This is more of the 'Hugely Diverse' series where I try to move on from talking about the the trip to the beach to our experience at Lago Atitlan, the huge, high altitude lake in the middle of the western highlands of Guatemala.
Our last day at the beach was low key, more frijoles and huevos and about an hour laying out. This lovely relaxing time was followed by a short jaunt through the mangrooves and a stop in the small town. The first bus of the day was very pleasant as there was hardly anyone else on. The second bus, from Coatepeque to Xela, was the complete opposite and was actually pretty hellish. It was completely packed and completely packed for a chicken bus means pure, chaotic insanity. I'll give you a small visualization: Picture the inside of a normal North American schoolbus and now picture ten people sitting across each row of seats. Not physically possible you say? Apparently it is. Now imagine that there is a person also standing in between each row of seats. OK and then there was me. All of the passenger buses have a convenient handrail nailed to the ceiling of the bus following the center aisle. For about a third of the hour and half ride I hung from that lovely bar. Oh it was a hoot. It is these sorts of bus rides (I have had many but none to such a degree) that make me think there must be a different sort of common courtesy in Guatemala than exists in Canada. Originally, immediately after the novelty of these rides wore off, the thought occurred to me that maybe common courtesy doesn't exist here at all, but luckily I'm an aptly trained anthropologist and I realized that really it isn't the best manners to judge a whole country as barbaric, especially as I haven't seen every single bus and until I have seen them all I can't draw that conclusion with any real academic authority. But I do often ponder the everyday unwritten social policies that I see being implemented here. Vancouver, for example, is one of the most heavily socially policed places I have been and not that I've been many places but I am well trained in the sort of common courtesy they uphold there and in fact I realize that I have even embraced the system wholeheartedly and have become one of the most relentless social cops that I know. Ahem. Yes I am glaring at you. You who appears to be refusing to give up your seat for that mother and small child. No, I will not stop glaring at you, young man who seems to be going home after a hard day of sitting on your ass behind the counter at the bank, until you get off your tush and give her your seat. So here it blows my mind that people will allow for the bus to become so uncomfortably packed. I mean, why? I know that it appears to be up to the driver who is in fact the one making the money and of course will do everything he needs to to get more income in the next twenty minutes, but really it's the people who decide to cram themselves on and stay quiet the whole time. So then it's a matter of choice; people choose to make themselves suffer then. They see the bus is full but they have to get somewhere so they cram themselves on and they can't think too much about the comfort of others because if they did that then they would never get to where they needed to go. So then it's a matter of choice which is an interesting concept here; by this argument people are choosing to stay quiet and uncomfortable and dangerously packed on buses instead of demanding another form of transit. Hmmmm... And who exactly is going to listen to people if they chose instead to make outlandish demands for a safer, more comfortable way to get around? The government? Ha! (again) Ha! These rough, cheap types of services are developed to suit the needs of people that aren't being met. People are poor in Guatemala, that is undeniable and true of 95% of the population. Poor people need to get around too. The government ultimately doesn't give a shit about how people get around or even that they need to so they can't be looked to for answers. When people are poor they get creative and the chicken bus system I think came from these needs. And the buses are actually organized. There are companies and routes and schedules and drivers and ayudnates (the helpers who as the driver drives herds people on and takes their luggage and throws it in the top and gives the driver the most up to date traffic information: GO NOW!). They are so organized in fact that they are the targets of some pretty hefty violence at the moment. Somebody wants something from the bus companies and so far the national press is being extremely vague about who is doing targeting and why. Tons of drivers have been assassinated in the capital in the past month and there have been innocents killed in the cross fire. It is actually pretty scary right now because the crime is escalating and there seems to be no rhyme or reason which makes it difficult to predict and avoid.
Basically, I think that the unique form of common courtesy here is the result of thirty years of civil and dirty war. I think generally people know that to survive while on the road they need to be foremostly concerned with their own safety. They also need to use what systems have developed in this country to do what they need to do and those systems are organic in their form. Being organic means they weren't developed in a fancy office in a foreign firm like many of the public infrastructure systems we have in Vancouver. It means people saw a need and filled in the most efficient way they could without help from the church or state. In this case it was the need for public transit and the solution was to convert cheap vehicles deemed waste by the materialistically excessive neighbor to the north into functional people movers and to plow along frequently and at high speeds.
So though my ride from the beach was crazy, I haven't totally lost my love for travelling by chicken bus and actually the next ride I took on one these demons was to the lake after two days of recuperating in Xela.
The ride to the lake was much more calm. Me and Shira left on a Wednesday. We left kind of late which made for some running around later in the day. We ate breakfast together in a house near the school and our hostel in Xela with a woman named Doña Yoly. She hosts students for family stays and she also cooks breakfasts and lunches for other students and teachers for a small price. It is a lovely way to never have to cook for one's self. I don't know much about her so I can't unfortunately give you much details about her but she is super sweet and cooks up a storm. Meals are three course affairs including a drink and gum to finish everything off and we pay about two dollars for everything. So that was of course a fun way to start the day. We hung out, finished laundry, did some interenting, bought a 'wedding present' for our friends who we were to meet at the lake and packed until we finally left to catch the 1pm bus to the lake. We missed it because of the crazy process that I have to go through to take out money from ATMs since all of my money was stolen. To those I haven't talked to about this: yes my money was stolen from within my account and it is a long boring story that if you really want to hear email me and I will give you the full shake down (basically it wasn't violent, I'm fine and I have money to travel for a bit more and get home). We had an hour to kill at that point and decided to get lunch. We made the most intelligent well thought out decision we could about food and ate right out of a woman's bowl standing next to dozens of moving buses while dogs licked the ground at our feet. I don't remember exactly what we ate there but it was delicious and I'm still here to tell the story. The bus to lake was mixed. It was not full so we had plenty of space and the views coming down on the lake were incredible but the driver was probably clinically insane and drove in a really risky painful fashion the whole way. It was nice to get off and touch solid ground after that one. One memorable part of the trip occurred when we got closer to the town and many passangers had gotten off I brightly observed that the driver was speaking to someone in an indigenous language. I leaned over to Shira and informatively brought it to her attention that the driver wasn't 'speaking english'. Duh. That one got hours of uncontrollable laughter out of us (clearly it doesn't take much with us). Ok I realize that's not that funny to read but just trust me, it was hilarious.
We got to San Pedro, a notoriously druggy hippy town on the lake and had to make haste because we needed to catch a boat to the town where our friends were. According to the rumours we had been subject to the boats only ran until late afternoon and we were approaching sunset at that point so we hustled to the dock and caught a 'lancha', as they're called, right before take off.
