school there I met a classroom full of six-year-olds.
 
Rosa, Claudia, Rosenda, Juana, Carlos, Mayra and Norma, eagerly gathered around me laughing as I showed them the photos I had taken of them on my digital camera.

 

On up the street in that same village was the small home of a weaver named Sylvia. She was weaving on a backstrap loom. I pointed to the glittery, purple woven liston she wore on her head. I asked her how much. “125 quetzales,” she said. We bartered a bit to settle on a price and then she removed it from her head and wove it around mine.

 

I thought of the sisters who road on our tourist boat for a whole day on Lake Atitlan.  Dalila, 14, and Selena, 12, were peddling

the weavings of their mother, Sionas.  I noticed Dalila’s worn purple toenail polish matched the horizontal purple stripes in her long black skirt. The girls shared with me that they have nine brothers and sisters and they all work on the small family farm raising corn and chickens.  Dalila and Selena grinned broadly as I showed them pictures of my family, especially my 13-year-old son, Maxx.

 

In my mind, I also recalled Clementina who worked with the soap co-op in San Juan La Laguna.  These Tz’utujil Maya women provide community health care services in their village by making and selling a line of soap and ointments made with the medicinal plants they grow locally. 

 
In that same village, I met Pascual Hermandez Mendoza, president of the fishermen’s association who beamed as he explained that his group was a friend of peace. “We are the guardians of the reeds,” he said. “We are committed to save the nature of the lake and to be models for other communities. I hope you spread news to others to visit us.”

 

I also met eight-year-old Anna Candaladia, who happily showed me a copy of a tourist map for her village of Santiago Atitla’n. Her picture was on the cover of this map and she grinned as she held it up next to her face for me to take a photo.

 

 

When I showed the hotel manager where the gun was, he picked it up, and said with embarrassment that it belonged to one of the security guards.

I later learned the security guard in question had stashed the gun in the flower pot as he stooped down to tie his shoes and had forgotten it there!

 

Throughout the rest of that day, I began to realize that finding the gun had forced my own uncertainties and fears to the surface. Yet, I had overcome those fears by coming here to follow my dream of traveling and writing.  In the process, I had made a lot of friends in this “dangerous” country.

 

I couldn’t wait to tell everyone back home the truth about this country and especially its people. Why would anyone want to go to Guatemala? I can give you dozens of reasons—most of them involving the smiling faces of my new friends. I knew I’d be leaving my fears in Guatemala, and taking home a new sense of confidence and peace.