This was set to be our last Guatemala-based programming day, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t the most special and necessary of the bunch. This particular set of sessions was a long time coming and for reasons I’ll elaborate on later, running them was something I felt we had to do. The Saturday program schedule called for two groups in the afternoon with a repeat beneficiary. That beneficiary, Valle de los Angeles, is a safe haven for nearly 200 kids in Zone 24, just on the other side of one of Guatemala’s trademark zonas rojas.

The day started like any other, the sun was shining and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I went out for a quick lunch and returned back to my room to make sure everything was ready for the session. I had been trying to work with Valle since June, but trying to coordinate sessions around Mo’s busy schedule training with the national team was difficult and things had been pushed until late September and early October. Last I heard, Valle had about 35 boys – so I had carefully packed 35 Around the Worlds bags in my luggage, along with a half-dozen Puma balls to carry out the session.

I usually give the boys their own balls during these sessions, but the school year wraps up in October and with Valle’s early Christmas celebrations, the kids more often than not go on to receive more soccer balls then, too. Careful not to overdo things, I opted to do bags as giveaways this time around. I opened up my Uber app at 1:30 p.m., hoping to give myself ample time to arrive on campus a bit early. It is normally a 35 minute trip without traffic. Almost immediately after the application launched, I noticed Uber was acting up. It said the nearest driver was nine minutes away and it continued to search. Then it updated to say the driver was 12 minutes away, then 20 minutes, etc. Apparently, a major road was closed down for construction, and would be closed both this weekend and next. As a result, normal 20 minute trips were taking 2-3 hours to complete.

Finally, I had another driver lined up – at this point, my ETA was reading as 2:53 – but I had no other choice but to commit. I think if I had gotten one more cancellation I would’ve reached out to my contact and said that running a program today simply was not possible, there was no way to get there.

“I have a tip for you, 20 quetzales,” I messaged the driver frantically, hoping it might be enough to keep her interested.

I watched as the message shifted from *delivered* to *read* figuring it hadn’t been convincing enough. However, my driver inched closer, finally pulling up to my front door.

She drew her window down, “Stephen?” she asked.

“Ah thank you so much,” I said, placing my bag gently in the front seat and hopping into the back. “Before I forget, this is for you – as promised,” I said, taking out a 20 quetzal note and placing it in her hand.

I’ll spare the details of the trip to Valle but it was a trip. I’d call it an adventure, but likely the word nightmare is a more appropriate one. The traffic was insane and I watched with despair as my ETA moved from before 3 PM to well after it. My driver had been nice enough to share a WiFi hotspot so I could advise my contact at Valle of a late arrival, as I shared that maybe we could merge the two sessions into one given our shortened time window. As we took an alternate route, I realized that the GPS was taking us to the backside of Valle, through that notorious red zone.

Finally, the clock struck 3:30 and we arrived at the back gate of Valle. Dropping my bags off in the middle of Valle’s parking lot and stepping foot onto a hauntingly quiet campus – I began to make my way towards the boys’ living area. The younger boys were getting ready, the older ones sitting in a communal living space peeking their heads out the window to get a glimpse of this stranger on campus.

“Esteban!” one yelled out.

“Hola Esteban!” exclaimed another.

The boys had been advised that I was coming, hence the above reception. I walked through the front door and was met with a big hug from one of the boys’ housemothers – Lolita. I had last spoken with her in 2021, as we were hoping to run something with the boys as soon as we could, with them greatly feeling the effects and impact of the pandemic. As mentioned before though, Valle is not a new beneficiary for us.

I first ran sessions here back in 2016. A weekend visit back then quickly turned into a three week long stint.

“Stephen, these boys don’t really have positive role models in their lives – especially when it comes to male figures,” I had been told back then, ultimately sparking the trip extension.

I would come back to Valle for another little run of sessions again in 2019, seeing some old, familiar faces, but meeting plenty of new ones as well. Time is kind of funny like that though, back in 2016 the youngest boys in the bunch were shy and soft-spoken, but after three years – they were now mature, they cared for the younger kids (the same ones they had been before) and like an older brother would a younger one – they would playfully tease them too. Fast forward another three years to now, October 2022, and that same cycle was just as evident. Today, October 1st, also happened to be “Dia del Nino” in Guatemala, so it was always going to be a special day, albeit merely a happy coincidence for me since I’d only found out this information on Wednesday.