Now I want to give you a taste of my first impressions of the lake so as to give you an idea about what would make me want to say something as ungraceful as 'hugely diverse'. Coming from the coast only days earlier into this area was like entering another world. The landscape, the people, the towns, the general vibe were all just so different than anything I had come to know in Guatemala that it was enough to make my head spin and my eyes super wide. It all started with the descent into the lake valley on the bumpy bus ride and that first view of the lake was utterly spectacular. I didn't want to blink and I couldn't really say much else besides 'oh my god' and 'holy shit', as per my usual deeply nuanced verbalized observations. It was like we had been transported into some Mediterranean town in Greece or Italy that we see in magazines. The lake is big and I'm trying to think of something to compare it to... Oh! Imagine a totally round Okanagan Lake. It's big like that. The water is a shiny, perfect blue and steep volcanoes and mountains plunge into it at every shore. As we drove along we saw cultivated fields of growing vegetables that touched the water. There was an interesting combination of tropical plants such as papaya, avacado and palms along with pine and cedar trees. The towns we past through were really nice looking, like maybe there was more money in them for municipal cosmetic upkeep. And the closer we got to the water's edge the less Spanish we heard. There were Mayan languages being spoken all around us. I was startled at point while walking down to the lancha dock that three teenage boys passed us in their cool clothes and M-P3s and with their I'm-a-teenager-I-don't-care walks speaking their indigenous language! I almost cried. To see that in Canada would be like a miracle and cause for celebration. But they were cool about it while I was like shitting myself I was so happy. Then there were the gringos. We didn't see any until we got down to our boat and when a bunch got on with us. I had heard that I was supposed to prepare myself for the gringo onslaught that is the lake. I had heard and been warned and had been preparing myself. But really nothing could have prepared me, it was just something I needed to experience to understand. I hadn't seen the tourists until this point in my trip. I had heard they existed but I until I got to the lake I had been in a very comfortable Spanish-student bubble surrounded by conscientious people who spend their free time reflecting on the effects of globalization and being self-conscious about their position as visitors in Guatemala. I was doing pretty good and was pretty proud of myself for keeping it together until we finally got to our hostel. Me and Shira went up to the attendent at the front desk and quite without giving it a second thought began explaining to him that we had reservations and that we were meeting our friends who had come the day before. This we did in Spanish naturally despite the fact that he appeared not to be native. Nothing could have prepared me for the look he gave and thank god I was with Shira. He looked at us totally stupified, he had no idea what to do. We let the tension hang there for a moment before finally Shira brought relief by asking whether it would be easier in English. Looking back, it is absolutely histerical because as we came to find out there is very little Guatemala in those gringo-geared hostels and they can really become a bubble. Here is this guy who has been living in the bubble for what appears to be long enough to forget that he is in Guatemala completely and in walk two very comfortably Spanish-speaking gringas who need something. Pure shock. I kind of lost it after that and wouldn't shut up about how weird the place was. Poor Shira, she did very well in just letting me get it all out of my system, she had been through it before during her first trip to the lake so while she understood perfectly what I was going through I can't imagine that it was easy to listen to me. The hostel, despite its being in a bubble was beautiful and cheap which is everything we could've asked for. I felt like I had been transported to a Gulf Island. Roghly hewn wooden bedrooms scattered throughout the grounds, a homemade sauna, a common cafeteria that was painted beautifully and hearty Naam-style vegetarian food eaten family style in the evening. Really, we had landed in gringo fantasy land and in a way it was kind of nice despite being so surreal and freaky that we were all kind of losing it. We finally lost it so to speak when we went to the gringo capital of the lake Panajachel the next day just to check things out. We walked down the main street and were just bombarded with stuff. All kinds of stuff, stuff to buy, souveigniers that you can buy to prove that you were in Guatemala at some point for long enough at least to buy stuff. It was positively upsetting. The vendors are from villages all around the lake and they speak more english than spanish and to hear these people come up to us saying the words 'buy' and 'very nice' was sad. But more than sad, it was depressing and stressful. When sat down on the strip to eat lunch at a gringo vegetarian restaurant we watched as child-vendor after child-vendor came into the restaurant to show off their wares to us as we ate deliscious food right in front of them and they clearly hadn't eaten at the very least that day. There was another woman in the restaurant sitting close by us and she was quite nearly the essence of a culturally insensitive gringa. We watched with disgust as she interacted with the children in a way that was mutually manipulative, both trying to get something out of the other. This made all the more gross because she obviously had the power to decide what would happen to the kids. It was just horrible to see and we all kind of lost our appettites. We got back on the lancha to our hostel right after that stressed and overwhelmed. We promised oursleves we wouldn't subject ourselves to that again but during the night, one of our company became gravely ill. Liz (Doyle) had been sick for some time but thought she could somehow get over it but that night it became obvious that she wasn't getting better and that we needed to take action. Well that meant that first thing in the morning we would be going back to Panajachel to get some tests done in the medical center. We were fortunate to have a better experience of Pana that day because we were able to see another side of the town, the slightly less touristy side of the place. Liz was diagnosed with giardia so thank god we endured the trip back to get her fixed. she got some medecation and felt better only hours later. Whew. We had lunch back at the hostel and as we were eating in walks a special character. Weeks and weeks ago my friend Ali from Minneapolis wrote me a note to tell me that a kid from our class in high school was traveling in Guatemala and that he might be in the same place I was and that I should keep an eye out for him. I recognized the name but I couln't place the face so I didn't think anything of it. But while we were sitting there in a hostel in a small town around a high alttitude lake in western Guatemala, in walks this guy named Alex Farrel. Turns out he was hosting his mom and sister for a visit and they were traveling around but that indeed he is volunteering in the town that I am 'based' out of, Xela. Over the next couple of nights we hung out and talked and had the requisit high school remenicences. This Friday and later that night our friend Caitlin joined us and before dinner we went for a walk up the hill to the town of Santa Cruz. It was beautiful but we felt that we didn't want to overstep the tourist boundaries since not many it seems venture up there. We watched the sunset from an amazing viewpoint and were inspired to do an early morning walk around some of the lake the next morening. On saturday we went for an exploritory walk and saw more of the lake. We got to see some of the hippies in San Marcos doing their hippy things. That was just so surreal. A whole town of hippies from North America and Europe who get together in this town and do yoga and drugs and try to 'heighten' their spiritual consciousness while at the same time forgetting completely where they are and losing any trace of sociopolitical consciousness they may have had before they lost themselves in that strange bubble. We spent the rest of the day hanging out and had a minor dance party that night. Sunday was sad. It was my birthday but first thing in the morning I had had to say good bye to good friends. Liz D and Shira were leaving to begin their trip home via El Salvador and Nicaragua. It was sad to see them go because we had so much fun together and we made for good balanced travel buddies, we were able to have fun and also be reflective about what we were doing as gringas in Guatemala. I then had to say good bye to Caitlin who was back off to New York for a interview for law school. Finally with Alex Farrel I went back to Xela to set up shop again. I check the office at the school to see if by chance the package my dad had sent me four weeks earlier had made it and lo! It had! So on my birthday I got to open a birthday present which was really fun. Later, because Alex's mom had brought him his computer, we watched a movie (Slumdog Millionaire) that we bought on the street for two dollars. Then I crashed and I can't remeber what I did the next day (not alcohol related). more later hopefully...
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Hugely Diverse: the beach
I feel dumb saying this but it's just to get me going for a little bit since I have access to the internet for un rato; Guatemala is a hugely diverse country. Hugely. That may not be a word but it is the only thing I can use to describe the range of everything that I've seen. Woah. After 'graduating' from the mountain school which was really sad because I grew to love it so much, me and two friends, Shira and Ramsey (previous blog), went to the beach. We went to a beach that is closer to our school, Tilapita (in case you're into Google Earth), instead of the more popular vacation beach, Champerico, that is further away by several hours. That was the weekend of March 13th. We then went back to Xela for a couple days and me and Shira hit the road again on Wednesday the 18th and went to the lake (Lago Atitlan) to meet up with some other people and to scope out the scene there. In this short span of time I saw a huge range of geographic and social diversity.
We left the Mountain School on Friday afternoon on a bus headed for Coatepeque, the commercial heart of the Boca de la Costa where alot of tropical harvests pass through on their way to larger markets. Within minutes of arriving in that town we jumped on a bus to the coastal town on Tilapa. This bus was really amazing as we came down from the hills into the coastal plains and the real, live tropics. The Boca de la Costa as I've said before is the transition area between the dry, mountainous highlands and the tropics. As we left Coatepeque we entered the tropics and of course I was blown away. Fields of palms, of bananas, plantains, mangos, papaya and other things I couldn't identify whirled by us. There were also fields of nothing , fields cleared for purposes we couldn't identify just by the looks of things. The buildings changed also. As we neared the coast more and more thatched homes appeared. Groups of these thatched buildings were scattered around and once in a while a big mansion with extensively landscaped grounds popped up; the dueños' homes stood out as ostentatious symbols of power and wealth, taunting contrasts to the thatched communties that clustered safe distances away. The communities are located far enough away from the owner's mansions so as not to be nusanes and reminders to the owners but close enough so that the people who live there can get to work easy enough and, in my opinion, be more easily controlled.
In the late afternoon glow, and it was glowing pink and orange and yellow, wqe arrived at the town of Tilapa and made our way to the lancha docks to get to the beach community of Tilapita. We got on our boat and road through a trash-filled estuary for about ten minutes. Still no sign of the actual big ocean. I should mention that we were tensly anticipating the first sight of the beach because this was going to be Ramsey's first time ever at the ocean's edge. It is hard to believe because he grew up in Texas but really it made our trip all the more exciting. So after a little while of cruising through trash and brackish water our little boat entered into something that I wasn't ecpecting: a mangrove forest! Wow it was so cool to be cruising throuhgh the mangroves at twilight. I felt lost and comforted at the same time in the massive adventious root system. They were huge trees and when we saw them, the survival of the coastal towns made a little more sense to us. I thought about Hurricane Stan that ripped a lot of the country apart in 2005 including towns in the interior around Lake Atitlan. Although the hurricane for all I know might not have effected the Pacific coast, seeing those mangroves still made it evident how important they are to the overall structural integrity of a coast line.
