No Respite From Itchy Bugbites

This is the season for black flies, a pest with which I was not familiar before arriving in Guatemala, but whose existence I am beginning to hate almost as much as that of mosquitoes.
These are tiny flying insects, who land ever so slightly on any piece of exposed flesh, and using I know not what oral protrusions, sink into one’s flesh, leaving a tiny red welt with a miniscule blood blister at the center. The itching that this small nuisance creates is really no small nuisance at all, but rather the kind of constant annoyance that leads one to scratch their skin raw before they have even noticed they were itching. At the moment, I do not even want to begin to count the number of these bumps on my lower legs, all over my arms and shoulders, my neck, and most importantly my feet. I am afraid knowing the sheer number would only serve to make me more aware of the bites. For the moment, I am trying to avoid making the combination of the punctures and the bruising from my itching on my neck resemble hickies. Other than that, I already appear to have the chicken pox.
Though I am trying to be very zen about this whole buggy experience, observe the pains and the sensations and all that, I really am ready to fumigate the world population of black flies. Just a quick meditation on hostility toward some of God’s creatures, and on how sometimes, it really is just the little discomforts that really get to a person. Though I heartily acknowledge that with black fly bites being the only thing I currently have to worry about, I have too many blessings to count…

New Studies

“María de Guadulupe es la patrona de Santa Anita,” María explained to me as we walked to the tiny, yellow one room church in the center of the community, “she is also the Patron Saint of Mexico. Since both she and that country protected and gave refuge to so many of us during the war, we adopted her as our Patrona.”
December 12 is a national holiday in Mexico, in celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe, who is ultra-important both religiously and culturally in Mexico. She is said to have appeared many times, but most importantly, her image was engraved inside the coat of a campesino man when he appeared to her on a hillside. Later, a church was built to her in that very spot, and the coat itself is displayed inside.
The 12th of December however, is not important only to Mexico as being the Día de la Virgen. At least two farms in this rural area of Guatemala have also adopted her as their patron saint, their protector. For this reason, the 12th of December here in Santa Anita was not a work day, but rather a day of celebration, of fiesta.
It started with a mass at 10 am. The priest showed up from Colomba, about a half hour away, moments beforehand. To perform the mass, he wore jeans and a button up shirt (people here, while traditional, don’t really stand so much on ceremony). At the end of the Hail Mary’s and Our Fathers, there was the wedding, quick, with an exchange of vows, rings, and coins to symbolize the sharing of all of the couple’s worldly goods. She dressed in a traditional handmade huipil (woven top) and he in a button down shirt.
In the evening, the Virgen was brought out on a small platform, carried on the shoulders of four of the community’s youngsters, as we all followed holding candles and singing songs of praise. The two lines in which we were theoretically organized quickly converged into a mass of people meandering along the community’s three ‘streets’, which are actually just the grassy paths along which the houses are located. Some people walked meditatively; I on the other hand, became the perpetual source of flame for a group of teenagers who passed the time seeing who could most blow out each other’s candles. Walking along in the midst of the whole community, accompanied by a guitar and a bass and genuine joy, made me smile as I both participated and observed.
The culmination of the evening, after the chicken and rice dinner sin utensils, was a dance just outside the church. With everyone gathered around an empty dance floor, listening to music, Luis Felipe, one of the community members, took it upon himself to teach me to dance marimba, traditional indigenous music. We danced and laughed and eventually coaxed other people onto the pista. I spent the evening practicing merengue, kicking up my heels and bouncing around with chicos from 8 to 60 years of age.
En fin, there is nothing to put into perspective the wonder of having graduated from college and experiencing life in a completely different surrounding, than spending a Monday night boogeying to Guatemalan marimba, cumbia, and merengue rhythms on a dirt dance floor under a plastic tarp suspended by freshly cut bamboo stalks in honor of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The 1-2-3 steps, the saint’s days, the prayers, the eating rice with just tortillas, involve a very different kind of studying than that I did for finals, but it is equally if not more enriching. They are life lessons, smiles and moments unforgettable. So soak up all you can at Hamilton, those of my dear friends who are there; but know that all sorts of amazing and unexpected adventures await you.

