New Journey

Shamanes and curanderos

2010-12-31T10:27:00.000-08:00

I apparently haven't written about the use of shamen and healers in San Pedro la Laguna, Guatemala, which is a tradition very much alive and well even tho Evangelicism has a such a strong hold (Catholicism has embraced Mayan traditional activities much more than the Evangelical churches, who even generally supported the army in their war against the indigenous in the 80s.)

My friend Jose's wife Micaela broke her ankle the day before Christmas. The family immediately called a woman curandera, a bone-healer. You can read about them on the ArteMaya.com website, but usually they are known to be healers from birth but don't start working as a healer until they find their curing bone, which calls or reveals itself to them in one way or another at some point in their 20s or 30s.

So this woman rubs the bone on the affected area (which can be very painful) until the broken bones are aligned, rubs the area with a pomade (don't know what's in it) and wraps it. There is no burning of candles or incense during this treatment, which is not regarded as a ceremony in that sense.

In the case of an accident like this, or when their little niece fell in the street and couldn't sleep the next night, or when Jose's son Lucas hurt himself badly falling from a flag pole, a shaman will also be called for the Traida de la Alma ceremony (depicted in one of Jose's paintings....see www.paintmyfuture.org)
This person lights candles and incense, prays, and then taking his small whip, goes to the site of the accident, usually with one family member, in the middle of the night as the soul is thought to be sensitive and easily-distracted or disturbed by street traffic or passersby, and they want it to make its way back to the injured person. At the site of the accidnet the shaman will pray and talk to the soul, reminding it of all the things it misses in the life of the person, and encouraging it to return. The whip is then used to beat the path behind the soul as it returns to the person's home, where the injured person waits, often asleep. When they wake they are predictably thirsty, as the soul hasn't drunk water in a long time.

With that piece of the soul returned to the body, the person usually sleeps well, becomes less anxious, and the body recuperates more quickly.

On this occasion, a woman shaman did the ceremony in the house (I heard of this in the case of the litle girl who fell, as well) and she simply symbolized the route from the place where Micaela fell with a line of candles, and did the same action along the line of candles, bringing the soul home.

In this case, neither of these - treatment or ceremony - seemed to work....Micaela was still in a lot of pain, and couldn't sleep or tend her home (which was lucky for me because I got to become part of the family for a few days, preparing food, cooking, and cleaning,)

So yesterday a different bone healer was called, and when the medical doctor (family friend) came to visit in the evening he prounced the bone in place and beginning to heal. The family also had a male shaman come and he did the whole ceremony from the point of fall. Today she is remarkably better.

It was interesting to me to watch Jose take over many of her tasks --cooking, sweeping the floor, cleaning the bathroom and so on, even buying stuff in the mercado in the mornings with all the women lined up to select and bargain, When she's able I've rarely seen him do any of these things. However her mother and two sisters who live next door on either side also help. Wonderful for me to see the family cooperation and fun.

Unfortunately no fotos to add to this story.

Guate funeral

2010-09-18T17:13:00.000-07:00

7 children; 69 grand and great-grand children. Died in his home in the midst of his family at the age of 95. Carried to the church for the last time in the hands of his son and grandsons, and then to the cemetary.

There were a lot of Tz'utujil words about his life, (this grandfather of my friend Jose) but I only got that he was a farmer and businessman - he and his brothers had the first buses on the new highway from San Pedro la Laguna to Guatemala City in 1957.

The sign carried by the children in the front of the procession from the church to the cemetary, says: "Little Grandfather (Abuelito) your grandchildren and greatgrandchildren love you, we will remember you forever. and your example will serve us well.. May God hold you in his Glory."

Evidently the grandfather was an important figure in the community, and thus the 200 or so people in his funeral procession. He was originally a trader in produce, his own and others, I presume - walking from San Pedro to the coast to sell, in 1935. He had the very first "molino" or corn grinder in the pueblo (thus reducing the amount of work each woman had to do to make tortillas.) The family still has this grinder. As I said above, he was one of the brothers who began the Mendez transportation business (a lot of old US school buses, now called "chicken-buses" by the foreigners, but which provided connection between the pueblos and to the Capital.) He was also a "pillar" of his church.

Taa' Menchu - Taa' means "elder" and Menchu indicates that his family first came to San Pedro from Tonotecpan.

The family then observed the traditional (in this area) novenario, 9 days of mourning, serving some 200 people a day with a meal, and on the 9th day 1000 people.
Jose had to go pick up 300 live chickens to take to the 35 women of the family whom together will produce this meal.
Then the family continues for the next 40 days to spend a lot of meals with the bereaved grandmother.
I am impressed. SO much work and money spent, so much time together to help this close family through the transition.

Children of Guatemala

2010-08-21T14:52:00.001-07:00

THE CHILDREN OF GUATEMALA
As I sat in the park in Antigua Guatemala, my first week as a Spanish student there, a boy of perhaps six came up to me with a shy expression and a wooden box to put my shoe on so he could shine it. He said something I didn’t understand and gestured at my shoes…I shook my head and indicated that they weren’t made to be shined. He looked at them dubiously for a moment and then wandered away, eyeing the shoes of each person sitting on the stone benches (old men, family groups, couples, and the occasional single person like me) as he passed.
A young boy about his age caught his eye. This boy was dressed in suit-pants and a white buttoned shirt; his hair combed back. He was with his family, and his father was blowing bubbles for him from a small bottle in his hand. The boy was shouting with delight and rushing back and forth to chase each new bubble. The shoe-shine boy paused for 4-5 minutes--watching the boy’s pleasure, perhaps; noting the interaction between father and child. Then he hitched the strap of his box up higher on his shoulder, as if suddenly remembering his responsibilities, and moved on down the path.
This was one of the first things that struck me about Guatemala: the old people working—firewood or bags of rocks strapped to their backs; pushing huge vending carts up the cobblestone streets, and children working--selling newspapers, fountain pens with your name on them, and picture cards, or shining shoes. Some of these children are working with or for their mothers, vending textiles, or begging with a bowl on one side of the street while mom sits on the other. But many are by themselves at 5, 6, 7 years old in a reasonably big city.
Children working became even more evident when I moved to a rural pueblo at the side of Lake Atitlan. But here it was more often with the family and not necessarily for money (though at the dock in Santiago you will be set upon by dozens of children vending bracelets, key rings, and other crafts items...and occasionally begging.) In both San Pedro, where I’ve lived for three years, and San Pablo, where I volunteer in the school, the children work for family – carrying corn to be ground, food purchases from the store, holding balls of yarn while mama winds them, or holding the homemade tool which twists the maguey twine made in San Pablo while mom plaits the plant fibre into the rope from her position five yards up the street. In San Pablo I saw two boys, perhaps 8 and 10, pulling a huge bull on a rope to tether him in another grassy spot. In slightly more sophisticated San Pedro, I often see a 13 year old carrying a man-size bundle of firewood strapped to his back via the mecapal across his forehead, and know well a 14 year old who helps his father get a pig on a table to slit its throat. The families I know think nothing of asking their children of all ages to drop what they’re doing and run to the store for them, and I never hear a “thank you” for their efforts. It is simply accepted that children help their parents as part of being in a family…just as their parents once did.
Another immediately-notable thing about Guatemalan children is the respect and affection they evidence for their parents and their elders in general. Fifteen-year-old young men walk with their arms around the shoulders of their much smaller mothers. And when I first arrived in San Pedro, I noticed a line of 3-4 adolescent boys lined up to kiss the hand of an old man, an elder, sitting on the side of the street. There is also enormous familial affection, evidenced everywhere: young brothers and sisters walk holding hands; a teen-age boy cares for his much younger brother, holding him on his shoulders, or by the hand. All of this is almost too common to mention, but not so common in the U.S. Perhaps this caring is part of the net that makes working with family not only tolerable but enjoyable.
Guatemalan children, especially the poor ones I know, share a bed with brothers and sisters and sometimes parents. Hand-me-downs from older sibs is the norm. Few have toys, certainly not more than one or two, and these are also shared. If you give a poor child some food, they will invariably tuck a part of it in some crevice in their clothing for their brother or sister.

In most other respects, of course, they are like children everywhere: curious, inventive, full of energy, fun, and teasing.
I asked a young man of 20--who told me he worked side-by-side with his father in the fields, hoeing corn and whatever else needed doing, from the time he was six or so—how that felt. Was it like drudgery? Did he resent it? Was it in any way fun? (showing my bias by my questions, of course.) He said no, he never resented it; he was proud to work beside his dad. “And there were no diversions or distractions in those days (a mere 14 years ago or less),” he said. “No TV, no video games. We were happy to have something to do and proud to help. It’s a little different, now.”
In this slightly more modern town, affected by much tourism over the past 30 years, things are changing…for children, perhaps more quickly than for anyone else. Plastic toys have arrived in cheap droves….sold in the flung-up booths along the street during the week of Feria. They break quickly, so the cry goes out for more. Many children have at least rudimentary TV channels available in their homes or that of a friend; Hannah Montana items (a lunchbox, backpack, or actual toy!) suggest that you are “in the know,” one of the chosen ones (we can all remember this from our own childhoods.) Envy thrives. Young girls are now wearing sports clothing, instead of the traditional wrapped skirt, belt and woven blouse.
These are not bad things in themselves, but as young people begin to want things from the wider world (in particular the U.S.) more than they want what their parents have to teach them, as cellphones and IPODs and gameboys become the desirable items and their grandparents know nothing about them, a measure of respect is lost. The sculpted hair of the boys and makeup the young girls want separate them even more from their befuddled grandparents…still immersed in centuries of tradition…and a generation gap ensues. And of course once families can afford to send their children to university in the Capital, the children grow away from home. I think that the family net is strong enough here to hold again the stretching of the bonds; I hope that’s true…and that the children of this generation gain more than they lose from all these changes.

Miranda Pope works with preschool children in San Pablo in her project (www.letsbeready.org) and with 5 to 13-year-old children of single mothers in her project in San Pedro la Laguna (www.paintmyfuture.org.)

Culture conscious

2010-08-20T11:44:00.000-07:00

Yesterday a local friend told me that they were having his baby's baptism at 9 at the church, and at 10 I was invited for almuerzo at their house. So there I was at 9 at the church, long skirt and traditional-fabric shirt on, only to find that mass was currently in session, so I stood at the back of the church with the group of jovenes in their creatively-spiked hair. All the usual standing and sitting and kneeling, tho not as much of the usual call-and-response recitations I like so much, but a marimba band and some mediocre singing. At 9:50 I gave up thinking that they were going to do the baptism at this short time before the almuerzo, so I walked thru the windy dirt and stone alleys to his house....or his parents' house. (He - at age 27 - still lives at home with mom and dad, his wife and two children, and his two adult sisters.)
So I entered the house via their molina on the street...direct entry into a dark gloomy room with a big machine for grinding corn which makes a huge racket--belts slapping, generator roaring. Then walked thru a flimsy curtain into a back passageway which opens to the left into a roofless courtyard (with a view of the top of Volcan San Pedro, which I wish I had a better view of!) Then across the roofed side of the courtyard into the kitchen....a nearly-empty room with pans hanging on the walls, a big armoire at the end full of pots and pans, a simple table on the left, and a huge flat-topped wood-fired stove on the right with the big chimney going up thru a hole in the roof. On the stove were two HUGE pots, one full of cabbage. So first I helped chop some cabbage, which they mix with a little hierba buena/mint and a little limon and eat fresh. Then my friend's older brother came in from somewhere and we talked about how his work at the bar was last night - and then I sat and watched his mother chopping the heck out of a pile of chickens, on a lower cement table attached to the stove. At some point I asked the brother if he grew up in this house and he said they'd lived there since he was 11....(so 22 years, but he moved out at 20)...before that they all lived with his grandparents up near El Centro. So he grew up with this constant racket from the molino! No wonder he does so well as a DJ (with the noise of the loudspeakers.)
Then a bustle, the whispers that the parents and baby were coming from the church, where they had had the baptism AFTER mass, of course, and a big woman came in carrying the baby and man came with her (the padrinos) and then Arecely and Henry (who took off his outer shirt and showed me he was wearing my birthday present Virgin Mary tshirt underneath,) and they all hustled into the main room. They asked if I'd like to sit with them but I chose to sit outside with the rest of the family since I knew the talk inside would be relatively serious and all in Tz'utujil. So I took the baby out of the fancy padded stroller she was in and held and rocked her for awhile and the family borrowed my camera and took some fotos, and then she was asleep so I was served first, a little ceremoniously as guest: the usual, rice with bits of carrots and red peppers, chicken, cabbage, and the broth it was all cooked in (very sabroso) on the side.
While waiting I had spent time watching the molino being worked by the younger sister while the older (who will soon be married) washed everything in sight in the hall and courtyard including taking a bucket of water and throwing it into the bathroom - off the courtyard - and then mopping everything down with a towel/broom (so that's why bathrooms here are always soppng wet.) And the molino sister showed me how to make a tortilla from the wet masa, and I watched two or three women come in with their cooked corn with a little "cal" added (white calcium powder?) and grind it into a mush, scoop it together into their bucket and walk home with it in the small plastic bucket on their heads.
So that's all there was to it, except for listening to a long oration by the padrino in Tzu on how the child should be raised, and then they got ready to leave but I insisted on taking photos of the mother/father/madrina/padrino and baby together, and then just the padrinos with the baby (I don't know what protocol is, but I figured....) Evidentally they are in charge of the child's spiritual life, but it didn't sound like it was too huge an actual responsibility. It seemed very important that he was a man who hadn't drunk in many years.

So that was that cultural event, but on the way home I caught the sub-director of the school next to an extranjera friend's house who also owns a restarurant/lavandaria/bakery and listened for a rapt hour to her stories of all her students are doing about recycling, and producing products from recycled matierals, learning about marketing, advertising, etc. in the process....but mainly coming up with their own great ideas. So I was stoked about that and walked home all happy.

Ooopss.....it's down time.

2010-07-01T14:17:00.000-07:00

The families left homeless by the mudslide are safely ensconced in a place that will work for now, and I've spent the money donated by friends in getting them shoes, some clothing, some work tools, and so on. We've had our every-six-weeks giveaway for the 15 mothers in our project, so I have no more work to do for that. And Feria has set in to San Pedro la Laguna all week and, I hear, next week. Therefore all my local friends are involved in things that have nothing to do with me (processions, for one)and I am feeling....a little at loose ends. My two closest gringa friends are out-of-country, I've already visited the two couples I know..... So this is one of the places you come to when you live in a country that is not your real home.

When I first got to know some of the local people I was very excited to think we could create good friendships across cultural and linguistic barriers. That feeling lasted for probably 9 months or so until we ran into some of those cultural things that separated us - language, for one. We speak spanish together, and have great conversations on sometimes deep personal topics. But when they are all together, and especially when they party together - like during Navidad and Feria - they speak Tz'utujil. So I am just left out, or they have to exert extra effort to translate for me. Both happen, but neither are completely comfortable; I notice I am not invited as often. And when there are local activities, like the traditional dancing, or a procession from the church - well I can watch, but I am not part of what is going on, and my very watching sets me apart. Reality sets in...on both sides, I suspect.

My dishes and my wash are done; I've swept the floor. So now I can read, I can write to friends at home (although the longer I live here the less energetic that becomes,) or I can blog - as I'm doing. I can meditate - and on a grey day like this one has become (after a week of heavy rain) that would feel good.
And I can practice living in the present moment even when the present moment is quiet and a little empty. Good practice.

And I can upload an image from last week's procession in San Juan la Laguna - the pueblo to the west. Which I did attend, with local friends.

Paint My Future/ Ayudame a Pintar Mi Futuro

2010-06-13T08:22:00.000-07:00

This is a photo of our project group in November 2009. We have added 4 more families since then. Our website www.paintmyfuture.org.

Lost but still not forgotten

2010-06-02T14:07:00.000-07:00

Today I met with another family who lost home and livelihood in this landslide. Flora has four children and is pregnant; husband Fredy makes a living crafting necklaces for the tourists. Fortunately he had his materials and tools in a backpack with him in town when the deluge came, but Flora and the children escaped with nothing. So i went through my accumulation of cortes (fabric that forms a skirt) and we cut some up to fit the older girls, a big one for mom. Then for $15 or so I managed to get underwear, a big plastic bucket for doing wash, shampoo, 4 towels, and the painters I work with donated food. And yes...crayons and a coloring book for the kids.

And I have a list of 8 other families who have lost everything. So we will meet with them, one by one, to confirm immediate needs. The biggest need, of course, is a place to live, but I will have to trust to others for that one. I want to give them a change of clothing, a way to bathe and wash clothes, and hope.

Disaster

2010-06-01T19:28:00.000-07:00

We are in the aftermath of a disaster, here in San Pablo. A landslide coursed down the side ofthe volcano through an area several hundred feet wide, taking with it about 15 homes. 150 families have been homeless for 5 days, because their houses are completely gone - with all their belongings and in many instances their livelihoods - or because it's still dangerous to return, or their house is still standing but full of mud; and of course the road is blocked.
All of this within a 1/2 mile of my house. The destruction is awesome...in the traditional way of using that word.
Today I met with a couple of mothers who are staying in the makeshift homeless shelters in a church and at the Muni center. Two of them had only the clothes they escaped in. I'm trying to understand the needs, and also the best avenue to get any donation to the people in greatest need. They say donated items are going to friends of the people in charge of the city; that rarely does anything reach its intended recipient. Because there are perhaps only 15 families left with nothing, I think a personal approach may be possible. Meet with them, ask what they need for now, and get it for them. The need for a new house and land is of course out of my reach; but someone I trust is in charge of restoration efforts here and is collecting money from local people. So if I can deal with now; they can deal with later. And I'll help how I can.
So for today it was underwear.
Tomorrow towels and shampoo.
And I think coloring books and crayons are in order as well.

So excited!

2010-05-19T12:47:00.001-07:00

My trip to California last month was very successful, in terms of selling most of the lovely products of Guatemala artisans which I carried there (after a fun but frenzied few weeks of buying them)in order to benefit my two projects, and for seeing my wonderful friends and family and even getting a little dancing in. I also made connection with a bilingual preschool and (again) with the high school spanish students. What a really great time!
I've been back a week, and two friends from Chico have contacted me to offer to help with the project here. So I am feeling very positive and hopeful about our future. One friend offered to "host" our project in their foundation, which already helps in Belize and Haiti. The other offered to head a "Friends Of" group for fundraising. So maybe Jose (the 33 y.o. painter who heads the project) and I will get more help in providing our (now) 15 single mothers with a food giveaway every six weeks, and the kids with the saturday classes in drawing and painting. Their offer to help us fundraise makes me set my sights a little higher: maybe we could find madrinos/padrinos (sponsors) for all the kids, which would free me up to help the mothers with literacy issues (4 can't even sign their names,) and the children with the many emotional and learning problems that come from living in disrupted and impoverished families. Maybe we could even develop a small loan program to help with things like fixing the roof or the water system, or buying a sewing machine or other tool to earn a living.
Ultimately our goal is to become our own NGO and to upgrade the art gallery so that the works of the main painters and their young students can help the project be self-sustaining, as it was originally.

Addendum to previous post.

2010-04-03T09:19:00.001-07:00

I had difficult loading up enough photos to do honor to Semana Santa in San Pedro la Laguna, but if you'll go to my facebook page -- I think it's under Mira Talbott-Pope -- you'll find a photo album for Semana Santa 2010 that has 25 or so photos with descriptions that give some sense of the history and culture.
I love living in San Pedro. You get used to wherever you live, but when I think about this place, looking at it from the outside, it's so deep and rich. I feel blessed.

SEMANA SANTA 2010-04-01

2010-04-01T10:43:00.000-07:00

El dia de la procesión de los niños., today…dia del virgen. This procession through the alfrombras, or beautiful fruit-and-flower carpets, in the streets ¨to the cross¨ affected me more than recent others have, maybe because the procession of children in special dress or costume-- some of the boys carrying the andas of Christ; some of the girls carrying Mary-- stopped on a large straw mat at various corners of the main calles of San Pedro (where usually I go to the ATM machine, buy my cards for my celfone, or buy my fruit and vegetables.) There tables had been set up with candles, flowers, and incense, and several old ladies in traditional dress, under a huge double arch of fruits and vegetables.In each of these spots or “stations of the cross,” a different child read a passage from the bible describing this station (Christ fell here and a soldier helped him up, it was difficult here and a follower wiped his brow, etc.) and all the people recited the appropriate group response. Really beautiful to hear the solemn voices. And then the whole column proceeded slowly to the next station, the or carriers with a side-to-side swaying motion, and the old ladies in the rear singing out of books that looked as old as they did.The children were adorable, as always,but the thing that always gets me is Mary following her son to his cruxificion. It was after all, a true story, whatever Mel Gibson made of it. I could become a Catholic, for all the chanting and incense, and the personal story of Christ; I just happen to have bad feelings about the Catholic Church.Que lastima.

Big Doings in the Neighborhood

2010-03-31T10:35:00.000-07:00

This morning - of Miercoles Santo (Holy Wed.) - there was suddenly a commotion in the street above my house: the large things they whirl over their heads that make a grating sound, dirge-like sounds from the trumpets and saxophones and the thump of the big two-headed drum: a procession! I left my weeding to go out in the street in the t-shirt I wore to bed plus decent pants...(no bra, hair uncombed)...just to see what was up and ended up sitting there for two hours..
A family just down the street who carry two of the oldest names here - Quiacain and Chavajay - were evidently hosting this event, and had a plastic tarp spread over their small garden.
The procession arrived very slowly--while I and my new pup and several neighbors sat on the sidelines to watch--the noise-makers, the band and drum, and probably 40-50 men in straw ten-gallon hats (a few wearing traditional embroidered pantalones) accompanying an older woman in a bridal-like veil, who carried a swinging incense-burner, and behind them probably 50 women with their traditional checkered shawls and behind them a motley crew of hangers-on, children, more men.
They all went inside the garden and sat. Various men and a few women made some sort of speech or prayer, in Tz'utujil, and the large audience rumbled their replies....a sound reminiscent of the ocean.
Eventually the family started dishing out "atol" (a corn drink, served in an embellished coconut shell) to the people in the garden, and then emerged with these round-bottomed vessels to serve people in the calle, even us. The drink is fairly thick, salt-less, sugar-less, with spices of anise (which grows all around here) and a slight picante bite. Many people came to get the drinks. They must have served at least 150 people.
Evidently the man of this family is currently in charge of the "Cofradia de Santa Cruz," one of the many cofradias or Catholic brotherhoods in the pueblo. So he pays for much of this, but all members of the cofradia also help with money outlay, setup of the scene, and cookingof the atol.
More praying and eventually they came out with the canastas of fruit and veggies that I had heard would end the hour-long event....but wow!....30 women bearing plastic baskets on their heads full of mostly plantains but other fruits as well , then 50 men bearing the same (tho because of the cowboy hats and because they're men, they carry them on the right shoulder)....and then 30-40 more men each carrying a large pod produced by a plant that I think grows on the coast....it looks rather like two primative canoes glued together, face to face....with long prows...about 6' long. I have seen them before in Antigua, and have always been fascinated with the pod - it is used in many ways in the alfombras (ceremonial carpets constructed in the streets for the processions of Semana Santa, including the cross-carrying Jesus to pass through)....the cascara itself cut and used as a "vase" for flowers, the long creme-colored branches inside used whole, or just the tips with their little creme-colored seeds or these seeds separated from the branches and piled together in shapes and designs along with all the other forms of fruits and vegetables to create these amazing carpets. (see photo attached to older post on Semana Santa.)
I don't know where these pods were headed---tomorrow night is when they make these beautiful alfombras all night long. I am hoping to find someone I know making one so I can take part for the first time. But I know the many canastas of fruit were headed to decorate the stanchions they erect over the way of the procession.
As these activities gather together toward Friday - Viernes de la cruxificion - (for instance my painter friend and his group have for weeks been painting the first "anda" or "float"--except that it is carried by hand, or shoulder.) that will be in the procession, one can't help but get caught up in the wonder of it (much as I hate some things that the Catholic Church represents.)
It's truly beautiful and there is testimonial to wonder and faith.

What's different about living in Guatemala?

2010-03-30T06:09:00.000-07:00

Of course it depends on where you live...if you're in the Capital, I imagine that you have most amenities but one constant concern would be security. Maybe someone living there could set me straight on that...I know there are many beautiful sectors of that huge city. In Antigua, you have all the European/US/S. American influences...in music, art, food...but it is a small city, so this is still somewhat minimal. Primarily there you have the sense of antiquity, since it is the oldest large city in Central America...originally capital to the area from above Chiapas, Mexico, to Costa Rica. It is a truly beautiful town, and you can live there comfortably, though I found it cheaper to live just outside Antigua, itself.
At Lago Atitlan, the differences between towns is more marked. San Pedro la Laguna has - to me - a lovely combination of rural and indigenous influences, and some amenities from the US/Europe. This is important to me primarily due to my food allergies - I need some foods that are NOT corn tortillas, beans and cheese. I also love to have the use of the internet, and now have it in my house for about $26 per month, instead of going to a local internet "cafe" (which could be a room in someone's house.)
But what is different about living here? Randomly: public toilets are amazing - you never know what to expect. You can pay 1-2Q and get a small bundle of toilet paper as you enter, wade thru the 1/2 inch layer of water on the floor and find a bowl without a seat, and a bucket to put water in the toilet afterward. That's the fancy toilets. The others, you never know...but an abundance of water OUTSIDE the toilet and none inside is pretty common (think: hold up your skirt, your packages and your purse while you try to manage everything else.)
A common re-use of a plastic coke or water bottle, even by the public utility system, is to cover wires to keep them out of the rain. Many people also use this in place of something to expand or extend the light, so you'll find the light bulb - usually the coiled energy-efficient fluorescent type (who knew?) - encased in a plastic bottle with the bottom cut off.
Plastic bottles are also used to direct water from the rain gutter into a smaller tube to direct the water away from a walkway or whatever. Lots of inventive uses for things of this type.
Houses and even stores are kept quite dark for energy (money) saving.
Showers: forget hot water. Unless you have an on-demand heater - in the fancier homes - or a gas heater, in some hotels - get used to a tepid shower. Or so I thought: very recently I figured out if I take my showers at 10 am, when the sun has been on my black plastic Rotoplas tank for a few hours, the additional heat provided by the tiny electric showerhead (don't touch it while wet!) is sufficient for an almost-hot shower. A great pleasure.
If a truck or car breaks down in the street, expect it to stay there, no matter how much traffic passes, until the owner or someone he hires gets his tools out, crawls under the vehicle and gets it going again. I don't think there are tow-trucks! And noone seems to mind, or complain. Everything her is taken with a "grain of salt." -- "No importa." "No tenga pena." "No hay problema." "No te preoccupas." Common phrases (it's not important, don't worry about it, no problem.)
Money: first you get used to the exchange rate with Quetzales/dollars - it was 7.55/1 when I first came to Guatemala; 3 years later it's more like 8.05. So my money goes a little further!
But there's more to it than that: 100 quetzales is about 13 dollars ....but for 100 quetzales you can buy two nice meals in a nice restaurant, or a pair of good quality used shoes for 75q, 50 q pays my cable bill for my tv (ok only about 30 canals and mostly in Spanish, but...I get Animal Planet and Discovery as well as CNN.) By the way, I found out that the So You Think You Can Dance series I watched so avidly was 6 years old. Wanna watch your favorite old series?
My rent for a really nice 2 bedroom house with a nice smallish garden is $185 per month....but there was no real kitchen, just a 4-burner "camping" stove on a plastic table and a tiny refrigerator....no shelves or cupboards til I put them in (two beautiful wooden cupboards "to order" cost me about $100.) There is no water in the "kitchen" but the bathroom is out the door and down the terrace and around a corner....15' away. And the bathroom itself is a trip - it's outside the main part of the house (as is true of most houses built by local folks) - and is so small, the sink is the size of a large dinner plate, the toilet is just past it, and behind that is the shower. The whole thing about 4' x 8'. I had to put up a curtain to keep from showering the toilet. And of course there's a hole in the roof enough to wet my head as I sit on the toilet when it rains. But the house itself is pretty gorgeous, and my terrace is a lovely place to sit in the evening, with a small view of the lake, a slight breeze, and all the sounds of the frogs and crickets.
From my terrace I can see men working in the corn and peanut fields just outside my garden fence...some in bare feet and traditional clothing. I rent a piece of land about 30 x 40 for $12.50 per month for my veggie garden. Hard going; hard to figure out what grows well here. There are banana trees growing down the road in several places, but the only things that do well in my garden are the "Spring" veggies and fruits in California. Go figure.
Transport is easy here. A tuktuk (3 wheeled motorcycle-with-cab from India) will take you where you want to go, with just about anything you want to carry, including lumber, plastic chairs for someone's party, whatever.) A pickup truck has a regular route thru this town and off 10 miles or so to San Pablo, where "my" classroom is. You stand up in the back with all the other folks for a couple of quetzales.
If I want to go to one of the other towns around the lake, a public boat is the only answer (unless I want to hire a private one.) 20Q to go to Pana (Panajachel.) This morning, 15Q to Santiago to buy some things to take to California to sell....to bring money back here for my projects.

These reflections on differences are just for starters, but I have to GO to Santiago early this morning because the afternoon is filled with activity: our food giveaway for the parents of the kids in our drawing classes, rush home by tuktuk because water only comes to my house and gardens 3 times a week (4 hours total) and today that's at 3 pm, then rush back up town to attend a weekly board meeting for another project I help.

The painters' project (a website I'm in the process of creating) is at www.paintmyfuture.org,
Ta'a Pi't Kortees is at www.taapit.org. Check them out!

2009-07-07T20:41:00.000-07:00

San Pedro la Laguna is finishing it's last day of feria--a two week period of carnival rides, video game and food booths, and constant activities, parades, etc. The men in the photo at the right dance all day and evening for six days straight! (The photo to the left is similar costumes in a parade in Antigua from 2 years ago.) It seems impossible; I asked a local friend if different people wear the same costume at different times of the day, and he said no, it's the same person. I asked "How can that be?" and he said, "It's like a sport." But of course it's also a time-honored custom in Guatemala--a depiction of the conquistadores, from several centuries ago.

There are three sets of masks, usually lots of young white faces (they also wear white stockings) depicting regular soldiers, two or more who look like the officals or high-ranking "officers," and then the bulls, who often play a comedic role. One of the bulls, this time, looked to be about 5 years old, but my camera batteries quit before I could get a shot of him.

Other parades were of the princesses of each school, and then the princess of San Pedro.

Crisis in Honduras

2009-06-28T07:45:00.000-07:00

A military coup d'etat (or golpe de estado) took place this morning in Honduras. Evidently the background is a referendum called for by the president, Manuel Zelaya, in order to change the constitution. He asked for the military to protect the people as they went to vote. This somehow resulted in his asking the leader of the military to step down, and other military leaders did so voluntarily. Leading to the coup.
Excellent background article.
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2009/06/27/honduras-crisis-over-controversial-referendum/

Quoted in this article are several bloggers from Honduras, and latin-americans writing from the U.S. which show the opposing views on the call for referendum. Worth reading.

El dia de feria en San Pedro la Laguna

2009-06-27T13:24:00.000-07:00

Wild, wild days. Rain all afternoon yesterday, the streets running with small rivers, people picking their way around them to get to the booths that line every street--full of roasted meat or corn, muchissimas hard bagel-looking things, video games galore, shooting galleries, plastic toys for kids, sports shoes, etc etc. We went to see the Queen of San Pedro crowned, when it was reputed that queens from all the other pueblos would come dressed in the tipica clothing indigenous to their pueblo. But of course it was raining, so feet and the hem of my long skirt soaked, I headed for home....only to learn this morning that of course the rain stopped just in time for the event, which I missed.

This morning I headed out to see the procession of "queens of sport" (reina de deportes) from each school in town. Really adorable marching bands in full uniform (a month's wages for some daddies,) and a decorated floats for each of the queens. All the girls were in traje (traditional clothing) and each float had it's own theme---one young girl throwing candy at the crowd from the middle of a huge paper flower, another with Respect the Environment blazoned on the front of the truck, another with "Let's avoid using plastic." I loved both of those. In the left photo, above, is a little sports queen next to two boys in tipical male clothing, playing a marimba. The back part of her float had been ingeniously set up to depict something you often see at fairs, but the announcer was saying not here in San Pedro-- a tall pole which rotates to swing men--or in the case boys--dressed up a monkeys (serves sort of the Coyote function in Guatemalan tradition) at the end of long poles. In the photo on the right you can see the boys in red fluffy suits, hanging---but they are actually having fun. The man sitting at the top of the pole is rotating the pole. Click on the photos to see the details.

POLITICAL LANDSCAPE

2009-06-14T13:57:00.000-07:00

A local, indigenous friend of mine drew a parallel between current Guatemalan politics and what is and has been going on in Boliva, Brazil, Venezuela--the new liberal trend. As a long-time liberal, I am of course delighted that the needs of the poor are being listened to, that education and health care are being funded, etc. But as a person slightly more jaded than I, he says, sure....they see that a more stable political base is the huge number of poor rather than the much fewer ricos! A redefinition of power. And according to him, each of these persons is using the poor as a stepping stone to personal power. Lasting personal power.; in each of these cases, the president is taking steps to ensure his own succession.
I can see the logic in this. This same person says that the current accusations against the president are just the rich trying to stop him. Maybe this is true too (it's a little hard not to believe the written and video evidence.) I think a little light is leaking into my ivory tower.

Published!

2009-06-14T05:17:00.001-07:00

I am delighted to finish a two-year work and publish it on Lulu.com. This novel essentially is my story of volunteering in education and social work near Antigua, then moving to San Pedro to volunteer in education again. But by a stroke of inspiration, I threw in a lovely romance, and the slow uncovering of ancient and modern history in my new village. How that history affects the couple is the crux of this story. Many details of Guatemalan/Mayan customs and traditions, and this enchanting landscape.

Preview it on www.lulu.com/preview/paperback-book/heart-of-the-sky/7239260.

Guatemalan Debacle

2009-05-19T14:16:00.000-07:00

Early this week Guatemalans were stunned to learn of accusations against their current president, Alvaro Colom, his wife and an aide by a lawyer who made a video saying he expected to be assassinated and that they would be responsible for his death, as well as that of another lawyer and his adult daughter who had been murdered the week before. The second lawyer was found dead, shot while bicycling two or three days after making the video, and a friend made sure the video reached CNN and other news venues.
The story behind this staggering story is that Colom, et al, were accused of using public money to launch private ventures through Banrural, the biggest bank in Guate. The first lawyer refused to have anything to do with this but gave documents proving the ventures to the second lawyer. Both were subsequently killed to prevent the information getting out, so the accusations go, but it emerged anyway, thanks to rather brave friends.
This is of course huge.
It is sad for me, because I had many hopes for Colom's presidency--the first liberal in many years. It is sad for many because some good things have been happening in education and health during his tenure. It is also terrible because this poor country can not get going without one thing or another providing a huge disruption. And now of course this president has to attend to his defense rather than the huge efforts that this country needs.
And should there be a coup by the army or the civil sector, it would be a devastating upheaval.
There are many calling for him to step down, but he of course refuses and denies all charges. Wisely he has asked for the UN and the FBI to come in to investigate the charges.
Many were afraid of a coup, which has happened so many times in the past.
I felt it would be a test of Guatemala's maturity at this point -- could they pursue and resolve these accusations and a change of government (there is a named vice-president) if needed, without upheaval??
So far, that is happening. The investigation is supposedly underway. There have been huge protests in the capital, but orderly protest (and shows of support -- held in two different plazas.)
Keep your fingers crossed for us.

The Death of a Culture

2009-05-14T16:07:00.000-07:00

I have been feeling lately that I am witnessing the Death of Culture, here.....mainly because the little girls are not always wearing the traditional clothing any more, but wearing sports clothes, instead. And today at a lovely celebration of Las Abuelitas (the little grandmothers) in San Juan, where we were testing reading in the public school, the school boys were playing around, ignoring the ceremonies and being interruptive. Which is just boys, of course, but usually in Guate I've seen them being very respectful.....kissing the hands of the older men as they pass them, for instance. That has always touched me.

So today I was watching the Dia de las Abuelitas ceremony, during a break. There were probably 50 older women in full traditional dress (traje) sitting on one side of the audience and 40 or so men sitting on the other side, all the men wearing the usual sort of man's hat, but white straw with a black band, and maybe 18 or so wearing full traje (see inset photo of girl and boy in local traje like their elders'....however this is a San Pablo foto, and the style is different. I'll find the one I want one of these days!)

The six older women being honored that day danced with their spouses (presumably) up to the stage in the usual 1-2-3, 1-2-3 step to marimba music and the men then tipped their hats and bowed to the women sitting on the stage and left each woman in her seat of honor. The women gave speeches in Tz'utujil in which "maktiosh" (thank you) appeared prominently.

