I had to erase my last post because it was too depressing. I didn’t go out Saturday night, it’s ok, we made up for it on Monday night.
I guess I should start out by saying that I’m back in the states now, and we have been since tuesday night at 11:00. The shock isn’t nearly as bad as I was thinking. Life in Guatemala quit being extraordinary after a while, it was just life, the same kind you have here. So life here and life there isn’t disconnected too much, and the transition is only in the images, not the thinking. Well, a little bit of the thinking. I can’t seem to force myself to flush toilet paper. Gross for you guys, normal for me and millions of other people below the line. And the desire to bleach everything I eat. We ate some blueberries today at Hugh’s house, and I felt a little panic after I only rinsed them in the tap. Air that smells like nature is really nice. And sitting comfortably in cars, that’s probably the coolest thing so far. Last night we got in an SUV cab to go to the hotel from the airport and it was like a small house on the inside. I could have slept in there.
Well here’s how it went, in case anyone is interested, but more so that I have something to do before I go to sleep.
Sunday me, Ashley, and Sara, the two other volunteers in the house, went over to Hilda’s for lunch and a jaspe demonstration. Jaspe is the ikat or tiedye technique that makes up the major part of indigenous women’s skirts. She showed us some knots at light speed for a while and then Hilda, her three boys, and us three gringas piled in the back of a truck and went to the market in Estancia- the place where I teach Juana and Dilma and Olga. We actually met Juana out there in the market, and I met her husband, who I was a little surprised with. He was wearing a leather jacket and all greased up, and then there with Juana, who looks like she’s raised 4 kids by herself-which I expect she has. I had no idea her husband was still around, and Hilda kind of rolled her eyes when he walked away. I don’t know what that means, and I didn’t ask. We got our ingredients and went back to Hilda’s house, and cooked the most amazing meal. I’m so glad we ended it on that, it was so worth it. We had marinated steak (churrasco) and mashed potatoes and grilled onions, guacamole, and steamed brocolli, and of course tortillas and tomalitos. Hilda made us feel so comfortable, almost at home, and we helped chop and entertain the boys.
Monday was our last day in Xela. It feels really weird telling it now that I’m in USA mode. I don’t know that I can tell it objectively. Anyway, we ran a million errands in the morning, trying to get everything out of the way for a big lunch we were planning in the afternoon. I bought the pieces for a backstrap loom that I’m terribly excited to try out, and Hugh and I went to Democracia to buy some house plants. One to give Claudia for the AMA house, a little greenery is always cheerful around there, and one for Hilda for the garden of her newish house, though we saw while we were there that her garden gets chicken burrows in it. She had two digging out little holes to curl up in while we were there. We came back and waited for everyone to come home to cook lunch- when Vlad left, he made us all this amazing marinated chicken that Claudia managed to get the recipe for.
I’m having a really hard time writing this. Currently I’m sitting in the Mill Mountain Coffee and Tea in Botetourt, VA. My old home town, even my old job. Right now I’m gazing out over this blacktop parking lot filled with cars, observing the action of two fast food restaurants and a gas station across from all the parked SUV’s. One of the restaurants and the gas station popped up in the time since I was here last over Christmas. Everyone in the shop is wearing a business suit and working on their laptops, and occasionally a middle aged woman in Capri pants and tight shirt come in with their manicures and their screaming kids. I just met a kid I went to high school with and his 6 inch Mohawk, who actually makes a living doing magic. He wasn’t so bad. I guess it all just makes me feel kind of claustrophobic. The coffee is the best I’ve had in a looooong time, but I’m still pretty weirded out. Probably the caffeine doesn’t help. It was really nice to drive here. No busses or pedestrians or 800 people honking and trying to jam me off the road, however that in itself was weird. I’m not scared when I drive anymore. I’ve observed enough of that aggressive/observant driving technique that I think I could see a solution to almost any weird or stupid thing that someone in the car in front of me could do, except that if they’re going way under the speed limit, I don’t think it would be appropriate here to just lay on my horn behind them for 20 seconds. The guy with the computer behind me is playing a game with machine guns and screaming and splattering sounds that I suppose are blood or heads exploding. That kind of stuff gets to me. Violence and disasters I’ve lost my insensitivity to. Dad was watching a disaster show last night where a helicopter crashes onto a sidewalk and I couldn’t handle it. It’s not a toy in a movie to me, I just see the people inside it. I don’t know why that changed, I didn’t see any violence in Guatemala. Maybe that’s why, the time lapse.