We unloaded at the edge of the forest and our piloto gave us a vague point supposedly in the direction of the town and the one hostel on the beach. I don't think anything could have prepared us for where we landed. We walked to what apparently was the street, a wide walkway made of the black sand of the beach. There was a small stroe to our right so we began walking in that direction. A group of people were standing and sitting around in near silence in fromt of a house or store and as we didn't really have a clue as to where we going we asked them and after a couple of minutes they set us straight. We walked back the way we came and then hitched a right down another sandy street. Meanwhile, the sun was doing fabulous things with color and sky and clouds as it set and as we trudged our city legs through the lusciously deep sand. At this point our sense was that we had landed in a small and relatively isolated community on a beach. It felt desolate and dark. There was no music blasting as it usually does in the towns we are accostomed to visiting around Xela. We knew we were in Guatemala but at least I felt far far away from anything I had until then known Guatemala to be.
After a bouple of minutes down the 'street' we asaw a sign for the hotel, Hotel Mar Pacific. We knew the name of the place from our guide book and across the way was a sign for the tortoise rescue organization I had also read about while reading about the beach. The sign was a attached to an empty hut made of some sticks and some wire mesh and thatch. We entered the grounds of the hostel and were greeted by three people on hammocks. The conversation went something like this: 'Hi, we would like a place to stay tonight. Do you all have rooms here?' Without getting up from the hammock, the larger of the three replied 'Yes we do.' 'Uh can stay here? We would like to stay for two nights.' 'Fine'. At this point it was confirmed to us that we had arrioved at a beach and things were going to move at the pace of a beach. After a couple more moments the larger got out of the hammock and began walking toward what we thought would be the rooms. We followed wiothout being asked. 'Ok. Here is what we have'. For the cheaper rate we decided to take a room that had two beds and a bathroom. The sun had gone all the way down and we were going our best to see everything through the dim. We tried to turn on a light but the man in charge said that there might be light at ten, for now there was no electricity. He dissapeared for a minute and then returned with a candle. We set our stuff adown and asked about dinner. There wasn't much on offer so we decided to, in the total darkness, go search out other possibilities. We didn't get to far before I got scared (many of you know I am scared of the dark) and before a young man came running up behind us. He was the son of the man who showed us our room and he asked us where we thought we were going. We replied that we were going to find food and did he know of a comedor or anything nearby. He did know of one but it was really far away and it was dark and well, it was really far away. Good enough for me, I started to head back and took the other guys with me. Beans and eggs and beans it would be for dinner and we were going to like it. While we ate by candle light on big picnic tables in the sand at the empty hostel the electricity would randomly come on. Lights, TV and music, for moments at a time. It was weird. After dinner and listening to the waves crashing on the shore in the not so distant distance we headed in to the room. It had been a long day for all but especially for Shira who had been hiking through the mud at 5am to get from a finca to Columba to meet us to go to the beach. And her intestines weren't treating her so well, she had picked up a bug of some kind at the finca. And there was no door to the bathroom in our room, a wall that didn't make it all the way to the ceiling but no door. The electricity came on a some point and we turned on the fan which provided a night of relief from the heat. But Shira, my spooning buddy, was shivering from fever and the fan didn't help her. At some point in the night we covered her a little more and just hoped she would sleep some. She did but we woke up early anyway.
We got up antsy to get to the beach but also hungry so we went to the front and asked about breakfast, huevos y frijoles. We sensed a pattern in the food options but we ate happily and took a good couple of hours sitting around the table before we finally got dressed for beach time. We wandered sdown to the shore and just kind of stood there in awe of how big the waves looked from our position on the beach. Ramsey was excited to go in but me and Shira warned him not to go to far away from us because, as we were the only people on the beach we would be the ones to have to save him if the riptide proved to be stronger than us and lifesaving was never a skill I picked up and Shira doesn't even like the water as I found out later (another story about our time at the lake...). Anyway we jumped in. We let the waves rattled our bones and tried not to get too far out. We body surfed and dove under the big ones. We lot ourselves be shocked by the force of the tide; we were at its mercy and that morning we obeyed the will of the waves. Me and Shira had the useless goal of getting tan. We dutifully lathered ourselves with high powered sunblock and proceeded to lie in the sun hoping for a healthy increase in melanin production. Really it was just more ironic hilarity, I tell ya it just didn't quit that whole trip. After hours of this lying and swimming and floating and playing (including one us' regular ameoba-induced bathroom breaks) we headed in for lunch, our fave egg and bean combo and Ramsey's complex just-bean combo (note-Ramsey has a very sensitive diet that requires him to eat like a vegan who has an intense allergy to sugar and can therefor only eat beans. That's only partly a joke...). After lunch we opted for a tour around the town with a mission for fresh fruit. We walked down the beach a ways and passed a group of about 15 people digging a large hole. curious but we didn't stick around lond enough to figure it out. We found the only signs of life that we were to see on the beach, dead sand dollars and made our way through the hot sand and into the town. We passed super weird plants that made us feel like we landed on another planet. Has anyone out there ever read Atwood's Oryx and Crake? I like that book and while we were in Tilapita I was constantly reminded of the imagery I saw while reading it. If you aren't familiar with it, it is a dystopic futuristic novel and if you just read the opening scene you will get a sense of how it felt to be at this beach. We even saw crabs later. I bring it up now because that was how our walk around the town felt. There were people around and the ones we came across were very sweet and friendly but there weren't many and they were also a little reserved with us for probably many reasons.
Something that amazing about this area were the cashew trees. We saw real cashews growing on trees. You should look them up on the web if you have a minute because it is a little hard to describe the fruit that is cashew. The tree is beautiful and gets really big. The fruit is red on the outside and bright yellow on the inside. The flesh is squishy and has a sweet, bitter, tangy taste that kind of sticks with you after you're done sucking out the juice which is kind of all you can do because it isn't really something you want to chew. And of course there are no seeds inside of it because the seed is the nut and it grows on the outside of the fruit, on the other side of the fruit than the branch that it grows on.
Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cashew That ought to make it easier...
This was just the beginning of our discovery walk. We spent a couple more hours wandering and looking at the plants and the big pigs that were owned by families but left to their own devices and wandered relatively freely through the town. The homes were thatched of course, some with concrete foundations and other with palm-frond walls. None of the little tiendas sold fresh fruit which was highly curious to us, but they did sell 'manis japones', 'Japanese' peanuts which are sugar coated peanuts that hit the spot after being a little dehydrated. We saw some people come from their boats with fish, a good sign I guess that there is at least some life off that coast. We planted ourselves after a while longer on the shore infront of our hostel and just hung out until the sun set. I found an empty bottle and resolved to put a message in it, so I thought about that. Someone behind us set the beach on fire. That was weird. We looked back toward the homes and there were two big fires going; garbage removal. It was cloudy at this point and we were anticipating a no-show sunset. After sitting there though an enormous swollen, glowing-red ball dipped down from under the clouds and began entering the sea. The clouds provided enough of a shield for our eyes so we could watch the whole process face on. It only took about twenty minutes for the earth to move its face away from the sun before we knew it would be really dark soon. We snapped lots of photos and laughed about the strangeness of our trip to the beach and generally chisme-ed about stuff. It was awesome and I will leave you with this and add more later because I am giong to where ther is no electricity until tuesday...
We left the Mountain School on Friday afternoon on a bus headed for Coatepeque, the commercial heart of the Boca de la Costa where alot of tropical harvests pass through on their way to larger markets. Within minutes of arriving in that town we jumped on a bus to the coastal town on Tilapa. This bus was really amazing as we came down from the hills into the coastal plains and the real, live tropics. The Boca de la Costa as I've said before is the transition area between the dry, mountainous highlands and the tropics. As we left Coatepeque we entered the tropics and of course I was blown away. Fields of palms, of bananas, plantains, mangos, papaya and other things I couldn't identify whirled by us. There were also fields of nothing , fields cleared for purposes we couldn't identify just by the looks of things. The buildings changed also. As we neared the coast more and more thatched homes appeared. Groups of these thatched buildings were scattered around and once in a while a big mansion with extensively landscaped grounds popped up; the dueños' homes stood out as ostentatious symbols of power and wealth, taunting contrasts to the thatched communties that clustered safe distances away. The communities are located far enough away from the owner's mansions so as not to be nusanes and reminders to the owners but close enough so that the people who live there can get to work easy enough and, in my opinion, be more easily controlled.
In the late afternoon glow, and it was glowing pink and orange and yellow, wqe arrived at the town of Tilapa and made our way to the lancha docks to get to the beach community of Tilapita. We got on our boat and road through a trash-filled estuary for about ten minutes. Still no sign of the actual big ocean. I should mention that we were tensly anticipating the first sight of the beach because this was going to be Ramsey's first time ever at the ocean's edge. It is hard to believe because he grew up in Texas but really it made our trip all the more exciting. So after a little while of cruising through trash and brackish water our little boat entered into something that I wasn't ecpecting: a mangrove forest! Wow it was so cool to be cruising throuhgh the mangroves at twilight. I felt lost and comforted at the same time in the massive adventious root system. They were huge trees and when we saw them, the survival of the coastal towns made a little more sense to us. I thought about Hurricane Stan that ripped a lot of the country apart in 2005 including towns in the interior around Lake Atitlan. Although the hurricane for all I know might not have effected the Pacific coast, seeing those mangroves still made it evident how important they are to the overall structural integrity of a coast line.
