by Lisa Roell Turano

The little girl was blue—that’s what I remember most. Even her dark Guatemalan skin couldn’t conceal her unnatural indigo color. She looked as if she had been dipped in a vat of ink long ago and the stain had never quite worn off. As the other children laughed and played, climbing into the branches of a scraggly fruit tree in the back yard, she remained silent, ambling slowly across the yard, stopping every few feet to catch her breath.

In 2001, I was staying at the house next door to hers, a homestay with a family while I was attending a Spanish school in a tiny village in the Petén region of Guatemala. The smallest children of the house spent afternoons clustered around me, helping me with my homework and laughing at my labored attempts to speak their native tongue. They had taken to rifling through my backpack in search of exotic American treasures, which one afternoon had led to my awkward explanation of exactly what the mysterious tube called “tampon” was used for.

After that discussion, I decided we all needed a break and suggested that I treat everyone to a “choco-banana,” the delicious frozen chocolate-covered bananas I had developed a fondness for. They were delighted and immediately began pulling me out the back door toward their neighbor’s house, where a woman sold homemade snacks to supplement her income. As we crossed the back yard, we passed a makeshift outdoor kitchen used to make a daily batch of corn tortillas (a task assigned to little girls). A small gray pig, christened “Miss Piggy” by the children, nuzzled at our ankles. When we reached the neighbor’s house and poked our heads in, she greeted us unsmilingly, opening a rusty freezer near the door. The bananas cost 50 centavos each, the U.S. equivalent of six and a half cents.

We walked back next door, where I savored my frozen banana, and the children, having gobbled theirs quickly, began playing tag. The neighbor’s children had come back with us, including the little blue girl. Aside from her skin color and a slight puffiness in her face she looked just like any other little girl in the village, with shiny coal-black hair and sparkling eyes. She leaned quietly against a mango tree, watching wistfully as the other kids ran squealing around the yard. I felt a tug of sadness in my heart. I could almost feel her loneliness and sense of defeat. Arleny, the eight-year-old daughter of my house, saw me watching the girl and came over to sit next to me on the concrete steps of the house.
“Her heart is sick,” she told me in Spanish, choosing words she knew I’d understand.
“Has she seen a doctor in the city?” I asked. “Is there medicine for her?” Arleny shrugged. She didn’t know.
There was so much more I wanted to ask about the girl. What exactly was her condition? Was it curable? And the biggest question—was there anything I could do?

By their standards I was indescribably wealthy. After all, I had the financial freedom to buy an expensive airline ticket to their country, and I was paying 160 U.S. dollars per week just to live in their village and attempt to learn their language—in a country where a family’s average monthly income was not much more than $200. Could a few hundred dollars from my pocket mean the difference between life and death for this little six-year-old girl?

I struggled to find the Spanish words to ask these questions. Then I realized that an eight-year-old would probably not know the answers anyway. I considered approaching the sick girl’s mother and offering help. But would I be able to string together the Spanish words well enough to make my questions (and intentions) clear? Or would I just come off as one more nosy gringo, prying into something that was none of my business and bragging about how much money I had? I sighed at the enormity of my dilemma.

In the end, I never spoke to anyone. I made no effort to offer help. After a long internal battle, fear won out—the fear of being misunderstood in a foreign language, the fear of making an unwelcome intrusion into another family’s business and the fear of being perceived as a know-it-all, self-important American.

I’ve often wondered about her condition. After some cursory research at home, I discovered that the likely medical name for her blue color was cyanosis, which means there is a lack of oxygen in the blood. The lack of oxygen can be caused by many things, including lung disease, asthma or a congenital heart defect. Once I got to the part about bluish skin being caused by scarier-sounding disorders like Methemoglobinemia—which can cause seizures, coma and death—I stopped reading.
Last fall my travels once again took me to the Petén, back to that same small Guatemalan village. My husband and I were on a six-week journey through Mexico, Guatemala and Belize, and our route to the Mayan ruins of Tikal took us so close to the village that I knew we had to stop—to visit my family, and to find out the fate of the blue girl. Although we arrived unannounced, the family I had stayed with welcomed me into their home as if I’d only left yesterday. The house next door where the little blue girl had lived was gone. A new road had been built on the land where it used to sit.

After a half hour chatting with the family, I worked up the courage to ask them about the sickly neighbor girl. The mother of the house was all smiles as she reported that the girl was still in the village and had moved to a new house with her mother. She was still a bit fragile health-wise, but she was doing well in school and was very happy. The relief on my face must have been evident as I tried to express to them how I had worried over the years.

Now that I’m back home again, I sleep a little better at night knowing that the blue girl is happy and doing well for now. She was one of the lucky ones who seems to be thriving without any outside intervention. But how many other children in that part of the world aren’t so lucky? How many small lives could be improved, if not saved, by an offer of help by an outsider?
I have fallen in love with Central America’s landscape, people and culture and plan to travel there again as often as I can. And if I ever find myself in another situation where my help could possibly make a real difference, in Central America or elsewhere, I will remember the lesson the blue girl taught me about listening to my gut and setting fear aside. If I ever question myself (and my intentions) again, I’ll just close my eyes and imagine a healthy, laughing little girl—her rosy cheeks glowing pink under the Guatemalan sun.