Senior devotes summer to humanitarian needs in Guatemala

Off the southeastern shore of Guatemala’s glittering Lake Atitlán, said to be one of the most beautiful lakes in the world, the small town of San Lucas Tolimán is blessed with a magnificent view: striking blue waters, azure skies and the distant shape of the dormant volcano Tolimán just south of town.

But behind this breathtaking Latin American landscape stands an impoverished indigenous community of Highland Mayan peoples, still tasting the bitter repercussions of a country once strife with civil war. Malnourishment lurks in the corner of every overcrowded household, and for children, the hope of education remains bleak.

Here, senior Nina Harris spent six weeks of her summer working with Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and its health promotion program founded by professor Dr. Paul Wise. Her devotion to this community began the previous summer, after a one-week visit during which she became better acquainted with Wise’s health program.

In the surrounding rural villages that volunteered to take part in this research project, each child was weighed every two months. If the child was judged to be second-degree or third-degree malnourished, they received the protein supplement incaparina, Harris said.

A great deal of discussion was involved, Harris added, as to which children should get the supplement, especially since the program relies on limited grants from Stanford.

“You have to make these decisions very wisely,” Harris said. “It’s a very hard choice to make. Do you try and catch somebody before they fall behind the second-degree malnourished line, or do you let them fall before you help them?”

For the last two weeks, a group of Stanford professors joined the research crew. Harris acted as their assistant intern and, equipped with her proficiency in Spanish, served as a translator during medical interviews regarding access to health care.

Although the health promoter program had already established a hospital in the area, many community members were not using it. Thorough investigation revealed that, more often than not, access to the hospital was limited by extreme poverty.

“If it cost five quetzales, which is less than a dollar, to get someone to the hospital, most people would not be able to afford it,” Harris said. “So we came up with ideas to make health care [more readily available] in the actual rural communities. We made medicine cabinets so that they would have access to stronger meds without needing to go to the hospital.”

In addition, Harris taught English classes in the community three times a week. In this region, where education is nearly obsolete, people who have completed third grade are considered lucky. Her students ranged from ages 15 to 48, though the majority were between 15 and 18.

“I loved getting to help them to learn, because I felt like I was doing something that was helpful,” Harris said. “I’m really proud of [my students] and miss them all a lot, but I also personally learned a lot about what it’s like to be 17 in another country.”

With her budding interest in photography, Harris also spent much of her free time capturing images of the native community.

“The people in Guatemala are incredibly beautiful, and I love the way they capture,” Harris said.

Harris also brought a photo printer with her, enabling her to give physical copies of portraits to families.

“Most of [the people in San Lucas] have never seen a photo before, let alone have one for themselves,” she said. “I had a lot of mothers start crying because they were so happy to have a picture of their child. I also learned a lot about perspective, both literally and figuratively, since there’s only so much you can see in [the frame] of a photograph.”

During her stay, Harris lived with a host family, which consisted of “an incredible father” named Angel, his six children and several of his grandchildren. Besides his nuclear family, other relatives also shared the house complex.

“The way families interact [in Guatemala] is colossally different from anything I’ve ever seen,” Harris said. “People don’t think of their extended families as an ‘extended’ part. Everyone’s family is just the whole family, and everyone has hundreds of siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles — it’s just much more community-based.”