Then some of the women danced together with the same step in couple posture.

It all seemed incredibly sweet to me.

But I can imagine how it might look to the young kids, who aren't interested in laboring in the fields or over a backstrap loom, as their grandparents and parents did or still do; who look to tv (what little they may see) to define the world for them: "Those old people, who no longer have wisdom to offer us, who wear those silly clothes...."

Sometimes I fantasize that the presence of us Americans, who like to wear the traje (I just happened to have a venerated huipile from San Juan on today with a local textile skirt,) and who love to work in the garden, if not the field, might be a different example...at least for those few who revere the old ways, and there will always be a few - like me - who revere honest physical labor, who love weaving, and a relationship with the soil and plant life and the weather.

But of course culture is ever-changing, and has been "dying," here, since before La Violencia. One anthropologist dates it to the time when the younger men didn't want to "spend" their money, hard-earned on the distant fincas or in the city, in the traditional way--by throwing big fiestas for todo el pueblo which cost everything they had--the ancient culture's way of levelling the playing field, establishing non-material status, and avoiding jealousy over material goods.

(See the wonderful book, Violent Memories by Judith Zur, which is about so much more than the war years.)

Mothers Day

2009-05-10T06:47:00.001-07:00

2:30 am Mother's Day. Of course! it's time for firecrackers and long lines of youth singing and laughing in the streets in front of my house. My dog is alarmed and won't stop barking. I consider getting dressed and going out to the street to see what is up, but......nyah. I return to sleep to be awakened again as the group returns and walks down the path next to my house, sets off firecrackers at the house at the bottom and after a bit returns.
I'm not CERTAIN that all this is in honor of Mothers Day, although they do take the day seriously, here. But I remember when I lived in Santa Ana, in the house next to the cancha de futbol and church plaza, there were drunken musicians at 3 a.m. on Mothers Day And then about 5:30 or 6 the women, in traditional dress, lined up on chairs outside the church.
Will I walk up to the central plaza today to see if the mothers line up, here? Maybe.

I am more excited to stay home because my friend went to Pana in the boat yesterday and will bring me back some vegetable seeds for the garden--nothing unusual: broccoli, zucchini, watermelon, green beans, carrots, and the like. There are only two vegetables here that I like that I wasn't previously familiar with--huisquil (a vine with green, squash-like "fruit") and some leafy green they use in soups.
I can't remember if I said I rented the little plot ("terreno") below my house, paid my favorite gardener to fence it with corn cane, get all the huge rocks sorted out of the planting spot, and burn the "montes" (weeds.) I helped a bit with putting the cane on the gate frame, but then he came along and redid it all, tightening the baling wire they weave it together with. (And I thought I'd done a good job!)
This house is too enclosed, except at my writing desk--where there is a window across the front of my bedroom. I like being outside, with the sky over my head.
I have been researching medicinal plants and want to put some in the garden. Some will be easy: there's already a lime tree; I planted a weed I brought from Lago Izabal whose leaves taste like cilantro and it turns out to be good for "women's troubles," my gardener says. Also the lemon grass which I planted to enhance my attempts at Thai food is supposed to be good for "colds coughs diarrhea fever flatulence flu and stomach pain." By chance I have a papaya tree, which is good for urethitis. Avocado, coconut, mango, coffee, orange leaves, banana, basil.....all are good foods (though I don't have most of them in the garden they are available in the market) and medicinal, as well. Of course.

The days are full of rain but at least yesterday morning, and I suspect this one, much sun as well. Happy garden. Happy gardener.

Cultural quirks

2009-05-07T17:12:00.000-07:00

[Photos are of me giving a talk to the parents and working with a child in the classroom I support.)

Although I am clearly living in another culture, at least Antigua and San Pedro are so modern that the differences don't seem marked. But today I ran into something a little different.

There are many times when we go to a school to work that we learn we can't work that day because: it's a fiesta day for that community, the teachers have a training to go to, it was fiesta the night before and everyone's staying home that day, the children are excused for a(nother) special activity, etc. [It's no wonder that 60% of the children in 2nd -4th grade that we test are unable to read well enough to follow the instructions.]

But today we were given an unusual reason: we could not go to the school because 40 or so children in San Marcos had somehow come in contact with some old human bones and were bewitched. Many psychologists and so forth have been called in (for some reason I didn't hear that a shaman was called, though it seems more appropriate.) All agreed (so my informant said) that the children were "possessed." The bones wanted to be buried together not in jumbles, and the spirits of their human beings were possessing the children.

Although I am aware of hysterical reactions, especially of children and especially in groups (think of our Witch Hunts in the 1800s in the US, many of them sparked by "possessed" children), it seems to me perfectly possible that these children, individually and culturally, may be sensitive enough to receive the "vibrations," if you will, of these bones--whether we gringos are able to or not. They could easily be the bones of the "disappeared" during the "violencia" here, which would be crying for recognition and return.

[I have been reading a lot about this period of violence in Guate...currently "Violent Memories" by Judith Zur. So much to understand about Guate, and about human behavior.]

On another note, I have just returned from another happy and successful visit to my home town and find myself having a harder time adjusting than usual. More usual is to be there when I'm there; and here when I'm here. ..I'm more "in between," this time. On the shuttle-ride here, Guatemala looked more different from California to me than usual, too....scruffier and dirtier, though always more interesting. And it's suddenly the rainy season, here.

And on we go.

Photos near Nebaj, Guate

2009-04-10T10:37:00.000-07:00

I wanted to be sure to get in some photos of the sweet communities near Nebaj...Xexocom, and Xexuxcap. This area is in the high country; it was maybe 50 degrees at night, so sitting around the stone cookstoves was a must. But during the day it's probably only 62 degrees, despite the bright sun. I loved this area; the sheep, the slow way things get when there are no cars, the hillside villages, striped baby pigs at the house of the woman in the photo--sister of our young guide; tumbling streams (you don't see much water in Guate at the end of this dry season). I could live there quite happily if it weren't so cold.

This is near the area of the worst atrocities during the war (mostly in the 80's). The guide told me his parents had to leave Xexocom during the day to avoid the soldiers; they would run to the higher mountains and hide for the day. They had no water and nothing to eat; they couldn't tend their fields because the soldiers were watching. A time of hardship and terror.

The Peace Accords were finally written in '96.

There were mostly adobe homes in these two villages, but some new homes were also being built. Francisco told us that almost every family has a member living and working in the U.S., mostly in Minnesota if I remember correctly. They depend on the money sent to them for any progress in their lives.

The languages spoken in ths area is Ixil, but I noticed they still use "Mak'tiosh" (spelling questionable) for Thank You, as they do in Tz'utujil. Our guide told me that Ixil is the one Mayan language that is not from the original root, but of course every area has a story about how their place is special.

Semana Santa - San Pedro

2009-04-10T10:18:00.001-07:00

For some reason, I wasn't impressed with last night's procession in San Pedro, although it was very nice to view the three Andas carried by men (Jesus), men (the cross) and women (Mary,) in this more intimate setting. Fortuitously, we parked ourselves in the spot where the first change of carriers took place, so we got to watch the routine. Instead of men in pilgrim costumes—the deep purple color of penitence--as in Antigua, these various groups of men were wearing matching t-shirts, all striped, but in different colors for each group.
The women all wore the traditional traje and checked shawl of San Pedro. Young women wore short bridal veils. They carried the smaller anda bearing the cross in one section, but I noticed that coming down the steps of the church and going around the corners, the men took over for the women, briefly. As usual it was difficult to get these tall figures underneath the wires and the beautiful decorations of folded banana leaves, fruit and flowers on each significant corner, so more machinations (bending, shifting to the arms instead of shoulders) took place there. All the andas were lit by light bulbs; long wires trailed out for blocks behind to where the generator came, pulled by a couple of men on a wagon. There was a small but rather good band, with just one repetitious but rather lovely song; among the members were two women on trumpet and saxophone. The job I didn't envy was that of the drum carrier....this enormous thing on his back, secured by the tumpline on his forehead.
This morning's procession (this is after all "Good" Friday) was altogether different. We walked up through the stone streets at 7 am to see the carpets. Instead of being laid on different streets all over, as in Antigua, they were one after the other, touching, for all the blocks that surround the central plaza...maybe 10 blocks, in total. These alfombras were AMAZING....much more beautiful and creative than those I remember in Antigua.....more fruit and vegetables, several with designs from the textiles here and (I think I recognize) in Nabaj done in colored popsickle sticks (one) and chrysanthemum petals (the other.) The use of flower parts and flower/fruit combos was extremely varied and creative; one was entirely of different sizes, shapes and shades of green leaves all placed strategically. There must have been 60-70 carpets. Unfortunately I didn't take my camera. Que lastima! I hope to include a few from Antigua from last year.
The most beautiful vistas were from the steps up to the church looking up at the Christ figure as he first emerged from the church portal, long lines of shawl-covered women in front of him, singing a high-pitched dirge. And then looking down on the same anda after it passed to the steps below onto the street and onto the first carpet. For of course they proceed over these beautiful carpets. One person told me, “but of course; that is the sacrifice.”
The anda stopped at that point, carried by the slightly-straining men (11 to a side) and some priest I couldn't see gave a long prayer in Tz’utujil, the local language. When he began, a whole group of men in apricot-striped t-shirts knelt all along the beautiful carpet, and the women in the row above them quickly covered their heads. Then all the people repeated their part in the prayer. All of it in Tz'utujil.
Then they started up again and proceeded up through the first carpet, trampling large fan-shaped leaves decorated along their lines with fruit and flowers, abundant fresh-smelling pine needles, large arrays of flowers in a basket made of criss-crossed sticks....and on and on. Quite stunning. And always Maria Dolorosa follows her son to the cross, many more women covered in shawls following her and singing (including the one French woman who lives here, who speaks Tz'tujil perfectly and wears traje, or typical dress.).
But how lovely. I saw several people I know from here....one woman said they made the sawdust Mariposa carpet that was the last before re-entering the church. It was lovely, but sort of too-perfect. I preferred the hokier ones with more varied texture.

We have said we will go to San Juan this afternoon to see the beautiful carpets there.
Tomorrow the procession is "de la Virgen de la Soledad, cargado (carried) por las Madres de Familia e Hijas de Maria".........And Sunday es "solemne procesion del Senor Resucitado" at 8 am...Christ’s resurrection. I hope that turns out to be well-attended; in Antigua all the focus seems to be on the death, not the re-birth..
Interesting. And there are no stations of the cross here, as in Antigua.

I wanted to post photos from San Pedro, but failed to take my camera with me. So the photos above are from Antigua, last year.

Anyway. Lovely, lovely.

Continuing journey

2009-03-21T20:41:00.000-07:00

Well my idea here was to show you the colorful desks in the classroom (of 300 in 10 classrooms) that we painted this winter, and the adorable bookshelves we hired a local carpenter to construct, and then filled with books and books.

and of course it would be wonderful to introduce you to this carpenter - as round as he is tall, with a sort of pointed head, and the most welcoming smile you can imagine.

But I can't get Kodak Easy Share to share these photographs easily, here. So instead we have two views from my favorite restaurant on the lake - La Puerta - run by two great friends, Blake and Santos (cook extraordinare.) The one on the left looks across the lake at Panajachel. The one on the right looks past the foot of Volcan San Pedro, toward Toliman. The barco in the front is wooden; what the local fishermen take out onto the lake every morning.

Beautiful - this lake is BEAUTIFUL, moody, ever-changing - but they aren't my beautiful yellow red and blue desks for the little kids, to cheer up their rather dingy classrooms.

Que lastima.

I would also love to share the photos from my latest trip to new parts of Guate (for me) - to Nebaj and some small villages above there, where it was very cold, but where we walked for hours in the countryside past tumbling streams, children herding goats and sheep, men and children on horseback on this dirt road, to stay in a small hostel overnight, eat with a neighboring family, and return to Nebaj the next day. Then to plummet down the side of the mountain (a worse fear for me than even the boats on the lake on a windy day) to go to Tactic, where we rode for 3 hours to visit the farm of a friend from San Marcos, where he is going to be reforesting with teak and rubber.

But until I can get Kodak to behave itself. these photos will have to do.

More adventures

2009-03-21T20:23:00.001-07:00

Most of my adventures are pretty sedate, at this point. With the Pedagogia Basica folks (see letsbeready.org) I worked in Antigua for a year-and-a-half; now I've been working with the originator of PB here at the lake for about 8 months.

The "adventure" part of this is what began in Antigua: just allowing myself to be let where Life (or God, to use the name I give it) wants me to go. Lo and behold, I'm in San Pedro, not Antigua; made contact with the wonderful director of the San Pablo school, and now am sponsoring a 4th grade classroom and have been providing materials for all of the preschool and first grade classrooms, and their beleagured teachers, who previously had been providing most school materials out of their small salaries. This with a lot of help from friends and family back in the U.S.

Some photos of the work we've done (hiring local painters to paint 300 desks to make the classrooms a little more cheerful, hiring a local carpenter to make bookracks and filling them with books, buying locally-made petates for the preschool class to sit on for circle time, buying lots and lots of scissors, crayons, paper, construction paper, paints, etc.) My favorite is the easel in the preschool classroom: the first time these children have ever painted!

Fantasy and Reality

2009-01-31T18:58:00.000-08:00

Well so not ALL dreams come true.
I lived for seven months in the house of my dreams (photos at left). In the evenings and early mornings I sat on the circular balcony of my bedrom, watching sunrise and sunset, watching the tiny fishing boats out for their daily catch - the fishermen standing in the boat no matter how rocky the waves, throwing out nets or getting their catch with a pole - and listening to the myriad of birds in the 100 trees in my yard. All this was worth the difficulty of living a mile or more outside of town, walking the road thick with mud or dust, getting tuktuk's to drive me or taking the local pikop home with piles of groceries, training my German Shepherd pup to ride there with me, and living without tv or - worse yet- internet.
But I did all that and would still be doing it, except that the landlords came home from Italy this first month of the new year.
So now I have moved into the house - closer to town, and with internet - of the man I became involved with in the last post, who has simply become a good friend, and my jefe in the project I am working with here, from whom I am learning many things about helping children with learning problems.
Since I have been here I've developed something of an obsession for learning about the period of the war here in Guate, especially as it affected people right here in my chosen village.
While the brunt of the violence took place in the Ixel Triangle, North of here, a reign of terror existed for many years in most of the indigenous villages - of which San Pedro was and is one - perpetrated by members of the community for personal as well as ideological reasons. It is a story that has been repeated in one way or another over time, in Africa, in Germany, Bosnia and other countries....where old grudges, power struggles, and ideological differences can erupt into violence, or can be used to manipulate people to turn against one another.
I have spent much of my life trying to understand "man's inhumanity to man," so I continue to pursue that interest here.....to see how this could have taken place in this small pueblo in the fairly recent past.
And I continue to meet really remarkable people who are part of that story.

New Life - otra vez!

2008-04-18T12:10:00.000-07:00

I wrote a short story, not long ago, about a social worker (me, maybe 20 years younger) coming to Guatemala, working with the people I work with, and learning the things I have learned about the economy, the people, their lives, their difficulties. And she falls in love with a Mayan man maybe 10 years younger than she, who lives on the side of the Volcano at Lago Atitlan. I enjoyed playing with the writing of this romance – trying to make it “true” in terms of psychology, cultural differences, and so on – but as I did, I learned I was really writing about MY romance, not with a person but with the natural world, with the sensory world of sounds and smells and sights, in this case his farm…….and her memories of milking goats, forking hay, feeding the chickens on her own farm in the past (my farm.) My feelings about that were so intense, that once again my desire to live more in the country emerged…..to have something more in my life than my sweet view of the banana “trees” and bouganvilla, and the low mountain behind them, out my bedroom window.
Some days later I went up to Santa Maria de Jesus (on the side of Volcan Agua) with our teachers, and coming back was just stunned with the view……….not really the beautiful view of the valley and Antigua in the middle of the mountains, but the view of the varied fields around Santa Maria…rich and green. I felt as though I was feeding on the view, as though this is what my soul absolutely needs for sustenance.

So what a surprise to have a love come into my life at this age…now nearing 73….almost as though I called it into being by imagining it. He is not a Mayan and not much younger than I, however certain aspects of the story are there. However, I suppose it should never be a surprise when someone comes into your life who pushes certain buttons, requiring you to grow as a person, while at the same time pleasing and pleasuring you. So that is a delight for which I am very grateful.
But secondly, he lives near Lago Atitlan, and when I visited him there we walked along the lake and I discovered the house that I first saw when visiting San Pedro to be trained in Pedagogia Basica, a year ago, which I fell in love with and said to our young teachers, “That’s MY house!”
On 3 subsequent trips I had been unable to find the house again.
Well the story would be perfect if I bought the house and lived there forever, but it’s nearly perfect in that it is for rent for the next six months, and so I’m going to uproot myself to “fly” again, this time to live near a lake and near a man I find quite delightful, with whom I’m going to work in the schools there.

God works in wondrous ways……….la verdad.

New and Old; a lovely encounter

2008-02-08T04:41:00.000-08:00

A good old friend from California is in town and he and I went around looking at things at the artesania place near the mercado. And in a tiny little cubicle we went in to look at some beautiful heavily-embroidered textiles. A young man of about 20 was tending the space and he spoke so knowledgeably about the different types of textiles and what parts of Guatemala came from that I said, "You know a lot about this!" and he said, "It is my culture." And thus began a long and rather emotional conversation about his desire to know more about it, and his last name (Mayan.) He was interested that I knew the difference between ladinos and Mayans and that the ladinos don’t by-and-large do this textile work as the Mayans do, except in the way that individual Europeans or Americans like me do. He told me that all the languages like Tsutu'jil and Katchikel (I don't know how to spell them correctly) SHOULD be referred to as Maya Tsutu'jil and Maya Katchikel, etc.
He showed me in detail how this BEAUTIFUL embroidery about 4 feet wide and tall was first woven and then designs drawn on in pencil, not pen, and then embroidered in silk, which breaks more easily than cotton, he told me, and that it takes about 4 mos. to do it, and his respect for it was so lovely, and he just so lovely.
So I said, intending to be flattering, “You should be teaching this in a museum or university.” And he said he was starting to study so that he could go into archaeology or anthropology.
He was just so earnest and sweet and had such integrity that I wanted to fund his college education or at least buy his stuff, but the one we were looking at was 4000 Q (or about $320) and even the little ones were very expensive. I guess he must be selling some or he wouldn't be there, but how many people are going to recognize the value of these beautiful things? Even I try to get the prices down. And so many things are being produced now, more mechanically, and more cheaply. And if they are bought, these lovely things will go out of existence.

Guate Earthquakes

2008-01-26T20:24:00.000-08:00

Guatemala, like my home state of California, is a land of earthquakes.
A short trip, via USGS, through the history of recent major eruptions names three:
On 4/19/1902 , there was a 7.5 magnitude earthquake with 2000 known fatalities.
This report doesn't mention 1917, but another refers to a big one in that year.
On 2/04/1976, there was another 7.5 with 23,000 fatalities. Both of these were on the Santa Marta fault, located NE of Gua City.
I was just reading a memoir of a woman living in Belize, at that time (country to the East of Guatemala, on the Pacific) whose house rocked with that quake. Our co-worker Carlos' family got trapped inside their house just north of Antigua. It is said that most of the adobe block structures collapsed....and probably initiated the changeover to concrete block houses. That earthquake was said to be 1/16 of the force of the 1905 San Francisco quake. ONE-SIXTEENTH!
I think it was 1979 that California had another major earthquake, centered in Loma Prieta near Watsonville, where my husband rode a bus that, he said, drove side to side over the highway moving under it, and of course in W. Oakland, near where my daughter lives, a freeway collapsed, killing a hundred people or so.

In very recent history, on 6/13/07, when I was here there was a 6.7 magnitude quake whose epicenter was offshore SE of Gua/Antigua. No fatalities. I remember watching the ground move back and forth outside my house. The latest one reported in the USGS report, was Friday 1/11 2008.....70 mi SSE Gua City (again off shore.) I think that was when I just bolted straight outside, to meet my neighbors standing there.
The earth writhes in convulsions once in awhile, letting us know her power. It's not hard to imagine what those convulsions might be about.

This report also mentions the Santa Marta earthquake on July 29, 1773, which "destroyed" Antigua nearly completely. No magnitude was given for that one, or probably recorded.
The deluge of water from Volcan Agua in 9/11/1541 destroyed Ciudad Vieja and killed the pretended governor(ess) as well as 599 other people. I've heard that an earthquake from Fuego triggered the water-"spill." But other reports cite the volume of water building up in the caldera of Volcan Agua. Agua evidently erupted 80,000 times, but the last volcanic activity there was 10,000 years ago.

A short, but active history.

On to Comolapa

2008-01-25T16:37:00.000-08:00

Today a friend who runs a weaving cooperative which exports material to the US organized a group of women together to go up to Comalapa (incidently home of one of the indigenous teachers I work with.)
Well first was the group of women! I didn't get all the stories, but one has lived here for 20 years, running an excursion agency, with excellent spanish and stories galore of traveling around this country and others, and another is an archaeologist working on a site called Holmul in the Peten. I had naively assumed this area had been thoroughly explored, and was laughed at, in a friendly way, for that assumption. She says the Peten has barely been touched, despite the extensive site at Tikal. The question they are pursuing at Holmul - as I understood it - centers around the early pottery remains there, which are similar to some in both Mexico (the Yucatan?) and Belize, the question being whether they were all produced in one area and traded around, or produced thru various influences in different centers or at any rate what the connection was.
The talk between these two women in the car occupied us all, focused as it was on snake bites in the jungle, especially by a very poisonous viper called something like....Freiants, and their stories of various instances of bites among people they worked with, how to avoid it (wear shoes and pants), and the effects not of Dengue Fever, which I've heard about, but some larvae carried by the mosquitoes which burrow into your head and create enormous itching and electric sorts of buzzes, and how to get the larvae out (squeeze) and how to avoid the mosquitoes.....eat a lot of garlic two weeks before going to the jungle, and some spray called BUGOFF or something like that, but not DEET. Interesting conversation as with two friends from Caliornia, I am planning to go to Tikal in 3 weeks or less. But it was very interesting to listen to these women's long and strenuous/challenging experiences here, as well as their obvious love of and intrigue with the area. The travel guide is also an amateur archaeologist.
I had been told by my Spanish teacher that the sites in Tikal and the Peten had been emigrated TO by the Mayans who left the area we were in (especially Ximche) there in the mountains. This woman set me straight that it was the other way around....from the jungle to the highlands after the Conquest.
At any rate...on we went to Comalapa. Which is a town on a long windey green road up into the mountains....it doesn't differ much from others I've seen...........dusty streets even if concrete, long rows of poor, low, not-very-attractive differently-colored but drab buildings, and this contrast with the incredibly brilliantly-colored clothing of the indigenous people, which in this town are 100%. Another thing which distinguishes this town - besides, we were told, a history of famous painters, one who had had an exhibit in Wash. D.C. as well as Gua City - was an incredible mural, maybe a block long on the wall of the cemetery (on the main street of town, quite unusually). [See photo above.]

The woman we were meeting walked us along the mural and told us about the depictions, a history of the people of this pueblo. This had been initiated by an Italian woman volunteer, here, who got all the kids in school to draw pictures of what they knew of the history of their people. They then collected these, categorized them, and from them got various artists in town to do the sections of this mural
It started with the Mayan Dieties and the colors of the corn and their significance, went thru the period of a religious war, and then the atrocities of the 70s, and finally La Paz (two sections with bright white doves, etc.) and then courting rituals and other ceremonies, and then the present....a mother washing clothing in the pila with a little thought balloon where she sees her daughter studying in school, a man hoeing corn while his son and a computer sit in a thought balloon above his head, and then a man pulling water up from a well, and envisioning running water. I said "sus sueños" (their dreams) and she said, yes but they have become a reality, now. But she talked quite a bit about the importance of embracing progress while not losing the language, so they can speak with their elders, and not losing their culture. There was also a segment of the mural about chopping down a lot of trees, and then the alcalde (mayor) of the town stressing the importance of replanting trees.
So that was all touching and lovely, and the woman's attitude and story sweet.
Then we got out of the encroaching drizzle by driving down a long dirt road to a nearby community (dirt road throughout). The second photo is of the "road" of the house to which we went to meet a weaving "genius" (according to my friend, who employs her). The house was absolutely the poorest I"ve been to, although scrupulously clean....the first I've been in with adobe block walls and dirt floors in every room, the first with a small shed attached to the house which served as the bathroom, with a wooden circular structure over an outhouse hole for the toilet. I was totally amazed at two very large handmade looms, one outside on the patio, [see third photo] and one taking up most of a room. The structure was just like the "overhead" Swedish and other looms I've seen, but every part hand-made, including some of the iron parts. She demonstrated the way it worked and let several of us sit and mess up her weaving, then showed us the big xxx that she winds her warp on, and to satisfy my curiousity, showed us the handmade structure to set the bobbins on (each one purchased cotton thread wound on short bits of cane from the corn), and the way she winds from them onto the xxx. It takes 3 people to set the warp on the loom....instead of being able to stand behind the loom while it's being wound on, as I'm familiar with, the 3rd person has to get under the loom to feed it to the other two attaching it to the loom. SUCH a process.
We then left and went for lunch: caldo, a traditional dish here that I also had in Xenocoq, some distance away, with fresh warm blue tortillas. Essentially caldo is chicken soup, but the chicken, huisquil, carrot and rice are taken out of the broth and served on a plate, and the broth served separately. She explained to us that the white chicken I DON'T buy from the market is 1 month old and comes from Gua City, the "amarillo" chicken I do buy is 2 mos old and grown on the farms, and what they use is a 1 year old chicken grown on their own place. They said this proudly, as if much the best, and the flavor was really good, and it was less fatty, tho I suspect it is a chicken who has been running around for awhile, and thus the meat is redder and a little tougher. But delicious, for sure.
Then we got to watch a woman demonstrate on a backstrap loom, squatting on a pillow on the floor. She has been weaving since she was 12, learned from her mother, of course. She did probably one quarter inch of weaving for the hour we were there talking, asking questions, and looking at some items for sale. I was re-impressed with how incredibly painstaking this patterned weaving is.....everything is set in by hand, not machine-driven, and most of the complex geometric patterns are in their heads, though they have paper patterns for the flowered designs.
Seeing this work and how long it takes made me ashamed of how I usually try to talk people down in price. Seeing how complicated it is was rather mind-blowing, when I've just paid to have the teacher from Comalapa buy me the materials for a backstrap loom, thinking I'd sit down and weave in the evenings.
The drive back was occupied talking about the jungle, and we parted promising emails and all. And then one woman mentioned that she and another do drumming every Saturday morning, together. DRUmming!? I'd just been asking to have that back in my life, BUT it turns out to be handheld, I presume Native American type drums, which is less interesting to me than African jimbe, BUT I will try to go next Saturday to check it out.

She also asked, "Do you Journey?" and of course I have, and would be interested to find some women interested in Visioning, and something a little more spiritual than I've so far encountered here. I guess I'm still trying to recreate the women's groups I belonged to in Chico.
Maybe that's not possible................but we'll see what is!

So....all told, another amazing day.
May we always be amazed.

Monterrico

2008-01-20T06:22:00.000-08:00

A chance trip to Monterrico! The shuttle there wound through huge commercial sugar cane and corn fields, not jungle as I'd anticipated. The ride was 2 hours or so from Antigua and totally comfortable, in this cooler January weather.

We stayed at one of the cheaper hotels (gorgeously-plaited thatched roof of the terrace looking out to the ocean, seen above) and still could walk out to the beach and have dinner and drinks on the beachside terrace of a slightly more expensive hotel not far away. Most people go to release the baby turtles into the ocean........and since there isn't much else to do, we did that too....or at least my two friends did. I was a little sick from something I had at dinner, and spent the evening, comfortably enough, in my room with the fan on and the windows open.

We took a dawn trip into the river sanctuary. That was a beautiful trip, and included sunrise over the reeds [see photo] and trees, and a close look at their weird fish.....which have two sets of eyes, one for seeing over the top of the water, and "fly" or skip like a skipping stone across the top of the water. Pretty amazing to see.

I loved the town....all laid back and open-aired (unlike Antigua's closed walls on the street, which actually I also love)....and of course, pigs in the street. My favorite thing. [see photo]

The starving dogs in the street were not so cute. Despite my friends' advise, I had to go back to feed one puppy I saw. The cemetary was also unusual, colorful, and beautiful.

I could spend some time there.

2008-01-20T06:12:00.000-08:00

Somehow I forgot to post an overnight trip I took with two friends out to the beach at Monterrico. I've heard of this place ever since my first trip here, because everybody goes to Monterrico to release the turtles. Somehow I got the idea it was a long way and over the mountains, so I didn't want to go. Really.

But a Guatemalan friend I work with wanted to get away for two days, and a traveling friend wanted to see the beach before she left Guatemala, so off we went on a weekday.

I loved Monterrico. It's my ideal laid-back place with some consciousness about the environment (on which their economy depends) and with black-sand beaches which otherwise look just like the California coast where I grew up, except the first time the water hit my feet I was shocked with its warmth. How to have everything!

We stayed at one of the cheaper hotels, with a second-story balcony terrace looking out at the ocean, and hammocks to hang out it. Hammocks are a feature of all Monterrico hotels and houses, which I'd never seen in Guate before. Conveys something about the cultural climate. Most houses have rooms on each side, and a central "court" area under the thatched roof where the hammocks hang and where the people eat and hang out most of the time. I love that.

Payasos in the Parks

2008-01-19T11:05:00.000-08:00

These are some of our payasos (clowns) working with young children in the plaza of their pueblo in San Pedro.

The other photo is of one of our teachers working with children in the plazuela at Santa Ana, close to where I live.

The teachers do Brain Gym activities in the schools. The clowns reach younger children in the parks of their pueblos with preschool concepts (colors, numbers, and the Brain Gym activities of Pedagogia Basica) to help these children succeed when they begin to attend school.

Reports have said that 30% of children fail the first grade because of lack of early stimulation. We'll do what we can. To volunteer with us, see www.idealist.org.

Guatemala Life and Culture

2008-01-19T10:45:00.000-08:00

Daily Life
As I look out my kitchen window this early morning, my neighbor, wife of the gerente or manager, walks across the grass toward her one-room building - which is home to at least four people - carrying the morning’s bread, fresh from a local bakery. She does this every morning, usually accompanied by one or more of her grandchildren, the youngest of whom always lives with her. She then cleans one of the other houses, several times a week, does her family’s wash by hand in the pila of the house across from me, and keeps her own home spotless, as I learned once when I had to use their gas stove to heat water because the electricity at my house was off. Her older children visit often, one bringing her two grandchildren with her, and the women sit in the area they’ve created adjacent to the building, just recently roofing it with corrugated plastic, and creating a foundation, so it has become a room with two walls, the other two open to the garden. This is where the family spends its daytimes and sometimes evenings.
And this is her life. She rarely leaves the “compound,” though she sometimes goes with her grandchildren out into the plazuela in front of our houses to look on at an event. She seems to have no friends in the community, or at least none visit and she doesn’t spend time anywhere else.
My friend Katrina complained that a woman she has come to know here has a similar life, working all day in a small hotel, and going home to her own home with her son at night; nothing else.
But Maria’s life looks okay to me. Her children and grandchildren adore her and are very affectionate with her. Her son evidently studies hard, and is playful and good with the little children. Her husband, who looks quite a bit older, is a sweet, loving and hard-working man. They have created a life, as managers of this little compound, that is better than that of many people in the community. What more does one really need?

More Celebrations
Yesterday a funeral, and later a carnival for the kids and some sort of dancing in the evening – from the distance of my house it looked like those figures with big comic heads. And of course bombas – the big ones, going off from time to time. Today there is a barrage of 80 million firecrackers going on down the alley past my house, following a play of some sort which was held in front of the church, with figures costumed as kings, queens, and knights, with play sword-fighting and much shouting; now a band consisting of several horns and a tuba just went walking thru the pine needle alfombra on the street and past my house, down the alley, followed by 50 or so people from the village. There is a statue of the crowned Virgin up in front of the church, but I have no idea what it’s all about. I don’t see Maria and her kids in the yard, perhaps they are in that crowd. Tono just came back all dressed nicely and with his hair combed back. Usually he is in the yard with his pants rolled up and his hair every which-a-way.
I moved here to be part of a community…..but I don’t take part, really. Primarily because I have noone to go out on the plaza with. I should get the phone number of another volunteer who lives down the street next to the store, so I can see if she wants to attend with me, the next time something’s going on. Don’t know why I think I need that, but I always feel I stick out like a sore thumb. Probably I’m un-noticed. I have been out there of course – once for a good futbol game, twice with our clowns, once or twice for music or some other event, and of course I used to work with our teachers in this school. But no mucho.

New Pueblo
I went with our young teachers on a bus to Alotenango today. I expected to find it a small pueblo on the side of that volcano, like Santa Maria is on Agua, but instead it is a fairly large, probably once colonial town, like Ciudad Vieja (the first Spanish capital) down in the valley some distance from the foot of the volcano of the same name, which can be seen from the streets in Antigua, companion to Fuego.
In this town streets are paved with interlocking cement blocks, like so many. There are some large stately buildings, most in disrepair, some half-destroyed. This pueblo is also dominated by Volcan Agua and probably received some of the brunt of that deluge. Their cemetery is one of the grandest I’ve seen, with figures on top of the omnipresent cement biers, possibly these were internments in colonial times, although at a quick glance I thought I saw flowers on those graves. The people of the town, as in Santa Maria, are more indigenous than in Antigua…..browner faces, shorter bodies, more traditional traje. But there are also a few young women in pants suits….maybe teachers from other towns...and young t-shirted girls on bicycles. The school is quite large, grey, dirty, ill-lit but spacious. The teachers all looked friendly. No kids in class, yet. The sub-directora was hospitable and seemed intent on introducing the idea of our program to her teachers at a meeting tomorrow. It seems word of the program has been spread there by a teacher who took the training and used the exercises. That’s nice to hear.

Coming back, I was glad to have time to do some grocery shopping before my Spanish class at home this afternoon. Carrying my groceries home, stopping at the internet shop to email family and friends, it suddenly seemed awfully nice just to be here. I have always been so set on accomplishing something, being of use, being valuable to others, on having a purpose in what I do…so Capricornian, really most of the time, although if I have a Grand purpose then I am comfortable fooling around on my “off-hours.” But for this moment it just seemed nice to be in THIS town, even at this juncture (although modernization continues creeping in,) to be seeing these faces, and expressions of this culture (which, as soon as I had decided the other day that it was becoming overly modern, seemed to show me one face or another of its traditional activities – the procession, WITHOUT a motorized carrier for the large religious figure, the band very slow and traditional….drum and out-of-tune horns., all these somber people in black, walking and chanting. Lovely, really. ) That it was nice to live here, regardless of how productive or helpful I’m actually being.
Just that I like living in this town and this culture.
Although as usual it’s hard for me to say that without quickly saying…..of course I’d rather live in the country.

Yesterday an older man (well maybe my age) made the rounds of the plazuela, trying to get people to write letters complaining about the noise. His wife is ill, he said, and the noise makes it impossible to sleep. Well, I told him, I understand completely, although at times I rather like the music, but I don’t want to write letters complaining, because I’m a visitor here. This is their pueblo. If I don’t like it, I can move.
He explained that he and his wife have rented a house here for some years, since moving from the house they own in Panjachel. He’d like me to come visit his wife, as she has no social outlets. After telling him about my volunteer work, he said, well you could consider it a deed much-needed. He is originally from Trinidad and has lived in the U.S. and Europe. His wife lived in Argentina at one time (and danced Tango, he said when I asked) during the Eva Peron era.

Economics
The gentleman told me that the factory behind his house, of which I see the East gate from my house, and the employees at lunch break in the calle North of me, is owned by an American and makes rugs which he imports somewhere. Well there’s what I railed at in my political days…..American jobs going overseas to take advantage of the low wages and no benefits. But in this town this is the ONLY industry, and except for the many vendors and few cabinetmakers, etc., the only job in town. What a huge difference these jobs make for the people of Santa Ana. The other face of CAFTA.

Personal
I am sending ideas to my two friends who are planning to visit here in February. It is wonderful to remember all the trips I’ve taken and the lovely or interesting places I’ve been, and would like to take them to, and of course we will see some new areas, as well. I have been dying to get to the jungle – having a fantasy about listening to the night sounds – for some time, and we will go to Tikal.
My wireless internet at home has not been functioning since the first days of the electrical blackouts, which happened daily for a week or so, about the same time every evening. That was during our coldest days (maybe 48 degrees F) so perhaps lots of people had electric heaters turned on. But the phone in the house across from me ceased functioning, and that is my internet connection.
And then nobody did anything about it, since those young volunteers come and go. You’d think connection with home in Belgium would prompt some action, but no. I finally had to call repair service – which came the following day to my amazement. But internet still doesn’t work. So tonight I called Julio – a smiling family man who has a small shop in the front of his house ½ mile closer to town. I had recently taken my thumb drive to him, when it developed a virus and wouldn’t open. As I walked there, I caught him in the doorway of his shop with his arm around his 10 year old boy. There is now an internet shop next door to him; perhaps he has expanded. He fixed my thumb drive with no charge and a big smile.