The cats! I’m reunited with my cats! I want to say that before I continue more. The did amazingly well while I was gone, even living with their first dog at the Browder’s house. They sat in the car and were so good on the 4 hours back home, and when I let them out, Zy, the sensitive shy one, popped right out and pranced around like “Hey! I’m home! Thanks mom!” He’s spend the first day and a half rubbing on all our legs and purring and he slept with me last night. Lula, the one who’s usually in charge, has spend the whole time growling and hissing and being easily scared. She’s finally at the point where she’ll let me touch her, and even cuddle with me when she knows the door’s shut and there aren’t any other threats around. She tries to nip at my parents though, and will act like she’s going to attack Zy when he come near. Zy just looks at her like she’s immature. They’ve discovered the screened in back porch and spend a lot of time there chasing the birds with their eyes. We also have humming birds here. I love the back porch. I was sad to lose my connection with the sky after losing the patio, but I think I’ll spend as much time back there as possible. It’s humid here, which I don’t like at all, but it’s nice in that the air smells and tastes like water, or like the re-breathed air of trees. I can fill my whole lungs up with it and not get light headed. Also the altitude is so low! I feel heavy, like my head is closer to the ground. It takes more effort to fill my lungs all the way up. And mountains. I grew up in the Blue Ridge, I’ve spent a significant amount of time in the Rockies especially near Colorado, and though I’ve always known they were small mountains, I still considered them a major mountain chain, and thought that their presence affected the road systems, farmland, and grown habits of the community, which it has.. But still. I look at them and think, I could walk to the top of you in probably 30 minutes, you’re no bigger than Baul- the “hill” behind our old house that looks over Xela, which has a trail to the top of it that takes 30 minutes. Then I think, if you were in Guatemala, you’d be covered in corn and houses. A mountain here transplanted there would absolutely be prime real estate for a farm. Then there’s the fact that they’re covered in trees at all. I didn’t see all that many trees there, though there should have been a major forest cover in other circumstances. Hence the reforestation projects I suppose.
I miss families here. Kids here are insane. I just watched a 9 year old girl pick up her 2 year old sister by the hands and spin her around and around and around, in the major walkway of the coffee shop. Also, that same little girl screaming at the top of her lungs and her mom talking to her in her best poodle-voice something about being quiet which was obviously not observed. On the plane here from San Salvador there was a little boy Luie’s age who spent the entire 4 hours jumping on top of the cushion of his seat. That’s no exaggeration. And he only had one volume, which was scream, and I never heard his dad say a single thing, not one word. It’s like they’re the adults, they run the house, they run their parents. And I can’t say enough about the idea of carrying a baby on your body when it’s an infant. I never saw a baby cry when it was on a back, not even after 3 hours on a bus when it’s wedged between its mom and the seat. They don’t fuss, it’s like that’s where they belong. Almost every baby I ever saw in a stroller when I worked in the mall was writhing and wimpering. And babies stay with their moms until they’re school age- which means they come to work with them if they have to. There were 2 year olds running around in Trama and in the libreria I got paper supplies at, and they weren’t little terrors. Everyone looked out for it, and it didn’t get in too much trouble because nobody let it, and it didn’t make a big screaming fit when no one paid attention to it. I don’t know what it is that does that, I think that parents there just really spend a lot of time with their kids doing things that aren’t passive tv watching so the kids just know they’ve got attention so they don’t have to fight much for it. And also I have observed parents not letting them get away with crap when they’re being little monsters. I don’t know what it is. I see an observable difference between families here and there though. Like siblings don’t compete as much, and everyone’s more affectionate, and parents are parents and kids are kids, and I don’t have to deal with bitchy kids there, the parents do. On the plane here I was having to deal with that bitchy kid screaming and jumping all over the place and hitting Hugh accidentally and staring at us. Because his dad sure wasn’t.
