It’s been a long time since I last blogged! During this quarantine, I’ve decided to get back into journaling and blogging in a first-person voice, hoping to entertain both you and myself. It might feel like you’ve missed a lot of updates, but I’ll try to catch up as we move forward. In the meantime, stay safe and remember to wash your hands.

Today marks Day 39. This morning, I received an email from my friend Jay Money from Budgets Are Sexy. He reached out to help with a small project I have going in Guatemala during the COVID crisis.

In my village, many people live day-to-day, and the five-week lockdown has been extremely harsh. People are out of food and work, and there’s no immediate sign of improvement. Guatemala relies heavily on tourism (which has halted due to travel bans), remittances from immigrants (many of whom are now jobless in the US), and exports like coffee and sugar, which weren’t very lucrative to begin with.

Out of desperation, people have started hanging white flags out their windows to signal they have no food. Many live off the informal economy, selling small items on the streets, but with everyone struggling financially, their meager incomes have disappeared. A tiny restaurant that once offered “pay it forward meals” has seen demand explode from 20 people a week to over 1,000 daily.

Displaying a white flag is an act of bravery because it publicly acknowledges one’s financial struggle to all the neighbors. You can’t just go to a social worker or food bank; this is the only way to signal for help.

I’ve been sending money to friends organizing food distributions in Southern Guatemala and have tasked a community leader in my Northern region with doing the same. I’m focusing on households with single moms, as they don’t have a man to help with tasks like planting corn or gathering firewood, making them particularly vulnerable.

Knowing Jay Money’s big heart, I asked if his community fund charity could help. Soon enough, I received extra funds to assist. I don’t know how much inflation will impact prices in the coming weeks, but here’s what it looked like when I left:

– 30 eggs cost $4
– A pound of rice was $0.80
– A pound of beans was $0.70
– A pound of cornflour for tortillas was $0.50
– A quart of oil was $2
– A pound of potatoes was $0.50
– A half-pound bag of pasta was $0.50
– 3 soaps were $2

With $25, you could buy a basic package for a family, including eggs, rice, beans, cornflour, oil, potatoes, and other essentials like salt, sugar, coffee, oatmeal, and powdered milk for kids.

There’s a video showing the white flags used to indicate food shortages, with red flags for medicine needs and different colors for issues like domestic violence and child neglect. Guatemala has pleaded with President Trump to stop deportation flights that are bringing more COVID cases, but these requests have been ignored.

The big issue in Guatemala is the lack of state support. The government promised a few hundred thousand care packages, but it’s far from enough. Many remote families, like those in my jungle village, are hard to reach and support takes much longer to arrive.

In addition to aiding single-mother households and the most vulnerable families, I’m also matching these funds with work for able-bodied men. There are tasks at my house, like garden upkeep, that aren’t vital but provide pride and purpose to workers, rather than just handing out charity. Unemployment in a macho culture, where men are valued by their ability to provide, can severely harm mental health.

Gang violence in cities is on the rise as people turn to desperate measures to survive. Thankfully, my village remains peaceful, but we’ve seen an increase in petty theft, with people stealing chickens and crops out of desperation.

That’s why I’ve started giving out food and jobs, and I hope to continue until the lockdown ends. If you’d like to help, you can send funds to my PayPal at tdmpauline at gmail dot com. I will use my local account to transfer the money without any transaction fees, ensuring 100% goes to food. I will also match your donation by providing work in my village.