comprehension. They the
words didn't have meaning. And without books in their homes,
without books in those schools, reading is not something they
do for enjoyment, and it's not something they see as valuable. UM.
(52:13):
They don't see picking up a newspaper as as something
that will help them, that will assist them, or going
to look for information and texts. So developing that culture
of reading, so we want the kids not only to
be able to read and develop those critical thinking skills,
we want them to want to read. The want them
to see that reading is something you do for pleasure
and it's something that you do that will enrichually. So Chuck.
(52:37):
What Caroline and UM the Cooperative for Education figured out
was that UM teachers were teaching kids to read basically
just writing their assignments on the board and then kids
had to scribble them down real quick before they were erased,
and there was no comprehension whatsoever. So the court program
that Carolyn created UM is part teaching kids to read,
(52:59):
but it's also a part teaching teachers how to teach
kids to read. So instead of just standing there and
reading very quickly from a book, it involves like reading
in a very big voice and like like you read
to kids, and then showing them the pictures so they're comprehending.
There's not just a string of letters. There's comprehension to
the word. Sure. I mean, I wasn't any impression. It's
(53:20):
more for the teachers because they had never seen books either. Well, no,
it's part for the kids too, because remember the books
get translated into a UM a picture book, and then
a play and then I think another big book. So
technically this one book that they start off with, by
the end of the week they have three books and
(53:40):
they've made a play out of it. So they have
a book down flat in in in a week. Pretty awesome. Again.
So that's the end of part one of S Y
s K is Guatemalan Adventure. Uh, the exciting conclusion is
coming up on Thursday, and stick around after these words
(54:01):
to hear how you can buy student textbooks for life
with just a five dollar text donation. This episode of
Stuff you should know. It's brought to you by go
to Meeting, the affordable way to meet with clients and
colleagues for your free thirty day trial is it go
to meeting dot com slash stock. Okay, folks, if you
(54:23):
like what you've heard so far about the co Opera
for Education and you want to support them, you can
do so with just a five dollar text donation. And
here's how it works. Just text the words stuff stuff
to two zero two to two and you will donate
five dollars to help put a textbook into the hands
of a Guatemalan child. You will receive a text back
(54:46):
asking you to confirm the donation and just reply with
the word yes to complete the donation, and you will
see a one time five dollar charge on your wireless
bill or deducted from your prepaid balance. Message and data
rates may apply. And if you st up and change
your mind before confirming the donation, which you shouldn't do,
you can reply the word s t O P stop
(55:07):
the two zero two two two, or if you need help,
reply with the Word Help h e LP donations are
collected by the Mobile Giving Foundation. For more info, you
can call eight six six eight one oh one two
zero three or go to h m g F dot
org slash t so tune in Thursday for for the
(55:27):
conclusion the exciting conclusion of s Y s k's Guatemalan adventure. Audios.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
com home page. Brought to you by the reinvented two
(55:50):
thousand twelve Camray. It's ready, are you
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
Good Game with Sarah Spain
Good Game is your one-stop shop for the biggest stories in women’s sports. Every day, host Sarah Spain gives you the stories, stakes, stars and stats to keep up with your favorite women’s teams, leagues and athletes. Through thoughtful insight, witty banter, and an all around good time, Sarah and friends break down the latest news, talk about the games you can’t miss, and debate the issues of the day. Don’t miss interviews with the people of the moment, whether they be athletes, coaches, reporters, or celebrity fans.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.