I want to go on a hike. I don’t suppose it’s safe for me to do that by myself, especially when I don’t know the trails. Maybe I can get Hugh over here to go with me.
I also was able to leave my computer and bag by itself on the other side of the shop while I talked to my magician friend and not worry about it disappearing. That was nice.
I miss the colors there. Here it’s more natural. Brick and leaves and dark asphalt. I miss teal and hot pink. I miss teal a lot. I miss the chrome flashes off chicken busses. Every time I left the patio I got a new visual show. Constant entertainment and inspiration. And the people. Women in traditional dress. Western fashion is boring.
I like being able to wear a skirt again and not getting harassed. I like not having to worry about getting harassed, though I am more sensitive now to the possibility of it. I’m distrustful of young men of all types. That’s probably a bit unfortunate, and I may get over it.
I still can’t make myself tell the story from Guatemala. It’s too far away. I’ll paraphrase.
Monday night, we had another campfire in the patio and invited our friends from the school. We had Guacamole and nachos and fried plantains, all my favorite foods. When we started the fire we made smores too. Carlos, Luis, and Jairo came soon after, and brought hot dogs that were pretty funny to watch roast. We put on salsa music, and Carlos gave an impromptu lesson in the patio for Sara and Ashley’s benefit. I danced some with Luie, who will be a crazy lady killer one day! Ashley used to swing dance, so she and Carlos hit it off as dance partners really well and managed to turn out some nice moves in just a few hours. I got in my last dance with Carlos, which I enjoyed so much, and took lots of pictures that I’ll post later. It was wonderful, I smiled through the whole damn thing and couldn’t have been happier. All my favorite people in one place, doing their favorite things. It was perfect.
Tuesday morning we left at 6:30, and got to the airport at 10:30, something like 4 hours before our flight left. It was relieving to know we weren’t going to have to rush, so I was ok with it. After four months of riding on chicken busses and microbuses and all the times I’ve gotten carsick in that truck, I finally, in my last hour of ever riding a road in Guatemala, had to get the driver to pull over so I could throw up. That just put the cherry on top. My experience on the roads there was oooooveeeerr. We had a short layover in San Salvador, and then got on for Washington. We didn’t have any problems in customs, though I think I was smuggling products that I decided wouldn’t be a good idea to claim since I’d probably have to pay taxes on it. Well, I’m not selling them, am I?
We got out of everything at 12:00, which was not very late. We were expecting 2 at the earliest. And then kind of figured we’d spend the night at the airport. I know I know, how gross and uncomfortable. But hotels in DC are crazy expensive, and we just don’t have spending money right now. Actually, while we were trying to figure out where to go during this time and calculating costs, we figured out with would cost significantly less to stay in Guatemala for another MONTH than this one night after the airport. Doesn’t matter what we did, bus, train, hotel, cab, it would all be over $150. We sucked it up and got a hotel though. 7-9 hours waiting for Hugh’s parents in the morning was just way more than we could handle in the luggage claims while they were waxing the floor. Just too much, plus we had so much luggage, it’s hard to keep track of making sure nothing goes walking off if we doze off. It was worth it, for sure. Hugh and I spent the morning watching TeleMundo Spanish morning shows, and I had to fight, literally fight, my mouth from talking to the maid in Spanish, though I don’t suppose she’d be incredibly offended. Who knows.
Hugh’s parents picked us up at around 8:30 and we went back to Williamsburg, to the cats, to a nice little house in a nice little suburb, with a nice family who was so happy to have us home and take care of us. I ate blueberries and pork chops and petted a tame, clean, sweet dog that was really happy to see us and slept in a flea-free bed and breathed fresh air. It was nice, but I got stir crazy really quickly. My parents picked me up on Thursday with the cats, and we stopped off in Richmond for lunch and to drop off my smuggled items at AlterNatives, then drove the 3 hours home from there.
