Shot on location in Santa Maria de Jesus, Guatemala.

He thinks I'm crazy.

And...quite honestly...maybe, so do I.

All I had was a photograph, his first name and the drive to find out more about his story. It was a crapshoot, to say the least.

It was the first step out of the bus and back onto the cobblestone streets of this culture-saturated-village-on-a-volcano and I knew that, regardless of the end result of this escapade, it was already worth it. My comrade on this jaunt and quite possibly the only guy who would be willing to even attempt this wild card of an adventure, Glen, happens to know quite a bit of Spanish. So, aside from being nice company, he’s also very useful. Remembering like it was yesterday where I first met Mario, at the washing plaza near the center of town, we beelined through a few blocks of buildings, trying not to make a bigger scene then we already had. Two white foreigners lingering around with cameras in a small town are not always favorably looked upon by the local Mayans. At the washing plaza, we asked around and showed the photograph, making sure to mention that he was an ‘amigo’, not making much progress. One person sent us one direction, another person sent us the opposite, not knowing the boy in the picture, but directing us as to where we could ask others. We weaved in and out of buildings, lost in a maze of cobblestone under a darkening sky, losing hope with each time we doubled back. The search continued down one crooked street and another until hope started dragging his feet in the dirt and, as should be in a great story like this, at that precise moment the light went on in one man’s eyes. Sitting on a wooden crate huddled under the eave of a storefront window, a middle aged man said, “Si lo conozco”. And with those three words, our pace quickened. A few more turns, a few more asks, a small band of children skittering ahead of us and behind us and one finally taking us to the exact location where our first-named friend, Mario, lived. I stood there for a minute. Facing the corrugated metal wall of the house processing what just took place and trying to process what should now take place. All the times I thought about wanting to find this kid again, I never really thought about what I would do if I did. Glen looks at me. “How do you feel?” he says. Excited, afraid, and like I’m going to pee my pants. (That could have been due to the fact that I was 6 1/2 months pregnant, or, it could have been evidence of my nerves. We may never know. Needless to say it was a very real and uneasy sensation.)

Knocking on a corrugated metal wall that serves as the boundary to a roofless compound where I hoped to find the kid who I met once, two years ago for ten minutes is, I will admit, a little awkward. But deep breaths are good for this kind of scenario, so I filled my lungs and knocked away. Of course, as all good stories have, there needs to be a glitch, right? A conflict? We got one. No answer. By this time and in this part of town, the streets had thinned out. Only a few people passed by. Now what?

It gets better, and longer, and more detailed. And maybe the details are left to be remembered, only and never written down. And maybe for the rest of this post all that needs to be said is that a neighbor took us into her home while we waited for Mario and his family to come back for the night. She spent an hour with us, talking and laughing and making us feel comfortable. Mario got home, I explained who I was, showed him his picture, met his horse and then we all stood there in disbelief that what was happening was actually happening. I had a lot to explain. And so did his mother. And she cried when she said she couldn’t read. And she cried when she said her kids couldn’t read. And she cried because her children will always have to work and will never be able to go to school because they will not survive without them working. We went to work with them early the next morning. And the time was too short. And after a few hours, I got back on the bus, and the bus descended down the mountain and I was full of pride and excitement and passion that tore me apart. And when I stepped off the bus at the bottom, all I could think about was getting right back on.