More Processions
Yesterday about 5 pm, as I accompanied my Spanish teacher to my gate when she was leaving, there were cacophonous noises from the church nearby. We stood for a moment with the manager of this place to see what would emerge. My teacher surprised me by asking the manager’s age. He said he is 73 and that the tiny girl with him is his daughter, not granddaughter as I had thought. He also said his wife, who looks perhaps 40, is only a few years younger. So none of this adds up, but perhaps is the story they tell this little girl.
At that moment a large anda began to emerge from the church, carried on the shoulders of about 25 people. My teacher and the manager surprised me by instantly dropping to their knees, though we were 100 yards away, and making the sign of the cross, then kissing the tip of their joined thumb and fingers, as people do here. They remained kneeling for another few moments.
The figure on the anda looked black, from my vantage point, and I asked if it was the Christo Negro. I had heard that his figure, famous in Esquipulas, some several hours distant from here, and that people came there to worship from Mexico, Nicaragua, and so forth. My teacher told me there are numerous copies of this figure, and evidently one here. The musicians following the anda were the worst I’ve ever heard, the cacophonous quality of a 6th grade band of horns and a single booming drum. Yet somehow the primitive quality of the music was appealing. About 60 people walked in front, beside, and following this anda with its brightly illuminated Christo, wearing head coverings and carrying candles. The group stopped some 20 feet from where I stood, taking photos (after asking my manager if it weren’t rude,) and lowered the anda to arm's height for a few minutes, then shouldered it again and proceeded. The usual firecracker explosions followed along with them. I want to learn more about these various figures, because far more are celebrated than fits the schedule of each village having its saint’s day.

Personal Musings, and Volunteering

2008-01-19T10:34:00.001-08:00

My birthday party in Berkeley in 2006 marked the beginning of my trip to Guatemala.
I gave myself a party last year with 15 people, mostly from the writers' group, in attendance; this year my “boss” convinced me to have a party at his house. It was lovely. Most of our teachers and the coordinator from the project and my Spanish teacher and the teacher I worked with in San Pedro all came, the latter two ladies brought their teenage daughters. Many people from Fred’s hotel came and two of my gringa women friends from writers’ group. 21 people in all….and we had entertainment by the great clowns that are staying in that hotel and are collaborating with Fred's Payasos Educadores clown project, with whom there were also great connections afterwards for the training the French Canadian clown is giving.
A month or so ago, Fred offered me the (volunteer) position as his coordinator for the young women teachers. I said “No, what I really want to do is work with women and children.” And then pissing and moaning to myself a few nights later about not having been able to find a position doing that, I suddenly thought, “Of course I will be his coordinator. I can continue to improve my Spanish, and eventually I’ll be able to do counseling, etc, but I can’t, now, anyway.”
I think it’s about looking at what’s being offered in front of you – not what you want to reach for.

So I have started by looking for funding for his project, and have a couple of good leads and one Letter of Inquiry in. Fred has also started considering doing Early Childhood Education training for teachers, ex-paning our Pedagogia Basic training plan.
Well ECE is what I consulted in for 15 years, and I do feel passionately that children need good initial school experiences (if not totally good experiences) so I am happy to help out with that. I have developed a plan for HOW to do that, using the ECCERS, and have written away for materials. So I feel productive and energized about that. I have been attending a training by a professor from Canada on the topic, and contributing somewhat….trying actually to keep my mouth shut because of course I always think that I have ideas better than almost anyone I listen to. Which is silly, really; I have many ideas to contribute on the topic and they have others. Collaboration is the key.
So that has been interesting. She will speak about behavior management this week; there I will really have to sit on my hands, or better yet, use all my skills to say what I need to without offending her or taking over the training. That will be hard unless she has a very similar philosophy of behavior mgt….and even on classroom management we have had at least one difference.
In my opinion much of the ideas (Montessori, and others) on education were developed in a time and with a culture which was very emotionally restricted, upperclass, needing liberalization. And as much as I believe in this, and taught in this framework myself when raising my kids, I have learned that for kids from chaotic backgrounds, children with emotional and behavioral issues, there needs to be more structure and somewhat more restricted choices. Or at least to start with that until they feel secure about what is expected in class, then perhaps you can allow more freedom and choice. Besides the Circles people found that when choices and group size were limited, children interacted more verbally and tried more different activities.
So….at any rate we will see about all that.

Today I attended a Payasos training to attract new payasos to volunteer with us. Very entertaining. Lovely expressive people; and several young teens were there, wanting to become clowns. I have learned there is a strong expressive arts community emerging or growing stronger here. There was a collaborative meeting in San Marcos a few months ago, with dancers, and performers, including some from the Livingston group. This country is not huge, and thus collaboration is easy or at least possible. But I think good things are beginning to happen too.
And Guat has a new President who promises to be slightly more liberal than the last. Like a Clinton compared to Bush or one even more militaristic than Bush.

January 2008. I have seen all of 2007 here. I have a brief respite before the school year begins, and then we will see what the year holds. My “boss” said we will have more responsibility this year; not sure yet what that means, or if it involves me.

Cultural Changes
There have been so many changes in Guatemala in just the short time I’ve been here. First and fore-most their airport, which has gone from a small and funky one, which I liked a lot, to one the equivalent of L.A. Other changes? The highway between Gua City and Antigua has been noticeably improved. That has been going on since I arrived, causing many delays in getting from city to town. On a local level, I notice more kids with bicycles and one with inline skates, though one ten-year-old boy watching the payasos in our park one day in December said he had never had a bicycle. And very close to my house is the first fast-food place in Santa Ana, offering pizza and hamburgers. It has become the front-step hangout for young men and a few women motorcycles and scooters, or just standing around.
The internet shop in Santa Ana - a hole in the wall, previously; the ground-floor front room of a two-story house where the shop-owner lives – has up-graded considerably. New linoleum tile on the floor, two rooms, more computers, internet setup for the kids and young men to play games, AND better quality connections. The owner still has his two young boys - maybe 11 and 15 - run the shop, though I notice they run upstairs to call him if something goes wrong.

I have been concerned with a small and simple shift: all the older people always greet one another during the day and evening, with “Buenos dias, buenas tardes, buenas noches…” I love the sound of it as they pass and respond to my greetings. All the different intonations, different styles; it’s really quite lovely – I’d like to record it. But what concerns me is that most of the youth….or maybe half of them, toss off a “Buenas” or a “Hola” or don’t respond at all. Is this just another indicator that the old, polite, slow ways here are passing?? Will it all go in the direction of wanting more things, spending more time in loud bars?

Today I read the book by Nicole Maxwell, about hunting for medicinal plants in the Amazon in the late 1950’s. “The younger Indians,” she writes of the Cárdenas, “consider such ‘classical’ sessions [of the men’s secret societies] rather a bore. They aren’t much interested in ancient beliefs, and when it comes to parties, they’d just as soon dance rumbas to the music of the radio on the smooth [new] floors of their living quarters.”
So this has always been going on. Is this just because of the North American/European influence? or is this the natural Uranian thrust of youth? Always drawn to the new and different, rejecting of the “old” ways of their parents? I suspect there are always different temperaments, even within this young/old dichotomy………those who move eagerly to the new, those who hang onto the old forever.

Something I love: yesterday on my way into town, a teenaged boy on a bicycle was pedaling his mother who sat on the crossbar in front of him, and a man was pedaling his three little kids: a girl on a seat behind him, and two boys, one on the crossbar in front of him, and one on the front fender, facing and hanging onto the handlebars.

Bad News
My salsa teacher was wounded while taking part in a procession on Christmas day and has been unable to work all during the time I was in New York City for Xmas, so I had a class with a younger teacher in their new “salon,” which is just the large entry way of a small hotel – where they moved way over by the Mercado after the tienda of tipica they had been housed in was robbed during the night a few weeks ago.
And that right after a day-time armed robbery of a regular tienda down the same street, which has caused it to bar its entrance. In the same week a young American friend of friends was stopped by a motorcyclist not too far from my area in broad daylight, and robbed at knifepoint, and a chickenbus from Comalapa was boarded, and everyone robbed of their huipils and their Christmas bonuses. So there is more crime and violence here than when I first came, and it is extending to the locals, not just the tourists. The “word” is that gangs from the City are moving out into the rural areas.

Celebrations
On the way to walk out to my salsa class today (now nearly a mile away,) I noticed bundles of pine needles arriving on the main street of my pueblo, and more cars parked than I’ve seen before. I thought perhaps it is a saint’s day or something and that I would find a procession on my return. But coming back, I found the main street of Santa Ana full of people in black, following behind a carried gold casket. Hundreds of solemn people, walking…some singing. Back up the street toward my house there were still people lining the streets, so whatever it is is not over. There were bombas being set off as I left, but none now.
We have had our electricity going off and on and off for several days, apparently due to high winds knocking trees onto the wires here and there in Guate. Our water is out today too, and for the first time we have none in our reserve tank. Internet is also out at my house, because the phone in the house I get wireless service from has not been working since the first power outage. We also had a 5.6 earthquake centered in “nearby” Equintla yesterday evening. It was the first one that has startled me enough to cause me to run quickly out of the house…..where I found my neighbors, too.
I thought it all seemed very 3rd world til I read the news today that 500,000 people in California (including my sister, for a time) are without power. My daughter living in my house has snow, no power, and no hot water. I had the house set up for those emergencies, but they aren't sure how to get the generator power going. Much email conversation about that.

The huge bunch of bananas that has been hanging in the tree in the yard came down yesterday. And with it came the whole 30 foot tree. My Spanish teacher told me that the tree is no good once it produces a bunch…..that a sprout will grow out of the old trunk to produce a new bunch. It will be interesting to see how long that takes. The bananas are ripening in a wheelbarrow covered with a tarp in a corner of the yard. I’m sorry to see that long purple knobbed appendage come down with it. That was beautiful.

Mythical Mayan Pueblo - DOS

2008-01-19T10:26:00.000-08:00

Volunteering/ My mythical Mayan Pueblo - 2
Went with a social worker to San Cristobal al Alto this morning, taking a road I walk past all the time on my way to the Project. This 5-mile road - almost all dirt, though fitted concrete blocks cover some especially steep parts - climbs the hillside maybe 1000' to a small pueblo which is the prettiest one I've seen. Unlike others, the road meanders a lot thru the pueblo, and the houses and tiendas are not just one long row of low concrete buildings or walls on either side of the road, painted different colors. There are gardens interspersed between the houses, some cultivated, some wild. The church is one of the least ornate I've seen....actually looks abandoned but is still in use on Sundays. The school appears to have about 3 classrooms. There is a medical clinic run by the government in a room of the school and a moderate-sized plaza between the school and the church. That's center of town. Along the - seems like just one main - road in the pueblo are several tiendas carrying the usual sorts of odd things, lots of wrapped penny candies, Ketchup, Corn Flakes, some bread rolls open in a case, next to a box of batteries, etc. The tiendas are jammed to the rafters but I am hard-pressed to say with exactly what.
At one spot on our walk through town, a baby pig got out in the road and was chased or herded by me and several children (a sure sign that I'm going to like the place!) What was especially lovely [we're suddenly having an afternoon downpour in my pueblo and I hear the children playing in the plaza screaming and running for cover] is the view which you can see in places of Volcan Agua, pretty close, and in one direction of San Pedro (where I work in the school) and of Antigua in the other, way down below. Tan bonita! What was charming was all the gardens. Even at that altitude (probably 6000') lots of banana trees with huge leaves like elongated, slotted elephants' ears, many many Nispero trees (loquat), oranges, grapefruit, limes, corn galore, squash so verdant the vines were climbing 15-foot trees. The people are not really indigenous, there - no traje worn - but most are agricultural workers, some work in Antigua.
The streets were mostly empty when we were there at 9-11 a.m. So most people were off at work. The woman we visited said the pueblo is very tranquil. Some danger from thieves if you walk down the hill by yourself, but otherwise no. As we drove in, the driver said an American lives there in a big house....no se' if it's year-round or occasionally, but it surprised me to hear this as it feels quite isolated up there. It was about a half-hour drive up the hill; maybe 12 mins. coming down. But there are actually busses that make it up that road, three times a day. That is phenomenal...I don't think I'd want to ride in one. Very steep and muddy. I asked a woman if there were houses for rent, because I was quite captivated, but she said she didn't think so.
I can see that hill from my house as I sit here writing. I have such a strong craving to live in the country. My house here is surrounded by a nice cultivated garden and there are tall banana trees directly opposite my window, but it is not the same. It's just very difficult to do so, at least from my current vantage point. I think the only way it could happen is if a project has a small satellite somewhere and wants someone to "man" it....that way you have some status and protection....some raison d'etre. Otherwise I don't know how. And that particular place is a bit isolated from anything in Antigua, like my writer's group, or the mercado, or my salsa classes.But where there's a will...............there may be a way.

Volunteering yesterday a gringa speech therapist and I went to a home in a downpour of rain....up the narrow dirt path between barbed wire fences, the rain making a river of the path with just a 6" dry part....thru the scrap-wood gate (happy hollering kid in the rain opening the gate for us) and thru the filthy yard. I know there is nothing about poverty that requires a yard to be full of trash (except perhaps no $5 per month for trash pickup).....but this one is the worst I've seen. But a large yard, at this moment all mud....a few wet flowering plants, a banana tree or two. The house is two concrete block rooms without doors or windows and a kitchen area that is just an open shed with sink, woodstove and plank table. The five kids are all wet and dirty, we work with them (me doing a puzzle with the three boys to keep them occupied while the younger daughter gets speech therapy) in the kitchen/shed area. Can't remember if the floor is cement or dirt, I think cement, but there is no electricity, so we work in the very dim light on this grey day. The young dog hangs out under the table since he has discovered I pet him; his nose is constantly in my hand as the kids and I play. The boys are great. Their hair hasn't been washed in awhile and sticks out all over; their faces are very Mayan....although narrow, but high cheekbones, dark skin. They are fairly quiet and pretty cooperative with each other; they sort of ignore me, as many kids do because I don't speak a lot and not always well....but they get along well together and respond more to me as time goes on. The mother is small and dark, smooth hair, wearing American clothes, a sweater; she is quick in her movements........she reads to the other daughter and is generally good to her kids, but slaps if they displease her....and last time berated her daughter to tears for spilling something. I want to do some parenting but the speech teacher rightly says the mother hasn't agreed to this, and I don't have the language to do the adroit entries into suggesting this ("Perhaps you'd like some ideas for other ways of handling her behavior," or such as that.) It isn't that I can't say those things ("Tal vez quisieras unas sugerencias para otras maneras en que tu puedes mantener su comportamiento") but here in the quiet of my home it takes me a whole minute to think of it....and in the flow of rapid conversation in the home it's hard to stop everything for me to get it out clearly.
But that will come.

My sister suggested that I could live up in S.C. al Alto and still maintain my contacts here. That hadn’t occurred to me. Buses up and down for writers' group, salsa class, and spanish. I could speak to the alcalde of the town about a place to live and work.

But I don’t feel the impulse to actually DO it. I suppose I could have a room in a house, rather than a whole house to myself, but that is not really my style. Thinking of the difficulty I have speaking to Maria and Tono, maybe we’re talking about six months from now. Maybe I won’t be doing writers’ group and salsa by then???

More Guatemala travel - to San Marcos

2008-01-19T10:19:00.000-08:00

Trip to San Marcos
It is beyond beautiful here.................the way we came in from the dock (after a VERY choppy boat-ride with 12 indigenous people with their baskets and bags,) led us through stone covered paths through the banana trees and other vegetation.....very thick and lush, turning here and there through cultivated veggie gardens, coffee plots, everything totally rich and lush and verdant.
We are staying at the hotel of a grey-tressed woman I once met at a music concert in Jocotenango almost a year ago. She has built a lovely place with hammocks on the porch, and for herself a wonderful grand treehouse. She has little indigenous kids running around, her ¨god-children¨ and the whole place is just easy and lovely.
We went up to Blind Lemon's for a hamburger and to use the internet; tonite after dinner the woman and her Argentinian friends will play music. My friend Merri is at a clinic right now, seeing about a possible job. I would love to have a job and live here.
The hippie part of it is like the best of Berkeley thrown willy-nilly in to the jungle, and above this low-lying area, which was sold to the hippies after a Hurricane destroyed everything in the low part 10 yrs ago or so and the indigeneous-Hispanics (mostly indig.) moved their town up a little further, contiguous with this. That area is just a regular Mayan pueblo, but a little cleaner, and more pleasantly meandering than others I´ve seen. But kids of 11 or so trundling huge boulders out of a hole beside the street (i.e. men´s work,) a small group of young kids catching bugs on some plants on the side of the road (starting to interact with them I suddenly remembered a recent warning not to engage with children because of the rumors we gringas try to steal them,) a school in session, the clinic with the moms and babies waiting on the porch, etc. i.e. just a town, like Santa Ana but at least the part I saw more charming.
No howler monkeys, unfortunately, in the San Marcos “jungle”, and no unique singing or noise-making birds, but some evangelical Mayan woman singing over a loudspeaker at 6 am which I could hear clearly from my hotel....which was actually quite lovely........sort of an endless chant in a voice that sounded childlike and innocent but strong. Nice.
Last nite was music by the "wildwoman" I met at the concert at Jocotenango. I was prepared, in my critical way, to not like her...........I am predisposed to dislike these strong outgoing large wild grey haired women, it seems...........but in fact her guitar-playing was very good (all those bar chords up the neck I could never manage) and her voice was strong enough and clear and had a nice quality, and she sang some Billie Holliday and not Mae West but some woman of the 20s and 30s songs that were just a pure delight.........one made me ask her if she knew The Sheik of Araby, because it was of the same genre. Anyway she was a great pleasure.
And then she was joined by some black guy on drums who just happened to be there for his honeymoon with his lovely hippie wife, and an Argentinian man I liked very much, and, unfortunately an Argentinian woman who had a nice clear strong voice and slim body, very beautiful, but her voice just too strident for me.
But the Scene (which Merri described as very "clique-y" tho I didn't see that) was that the woman from the clinic (another big wild-grey-haired woman) came down for the music, with several people in tow.
Twenty-five or so people showed up in this small venue, which the woman (Terri) built.
So that shows you the extent of night life around there, although we met some guys from Australia on the bus back who had been at a different bar/music venue, there.
The whole town seems to be these two parallel walkways from the lake/dock that lead up to a regular street that apparently goes up to Solola which is the border of the regular town. On either side of these walkways are probably 12-16 shops, restaurants, B&Bs, and Centres. And then there is Blind Lemon's at the top and then the town.
A life there would be (for me)....like.....maybe a little work at the clinic, doing Infant Stimulation stuff or possibly counseling with better spanish (which would be hard to achieve since most of the people I would know tend to speak English with each other)....maybe volunteer in the indigenous school up the road a ways. Then I discovered a Therapy Center down by the dock (lovely wood-frame home up from the lake.........which I adore.......I can't believe how much it affects me each time, being by the water) which does past life regression therapy, etc etc etc. I'd be interested in learning more about doing that (I've done a lot on myself, a little with another therapist, and a few sessions with friends), and also maybe doing some of that myself, as well as Astrology....especially now that I'velearned to do re-location therapy, and I think that would be a "seller." Anyway so I could do those things, write, adopt some little kids, have a garden. But no pigs, goats, etc. A little too uppity for me, really, tho I like uppity hippie-new age better than uppity-tourist. And these folks still have to deal with insects, mud, rain, blackouts, etc....I mean real things, and more than in Antigua. And days of choppy water when no one can get anywhere.
So it's appealing but not absolutely. It's missing something low-key, comfortable, and warm. My friend's reaction to it all is a bit iffy (I noticed on the whole trip that she and her daughter are much more negative about people, especially men, but everyone, than I am.) But if she goes up there again for a week, I'll go with her and just check things out.
But it would be the ideal, like Antigua, of a place to work with needy folks,while still having your internet, and health food store etc.
And of course it would be a more likely place for a Danceaway, or Auth. Movmt group, or whatever than even Antigua. A bit like trying to figure out who you ARE.
Here one year today….September 5th, 2007. Almost two years since my romance with Guatemala began.

The Mythical Mayan Village

2008-01-19T09:59:00.000-08:00

Mini-jaunt
On a Sunday, Fred (director of our project) and I walk up to Santa Maria. This is the pueblo furthest up the road that passes Santa Ana and Familias de Esperanza. Once I could see the lights of Santa Maria from my rooftop terrace on Callejon Lopez. We walked for miles up a steep hill, past Finca Carmona, the furthest school on that road that I’d ever visited and then miles more. Finally, legs aching, I asked if we were close and Fred said “About half way.”
I said a few swear words and then said, “I’m going to take the next bus that comes along.” And along it came, moments later. We walked around town and looked at things in the market, just like in Antigua and other places, and then started back down the hill. That’s where I fell in love.
Looking out across the verdant fields of corn and squash and beans, below us, criss-crossed with makeshift fences and dotted with small sheds, I felt as though I were feeding, as thought the landscape were a source of direct nourishment through my eyes and heart.
“Yes,” I kept exulting inwardly, near tears. “Yes! This is what I’ve been missing – with only that narrow vista of banana trees and the hillside from my windows. This is what nourishes me.” It seemed like a great confirmation.

I keep looking for the Mythical Mayan Village
So today I went to the pueblo of one of our young maestras, who is indigenous, spoke Katchiquel as a child, and still does occasionally at home. I had thought she lived in my mythical village, but it is nearly as big as Antigua, mostly concrete streets - a few mud - a large municipal building being built, and a big plazuela with, on this day, a ferris wheel, big jumping house for kids, other things like that, several stands for marimba bands, a vegetable and textiles fair......and so on.
First we looked at her house.....which is a series of side-by-side rooms down one side of a large cleared dirt space with little "flower beds" in it, with fruit trees or vegetables growing in them. One room was her "kitchen" - dirt floor, corn-cane walls, woodburning "stove". The other side of the cleared space is for the houses of two of her uncles. The whole thing about 100 ft sq. She showed us her backstrap loom, the first time I´ve seen them unassembled. ( I realize I could easily have one at my house!)
Then we walked to the fair area and suddenly started seeing masqued and costumed figures coming out of a large building and followed them to a big roped off area in the plaza where they danced and paraded for the next hour. The most interesting and elaborate costumes! Many like the conquistadors with epaulettes and much metallic embroidery, some like Native North Americans!, some with horns coming from their shoulders, heads, chests, some like something from Mad Max at Thunderdrome (much leather and spikes), some like humanoid figures in Star Wars, several men dressed as women, two skeletons with skulls on their upper arms and backs, a few clown-types, but most interesting were the masques they wore.....almost like mannequin´s faces, but even more stylized.....perfect flawless faces, some with perfect goatees, but so many of them identical, and all with that strange immoble look on these vigorously dancing figures. Very surreal, really. I enjoyed that a lot.
Then they started a contest.....pole climbing. The pole was maybe 40-50 feet tall and had been slicked and covered with pig grease. There were 4-5 men gathered to climb it for the 800Q tacked at the top of it (maybe $110.) What was interesting is that they carried bags of sand over their shoulders, and scrapers in their pockets, and it seemed to be okay to use this to try to get rid of the pig fat which was making it impossible to climb up (no cleats, of course...bare feet or tennies)
But I also loved the cooperation between the contestants.....scraping and cleaning a section, then coming down to let someone else try to get further, boosting each other, standing on each others´ shoulders and sometimes heads by mistake (much unintentionally or intentionally funny behavior, like sliding down on top of each other)...at one point the pole looked like a totem pole, with 5 human figures crouched one on top of the other on the lower half. There were also some monkey figures in costume running around, who were messing around (sort of like Coyote in this culture, I think) messing up their attempts, getting in the way, etc. And then just some older drunks who were trying to be helpful but of course slipped or fell. So the whole thing was hilarious and yet the contestants were very persevering and serious about it. They had made it half the way up the pole in the 40 mins or so that I watched.
We also went up to the church where there were the most beautiful large wheels covered in peacock and other feathers with a saint´s image in the middle, lots of incense smoke in the air, beautifully dressed women in typical huipiles and faldas, such as all the women in the town wears, but with the addition of silver and colored ribbons tying up their hair, and a white veil draped over the whole thing...carrying these lovely fabric-covered poles with images at the top. Later they came out of the church and formed a procession through town...along with the big "wheels" carried on the shoulders of the men.
But we had to leave.
On the way back (in a friend from the project´s pickup truck - some of us sitting down in the back) we saw a dirt road leading to a pueblo and one of the young maestra´s invited me to go up there with them in two weeks to do a training in Brain Gym..........so maybe THAT is my mythical mayan village! I´ll go see....

More Cultural Events

2008-01-19T09:48:00.000-08:00

Sunday 17th June. Photo on left is from yearly procession in Antigua.

Something in me has shifted just recently. Or maybe there were several slight, un-noticed shifts before the results became apparent. Whatever has occurred, I am feeling happy and grateful again. My Spanish has improved enough to make some communication possible, though I still struggle with hearing well in the group settings, now two children’s groups. And I think I have just accepted my slow learning progress; which together with a bit of improvement, makes for a lot of improvement in how I feel. And I have loved working in the school classrooms, several days this week because the main teacher had to be at a training all week. So I felt like I was a real help. And Jose, in one class, who was so dreadful at first, is doing better behaviorally, working more at his school work, and when I pass he looks up at me to get his approving looks from me. That really touches me. And then I worked one day in the prepa class at San Cristobal, too, and felt effective, though I have to be very careful not to step on toes, and I need more manipulables for that class. So all that just makes me happy.
And then Fred told me that at their training, the Santa Ana teacher said she was looking forward to my behavior training, which means I have to get back to her in the morning (I want to peek in her prepa class, too.) I wish I had a good translator, familiar with classroom teaching; then I could do these behavior trainings instead of just handing out written materials (checked and corrected in my Spanish class.)

And now it’s just one week until it’s time to go home again. What a pain. I don’t care to leave when I’ve just gotten started. I said that last time too.

Personal
So it seems I had to come all the way to Guatemala to find out who I am. And oddly enough, it’s who I thought I was all the time.
Cut to the bone, without friends or family to distract me………I am what I love……my emotional connections…………the things in my life that make me feel emotional:
The kids and my varied relationships with them
My dance teacher and the dancing we do
My TV movies………all emotional ones
My writing about my emotional life, and that of others.

That is my life here. That is who I am.

Scorpio, scorpio, cancer cancer
And Aquarius writes about it.
And of course Capricorn keeps up the struggle of it all.
Too funny, really. And of course that is what my horoscope for Guatemala said.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Those kids are killing me. I’ve been getting too physical with the ones in Dianet’s class…pushing them into Time Out for instance, holding the door against them to keep them out at recess (I’m not sure why she wants this.) And when the door banged into the back of my foot, I got a nail in my heel for my trouble, and to remind me that being physical is not the way.
We have to set it up clearly so that the consequences speak for themselves and we can be the coaches………trying to help them learn behavior appropriate to a learning situation. I have to remember that for the training. And before I left I spoke to both teachers, and left a written explanation of this stance.

But today, in the prepa class, with those three little boys laughing at everything I tried to say….that was hard (I make the mistake of wanting them to like me, that emotional need thing, again) and the boy who screams in my face (and at the other teachers.) I did well with shining both of them on, but didn’t need to make faces at the screaming boy, funny or not. Just shine it one and go about my business, but then exact consequences. And of course later, when I had the manipulatives out and was left in charge of the kids, it was exactly those boys (“my” kids) who were there wanting interaction with me (and the toys) and appreciating my comments.

It is interesting to me that Guatemalan kids don’t gravitate to me like the children I’ve known in California. Part of this is the language barrier, but I think some part may be the greater affection I see children getting here. They don’t need me or my attention as much. This is a little difficult to take, but I’m here to help them, not get my emotional needs met.

Cultural
July. For the past three days this pueblo has dressed itself up as I’VE never seen it before, in preparation for two days of a futbol tournament, evidently. Makeshift booths line two sides of the plazuela, full of video games and food. Both nights the teams came, in full regalia, with referees and a scoreboard. And both nights it RAINED and RAINED, a “tormenta” my manager calls it. And it has been a torment for these people, though I don’t hear them complaining. For awhile the audience sat under umbrellas and the players slipped and slid across the slick court. Hilarious to watch; but it must have hurt and been disappointing for those who invested time and hopes of some income. Finally everyone went home.

But the fiesta goes on….evidently working up to the big Antigua festival starting this weekend and continuing on to Miercoles, it’s Saint’s Day. Today many paper decorations on the church, and tonite some performances including two very dramatic but very off-key singers.

Guatemala goes on revealing itself. A social worker I know from FdeE came back from the lake today, just as I’ve been thinking I need to call them to come visit (thinking more and more about San Juan.) She and her husband have left there because the “moral cleansing” that has been going on there for five years started hitting closer to home. I have never heard of this before, even the few times I was in that area, but evidently people who rob and steal or commit adultery, or who knows what else, homosexuality possibly….are being shot, and the people of the community stand behind it. Three teenagers were killed recently for stealing bikes and dealing pot, I think; and she received a threat against one of their employees. So that was it for them. Que lastima for me, possibly, (or maybe I’m supposed to stay here) and que lastima if those projects that are helping the area recover from the pollution of the lake begin leaving it.

Santa Ana is having another celebration….for Corpus Christi my teacher says, describing some sort of vessel into which the host is placed, which is carried around the village. Maybe that’s what they were carrying this morning, on the third day of celebrations. Unfortunately for the pueblo, the first two nights it rained torrents. The valiant jugadors continued on but they were slipping and falling in the water on the concrete court until they finally called it quits. Last night was clear; it had rained earlier. So the games went on, the women’s teams appearing first. The skill level is not first-rate but good enough.
Then the canned music started. Boom boom boom go the woofers, making my windows rattle.
Nearly the whole pueblo seems to be out in the plazuela, and finally from my upper window I can see some heads bobbing, which pleases me (it has seemed to me that no Guatemalans dance at these public ferias.) Earlier they had some men and boys with giant animal and people heads on their shoulders, dancing in concert. THAT brought me out into the plaza; they were really wonderful dancers. Later in the evening I saw them from my window, dancing in the futbol court. They had taken off their big heads, revealing lots of dark-skinned young men and boys and a few older men, all dancing with such vigor, arms flying, legs pumping in unison. Just wonderful! But the music went on til at least midnight, when I finally got to sleep.
And this morning at 6 am they were at it again, this time with loud bombas in the concha (futbol court) rattling my windows and setting off car alarms. And then the traditional drums and flutes started to play, and I looked out to see about 100 people - dressed mostly in black, the women with their heads covered with scarves or lace – proceeding from the church, a few people carrying the big vessel, the others walking slowly and singing or chanting. I took a few photos and then stood respectfully as my fellow Santa Anans walked slowly by.
And now…at 3:30 pm, it’s time for the full band, with trumpets and trombones, to start shaking the windows again. And again with the bombas. I’m game, but this window-rattling is too much. I think my neighbors will also be annoyed and perhaps get it to stop, but when I look out I see the whole pueblo seems to be in the plaza. No wonder they don’t mind about the windows.

Culture and History

2008-01-19T09:41:00.000-08:00

May 20, 2007: the election campaigning has started already – headed for September. At 10:15 am a cavalcade rolls through tiny Santa Ana. About twenty cars, each identified by something orange (balloons, signs, tshirts) and many signs on its sides. The usual loudspeakers, music, a few bombas set off…..drivers jumping out, setting up the launcher, setting the charge, running a short distance away, boom….and then in the sky, a second boom…..repeating the process once or twice. Then putting the launcher back in the truck to drive on, chasing the calvalcade.
This one was for General Molina, a candidate for the party identified by a drawing of a raised fist and the word URGE. He was standing in the back of a new pickup with orange balloons all over it, with his wife. He actually looked rather handsome, competent, and nice. And as far as I could see, no secret service. Definitely no policia.

Volunteering
5/30/07 And finally, after nearly nine months here……!!....Something may happen. I spoke to the director at San Cristobal el Bajo about consulting with them and she wants me to see this mother tomorrow morning. She also agreed they could use help in the prepa (preschool) classroom. I had to wait 40 minutes, standing outside her office, looking at the view, wondering about their water system, before she spoke to me. Evidently I didn’t make myself clear and she thought I was waiting for the other teachers. So there’s a hint, for the start of my project: be sure I’m clear about things and being clear. And of course more than half the time I’m just faking it in Spanish. I wish I were comfortable admitting I understand so little.
And I’m starting to work in the special ed classroom at San Pedro, thanks to my Spanish teacher’s friend, and taking some motivational stuff there this morning. And I have permission from Fred to do all this, because we now have four teachers and I'm really not needed in those classrooms.
And there’s something of an opening at San Juan because that director wants to start a program, and this would demonstrate need. I think I could convince her to do a parenting training (maybe group but I’m not ready for that) and maybe an infant stimulation group. Then borrow the materials from Felipe (I thought I was just in there for fun.) I’ve spoken to Sandra about hooking this up with F. E. but she thinks better not (not sure why; she’s going to speak to someone.) And through Francisco maybe I could get an AA person up to San Juan for the group she wants. Or perhaps someone from the F.E. AA group.
So all this would fit my individualist/ do things now personality, and yet I tried to make it more structured and connected to F.E., if only to require people I see to sign up there first.
I know I’m gong to end up spending money, adopting people, etc. I hope not.

Cultural
Sometimes – watching HBO at my house, walking on the street with motorcycles going by, sitting in the internet shop, buying groceries at the gringo food store, sitting in my writers’ group, or having lunch at a nice café – it’s easy to forget that I’m in Guatemala……although the movies have Spanish subtitles, the motorcyclists don’t wear helmets, the rest of the folks in my internet shop are young Guatemalan boys playing videogames, and my lunch today was with the four young Guatemalan teachers I work with. But it hits home that I’m in a “third-world” country when we go to San Juan, today, to visit a family, walk down a rutted, trash-strewn alley to a wooden gate in a wire fence which opens to show a rain-washed cement patio leading to a dark cement house, much of it open to the air, and the roof – like so many – just corrugated tin, with openings everywhere under the roof. A young boy asks what we want, his clean school uniform in sharp contrast to his surroundings. Two other children wave and rush up to talk to us. They are a young girl who is in my kids’ group - she is a little shy with me – and a young boy in the older group whom I always watch because his face is so appealing; beautiful, with high Mayan cheekbones, dark-lashed eyes……….something about his manner is so slightly-tough or restrained on the surface, and sweetly shy underneath.
I am so moved by all these kids and their difficult lives. I am so touched when they recognize me.

History
Guatemala reveals itself slowly. I have been somewhat disturbed by reading The Long Night of White Chickens…..which paints such a dark and negative picture of Guatemala, of course during the long time of violence, here. But he paints, also, a negative feeling about Guatemalans, themselves; almost as though something in their nature could have brought about this time of silence, betrayal, and viciousness. My Guatemalan writer friend comes by my house to talk about his emerging book and says, without my mentioning this book or my thoughts about it, that he wants to get out of Guatemala again; away from this place where there has been such ugliness. He tells me friends of his were tortured and murdered during that period.
This story from him makes the history I know even more personal and apparently more wide-spread, since he and his friends lived in the Capital. Somehow I had thought the massacres and torture and uprootings that existed in the highlands – evidently unknown to Antigua-dwellers, according to my Spanish teacher and my expatriate friend, (although she said, “We didn’t know; we didn’t WANT to know”) – was the only period or place of horror since the conquest.
In the long history of Guatemala there were of course earlier times of terror……..the conquest, certainly, the herding of indigenous people into pueblos like the one I live in now, the civil war in the 60s - started by soldiers angered at the placement of troops here by the US, to train to fight in Cuba, as I understand it from him, and then the massacres in the 80s. And there were natural disasters, notably in the early colonial period…..devastating earthquakes, Volcan Agua’s deluge….and later earthquakes, and the hurricane that destroyed lives in October of 2005, just before my first visit here. Layers and layers.
Perhaps some of the joy I sense here in people is just the joy of being alive in a time in which these things are NOT going on. I think of the way the earth recovers after a natural disaster, and even a war. Sometimes it takes years but the spirit of life recovers, plants grow up from the overturned soil, flowers blossom, and seeds drop to sprout again.