We unloaded at the edge of the forest and our piloto gave us a vague point supposedly in the direction of the town and the one hostel on the beach. I don't think anything could have prepared us for where we landed. We walked to what apparently was the street, a wide walkway made of the black sand of the beach. There was a small stroe to our right so we began walking in that direction. A group of people were standing and sitting around in near silence in fromt of a house or store and as we didn't really have a clue as to where we going we asked them and after a couple of minutes they set us straight. We walked back the way we came and then hitched a right down another sandy street. Meanwhile, the sun was doing fabulous things with color and sky and clouds as it set and as we trudged our city legs through the lusciously deep sand. At this point our sense was that we had landed in a small and relatively isolated community on a beach. It felt desolate and dark. There was no music blasting as it usually does in the towns we are accostomed to visiting around Xela. We knew we were in Guatemala but at least I felt far far away from anything I had until then known Guatemala to be.
After a bouple of minutes down the 'street' we asaw a sign for the hotel, Hotel Mar Pacific. We knew the name of the place from our guide book and across the way was a sign for the tortoise rescue organization I had also read about while reading about the beach. The sign was a attached to an empty hut made of some sticks and some wire mesh and thatch. We entered the grounds of the hostel and were greeted by three people on hammocks. The conversation went something like this: 'Hi, we would like a place to stay tonight. Do you all have rooms here?' Without getting up from the hammock, the larger of the three replied 'Yes we do.' 'Uh can stay here? We would like to stay for two nights.' 'Fine'. At this point it was confirmed to us that we had arrioved at a beach and things were going to move at the pace of a beach. After a couple more moments the larger got out of the hammock and began walking toward what we thought would be the rooms. We followed wiothout being asked. 'Ok. Here is what we have'. For the cheaper rate we decided to take a room that had two beds and a bathroom. The sun had gone all the way down and we were going our best to see everything through the dim. We tried to turn on a light but the man in charge said that there might be light at ten, for now there was no electricity. He dissapeared for a minute and then returned with a candle. We set our stuff adown and asked about dinner. There wasn't much on offer so we decided to, in the total darkness, go search out other possibilities. We didn't get to far before I got scared (many of you know I am scared of the dark) and before a young man came running up behind us. He was the son of the man who showed us our room and he asked us where we thought we were going. We replied that we were going to find food and did he know of a comedor or anything nearby. He did know of one but it was really far away and it was dark and well, it was really far away. Good enough for me, I started to head back and took the other guys with me. Beans and eggs and beans it would be for dinner and we were going to like it. While we ate by candle light on big picnic tables in the sand at the empty hostel the electricity would randomly come on. Lights, TV and music, for moments at a time. It was weird. After dinner and listening to the waves crashing on the shore in the not so distant distance we headed in to the room. It had been a long day for all but especially for Shira who had been hiking through the mud at 5am to get from a finca to Columba to meet us to go to the beach. And her intestines weren't treating her so well, she had picked up a bug of some kind at the finca. And there was no door to the bathroom in our room, a wall that didn't make it all the way to the ceiling but no door. The electricity came on a some point and we turned on the fan which provided a night of relief from the heat. But Shira, my spooning buddy, was shivering from fever and the fan didn't help her. At some point in the night we covered her a little more and just hoped she would sleep some. She did but we woke up early anyway.
We got up antsy to get to the beach but also hungry so we went to the front and asked about breakfast, huevos y frijoles. We sensed a pattern in the food options but we ate happily and took a good couple of hours sitting around the table before we finally got dressed for beach time. We wandered sdown to the shore and just kind of stood there in awe of how big the waves looked from our position on the beach. Ramsey was excited to go in but me and Shira warned him not to go to far away from us because, as we were the only people on the beach we would be the ones to have to save him if the riptide proved to be stronger than us and lifesaving was never a skill I picked up and Shira doesn't even like the water as I found out later (another story about our time at the lake...). Anyway we jumped in. We let the waves rattled our bones and tried not to get too far out. We body surfed and dove under the big ones. We lot ourselves be shocked by the force of the tide; we were at its mercy and that morning we obeyed the will of the waves. Me and Shira had the useless goal of getting tan. We dutifully lathered ourselves with high powered sunblock and proceeded to lie in the sun hoping for a healthy increase in melanin production. Really it was just more ironic hilarity, I tell ya it just didn't quit that whole trip. After hours of this lying and swimming and floating and playing (including one us' regular ameoba-induced bathroom breaks) we headed in for lunch, our fave egg and bean combo and Ramsey's complex just-bean combo (note-Ramsey has a very sensitive diet that requires him to eat like a vegan who has an intense allergy to sugar and can therefor only eat beans. That's only partly a joke...). After lunch we opted for a tour around the town with a mission for fresh fruit. We walked down the beach a ways and passed a group of about 15 people digging a large hole. curious but we didn't stick around lond enough to figure it out. We found the only signs of life that we were to see on the beach, dead sand dollars and made our way through the hot sand and into the town. We passed super weird plants that made us feel like we landed on another planet. Has anyone out there ever read Atwood's Oryx and Crake? I like that book and while we were in Tilapita I was constantly reminded of the imagery I saw while reading it. If you aren't familiar with it, it is a dystopic futuristic novel and if you just read the opening scene you will get a sense of how it felt to be at this beach. We even saw crabs later. I bring it up now because that was how our walk around the town felt. There were people around and the ones we came across were very sweet and friendly but there weren't many and they were also a little reserved with us for probably many reasons.
Something that amazing about this area were the cashew trees. We saw real cashews growing on trees. You should look them up on the web if you have a minute because it is a little hard to describe the fruit that is cashew. The tree is beautiful and gets really big. The fruit is red on the outside and bright yellow on the inside. The flesh is squishy and has a sweet, bitter, tangy taste that kind of sticks with you after you're done sucking out the juice which is kind of all you can do because it isn't really something you want to chew. And of course there are no seeds inside of it because the seed is the nut and it grows on the outside of the fruit, on the other side of the fruit than the branch that it grows on.
Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cashew That ought to make it easier...
This was just the beginning of our discovery walk. We spent a couple more hours wandering and looking at the plants and the big pigs that were owned by families but left to their own devices and wandered relatively freely through the town. The homes were thatched of course, some with concrete foundations and other with palm-frond walls. None of the little tiendas sold fresh fruit which was highly curious to us, but they did sell 'manis japones', 'Japanese' peanuts which are sugar coated peanuts that hit the spot after being a little dehydrated. We saw some people come from their boats with fish, a good sign I guess that there is at least some life off that coast. We planted ourselves after a while longer on the shore infront of our hostel and just hung out until the sun set. I found an empty bottle and resolved to put a message in it, so I thought about that. Someone behind us set the beach on fire. That was weird. We looked back toward the homes and there were two big fires going; garbage removal. It was cloudy at this point and we were anticipating a no-show sunset. After sitting there though an enormous swollen, glowing-red ball dipped down from under the clouds and began entering the sea. The clouds provided enough of a shield for our eyes so we could watch the whole process face on. It only took about twenty minutes for the earth to move its face away from the sun before we knew it would be really dark soon. We snapped lots of photos and laughed about the strangeness of our trip to the beach and generally chisme-ed about stuff. It was awesome and I will leave you with this and add more later because I am giong to where ther is no electricity until tuesday...
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Diary #1
For the sake of my sanity I'm just going to write. There may not seem to be any sequence to what I am about to put down but I haven't been writing with enough frequency to actually 'catch up' at this point so I'm just going to tell a few stories and hope that there are enough clues for you to chain the links together.