The World´s Many Ways

The clouds in the sky seem to enrich the variable greens that cover the entirety of the community. Next to the peeling painted walls of the beneficio, the drying patio is covered with piles of coffee, laid out on tarps or tin, and covered with corrugated tin tents to protect the parchment beans from the threat of rain. A pair of young men walk by me where I sit on the steps of the “casa grande”, the big house, with my notebook, trying to take in these moments and make some sense of what life is in this unique corner of the world. They carry with them a basketball, their aim the unoccupied section of the drying patio where a hoopless backboard has been constructed for their amusement.
In the background, I hear guitar music and off key singing coming from the grass street over, where today they are celebrating a quineañera, the coming of age birthday for girls in Guatemala and Mexico. It happens at age 15.
Tomorrow, the focus of the fiesta will switch from celebrating a flesh and blood community member to honoring one that hovers over everything, ever-present. She is the patron saint of Santa Anita, the Virgin of Guadalupe. Her like ness can be found in any of the houses here, framed or unframed, drawn or painted or a statue, in some crook of at least one room. In addition, tomorrow one of the community’s couples will be wed in the church as part of the Virgin’s mass. Not a new couple however, Luciana and Obispo have been a couple for decades, but according to her are finally going to honor the union as children of God in front of God. Afterward there is to be a chicken dinner.
Just being here a few days, one learns a lot about the individuals, the community, the country. The father of the quinceañera is working in the states, sending money home which makes possible the celebration, complete with rented plastic chairs and a microphone. While the quinceañera is always an important event, a public celebration is really only possible for those with some disposable income (read: a family member in the states). On the same street, there is an older man who is an alcoholic, a common issue in rural communities. The woman that I eat with has a husband, but he lives on another farm, where he has a second family. His leaving her may be related to her inability to have her own children. Many of this community’s children do not speak and do not desire to learn the indigenous languages native to their parents, a symptom of the continuing racism which exerts pressure even in these bucolic places. Here, I can talk to families native to eight or ten regions on the country, all united by their history as campesinos united on the guerilla side of the 36-year civil that ended in 1996. They are tied together by stories of oppression, by disappeared relatives, by exile in Mexico, and now, by a commitment to work this farm together in hopes of eking out a better future for themselves and the many children running around without shoes, carrying smaller children.
The wedding of tomorrow is to be the first in the community’s eight-year history; something that seems impossible in a predominantly Catholic country. However, Guatemalans in my experience have shown themselves to be profoundly practical as well as religious. Almost all older people in the community have their marido or mujer, but most often, when you really ask, they are united only in a “free union”. They do not have the money, the time, or the attachment to frivolity to marry by the church, despite being deeply religious and traditional. Rather, they recognize themselves as both children of God and sinners, and have faith that God understands their situation whether or not it comes with an official seal. Official seals, by the same token, matter very little, as many people here have only a cédula, or citizens card for identification. Things like birth certificates, passports, and drivers licenses will not be found in any of the corners of the rooms of these houses, no old bank statements or credit card receipts, no filing cabinets with electricity or water bulls. People are who they say they are, or they aren’t, and that’s just the way it is. Either way, they make their lives day by day, absent the paperwork and the formalities we thrive on in other parts of the world.
Being here really does mean just seeing another way to be, where people aren’t rushed, despite there being lots of work to do. Where women spend the day in the house, washing or cooking over fires encircled by cinder blocks. Where the school vacations really do match with harvest time, and there really isn’t anything for the kids to do except figure out how to amuse themselves. Where some member of the family has to stay in the house to watch the store, one of which there is on every row of houses, and where the sales consist of 5 cent bags of chips or bottles of soda, laundry soap or bubble gum. Life moves slowly as the morning turns to afternoon, the afternoon to evening, and the evening into bedtime about nine o’clock. Living here these few days, it is hard to imagine a lifetime of these quiet morning and nights. It feels like I imagine growing up in any community of only 170 would feel, both comfortable and claustrophobic. Comforting to know that it is what people here have chosen, have sought. And I feel like an explorer, coming away with I am not sure what impressions, but with more ideas and knowledge about ways to be in the world than I had before...