Guatemalan culture past and present

2008-01-19T09:27:00.000-08:00

Cultural differences
This pueblo continues to surprise me. I moved here in part because I wanted to be more part of a community; I didn’t realize how community-oriented this plazuela would be. Not only are there games of futbol at all hours of the day and evening, and some odd type of basketball that allows you to run, holding the ball, but next door to our “compound” there is a center at which young girls hold their Quinciñeras (essentially “coming out” parties, at age 15) and people of all ages have their birthday parties – complete with loud music, one night rattling our windows. Fortunately it tends to be types of dance music that I enjoy.
Then there is the reggaeton music, which I also love, broadcasted to accompany the more up-scale futbol games. And, more quietly, every night men use the street light very close to my house to play cards, sitting on the plazuelas low concrete bleachers, but of course this is also accompanied by music on the radio and occasional hoots and howls. Recently they have initiated bingo games in the center of the futbol court, accompanied by a loud announcer.
As relatively quiet person, when I’m not dancing - and accustomed to near-absolute silence at my home in California - I could let this annoy me, especially when it all goes on really late, but consciously allow myself to be “part of a community,” to just let the sound come in and out of me without resistance.
But this morning, at 5:15 am on a Sunday is a first: I am wakened by loud singing. Going to the window that looks out on the plazuela I see a group of men standing under the street light in the middle of the plazuela 100 feet away. Putting my glasses on, I see two are playing the large guitars (guitarones?) I sometimes see here. They are singing loudly, seeming a little drunk – but maybe that’s just my perception of the hour. The singing and playing are both good, somewhat like mariachi music. As I watch, they part and the musicians – one of them with an accordion – walk past me. I notice there are a lot of people on the street at this hour….that is, groups of 2 or 3 pass my house every 3-5 minutes, all walking down my street in the same direction. It seems obvious that some sort of celebration is taking place on one of the streets behind my house. I notice my manager’s family is up and walking around; I am tempted to ask them what’s going on and imagine being swept up into yet another odd and interesting local activity, or not. I elect to stay in my robe. Then there is a loud honking, and I see two chickenbusses parked in the road in front of the gancha (court.) I can’t imagine how they reached here through these narrow streets. I see several children with packs pile into one, which is evidently already filled; it takes off down my street, with what appears to be a huge paint bucket and a babystroller on top. Another parked bus is filling up with adults carrying packs and bags. The whole town is having an excursion somewhere?
Finally it takes off, too, and at 6:30 am everything is quiet again.

Cultural
Well of all the celebrations we’ve had here (and these folks love ‘em!) this one most has me both gnashing my teeth and dying of laughter.
It’s El Dia de Madre - their Mother’s Day a few days before ours.
It starts at 3:05 a.m. with a loud amplified voice and marimba music for ½ hour; which suddenly seems to grow very loud, pass on the small street right next to my house and disappear.
4:35 a.m. again a loud voice announcing the wonder of mothers and this day set aside for them, and lots more music, but this one is stationary and on-going.
I have cotton in my ears and a pillow over my head (though I like the music well enough) but the sound is coming through the cobblestone streets into my bones.
Eventually I give it up and get up about 5:45, deciding this is a great day to wash my sheets (by hand on my own little pila outside on my back patio.)
I notice my gringa neighbor peeking out the door of our gate so I look too. From the music you would expect at least dancing couples with full skirts lifted up. But we see a lone man sitting at a table with huge amplifiers, talking into a microphone, and not too far from him (all this in our plazuela in front of our – now beautifully lit – church) a row of about six women sitting silently in chairs side by side.
And of course every so often tons of firecrackers or the larger bombas.
Just what every mother wants at 6 a.m.
I sort of like displaying our mothers NOT making tortillas for the family at this hour, although in this “day and age” there are women around town who specialize in fresh tortillas (no salt) and you either go to their house or tienda, or get them when they walk around with large plastic baskets, the warm tortillas covered with brightly-colored cloths.

Suddenly there is competing music coming from the other size of the plazuela and I see 4 cars with a loudspeaker. I say "competing music" but it’s exactly the same music played independently. Some people in orange jackets get out, set off a few bombas (while the other music plays on,) and a disembodied voice talks about how wonderful “madrecitas” are. I notice on the back of one of these cars what appears to be a political poster. Since campaigning for the September presidential election has already begun, I suspect that somebody’s sentiments are “for sale.” I suspect these folks are the ones who started the day off at 3 a.m.
Now the music has switched to a slight rap or hip hop flavor…but no, we’re back to more soulful men singing about the saintliness of their mothers. And of course more firecrackers.

Yesterday was sweet…..we went to our schools to work but found most of the classes were preparing little gifts and cards for Mother’s Day and getting ready for some sort of presentation at a special Mass in the local (beautiful, old) church. And all around town yesterday were children walking holding carefully-made little gifts and mothers with large baskets of goodies. These folks do revere their mothers.
The mothers in front of the church have dispersed, now, and the music has stopped at 7 a.m. Looks like people are getting ready for Mass in this church.
I’m sure there are more things planned all day.
Think I will finish washing my sheets.

And yes…..more things are planned. I walk out into the plazuela (aware of being the only gringa, though there are a dozen of us volunteers living here and there in this town, I hear) and stand to watch several acts put on by different classrooms (children reciting, dancing, acting in some skit) and two women who do the meringue with the school director (who is pretty good) and one of the practicantes (student teachers.)

History
I had heard the story of the woman who declared herself empress, here, after her husband’s death and was then killed by the deluge from Volcan Agua, but here is the official story (“A Short History of Guatemala,” Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr.):
“Unwelcome in Peru, Pedro de Alvarado (who had, with his brother Jorge, established a town very close to Antigua as the capital of the Guatemalan region-which stretched to Panama) returned to Spain where his wife, Francisco de la Cueva had died in 1528.” (Seven years before....in those years distances were real.) “Alvarado now married her sister, Dona Beatriz de Alva de la Cueva. Accompanied by his new bride, he returned to Guatemala in 1539, but rumors of golden cities in Cibola lured him north to Mexico. There he fought with his characteristic courage and recklessness in the Mizston War against the rebellious Chichimecas until he died in Guadalajara on 4 July `1541 after a horse fell on him. Word of his death did not reach Santiago de Guatemala (the capital) until 29 August, when a letter…ordered Lt. Governor Francisco de la Cueva, a cousin of Alvarado’s widow to continue as governor in Guatemala. In her grief over the loss of her husband, Dona Beatriz reportedly wailed excessively and called herself “la sin ventura” (the unfortunate or hapless one [and I heard elsewhere she had the building housing the present salsa bar Sin Ventura painted black and she and all the servants dressed in black for a year.] "Her tears were matched by unusually heavy rains that drenched Guatemala in early September 1541. On 9 September the City Council and other notables including Alvarado’s widow, met to install [her cousin] as governor of the kingdom [sic] but the strong-willed and ambitious Beatriz, supported by the powerful Bishop of Guatemala, Francisco Marroquin [whose name I know only as one of the schools we visit] managed to…make her interim governor. ….[she] would rule but a pair of days, however. The rains continued throughout Saturday, 10 September 1541, and on that night tremors from the nearby and active Fuego Volcano [which still sends up plumes of smoke every day and produced a tremor that shook my bed last week] caused the crater at the top of the Agua volcano to rupture. A torrent of water and mud gushed down the volcano’s side carrying away part of [Ciudad Vieja] and killing many people, including Dona Beatriz.”
The cousin, Francisco De la Cueva and Marroquin then established Antigua “on the other side of the valley” [not far.] De la Cueva then married a daughter of Alvarado and Tlaxcalan Princess Dona Luisa de Xicotencatl [who must be Mayan], who had survived the destruction of the capital along with several ladies that Dona Beatriz had brought with her from Spain. These survivors were important in Guatemalan history as mothers of many of the principal families of the colonial era. Alvarado had no children by his De la Cueva wives. His legacy in Guatemala continued only through the descendants of his union with Dona Luisa., [the Mayan.]"

This is of course fascinating to me primarily to consider the drama of the lives involved. I would like to know more about these families.

Madrina y voluntaria

2008-01-19T09:20:00.000-08:00

I go for my first visit since returning to Guate to live, to see Denilson, my ahijado (“god-son”) or sponsored child from the Camino Seguro project in Guatemala City. I chose Guatemala to live (over Jamaica) in part because of the idea that I would be closer to Denilson. Yet I have been here six months without spending time with him, though I bought a basket of food and some shoes for him at Christmas, as well as supporting him at $25/ every month.
There are a few reasons for this: one is advised NOT to go to Guatemala City on the chicken bus. It is an hour ride in a densely-crowded bus. One tourist was killed on the bus for not giving up his money just after I arrived here. A bus driver and his assistant were shot and killed just the other day. And once you get to Guate City, you have to change to another bus, and then walk through a very poor area to reach the project. Camino Seguro strongly advises against it. So the other option (besides an expensive cab) is to go with the project tour. This leaves at noon and returns at 4:30. Since I have wanted to take him to the zoo, this gives us only 2 hours for that trip, which seems too short. So I kept putting it off, trying to come up with some other solution. And then I have been working a lot, though I have deliberately kept Thursdays off because that is the day for the tour.
So this Thursday I go with the tour, and the trip there is uneventful except that even with our regular guide we somehow get on the wrong bus and have to walk further than usual through the streets, crowded with peddlers. I don’t recognize the road, despite 4-5 trips with the tour group. And then, as our group of 15 or so people is straggling along through the crowd to get to the “more dangerous” area, the girl behind me is “attacked”: a man pushes her in the chest to throw her off balance and grabs her expensive necklace and runs. She is shaking and crying, but unhurt.
I never wear expensive jewelry here, but I commiserate with her shock.
Denilson is waiting at the project, and looks delighted to see me. We take a cab with the social worker to the zoo, where it turns out Denilson has been several times with his school or the project. But he loves to see the lions, we eat pizza and take a lot of photos, and he goes on a few rides. His shining face is a pleasure, but once again I am disappointed that he connects more with the social worker (a nice young man) than with me. It stands to reason, and I am glad that Denilson receives enough from his mother that he doesn’t hunger for the kind of attention that I give out….which so many children have gravitated to. But it is slightly disappointing.
It is also VERY expensive to take a taxi (well 80Q) and to pay for food and fees for all three of us…..I spend about $50 on the trip. This definitely limits the number of times I’m going to be able to come, though I'll admit to paying more for my salsa classes. But really it's that he doesn't seem to need it; again, this is a good thing. I talk to the social worker about finding out what the family needs; maybe this is a better way to use my money for him.

Volunteering
With another psicologo (here, a college graduate in psychology) from Familias de Esperanza, I finally go to a pueblo to visit a family home. We go to San Juan, past the center of town and the school I visit with the Brain Gym folks, and down into the back alleys.
I am stunned at how these people have to live. I have seen scattered houses along the highways with tin roofing for the outside walls, held together with baling wire, but never so omnipresent as it is here. Maybe I have forgotten so quickly, but this area, except for the flying trash, looks worse than the Basura (dump) area in Guatemala City where the Camino Seguro project is. The alleys are hilly, rocky, dirt - wide pathways, really – along which children play and ride a few bicycles downhill. Small children are filthy with uncombed hair; older children, returning home from school, are clean and neat in sharp contrast.
We enter the home we’ve come to visit through the makeshift gate. Wash is on a line, the yard is dirt, a dog barks from a corner where he’s on a short chain. There are piles of concrete, brick, and lumber here and there, covered with dust. The pila, full of dirty dishes, is outside the front door. We enter through a torn lace curtain. Inside one of the project houses, made of cement sheets and roughed-out timbers, with a tin roof and air space under the eaves, the family lives in a room 15 feet square. Two double beds are on two walls, a dresser is in the middle of the room with a table covered in linoleum cloth behind it. Remnants of a meal are on the table.
I notice there is a project stove in the courtyard, tucked under some tin materials. The grandmother is trying to cook on it, unsuccessfully…..she can’t get the fire going hot enough.
There are women who are able to keep an orderly house in this sort of environment – I have been one, myself, although even my log cabin was in better condition than this – but this woman does not. Evidently, we learn, she works all day, earning pennies selling things door to door. There is no electricity (or water) in this house she rents for 150Q a month (about $20 American) so at night there is no light for housework or her granddaughter’s homework. This is one of the problems she wants help in addressing.
She talks rapidly with my co-worker in Spanish. I catch only about 40% of what they are saying, but enough to start thinking of solutions. I can observe the girl in the classroom when I go there with the Brain Gym folks next week. I can see if there are some sort of lanterns here… kerosene or oil…..which I could buy them to start with. But where would she get more kerosene? New things to learn. I can also ask her teacher if there is any sort of homework club after school to provide the girl with a place to do this; as California’s schools and projects have. Or, failing that, if there is a neighbor she can stay with for an hour while the grandmother continues to work alone.
I can also help with the cookstove fire, which I do, showing the grandmother that she needs to keep the wood entrance open enough to allow a draft through, rather than jamming it full and trying to blow thru the top hole. In a few minutes the fire is going briskly, but I notice she doesn’t attend it during our conversation in the home, and doesn’t check her beans. Having cooked on a woodstove for years in California, I know what is necessary, and am a little confused at her response.
But we will learn more when we visit next week.

Personal/cultural musings

2008-01-19T09:14:00.000-08:00

April 15: I start a full work-week (I’m limiting it to four days) next week, with both the Brain Gym teachers in the small pueblo schools, and seeing some women in their homes with a social worker and held in the kids group for Familias de Esperanza. Frankly, I’ve been enjoying my time off to go out of the country, to Chico the last week in March, for Semana Santa in Antigua and the week my sister was here - just going from this to that………..but volunteering is what I came down here for and I know I’ll get caught up in that again, too.

I still don’t feel centered here, but can’t imagine anyplace else that is more right – not Chico, not Livingston, though I hope to go there again in November, and still fantasize at times about living with more music and dance….and pigs in the street. I think about San Juan on Lago Atitlan….which would keep me in touch with the Brain Gym project, be the same climate (though I’d like it a little warmer,) and be a little quieter and more tranquil – possibly even more “in the country.” And last nite by chance I met a woman from Spain who is volunteering in Xela, and very much wants me to come up to see the children in the orphanage there which she works for…..but reading in the guidebook, the altitude could touch into my fear of heights, and it is COLDER than Antigua, not warmer.
So nothing’s quite right. But I’m still putting one foot in front of another, feeling my way along.
Actually what I enjoy most is sitting at my computer, writing on one or another project I’ve become involved with….looking out at the banana trees and bouganvilla in my yard here in Santa Ana.
And of course when the people next door suddenly start playing some good CDs really loud (usually there is no sound from there – it seems to be a small convention center) and the plaza is full of fathers and kids playing papi futbol……and I’m going out to dinner with some folks from the project………it all seems pretty good.

Cultural/Personal
As I’m walking home from the bus at lunch time – the side street from Calle Hermano Pedro to my house is a little more deserted than it usually is at 8 or 5 – two Guatemalan men are coming down the street in my direction.
“Hello,” the man closest calls out, in stilted English. “How are you?” “I’m just fine,” I say, with an off-hand smile, but he sticks his hand out to shake mine. I take his hand, but notice that his eyes and his friend’s look a little drunk, at this hour. “You can give me money for lunch?” He asks. I often hand out quetzals but not to drunk-looking men. “No,” I say, “No hoy.” (Not today.) And pass on.
In retrospect I realized that in my intention to be friendly and respectful to all passersby, no matter their outward appearance, I could have been in trouble in this instance, with no one else on the street. When I gave him my hand he could easily have pulled me to him, at least robbing me.
I am careful not to carry much money, and when I have a little more than usual with me, for some purpose, to put it in my pants pocket or an inner pocket of my bag. But I think on an empty street like that I need to steer clear of getting so close to strange men.
Later in the day, I hear that the body of a 30-year-old man was recently found a block from that spot. I will be a little more cautious.

If I want to involve myself more in the culture here, I am going to have to change some life-long habits. I have already shifted one: my tendency is to get right to whatever subject I have when talking with another person. I was already cautioned about that when meeting with some Native Americans in California; first they want to get to know who you are before you start discussing business.
Here, the cultural tendency is to say, “Hello, How are you? I am fine, thank you, and you?” before even the briefest phone conversation. I am learning this. At least it is not the more elaborate greeting that I understand exists in Afghanistan (and all Muslim countries?) where you enquire after the person’s family back to the 10th generation, the health of their households, etc.
Secondly, everyone here kisses on one or both cheeks even on first meeting. In California, I often hug people I’m very fond of, touch them on the hand or arm, and so forth, but not in a routine way on meeting and departing, as they do here. And not when I first meet someone.
Oddly enough, now that I’ve gotten used to it, Guatemalans in the psicologia department at the project, are NOT greeting me like that, and I miss it. And of course I decide to change that immediately, and with my salsa teacher, too, by initiating it.
Another custom, which I ran into with my mother-in-law in East Oakland, was to feed everyone who comes into your home. Maybe this is just a poor, rather than Guatemalan, custom. Well I don’t do this except if someone has come from a long way and is staying awhile.
More habits to change. More reference to the Alchemical idea of working on oneself in anything you do, and I guess, anywhere you go.

Chichi et environs

2008-01-19T09:07:00.000-08:00

We stayed the night in a small hotel near the market and central square between the two churches [the most beautiful church in the photo.] What we didn’t know was that the night of Easter, music and dancing goes on there – very loud - until 3 a.m. This was a live marimba band who played non-stop, but the traditional music was also well-integrated with much more modern trends (my sister described it as similar to Tex-Mex.) The only unfortunate thing was that we didn’t feel quite safe enough to travel through the dark streets to and from the activity….although it was only a few blocks away. In the light of day that seemed silly, but…. If I’d known about the music I would have arranged with the guide to escort us to and from.
The guide, the young artist from whom Suzanne bought some paintings, and the young man who waited our table, all indigines, were so friendly and open and sweet………..these interactions were a high point of our trip. I am happy that my Spanish has mas o menos progressed to the point that this sort of interaction is possible. Tomas told us that his family lives outside of Chichi in the country, neither of his parents were literate, his father died a few years ago so he is head of the family and has to work as a guide, but he is finishing high school at night.

We then went back to Pana and got hustled by two young guys into taking a private boat for 100Q each to the little “resort” we’d reserved for two nights. (Take the public boats for 15-20Q.) Isla Verde was created by a young woman from Spain over the last three years. It has.a lovely common room, kitchen, deck overlooking the lake, meditation platform and yoga space…..and lots of little cabins strung up the hillside also overlooking the whole lake. The little bathroom of our cabin was charming, open-air, with lots of plants growing into the space. The owner/builder used the concrete parts of all structures in a way reminiscent of the Southwest of the US – free-form, curved shapes.
It was a little expensive by my standards ($175 for 2 people 2 nights and all the excellent meals and help from the staff.) She is interested in hosting workshops there – weaving, yoga, or whatever.
We did quite a bit of relaxing there, though the hottub wasn’t functioning, and we didn’t indulge in the massages offered. In the day time we took small public boats (which are a trip in themselves, as the locals shuttle themselves and various goods from one dock to another) to several villages around the lake. There is a very hippie village there – San Marcos – which we didn’t visit, but we went to San Juan (which I am sort of interested in living in, at some point) where we went to a painter’s workplace and talked with him about his wonderful folk-art paintings, and to a weaving coop which uses all natural dyes, where we shopped in their tienda for lovely scarves and walked through their dye process, and talked with a lovely woman weaver. They use the backstrap loom, like all the other weavers I’ve seen in Guatemala
San Juan is one of the cleanest, quietest villages I’ve been to. We met only two gringos on the street, both volunteers (one with the Peace Corps) in various projects in the area, teaching reproductive choices and women’s rights (one) and helping develop small economic projects (P.C.) Lovely people we talked to, and a very nice restaurant there, as well.
We then walked to the next village – San Pedro – where I took a training for 4 days some months ago. We took a winding way thru the village (evidently known locally for its drug culture) and then got another public launch to Santiago, home of Maximon, the local saint. He’s a cigar-smoking, whiskey-drinking saint you can appeal to for curing and other benefits. A tuk tuk took us to his current home (he is passed around the village annually to vs. members of the brotherhood,) and a little boy guided us up the alley and through a curtained doorway to confront Maximon, a few feet from the door. The assembled men quickly pulled it together to receive visitors and for a few quetzals we could take photos, look at the other saints reclining in biers nearby, and see all the plants hanging from the low ceiling, that are used in various parts of the ceremonies (the Curasca among them.) I tried to get more information about the ceremony and Maximon, but there was only one man who spoke Spanish, and that was limited. Suzanne picked up a book about him, though, so I will learn more in the future.
We then backtracked to Antigua the following day, spent a day seeing the sights here, and finished an incredibly lovely 8-day vacation.
It was really lovely to have her here, and to see all these things which I’ve seen before (except for Semana Santa) but from yet another perspective.

Cultural Traditions and another visit

2008-01-19T08:37:00.000-08:00

For two weeks I have been volunteering four mornings a week with the young teachers with whom I went to San Pedro de la Laguna. We go into the classrooms in the various public schools in the small pueblos near the project: San Juan Obispo, San Pedro de las Huertas, San Cristobal Abajo, Santa Catarina Bobadillo, and my own Santa Ana. Public schools in Guatemala are for the poor. Even my Spanish teacher and Salsa teacher send their children to private schools.
I’m not sure if taxes in Guatemala go to the public school system but whatever the revenue there doesn’t seem to be much. The buildings are old concrete block, the classrooms too small, there is no money for extra classroom materials, although their text workbooks look good (describing moder teaching methods, etc.) and seem to be new. But for several weeks San Cristobal didn’t even have water for the bathrooms! The school year is nine months, mid-January through mid-October, half-day for all grades; with lots of vacation days for local fiestas and national holidays.
However I have been very impressed with the quality - the compassion, dedication and interest in the welfare of their students - of the Directors of the various schools.
We go into the classrooms to do Pedagogia Basica (Brain Gym) activities with the students, sometimes in class if we need the blackboard, and otherwise outside. My role is to observe our teachers and make suggestions, to be sure their delivery stays in line with the original intent of the training, and to help with behavior management. Every class has four or five students who are usually out of line, or take every opportunity to get there. If we let them go for a moment, the whole class goes bonkers. But part of behavior management is keeping the kids from getting bored, so I also spend time encouraging, giving thumbs-up’s and nods or words of approval.
And of course encourage our teachers (we hire two more before long) who are just-graduated students, themselves, but quite gifted. I really enjoy doing this when there are just two teachers and I feel fully involved and useful.

Cultural
April '07: Antigua just had its biggest celebration of the year – Semana Santa or Holy Week.

This country takes its religion very seriously. For several weeks BEFORE Semana Santa, the outlying communities have their fiestas and processions ….each of them depicting a different part of the Stations of the Cross. These start at the church in their town (where there are sellers of food and religious items) and proceed into Antigua. (For non-Catholics, like me: each of the Stations represent a different stage of the procession to the cross – where Jesus stumbled and fell, where Veronica washed his face, where someone gave him a drink of water, where someone carried the cross for him for a way, where he was beaten, etc.) These depictions take place in one after another of the outlying communities first, each winding their way into the center of Antigua on successive weekends.
Then Semana Santa begins. For all the processions, different schools, and groups and even different stores or tiendas, create an “alfombra” (carpet) on the street outside their building. These are made of colored sawdust, placed via templates into patterns worthy of Persian rugs, or made of flowers and other parts of plants; the latter can be incredibly elaborate or quite simple. (Around the alfombras in the aisles of the churches there are even elaborate borders created of various vegetables in incredible patterns – the food is then distributed to the poor.) One plant that is used in many variations (individual rice-like seeds in decorative piles, the fan of 5” seed-heads, the individual linear stalks as lines, the full, thick 4’ stalk with all the seedheads, either in or out of its pod, and pieces of the pod itself) is called Carascol?? I think. These pods and interior parts also are used as hanging decorations.
It is lovely to walk around town and watch the care and often devotion that goes into the creation of these alfombras. Even teenage boys take part. Anyone can participate, of course. Unfortunately I was in Chico while the fiesta for my pueblo – Santa Ana – took place, but my Guatemalan neighbor and her eight year old daughter took part in creating an alfombra on the street near our houses, and her gringo husband walked in the procession, carrying a “float.”
The processions – large “floats” called andas, (the word andar means to walk) depicting Christ or Mary in one or another scene, which are carried on the shoulders of 20 or more people, usually groups of men for Christ and women for Mary – then proceed through these alfombras, destroying the work of many hours in a few minutes, which is the “sacrifice,” as is the act of carrying the anda. They pay the church for this privilege.
Setting aside any feelings I have about the negative aspects of the Catholic church, or about Christ’s “sacrifice for our sins”……..I was SO moved by some of these processions, and the feeling among most of the onlookers (although of course there were balloon-sellers, and people chatting among them,) that I was often in tears. The procession which depicts each of the Stations via life-size, very realistic and beautifully- sculpted figures, on one float after another (these on wheels) was almost too much to take.
The crucifixion of course took place on Friday, toward dusk, in the central square in Antigua. Frankly, I don’t know how a Christian can get through it all….if you felt Christ went through all this for YOU.....extremely moving, but I suppose if you watch it every year from the time you are carried “in arms,” you become accustomed to it, if not inured.
I understand that Saturday’s processions are mostly devoted to Mary, and Easter Sunday there is a joyous procession. But my sister (who has been visiting for this special week) and I were on our way to Panajachel for a day of sight-seeing, and then to Chichicastenango for Easter.
Their market was huge, as usual, but the activities on the church steps, where Mayan traditions have been intermingled with the Catholic ones for several centuries….where there are Mayan altars all down the central aisle of the beautiful cathedral….and where the church facing the main one seems to be predominantly Mayan (there were so many beautiful old people on their knees with candles, that I decided not to go in.) One custom there – and perhaps elsewhere, but I haven’t seen it) is to crawl on your knees (upright holding a candle) up to the altar, to ask for help or healing of some kind. An old man who did this 3 times in succession on his bare knees on each side of the aisle for at least 30 feet, moved me so strongly, I sent him light and added my prayers to his.
Outside the church on the steps were huge wheels of bright objects and feathers, carried by several men. We saw this depicted in various paintings around town as well.
A young man named Tomas became our guide to go up to where the Mayan healing ceremonies regularly takes place, on top of a hill looking out over the valley where Chichi is and up to the brightly colored cementary on the hill on the other side. Fires are burned by the Mayan priest (sorry I don’t know the proper appellation, I don’t think it’s “bruja”) and in them are sacrificed things like chocolate and candles, and in the case of benedictions for a wedding, the priest sacrifices a cock and hen for the bride and groom, subsequently throwing the blood and then the bodies into the fire. If they jump around, this is a good augury for the wedding. I’m not sure what happens if they don’t….probably prayers and maybe personal sacrifice.
The priest we saw was a young man with a lovely manner and very expressive body, who was attending a couple. Tomas said the couple had problems in their family. They knelt at a stone altar with a large round stone as representation of the deity (sorry not to have researched my facts on this.)
It was okay to watch, to donate, and even to take photos, as long as we stood back. I was pleased to notice that Tomas, a good Catholic boy, showed so much respect for the ceremonies; he said he would certainly ask for one if he had the need, a more personal evidence of the integration of the Catholic and Mayan traditions.

New Home

2008-01-19T08:31:00.000-08:00

2nd of March. I've been here for six months, and I’ve moved to another home….less expensive, less beautiful, less private, and further from all the activities I’ve grown to love. But not without charm. This casa in pueblo Santa Ana was the first I considered in the Antigua area, but I kept hearing stories about que peligrosa (how dangerous) the area was. So, on my way to rent this house, I ran into the one that I ultimately rented. But $3600 and no roommate later, I’ve decided there are better ways to spend my money than on rent.
So my new “direccion” (address) is “frente plazuela 36A, alcalde Santa Ana.” Or in front of the plaza in the little pueblo of Santa Ana. It’s a sweet stand-alone house with grated windows, within the walls of a “complex” (but not, mind you, a fancy “gated community,” which there are many of here) with two other identical houses, painted dark rusty orange (mine is golden yellow.) In one of them live five young Belgian volunteers with a loquat project. In the other is a young family from Oregon; the husband gringo, the wife Guatemalan. The other habitacíon in the complex is a small bungalow of maybe two rooms, in which live the “manager” and his wife, and a varied assortment of other people including a grandchild of 4 or so. Fortunately for me they all prefer to speak Spanish, and of course the manager and his family only speak Spanish. It bothers me a little that Tono and Maria and so many other members of their family live in this tiny cottage, and I have a small, but 3-bedroom, house all for myself. But moving here from my former “palace” is all I can do to equalize matters. They live, I understand, on $50 per month rental of each of the three houses. They and the water bill. I hope to find various chores over time that I can pay them to do……like my wash, and maybe cleaning before family comes. The owner advised that they will do these things.
The owner and her family – all very nice people – look nearly white, like many Guatemalans, probably due to the presence of Germans workmen and engineers in this country during a period of massive dam-building and other projects in the early 1900s. Or possibly they are from Spanish forebears.

At any rate I am here, in front of the plazuela on which resides a beautiful old church, and a “papi futbol” court. Right now there are a group of men playing out there, rather poorly, but watched by a lot of people from the community, mostly men. There’s not much to do in this pueblo in the evenings.
Not much for me, either, as neither cable nor internet has been connected.
So I am proof-reading the story of another writer from our writers’ group – a Guatemalan man who spent his childhood in a very poor section of Guatemala, during a time of a lot of violence…..feuds between families over land, honor, and women. It’s a privilege to read the story.
The house I have rented came furnished, but unlike the last house, had no kitchenware whatsoever. Several trips to the Mercado outfitted me nicely for about $45. It also had no table to use for the computer. I found reasonable unfinished tables at the Mercado, hand-made for about Q150, but didn’t know exactly how I would get them over here. So I asked the manager’s wife and she introduced me to a carpenter in this community, and we arranged that he would make me one…finished, and with a wider drawer, for Q200, or about $26, delivered into the room. It is a little tall, as I hadn’t specified the height….but I will borrow a neighbor’s skilsaw and cut it down a bit tomorrow. So I am set up to live here, in that respect.
~~~~~~~~~
Yesterday, in this plaza, an older man had been sitting in front of the church all day long, beating a drum at intervals; at others whistling on a small pipe. I felt a little foolish, thinking of going over to ask him why he was playing; thinking I would look the fool to my new neighbors. I finally decided I didn’t care and went out my gate and across the plaza to ask him. He said it had to do with Semana Santa, nearly a month away.
Will he play all month? I didn’t ask, but I said that it sounded like it was a gift to the church, so I had a gift for him. He was very pleased with 10Q and the young man setting up a table nearby grinned at us. Hearing him beating his drum from time to time, after that, I’m glad I did.
~~~~~~~~~~
Just when I was thinking that I would miss all the processions that used to come by my old house, because probably this little community didn’t have such things, I heard singing outside and looked out my window to see 5 or 6 men and some women from the church, carrying a float with Christ carrying the cross on it, with candles, and singing, and the drum beating at intervals. Tiny and sweet.

