Keeping it casual

It was not all play and no work for my missions team and I at the Guatemalan orphanage. During the day, a group of us would work on laying the foundations of a future medical clinic. The clinic would provide medical care for the many needs of the orphanage and the public as a whole. Our work site was right next to a busy highway where passerby could see us working. We watched the large multi-colored buses drive past with people hanging out of doors with one hand and riding on the roof with the luggage due to over-packed quarters. Guatemalan rules of vehicle passengers are very lenient, as we found out our first day with eight of us taking a ride to a local soccer game in the back of a pickup truck. Still, we couldn’t get over the fact of how casual Guatemala seemed to be about everything. Public interaction, we found, was very casual, even among strangers. Our females in the group would also attract the attention of male pedestrians who would openly gawk and whistle at them. Sometimes pedestrians would stop walking and watch our activities for a good amount of time. In the US, this is generally considered impolite, intrusive, and if people linger too long, overall awkward much of the time for both parties involved. In Guatemala, people seemed to be very comfortable with blatant people-watching and there is no embarrassment or awkwardness involved. We learned to become accustomed to being watched and engaged in conversation with complete strangers, learning to adopt to the casual way of life of Guatemala.