The past three weeks have been a blur, a super fun colorful blur of events and movement and friends. I am feeling really lucky to have met some really amazing people and these past three weeks I have felt more comfortable due to their presence than I have felt since I've been down here. It has been awesome to spend so much time with so many good people. There's Shira, my spooning buddy for when the hostel gets too full and when we're at the beach and there is no sense in spending more on an extra bed. She's a midwestern gone New York and we chisme and laugh ALOT. It's to the point I think where we can actually communicate effectively through inside jokes and references, pretty annoying probably to the outside world. She has eyelashes like the angelitos that float around in our chocolate. There is Ramsey who has been a partner in crime for the past two months, we've managed to have nearly the exact same scholastic itinerary. He's a super-musician-vegan with a well balanced sociopolitical perspective from the generally confused state of Texas. Like a diamond in the rough that one. Esteban, or eh-Steve is the misplaced Chicagoan who unfortunately for us went back to LA last week. Kicking ass at ajedrez and at quite a few tunes on the guee-tar, he kept me alive with his compasion and pee-in-pants sarcasm. I hope he is throwing wads and wads of toilet paper into toilets for us back home. My teacher and confidant Eunice, which is a prettier name pronounced in spanish, has been like a light for me down here too. Even though technically she was my spanish teacher we got along like friends; we are exactly the same age with only countries and cultures separating us. She has two amazing kids who love her like crazy and amazing ideas and energy for her country. It was so inspiring to spend time with her and to talk about the state of the world with her. Her perspective is so refreshing and hopeful that now I have someone to go to when I lose morale for helping the planet.
Last Friday I technically 'graduated' from spanish class, which just means that I finished my scheduled time here at the school. It has been two unbelievable months and of course I can't believe that they are over. Finishing my time here has put me, duh, into a reflective place and I really do need some time to process everything that has happened over this last little bit of my life. I will say that as frustrating as this country can be with the corruption and machismo and lack of social infrastructure I have definitely fallen in love. There have been a few times on the bus from somewhere to another somewhere when I have felt the love most completely. I sometimes get waves of it when I am on a bus in Vancouver as well and the feeling is without a doubt love. Love that comes after the illusions have faded and the eyes see for the first time completely what is there to be loved. The streets, the buildings, the random people doing their random things, the sidewalks, the signs, the plants; all out there. At least three times I've been struck like that here and the feeling is good, like I'm seeing a familiar place with open eyes, ready to accept without judgement and unconditionally. Xela, San Juan, Concepcion Chiquirichapa, San Martin Sacatepequez (Chile Verde), Columba, Nuevo San Jose, Fatima, Coatepeque, Tilapa, Tilapita, San Marcos, San Miguel Ixtahuacan, Zunil, San Fransisco Ixteac; all these places are in like thirty miles of each other and represent a fraction of the country in terms of human experience. It's only slightly overwhelming...
The past three weeks have been a blur, a super fun colorful blur of events and movement and friends. I am feeling really lucky to have met some really amazing people and these past three weeks I have felt more comfortable due to their presence than I have felt since I've been down here. It has been awesome to spend so much time with so many good people. There's Shira, my spooning buddy for when the hostel gets too full and when we're at the beach and there is no sense in spending more on an extra bed. She's a midwestern gone New York and we chisme and laugh ALOT. It's to the point I think where we can actually communicate effectively through inside jokes and references, pretty annoying probably to the outside world. She has eyelashes like the angelitos that float around in our chocolate. There is Ramsey who has been a partner in crime for the past two months, we've managed to have nearly the exact same scholastic itinerary. He's a super-musician-vegan with a well balanced sociopolitical perspective from the generally confused state of Texas. Like a diamond in the rough that one. Esteban, or eh-Steve is the misplaced Chicagoan who unfortunately for us went back to LA last week. Kicking ass at ajedrez and at quite a few tunes on the guee-tar, he kept me alive with his compasion and pee-in-pants sarcasm. I hope he is throwing wads and wads of toilet paper into toilets for us back home. My teacher and confidant Eunice, which is a prettier name pronounced in spanish, has been like a light for me down here too. Even though technically she was my spanish teacher we got along like friends; we are exactly the same age with only countries and cultures separating us. She has two amazing kids who love her like crazy and amazing ideas and energy for her country. It was so inspiring to spend time with her and to talk about the state of the world with her. Her perspective is so refreshing and hopeful that now I have someone to go to when I lose morale for helping the planet.
Last Friday I technically 'graduated' from spanish class, which just means that I finished my scheduled time here at the school. It has been two unbelievable months and of course I can't believe that they are over. Finishing my time here has put me, duh, into a reflective place and I really do need some time to process everything that has happened over this last little bit of my life. I will say that as frustrating as this country can be with the corruption and machismo and lack of social infrastructure I have definitely fallen in love. There have been a few times on the bus from somewhere to another somewhere when I have felt the love most completely. I sometimes get waves of it when I am on a bus in Vancouver as well and the feeling is without a doubt love. Love that comes after the illusions have faded and the eyes see for the first time completely what is there to be loved. The streets, the buildings, the random people doing their random things, the sidewalks, the signs, the plants; all out there. At least three times I've been struck like that here and the feeling is good, like I'm seeing a familiar place with open eyes, ready to accept without judgement and unconditionally. Xela, San Juan, Concepcion Chiquirichapa, San Martin Sacatepequez (Chile Verde), Columba, Nuevo San Jose, Fatima, Coatepeque, Tilapa, Tilapita, San Marcos, San Miguel Ixtahuacan, Zunil, San Fransisco Ixteac; all these places are in like thirty miles of each other and represent a fraction of the country in terms of human experience. It's only slightly overwhelming...
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
The Mine
Well I know that it has been a long time since I have written anything here and that is una lastima (a shame) because I have so much that I want to say but I don't have the patience to sit here at the computer and that has a been the main thing that has kept me from writing lately. There is so much that I want to write about right now but what is most pressing for me to get down on this here site is something about the experience I had on a trip we took with the school the weekend before last.
Two fridays ago the coordinator at the mountain school told us about a trip that the school in the city was planning to a community in a nearby department that is in the process of resisting a mining project. The trip would be long but it sounded like my one opportunity to see a Canadian mining project in action in another country.
The trip began at 5:30 am on saturday morning and as 22 of us students and 5 teachers and staff boarded our microbuses there was apprehension in the air. The organizer of the trip was very nervous about what we were undertaking as she told us it was the first time that the school had gone to this community and the first time that the school was taking a weekend trip to support a community in opposition to a mining project that is still active. We crammed in and prepared outselves for a long journey but it turned out to be even more adventurous thn I think any of us expected. And to be honest I don't think that this journey will ever end...
after driving for about 2 hours we reached the heart of the department (province) of San Marcos and were on the outskirts of the major city with still several hours of driving ahead of us when we pulled over to wait for the other bus to catch up with us. As soon as we pulled over a police truck came up and stopped behind us. They demanded that our driver get out of the car to talk with them and to verify his license. This is when things got tense. Our teacher in the car with us was not hiding here worry and her fear for what might happen. Pretty soon our driver came back to us and told us that they were insisting on following us to our destination which wisely still hadn't been made clear to them. They insisted on following us on the pretense of protecting us fro all of the narcotrafficking in the area. During one of my classes after the trip one of my teachers made the observation that perhaps they were protecting themselves by preventing us from seeing things they are being paid off to keep quiet, like marijuana and poppy farms.
While we waited for the other van the worries floated around the car and some thought we should just call the other van and tell them not to stop while we led the cops back to Xela so they could go to the community without having to drag the cops there too. We ended up just going and everytime we crossed from one district to another we had to wait for the patrols to switch off. We called ahead to the community to tell them our situation and to ask if they still wanted us to come. The contacts we had in the community told us there was nothing to worry about and that it should be fine. OK, so began the police intimidation.
We continued toward the community and as we did the dust became worse. We were inside the cars and still having to cover our nose and mouth so as not breathe in too much dust. The area is high in altitude and very dry.
We finally arrived at the community of San Miguel Ixtahuacan, police units and all. Before we peeled out of the vans at about 10:30 hungry and dusty, a cop came up to our driver and would let us get out until he knew where we were all from. Our driver tried to say we were from a language school in Xela but he insisted on knowing each country we were from particularly if there were any students from Canada (!). Eventually we just said we were from all over and they let us out. Our first stop after a little 'breakfast' (in the end we told the cops we were in the community to see examples of traditional dress and wanted to eat in the homes of real 'guatemalans) was to a home that was structurally suffering as a result of the explosion from the mine which was maybe 2 kilometers away. We walked into the simple home and on several walls were very large cracks in the cement blocks. We went ni to a back room and we could see outside through one particularly huge crack. The cracks were obviously not the effects of poor construction, they didn't follow the spaces between the cinder blocks, they went right through them. We visited a few other houses with similar problems. We then took a walk to one of the eight water sources that historically provided water to the community allowing them indepence from surrounding communities but have dried up in the three years that the mine has been around.
