Each year many of us get the opportunity to play Santa Claus for our friends and family, but Scott Roland, a former Peachtree City resident now living in Chisec, Guatemala while working for the Peace Corps, got to truly experience what is like to be Kris Kringle as he visited with over 5,000 people in the country and provided them with gifts and photographs of themselves with the jolly old elf himself.

Roland, a 1996 McIntosh graduate, was asked a few years ago what he would do if money were not a concern. He answered that he would like to learn to speak fluent Spanish and help people. Three days in a row after having that conversation, Roland saw things about the Peace Corps pop up and within a few months He was living in Chisec, located in Alta Vera Paz, in the northern part of Guatemala.

“It’s about 30 minutes away from where they filmed ‘Survivor Guatemala,” Roland stated. “It is a beautiful jungle that is hot year round.” While some people don’t like the weather, Roland doesn’t mind the heat. “I love it. Living in Georgia gave me some good training.”

The idea for becoming Santa Claus for the people in Guatemala came after he threw a huge birthday party for himself in Chisec.

“It was really a carnival for the kids,” Roland said. “We had a dunk tank built, which was in itself a major feat, and we had bobbing for apples, which was a hit because the kids got apples.” There was also face painting, balloon animals, a game modeled after the “Grand Prize Game” on “The Bozo Show,” which involves tossing ping pong balls into pails, as well as a clown.

“These people almost never see outsiders or newspapers, so for many of them, this was their first time ever seeing a clown,” Roland stated, recalling one 80 year old woman’s expression at seeing her first clown.

After the carnival, Roland asked his father to borrow his Santa Claus suit. He sent out e-mails to all of his friends and family members and those e-mails got forwarded on to others. Soon donations came pouring in and Roland as Santa Claus had things to give the children and parents of Guatemala.

Tim Marting of State Farm in Tyrone donated pens and pencils and Dr. ken Rundle and Dr. Gordon Fleming of Peachtree City donated toothbrushes and toothpaste. A friend who is a soccer coach at the University of Michigan donated 50 soccer uniforms and dozens of soccer balls. He had adopted a baby from Guatemala and others in the area who had also adopted babies from the country came together to donate items for Roland’s Christmas project. Another group that donated came from a school in new Jersey. A principal had come to the area with his wife, a doctor, and Roland had translated for them. When the principal returned to school, he solicited donations from his students and they sent pens, paper, pencils and toys for the children. One of the most important donations came from Publix, which donated 2,000 bags to be used as gift bags. After Roland’s father, Mitch, came down, bringing over 500 pounds of items in checked baggage, Roland began his tour, which had him visit over 5,000 people and took almost a whole month to complete.

Among the places he visited were temporary shelters for victims of Hurricane Stan, which did enormous amounts of damage, burying some towns underneath mudslides so that they became little more than mass graves. He also visited orphanages, safe houses and city dumps, which often have people living there, as well as other rural villages. The range of emotions that Roland encountered as many people had their first visit from Santa Claus ran the gamut from pure joy to sheer terror. Roland was also able to give people a Polaroid picture of themselves with Santa Claus and for many of them it is the only picture of themselves that they own. His travels were covered by two major newspapers in Guatemala with one paper putting his picture as Santa visiting children on their front page.

Roland, who graduated from Auburn University with a business degree, works with the Small Business Adult Development Program within the Peace Corps and along with teaching basic business principles tries to help local businesses become more profitable. One of the major projects that Roland’s organization does is land titling for indigenous people. There was a cicvil war in Guatemala and though the Peace Accords were signed in 1996, one of the worst slaughters occurred after they were signed because of a lack of communication about the accords. Many people were displaced because of the war and the indigenous people who had previously lived separately all around the country now had to cluster together and basically squat in the middle of nowhere. Roland and the organization that he works for survey the land and get land titles don for people and their families.

The other major project of last year was to establish a community bank. The 11 families in the indigenous village that Roland works with were able to quadruple the money they had and send 30 children to school. It is a requirement that children go to school in Guatemala but they must also pay for all of their supplies. They are now starting to look into water systems.

“We help the people who don’t get anything,” Roland said, adding that not much is close to the area where Roland resides in Guatemala. While the flight to Guatemala is only three hours and the flight passes directly over Roland’s home in Chisec, the bus ride from the airport to Chisec is nine hours long because there is only one road into the village.

Roland stated that according to UNICEF, close to 83 percent of the population in Guatemala lives on less than one dollar a day. There are families of over 10 people eating what they can grow and if they are lucky enough to have a chicken, maybe having an egg or two every now and then. That is why he is eager to go back to Guatemala for one more year, starting this week, and he hopes to don the Santa costume again next year. While the Spanish that he learned in training hasn’t come in too useful in Chisec, where the population speaks Q’eqchi', he is taking Q’eqchi' lessons twice a week and translating for missionaries and medical groups that come to the area. When his time in Guatemala is over, Roland is considering entering law school, His experiences in the country are sure to stick with him forever and the people who met Santa Claus in December of 2005 are unlikely to forget that visit as well.

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