When the ten of us students had clambered into the back of the pick-up truck outside Asociación Centro de Estudios de Español Pop Wuj, one of the guys from the U.S. said, “I hope this is the right truck.” We were dressed in our cruddiest clothes, headed to try our hand at helping indigenous Maya-Quiché people in the nearby rural community of Cajolá Chiquito create latrines out of cement and wood.

“Every Guatemalan’s worst nightmare,” responded somebody else, laughing, as we suddenly lurched into motion down the cement-tiled street, ”leave for a moment and your pick-up fills with gringos.”

Not just any gringos, however, and not heading on just any touristic excursion into the rural areas surrounding Quetzaltenango, or Xela, as the second-largest city in Guatemala is often called. The majority of Xela’s inhabitants are Maya-Quiché Indians, and us gringos had come there from many countries to attend a Spanish school that aims to give something back to this community.

A non-profit cooperative wholly owned by its staff, the Asociación Pop Wuj (pronounced pope woo, the school is named after the epic saga of the Maya- Quiché, The Book of Time) is a language institution and community service organization rolled into one. Offering one-on-one Spanish lessons to people of all ages since 1992, the school uses the revenue from its teaching activities and the free labor provided by its student-volunteers to undertake projects that help indigenous people throughout the western highlands of Guatemala.

During my three-week stay, I helped build mud-brick stoves in dirt-floored kitchens and cement latrines for outhouse-less villages. Other students played with children of battered women at a local day care center and helped out at the Pop Wuj Clinic. The Asociación also runs a scholarship program for 120 local youths, subsidized by Pop Wuj’s proceeds and private grants from former students.

Attending this community-minded school is a soul-enriching and mind-expanding experience. Not only are the teachers well trained, dedicated to their students, and personally invested in the life of the school, but the service orientation of the institution draws a friendly and caring cadre of learners. Attracted by the school’s ethos, low cost, and diverse language learning offerings, including an excursion-oriented program for college students and special curriculums tailored for medical professionals and social workers, the students that arrive on Pop Wuj’s doorstep are often as dedicated to the education and the school’s mission as the teachers are.

My own teacher, a warm and bubbly woman named Lis who with her husband is part of the collective that owns and runs the institution, agreed to a roving Spanish lesson one afternoon, taking me to see the university where she had been trained as a teacher.  Read More...