Fulfillment through Filling

I sat down on my knees in front of a pile of dirt. Light on the top, the dark moistness was revealed as sections of the two foot tower sunk into themselves as earth was moved underneath it. One, two, three, I swipe a small, black plastic bag over the surface of the mound, opening it up by filling it with soil that soon will nourish baby coffee plants.
I am seated in the backyard of Wilma, a 50 year old ex-guerilla warrior who has lived here at Santa Anita since it’s founding in 1998. She shares the four-room, concrete block house she has here with her partner Roberto, and her two children, Maria and Luis, aged 15 and 11, as well as with two geese, numerous chickens, and a small cat. We periodically offer the chickens small insects we find going through the pile of dirt in front of us.
The project for this week in this household is the filling of 3,000 small plastic bags with earth, arranging them in neat lines in an area fenced with corrugated tin and pieces of plastic. In each row, the small bags are stood up, ready for the addition of the coffee bean that in a couple of months will sprout as a new tree, which in another three years will produce more coffee beans. So far, working for three days about five hours a day, we have filled approximately 1,400 of these little containers.
This seedling project is part of Santa Anita’s strategy to increase production, basically by covering any open space on the farm with more coffee plants. Currently, they produce high quality organic coffee, but the amount of production is so small that it makes it difficult to make ends meet. Particularly with all they have to pay in export taxes, certifications, and then basic necessities.
Sitting on my knees however, and filling these bolsitas, is about the best thing that I could be doing right now. I feel happy and fulfilled, plunging my hands into the soft, dark brown fluff we have just strained through a grid. That process reminds me of sifting flour, creating dirt of a similar texture. We all sit quietly around this pile, watching as it shrinks minute after minute, and our lines of bags get larger and larger. Occasionally we talk about George Bush, whether it will rain, Roberto and Wilma’s exile in Mexico, the primary and secondary school teachers recently hired by the community, the relative prices of automobiles in America and Guatemala.
There is something peaceful, solitary, in this work. Knowing that this is the project for the time being, that when one is tired, they can rest, that it will get done. That I am helping to do it. It gives me time to think about my own connection to stress, to always doing things in a hurry. I realize that being here now, concentrating on the task at hand, without worrying about the future, is part of the lesson that I am learning right now. I am working on being fulfilled by doing just what I am doing, being content. On filling up myself as I fill up these hundreds of tiny little black bags…

The Iguana

La Iguana Perdida is a small hostel in Santa Cruz La Laguna, Lake Atitlan, Solola, Guatemala. The owners are Dave, from Oregon, and Deedle, from England. The staff consists of Amelia, the 26-year old fiercely Canadian manager, Rusty, a 30-year old brit traveler who is newly converted to traveling without moving by working at the Iguana, Jan, more commonly known as Tiny (odd for a giant 35 year old Belgian man), who came here on vacation and has since returned to work. Last but not least is the British dive instructor Craig, who teaches scuba diving in the giant, super-deep volcanic Lake Atitlan.
Ten years in existence, the Iguana got electricity six months ago, but only in the bar, where now a person can buy cold beers. The rest of the hotel is lit in the evening with kerosene lamps. The walkways are lined with aloe vera, lime trees, coffee plants, and exotic flowers. It is one of the few places I have been that has a recycling program for plastic water bottles. The restaurant, staffed by lovely laughing young women from the town of Santa Cruz, serves everything from crepes and French toast to hummus, but no tortillas, only home made bread. Every evening, one member of the staff cooks a three course vegetarian dinner, served family style, with all the guests eating together in the bar. Often, guests are accompanied by locals who just come down to enjoy the company and tasty fare. At least a couple of nights a week, Dave and Dan come down and play silly songs on their guitars and drums, local favorites like “Dutch Girls”, “The Only Gay Eskimo” and of course, “The Chicken Bus” (see Transportation Blog entry for more information on these).
This magical place is made so by a combination of the setting (hammocks, tables and rocking chairs looking out over a giant lack and majestic volcanoes), the people who work there, and the local cast of characters. It is an easy place to get stuck thinking about life, reading, playing backgammon, and enjoying what it is to have deliberately chosen a paradisiacal lifestyle. One is immediately taken in, made to feel at home. A few days and you have learned the names of the locals and they yours, incorporating you into what feels like the neighborhood community that you always wished you had.
It is impossible to articulate the charm of such places, but these are the kinds of spaces that make one take a deep breath, evaluate their life, and realize that anything is possible; you really can make your life what you want it to be. And this would be a damn good place to do it.