I hadn’t been avoiding Valle all this time, on the contrary my heart had been yearning to get back there, but with cases rising and conflicting schedules I just couldn’t seem to get the timing right. The truth is, I had wanted to be in Guatemala since 2020. I felt like I had to be there ever since Willy, a former participant of ours and a dear member of the Valley family, passed away in April of that year. You’ll know by now that we started a scholarship in Willy’s honor back in 2021. I’m not going to act like this scholarship is anything monumental or a crazy amount of money, I mean if anything it probably packs the same punch cost-effective wise as our $1,000 scholarship back in the states.

Since then, a young girl from Colombia named Sofia had a full year of extracurricular studies covered in his name.

Also, another girl, Indiana, in the Dominican Republic was closer to reaching her goal of becoming a teacher. All these kids were coming from different circumstances, both dealing with tremendous loss and grief, but facing adversity with incredible poise and grace. Willy, Sofia, Indiana, these lives would’ve never intersected otherwise, but now they’re forever linked. That’s Willy’s legacy. That’s the best way I could think of honoring a boy who deserved to see his own dreams come true, not just those of kids like him.

My contact at Valle, Luisa Fernanda, had been extremely helpful in choosing this year’s scholarship recipient. Carlos Ortiz, or Carlitos as he was called by those closest to him, was a familiar face.

“Do you remember me?” I asked.

“Si, Esteban,” he said softly. “I still have the ball you gave me last time you were here,” he said, a light smile painting itself on his face.

Despite running behind on an already tight schedule, I wanted to take my time with this one. “Mira Carlitos,” I began, first explaining what the beca was, why we started it, and why he was receiving it. He was blind in one eye and at 13 years old, he was just entering into his adolescent years, so there was worry about him struggling to accept himself and who he was. At heart, though, he was a great kid. I knew that back then, and I’d only come to know it even more now.

“This is something small, but it’s just a way to help you here at Valle, to help you as a student,” I explained. “You’re a great example and I’m proud of you.”

I’d been bracing myself for emotion because I had no idea what kind of feelings this moment might bring about. It felt somewhat similar to those prior scholarships for Indiana and Sofia, but now I was in Guatemala. I was in the Valley. I was in the same place I had met young Willy so long ago. The place that was so formative and so important in his childhood and his upbringing. The place that shaped him into the amazing young man he was, and the place that helped him form all those dreams for who he eventually wanted to become. I wasn’t starting to spiral, but holding that scholarship diploma reading “Willy Garcia Memorial Scholarship” on it, I was walking an emotional tightrope. Luckily and perhaps surprisingly, the most unexpecting character gave me pause, and in doing so, gave me peace. It was Carlos. Three words is all he said. Three words is all he had to say.

“I knew him,” he shared.

Unbeknownst to me, their paths had crossed, both attending Valle at the same time though Carlos was far younger than Willy back then.

“We studied together here,” said Carlos.

I can’t explain it, but something so simple like that was comforting to me. More so than any other scholarship that preceded it. It’s true, Willy’s life lives on through people he might’ve never ever met in this life, but to know that these two, him and Carlos, had crossed paths in this world. I can’t explain it, but for some reason or another, it brought me peace.

“Look, I know you still have your other ball, but I do have something for you,” I said, placing my arm on Carlitos’ shoulder. “Usually I have some hats with my charity’s logo on them, but I ran out of those so today is your lucky day,” I added, while pulling a fluorescent yellow Puma ball from my bag.

“Now I don’t know if you’re a Cremas fan or a Rojos fan, but I will tell you that this was signed by a player from la Selección y los Rojos,” I said, pointing to the autograph Mo had been kind enough to add to it on Thursday. Above it, he had written Felicidades, too.

As I walked back to the building, my arm wrapped around Carlos’s, I asked him the same question I’d asked Indiana earlier this year.

“Listen, you’re still very young and it’s more than okay if you don’t know just yet, but do you know what you might want to be when you grow up?” I asked.

Without even hesitating, his ears perked up and he said he wanted to be an engineer with a big smile on his face. 

“What kind?” I asked.

“An agricultural or agronomía one,” he said. Carlos’ family are farmers and work in agriculture, which likely sparked his interest to pursue something similar.