More training

2008-01-19T08:24:00.000-08:00

1/19/07
I take a second training in Brain Gym materials here in Antigua on this beautiful January day – a repeat of the one in San Pedro last week. There are about 35 young teachers from the Antigua area here for this training, which is given in a beautifully-designed, well lit and well ventilated building at the Familias de Esperanza project,. The first thing I notice is that most of the participants wear jeans and sports jackets, not typical (traditional) dress as they all did in San Pedro.
The training is scheduled for 8 am. Most of the participants and the trainers are there at 8, but there is a problem; the written materials, which the trainers have to use during the training, are not ready (even though I offered to help and was told they would have all been completed last week.) I am blown away by both the unpreparedness (I think what my boss at Head Start would have done if I started a training without any materials and made the participants wait) and secondly by the patience of the waiting participants. I can just imagine the HS community workers walking out in a huff if I had made them wait half-an-hour. But these folks sit quietly and chat with each other.
The trainers wait, and wait, and finally decide to go ahead and show the video first. And they can’t get the bloody power point laptop to work! They have 3 competent-looking people up in front working on it – sending the girl member of the team out to hunt for other cables, finally producing another laptop. At about 9 am, the trainer decides to go ahead and just start the training – sans video, sans written material – and actually it turns out well; a rather personal warm up for the more scientific material in the video. But I’m still blown away that these quite professional trainers didn’t get someone to check out the materials and equipment BEFORE the training. Or that the young man I thought so much of muffed this so badly.
They teach the various Brain Gym exercises and then get the various participants – mostly young teachers, all of them with little more than a high school education – the only requirement for a primary and secondary teacher in Guatemala, tho many go on to take more classes – to get up and demonstrate how they would teach the children what they had just been taught. I am SO impressed with these young folks! Confidence, a good memory for the details of what has been demonstrated to them, and already some internalization of the philosophy behind the material.
This day really speaks well for the Guatemalan people and the school system! I am really impressed.
I am also a little surprised by two things – probably because of the little that we know in California about Guatemalan culture. One is that some of the activities require the teachers to physically prompt the “children” (adult volunteers) to do the exercises, and that the male teachers seem to think nothing of lifting the women’s arms, or putting their hands on their shoulders or backs to assist them, though noone does more than gesture at the legs (and this is part of the instructions.)
The other is that references are made to the similarities in these exercises, especially the ones involving pressure points and breathing, to tai chi and yoga, and the word “chakra” is used. Although it seems to be assumed that not many have taken classes in these topics, it seems assumed that all have heard of them. And these are teachers from the small pueblos between Antigua and Panajachel, hardly a modern area.
And of course the basic wonder is that the school systems here have embraced the Brain Gym materials for their pre-kinder, kinder, and primary classrooms – taking seriously the need these children (with poor early stimulation) have for left-right hemispheric coordination and requiring these exercises for 20 mins. each morning.
~~~~~~~
I will be going into the local primary schools in the small pueblos around Antigua with the two young women teachers whom I stayed with in the hotel in San Pedro la Laguna. Last week, they, and the woman trainer we had in San Pedro la Laguna, and I spent two days going from pueblo to pueblo, on chicken buses and walking. The local San Pedro, which I'd seen once before, now seemed sprawling and a little dirty; a little edgy. I felt better that I was there with 3 Guatemaltecan women. I remembered thinking on my first trip that I would like to live there, but can’t imagine that on this visit. A nearby school on a coffee finca was the opposite. Up a dirt lane and through a grand gate into the finca, then up two more paths to the tiny two-room schoolhouse. The smiling teacher was very welcoming. The children peeked at us from the doorway. That school should be fun. It seems that the owner of the finca started (subsidizes?) this school, primarily for her workers’ children.
Then I convinced the others that Santa Ana would be easy to reach, so we went there and found the school very close to the house I once wanted to live in when I first looked for a rented home in the Antigua area. In each case, we just located the school and got our bearings, because we have yet to get authorization to enter.
Then we walked down the road I would take for the bus, if I lived at that house, but turned left and took a back road to the next Pueblo - Santa Catarina. The trainer kept emphasizing that we should never walk this road alone. We took a look at the school in that pueblo, and then walked back to the road and took a short chickenbus ride to the project for lunch.
Then into Antigua and walking all over Antigua to see the 6-7 schools there. Throughout this time the three of them are chattering in Spanish. It seems many times that the trainer is repeating the same materials which we already learned in the training, and discussed at the meeting. Maybe these youngsters didn’t catch on as quickly as I thought, though mostly their questions are about how to deliver the materials in the classroom. The answers seem obvious to me, so it is evident that various experiences I’ve had with teaching and going into schools to observe are serving me here.

Cultural differences
There is a knock on my gate at 8:30 am on a Saturday. I’m tempted not to answer – anyone I know would have called, first. But I answer to find an old indigenous man in a plaid sweater and beaten-down hat. He asks for “Christina.” “No soy,” I tell him. He gestures toward a small bookcase nearby, with a carrying strap around it. Ohmigosh, he is one of those bent-over men I see in the street, carrying large or small pieces of furniture on their backs. I ask him, “Have you been carrying this piece?” “Oh si,” he nods, smiling, “de Solola.”
So he has been carrying this piece of furniture (since what hour of the morning?) all the way from Solola…..several hours on the bus and a half-hour walk through town….and his target customer is not to be found. Yet his dark eyes are shining with warmth and his smile carves deep creases in his face. How does he do it? My parting comment to him is not perfunctory: “Que le vaya bien.” (May you go well.)

To Panajachel again

2008-01-19T08:04:00.000-08:00

Travel/Volunteering/Cultural
We are going up to San Pedro, on Lago Atitlan, for a training in the Brain Gym – Pedagogia Basica – materials. The bus finally leaves at 7:15. We pick up two young Guatemalan women in Chimaltenango; along with the young man, Carlos, they will be our teachers. If I decide to volunteer with this project, I will assist them.
One of the girls settles next to me and I try to make conversation, but beyond “Como estas?” I don’t get anywhere. I notice that she is praying. She crosses herself when she is done. Wow, is this act that dangerous?
We ride without talking.
At a construction site on the highway, I watch the roadside vendors. A man stands beside the bus with a table heaped high with homemade sweets. They look very enticing, but I know Guatemalan dulces are REALLY sweet, and I haven’t eaten this morning. When he sees there are no buyers on this bus, he lifts the tray of sweets, folds the legs that were under it, tucks them over his arm and moves on down the road. A woman boards the bus with a basket of warm chile rellenos and tortillas; she moves down the aisle. I am tempted but don’t buy, and few others do. Another woman with an identical basket boards, announces her wares, then leaves. Only a young boy remains by the bus. He has a basket of commercial potato chips and other snacks. He looks about six, but is probably eight or so. He pulls a small wad of cash out of his pocket and counts it, then puts it back.
We finally arrive in Pana after 10 am. These young Guatemalans have never been to Pana before, though they live only 2 hours away. But they walk directly past all the enticing stalls full of market goods and look for the launch which will take us to San Pedro.
The girl I was riding next to, with whom I have exchanged only a few words, suddenly clasps me vigorously and laughingly says she is terrified of the lancha. The other girl says she thinks she will be sick. None of the three has been on a boat before; two of them (like me) cannot swim. They are giggling, but obviously nervous. But suddenly I am the “pro.” I reassure them all, suggesting that they breathe and that the girl relax her stomach and think of the boat as “dancing” (all this in stitled spanish.) I point to the lifevests overhead (which reassures me too) and off we go.
This smaller boat goes around the lake, instead of directly across, and I get to view the dozens of great homes around the lake as well as smaller houses clustered together, many of them rising almost vertically up the mountainsides.
San Pedro is not especially attractive. It is also very hilly. We wait near the dock for the project director. Lots of foreigners walk by; one a young man in dreads with a large tattoo on his arm. My companions don’t seem to notice. The director arrives in the typical indigenous outfit: woven falda and embroidered huipile, which the two young girls are also wearing.. She takes us through this rabbit-warren of streets and alleys, passing the restaurant where she explains we will eat (paid for by the project) and then we arrive at our hotel. The grounds are lovely with lawns, flowers, and big banana trees, but the rooms are minimal, though spacious enough. There is no Tv and not even a reading light. The man and I will each get a single room and the girls room together. 35Q – about $4.50 per night.
The four of us go out for our first afternoon in the town. They are all very accommodating to me; asking me which direction to take at each intersection, where would I like to go next, etc. I’m not sure why this is, but at first don’t think about it, just take charge. The young man is especially gentlemanly to me. They are all in their early 20s.
We look for a Mercado (market), which is prevalent in the two other Lake towns I’ve been in, but the outdoor stalls here hold only CDs, toys and other mostly plastic, commercial items. We finally end up walking out the road where we have been told there is a beach. We can see the lake below us, sometimes with people bathing and washing clothes there; in one or two places, small boats are tied up. I am thinking there might at least be a restaurante out this way, with cokes and a deck looking out over the lake. We walk and walk, AND walk and walk, on the dusty road, but no restaurant. At some point I stop to take photos of a beautiful finca with land stretching down to the lake. This lakefront area would cost a million per acre in Sausalito. No wonder extranjeros have built homes here and there. One of them captures my heart; white stucco with tile roofs, as is the style here, not too big, with a small balcony on the second floor looking out toward the lake, and wonderful vegetable gardens running down to the lake's edge.
I sit down on the unfinished upper floor of a house next to the road, my legs dangling, and look at that house and dream. I could have chickens, and a garden, maybe even a goat, though there don’t seem to be hungry children here as there were in Jamaica. But I’d have to sell my house in California - where my younger daughter is living - and possibly the land is too expensive even then.
Then there are three days (not four as we’d first thought) of trainings each morning in an open air shed off a main street, reached through a tin gate. The trainers are the project director – a 30s-ish attractive, slim, light-skinned woman – and a rather short, lythe, Mayan man in his late 20s with long curls and one day, a Che t-shirt. He was also featured in the video, practicing the exercises with some children; at one point barefoot.
After the first day, I had realized these young people can’t understand my Spanish at all, even when I take time and care. So the first morning, I hunt for a Spanish teacher. I also want the chance to compare another teacher’s style with my teacher’s, which I think has been part of my learning problem. She does SO much of the talking! Two schools are very attractive and fully booked. Each has a lovely room to work in which overlooks the lake. I pass up several which are also laundries or tiendas, and find one which can give me a teacher that afternoon. I ask for three days, but have to cut it to two when we decide to return home on the afternoon of the third day. They are very accommodating and I like the teacher who is assigned to me very much. He tells me, among many other things, that the land that I was looking at is not THAT expensive….maybe 100 thousand.
The trainings are grueling for me, but I can understand 90% of the man’s Spanish as he speaks clearly. He also watches my face a lot while he’s talking, perhaps because I am the most raptly attentive in the group of 15 or so, perhaps to gauge my comprehension. He seems to be a lovely person, very caring about the kids’ challenges in learning here, due to the constrictions of their early environment as far as development of left/right hemisphere coordination (what this training is about.) Children are often on their mothers’ backs for a good bit of the day (I have seen 4 year olds being carried in a sling while their mother walks some distance.) They don’t crawl much on the bare ground of the campo or the dirt floors of their homes. I have only seen one tricycle since I’ve been here.
The grueling part is the constant attention it takes for me to understand all the Spanish, and my desire to respond to this material with which I have some experience and much interest. I am a little panicked on the first day when we all have to introduce ourselves and say why we are here, but I get through this with some of the words I learned to describe my job in Spanish back in California. A few times I attempt to ask a question or respond in some way, but as I usually meet uncomprehending looks, I stop.
The second morning I talk to the trainer for a few moments during the break, giving him some feedback about giving mostly corrective responses – no positives – to each young teacher who volunteers to learn during the day, and then ask, “Me comprendes?” He says (in Spanish), “well I do, because I’ve been a teacher of Spanish in the past; I don’t know about the others.” It has never dawned on me that that might be the difference in the response I get from one person to another in Antigua – the level of familiarity with foreigners’ accents and speaking-styles.
The other trainer speaks much more rapidly. As modern as she looks, she draws a complete blank when I speak, but the third morning I talk to her about the similar exercises I used when I taught neurologically-handicapped children 30 years ago. She seems to understand but because I now think she won’t, I am nervous and stumble over and swallow a lot of words, compounding the problem. Ah well.
But I love the exercises, the focus of them, and the accepting philosophy behind this program.
I take the 3-hour training in the morning after breakfast with my companions, where I notice, again, that both the girls pray and cross themselves before eating. We also eat lunch together in this restaurant where noone else ever goes. The food is really minimal in taste, and a little dry, in general, for me; but it only costs $3.50 per meal. (20-25Q.) However, my companions and I are warming up to each other; the girls dare to ask me questions, and I ask about their families and their schooling. These three are high-school graduates, ready to teach children, but one of the girls is taking additional classes at the college in Guate City. Two have already had their own class, as practicantes. I ask about behavior problems. The man (20, but dressed in clean sport-shirt and slacks, with a long key-chain from his belt) says he had them at first, but not later. I can imagine he takes charge in class, as he does with his harem of three women – arranging food for us, conducting our decision-making about food or where to go, except when he defers to me, graciously.
I learn that two of these three responsible young people (19,20 and 23) are eldest children, the other is the eldest at home now, with five younger siblings. I am also an eldest.
They do something else while I am in my Spanish class, trying to figure out why my Spanish is incomprehensible. In the evening after dinner, on the first nite after training, the young man and I talk about music and listen to his. He loves what he calls Trance and I call Dance Hall, though I can’t keep up with the names. It is my favorite, too. We end up dancing on our narrow terrace that runs outside the rooms and overlooks the gardens.
It is a heavenly night. There is a strong wind coming from the lake, but it is just cool, and rather intoxicating as it rustles the big leaves of the banana trees and blows my hair. The stars are out. The girls arrive home and sit on the benches, watching us. We finally get one girl up to learn to dance Cumbia from the guy. We have a pretty good time.
The next nite is too cool to be outside. They elect to visit in my room – the guy brings his boombox in to play music, and I get out the pack of cards I just bought to avoid going to bed early, as I did the night we arrived. The young man spends the rest of the evening entertaining all of us with card tricks, jokes, stories, and various games. I want to suggest Hang Man, and it’s the next one he comes up with. We are all finally on a teasing level with each other, and have a pretty good time together.
The trip back on the third day is delayed when the girls want to go see the woman trainer’s house. Decisions are being made in rapid Spanish around me; I have no idea what’s going on, but just go with the flow. Eventually they are back and we walk up the steep hill to where we’ll meet a camioneta to go back to Antigua. The lake is evidently too choppy for a lancha. Although it does remind me of San Francisco Bay on the Oakland side, it doesn’t look that bad to me. But we reach the top of the hill and a bus is waiting at the corner. After we hop on I remember that camioneta is the local name for chicken-bus, which I have promised myself NEVER to ride back from Pana, since I’ve heard such horror-stories from my Spanish teacher about bus carcases over the side of the roads. The driver gets on. He is dark, young, lanky, and wild-haired. He looks as though his day-job is running drugs, and as though he could be on them at the moment, but he turns out to be a reasonably careful driver, and cautious with his bus. We drive around the lake and go through San Juan, which is really beautiful. I would like to come back here to explore this town.
The driver gets out to open the hood and put water in at the bottom of the climb to Solola. Once again, he stops while we are in the middle of the climb uphill, and his assistant jumps out to add a bucket of water to the steaming engine. I have always been afraid of cliffs, so I keep my attention assiduously to the landward side of the climb. At one point I can’t avoid noticing there are some steep drop-offs to the left, and there – God testing me on this fear, too – when we approach a sharp turn, which requires the bus to move to the outside of the grade, a huge concrete truck meets us coming around the turn. We have to stop right when I wish we could get out of the area, and back up enough to allow the truck to make a turn on the Inside of the hill. We then have to approach the turn, and back up toward the edge of the cliff to make the hairpin. It is truly grueling for me, my stomach is in a painful knot, but I just keep breathing and look at the hillside, and eventually we are through it.
I am always enchanted with the job of the bus assistants, who hop off at corners to see if people are headed down the street for the bus, and swing back on while the bus is moving. They also help people with their packages, take money, somehow remember on these packed buses who has paid and who has newly arrived, and generally keep things moving and let the driver pay attention to driving. I like that a lot. But I am amazed, when a woman gets up while the bus is moving and walks toward to front to get out at the next stop that this assistant opens the door of the bus and climbs the ladder to get her parcel from the top, while the bus is going at least 30 mph. She gets off, the bus starts up again, and the assistant emerges from the back of the bus where he’s gotten down the ladder and through the door at the back.
We are often three-to-a-seat on this chickenbus; at one point the dirtiest man I’ve ever seen gets on and sits next to me. He begins a conversation with me in very clear Spanish. Where have I been, where am I going. I talk with him the best I can until he starts asking where my husband is. At this point the girl I’m traveling with whispers to me “Don’t talk to him.” I am never rude, but diminish the conversation. Eventually he gets off.
And eventually, three hours later, we arrive in Chimaltenango. The girls get off and go their separate ways, with hugs all around. The young man and I walk for blocks and then hop the bus to Antigua, as my Spanish teacher and I did a few weeks before, arriving at the back of the Mercado (and a bathroom) at about 6:30 p.m.. We part company after we agree I will NOT try to help him prepare materials for the next training in Antigua tomorrow, and instead get ready for my quick trip to California for a family funeral.
I buy a few things at the Bodegona, mochilera still on my back, and then opt for a tuk tuk home. This private if bumpy lift costs me more, to go ten blocks, than a 20 mile trip on the crowded bus.

La Posada

2008-01-19T07:57:00.000-08:00

The La Posada processions have begun in Antigua. Every nite for (12?) nites groups from the different iglesias around town proceed to selected homes to be welcomed for food and drink. First you hear the sound of small drums and sometimes bells, then here comes the procession, 12 or more people - some with "robes" a la the Middle East (sheets and headbands) who carry the creche, others carry tall lanterns on poles, still others follow, singing. Last nite there were little girls with silver crowns heading the procession.
I followed one to the house and watched them open the door, shedding light onto those at the front of the procession, then one by one they entered, still singing. Down the long hallway, through the door, I could see the living room with its tall lighted tree and the family waiting to welcome them. For Antigua's devout Catholics this is the visit of the Holy Family.

Anyone is welcomed to come in with the group, but I haven't tried that yet. Maybe when my son comes to visit (today.)
I was especially happy that I had recently attended the La Posada performance put on by the Montessori school children when I was in Chico, to read and hear the song in Spanish, and see the event enacted.
Very sweet, all around.

Navidad. This town seems different while my son is here. More inviting, I guess. We try out five different restaurants, partly because of our differing dietary needs, partly just to experience more of Antigua. We also go to my salsa class together, which is a great joy for me. And we go to Sin Ventura, and get to see some of the incredible salsa dancers in this town. This bar is a pretty joyful – and crowded – place this night, where it had been deserted for the nights of Christmas.
And it is just lovely to have him here. Lots of talk, lots of eating, and walking. A total treat.
And Christmas Eve is incredible. This country’s response to everything is to set off fireworks, but on Christmas Eve they outdo themselves. We sit on my roof-top terrace and every firework ever created is crashing and flashing and booming over our heads. It is spectacular!!! And one also feels connected to all the different smaller pueblos around Antigua, as Santa Maria, San Juan, Jocotenango, and others set off their disply. I can see them all from my wonderful rooftop terrace.
In this country so dedicated to its Christian religions, this seems an odd way to greet the birth of their Christ. Yet, maybe just an expression of joy.

Travel/Volunteering
A grey January morning in Antigua – 6:30 a.m. I wait for the bus for Pana sitting on a low wall next to the Bodegona. My young male companion from the project stands nearby. My feet are bare in my sandals; I can feel the cold.
A man walks by with his hands clasped together, as if praying. Others have their arms wrapped tightly around themselves. A young blond girl waiting for the bus across the street grabs her boyfriend; he clasps her, keeping them both warm. Near me under the stairway leading to the Mochilero’s Place over the Bodegona, a man sleeps on the ground in a blanket.
An older indigenous woman stops across the street from me. I watch her adjust her bundle and am struck by the sight of her leathery bare feet on the cold sidewalk.
We get on the bus, which is handled by my Guatemalan companion – where is the bus going, what’s the cost?
As I wait, sitting by the window, I notice the camaraderie between two disheveled men when they meet each other….slapping each other’s arms, delighted looks as they walk off together, as if conferring the day’s agenda.
A tall man stands where we were sitting moments before. He is eating something steaming from a paper cup. He picks up a scrap of blanket that was lying next to me as I sat there – 1-1/2 feet wide, maybe 4 feet long; synthetic light blue material, slightly dirty. He looks it over, then puts it down again, but before he leaves, he picks it up and tucks it under his arm.
How different this street must look to the people who have to live here: Which corner is out of the wind and good to sleep in? What objects can be made use of?

Waiting, I attempt a poem:

Mami, I watch you stop and settle your bundle in a doorway
You reach up and arrange your long hair in a tight knot.
Your feet are bare. “No quiere zapatos, Mami?”
I would buy them for you if I could; if I knew you wanted them.
You place your bundle back on your shoulders,
Holding a strap before you in each hand.
I know that gesture: a long walk is ahead.
“But Mami, the pavement is cold this morning.”

The bus takes off for Panajachel. This is my first time there on a chickenbus (camioneta, locally.)

Home again, Personal musings

2008-01-19T07:40:00.000-08:00

Every three months one is required to step outside of Guatemala for a few days, although I’m hearing more and more ways to get around this. However my tickets were bought when I came to Guate in Septemember.
Visiting California after three months in Guate was very interesting.
First, on the bus ride from Sacramento to Chico, I was struck by how grey and barren the fields are, in contrast to Guatemala’s still-green lushness. Then I am surprised by the relaxed warmth of Chico culture, taken for granted when I live here. And Raley’s supermarket! Wow………spaciousness and bright vegetables piled high, and so many choices.
And of course visiting with so many friends, one way or another, and that warmth….so treasured.
After a few days here, I get into winter: the wind, the barrenness, the rain.

And after a very short ten days of family warmth and good friendships, and seeing some old clients, it’s time to leave again.

Extranjeros
On the plane down from Dallas there were at least 20 young Mormon men, on their way to do a two-year Mission in Guatemala. I was surprised to learn that their ONLY mission was to “preach the gospel,” because most church groups come down here to build houses or latrines or do some other specific, needed project. Naturally I was their first victim, though I usually enjoy talking to people about the heart of their faith. These guys were SO earnest, and so excited that I was listening…….it was really pretty sweet, until of course I did NOT want to accept the Book of Mormon. Then the guy I was sitting with asked to pray for me. I resisted, not wanting some sort of scene, but he persisted, I relented and it was pretty simple.
He COULDN’T believe he was finally actually in Guatemala – very excited and quite scared. Reminded me of my first flight.
Finally, I reached what has become my home to find my alleyway festooned with cutout paper streamers. I suspect this is for Navidad, only two weeks away, or perhaps el dia de Guadelupe, not for my homecoming, but it felt welcoming anyway. The house next door has palm fronds tacked to its walls and door. I think this has something to do with the tradition of Mary & Joseph going house to house, looking for shelter….La Posada; the tradition I saw enacted by the Montessori school children in Chico during this trip. I don’t know how the traditional response of the householder goes…. But I’ll learn before then, I’m sure.

Cultural differences
My first morning back, I go to the Bodegona to pick up supplies. On my way back, in the middle of the street is a tiny procession: a shiny pink casket held high by two walking men, the light color in stark contrast to the dark shabby clothing of the people following it….only a few women and children, one man, all looking pretty miserable. I want to respond in some way to the upwelling of feeling I have for them, but don’t know what is acceptable. Feeling a little inept, I stand at the curb for the few moments it takes them to pass.

And the first Saturday that I am back I go to the Mercado on Saturday morning later than usual and encounter a huge crowd (muchadumbre en Espanol) in which I manage to get pickpocketed!
I am distraught, running back and forth between the last stall where I purchased vegetables and the next one where I found I had no money. I had placed my small billfold in an outer pocket of my large market bag, which has a flap, but not enough to deter this determined person. What a drag. I lost my drivers’ license, my credit card, and my ATM card, so not only do I HAVE no money, but I have no way to get any. That was a big mistake; I'll never carry all those things together in one place again.
I go straight home, mad at Guatemala, mad at myself, and slightly shakey. I know the routine, since I lost my wallet some time ago, myself, but this certainly spoiled a beautiful morning and my joy at being back here.

Later I go to a party at BJ’s and look at her gorgeous apartment which she will be leaving, soon, and which I consider for myself briefly, as it is closer to the Mercado and cheaper, but hearing bad things about the landlady and her dog, I decide I can do better. But it is quite lovely except for that, although colder than this house! The entire kitchen and dining room are open-aired.
At this party, I meet Fred, who walks with me to one of the musical events available this evening, AND pays for me because I realize I have no cash. As we walk, he talks to me about volunteering for a Brain Gym-based program here. This is the first time someone has really WANTED me, with my current level of Spanish. Which turns out to be is as good as his, if not better, and he thinks his is fine, and he has been here for more than a year! He just has more confidence than I so he uses his with Guatemaltecos! So I am going to take a training with those folks and see if I have something to contribute.

Volunteering
12/19/06: Today I meet with Fred and Mercedes at Familias de Esperanza and Fred tells me they also need someone to work in the nursery school there. So I will see about that after the training is over (2nd week Jan.) So suddenly, after such a long and frustrating wait, there is some movement! Or at least so it seems. My good friend in Chico, Kathy, is VERY enthusiastic about Brain Gym, and I become so, too, after reading about the exercises and seeing the video.

It’s back to the hospital tomorrow morning. I had the most amazing several moments with Sergio yesterday, after two weeks away. He’s all trussed up so he can’t touch his scab from his cleft palate surgery, (Finally! Why did he have to wait so many months?) and has a tube in his nose, so I can’t lift him, but I leaned over his crib for a long time and got my face closer to his than I usually have done and he just looked at me fully for the longest time. Something very sweet there.

Wednesday and another morning with Sergio, with several of the children who have CP, and with a volunteer from Germany who is as angry as I am – or more – with the nurses who work with the babies. One – actually the cleaning person, not a nurse – is really sweet and loving with them, but most sit around and chat with each other while the babies get nothing but minimum physical care.
There is a tiny one, brand new to the ward, who starts crying for food about 10 am each morning I’ve been there. She’s there for malnutrition, but she has to wait til after 11 for her “pacha” (bottle,) even tho we volunteers start asking when it’s obvious what she wants. And then there’s the practice of feeding the ones who aren’t hungry yet, but that’s a more subtle error.
So out of this came a new fantasy: 1) get some questions answered – what areas do these babies come from? Are there babies whose parents DON’T bring them to the hospital because they’re afraid they won’t see them for the next six months? How do the babies do who ARE returned, five-to-eight months later? Are there some serious or even minor problems down the line due to low stimulation/ non-attachment? Why does it take so long to get their surgeries? 2) If the results seem in line with my hypothesis, I would want to develop a program to help prevent malnutrition in the first place, and for the cleft palate babies, help the babies return home quickly.
1) get money for surgeries quicker
2) nutrition prevention programs
3) followup help, social and nursing, so the babies can return home safely and soon.

I could become very passionate about that.
But as usual, unless I find people interested in the same thing who do speak Spanish better than I, I have to get better at Spanish. I need to talk to that woman I met at Deet’s before much longer. She works at the hospital with the older kids, but is a neonatal specialist, she said.
At least I had one successful spanish interchange w/ a nurse today, where I got her to do something I thought important, though also one unsuccessful one

But now I won’t see them again for a week, because my son Michael is coming to visit for Christmas.
Sergio won’t go home for Xmas. But at least there is one nurse there who spoke to him really sweetly today (besides the cleaning girl) and he responded very strongly to her. So that feels better.

GOING HOME again

2008-01-19T06:49:00.000-08:00

GOING HOME
We wake in the morning, get off without event, and take the launch to Puerto Barrios….only 60Q instead of 100 and not the long river trip, however beautiful. The trip is across the river and then along the East coast, with the usual view of homes near the water, grand and simple. The waves are easy, the ride is good; it is a beautiful morning. Puerto Barrios is a bigger town, actually a port with large ships in the harbor. We get off the boat and walk up the street to the Itelgua bus office, following a group of Christian volunteers who work in Guatemala City. When I hear this, I catch up with the guy and ask what the project is. They work with adults and families in the area near the dump, not far from Camino Seguro. I ask about programs for adult drug and alcohol users, but he’s unsure of any. They provide food and medical help. I ask how they handle the security issues in G. City. “We pray a lot,” he says in a superior tone. I don’t care much for him so I move on.
They are taking the 100Q bus in an hour, we will take the 50Q in about 20 minutes. I sprint across the street while Elena watches my bags and pick up some not very good, too-cool fried potatoes, and some excellent orange juice, squeezed in front of me, the juice poured into a plastic bag with a straw, for “carryout.” She buys some fruit.
The bus ride is completely uneventful because I read my book all the way, after slowly picking out all my braids. We are then at the station in Guatemala City. My Spanish teacher had told me to call the shuttle office from Rio Dulce to get a shuttle to pick me up in G. C. Elena said she wants to take the cheaper chicken bus. I have always been told that is too dangerous except in a group; Elena poo-poo’s this. Okay, I’ll give it a try. Cheaper by 112.5Q or $14.50.
But where do we find the buses? My Spanish is evidently inadequate for finding this information. It takes us both several tries before we learn there are no chicken buses coming to this station or anywhere around here. We are in Zone 1 (supposedly the most dangerous in G.C.) and the buses come to Zone 3. What to do? The taxi driver offers us a ride for $4. She talks him down to $3.50 (25 Q) for the two of us. He takes us right to the chicken bus station! I had no idea there was one. A bus for Antigua is waiting right there and we hop on. It leaves in about ten minutes, with her huge bag up on top. My smaller one is in my arms.
I have heard so much about the danger on these buses (some one was killed for not giving up his money soon after I arrived, and a day after I had ridden that bus with a group,) but I check the faces of each person who gets on. Hard-working simple people. There is one lovely very tall Mayan man (an anomaly,) whose face is so beautifully lined; his wife is shorter and plump. He puts his arm around her when they finally get to sit. I’m certainly not frightened of any of these folks!
When the bus reaches Antigua, I am always concerned because there is a place I can get off which is only three or four blocks from my house, but it’s still hard to recognize the corner (I’ve only taken this bus maybe five times.) I realize we’ve passed it and will go all the way around Antigua, coming to rest in the Mercado, a mile away. But for some reason the bus starts up a street I think I recognize as going to Jocotenango. I tell Elena we’re going the wrong way and she stands up and moves to the front. A gringo I hadn’t noticed behind me tells me that some of these buses make a swing thru Jocotenango before going back through Antigua, so we are fine. Elena has said she really needs to go to the bathroom, so she is still standing in front.
We pull in behind the Mercado, slowing down, and she suddenly jumps off. The bus pulls to a stop 200 ft away and everyone gets out. The guy gets her huge bag off the roof of the bus. What now? She’s nowhere to be seen. A jovial man explains to me that she ran into the bathroom, he makes gestures like cleaning her pants. He is joking with another man next to me and three others behind another bus. She doesn’t come and doesn’t come. I feel responsible for her pack even tho the jovial one is holding it. This man introduces me to all his friends, giving them silly nicknames. All is laughter and fun, but I would like to get home. I also am not crazy about the slight edge of sexual joking that is inherent in all this, although it’s just what they consider fun. Eventually she emerges, evidently she has diarrhea.
I wave heartily to all and sundry and take off. I look for a bus going up my street, but the bus signs are incomprehensible and the one bus I try is going down my street but only taking passengers for G. City. So I start walking, and end up walking all the way home. It is really good to open my gate and be back in my little private holdings.

Personal
So. What have I learned in all this? I feel as though Antigua, with its ambience, is like – say – Boston in the 1900s and Livingston is like Cheyenne, Wyoming. There are both good and bad things about each of these. I like the energy and the ugliness and need of Livingston. I like chickens in the yards and pigs in the alleys. I like the river, the warmth in the winter. I don’t know how I would take steady heat and humidity in the summer, but if my house caught a cool breeze, and I had a fan it might be tolerable. I’d like to have a real garden.
Who would I know there? These folks I hung out with this week, the local Hispanics, seem by and large undependable, tho more or less well-meaning. I think I could pay any of them to help me do things, but couldn’t get much from a friendship with them, except occasional conversation, which is nice enough. It is possible that if I became involved with the ONEGUA group, besides being frustrated if I actually wanted to see things accomplished, I could possibly find some friends. I think something I might be able to do is mentor a family or two, as well as whatever help I could do in their school, whatever that might be.
In Antigua, possible friends are the volunteers and the expats at the writers’ workshops…..few of whom are really good friends, although there are a couple of folks whose lives I would like to know more about. But still I expect there is more possibility of what might be called a “social life.” And I wouldn’t mind that.
All told, I think Livingston is still attractive, but questionable. I can of course go there another weekend in a few months to talk to the ONEGUA folks. This trip only cost me $63 plus food.
What would I lose if I moved there? My Salsa class, pastry shops on the corner, cobblestones, the sound of “Guate, Guate!” the babies, the privacy of this house, my Spanish teacher – who is a pretty good friend.

What would I gain? Warmth, the river, kids to play with in my neighborhood, a more reasonable rent (probably $150 max.) and I think the very interesting experience of seeing how I could possibly become some part of that community and have any effect whatsoever, and learning about all the factors which would make that more or less possible.
It’s not unlike the experience I have had all these years going into the homes of clients…how to make myself a part of their lives, yet not overstep or violate their privacy or confidentiality…that intricate dance of boundary-finding, boundary-establishing.

It’s still a toss-up, but at least I have more information.
I also have diarrhea and Elena’s cold.

Day FIVE - Livingston

2008-01-19T06:31:00.000-08:00

DAY FIVE - SUNDAY morning
I wake about 5:30 but it is still dark. I can’t imagine any ceremonial boat landings are taking place at this hour. When it gets a little lighter I go out, and literally run into a parade of people hooting and hollering and dancing in the streets. I pick up the rhythm as I walk toward them, but then step aside to let them pass. Some rather drunk, rowdy woman grabs me and whirls me into the crowd and off we go dancing down the street, arm in arm. Eventually I disengage from the dizzying energy but another woman grabs me and propels me onward. We are on the way to the cemetery. One woman is carrying a large wreath. Others are carrying bottles of beer. We dance and hop and whirl and drum our ways up into the cemetery, and the drumming stops. People walk quietly. I start to ask a question of a nearby man in Spanish; he says, “You can speak English to me,” and I do, gratefully. He is a Garif, visiting from nearby English-speaking Belize. He says that people will place the wreath on one of the graves. The group passes the huge tree, familiar from my last trip, and convenes at one particular bier. I don’t learn the significance of this one. The woman places the wreath on the grave, the drumming starts again, and a woman “falls out” and starts keening and wailing, her body on the bier. Another woman begins crying loudly outside the circle around the grave.
They are both supported by young men, presumably in their family. Other women hug them, several other people are tearful. I don’t know what’s going on, exactly, but I’ve seen this behavior at black churches in Oakland and among my first mother-in-law’s friends. It seems sometimes to be ploys for attention, but sometimes just overwhelming emotion, fully expressed. The trumpet player begins a dirge and I notice how he plays this group of people back into a more contained state of mind. How music hath charms….
Finally, the man I spoke to earlier gestures to me, “I’m going down to watch the landing,” and I follow him. Part way he excuses himself and stops off to talk to some women sitting along the road so I continue alone. I start to go toward the beach near my favorite restaurant, but someone says the landing will be on a different part of the beach. I go there and join five or six other people. We all express doubt about what exactly is supposed to happen and when, but we wait. I decide it’s just a beautiful morning to look at the water and it doesn’t really matter what else happens. We wait. Some people come; some get tired of it and leave. It is quiet and the calm bay stretched out in front of us mirrors the clear sky.
I watch some fishermen in a small motorboat throw net out of the boat into the water in a long line. Since they don’t come back and open the circle of net, I can’t imagine how fish are going to get in, or, if this net DID fill, how they would get the weight of it back into the boat. But in 20 mins. or so they come back and throw it all back into the boat. I strain to see fish caught in the net, but cannot. Another mystery.
Eventually some people with big stalks of coconut leaves come, and some man in a disheveled costume made of banana leaves, and then some drummers.
They begin drumming and some of the assembled older women and then men begin dancing. I love this rhythm, and step off down the street with them, alternating between thinking I am NOT part of this group, thus moving over to the side, then feeling that I love the music and I have a right to step right along with them. I end up taking a place where I can hear the drums well, but am not in the center of the costumed dancers. We join the main street and move into the center of town. I catch a glimpse of the Argentinian taking photos. For some reason I didn’t bring my camera; what a shame. Lots of drumming, lots of dancing; different groups of drummers/dancers moving from one end of the street to the other, passing each other in the middle. Finally there is a candlelight ceremony in the center of the street, words by two of the men I’ve seen over and over in these events this week. A woman is carrying a large photo of what appears to be a gringo man, decked with leaves. I have no idea who he is, but he is treated with some reverence.
I finally leave this scene and walk down the street in the direction of my hotel, stopped by a large group of people standing around listening to the music coming out of one funky restaurant. In front of it there are a few big women dancing, probably drunk, but not caring and just having a great time. A wizened old man starts to dance with one of them, pantomiming courtship, playing with it humorously. I love this so much; I’m tempted to join in but keep it to a little wiggling on the sidelines.
On the way back to the hotel I see that many people are standing in the doorways to the Catholic Church; apparently the Garifuna mass (misa) is still going on; I was afraid I’d missed it when I attended the non-boat-landing (which I later learn it did take place at 5:30 a.m.) I stand in the side door and watch as a long line of swaying women and a few men approach the altar, carrying fruit, eggs, and even salt & pepper shakers. The drums are beating, everyone is singing the same lines over and over (eventually I can join in.) As the people reach the slightly-swaying Hispanic priest at the altar, he blesses each item and hands it to his assistant. Then he begins the mass, (“hermanos y hermanas”,) which is punctuated at junctures by singing and drumming. The leader of the singing is a young man I met with the Garifuna group in Antigua; he is light-skinned and has cataracts making one eye milky blue. His singing in this context – hands raised in the air - is very beautiful, as is the solemnity yet joyfulness of this ceremony. I remain for an hour or less, swaying and singing, then politely leave when there is a shift in the mass. This “event” is very moving for me; I would like to live where this happens every Sunday.
Even though I have many negative thoughts about the Catholic church in Central America, I am always touched by the deep devotion of the people in this country to their religion, especially poor people.
I have the feeling that here I might be as close to Africa as I’m going to get (my original dream) but in the jungle rather than the majestic plain. For some reason the dirty streets as well as the hum of activity and the sounds of the Garif language make me think of videos I’ve seen of various small cities in Africa………..and are really appealing to me. After my response to the more conventional beauty of Antigua, this seems a little strange, but I definitely feel it.
I amble back to my room and take a nap for an hour or less (because there is supposed to be a big dance to culminate the weekend, tonite, and I could use some rest,) then leave again, and wander through town. I am drawn by music up on the hill where the Garif center is, and follow the straggling crowd up in that direction. There is this huge in-process edifice up there – the future cultural center – an octagonal concrete block structure maybe 30 feet around with huge tree trunks for roof beams, held together with specially-made metal braces. A dream of the future.
Under tent awnings, there are 100 or more people dancing….another 200 sit under smaller tent structures, eating and drinking, or standing around on the grass watching the dancers. I join the latter. There is one other white person in the crowd, a woman a little younger than me, her hair neatly braided; we catch each other’s eye with a pleasant look.
The dancing is wonderful and amazing. Punta involves intense gyrations of the hips and “fanny,” while making fast small steps in time to the 8th-note-beat and keeping the rest of the body fairly still – except for sudden punctuations of the rhythm with quick movements of the whole body – especially by the men. I LOVE it. There is something so contained and yet intense about it. And the old women in this crowd are the ones who are best at it. (I love that, too!) They are mostly large women, with plenty to shake around, and they do. They pantomime sexy behavior with the old men; they are all laughing uproariously.
And they are GOOD. There is also a tiny girl, maybe four; and her grandmother watches her with amazement as she does all the moves, too. A woman of maybe 80, thin and arthritic, does the littlest moves with the whole containment and humorously-mocking facial expressions going……….she also gets some encouraging whoops and hollers. I love this on several different levels.
With this and the church event this morning – I can hardly contain myself with happiness. I don’t ever get into full-out dancing, but am shaking myself a bit on the edge of the group.
Then the energy changes, the DJ quits and some Hispanic announcer on a nearby stage encourages everyone to watch a bunch of young girls in sporty/sexy outfits shake their behinds around in more typical MTV-type dancing. They can do it, but it’s interesting to see what a different energy this is. Then they start encouraging people to come up and make fools of themselves for give-away t-shirts. Some of this is playful and fun – the sort of thing I’ve seen twice at festivals around Antigua – but in general I think it sucks; more commercial, more sexy in a dumb way, and nowhere NEAR the dance expertise, even though they are good in an exercise-video sort of way. And of course the announcer just gets off on hearing himself talk. At any rate my interest drops to zer0 and I make my way back down the hill, determined to check back later.

Both my roommates are in the room, ready to take a nap, as am I. Since the second girl has come, Elena has not said two words to me, and seems irritated when I speak to her. Someone else commented on that about her, so I don’t take it personally, tho it is a little odd to be around. Her friend is friendly enough, though I make a mistake with her that I often do with people; criticizing something when I barely know them. She joined a group of drummers here at the hotel with her guitar (first asking permission.) They agreed but she is just a beginner, AND her guitar is out of tune. After a few minutes the drummers excuse themselves and leave her. When she comes in our room, I eschew saying something about her inappropriateness, but suggest perhaps bluntly that the guitar needs tuning. Between us we get it in good order, but still I’ve done it again, as I did to the restaurant owner when – trying to be helpful – I suggest that her hand-lettered sign out front needed work in order to be more attractive to customers (you could barely read it.) When she says defensively that she gets people here all the time, I realize I had done it again. But a day later she suggested that if I were to come here to live she would pay me to do some menus or signs or something on my computer. Still I need to recognize this proclivity to critique BEFORE I do it rather than after.