Sorry, a little back ground info on the mine and the project. The mine is a gold and silver mine and of the mountain-top removal sort. Cyanide and water are used in the extraction process though I am not totally sure how or why. The company responsible is Montana Exploradora which is a Guatemalan subsidiary of Goldcorp, a Canadian company based in Vancouver. Excuse my language in advance: FUCK. The specific project that we visited is called the 'Marlin Project' and has been in opperation for four years. The people of the community who hosted us for the day are a group of very special women who represent about 8 out of fifty families who live in the community and are affected in some way by the mine. Eight. That's all. Eight out of fifty families are brave enough to resist the mine. The others are intimidated by acts of extreme violence that have occured in the area since the opening of the mine and others work for the company or have family who do.
So as I mentioned water is used in the extraction process and we went to see a dried up source before taking an excursion to the actual mine site. It was evident by the increase in vegetation in the small area that surrounded the extinguished spring compared to the dry, scrubby southern Arizona-type vegetation that characterized the rest of the area that there should hae been more water nearby and that in the not o distant past there was. This scene was made all the more potent when we got back into the vans to go see the mine itself. Apart for from the expected dry treeless earth that was being moved around by enormous trucks was a huge neon green lake. A lake of a normal color would have looked alien in this environment but the absurdness of its color made us feel like we were in a true apocalytic nightmare (and that night I did have nightmares of the apocalyptic sort).
We talked some with the community and observed more of the conditions they face. There are no paved roads in the area and as a result they live in a dust cloud. You can't believe the dust; it is fine and finds its way into every pore possible. Trees that are used for fire wood wçare stunted in their growth because they are covered in dust; people are dusty, homes are dusty, it's constant and unavoidable. And it's made worse by the enormous earth-movers that go in and out of the community on their way to and from the mine. We were there for five hours and I wanted so much to go back to the smoggy city just to get out of the dust. After driving as close as we could to the mine site we collected money amongst ourselves to donate to a man who had developed cancer in the past two years and then we began the five hour journey back to Xela. We got home at 10pm totally exhuasted and disheartened.
We all met at the school on Tuesday to talk about our trip and what we could possible do to help the community and what we still needed to learn and just to share our experiences of the trip. It was a long meeting but generally fruitful because we were able to organize at least a little and decide what might be possible and within our realm as students at a language school in Xela. This is at least some of what came out of it and if you are interested let me know if you want to know more:
http://proyecto.intodit.com/page/home
The trip had a really deep impact on me and I am dedicated to resisting these mining projects and the companies responsible for a long time to come. A lot of them have offices in downtown Vancouver so I think it shouldn't be too hard to go speak out. Anyone in for some protesting?
My paranoid self hopes that the feds aren't reading this, I know I'm not that great of a writer anyway but this time I left out alot of details intentionally...
OK dudes, more later hopefully.... (ojalá that the next one will not be so depressing)
Two fridays ago the coordinator at the mountain school told us about a trip that the school in the city was planning to a community in a nearby department that is in the process of resisting a mining project. The trip would be long but it sounded like my one opportunity to see a Canadian mining project in action in another country.
The trip began at 5:30 am on saturday morning and as 22 of us students and 5 teachers and staff boarded our microbuses there was apprehension in the air. The organizer of the trip was very nervous about what we were undertaking as she told us it was the first time that the school had gone to this community and the first time that the school was taking a weekend trip to support a community in opposition to a mining project that is still active. We crammed in and prepared outselves for a long journey but it turned out to be even more adventurous thn I think any of us expected. And to be honest I don't think that this journey will ever end...
after driving for about 2 hours we reached the heart of the department (province) of San Marcos and were on the outskirts of the major city with still several hours of driving ahead of us when we pulled over to wait for the other bus to catch up with us. As soon as we pulled over a police truck came up and stopped behind us. They demanded that our driver get out of the car to talk with them and to verify his license. This is when things got tense. Our teacher in the car with us was not hiding here worry and her fear for what might happen. Pretty soon our driver came back to us and told us that they were insisting on following us to our destination which wisely still hadn't been made clear to them. They insisted on following us on the pretense of protecting us fro all of the narcotrafficking in the area. During one of my classes after the trip one of my teachers made the observation that perhaps they were protecting themselves by preventing us from seeing things they are being paid off to keep quiet, like marijuana and poppy farms.
While we waited for the other van the worries floated around the car and some thought we should just call the other van and tell them not to stop while we led the cops back to Xela so they could go to the community without having to drag the cops there too. We ended up just going and everytime we crossed from one district to another we had to wait for the patrols to switch off. We called ahead to the community to tell them our situation and to ask if they still wanted us to come. The contacts we had in the community told us there was nothing to worry about and that it should be fine. OK, so began the police intimidation.
We continued toward the community and as we did the dust became worse. We were inside the cars and still having to cover our nose and mouth so as not breathe in too much dust. The area is high in altitude and very dry.
We finally arrived at the community of San Miguel Ixtahuacan, police units and all. Before we peeled out of the vans at about 10:30 hungry and dusty, a cop came up to our driver and would let us get out until he knew where we were all from. Our driver tried to say we were from a language school in Xela but he insisted on knowing each country we were from particularly if there were any students from Canada (!). Eventually we just said we were from all over and they let us out. Our first stop after a little 'breakfast' (in the end we told the cops we were in the community to see examples of traditional dress and wanted to eat in the homes of real 'guatemalans) was to a home that was structurally suffering as a result of the explosion from the mine which was maybe 2 kilometers away. We walked into the simple home and on several walls were very large cracks in the cement blocks. We went ni to a back room and we could see outside through one particularly huge crack. The cracks were obviously not the effects of poor construction, they didn't follow the spaces between the cinder blocks, they went right through them. We visited a few other houses with similar problems. We then took a walk to one of the eight water sources that historically provided water to the community allowing them indepence from surrounding communities but have dried up in the three years that the mine has been around.
Sorry, a little back ground info on the mine and the project. The mine is a gold and silver mine and of the mountain-top removal sort. Cyanide and water are used in the extraction process though I am not totally sure how or why. The company responsible is Montana Exploradora which is a Guatemalan subsidiary of Goldcorp, a Canadian company based in Vancouver. Excuse my language in advance: FUCK. The specific project that we visited is called the 'Marlin Project' and has been in opperation for four years. The people of the community who hosted us for the day are a group of very special women who represent about 8 out of fifty families who live in the community and are affected in some way by the mine. Eight. That's all. Eight out of fifty families are brave enough to resist the mine. The others are intimidated by acts of extreme violence that have occured in the area since the opening of the mine and others work for the company or have family who do.
So as I mentioned water is used in the extraction process and we went to see a dried up source before taking an excursion to the actual mine site. It was evident by the increase in vegetation in the small area that surrounded the extinguished spring compared to the dry, scrubby southern Arizona-type vegetation that characterized the rest of the area that there should hae been more water nearby and that in the not o distant past there was. This scene was made all the more potent when we got back into the vans to go see the mine itself. Apart for from the expected dry treeless earth that was being moved around by enormous trucks was a huge neon green lake. A lake of a normal color would have looked alien in this environment but the absurdness of its color made us feel like we were in a true apocalytic nightmare (and that night I did have nightmares of the apocalyptic sort).
We talked some with the community and observed more of the conditions they face. There are no paved roads in the area and as a result they live in a dust cloud. You can't believe the dust; it is fine and finds its way into every pore possible. Trees that are used for fire wood wçare stunted in their growth because they are covered in dust; people are dusty, homes are dusty, it's constant and unavoidable. And it's made worse by the enormous earth-movers that go in and out of the community on their way to and from the mine. We were there for five hours and I wanted so much to go back to the smoggy city just to get out of the dust. After driving as close as we could to the mine site we collected money amongst ourselves to donate to a man who had developed cancer in the past two years and then we began the five hour journey back to Xela. We got home at 10pm totally exhuasted and disheartened.
We all met at the school on Tuesday to talk about our trip and what we could possible do to help the community and what we still needed to learn and just to share our experiences of the trip. It was a long meeting but generally fruitful because we were able to organize at least a little and decide what might be possible and within our realm as students at a language school in Xela. This is at least some of what came out of it and if you are interested let me know if you want to know more:
http://proyecto.intodit.com/page/home
The trip had a really deep impact on me and I am dedicated to resisting these mining projects and the companies responsible for a long time to come. A lot of them have offices in downtown Vancouver so I think it shouldn't be too hard to go speak out. Anyone in for some protesting?
My paranoid self hopes that the feds aren't reading this, I know I'm not that great of a writer anyway but this time I left out alot of details intentionally...
OK dudes, more later hopefully.... (ojalá that the next one will not be so depressing)
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Un Día en la Vida
This week I feel like I've settled into a groove here. I have a routine and it is interesting because it has taken this long to fall into one and to be honest I din't think I would ever really find one. Basically when I was thinking about what to write it occured to me that I didn't really have anything more to talk about other than my everyday life here at the Mountain School so bear with me through an everyday play-by-play is.