I congratulated him one last time, as he retreated back to his living quarters to change into athletic wear for our already-delayed sessions. As all this had passed, I had begun to learn more about the circumstances of Willy’s passing. I won’t get into the details, but from what I had heard, it wasn’t cruel. It’s tough because in a place like this a distinction must be made between dying and being killed – and I so greatly dislike that that distinction even exists but that’s reality. The way that young Willy left this world did not seem cruel and I tried my best to find solace in that.

We organized the first group of the fifteen youngest kids to kick off the first session of the day. Now, in the same way back in 2019 how the youngest kids were unfamiliar to me, and the same way all the kids were to me back in 2016, I didn’t recognize a single face in this first group. But, the kids were excited, and their energy made everything fall right into place. We ran through our listening drill, a symphony of giggles and a beautiful mural of smiles delighting the senses throughout all 10 minutes of it.

From there, we did relay races before closing things out in time for the older boys to enter the fray. The younger boys all stepped forward to receive new bags and Guatemala/USA colored bracelets.

For the second session, I deployed a captain, a boy I had worked with back in 2019 – Guayo was his name, though he had grown significantly taller since then. He removed his jacket, and pulled the yellow captain’s armband over his right arm, before running three rounds of our listening drill, much to his peers’ delight.

From there, we broke into our 1v1 drill towards goal – with two teams of eight. In goal, the tallest boy of the bunch, and a star keeper if I should say so myself. Eventually, the drill wrapped with the score 3-1 so we could move to a scrimmage. Before closing out the program as I blew the scrimmage to an end with my whistle, the kids all gathered around for one game of mano o cabeza with three prizes reserved for the final three boys remaining.

Plenty of applause, pulseras, y premios later, I sat the boys down in front of me for a little charla.

“It’s an absolute pleasure to be here with you guys again after three long years,” I started. “I’m always so happy to be here, to be in the Valley, to be with you all. And listen, the most important thing is that we’re all here. We’re all safe. And we’re all healthy,” I finished, telling the boys that I’d see them again surely.

A bevy of high fives and hugs later, we made our way inside where all the students of Valle were saying their afternoon prayers. I stayed just outside the building, speaking with Sor Idalia and Padre Joaquin, two of my many contacts from Valle – and also friendly, familiar faces from back in 2019. I thanked the both of them for welcoming me back with open arms after such a long time, and reiterated how grateful I was to see them yet again.

“This was a gift getting to be here,” I said, turning to Father Joaquin.

As the kids had sat down for dinner, I was met by a group of older girls – students who had been there in 2019 – my last time in Guatemala. 

“Do you remember us?” they asked.

“Yes,” I said, lying through my teeth.

“What’s my name then?” one of them asked. My plan foiled, I admitted that I wasn’t good with names, especially after all this time.

“Well, what’s my name?” I asked.

“Esteban!” three or four yelled in unison. “Come eat dinner with us at our table,” they insisted, heading towards the kitchen to grab plates after everyone else had been served already.

The menu was simple, but nostalgic in the best possible way. Eggs, beans, and flour tortillas – the same Valley menu I had come to love so long ago. I grabbed a plate and sat down with the eldest girls at Valle, a group preparing to graduate in exactly two weeks. Many of the faces I recognized from three years prior, though like I said matching names, as expected, had managed to evade my memory. We spoke about their post-Valle plans, and I was blown away by all their responses. Some wanted to go to the states, to work as au-pairs like so many of their peers and sisters from Valle had done before them.

“I want to be a doctor,” shared one girl.

“I want to be a psychologist,” added another.

The list also included a physical education teacher, a physical therapist, and more. I was called during dinner to head towards the friary for a second dinner in the company of one of the volunteers, Sor Idalia, Padre Joaquin, and a few of the other Sisters. Excusing myself from Valley’s soon-to-be graduates, I made the long, steep walk towards the friary. My first stop upon arrival, after a warm welcome from Padre Joaquin’s two dogs, was the kitchen, just to ask if my help was needed.

“No, you’re okay, but thanks for offering,” said one of the Sisters. “We’re making baleadas,” she said with a smile. I told her they were a personal favorite of mine, and thanked her for using cooking as a means of transporting us back to her home country of Honduras. As we all enjoyed a hearty serving of baleadas complete with frijoles, queso, huevos, crema, y aguacate, we enjoyed an equally hearty conversation about what a treat it was to see each other yet again.

“Please come back soon,” said Father Joaquin. “You are always welcome here.”