My last evening. I want a bowl of Tapado and decide to invite my two erstwhile friends, the Argentinian and the Swiss jewelery-maker, to have dinner with me at my friend’s restaurant, thus killing several birds with one stone (what a dreadful analogy!) On the way I run into Prince. He is in his low mood (his girlfriend was here yesterday and dissed him one more time, even handing off some of his clothing to another guy) and looks unsure of his welcome with me, but I am delighted to see him….I’m actually rather fond of him. However this creates a dilemma; I can’t pay for everyone, and I know all these guys are too poor for a 50Q dinner. I decide to walk down with Prince to the restaurant to get him ensconced in her motherly atmosphere. When he’s on a chair on her deck I tell him I’m going to go check w/ a friend and I’ll be back. The two guys I’m looking for are together in the vendor’s favorite spot again and I sit down and tell them I’d like to invite them to have dinner with me at the restaurant. The Argentinian says she once fed him bloody chicken and wouldn’t take it back so he won’t eat there. The Swiss man has another scathing story….they are punching each other’s shoulders and laughing and I realize they are both shit-faced at 4 in the afternoon. I am still joking with them and take two photos of them together. The Argentinian is being charming with every young girl who passes by (and he is handsome and good at it, drunk or no) and accosts an uncomprehending Yugoslav guy about his grandfather from Russia and other somewhat incomprehensible stories but after the guy makes his getaway, he tells us he’s trying to get some investors for his cantina. People don’t realize the opportunity here, etc. I can see an evening with these two is not going to be the nice farewell party I’d imagined, so I tell them how much fun it’s been to get to know them, etc., and head back for the restaurant.
Prince has obviously given up on my returning, probably used to that sort of thing from the visitors he attaches himself to, and is down on the beach in the dark, but emerges quickly when he sees me coming. He has a couple of little kids with him, and he takes their leave really sweetly. For all his faults he seems like a heartful man. I ask if he’d like to share a bowl of Tapado with me and he says, “yeah” but hushes to a whisper and says there are better Tapado cooks than this woman. Even he is a little shocked at his faithlessness, and says “with all due respect….” etc, “there are better Tapado cooks.”
I expect we will head for some Garifuna place, but he stops at a brightly-lit place run by some Chinese. We order, get some lemonade (he asks if he can have a Pina Colada) and are joined by Elena and her French erstwhile boyfriend. Lots of talk in Spanish, which I follow well enough. I watch the two of them demolish one piece of fish on a plate between them, picking every scrap of meat off the skeleton. The conference couple comes and we talk about not being able to get together here to talk, but she says she will be in Antigua in a few days and perhaps we can meet then. I really like both of them, but I think they look a little askance at the rowdier members of my group. When I turn back to the table, Elena and her friend are gone, replaced by the two women from last nite, Jennie and Kim. The talk flows on. Then they leave and Prince gets into his “can’t sit still” thing. He excuses himself gracefully each time, but runs to talk to someone, runs to get cigarettes, etc. It’s true that the only real connection between us is his sad love-life, and I think he doesn’t want to talk about that tonite, particularly since I’d been right in the advice I had given him earlier in the week.
I watch the activity in the street…..families, foreigners, kids in small groups with play guns. Jennie had commented how mean these kids are with each other; very like Jamaica. Eventually Prince returns, and I wonder aloud what has happened to our dinner….they could have caught the fish personally in the time we’ve been waiting. He graciously goes to see where our order is, and returns to say he had to order all over again; the girl had forgotten. He asks for a second Pina Colada and I agree, and get another lemonade although I’m going to be floating before long. I’m a bit worried he will be, too, as I’m hoping to see some night-life with him, but figure the food will help.
Then it arrives. I only saw the finished (literally) project before……..this soup is more than I can handle. A complete baked fish, head and eyes intact; squid, the same. I love squid but don’t even like to see the tentacles much less the face. At times in my life, I have had my hands inside some still-warm turkeys and a goat, but this is too much for me. I also find, once again, that I don’t like boiled bananas. So I pick at what I can eat and hand over the rest. What I like most is the broth and bread, but this bread is just little round hamburger buns, no garlic toast, like at the other restaurant. I am annoyed that I didn’t follow my own inclinations. But he eats heartily, heads and all…….. though we give the eyes and other bits to a starving dog who is watching us. The dog has such a sweet demeanor that it’s hard for me not to rush out and buy dog food, but I don’t know where I would find it. I briefly think of buying him a hamburger, but then what about tomorrow? He ends up getting quite a bit from our table. I finally get the check: Q112….Or about $14.50. I am a little shocked, food is relatively cheap but drinks are not.
There is supposed to be a big “closing” dance at 8 pm, but although the lights of the gimnasio are on and the speakers are blaring, there are only a dozen or so people lining the bleachers and none on the floor. I delight in finding an open floor in Chico, but not here….and I don’t think Prince is ready for that, either. We go off to UBAFU, and the drummers are playing. I tell him one more beer is the end of my budget and we sit and watch the drumming. Somehow I want more than this tonite, so eventually we end up walking over to the gimnasio again. And again just a few people and no dancing.
He shows me a tiny disco on a side street…..a bar, really, with a tiny floor and a tiny screen showing a dance competition somewhere. We stand outside for a bit and then I sidle in, lured by the screen and the good music. He evidently can’t come in yet…..when I inquire why he shows me his can of tomato juice. Wow, I love tomato juice…I take a sip, not really noticing his wry look. Good gravy it also contains alcohol of some wretched sort. I spit it in the street.
I go on in and dance a bit in the first, nearly empty, room. Then he comes in with me and we go in the inner room where people are gyrating wildly, bumping into each other. I opt for a little floor space, and he tells me he’ll be back in a minute. Some guy wants to dance with me, but insists on getting close. I tell him to back up and give me some space and he doesn’t get it, so I back him up physically. He still doesn’t get the message, so he pulls in a friend to dance with me. We step down and have some fun for awhile. Then Prince is back. I like his movements well enough, and match him, but he is more interested in talking to a friend, banging knuckles and all that greeting stuff. [They have a lovely greeting ritual here – besides the cheek-kissing, which everyone does. The young men do the mutual palm-slide and knuckle banging that I saw in Jamaica but then the fist touches the heart.]
We dance for awhile, and then he says he’s going to step outside with his friend. They do and start walking off down the street. I run outside and whistle loudly. He runs back to say, “We’re not leaving you – you can come if you want, or I’ll be right back.” The friend is now pissing in the bushes (a common sight in Guatemala) so I think maybe that’s what they’re up to, so I go back in.
Half an hour later he is still not back, and the room has become so crowded and hot that I am out dancing in the cool street. So I decide I have had enough of being “squired” and head off for home through the cool night. They are drumming in UBAFU, but the music from the speakers outside is drowning them out. I go out to see what’s going on, and it’s rap and hip hop. I am delighted, assuming I will see some great dancing, but no. Noone is doing anything interesting. I finally head for home. It is only 11:30 so I decide to pack my bags so I can leave early in the morning. I can still hear the pounding of the speakers in the distance, but suddenly the music stops abruptly and the lights go out everywhere. The available electricity in this small city has been completely overwhelmed.
Elena comes in just as I’m getting to sleep. I turn my flashlight on for her and she asks me to wake her in the morning. I thought she was going on to Honduras with her friend the next day, but somehow the friend is staying here another day, Elena is returning to Antigua to meet another friend, and then they are going off somewhere.

Day FOUR - Livingston

2008-01-19T06:22:00.000-08:00

DAY FOUR
I decide it’s time for a shower before I leave the hotel Saturday; think about taking these braids out but decide to just wash my hair with them in. Obviously some of my standards are going fast. The shower is so cold I can’t get under the water, but manage to wash my hair, and rinse everything else. Then there is the towel provided by the management. I don’t think it’s even made of cotton – some thin synthetic material. How I wish I’d followed my first instinct and brought my own towel. When I’m done drying my hair, I hang the towel on the line of clothing that stretches across the garden of the hotel and never see it, or any other, again. The day is overcast as was yesterday. Light sprinkles occur occasionally, like a mist in the air.
As I leave the hotel there is a big splash in the little creek-like pond near the lawn. I have heard this before and suspect large goldfish, but this time I see the culprit: a huge turtle…with a carapace maybe two feet long. He’s so big he’s a little eerie looking, but soon disappears in the muddy water.
I have talked to the restaurant owner about living here in Livingston and she has said she would help me find a place. When the owner of the hotel calls me over to say we owe for the last day, we settle that question quickly, but I mention to him how much I like it here and he says, too, that he would help me find a place. I say the one thing I don’t like is the cold showers. He says that’s a really simple problem to fix – hotwater showerheads are available. He asks me how old I am and then goes thru the rigamarole about seeing me walk down the street in such a sprightly way (he doesn’t use that word, but..) he thought I was so much younger. He is starting to hit on me, so I smile warmly and make my way out of there.
The President of Guatemala is supposed to be here today to make a speech at 10 am at the ONEGUA center on the hill. I notice all the uniformed soldiers and police in town, who hadn’t been there before. I don’t see anything going on at the Garifuna center at 10 am, so I go down to the seminar again and sit in on an hour of talks. Later I learned the President arrived and left in a helicopter a little after I was there. After the seminar the German girl agrees to meet with me the next day to fill me in on what she has learned, attending all of the talks.
I spend an hour or two talking with a woman who arrived in Livingston yesterday for the weekend. We have a good conversation about projects for kids, and the counseling she does in Seattle for couples who are trying for open marriages. She says hers has been successful for ten years. I guess “successful” includes the hickeys she shows me that she got on her first night here.
I feel as though I’m just a sponge for people’s stories, this weekend. I am so interested to find out what sort of people gravitate to this culture – both the culture of Livingston and the Garifuna, that of Guatemala, and that of the free travelers.
Later I see her with her new “shadow,” a beautiful shy little Garif boy who has followed her ever since she bought him some potato chips. She thinks really it’s just the attention he wants and I agree. While we talk outside the store, a family of pigs - mom and two different-sized babies - comes wandering by, nuzzling each plastic bag on the ground. The cleanup crew, I suppose.
I run into the Argentinian sitting with a friend in front of one of the hotels, where the friend, a jeweler, has his lovely wares displayed on a big cloth. I had seen them earlier and waved cheerily; now I sit down with them. Neither of us comment on my request to have the Argentinian “squire” me – I presume he has forgotten all about it. He introduces me to the jeweler, a 40 year old blond skinny red-faced Swiss, with a wide grin, who has lived here six years and speaks good Spanish, but no English. At some point I ask him how long it took him to feel like a part of the community; he says five years. Whew. And I would only think of living here for two – that says something.
My free-marriage friend comes by and we sit and talk with the two men for a bit, other people stop to chat with them, or with me. This sort of loose, easy camaraderie is familiar to most people who have travelled or hung around bars, I suppose, but is totally unknown to this essentially hard-working mother and farmer. My hanging-around was confined to afternoons at the pond, or at parties of friends in a small rural community. So this continual ebb and flow, like the lapping of lakewater, is intriguing to me.
I go off with her and her friend to see the crowning of the adult Garifuna Queen for the year. The junior queens were picked yesterday. By 8 oclock the gimnasio is filling up. These two women and I pay 5Q each and go in, sitting on the bleachers. The room is filled to bursting with noise – primarily from the huge speakers blasting disco music at the front of the room, but also all the people – families, kids, adults of all sorts – trying to talk over the music.
The audience is on two sides of a central square, with a long table – presumably for the jurors – on another side of the square, and microphones for the announcers and the drummers on the 4th side. The two drummers are from the Jovenes de Garifuna group I met in Antigua, whom I spoke to my first day but haven’t had contact with since….this seems like quite an honor for these two young men.
Everything takes forever to get going, but eventually there is a hush and the first Queen candidate comes in, in traditional checked cotton dress and headscarf, dancing a slow step to the music, and curtseying as she gets to each quadrant of the square. She then takes her place near the announcers and the next woman advances. The first is a perfect beauty queen, lovely to look at and very demure in her attitude. The second girl is younger and less sure of herself; the third woman is a little older and heavier. When they have all taken their places they then advance one by one to the center of the square and do a slow step-dance, shaking their rear ends, but no more advanced steps or rhythms. They then leave and some other women all dressed alike come in and do some dance steps in concert, nothing as fascinating as I saw in Antigua, but interesting. Then the candidates return, dressed in raggedy costumes and carrying something depicting some part of their heritage; they act this out, starting fires, cutting wood, stirring food, cooking, For the third return they are dressed again in clean light-colored checked traditional clothing, and they dance again. They then each give a speech, first in Garifuna and then Spanish. The third woman’s speech in Garif is greeted with cheers, but she muffs the Spanish and retreats. They are then each asked to answer questions about Garif. History or something about discrimination.
Finally the choice is made by the jurors. The larger woman, who gave the great speech and was the best dancer (and perhaps the most popular in her community to judge from the audience response) is the Queen. The 3rd runner up, the pretty woman, wins an electric iron; the 2nd runner up gets a big electric fan, and the Queen wins a new bicycle. There has been much attention by the crowd of about 500 up to the point that the Queen is picked, but as soon as she is selected, everyone barrels out of there, leaving her with a crown and hugs from her family.
There is a huge party planned for 11 p.m. up at the Garifuna center. The couple from the Conference have been sitting in front of me for most of the crowning ceremony, and they agree to walk up the hill with me, since their hostel is over in that direction. The two women I came with got bored long ago and left. When we arrive up on the hill at 10:30, there is nothing much going on and noone I recognize is there. I realize that I have been spending my time with Hispanics and foreigners, exclusively, ever since I’ve been here; no wonder I don’t know anyone. We walk on, and part company at the top of the hill. I make my way down the trail to my street, and my hotel. People from the party will be up all night, and then attend the ceremony of the landing of the Garifuna people to these shores at 6 am, my agenda says, but at the crowning the announcer said it would be at 5 am.

Day Three - Livingston

2008-01-19T06:13:00.000-08:00

DAY THREE [images are of the lagoon and the amazing tree in the middle of the cemetary.]
I wake up to the sound of roosters and calling birds and then a lot of hooting and hollering in German from other hotel guests on their way to the bathroom, muy cerca our room. I think about people who travel from one place to another, as the Argentinian has done….meeting new people and telling old stories. And of course always telling the dream: I’m going to build a cantina, I’m going to marry the Hindu girl and we’ll move to Jamaica; I’m going to get on the cruiseship and work around the world; this girl’s going to take me with her to Mexico. It seems like at least for some it becomes an exercise in holding the dream out in front of one but never staying in one place long enough to achieve it, or to deal with not having achieved it. Or maybe the dream is just an excuse; and the living from day to day and telling stories IS the real life. Since it seems to me something of the alcoholic dynamic, it is interesting that it seems to be accompanied by a lot of drinking.
Last nite, the Argentinian introduced the group to some hootch made and sold behind the bar which smelled like gasoline and cloves. He swears that he came to Livingston very ill and was cured by drinking the stuff as medicine. I can’t even sniff it. He also mentions the Nonny juice – as a curative – that I ran into in Jamaica.
Then Elena wakes too, and decides to go with me to get some fresh oj for breakfast. We start out through the garden, but are waylaid – before 9 am – by a group of young people in the cupola performing – in Spanish – what seems to be a comic presentation, mimed and narrated, on the use of condoms. There are two young Hispanic actors – and the girl narrator in a big rasta cap. This event is being watched by four gringo adults and eventually ourselves. I can’t exactly figure out what is going on because of some of the comedic efforts, but decide it is like the skits used in projects in Africa for reaching out into the analfabetic (non-reading) communities to teach AIDS awareness and protection.
At the breakfast place we discover that there is a seminar on supporting and revitalizing Garifuna culture starting next door. So we leave and fall, instead, into the free breakfast – fried platinos and refried black beans (one of my favorites) with excellent scrambled eggs and a white bun. I ask for fresh squeezed oj and have a large glass brought to me for $1.30.
The introducer is a local Garif and the lst speaker a Hispanic anthropologist, I gather married to a Garifuna woman. He is an excellent speaker, very moving (even though I can understand only about 50%.) He mentions that the Garifuna anniversary date (of arrival) is a national Holiday in Belize (albeit a much smaller country) but barely recognized in Guate. He stresses that although the Garif are descended from the survivors of a slaveship-wreck (mixed with Caribs and the Arawak Indians from the coast from Venezuela to Guate) they never actually worked as slaves, and they fought off the British colonizers for many years. Slavery or no seems to be an issue, here. Several local people get up and put in their 25 cents about the value of the Garifuna people and Garifuna women in particular, (I am interested that these impromptu speakers are welcomed however long and rambling their speech) and then they take a break. I have been struggling with all that Spanish, so decide I can learn more later from the German girl who is writing her thesis on the Garifs, and elect to go home and change out of shorts and a tanktop, as the weather has turned cooler already.
I’m not sure what I will do next, as I am learning that what is planned doesn’t happen and I’m better off (perhaps everywhere but certainly here) just following my intuition/inclinations and see what happens.
I would still like to see some futbol and to find out where the community center I saw last time actually is, now that I know the town a little better. I would also like to spend some time with the Argentinian as I find him intriguing.
I go back to the seminar to see what is going on, but they have broken for lunch. I’m encouraged to eat there, but figure this isn’t very fair since I’ve hardly attended, so I eat at the restaurant upstairs, then come down to sit with the Peruvian/German couple while they talk to the anthropologist about the African origins of the Garifs, and a story the Peruvian has heard that there were supposed to be boatloads of Africans who came to the Orinoco R. area in Brazil long before. The anthropologist doesn’t know anything about this. They return to the seminar and I finish my lemonade while I look out at the boats coming into the harbor.
An older Garif. woman stops by my spot and starts talking familiarly to me….I simply must get braids in my hair, it would look so nice, blah blah. I had thought about it before coming but know I look dreadful half-bald, however pretty the braids and beads, but figure what the heck, so I tell her to do it. She says 10 braids for 2 Q each, which as she starts to work becomes 10 braids on each side. She engages a young woman and they start rapidly working on both sides of my head. There is the usual pulling of hair and too tight braids, and we negotiate (that is, I go “ow, ow!” and she says, “Okay, mama,” and loosens up slightly.) It never occurs to me that someone would offer to do this and not know what they are doing. A couple of young guys across from me are laughing at the spectacle; that should have been my first clue. As is the fact that she never looks at me from the front to see what effect we are having. Eventually she says she is done. I feel the back of my head, it is still unbraided! What? She makes a hasty retreat then comes back to tell me I have ten braids on each side, two quarters of my head are done………so I owe her 40Q (about $5.50.) I am angry and make it clear to all within hearing that I am disappointed, but pay up…….it is not much money. But the hairdo is rather ridiculous, not like some of the elaborate braiding I’ve seen – each of my “hairdressers” had different styles of dealing with these tiny 1/8 inch braids and the rubber bands and beads. I spend a little time evening things out, but eventually just figure “What the heck.”
Later in the day, I look for the Argentinian’s place but can’t find it, then run into him as I get back on the main street. He walks me back down the alley and spends the next two hours or so showing me all the stuff he’s building in his cantina, the mess the previous owner left in the yard, where he wants to build a “tiki” hut and then gets out a million photos and shows me other bars he’s built in Florida and elsewhere (all a little Floridian or a la Reno to my taste) and then a lot of photos he’s taken of women, when he was earning a living as a photographer. There are some beautiful photos and beautiful interesting women of every nationality. There are also some photos of him much younger – what a gorgeous guy! I ask what propels him from one city, state, and country to another. “Oh I’m ADD,” he says, “I can’t stand still.” He also tells me his story of betrayal by his girlfriend’s mother,who was his business partner, then robbed him, didn’t use the money he sent to get the licenses and so forth that he needs for the bar, and now wants to marry the girl off to some rich old man. The girl is of course culturally-bound to obey her mother, and on and on. I notice the scars on his hands and comment. Oh yeah, he’d been a boxer somewhere where bare-knuckle fighting was legal. Charismatic guy.
At some point I tell him my problem with not being able to get to some of the places I’d like to see at night, because I’m on my own (and I’ve been warned those areas around the discoteques are dangerous.) I ask if he’d be willing to “squire” me, and tell him I'd pay for his drinks, etc. “Like a bodyguard,” he says, and I say “un poco.” I leave with no clarity on this topic but a cheerful “See you!”
On the way “home,” down this street of stores, bars, restaurants, a big Catholic church, and abandoned buildings, I am startled to hear a grunt behind me, and turn to find a very large dirty pig ambling down the street. Noone else pays it any attention. I guess that puts the chickens in the yard of my hotel in perspective.
That evening I see neither hide nor hair of the Argentinian and Prince has to go to bed at 8 to work at the docks at 4 in the morning. I’m never quite clear what he does but it has something to do with loading something on a cruiseship. Since he doesn’t have the build of a stevedore, I presume he does checking or something. He does this one full day per week and lives on what he makes (I never heard what the hourly wage is.)
I go down to the usual restaurant for dinner by myself and we talk some more. She tells me Prince had a big crack problem in the past when that was rife here in Livingston (people in Guate City had told me there were no hard drugs in use in Guatemala – just alcohol and glue-sniffing) but he has cleaned up his act (except for drinking so much, I suppose, but I don’t say this.) She thinks he has a good heart, and having seen him interact with people when he’s not drunk, I’d agree. When he’s drunk he’s not mean, just a little morose and bitter.
I send some emails to family and friends, watch the street from my favorite perch on the Muni Bldg steps, look for a t-shirt for my younger daughter, and eventually head toward home. I run into two women I have met briefly. We all walk over to UBAFU and this evening there is music and dancing, or at least the drummers – even the big older woman drummer – get up from time to time to dance. When they take a break I walk over to ask the woman to show me the steps. She misunderstands me…is friendly and welcoming and then goes outside…..I think she thought I was complimenting her.
I sure wish I had a male friend to come to Livingston with, as there are so many fascinating places where I shouldn’t go by myself – like all the discos down the side streets, whose music I can hear blaring away enticingly as I walk past on the main street….”dance hall” music, it seems; my favorite. Or at least I’d like a dependable woman friend to sit in Ubafu with, having a coke and waiting for the music to start. All I’ve seen of dancing so far was a few minutes in Ubafu, and a few minutes after the kids presented the skit in the street….and then I couldn’t quite see their feet. This punta dance fascinates me, and I’d really like to learn how to do it.
Since the other folks have left, and the drummers are taking a long break, and I don’t have anyone to talk to, I head for home. A block from the hotel some short fat Hispanic man tries to convince me that he is un buen chico and una buena chica like me could do no better anywhere. I tell him I’m sure he’s right, but no thanks.
I reach the room, do a little writing and read the wonderful book I brought with me. Before I go to bed I sit outside on the lawn and listen to the crickets.

Livingston trip - day two

2008-01-19T06:00:00.000-08:00

I tell the management of the hotel that their place is truly lovely but I need to be closer to downtown. They say fine, so I go back to check at Via Del Mar. The manager tells me that they have rooms for two nites, but not four, when the huge influx of weekend reservations will arrive! Yikes! I guess I can continue to pay $20/nite – at least I have a room for all 4 nites, and there are few rooms in town left. Most of the students I “boated” with did not make reservations and are scrambling for a place to sleep.
I walk down toward the Bay and the cook/owner from last nite’s restaurant calls out to ask if I want breakfast…..”It’s the best in town; I cook just for you…” etc. My favorite place from last time was still closed when I’d walked by so I say yes. I invite the owner to sit with me and talk because the place is empty. (One thing I notice about traveling is that it makes me more gregarious than I am at home.) While I wait for my food and conversation, I look at her restaurant: wooden walls covered with photos and postcards, open windows with strings of shells hanging in the openings. No glass in the windows, tho there are wooden shutters to close and lock. Most of the open peaked ceiling is covered with plaited hemp mats, but above the first few feet inside the door you can see up into the traipsing electric wires. The roof is slatted wood; all the tables and chairs look handmade. Pretty casual.
The owner has made my eggs and potatoes, HER style: little scraps of crispy scrambled egg among crispy potatoes accompanied by fresh pineapple juice. Finally she sits and we talk a little about our lives. She is Hispanic; medium-light skinned with yellow-brown eyes the same color as her face and hair; probably early 40s. She grew up in Mexico and was married at 19 to an older Indian man and lived in India for the next two evidently disastrous years before returning to Mexico. She has a gorgeous son who works for her somewhat regularly – he is very respectful with her. Another son is in college in Mexico. From what she earns in this tiny restaurant (which is mentioned in Lonely Planet) she supports herself and her son in a one-room cabin down the street, and sends her other son to college, while saving for this son and a good friend of his to go to college in a year. After she moved to Guate, one of her husbands was a Garif. We talk about money, marriage, men, and children – i.e Life.
I ask her a bit about community projects here in Livingston, but she doesn't know of any.
Eventually I remember that I am supposed to be doing something about a hotel. She suggests The African Place. “The guidebook didn’t seem to think much of it,” I tell her. “No, no; they are great,” she says. Since the other hotels in the Garif barrio mentioned in Lonely Planet don’t seem to exist, at least during my walk up and down that street, I decide to go check out the African Place. On my way up the street I run into Elena, the tall German girl from the boat and the dinner last nite. She needs a hotel, too, for herself and a friend who is coming the next day.
She decides to go with me to see the African Place. We look at the large glaringly-white Moorish structures, the hand-lettered sign, the huge garden and beautiful tile work and are intrigued. The owner has two rooms left for 4 days….one with two beds, one with three. After a brief discussion in her limited English and our limited Spanish, we decide to take the three-bed room together. It turns out to be 25Q per person per nite…………more expensive than some of those sparse individual 25Q rooms…..but still only $13 total per person for four nites. That seems incredibly good. I pay and she will pay me back. Unfortunately there is NO hot water in the common bathroom with only two toilet stalls and two shower stalls for this huge place, though the owner suggests that the showers are “un poco caliente.”
I run back to the other hotel, take advantage of the hot shower there before check-out time, and then carry my packs away to the African Place. I decide to take a short cut - always aware of the reputed dangers of getting off the beaten path - on a road pointed out to me, and end up puffing my way up a STEEP hill – shades of Jamaica! Then the road peters out and I pass a parked sheriff’s car, presumably by his house, and I take a dirt trail down the other side of the hill to where the road begins again. A left turn near the bar and I am on the road to my new home.
Later someone tells me where the ONEGUA office is, back up that same steep hill, and with some difficulty, turning down side roads thru residential areas – aware of being the only whitey and tourist in the area - I find it. They are obviously getting some event together here but I find the office, walk in some wet paint that noone seems to care about, and speak in Spanish to a young woman for some time….she seemed to be understanding me, but even when I ask her to speak slowly I’m not 100% sure we are really communicating …however it seemed that they are open to gringos helping the project (projects in general, rather newly, are preferring to have local help whenever they can get it, even or perhaps especially for professional roles, rather than foreigners) and that they have some sort of school and that she thinks my skills could be helpful….and that the person here who speaks English is way too busy this week but he will answer my earlier emails after the week is over. She gives me an events schedule for the week, and off I go. The first scheduled event is at 2 pm, a seminar on the attempts to retain and revive the Garifuna culture.
My roommate, Elena, is also interested in this talk so off we go. We think we are in the right place, people direct us up steps past the parked motorcycle and so on…and we stand for awhile, and then a young Peruvian man and his tall German wife come, and it turns out (he spoke only German and Spanish, but she was fluent in English, too) that she is doing her thesis on the Garif. Culture and worked at an ONEGUA project for a month in Belize. It was supposed to be three months, but she said things were so disorganized she finally left early. So mostly the three Germans chat, in German, but occasionally translate for me or speak in Spanish, and then two Hispanic girls from across the river at Puerto Barrios arrive. And then we all wait. Eventually at about 3 pm, a black man in a suit arrives and opens the doors for us and disappears, so we sit inside and wait. Then he returns to announce that speakers from P. Barrios have gotten waylaid and it will be another ½ hour. So my roommate opts to return to the hotel and I walk to the main street.
Prince engages me again and wants to talk more about the love of his life who promised him everything in the way of a good life and then dumped him, so I buy us both a coke and we talk. He is obviously a little drunk, especially for 4 pm, and wants to schmaltz me about what a good heart I have, and how younger girls don’t appeal to him, and how he needs a room for the night so he doesn’t feel so alone (he lives in his mother’s small house, here.) All this falls a little flat, so I get out of there after a few more minutes. I then locate a store on a side road where I can bargain for one of the beautiful lacy overblouses the indigenes wear here (since the morning was hot enough for a tank top and I expect a few more days like this) and get a coral one for about $15. I quickly change on the street from my overshirt to this pretty lacy thing, and am pleased when several women wearing similar blouses smile, gesturing at their blouses and mine.
I see lights on in the room where we were supposed to hear the speaker, earlier, but decide not to go back up. Later the German girl tells me that a facilitator had them all draw Family Trees (shades of California!) to give some ideas for making a Garif family tree. She and her husband went along with it, but thought the whole thing was silly.
Then I go back to our room and Elena has a cough and is lying down, so we talk nicely about her life and my life and why we came to Guatemala, etc. She is only 19.
I put on a long skirt to go with my lacy coral top, feeling quite the queen, and we walk out for dinner, and a dance contest scheduled for 8 pm….but after five minutes in the restaurant she says she has to meet someone so she leaves and I have this huge dinner to eat by myself and my breakfast companion/cook is occupied with her helper and ignores me, and two of the guys from last nite come in and sit on the porch with new dates, so I eat and feel a little sorry for myself, here alone. Then I leave and walk up toward the internet shop to send some emails while the Ladino owner of the shop sits in a nearby chair and rocks his baby and sings to her.
One of the things I love in Guatemala is the more informal and family-centered sense of work. Many if not most stores are in the front of homes.
A different Garif band of drummers and a conch-shell player is at a local restaurant on the main street, so I sit on their steps and listen for awhile. At 8 o’clock I go to the gimnasio where the main contest is supposed to be held – really looking forward to seeing a dance contest - but there are lights and loud music and nothing else.
I kill time by walking up and down the main calle, then sit on the wall of the Muni Bldg and watch while the father and son Hispanohablantes from the boat run into the girl who had walked up through the jungle. I almost join them but know I can’t keep up with the Spanish. Prince walks by and joins me on the wall, and two other girls from the afternoon join us and at 9 we go to see if the dance contest has started. I have been dying to see this, but notice that my energy level has dropped considerably since learning that pretty much nothing comes off as planned around here. It’s hard to get excited about things. This is probably good for me – overexcitable and over-planned – but could explain something about the “lackadaisical” people in Livingston.
There are more people gathered outside than when I had checked at 8 pm but still absolutely nada going on inside. What a disappointment! We all walk over to the UBAFU bar where I see drummers are setting up so several of us go in, and others opt out.
A middle-aged man joins us and for the next hour or so he – a sort of Hemingway/boxer-looking Argentinian who has spent most of his life traveling all over the world and 23 years in the US living in 33 states (or was it 33 years and 22 states?) building and refurbishing bars for people – spins his tales. He and Prince spend their time vying for my attention – both love to tell stories – while I try to watch the drummers. I do want to hear the Argentinan’s stories – I am fascinated by people who have spent their lives traveling; really don’t understand it - so may meet up with him again. He has given me his email address and tries to tell me where his cantina is. After awhile each of them gives up on being heard over the din and leaves, and soon so do the drummers, so I listen to the reggae on the jukebox and watch other people in the room dance or talk together (ever the people-watcher, and actually pretty comfortable just sitting there with music and people to look at,) then walk home about 10:30 pm to find that the stars are glorious overhead, and the warmth is still in the room because I’d closed the windows before I left.

Going to Livingston again!

2008-01-19T05:46:00.000-08:00

Extranjeros
I am very interested in talking more with some of these folks who have been here for so long…..especially NOT on retirement income. How do they manage? A woman I met in Pana lived by making cookies to sell to tourists. My one steady friend here is a massage therapist. Others live on savings.
The woman who hosts the writers’ group I have started going to has been here for 30 years. I know how she manages to live, because she is partners in one of the “hottest” café’s in Antigua, but she must have been here during the war years, and I’d like to know more about how that was for Gringos in Antigua. My Spanish teacher (Guatemalteco) says she and local people she knew were totally unaware of what was going on, even though as part of her university education, she interviewed many people in the government for a paper she was writing. Not unlike the situation in the U.S. for the majority of people who only read mainstream news.

SECOND TRIP TO LIVINGSTON
I’ve been thinking about Livingston since I first heard there was a black Caribbean community here in this Eastern Coastal town in Guatemala, and of course especially after becoming so enamoured of the Caribbean black culture when I was in Jamaica for three weeks. Thus I decide to take my second trip to Livingston during the weekend of their annual celebration of the day the first Garifs landed in there, 199 years ago, which coincides with our Thanksgiving week in the U.S.....end of November, 2006.
I wanted both to experience what I expect to be a weekend of music and dance, in the rapid hip-shaking punta-style, but also to check in with the ONEGUA organization dedicated to Garifuna cultural revival and to spend time in the community to settle my mind once and for all whether I would like to leave Antigua at the end of my six-months’ lease and live there.

DAY ONE - travel
Last time I went to Livingston was with a tour – the same guide and big van all the way. This time I’m going to get there by public transport, and on my own. My scheduled shuttle pick up is late so it is nearly 4:15 am, not 3:45 when it arrives; I’ve been up since 3:15. Score one for the vagaries of travel, though this is minimal.
We drive thru the still-dark streets of Antigua and then into the country and finally the lights of Guatemala City. We make our way toward the bus station through a million dirty streets with closed dirty shops – shades of the downtown Oakland Greyhound station 30 years ago. I stand in the freezing wind with 15 or so Guatemalan men, women and children after the shuttle drops me off. When the station office opens at 5 am I learn that the bus for Rio Dulce is at 6 am, not 5, as my Spanish teacher had been informed on the phone. (Score two.) The good news is that I misunderstood the price of the ticket - ¼ of the way across Guatemala by 2nd class public bus – it is not 50 dollars, but 50 Quetzales - about $6.50. Seated in the waiting room, we all huddle over our bags; the cold wind blows through the station door - my teeth are close to chattering. The woman next to me enviably has a light sports blanket over her shoulders (I had elected not to bring mine, at the last moment,) the man across from me has a bath towel wrapped around him. People gather around the lunch counter when it opens but since I thought I was going to be short of cash I have a little stash of food in my bag, which I consume with my hands as I wait. (Always I wonder what locals think of me, an obvious gringo, operating like a poor person.)
The bus, while it has TVs mounted above some seats, and probably A/C and heat…activates none of them. It also has a non-functioning bathroom in the back for this five-hour trip. The temperature in the bus doesn’t become tolerable until 8 am or so. By 9 I’ve taken my sweater off, as the sun comes out and we drop in altitude. It’s been so chilly most days and evenings in Antigua for the last few weeks I am really looking forward to warmer weather at sea-level, but when we reach Rio Dulce it is cloudy and just pleasant. People are saying there is some polar air mass moving down through Mexico and Guate, making the weather chillier than usual.
I'm not sure how I'll find the launch for Livingston, but "the tourist industry" takes care of that: when I step down off the bus, a young guide essentially grabs me with the call, “Livingston!” He gathers up the other two gringos who were on the bus – a young couple who have kept to themselves and looked at noone - and we go down to buy tickets for the public launch. I walk with the guide and am pleased that my still-minimal Spanish makes possible a shallow conversation about the weather and his brother who lives in L.A. He says it is even COLDER in Livingston than here at Rio Dulce.
I am lucky again – the ticket is $13 one-way, not the $26 it cost for the shared private launch last time – however although I got up so early to be in R. Dulce before the “last launch” I’d heard about at 1 pm, it is still only 11:20 am and the launch not leaving until 1:30 “or when it’s full.” I go next door to a restaurant overlooking the water, opt for a hamburger and fries (something I rarely eat,) and wait, watching the ducks and a coconut floating in the water next to the deck. The food arrives – a huge hamburger, lots of very crispy delicious fries, and a huge tart limeade in a chalice decorated with cherries. About $5.
A young man walks past me and dumps what appears to be a large bowl of soup into the beautiful river. He turns, sees me, quickly says “Hola!” and laughs at my exaggerated shocked look. I watch boats and people come and go, some of them fisherman standing up poling their carved wood barcas. Suddenly there is flurry of very small fish in the water in front of me – can they be after the soup? I check; there’s a much greater congregation in that part of the water than anywhere else.
The launch is finally ready and I am startled to see it is piloted by two boys who look about 12 and 17, however the older one turns out to be the best pilot I’ve ridden with. We follow pretty much the same route as last visit, minus the wonderful lilypad lagoon. I chat and joke a bit with the 20 or so young travelers from Germany, Australia, France and America, but everyone is traveling in couples and groups. There is one apparently-gringo man my age on the boat, speaking perfect Spanish with his handsome 20-something son. Along the route we drop off a young couple who have decided on an overnite at a riverside Bed and Breakfast run by what looks like a 30-something hippie couple who’ve bought here on a lagoon off the Rio Dulce. The boatmen don’t know the place the couple describes and are not even familiar with the little tributary the B&B is on, but conversations with passing boatmen provide the directions.
What a Paradise! A redwood A-frame house visible in the thick dark green foliage that borders the water; other structures half-hidden behind it, and a friendly welcome.
A girl in the group who also speaks rapid perfect Spanish gets off at the dock of the school project - Ak-Tenamit - that we stopped at last time. She is going to “stay the night in a Mayan village and walk to Livingston through the jungle” mañana. I beg to get off at the same place – momentarily – as I wanted to buy some crafts objects last time but had no money. The guide agrees to “diez minutos” and I run up the walk, quickly select my carved and painted gourd bowls, and off we go again – churning water downriver toward Livingston. After the obligatory stop at the hot springs on the edge of the river (steaming water coming out of the foot of the mountain) we land about 5 pm.
A Rasta guy hits the boat immediately with a “bid” for his Hotel Viajero at $4 per night. Several folks head for there – I look at one room; clean but very sparse. I part from them and continue down the street to look for the hotel where I’ve reserved a room for four nights at $20 per night, which sounded cheap until I got here. On the way I run into a group of drummers walking along – two of whom I’d met in Antigua. One I’ve never spoken to recognizes me and gives me the traditional kiss on both cheeks, as does the guy I know better. He says they will be playing tonight at 10 pm, then extricates himself to follow his friends, saying, “We’ll see you later!” What a nice welcome to Livingston!
Livingston is a community of about 5000, on a jungle-covered peninsula on the Rio Dulce, accessible only by water. The town itself is slightly hilly, and rambling - concrete block houses interspersed with some thatched-roof huts or cabins, empty lots full of banana and coconut trees, brush, some flowering bushes, trash, and scavenging, mangy dogs. The main roads are paved with concrete, not cobblestones like Antigua, although there are some with interlocked concrete blocks. Children run all over town, on their own. There are few beggars and no hawkers, such as we encountered in Jamaica, but all along the street, there are tiny carts or makeshift tents with food or other goods front the many small stores of every sort. Because it is essentially an “island” there are few cars, but many bikes and motorcycles, and many more pedestrians.
My hotel – Casa Rosada – is very pretty, but a long way from the area I presume most activities will take place. I look at the rustic bungalow I’ve reserved, with its traditional peaked roof covered with dry banana leaves, capped with a tin cone. The place is very pretty, right on the river, with flowers and a few pieces of hand-painted furniture in the clean but simple rooms, but the bathrooms are communal and only one has hot water. Seems like a comparatively steep price for this. I decide I will look around for something else, and see if I can change. I throw my bags down and go out to check the town before nightfall.
I run into two folks from the boat collapsed on their bags on the sidewalk near where we docked. One of their group has gone to look for a hotel. I tell them about mine and about Viajero, and walk on. I see the hotel - Via del Mar - my Garifuna drummer “friend” mentioned to me when they were in Antigua. I ask about a room there, on the second floor with sort of a view of the bay: “Oh si, no problema.” It is bare but clean, and overlooks the street where a lot of activities will go on. In part this means I won’t have a long walk home alone after midnite or whenever the music stops. It is 25Q per nite or about $3.50. I don’t know if I can get out of my reservation for four nites, but will try in the morning.
At the ocean (actually a huge bay) at the other end of the main street, the fairly smooth grey water comes right up to the shore – no sandy beaches. This is about 1-1/2 miles away from my hotel via the street. There I find another group from the boat sitting at a table outside a restaurant, drinking beer with a young local guy in a Rasta cap. They invite me to sit and I order the best lemonade of my life. They make it by blending the whole unpeeled lemon so it’s deliciously tart and tasty. It turns out these kids have been studying in Antigua, so I spend the next couple of hours listening to these young internationals tell stories of the night-life I miss in Antigua, gossiping about people, other places they’ve traveled, and so on. They are very welcoming to me and include me in the conversation, and I make joking remarks from time to time, and by now even have a few simple travel stories. Then the cook brings out their dinners: great curry and a traditional Garifuna dish called Topada. Eventually there is some broth left over from this, so I order more piping hot garlic bread and we all dip it in the broth. The Hispanic man at our table, Prince, eventually walks off with me and a very tall 19-year-old German (Elena) to show us where the bar is where the Garif music will be, later. We get hung up at the internet place where Elena does her email while Prince tells me his love-troubles (in good English – his father is from Livingston but he went to high school in L.A. and his mother and stepfather now live in Texas.) We discuss ethical and emotional responses to his situation [I can’t escape my profession.] We then leave Elena, who is still emailing back to Germany. He shows me the bar I was introduced to last time, in a slightly different place than I thought and looking much more colorful outside than I remembered it from the brief trip just a few months ago.
Then I walk back to my room to take a nap before the music begins at 10, knowing there’s a good chance I will sleep right thru it since I’ve been up since 3 am, but recognizing there will be music all weekend. I wake at 3 am, listen to the crickets, the water lapping gently at the dock near my bed, and a few dogs barking in the surrounding community, and go back to sleep. What a treat all this is!

Volunteering, and Cultural Differences

2008-01-19T05:28:00.000-08:00

Volunteering