Even though we are in a rural area there seems to be very little time to sit around and do nothing. Every minute there is something to do.
The morning starts at four with the honking trucks that go down and up the street to take the men off to work in some other town. Luckily I have earplugs so I don't wake up until six thirty to get ready for breakfast at seven thirty. It takes a while to make coffee and sometimes there's a line for the bathroom so I like to get up that earliy though probably I don't have to. With coffee in hand, in a mug I bought at a nearby finca, I walk down to the community of Nuevo San Jose which is about the equivalent to about two city blocks away to eat breakfast with a family. This week I am eating with the family of one of the guys who works at the school, Jorge. Technically it is the mother of the family who is responsible for feeding the students, María is Jorge's wife and mother of seven children. I go into her kitchen which is not part of the original structure of the house but is a crude room built of corrugated metal lamiante at the center of which is a wood burning stove. I sit at a little table in the corner and there is only one other chair where someone sits with me while I eat. Usually it's just me eating because I assume it's like the home of any other busy family where everyone just kind of eats when they get a chance. For breakfast I usually get frijoles and beans and of course fresh tortillas. I chat with María about whetever; Canada, Guatemala, goings ons at the school, past students, ect. Then I head back to school.
This week my class is in the afternoon so I have the morning to do whatever I need to. Usually it's homework, I actually have a lot and I've been really ambitious with learning Spanish. If it's not homework then we are probably making our way to the twon of Columba, the internet... It is here that I get my fruit fix, I buy my usually staples of one pineapple, one papya, bananos, cucumber, zapote and limes. All for about 25Q(uetzales), the equivelent of about three dollars.
We have to make it back to the school in time to go back to our families for lunch. Similar process to breakfast but it probably includes more vegetables. Yesterday I had cucumber salad with egg-dipped-fried cauliflower and of course more tortillas. After lunch I start my Spanish class. Every week we are paired with a different teacher and this week my teacher is Eunice (with four syllables in spanish). She is exactly my age we were born in the same month in the same year. She is amazing, tons of energy and we get along like good friends, letting our hair down and talking about buys. Despite all of our similarities our lives have been very different; she was married at 17 and has two small children, ages 4 and 2. She bagan studying last year on the weekends for social work and I think she is having trouble paying the 1000Q annual cost. A major problem here is that school is officially free but things like books, transit and other costs are not covered and this excludes the vast majority from ever going to school, even primary school. Ay. Our class is four hours long with a twenty mintue break for fruit. After class we have half an hour before we have to head down to dinner with our families. In all of the small breaks during the day I don't even have a chance to sit still. For example throughout the day I did my laundry. Soaking, scrubbing, rinsing and finally hanging to dry.
Dinner is like lunch with veggies of some sort and tortillas and conversation. I am vegetarian but generally people don't eat meat here because it is quite expensive but there is a lot of soy surprisingly, textured vegetable protein. Eggs are relatively cheap too but it is definitely the masa that keeps the country alive.
There was a lot of unsual excitement earlier this week when one of our guard dogs was poisoned. Compa, the dog that has been around since the founding of the school, ate a piece of bread that was left at the entrance that had been poisoned with, what was later discovered to be by the vet, insecticde. We all thought that he was going to die right there because of his age but luckily there is a vet studying at the school right now and she was able to stay on top of the situation. Abelino, one of the directors of the school has a pickup and they left to Coatepeque, the nearest town with a animal clinic, quickly. It was uncertain weather he was going to make it through the night but pretty miraculously he did. He was back the next day and laying in the sun when I left the school this morning.
It was very clear that the poisoning was intentional and the working hypothesis is that our dogs were targetted because they are constantly chasing the motorcycles that go down the road in front of the school. Motorcycles are the ONLY they go after (which might be a little worrying considering that they are supposed to go after suspiscious people). It is like a game for them because they all come from wherever they are on the school grounds to run after every single motorcycle that passes. And they do go after them with determination, I've seen some people have to kick them off as they go by slowly on the bumpy road. Jorge built a gate yesterday to keep them from going out into the road. I was pretty freaked by the attack and I had nightmares the other night about it because it was such a violent way for the community to communicate their frustration with the dogs. That's life in Guatemala, vestiges of war are everywhere...
Even though we are in a rural area there seems to be very little time to sit around and do nothing. Every minute there is something to do.
The morning starts at four with the honking trucks that go down and up the street to take the men off to work in some other town. Luckily I have earplugs so I don't wake up until six thirty to get ready for breakfast at seven thirty. It takes a while to make coffee and sometimes there's a line for the bathroom so I like to get up that earliy though probably I don't have to. With coffee in hand, in a mug I bought at a nearby finca, I walk down to the community of Nuevo San Jose which is about the equivalent to about two city blocks away to eat breakfast with a family. This week I am eating with the family of one of the guys who works at the school, Jorge. Technically it is the mother of the family who is responsible for feeding the students, María is Jorge's wife and mother of seven children. I go into her kitchen which is not part of the original structure of the house but is a crude room built of corrugated metal lamiante at the center of which is a wood burning stove. I sit at a little table in the corner and there is only one other chair where someone sits with me while I eat. Usually it's just me eating because I assume it's like the home of any other busy family where everyone just kind of eats when they get a chance. For breakfast I usually get frijoles and beans and of course fresh tortillas. I chat with María about whetever; Canada, Guatemala, goings ons at the school, past students, ect. Then I head back to school.
This week my class is in the afternoon so I have the morning to do whatever I need to. Usually it's homework, I actually have a lot and I've been really ambitious with learning Spanish. If it's not homework then we are probably making our way to the twon of Columba, the internet... It is here that I get my fruit fix, I buy my usually staples of one pineapple, one papya, bananos, cucumber, zapote and limes. All for about 25Q(uetzales), the equivelent of about three dollars.
We have to make it back to the school in time to go back to our families for lunch. Similar process to breakfast but it probably includes more vegetables. Yesterday I had cucumber salad with egg-dipped-fried cauliflower and of course more tortillas. After lunch I start my Spanish class. Every week we are paired with a different teacher and this week my teacher is Eunice (with four syllables in spanish). She is exactly my age we were born in the same month in the same year. She is amazing, tons of energy and we get along like good friends, letting our hair down and talking about buys. Despite all of our similarities our lives have been very different; she was married at 17 and has two small children, ages 4 and 2. She bagan studying last year on the weekends for social work and I think she is having trouble paying the 1000Q annual cost. A major problem here is that school is officially free but things like books, transit and other costs are not covered and this excludes the vast majority from ever going to school, even primary school. Ay. Our class is four hours long with a twenty mintue break for fruit. After class we have half an hour before we have to head down to dinner with our families. In all of the small breaks during the day I don't even have a chance to sit still. For example throughout the day I did my laundry. Soaking, scrubbing, rinsing and finally hanging to dry.
Dinner is like lunch with veggies of some sort and tortillas and conversation. I am vegetarian but generally people don't eat meat here because it is quite expensive but there is a lot of soy surprisingly, textured vegetable protein. Eggs are relatively cheap too but it is definitely the masa that keeps the country alive.
There was a lot of unsual excitement earlier this week when one of our guard dogs was poisoned. Compa, the dog that has been around since the founding of the school, ate a piece of bread that was left at the entrance that had been poisoned with, what was later discovered to be by the vet, insecticde. We all thought that he was going to die right there because of his age but luckily there is a vet studying at the school right now and she was able to stay on top of the situation. Abelino, one of the directors of the school has a pickup and they left to Coatepeque, the nearest town with a animal clinic, quickly. It was uncertain weather he was going to make it through the night but pretty miraculously he did. He was back the next day and laying in the sun when I left the school this morning.
It was very clear that the poisoning was intentional and the working hypothesis is that our dogs were targetted because they are constantly chasing the motorcycles that go down the road in front of the school. Motorcycles are the ONLY they go after (which might be a little worrying considering that they are supposed to go after suspiscious people). It is like a game for them because they all come from wherever they are on the school grounds to run after every single motorcycle that passes. And they do go after them with determination, I've seen some people have to kick them off as they go by slowly on the bumpy road. Jorge built a gate yesterday to keep them from going out into the road. I was pretty freaked by the attack and I had nightmares the other night about it because it was such a violent way for the community to communicate their frustration with the dogs. That's life in Guatemala, vestiges of war are everywhere...
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Friday Still (the non-political)
The transformation is only just noticable.
Feeling the day turn into night.
Now only a soft shade of pink to remind us of the earlier day.