Santa Anita

I got down out of the back of the pick up truck, shouldered my heavy backpack, and turned to face the community where I plan to spend the next few days. A handpainted sign read “Bienvenidos a Santa Anita de la Union” (Welcome, basically). I took it for what it was worth, and walked slowly down the dirt path into a hodge podge of buildings in various states and colors, looking for signs of life.
About a hundred yards in to Santa Anita, there is a crossroads. I looked both directions and in one, saw a man clearing the weedy road with a machete, and down the other, a small hill and a pick up being loaded with something or other. I chose the path with the man and the machete, but stopped before reaching him when a boy about three feet tall jumped out from behind a string of bushes and a corrugated tin wall shouting, “Mama! Mama! Una extranjera!”
My foreign identity and large backpack clearly a dead giveaway, I resigned myself to my role as the clueless visitor and waited for the appearance of Clara, a round faced woman about 5 foot 4 with five children in tow. She welcomed me, I explained that I had called, but that upon arriving, I was unsure where to go. She laughed a little, and led me further into the community to “the hotel”. As we walked (not far, as this entire community of 170 people apparently has only about 6 acres of land), we passed a tiny, yellow, one room church, a blue and white pharmacy (supported by an NGO from Madrid, I was told), the beneficio for the coffee, the elementary school, and came upon the hotel.
The hotel has about eight rooms, and I imagine a capacity for 30 or so people. The rooms are simple and cream colored with various chunks missing in the spackled walls. The tapioca and brick checkered floor has the look of being old and dusty even when it is freshly washed. Curtains hung with clothespins cover the square gridded windows. The room where I am staying has five beds and a large television. Just outside is a hand painted map of the community, various rules and announcements for guests.
Santa Anita is a community of 35 ex-guerilla families. It was founded seven years ago. In the three hours that I have been here, I have been reminded of this a few times, quick instances that jar a person into remembering the horrendous and violent history to recent in this seemingly peaceful countryside. The first instance today was when Clara introduced herself and the other community members as ex-combatants. Moments later, I was talking to her children, when one of them, about four years old, came up with a very realistic looking toy gun. I was taken aback by the image of this small child with the model of a very deadly weapon in his hand, surfacing the lives and experiences of his ancestors who are now sharing this seemingly peaceful existence. The next moment was a series of gunshots just outside the window to my room, which caused me to catch my breath and run to the window in time to see a man with a gun running to the back of a pickup truck. Will have to find out more about that pronto.
Here at Santa Anita, I am to eat with families, participate in what needs to be done and learn as much as possible. So far, I am hearing the laughter and patter of running children, breathing hard, screaming, playing. There is a church service going on outside, people enter and leave the small yellow building as both a man and a woman take turns talking about Christ on a microphone. The community bustles as the sun sets on another December day, seemingly the kind of peaceful day these people took up and put down arms for before they arrived here. I hope to have a much better sense of their past, their present, and their aspirations for the future as I share with them a few of these hard-garnered sunrises and sunsets.

Unsolicited Gifts

I am seated on a tiled building fachada on the dusty main street of San Juan la Laguna, Lake Atitlan, Solola, Guatemala. Isn’t that a mouthful? The early afternoon sun behind the building where I am seated causes half this lazy cobbled street to be cast in shadow. The calm is only occasionally disturbed by a bicyclist, a pickup truck, a horse.
The plain concrete buildings that stretch along the narrow corridor vary in shade from cream to sky blue and mint green. Their corroded, corrugated tin roofs give a rusty overtone. It is the hora de almuerzo and from inside these homes, their wooden windows open, comes the clattering of pans, occasional drumming of hammers and woodwork, laughter, and conversation interspersed with both Tzutijul (one of Guatemala’s two dozen odd indigenous languages) and Spanish.
I sit in front of the cooperative office of La Voz que Clama en el Desierto (The Voice the Cries in the Desert). Every once in a while people amble past; an indigenous girl in traditional dress, a couple carrying a bookshelf between them, an old drunk man.
As I sit here and write, I am approached by Leslie, She is eight years old, wearing no shoes and a breathtaking woven skirt, her bright brown eyes shining in her round face. Unabashed, she begins conversations about anything and everything that comes to mind. Where I live, wearing pants, being scared of snakes and scorpions, the woman that sponsors her school supplies, now many stuffed animals we each have, her grandmother. I give her some stationary and an envelope to write someone a letter as we go through my backpack together, carefully removing and examining each part of its contents. We use it to compare our signatures. After a few minutes, she runs inside to grab her two rag dolls, explaining to me that one needs to be washed. After carefully examining them and sharing them with me, she informs me that she wants to give me one. I am shocked at this genuineness, this unsolicited gift. I am touched by her willingness to send with me one of her two stuffed animals, but don’t want to take the doll from her. I am saved from taking away one of her dear toys by the arrival of the man I am waiting for. Leslie and I say good bye, and I promise to find her when I come out of my meeting. I do, we hug and chat a little more. I am moved by the few minutes that we have spent together, and am sure that I will remember siempre just where her home is.
These moments, gestures and connections tend to sneak up on one while traveling, and in life in general. They are the instances that shock me into remembering and recognizing the wonder that is bumping into my own and other’s humanity by sharing smiles, giggles, the twinkling of an eye.
In the end I didn’t take the doll. But the more that I think about, it seems the wrong decision. Somehow it isn’t right to refuse a genuine, unsolicited gift, as it is offered as a means of cementing a connection. Though I will not forget Leslie, or the brief time we spent enjoying each other’s company, if I had taken the doll, each time I looked at mine, or she at hers, we would have remembered each other. I suppose that is why we often try to bolster our memories through souvenirs, through physical reminders. If any of this trip I am going to remember through things, I want them to be of that type. Next time, I will hope to have the wisdom to accept a gift that someone offers me out of their genuineness. I will plan to and hope to exchange something of mine as well, giving us both a lasting token of a moment…