Working with sweet Sergio in the hospital today – despite the cleft in his lip, the most beautiful of the babies - I began to wonder if I am asking him to do more than he should be capable of. If he’s only two months old, not three, yet….well maybe he can’t be expected to grip my fingers and pull himself up. He has no tendency to grip at all, though – I grasp for my memory of my own babies’ capabilities – this seems strange. Yet he pushes like crazy with his feet, against my stomach, the edge of the bed or whatever he can push against…..not enough to keep him upright, but then he’s probably still so young.
I decide to go look at the big board where the babies’ statistics are kept. I can’t believe the dates I see, so ask first another volunteer, a young Dutch girl, and then the nurse. Sergio is SEVEN months old. He still just about fits on my lap between my knees and my stomach….that’s about 24 inches…maybe 25, 26. Quickly I look at the other kids’ statistics. I think Alma is the same age….she is eight months old. Two children are doing well – smart and curious and already sitting and crawling – they are 11 months. Two of the much more compromised babies – cleft, but also with cerebral palsy and maybe retardation, whom I thought about 8 months – are already 2 and 2-1/2 years. And the boy I thought was 7 is 12. I am simply stunned.
I wonder what I think I am doing, if so much time has passed without the sort of stimulation I am trying to give the babies. Of course, eventually, as I hold and rock and talk to the girl who is most compromised, finally getting a smile out of her (it always feels like a triumph)…..the idea of making progress passes, and I simply hold her and rock her and talk to her, giving her human contact.
I am disturbed that with all the children, the nurses simply feed them and put them down. They tend to feed them somewhat upright and facing out…since they all seem to do it the same way, perhaps that’s how they were taught. Maybe it avoids bubbles, because I don’t see any babies being burped, and forget rocking them to sleep. The nurses have a lot of babies to care for, and except for the day some nurses had off, they are always clean, and don’t have diaper rash, so they are doing something.
In all my years of working with children, I’ve never worked with those with physical handicaps. So I suppose I am simply adjusting, but my day feels changed as I contemplate the life some of them will live. I feel as though nothing I do will have any effect, and then notice Sergio using his feet against the bars of his crib to turn himself over. He wasn’t doing that two weeks ago. And when I leave for the day, both he and Alma are looking directly out of their crib at me. So maybe, maybe, what I and the other volunteers are doing help push them along toward greater capability, bit by bit.
Later in the day, I talk to my teacher about the babies and the things I learned today…practicing my Spanish. She says that malnutrition is rife in Guatemala. The Mayan people are small to begin with, or smaller than Americanos, but poverty and malnutrition produce babies that are tinier than they should be. Still it seems strange to me that Sergio has been in the hospital since April 28….just over six months, and he hasn’t caught up. I still don’t understand it, but suddenly nutrition education – especially when she tells me cleft palates result from folic acid deficiency - becomes for me a more salient need in this country than I had considered.

Cultural
“It’s the little things,” as my daughter advised. I start off to “work” at 8:45 Monday morning and notice that a van is parked in the middle of the very busy street I live next to, the street the busses use to get out of town. It has a small collection of metal parts under the front bumper. Has it dropped an axle or drive train? A groaning bus full of people comes up the street and manoevres around it. On my way home at noon, I see two men have jacked the van up, and have a box of tools open on the street next to the van. Whatever is wrong they are repairing it right there in the middle of the street. Typical Guatemala.

One day I walk up through Central Park toward the ATM machine which helps me manage my money here, and notice a huge crowd on 5th Calle. I join them and see men and women with numbers on their chests, balancing trays of food. I think perhaps they are going to serve people in the crowd….but how would this be a contest? Best server??
Then they all move down toward the park and line up in a row, and I get a good look at the contestants. They are all dressed differently, evidently the “uniform” for whatever restaurant they work for….even a few women in indigenous dress. This seems a little unfair as some have dress shoes and some tennies, and it seems like this is a race! I notice with amusement all the different “starting” stances they take, from seriously aggressive to casual, and then off they go! This is actually a race….they will go as fast as they can around the park and then down one street and up another, ending where they started………and carrying their trays aloft!! This is hilarious, but they are pretty serious about it. I watch for awhile, unbelieving and delighted, then head for the Bodegona.

There are so many processions here, all taken very seriously. But on All Saint’s Day there is a big one, leaving from Iglesia San Francisco and going up the calle. I stumble on this as I go to my favorite internet cafe. They are carrying the huge "float" (I don't know the word yet for the big box on which rides different sorts of figures, on this day a saint lying down, carried on the shoulders of many people in unison.) At first I think perhaps someone has died, and this is actually his body.....the people seem to be in deep mourning and most in the crowd around the "bier" are wearing black, but then realize it is just a statue. I have heard there is a tradition of Jesus Acostado (lying down); maybe this is what this is? Ahead I see there are a group of men dressed in long purple sort of Arabic headcloths, with the rope to hold it in place. When the "float" reaches them, they trade positions with the bearers and the procession continues. I follow it up the street seeing other groups gathered ahead, in different colors. Wondering, bemused....I go back to the internet.

Cultural differences
I went to pick up a package at a nearby receiving station (cargoexpress) where I was told it was safer to send packages than thru the post office, especially because my house has no way to receive any sort of mail (no mailbox or slot.) I told them it had been 13 days since it was mailed from California, so they talked among themselves and decided that perhaps it was at another station. I couldn’t understand the directions the guy was giving me, so he told me to come with him, and walked outside. I thought he was going to point down the street, but he got on his motorcycle (those and scooters more prevalent than cars, here) and motioned for me to get behind. So off we went, whizzing through the cobblestone streets and around the potholes. My first motorcycle ride in a long time, and very fun. And it turned out that the package and a birthday card from my son were at the regular post office - perfectly safe, but undelivered.

Cultural
I went to my first real concert yesterday (other than free ones in the downtown park.) It was scheduled from noon to midnite. I paid $13 for a ticket and $5 to share a tuktuk with another woman to get there, since it was held in a pueblo outside of Antigua. This woman – a new friend, met at the Macadamia Nut finca trip - is eight or so years younger than me; I was impressed when she told me she drove her car down through Mexico to get here some 18 months ago. When I had contemplated this, I was told it was totally too dangerous and if nothing else I would be required to pay to get through real or bogus “checkpoints” all the way. She said absolutely not; no problem whatsoever, except that her camper was searched at several checkpoints and fumigated at one. Usually she stayed in various campgrounds, of which she said there are plenty in Mexico, but one time she parked on the beach (where I’ve been told you NEVER camp, being more isolated, etc. - and I did meet a woman who was robbed when she camped on the beach in Livingston) and she realized she was stuck in the sand in the morning (shades of Y Tu Mama Tambien.) She hailed a nearby farmer who tried to get her out with his truck but couldn’t; he located another farmer with a tractor and he pulled her out immediately, and wouldn’t accept any money.
She has been in Guate ever since, except for going back to the US to sell her car, among other things. She is headed for Peru in a few months. I have met several women traveling alone through C. America, but except for my short jaunts here in Guate, I can't imagine it.
I had heard the bands at this concert were from El Salvador and Nicaragua as well as Guatemala, so I was expecting all traditional music, like some I’ve seen so far at the concerts in the park. Well…..no..... The crowd was at least 3/5 Guatemalan, but 90% young; the music was rock, for the most part. I had also expected that there would be a shaded area, with seats, but this was in an open field (demonstrably a cow or horse pasture on other days) with a huge very well-appointed stage (lighting, sound equipment etc.,) comparable to the Grass Valley music festivals in California. The day was sunny and pretty hot, though the breezes came up at 3 pm or so. The bands were mostly young and good enough but not spectacular, with a few notable exceptions. I don’t care for heavy metal but the first band, with a singer with lots of long black hair and a spectacular falsetto, was excellent. The next two were just loud so I went to get some dinner (for $2.50 a crisp bun full of freshly-roasted pork; the entire pigs were there on spits.)
Then there was a guitar player from Canada who played solo, who was really exceptional…he also played one tune with Alicia Jo Robins, a fiddle player whose group followed him. She played four or five selections of old-time fiddle, and it was really fun to see some young Guatemalan men dancing to the music, doing the do-si-do and fooling with it, but also just having fun with the bouncy rhythm. Then there was a group of young Guatemalan women musicians in traditional dress, which I looked forward to, but though they were excellent drummers their singing and especially their harmony left a lot to be desired. Then there were two Guatemalan men, Fredy Colorado and his brother, who did Latin TAP dancing and breakdancing! Which of course I loved. And then a band which I would like to locate the name of….possibly Guanamanga….which consisted of an older guy with long grey hair who looked Gringo but spoke impeccable Spanish, and the others all Hispanic….a percussionist who was one of the best I’ve ever heard – on wooden box, and a ceramic pot, as well as more traditional drums – an old man who played various ocarina-type instruments strung around his neck, a woman who sang behind the lead singer, and a bassist. He was definitely good enough to come to the World Music Festivals in Chico.
I would have liked to stay for the next two bands, from El Salvador and Honduras, which were also the highlighted bands, but by now the crowd was a little drunk, my legs were giving out from dancing but mostly from standing, and the wind was freezing! I stood by the warm generator for awhile, trying to keep myself going, but eventually gave in and walked out to the road to wait for a tuktuk to get me home at about 10 pm. This act in itself a challenge, as you are warned so often about walking on a dark road alone.
In this whole crowd of maybe 800 people I knew one person (my friend – i.e. a woman I’ve met twice - went home early): the guy from my local English-language bookstore, and he was hung up on some young Guatemalan women. I met one person when my friend spoke to her – a woman with long curly grey hair, dressed in a flowing skirt and bright shawl, who told us she is a musician (guitar and flute) and that she was personal friends with a lot of the folks who would be playing. She has lived in San Marcos (on Lake Atitlan) for 13 years. I am still intrigued about gringos who have managed to live here a long time...how they do manage, but there was no time to query her.

El Dia de Los Muertos

2008-01-19T05:23:00.000-08:00

EL DIA DE LOS MUERTOS I realized this community takes this day seriously when my Spanish teacher told me there would be no class today because she was going to the cemetery to take flowers to her child who died eight years ago as a baby. When I think how some people in my family give my granddaughter grief for continuing to go the grave of her six- year-old child, after five years, the difference in attitude of the two cultures is more obvious.
Hardly anyone in the calle; no one in the park. That is unprecedented. No one hundred or more people in line for the clinic at the hospital, when I go to volunteer. As a matter of fact, hardly anyone there at all. For the first time, today, I had to change two dirty diapers. I’m guessing that they were short of nurses, so that some of the staff could go to honor their dead.
After working, I passed some people in the street selling the beautifully-colored kites that are used on this day to commemorate the dead. I know there are huge ones somewhere, but these were small. I felt an urge to buy one but thought “…but I have no dead to commemorate.” Maybe I was thinking about dead children of my own, which thankfully I don’t have, but there are my parents, two of my husbands and a best friend….and a great-grandchild. Nonetheless I didn’t buy a kite because the rain clouds were heavy overhead and I could imagine them drowning in the rain.
As I walked up to the Spanish school to take their bus to Santiago Sematapeq, where I had heard they would be flying the big kites in earnest, I was surprised to find that most of the stores I know were closed for the day. A Spanish student from Germany and I chat while we wait for the bus to leave. We drive for miles out of town and into the country. We start to drive down a long winding dirt road to the town, but the police said there are no parking spaces for miles. So we get out and walk…….for miles; down one hill and up another to Santiago. There we came upon throngs of people, thousands of people milling up and down the streets. One hoard is on its way uphill to see the big kites and the other returning; Guatemalan men, women, children, and a few gringos here and there among them. All along the route people were selling everything imaginable, especially food and textiles. Everything drew my attention, especially the food since I hadn’t had anything for lunch, but our leader was moving strongly through the packed crowd, and I didn’t want to lose track of him. Finally we reached the top of the hill. There was a bandstand and a band, but as usual at these “fiestas” there was more giving away of prizes (T-shirts, hats) than music. This seemed to hold the attention of the 500 or so people assembled. We passed through that area quickly; ahead was the cemetery where the kites were.

The cemetery covers nearly five acres of this hillside. Almost every tomb, either those that are cement and above ground, or the simple mounds of mustard-colored earth, are graced with flowers; red, yellow, orange, blue and purple everywhere. A few tombs were covered completely with marigold petals. The multitude of flowers were witness to the number of visitors to the tombs this morning, and the care given to the dead. But now the graves were being walked over and trashed by the crowd assembled to see the kites. The woman I was walking with kept saying, “Lo siento; lo siento,” (I’m sorry) as she walked over them.
There were ten or so kites propped up on the perimeter fence which were at least 40 feet across…..brightly colored, with beautiful designs, traditional and modern, and covered with sayings of all kinds, mostly religious. The messages on one huge kite were about Justice; it had many drawings with sayings like “No more assassinations,” “No drug trafficking,” “No victimization.” Another adjured the readers to respect the traditions, and remember the language. These were not flown, though tears in the fabric – seen against the sky – suggested flights in the past. In the air were 20-30 small kites but at least five of the large ones 10-15’ across were flying. These heavy birds are constructed with bamboo poles crisscrossed to hold the octagonal fabric; if they didn’t make it aloft and were to come crashing down on the crowd, which they did two or three times while I was there, they could cause some damage but definitely caused a lot of excitement and laughter. The place was packed with people flying kites, eating and drinking, and watching the sky. Kids ran around with toys which buzzed and whistled. The helado (ice cream) sellers rang their bells to attract customers. These sounds added to and enriched the fabric of the day.
Red and yellow and white against the blue sky, flags flying, the sight of these enormous kites in the air could almost make you believe they could enable souls to soar aloft on their way to Heaven.

Ceremony

2008-01-19T05:16:00.000-08:00

With an aquaintance from Texas, newly back in Antigua (friendships are difficult here, as most people come and go,) I go to Café Pena de Sol Latino for their first anniversary party. I look forward to some good music and a few lemonades. On a whim I call several other friends and ask them to join us; a Guatemalan man from our writers' group shows up. The young band playing first is very good, though their repertoire a little limited (I liked hearing “Hotel California” en español.)
Toward the end of the afternoon, they had a Mayan ceremony to bless the café. I had seen one of these here before, and was tempted to leave, as I had a bad cold, but am glad I stayed.
As part of the ceremony blessing the café, they demonstrated a healing ceremony for several of the regular band members. The fact that three of them did it suggested a genuine request for healing rather than just a demonstration.
An older non-Mayan appearing man spoke en espanol about the meaning of this day in the Mayan calendar…..having to do with seeds and planting for future harvest. Virtual seeds, and seeds of pensamientos, thoughts.
The shaman, a short dark-skinned man with short-clipped hair and a red tshirt, put on the traditional red headwrap, with its four tails ending in long tassels. In this act, he transformed himself.
The traditional fire – containing chocolate, tobacco, sugar, and candles of several colors - was lit in a metal bowl in the center of a circle of rose petals. The ceremony proceeded, to the best of my recollection, with the shaman circling his hands around the head of the supplicant, releasing whatever energy he picked up with a snap of his hands, behind the man’s back. Then a bundle of herbs was passed around the head and then down the arms and around the body of the supplicant, much as I’ve seen in attempts to follow Native North American ceremonies, but these bundles were not sage – probably sietemonte - and not burned. The bundle was then broken in half by the shaman, and the two bundles pressed firmly, first to the temple and back of the head, then to the two sides above the ears. The bundles were broken in half again and two of them deposited around the outside of the fire on the rose petals. The smaller remaining bundle was again pressed in the four directions around the head of the supplicant, who was kneeling upright with his eyes closed. The shaman then took another bundle and sprinkled it with alcohol, which was also sprinkled into the fire, making it flame up. This bundle was then wrapped sharply from shoulder to hand on both sides, leaving small wet marks on the man’s long-sleeved shirt, and then across the back and on buttocks and knees. The shaman then took a large two-handed bundle of small tapered candles, colors presumably selected to meet the applicant’s need, and set them on top of the man’s head, then on each shoulder, on his chest in the middle, then on the back on both sides, and then, after holding them slightly aloft in a supplicating pose, distributed them in the fire. Just before doing this, he had to stir up the fire, and I noticed when he took the candles away from the spot on the man’s chest, that he had the man put his hand on that spot for the moment that the candles were away, as if “holding the energy" of that position.
He then took an egg, and touched it to the top of the man’s head, his forehead, and then each shoulder. He then gave the man the egg to hold in both hands at the midpoint of his chest, while the Shaman, held one hand on the man’s forehead and one on the back of the head in a firm pressure that I myself could feel, watching. He then snapped his hands (flapping all fingers sharply against themselves) to release the energy. He then took the egg, held it up toward the fire and then put it in.
Then I think there were more candles, maybe more bundles of herbs….the last one appearing stiffer and different from the rest, like rosemary. This same ritual was repeated with the two other band members.
The organizer then offered all of us in the audience (maybe 30 people, including some kids) an opportunity to take a taper and throw it in the fire, as an offering for seeds we wanted planted.
What came to me as I did this, was that I keep hoping to find something here that feels truly like My Place, (though I do love being in Santa Ana – where this morning the singing from the church mass is wafting through my window - and potentially like the work I’m doing) and what I received was that until I’m in My Place inside myself (because I’ve gotten so thrown here; feeling so off-center without adequate language) I’m not going to be able to find the external Place.
So that was very helpful. I was also very moved by the sincerity of the ceremony.

Volunteering

2008-01-18T10:53:00.000-08:00

Volunteering
Thurs. Oct 19. I have certainly been finding it difficult to “get my foot in the door” of volunteering, here. Which seems ridiculous because everyone and their mother, literally, is volunteering. Okay most have more Spanish than I do, but…..
I went to the hospital for the tour two weeks ago. Then I thought about it for awhile because those trundled up babies with their smashed-looking faces somehow just didn’t call to me. But I went in last Monday to be told, certainly they would love to have me, but they are full-up for volunteers with the babies for a week. Please come back the following Monday and bring a copy of my passport and two photos, one for the identity card. So I go through getting Milvia to take a photo of me and finding a place to reproduce it, since my printer is refusing to print photos, and on Monday I show up and the social worker isn’t there; she is busy in Guatemala City. I leave my photos. I return on Tuesday and she has only five minutes to talk to me, after talking with another woman and handing her identity card to her, I notice. Yes, yes everything is fine. Yes Monday and Wednesday mornings will work perfectly.
So I return Wednesday morning to her office so that she can introduce me to the ward. She isn’t there. The other person, who speaks no English, calls the ward and then tells me, “No, they don’t need any volunteers in that ward.” I am stunned and almost tearful. WHAT? The social worker will return in the afternoon, that day. I leave my Spanish class early and go again at three pm. She’s there, she’s busy with two other potential volunteers. She asks me, in passing, if I started yesterday (that would be Tuesday.) I say, “Un pequeno problema.”
When she finishes with the other person, while I wait, wait….she says, “There was some confusion. Yes you are on, but you will have to start next Monday.” She is quite apologetic. I say Monday will be fine.
Interestingly this doesn’t seem to be an isolated situation. At least one other person here has told me she thinks volunteers are treated terribly – i.e. ignored, given conflicting information, not really utilized well, etc. And I can say that noone from C.S. has contacted me since receiving my application, though I understand Hanley won’t be back for a few weeks, which makes it make sense. Noone from Families de Esperanza has contacted me despite leaving a note, in Spanish, asking them to; despite signing up to do anything temporarily while I’m learning Spanish (and despite their brochure saying to come work with them because it will help your Spanish.)
Very strange. But is this part of American “cultural values,” to think everything should move efficiently? Additionally, so many coordinators of these projects are volunteers, and apparently often with no idea of what possibilities are offered by the expertise of some of their prospective volunteers.

Personal
A little calculation this morning makes me realize I am living just under my income, including putting aside money for trips home, which won’t always be necessary. Even though I'm paying $600 rent.

Cultural
There is a schizophrenic Mayan man who lives in the park between my house and the hospital. He is filthy, his curly hair sticks up in all directions; his clothing – the same every day - has become one dull uniform color. I see him in the evening, lying on a park bench, legs sprawled out, a bag with a bottle in it clutched in one hand. Or in the morning, asleep on the ground, if it hasn’t been raining, or on the cement base of a fountain with a little overhang, if it has. In the daytime I see him eating out of the sort of small paper container sold by the nearby food merchants; his face is crumpled and fallen; the look in his eyes dark and inward. I presume he is a drunk too, or maybe drunkenness and schizophrenia have all mingled together in his mind, to produce the mumbling and gestures his disheveled body produces. Nearby school girls in their clean uniforms, relaxing on the grass during a break, laugh at him and point. He seems oblivious. He reminds me of a few schizophrenics I’ve known, obsessively writing down the license plates of all the cars that park on their block (though this man probably cannot write,) or walking into traffic, arm out, shouting at unknown enemies, daring anyone to deny their right to pass.
But I wonder what goes on in HIS head; I wonder what the story is that has brought some woman’s sweet clean baby to this pass.

The three volcanos that ring this city are a palpable presence here. Volcan Agua huge, to the South, the visual reference point for orienting yourself when you walk through the city; small Fuega to the West, with its thin puff of smoke, and larger double-crowned Acatenango. Wherever you walk, they are always there, dwarfing the city. People look to them to see what sort of day its going to be…………..when Agua is ringed with clouds, or invisible, heavy rain is coming. If you can see Fuego’s thin smoke trail, it’s a clear day. But it’s more than a pragmatic thing; these huge mountains, so close to the city, are like guardians, or sentinels. I can see why the people near Mount Olympus believed their Gods dwelt there. I look to these as if addressing a prayer, and listen for the answer.
Agua unleashed a torrent of water in 1541, destroying this City that had been built as Central America’s crowning glory, destroying the many now-ruined churches whose occasional adorned pillars, tumbled walls and half-ceilings still attest to the workmanship and devotion that once graced the city.. So there is respect, too. These are not tame Gods.
Some believe that the presence of the lava field that created these volcanoes is part of the energy that created the wars and violence this country has experienced, and the sense of danger that still exists here, despite the relative tranquility of the present city, abundant flowers spilling over its walls.

Climate
Nearly the end of October, and the weather continues to be so varied. Cool at night; hot sun in the morning without a cloud anywhere; almost-hail by 3 pm.

LOS NENES [“Nene” is Guatemalan Spanish for “baby.”] I have worked at the hospital three days, with the babies. There was no orientation, just an introduction to the head nurse, who speaks no English. They don’t tell the volunteers what to do, though they may say what NOT to do, based on the doctor’s directions, or, frankly, what makes things easy for them. So we English-speaking volunteers, and there seems to be a new group nearly every week - from Holland, Germany, Canada and the U.S.- teach each other.
In this ward, there are about five brand new very small babies who are there for nutrition problems. They are TINY. Occasionally the nurses hand these babies to us volunteers to feed, otherwise they pretty much stay wrapped up in their wrappings, in their heavily padded sit-up chairs in their cribs. If these are preemies, this might be appropriate, otherwise I would like to see them receive more skin touch, more rocking, and be held more closely, looking at their faces when being fed. They tend not to feed them this way, but face them out or at least not close.
Then there are two babies, Sergio and Alma, who are about three months old. They both have cleft palates, not too terrible looking. And actually you get used to the gaping hole from the middle of the upper lip up into the nostril pretty quickly. Alma is pretty responsive but it takes Sergio longer. He is really cute though and has begun to look at me more, and is responding to my sounds and words. He pushes with his feet a lot, so I prop him so that he can push against my stomach or the crib if he’s lying in the outdoor one, where we can put three to four babies at once so they can stimulate each other. But we have to watch that they don’t start going for the mouth or eyes. It gets a little hard to juggle all the kids who need attention. Actually it is very hard for me, and I tend to get uptight about it; but I keep reminding myself I can only do what I can do and trying to limit my attention to three to four kids each time I go.
There are four older babies, all girls, who have cleft palate, too. One of them has two clefts with two tiny teeth sticking straight out between them. She also has little control over her eyes (or does she “space out?”) and seems to have CP in her legs, and possibly is retarded, too. She was pretty hideous to me at first, but now just looks like herself. It is amazing the way she manages to shift the nipple of the bottle from one side to the other of these two clefts, and essentially chew on the nipple to get the milk to come. All of the babies with the clefts, do this, but it is more obvious with her. Evidently they can’t get suction. One of the nurses tends to feed her by covering her nose with a cloth, perhaps to get suction; this makes her twist and scream. When I fed her there were no problems, so I don’t quite understand it.
Two slightly older girls do pretty well; they smile at people, they are ready to play and be picked up. One hollers if she is put down, and most of the other volunteers go for that and pick her up again. I try to interest her in something when she’s put down; she usually settles for that. The other older girl (no more than eight months old) I haven’t gotten to know. She seems to be retarded, too. I will have to be sure to give her some attention on Wednesday.
Then, there is an older girl – maybe four years old – in a wheelchair. An older boy of about four is also in a wheelchair, but he also seems autistic. He screams a lot; he hits at the other kids if he’s close, or sometimes at you if you try to play with him, but I think it’s more an attempt to get you to engage than aggression. But he can hit hard. The only connection I’ve made with him is to toss a soft ball or big rag in his lap; he will then sometimes toss it back, but often it goes on the floor, and if I’m holding a baby, it’s hard to retrieve it, so the game stops. He also likes to clap, so I try to get him to imitate the number of times I clap, and I count in Spanish. But I haven’t figured anything more out with him. Then there’s a sweetie of four or five, who likes to put a lot of puzzle pieces in a small box which he can barely hold. He is also in a wheelchair. He is smart, knows some of his colors, can remember your name, and calls “Ayudame” (help me) all the time. He is pretty demanding of attention, but of course he needs and deserves a lot more than he’s getting. However some of the visitors, especially some kids who come with their parents to visit their baby, play with him, and some of the other volunteers. I try to focus on the babies.
There is also a boy of about seven, who seems to have CP. He is a sweetheart but is fixated on watches, and asks all day long what time it is and whether he can have my watch for a few minutes. He has one of his own. He is really smart and needs way more intellectual stimulation than he’s getting. I play catch with him when I can, and I’d like to get him a Walkman so he could listen to music or stories.
It’s really hard to see all these needy kids, and then sometimes to see the nurses all taking big long breaks together while one or two of us handle all the kids. Maybe no more than ½ hour though. There is one nurse who is really sweet with the kids, nuzzling them when she changes their diapers, for instance. I’d actually like to spend MORE days there, but am trying to keep in at two mornings a week. I don’t want to set up something I can’t sustain. I want to continue with some of the writing I’ve been doing. And want to leave myself open if Camino Seguro finally comes up with something for me to do.
All of this is pretty frustrating. When I was here in November there was so much openness to my volunteering, so much sense that volunteers were really wanted and needed, and now……??? Is it just the Spanish? Or is a lot of it a sham? Or is there something about me? I would say at Familias de Esperanza I made the mistake of suggesting that things in one group for parents should be run a little differently, (just a little!) and I think that didn’t sit well. But………….there is NOTHING there for me to do, in any department? I don’t know, but I have to be more careful with my behavior in the future. Being critical or suggesting you know better is not the way to start.
But of course the first day at the hospital I got huffy and finally went to the doctor when it took them ½ hour or more to come up with a diaper I could put on a very wet, and eventually partially naked baby (while all the nurses took a very long break, sitting in the middle of the room, drinking coffee and chatting.)
So that is the babies’ department. I enjoy it; I would like to help more, but again there is the sense of frustration that it is a drop in the bucket, and that the nurses need some training in bonding and attachment and early cerebral stimulation, that I could probably give, or someone should be giving. But we’ll see. I’ll try another approach (being quiet, just doing my job, and perhaps modeling for parents or staff, but I won’t worry about that part.)

Introspection and another short trip

2008-01-18T10:44:00.000-08:00

I think the primary thing I’m “suffering from” here is the lack of passionate work. I have the idea in my head of going to volunteer in Livingston, eventually, perhaps, after I’ve learned more Spanish. I had the idea that these babies at the hospital might need me to not only hold them, but to teach people about infant depression, bonding, need for touch and stimulation. Now I hear they have psychologists and etc etc. there. Of course those could be psychologists who aren’t applying what they’ve learned, or they haven’t learned about this. At any rate I will do the tour on Thursday and we will see what we will see. But that would be very satisfying – even just holding the babies.

One other thing that struck me, in all of this looking at living/working in another country, is the impression I got from both the ex-pat women I’ve dealt with: loneliness. My friend was so eager to talk and talk – in part because what we were talking about was rejuvenating her dream, which has gotten buried in the mountain of work to do to realize it, but in part because she has noone to talk to. And when I made a date for tonight with another woman, she said “Oh that will be something to look forward to.” I recognize both those states of mind, at least as I perceive them: something, something to fill the lonely days…..something to remind one of what in the hell you came here for in the first place.

Personal
“Wherever you go, there you are…..” A phrase I’ve thought of for years; one of the concepts I used to justify why I never traveled (besides no money, children to care for, and goats to milk.). And here I am, so far from home, and guess who I find! The same person – a little too isolated, yet rejecting of anyone that doesn’t fit just right (not that that is necessarily a bad thing;) connecting with kids and parents in the calles, at least through understanding glances and smiles – especially when their child does something cute and both the parent and you see it…..and catch each other’s eyes and smile. That's pretty sweet.

I run into Beth, from Camino Seguro, on the street. She hails me down by name, as I only recognize “someone familiar.” We talk for half an hour, about volunteering at C.S., about my “god-son” Denilson, who attends that project, and who I’ve been supporting since last July. I fantasize taking him to a futbol game, which she thinks is possible, and we talk about learning Spanish. She says she’s been here 9 months and still doesn’t speak it well; we commiserate about how inadequate it makes us feel, but she says she’s just decided to be perfectly fine being a poor Spanish speaker. At the time this makes me feel better; on the other hand she has a volunteer job (or possibly a paying job) at C.S. where Spanish isn’t necessary. Hmm.

October 15. I finally make it to Cerro de la Cruz – that spot on the hill with the big cross that I see all the way across town. I show up for the tour at the policia tourista office in the center of town. I am early, so I grab a local tourist publication and read about the activities of a doctor who worked for the United Fruit Company in the early 1900s. The author acknowledges the dreadful things the UFC did by the way it influenced politics in its favor, but says that UFC made habitable 50,000 acres of “virtually uninhabited” jungle/swampland where yellow fever, dysentery, snake bites and malaria were rife, and provided its employees with services from the hospital that it created. This article also states that UFC “paid the highest wages, sold food at subsidized prices to its workers and families, [and] provided housing and education.” But what did UFC do to the area to make it malaria free – spray poison every where? And what does “virtually uninhabited” mean – just that indigenous Mayans lived there? The book I read on Rigoberta Manchu suggests that the struggle with UFC that caused such genocide in the Mayan highlands was precisely over low wages, and “owing your soul to the company store.” It will take more research to resolve this unending debate.

Then another person arrives for the tour, and she and I chat. She loves the night life in Antigua and wonders why she is signed up to go up to Xela, where it’s colder. She will study Spanish there, too, and volunteer with some project, she’s not sure what. She tells me about various places she’s been to in Guatemala. Three other girls and a guy arrive; one of the girls is talking about having been to Tikal so I swing in step with her to ask her impressions. She loved it; BIG bugs and scorpions, a huge tarantula on her pillow at nite, but “it was worth it.” She is from Israel, and has been traveling thru the US and Mexico. She works for an Israeli tech company with an office in San Francisco, so she has been there. She says she has very little Spanish; that it seems hard to learn. I comment that at least she has already learned one language (she speaks English very well) but she says that in Israel English is everywhere, especially on TV, so it’s really easy to pick it up. We start the climb up to the Cross.
In 15 minutes I am starting to pant and puff, and my legs start to hurt – this abuse added to my new salsa class last Friday. I start dropping behind, a little embarrassed. My partner starts to lag with me then sees I’m really behind and goes on ahead with all the other youngsters. Fortunately there is a policia bringing up the rear; they must be used to this. I suddenly realize that I did not come here to race to the top, anyway. I wanted a walk through the woods. So I am happy to slow down. I notice the tiny columbines in the heavy undergrowth, and the purple morning glories, but can’t identify the rest of the plants, except that we are in a huge eucalyptus grove. Eucalyptus was brought from Australia to California intentionally, as a lumber tree, which didn’t work out. But who and what brought it here?
Finally I reach the top and there is Antigua, spread out below us. I can see the arch I used to walk under every day, Central Park, and think I identify Iglesia San Francisco, though there’s no sign of my rooftop or the taller one at Sky Café around the corner. I wish I had brought binoculars. There is a huge red building, a square around an open center. A query of a nearby family brings the information that is an escuela for “monjas”….nuns. I have seen them walking around town, quiet and virginal.
There is a good looking curly-haired young man with the group, but for some reason he and the four girls are not talking. I go over to where he is and ask, “So why and how long are YOU in Antigua?” He says he’s just traveling through. He is from a farming area in France, where he worked with autistic kids on a farm dedicated to principles somewhat like Montessori school. He started in Montreal, then came through the US on a bus, stopping briefly in NY, Philly, and Atlanta. We share delighted views on NYC, which I also love. He then went through Mexico and he also loves the town of San Cristobal de las Casas, where I’ve been advised to go. He likes Mexico better than Guatemala, but can’t say exactly why. He wants to get out in the country. He really liked the Panajachel area; I tell him my impressions of San Andres Sematabaj.
The group then starts down the hill again. This way is easy. I pick up a little of the trash thrown around the area of the Cross, and dump it in a trash can on the way down. The rest of the group goes ahead and I walk with the other policia. He asks me how long I’m here; the usual questions. He seems interested that I want to become “fluida” in Spanish, and starts asking me questions to get me to practice. I ask if he is a teacher, he says he was for seven years, but now “Soy policia.” We stop at a stand, I look for a moment at a group playing “futbol,” some old men, some boys in the group – a real “pickup” game. Someone else has bought slices of pina in a plastic bag; I do the same – wonderful rich-flavored juicy pineapple, no sourness to it. I rejoin the young man and ask what he will do from here. “I don’t know,” he says. “You don’t know??” I respond, some-what incredulous. It is fascinating to me that some people can just go from one place to another without much pre-planning.
He mentions an “earth lodge” somewhere on the side of Volcan Agua that he wants to check out. He wants to get out in the country. He walks away from me across the street, and I think, “well….okay,” and I begin to move along. Out of the side of my eye I see that he has just dropped some trash in a can and is headed back over, but by the time I turn he has seen me ahead and switched back. “Adios!” I call out, but he doesn’t hear me.

Bakc to the Lake, and home again

2008-01-18T10:37:00.000-08:00

In the morning I sit in the sun and read and listen to my surroundings, waiting for my friend to wake.
There is a bird here with a loud whistle – I have heard it once or twice in Antigua, too – and there are many other birds around in the trees and on the power lines overhead. The church not far from her house begins to boom out its morning sermon and there is a lot of choral singing. A little boy - playing or working on the roof of his house, visible behind hers - keeps calling to his brother. There are even the loud pops of occasional bombas (firecrackers.) For an idyllic place, it seems rather noisy this Sunday morning.
When she finally joins me we talk about that – I’ve referred to it before as Imperfect Perfection. But we also talk about it in terms of the spiritual exercise we both follow – that you have to be able to Do Your Thing no matter what’s going on around you, and resisting some annoyance or intrusion only increases the hold it has on you. Essentially one has to accept Guatemala (and anywhere else) for what it is…..and continue to go your way and do what you do, which may or may not affect your surroundings.
We talk about her struggles building this place over the years (she no sooner got a huge long retraining wall built around the back part of the property – hiring many men from the community to help her – than Hurricane Stan came along, the water poured off the newly constructed soccer field a ways above her house, and her wall came tumbling down - for instance) and how she feels that a house built in Norway (which she has done) would last a hundred years, but because of the heat and humidity in Guatemala nothing lasts more than ten years. Already one wall of one house is cracked because the foundation has settled, two large trees with roots under the house are buckling the porch, etc. etc. She has become somewhat discouraged, especially after she discovered that some workmen she had trusted were cheating her.
So we talk about all this, about creativity, about our experiences with and because of the latihan, and about our relationships with our parents and with our children, as the sun rises in the sky and eventually the inevitable clouds begin to gather.
We decide to have some late breakfast before I leave, and she makes me some scrambled eggs with veggies cooked in, and spreads on top of it some sort of red-orange “caviar” out of a toothpaste-type tube she had brought from Norway, made of codfish roe; not really caviar, but a little salty and very delicious.
Then about two o’clock we set off to walk me to the truck stop so that I can return to Pana in good time for my shuttle to Antigua, and sort of by surprise she decides to go to Pana for the afternoon, too. I am a little glad that she is with me, as this second pickup has no framework around us (some have a sort of peaked roof made of pipe, which I presume is covered with a tarp when it rains) and therefore there is nothing to hold onto. There are just two low benches down each side, and when the truck starts up it is going twice as fast as the first truck – (i.e downhill) – and I am terrified….each twist and turn of the road at this speed seems to threaten to toss me over the side. I have to just hang on tight to the edge of the truck and look straight ahead into the bottom of the truck so I won’t be as aware of the speed. She suggests I look out at the lovely view toward the lake, but then sees I am pretty tense and says, “Just breathe.” Well, I AM “just breathing” and have gone back to my former mind-set of just giving myself over to God, [the back of the Guate chickenbuses are usually painted with signs like “Cuidame Senor” – Take care of me, Lord] but I wasn’t about to look down at the lake. I decide that if I come back again, and I imagine I will, I’m going to take the INSIDE side of the truck on the way down, and maybe even take the position of one of the little girls in this truck, with my back up against the window. So THIS ride isn’t too fun, at least until we get most of the way down the mountain side so I can enjoy the vistas again (usually I love riding in the back of a truck.)
And then we walk back into crowded Pana, in the throes of their big weekend fiesta (replete with carnival rides and shooting galleries.) We walk down the stalls of bagged bagels (unfortunately vendedors here don’t seem to have learned the basic principles of good business and have set all their stalls out one after another with the same items, whether textiles and crafts or food, which of course undercuts prices and bores the customers.)
I find some wonderful fresh homemade bagged potato chips, she gets some hard chunks of almonds drenched in molasses, and on we go thru the maze of streets, looking for the hotel where I am supposed to meet my shuttle. Of course I see 10,000 textiles and carved items and handbags and so forth that I would like to buy, but I am not in the money-spending mode these days. After locating the shuttle, we walk down to the lake, and see that gorgeous sparkling blue entity stretching out for miles and miles, with a few people bathing themselves on the water’s edge below us, replete with soap, and then swimming, and unfortunately the usual flotsam in the grass below us, ten feet from the water. You do see signs around about putting your trash where it belongs, but noone seems to pay attention – but at least that’s a start.
We decide to eat, since it could be seven pm before I get home; but unfortunately choose an Americanized restaurant because it is across the street from my shuttle, and get a not-great meal, but for only $6.
At the restaurant is a whole clutch of young Norwegian women, whom she says – after a brief conversation with them – are going to Spanish school in Antigua and starting to volunteer in a kindergarten; something set up by their school.
Then my shuttle comes, I say goodbye for now to her, and I have another opportunity to spend three very close hours with nine strangers. The girl next to me and I start talking; she is of course going to Spanish school in Antigua and starts tomorrow volunteering in a hospital here where she says babies with cleft palates whose parents can’t afford to take care of them stay until they are three months old and can have the operation! With all my concerns about the importance of touch and about early bonding and it’s affect on later behavior (proclivity to violence, inability to feel empathy, or have good relationships, etc.,) you can imagine how this sounds to me. On the shuttle TO Pana, a girl had mentioned that she had taken a tour of this hospital and that “babies” (she didn’t say what sort or what problem they were in the hospital for) are kept in sort of cages…..! I have been thinking off-handedly about going in to volunteer to hold babies, as volunteers do in hospitals in the US for extra care, but having heard these stories I am determined to go to the hospital this week to learn what I can about volunteering with them until my Spanish gets better.

This second shuttle driver is younger and more reckless than my teacher’s husband, (although at least all these shuttles are enclosed vans – usually appearing and sounding in good mechanical order): at one point he is passing busses on a curve, and I make a comment to the other passengers in the back with me, and a young man sitting behind me speaks up to the “chauffeur” in perfect Spanish asking him not to pass on curves and to take care of his passengers. When the guy doesn’t respond, the young man says, “Did you hear me?” and the driver slows down. The hippie guy sitting directly behind me says to the other man that he has been all over C. America and thinks this is the most dangerous road – way worse than Chiapas. I had heard in that parts of Mexico the drivers are crazy and always thought I couldn’t go there on a bus because of that – now I know I’ve already been through the worst!! Although I would NOT do this trip on a chicken bus. Those guys are insane!As you travel you see wrecked and ruined buses over the edge of the cliffs.
With all of these “possible danger” issues, however, my feeling is that if I’m not willing to take these occasional risks…………what then? Stay in my house all my life? I will be reasonably cautious, por supuesto! But some risks are necessary to see this incredibly beautiful country and to learn more.

All along the highway on my way home are families in the beautiful reds and blues against black or indigo of the traditional clothing, walking back miles and miles from the regional markets. Mothers with wrapped babies, small children, old men…..walking,walking, chatting with each other, carrying things. Such amazingly strong and resilient people!

Back to antigua, and on to San Andres Sematabaj

2008-01-18T10:29:00.000-08:00

The drive back from Copan is pleasant and uneventful. We stop once for a bathroom break and to let one of the group off to make his way by some series of local busses to Tikal. We also stop for dinner about half-way at a decent restaurant with delicious limonada con soda (lemonade is made with limes down this way) but I am so broke by this point that I order only 2 tamales, and have to borrow a bit to cover that. As we drive in the dark I find myself saying, “Ah it will be wonderful to be HOME…” and then realize that I am thinking of it this way, which feels rather nice. And it is wonderful.
~~~~~~~~~~
Although the weekend was full of realizations and information of various kinds, I think two things stay with me strongly: 1) the importance and pleasure of speaking Spanish well enough to really talk to people. 2) Guatemala outside Antigua (and outside of Guatemala City) doesn’t seem nearly as dangerous as the guidebooks and various information on the internet has led me to believe. THAT is important for any future traveling around that I do.