We can see the clouds now for their true selves, their shapes, their subtle movements: No longer distracted by their brilliant reflection of the long gone sun...
The banana leaves accept the night easily, liquidly trusting the cool breeze.
In moments the valleys will disappear making way for the silent theatrics of lightning bugs
Accompanyed faithfully by the music of crickets growing ever louder in competition with the enduring bassline of evangelicals.
Along with dry wood burning in stoves is the faintest, imaginable
scent of coffee flowers.
Feeling the day turn into night.
Now only a soft shade of pink to remind us of the earlier day.
We can see the clouds now for their true selves, their shapes, their subtle movements: No longer distracted by their brilliant reflection of the long gone sun...
The banana leaves accept the night easily, liquidly trusting the cool breeze.
In moments the valleys will disappear making way for the silent theatrics of lightning bugs
Accompanyed faithfully by the music of crickets growing ever louder in competition with the enduring bassline of evangelicals.
Along with dry wood burning in stoves is the faintest, imaginable
scent of coffee flowers.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
In the Boca de la Costa
Last Sunday I arrived at the Mountain school, another campus of the Spanish school that I am attending right now. It is the rural sister school and it is located in the lush coffee country, west of and below the volcano I wrote about earlier, Santa Maria. After a two-hour ride crammed in a "chicken bus" we got to the school. The change in altitude and climate was noticable immediately; lush, green, humid and warm. I was totally blown away of course like I always am and right away I signed up for another week at this campus, three weeks instead of the original two. The school is located by, supports and is supported by three nearby communities. The nearest access to computers and ATMs is in the town Colomuba, a twentyfive minute ride by 'pickup' down the hill. The school itself is beautiful; the grounds are covered with tons of plants, lime trees, banana trees and other palms, super wonderful lilies, the tropical plants that you buy for your house, neon (not exaggerating) impatients, ferns. Our classes are held in little "ranchitos", thatched huts that hold two people and a desk and chairs comfortably that are scttered in the back. There is a dry latrine which is super fun to use even though there are also tiolets inside. There is a hut on stilts that gives us a view of the photosynthetically productive valleys and hilltops surrounding us. We all live together and some of the teachers stay with us through the week so it really feels like a home that I can let loose in. We eat all of our meals with families in the communities and that has been really fun because we get to see how people live and also get to be a part of the life here in a small way.
We are in the heart of coffe country which is like heaven to me. We are in the "Boca de la Costa", the foothills of the highlands to the east. We are able to fully appreciate the geography and its range of features on our rides into town standing up on the beds of the local taxi-pickup trucks. On the way down we can see the land flatten out presumably until it reaches the Pacific. On the way back up we can see the enormous crater of santa Maria with its regular eruptions and rocky west-facing slope. I don't know if words could do justice to the grandeur of the sunsets we get to see...
So as I mentioned we are in the heart of Guatemala's coffee country and little by little I am learning just what that means. Basically all of this land is divided into coffee fincas. the divisions were made in the late 1800s under the influence of the then president something Barrios. He is responsible for allowing foreign companies and oligarchal Guatemalan "ladino" families to invest in developing the land for export production. This was the beginning of the finca system that continues to permeate and dictate life around here and through the rest of the country. This is the land of the campesinos, people who make their living on the fincas and who either live on them or live in other communities and commute daily or weekly while their families stay at home. I haven't come close to comprehending the effects of this finca system; a system that seems to have been formed by global processes of greed and demand and by local processes of living and surviving. Everything around here seems to be a direct result of the finca. Today we visited a community of exfinca workers who were kicked off the finca on which they lived and worked for attempted to organized to more effectly demand fair pay and humane living conditions. This was in the eightie and since they moved off the finca they have developed their community on land that an American aid institution (Welden?) bought and loans to them. They are now trying to find a way to buy their own finca as they still have to leave their remote community to work. It is absolutely unbelievable. This place that we visited is just one exaple of what has been happening as a result of the finca system and they have eeked out a decent living for themselves because they are exceptionally well organized. Other groups of families (ex and current finca workers) have not been so fortunate and are really struggling to meet their basic needs.
It has been really amazing to see the ways these people negotiated their situation. It seems that a lot of people have turned to foreign aid organizations for material and legal help since the government has a well-deserved reputation of being inaccessable and detrimental instead of helpful. I've also been struggling with the role of the church here which seems to have had a role in putting a lot of these people to sleep as I think I mentioned earlier; there are several situations in which the church, evangelical and catholic, has been an important organizing tool that has allowed some communities to access what they need to survive.
I think I am slowly piecing together the convoluted legal processes many of the communities around here find themselves in. Clearly the judiciary system functions sort of as it does in Canada in its treatment if Indigenous "issues"; it is complex, entangling and systematic oppression. Here though there is a very blatant emphasis on maintaining an essentially passive workforce, sustanence to the oligarchy.
Note: Apparently eight families hold control of EVERYTHING in Guatemala, down to who is let in from other countries to "invest".
The school that am going to right now was developed by some of these ex-finca workers as a way to create alternatives to finca work. It really seems to be an amazing organization that serves as gathering place and an oulet for people who need access to outside help.
I hope some of this made sense. I have been in a continual state of 'blown away' since I got here three weeks ago and I am feeling myself attaching to the land scpae and also to the shit that is going down on it. Ask me questions if they come to you because it would be a great excuse for me to do some research.
I love you all and I thin about you even when I'm not writing you or talking to you. I hope that I am generating some curiosity about Guatemala amongst you because that would be amazing.
over and out love xoxoxo
We are in the heart of coffe country which is like heaven to me. We are in the "Boca de la Costa", the foothills of the highlands to the east. We are able to fully appreciate the geography and its range of features on our rides into town standing up on the beds of the local taxi-pickup trucks. On the way down we can see the land flatten out presumably until it reaches the Pacific. On the way back up we can see the enormous crater of santa Maria with its regular eruptions and rocky west-facing slope. I don't know if words could do justice to the grandeur of the sunsets we get to see...
So as I mentioned we are in the heart of Guatemala's coffee country and little by little I am learning just what that means. Basically all of this land is divided into coffee fincas. the divisions were made in the late 1800s under the influence of the then president something Barrios. He is responsible for allowing foreign companies and oligarchal Guatemalan "ladino" families to invest in developing the land for export production. This was the beginning of the finca system that continues to permeate and dictate life around here and through the rest of the country. This is the land of the campesinos, people who make their living on the fincas and who either live on them or live in other communities and commute daily or weekly while their families stay at home. I haven't come close to comprehending the effects of this finca system; a system that seems to have been formed by global processes of greed and demand and by local processes of living and surviving. Everything around here seems to be a direct result of the finca. Today we visited a community of exfinca workers who were kicked off the finca on which they lived and worked for attempted to organized to more effectly demand fair pay and humane living conditions. This was in the eightie and since they moved off the finca they have developed their community on land that an American aid institution (Welden?) bought and loans to them. They are now trying to find a way to buy their own finca as they still have to leave their remote community to work. It is absolutely unbelievable. This place that we visited is just one exaple of what has been happening as a result of the finca system and they have eeked out a decent living for themselves because they are exceptionally well organized. Other groups of families (ex and current finca workers) have not been so fortunate and are really struggling to meet their basic needs.
It has been really amazing to see the ways these people negotiated their situation. It seems that a lot of people have turned to foreign aid organizations for material and legal help since the government has a well-deserved reputation of being inaccessable and detrimental instead of helpful. I've also been struggling with the role of the church here which seems to have had a role in putting a lot of these people to sleep as I think I mentioned earlier; there are several situations in which the church, evangelical and catholic, has been an important organizing tool that has allowed some communities to access what they need to survive.
I think I am slowly piecing together the convoluted legal processes many of the communities around here find themselves in. Clearly the judiciary system functions sort of as it does in Canada in its treatment if Indigenous "issues"; it is complex, entangling and systematic oppression. Here though there is a very blatant emphasis on maintaining an essentially passive workforce, sustanence to the oligarchy.
Note: Apparently eight families hold control of EVERYTHING in Guatemala, down to who is let in from other countries to "invest".
The school that am going to right now was developed by some of these ex-finca workers as a way to create alternatives to finca work. It really seems to be an amazing organization that serves as gathering place and an oulet for people who need access to outside help.
I hope some of this made sense. I have been in a continual state of 'blown away' since I got here three weeks ago and I am feeling myself attaching to the land scpae and also to the shit that is going down on it. Ask me questions if they come to you because it would be a great excuse for me to do some research.
I love you all and I thin about you even when I'm not writing you or talking to you. I hope that I am generating some curiosity about Guatemala amongst you because that would be amazing.
over and out love xoxoxo
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