I am also left this morning with the wonderful and well produced CD from the Garifuna man we met, Aurelio Gota (Gotay?) The music is very fast (I believe it’s called Punto, the music and the dance) and vital and his voice is wonderful, and the songs are in the Garifuna language.
What a trip! And did I say that my teacher and I are going back to Livingston for the annual Garifuna celebration in Noviembre?

And then the week goes by in its usual way, and this weekend I leave Antigua to visit my new Subud acquaintance from Norway who lives outside of Panajachel, in a shuttle-bus with three young women, (including one who had traveled to Rio Dulce with us,) my Spanish teacher and her tour-guide husband - having decided not to go it completely on my own, plus they gave me a slightly better price than the other agency – $20 roundtrip. It takes nearly three hours to get to Pana, one more than I thought.
I had forgotten how beautiful the drive to Lake Atitlan is – through agricultural areas almost all the way. Fairly large farms - though they appear to be mostly family-owned - in the flat valley, and then smaller ones on the sides of the hills as we get up into the mountains: primarily cabbage, and corn, with some lettuce and some coffee. Once we get to Pana, and let the three girls off at their hotel, my teacher insists on walking with me to help me find the truck that jitneys people up to San Andreas, where my friend lives. Actually this turns out to be a big help as Pana is larger than I remembered, and is having ITs pueblo celebration this weekend – with thousands of people in the streets. I’m not particularly concerned about taking the “jitney” up to San Andreas, though it’s an open truck, but Milvia wants me to call her on her cell as soon as I get there to let her know I have arrived safely.
When the truck finally shows, on the unmarked street corner, I hop in with two young women in traditional dress, and then one after another a man with a big sack of something, a boy holding a flat of eggs with his mother and his little brother wrapped in her big shawl, several other women and men with some other parcels, show up and climb in. I had chatted with the first women while we waited, and told them I was visiting a friend in Pana (in part, cautiously, to let them know someone was waiting for me), and I greet all the other arrivals, help to load a bag in for the old man, and complement the boy on his sweet “big brothering.” This is all natural for me to do, but I am aware of my actions as possibly easing my being there, and I think they do, tho I did hear the word “gringa” at one point.
Then we take off. I was a bit nervous that this would be a wild ride up a steep hill with dropoffs (one of my big fears) but actually the area along the road is richly green and pleasant, not especially steep and it is beautiful looking back at the lake. Various passengers rap the side of the truck and get off or on at various points. When one man gets off, he picks up his big machete off the floor of the truck and takes it with him. If I had been really worried at any point about the potential for being robbed, I might have worried if I’d seen this; but actually I was quite comfortable from the beginning. I am a little surprised there are not more greetings and adios’ between the people, although they are friendly about jostling into each other as the truck goes around sharp corners, and at one point a woman grabs my leg to steady herself and we have a nice warm non-verbal exchange.
After about 20 minutes we arrive in San Andreas Semetabaj. I had some thoughts that it would be a tranquil Mayan country village, but the street are wide and paved with interesting fit-together blocks of concrete, there are quite a few tiendas, restaurants and so forth, there are lots of people in the streets, there is a new parque, already somewhat littered, and there is water flowing into the street from the mountainside (and last nite’s rain.) Nonetheless it is quiet in comparison to bustling, touristy Pana.
I had not had any response to my email telling her I would be coming, but she had expected me the week before without any communication between us (before I decided to go to Rio Dulce, instead,) so I was pretty sure she would be there waiting for me. Just in case, I have taken some extra money so I could ride back down to Pana and spend the nite in a cheap hotel if need be.
I follow her map carefully but manage to get slightly lost anyway. A nice well-dressed man walking with his kids sets me on the right road….which is actually just a double-track trail down off the paved road, some 500’ to a gate with the sign “Casa del Luz” – the name on her map. I knock at the locked gate and after a moment her face appears……..I am lucky she is there because she HADN’T gotten my email and has no idea I was coming. It takes her a few moments to adjust.
So we spend the rest of the day and evening together and a good bit of the next morning.
I am rather low-key this weekend, fighting off a cold, but for some reason I do very little talking, and she does the majority – talking in particular about her studies for many years now, even when in Norway, of the Mayan Calendar, the Popul Vuh, and various things associated with it. She has sought out Mayan shamen in the Lake Atitlan area, and at an earlier time in Mexico, but doesn’t think too much of most of the ones she’s met because of their focus on blaming other people for the ills that befall one – i.e. black magic. However she has read the work of some Mayan man who became a professor in Mexico, studying and writing on the Popul Vuh (which he said was not a correct translation of Mayan words) which she gravitated to very much, and she has given lectures on the topic in Norway several times. Her vision as she was building her Casa del Luz was that it would be a place where people could come to learn about these things, that she could arrange contacts with local Mayan shamen and visits to villages, particularly for the great numbers of Norwegian visitors that come to Pana and San Andreas because of her Norwegian neighbor and another Norwegian woman who runs a Hospedaje in San Andreas. But I tell her I know several people in Chico who might be interested, as well.
Her place is gorgeous. The land it’s on is not large, but there is a lovely lawn-and-trees area just inside the gate, and two houses which were evidently shells when she arrived, but are now just lovely, fairly simple – somewhat Santa Fe/Taos-looking – homes. Very like the style of most homes in Guatemala, but a little more grand, and she has added wonderful pine wood-framed windows (instead of the metal ones other people use) and beautiful paneled doors. The houses both face the gate, one more-or-less behind the other, and there is about 30’ between them. The view from one house is the lawn/garden (with a big pine tree as a centerpiece) and from the other, higher by 15’, over the wall to the coffee finca beyond and across to the mountains that surround the lake 15 miles away. VERY lovely, and her furnishings simple and very beautiful. She has quite a few citrus trees of various types, banana trees, excellent avocados (I haven’t found any good ones in Guate this time of year,) and passionfruit. I have seen the vines many times, in Berkeley and elsewhere, but never have seen the fruit, much less tasted it. The inside of the fruitskin is spongy/fibrous, but within this is a bed of sweet seeds, not unlike a pomegranate, and you crunch the little seeds inside them.
Since I had been a bit interested to hear about the orphanage that her Norwegian neighbor has started here in San Andreas, she tells me that it has been funded by various Norwegian organizations, who give a lot in Guatemala, and that it houses eight children who are cared for during the week by one Mayan woman with an aide who stays for the weekend when the main woman goes home. The Norwegian woman who started this is married to a Mayan man, and lives next door to my friend with her husband and four Guatemalan orphans, in a rather lovely turquoise eight-sided concrete house. Her husband’s relatives live in three or four shacks on the property. S. also tells me that there is a more traditional Mayan village a mile or more up the road and that we can walk up there to see it next time I come to visit.
My friend has also looked into other projects in this area and says that in general many seem to get started, with great will and enthusiasm, but that few continue; those that do seem to involve more Guatemalans than gringos. She seems to think that many projects just let the government off the hook for taking care of its own people, a philosophy shared by some of my Chico friends. But my thinking is that it is very expensive and requires a lot of expertise to get these projects started: perhaps the best “compromise” is to have NGOs start them, and train people (learning from the locals as well, of course) with the expectation that the government will take them over in time, and certain monies or trades will be locked into that prospect.
However, I have to say that doesn’t even happen in the US….witness my own program which foundered and had to change its really useful focus after the initial funding by the Prop.10 organization, in order to fit into government guidelines for MediCal funding.

So we sit in the garden and then the house, and she talks and talks and I listen. Then we walk down into San Andreas to give me a “tour”. I can’t say the town impresses me much, though it could have its days. It is a rather dark and glowery day today. And the restaurant we decide on is only so-so, but relatively inexpensive. We also walk up to the town cemetery which surprises me in having no statuary of any sort – just rectangular cement boxes with names and dates on them, painted turquoise or rose or white with LOTS of plastic flowers, and some little raised dirt mounds where children are buried. Nevertheless a lovely place with an overgrowth of every sort of plant.
Next - back to the lake, and home again.

Beyond Livingston

2008-01-18T10:18:00.000-08:00

So we leave Livingston to return by boat to our van at Rio Dulce, and stop at another small restaurant along the river, where lunch was offered on the deck next to the water. At this point I was not hungry, had very little money to spend, and was anxious to get to Copan before dark. This is of course the problem with tours, and this one was deficit (though the driver/guide was a wonderful man) in not ASKING us what we wanted to do next. I think all of us would have opted for going straight to Copan, though these “kids” were always ready for a beer. At the same time, being with a tour gave me the chance to speak or at least listen to Spanish nonstop, as almost all the other travelers were better at Spanish than I. In addition, this spot on the river was beautiful, and the restaurant staff congenial and willing to speak Spanish and talk a bit about their lives…….
and we heard again about the difficulty children in this area have in getting to school.
This trip back to the Backpackers Hotel is muy rapido. So much so that the boat starts slapping hard at any incoming waves from other boats and spraying the outside people with water. At one point it gets to be a little too much for this non-swimmer, and I find myself turning around and saying sharply, “That’s enough!” From thereon it seems more reasonable. That is the only point on the trip that I am at all afraid or worried. [Later I learn that our speedy bus driver had been taking his first turn at handling a boat – that information would really have worried me!]
There are some problems when we dock, as the rest of the group swore they had been told that the price of the boat ($26 each) was included in the tour price ($90.)
I had been told it was not, but believed that it was only $10, and am getting so short of cash that it makes a difference to me, too. The boatman begins to look a little worried when the Canadian starts to rant and rave about being cheated and ripped off; I hurriedly get M.C. to make sure he understands that we thought he’d done a good job and the anger is not at him, but at the people who booked the tour. Eventually all is resolved, though I decide to tell my teacher to explain to her husband at the tour agency that people need to know EXACTLY what costs are involved, covered or not covered, as otherwise they will be very angry and OFTEN, as in my case, not bring enough to cover expenses. But everyone settles down after a bit, the pilote gets paid, and off we go again in the van.
The trip to Copan is easy enough though it takes several hours. In general the landscape is more thickly populated and more modern. They take our passports at the border of Honduras, but everything is in order, and on we go and in a 15 min. drive from the border we are in the town of Copan and at our motel.
Maria Cristina and I are roomed together, again, but quickly leave after dumping our backpacks and go to look around the town. The town is bustling at this hour (8 pm or so, although this is confusing as Guatemala had already gone off DST and Honduras has not, so we lose – or gain – an hour) with people sitting in the park or chatting on street corners. We find a cute restaurant with some liveliness to it and go in, whereupon the teenage boys at a nearby table begin dancing outrageously and sort of flirting with us. That is fun, and we decide the culture here is different from Antigua or anyplace else we’ve been in Guatemala. More loose and easy, more friendly, less traditional (and actually there is no typical indigenous clothing in evidence here, of the sort we are used to among the Mayans in Antigua, although a lot of older women are wearing openwork lacy blouses, which might be typical of this area.) It is possible, if this impression is true, that the fact that this is one of few countries in this area that didn’t go thru civil war in the 70s and 80s contributes to the greater modernity and more “relaxed” attitude.
The manager or possibly owner, tho he is quite young, of the restaurant comes over to chat with us, eventually introducing us to his little daughter, who stays with us to talk and play even when daddy goes to take care of other customers. He then brings his baby boy, obviously his pride and joy, over to see us. His wife and other family members or friends are playing cards in the back of the restaurant while the tv shows cartoons for the kids in the group. I notice more and more how M.Cristina’s fluent Spanish makes it possible for her to connect with everyone everywhere we go. A definite incentive for me.
After a quick dinner we leave and walk up the street toward the motel. On the corner we run into the rest of the group, eating dinner in an open-air (screened) restaurant. We join them, although again they are all smoking like crazy, which MC likes even less than I do. When the guide, sitting next to me, lites up again, I take my leave and go over to where some little wild kittens and their mom are rustling around in the bushes outside the restaurant. I come back and beg a few pieces of meat from one of the men and when I throw it to the kittens, they lunge on it in a way that makes me think they are actually starving. Oddly enough, noone else heeds my plea to give up a little meat for the cats, even after I repeat it.
The restaurant is run by two women, evidently a mother and her adult daughter with a baby. They take care of the baby over in a corner, all the while they have some pretty outrageous rock and salsa music playing very loudly.
We then leave the restaurant and I think we are headed for the hotel but the group follows Carlos (the guide) down the street in the other direction, and we follow them, thinking maybe we had gotten mixed up in our directions. Eventually it is clear we are headed somewhere else, and he takes us to a bar in a lower part of the city. The bar plays videos of various American and European rock groups – Rolling Stones, et al – and everyone in our group is in a good mood, friendly, and joking is rampant, in a combo of Spanish and English, but for the life of me I can’t get anyone to get up to dance, so eventually when one guy decides he’s had enough to drink, I get up and leave with him to go back to the hotel. M.C. had already taken her leave early on, deciding the music was too loud for her. After the nite at the Backpackers Hotel, we both sleep soundly despite some noise from the street which filters easily into the hotel through the wrought iron façade.
In the morning MC and I again go walking around town, in part so she can check out a hotel to stay at for the next few days as she ls leaving us here. She finds Hotel La Posada around the corner, a beautiful place with inside gardens, nice rooms, hot water, cable tv and good towels, for $26 per nite.
We learned that the president of the country is coming to make a speech that day, and we ask various people around town, including some men working on the street, whether he is a popular president, which they say he is. We let them know our American president isn’t very popular with us. Everything seems a little low-key for a presidential visit, tho there is blue and white bunting all over, and families and people line the low walls of the park where he will speak. There are also several trucks full of soldiers in evidence, but even that seems easy-going. Of course, this would be more like the governor of a state in the US, in terms of size. But still quite relaxed.
I notice many of the older men in town wear sombreros, and we had earlier noticed different men on horseback, but whether this is for some parade or common behavior, I never learn for sure. One of the men we see is so old, tired and poor-looking, that I think horseback is his usual method of getting around.
We leave in the van fairly early (although there is a mixup because of the time-change) and make our way to the Copan ruins. There is some problem because while the fee is $10 American, by the time we convert the Honduran Limpiras we’d gotten in change for our Quetzals at dinner, we were shorted by a few dollars, but we all just bite the bullet and go in. (Interestingly, the Limpira is named for one of the heroes of Honduras, an indigenous Mayan, whose picture, with long black hair, is on the bill and on many posters.) We get a wonderful Mayan guide of 27 or so who has a capacious memory for details and who enjoys the questions and energy of our group. Copan ruins are famous among the Mayan group for having preserved inscriptions which tell of Mayan social life, the guide tells us, but I’m not clear how this is important, since he says because of the scrambling of stones over the centuries and inaccurate replacement, no one can read the inscriptions. Nonetheless the area is absolutely beautiful and the carved statues of the various numbered kings (“…and 14 beget 15 and….”) are fairly intact and quite wonderful. The guide shows us the various large round stones with channels for the blood to run down, which had been used to sacrifice human beings to the gods. They seem to still hold some power, as I perceive them (at least I correctly identify the one that is an original, not a copy, as are many of the other large carved figures.)
He shows us the ball court where they played a kind of volley ball, 4 on 4, with a big heavy rubber ball which was, he demonstrates, hit with all parts of the body except for the hands and feet. The object was to score with a hit on the two carved standing stones at either side of each end of the court. At the end of the game, the best player was sacrificed to the Gods, and of course every player tried for the honor of being the best. He refers many times to the various kinds of drugs used by the shamen (was that the term?) and kings for visions and wisdom, some of which were also used as anesthetic for the sacrificial “lamb.” He says that in this case, unlike Rome, the common people (who were shorter in stature and had a shorter life expectancy than the ruling class, and lived in a very specific area of the community) were not allowed to watch the ball games (being spiritual in nature, in homage or supplication to the Gods) but they could sit away from the court, and with the incredible acoustics of the area, HEAR the whole game…..even able to tell which player was in action at a given moment. This suggests to me the enormous power of the shamen and kings. In Rome, as I understand it, the emperor had to offer the “games” for the amusement of the people as a way of keeping them in line.

Although most of the tops of the huge “pyramids” have been removed to the museum for protection, the remaining buildings are quite amazing and beautiful, and it is possible to feel something of the size and nature of the original community. The museum cost an additional $5, but we don’t have the time or money; it is also possible for another $12 to go into the tunnels used by the archaeologists in excavating the ruins.
As we leave, after wishing the guide good luck on the exam he has to take for an Anthropology class the next day, (he has to study outside his country because there are no Anthro/Archaeology teachers at the University of Honduras due to budget restrictions,) Maria Cristina takes up a conversation with one of the security guards or assistant guides, an older Mayan man. She mentions to him that although the rest of the group is leaving for Guatemala, again, she will be staying in Honduras and would be back the next day to see the Museum. He tells her that if she wants to take a tour by horseback, he will take her around to the various present-day Mayan villages in the nearby hills. Of course she says she would love to go. She had also found a poster for a butterfly reservation within walking distance of town, so she is set for several days on her own in Copan, before following whatever trail is next for her.
We also learn that one of the reasons for the president’s visit to Copan is because there has been talk of raising the price of admission to the ruins to $180, which worries all the staff and the Mayan communities around the ruins, as they are afraid no one will come any more and their livelihoods will be destroyed. The president is coming to talk to the community about their concerns [what a concept!]
The rest of us pack ourselves back in the van (by unspoken agreement everyone keeps the same seats they first started with, but because MC is leaving, I get her backseat with a headrest and a larger window-opening,) and off we go for the five-hour drive back to Gua City, after converting our remaining Limpiras back into Quetzals with a venderedor at the border, who walks around from car to car with big rolls of bills (and who of course shorts us in the conversion, this time by $12.50, for me.) I’m not sure how to avoid this money loss in each direction, but hope to learn.

Livingston, Guatemala

2008-01-18T10:12:00.000-08:00

Then Livingston. I have imagined it many times, having heard that it has only one street, but it is not at all what I expected. Coming in from Rio Dulce, it looks like many towns along the coast of California, say Moss Landing..…moored sailboats and motorboats, some very fancy homes, and many of the unique-to-3rd world country homes of bamboo and thatch on stilts next to the river. Once we disembark, we stop at the first restaurant we come to on the hilly main street, eat a fantastic breakfast with fresh-squeezed oj (I haven’t found any, yet, in Antigua) on the veranda of the restaurant, and watch the people go by. Next to us, two Hispanic women in the large lacy blouses and loose skirts typical of this area work on laptop computers. It turns out that they are associated with the local project for providing job education for young people in this area, which this wonderful restaurant BACAMAMA exists to benefit.
I am looking everywhere for evidence of the Garifuna people that Livingston is famous for, but they are in the minority on this cobbled calle, although a few black women approach us with photos of women in a little album, asking us to choose a style to have our hair plaited (just like in Jamaica.) Most people walk or bicycle by, but there are a few cars, which we ask about. Evidently there is a daily ferry, on which any cars have to come.
The heat and humidity are really oppressive, but welcome breezes from the river and the Bay are frequent.
Maria Cristina and I have hooked up with the young American man and a woman from Holland for breakfast, and we then start off together to explore the town. The first sight is the concrete basketball court, where many people are spending a lazy Saturday watching the local teams play basketball, not futbol as in the Antigua area. We meander along the usual sorts of stalls and small shops, selling local crafts, food, lots of signs for Liquidas – bottled water and sodas. When we get ¾ of the way down the one main calle (although lots of side roads run off into the residential areas,) I ask our tour guide about the Garifunas – is there a special area where they congregate, or something? “Oh they’re all over,” he says, without much interest, but up to this point I have seen very few black people, proportionately. We pass one large attractive restaurant with the word Garifuna in the name, but otherwise I have seen nothing to indicate the presence mentioned in the guidebooks. I had imagined music coming from one after another open-air bar, colorful costume (though what I’d seen on the Garifuna youth playing music at El Pelicano bar in Antigua wasn’t TOO colorful) and the sort of rich patois I’d heard in Jamaica.
Then we see a bunch of folks from our tour congregating next to a shack on the side of the street, talking with an old black man with a grizzled beard. He speaks English and as we come up he is describing a tour he and his band had made to Holland, and says that they have recently been in New Mexico. The folks in our group from those areas speak up enthusiastically and he engages with them, naming towns they know, and places they are familiar with. I elaborate about this, here, because he looks like an old drunk and I make the snap judgment that he is b.s.ing us about the grand travels of his band. I take the chance to ask him about the Jovenes de Livingston, the group of young Garifuna musicians I had met in Antigua; hoping, really, to connect with them again, here. He says he has heard about them from many people, but he doesn’t know who they are – they must be from Puerto Barrios, on the other side of the river, and just using the name of Livingston – he seems rather scornful. I ask more about the Garifuna influence in Livingston. He says that they have been more and more shoved out of eminence here by the Hispanics, who had “come in with their restaurants and their culture.” Now the Garifuna are a minority in their “own land.” I ask other questions, and he offers to take us on the tour that the tours don’t offer (he says something about that to our tour guide, who is hanging back from this conversation – in English, which he doesn’t speak – but also with some apparent degree of scorn, or desire to distance.)
Five or six of us swing in behind the man – Aurelio Gota – and he takes us (and our reluctant guide) down to the end of the calle, and then along the ocean – because, tho the shoreline along the bay looks the same as along the river, Livingston is where the Rio Dulce meets the bay and then the sea. There is no beach to speak of, and the water is resplendent with some floating plastic bottles and bags, and other wonders made by man. Not dreadful, but not very pretty. We walk along among groups of children playing, a few tiendas offering food or liquidas, people taking their leisure in the cool ocean breeze. Most of these people our impromptu guide speaks to by name, and we of course say Hola and Buenos Dias to everyone we pass. One tienda is playing a CD, and Aurelio says, “That’s my music,” and offers to sell us a CD. I go back to get a cold bottle of water and ask the woman, jestingly, if the music is really his, and she says, “Oh, certainly!” When I return to the group, Aurelio is handing out the CDs and when I take one, I joke with him that I had checked it out and what he is telling us is true. Unfortunately, he takes some offense, even though I apologize and explain to him that so many people try to sell different things to us tourists, and so often exaggerate their value or the story connected with them that we become skeptical.
As we continue to walk along the shore – meeting one white couple (from our tour group,) and few Hispanics, but dozens of Garifunas – he shows us a pink and white mansion on the shore, with a beautiful garden, among the shacks that otherwise line the shores. He says that Nazis, fleeing Germany after the war, settled here and remained for 3-4 years, then disappeared. He says that you hardly ever saw them outside their fortress (which had a two-story tower, as if to look out to sea,) but he remembers them. I ask how old he was then and he says about two. I say I was ten when the war was over, born in ’35. He and the young man we are walking with express surprise, and he said he was born in ’53 (which would mean that any Nazis he saw would have had to be there for nearly eight years.) I am shocked because from his appearance I would have thought he was 75 or so. He laughs and says, “Well I was thinking about courting you, but now I know you are old enough to be my mother!”
He then leads us up a steep meandering path away from the ocean, through backyards and into a house, where he introduces his bedridden aunt – probably a bit shocked to have 6-7 foreigners show up while she is in bed. But she is very gracious and Maria Cristina does her usual charming Spanish thing with her, and we leave her with well-wishes for her health. Then through many more back “yards” – this path reminds me very much of the ones we took off the road in Jamaica. A few children bounce along with us for a way, some teenagers call out jokingly to us, many people look askance. I get the feeling that not many tourists show up here. We then go through a big cemetery with gravestones and some larger edifices a bit higgley-piggley on the varied terrain and also, he tells us, tumbled about by the hurricane last year which demonstrated to the people that they needed to abandon their traditional bamboo and thatch houses and begin to build with concrete. This comment interests me, as it suggests that recent hurricanes have been more frequent or more devastating than previous ones.
In the center of the cemetery, he shows us a huge tree 100 feet tall or so (not many trees in Guatemala reach the heights I’m used to in California) and at least 20’ around with many trunks grown together. He says something lovely about the roots reaching down into the graves and the bodies of the people, which include his parents and a sister, feeding this tree spiritually as well as physically.
He has been talking all along about his attempts, as a leader in his community, to keep the Garifuna culture alive, through his music group, but also through his school. The children come there outside of regular school to learn the Garifuna language, history, music, and customs. At this point he shows us the building where his school is located, although he also says sometimes they meet on the beach. He says there hasn’t been much interest by other agencies in helping.
I ask why the community in general doesn’t take part more in the tourist activities, which is the economic base for most of the country……….why not more restaurants, with Garifuna music and dance? I tell him that tourists come all the way here to see the Garifuna culture, and it’s not in evidence – why not take advantage of this? People could raise pigs and goats and chickens and vegetables to supply the restaurants – everyone could benefit! He says, “I think we Garifuna are a lackadaisical people.” An interesting word to use.
What I see is a people being marginalized in their own town…..second-class citizens. But maybe they don’t care. Maybe they are happy with their lives as they are. I know many Europeans and especially Americans have met this sort of lazy resistance to their efforts to improve the lives of various indigenous peoples around the world, who are actually fine with things as they are, or don’t want foreigners interfering.

Given my rather negative experience with child-rearing where I was in Jamaica, I ask him at one point about parent-child relationships: “Are the Garifuna pretty loving to their children?” I say, ingenuously. “Oh sure, they are! Of course they have to be strict with the kids, a little whipping never hurt anybody! These mothers, they are STRONG,” he says, admiringly,” You don’t mess with them.” I hear in his voice his memory of his mother. So, in my mind, it is the same as what I saw in Jamaica….and for that matter in a lot of areas.
When M.Cristina asks about the Garifunas’ relationship to Africa, he goes off on a heated oration for 5-6 minutes about how the Garifuna are NOT, as is said in the books, decendants of shipwrecked African slaves, and not from Africa at all. He knows that the Garifuna people came from Venezuela and spread up the coast (and it’s true that there are Garif settlements all along Central America on the Caribbean…thru Honduras and Belize, for sure.) I don’t know if he actually believes this – he seems to – or if it’s a concept he uses to help the children of his community feel more proud of their derivation.

He then takes us to a locked-up restaurant made of wood but designed to let the air in, as the thatch houses do. In its dark recesses, on a low stage, are four drums of the type I saw with the Jovenes de Livingston group. He says he made the drums and that they are very different from the Djembes of Africa (which is true – much more primitive looking) and he sits down and plays for his very appreciative audience for a few minutes.
He then stands and says the tour is over. He had said all along that we could give whatever we felt for the CDs (home-executed copies) but when we offer 100 Q for the two we had asked for (pretty much all we had-$13) he is offended and says “For the tour, too!” though of course that it was not free was never mentioned. But we cough up what little more we feel we can spare from what we have left for the expenses we will still encounter. And we walk the short way back to the center of town. We still have 50 mins. until we are supposed to meet the boat, so people congregate on the wharf and some have more to eat and another beer, but I am pretty much out of money.
Next - leaving Livingston