It’s nice to be home. For all the reasons I’ve already said and a couple more. It’s surreal and I don’t like so much being in this strip mall at the coffee shop. Everyone’s nice. But it’s weird being around so many white people! I’m so used to being the minority. I didn’t like it then, and I still wouldn’t like it, mostly because people there were not very accommodating to my skin color, but the ones that were were really patient and kind. I think I probably encountered more patience and grace from people working with me there than someone from there would get here. I hope I can give that gift back one day.
I also excruciatingly, heart-breakingly, miss Claudia. I would adopt her into my family if I had the chance. I’m sure mom and dad wouldn’t mind having another daughter, and meg and whit would like her as a new sister. I also hope that I can repay her kindness in taking us into her household whenever she wants or can afford to come to Virginia. I hate that she’s in that house all by herself now. I want her to come here. I miss Luie.
Ok. That’s enough for now. At some point I’ll get the nerve to sum up my feelings about the project. I talk about it a lot with Hugh and the people close enough to me to care and ask questions, and I feel like something’s a little unresolved. I’d like to get it all out in an organized manner, and this feels like a good way to do it. So stay tuned. At some point there’s more to come.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Some things I’ve learned:
The best way to come to Guatemala and expect to accomplish anything is to be completely unprepared for what you’re doing and what’s going to happen.
If you want to run things your way you need to be supplying the money.
Business should be different from charity. If you’re helping people by giving them jobs, treat them like employees.
When someone singles you out from a crowd to molest, don’t take it personally, it’s only because you were closest.
Beauty and ugliness are equally mixed in everything, and if you ignore one I’ll only hurt worse when it inevitably appears again.
Strength of character and responsibility are learned, not instinctive, traits.
It’s ok to be disappointed and want to do more, it’ll keep you working and it’ll keep you honest.
Abandoning anything is not an option, even with the promise of coming back. Be prepared to let it run without you and take the turns that it may or have the strength to kill it yourself.
Be open, alert, flexible, aware of both sides of every issue, non-judgmental, and adaptive.. just in case your plans change.
Protect the people that mean the most to you, even if it means not punching someone that insulted them in the face. Figuratively and literally.
People with good hearts still do shitty things.
People who seem shitty can have good hearts.
Human nature will surprise you. For the better and especially for the worst.
It’s better to walk into a room and assume that everyone likes you, then make relationships from there. At least then you’ll be able to give yourself the chance to change their minds.
Look up, not down. The sky’s much more interesting than your feet.
Sometimes pigeons are cute. Especially when a really old lady wearing a mardi gras necklace like legitimate jewelry keeps two as pets on the counter of her tienda. Especially when they have their own little cardboard box house and beside it a hoard of shiny objects and bottle caps.
Things work out. Usually I have no idea how. A little responsibility and flexibility seems to help.
Nobody knows what you just went through unless they did it with you.
Get over yourself. Get over myself.
The world is not small. It’s interconnected, but it’s not small.
Good hot chocolate can solve alllll your problems.
Some things I’ll be happy to return to:
Potable tap water
Septic tanks
Vehicle exhaust laws
A general respect for women and people of different races.
A personal vehicle
Thai food
MY CATS
Domesticated dogs
Strong coffee
More than 3 pairs of pants, without 2 always being dirty
Dancing that doesn’t need 6 months of practice before it’s presentable
Weaving
Making art for my own sake
A different watch that doesn’t smell bad
Being able to pick out my groceries, rather than asking someone to bring it to me from behind a counter
The best way to come to Guatemala and expect to accomplish anything is to be completely unprepared for what you’re doing and what’s going to happen.
If you want to run things your way you need to be supplying the money.
Business should be different from charity. If you’re helping people by giving them jobs, treat them like employees.
When someone singles you out from a crowd to molest, don’t take it personally, it’s only because you were closest.
Beauty and ugliness are equally mixed in everything, and if you ignore one I’ll only hurt worse when it inevitably appears again.
Strength of character and responsibility are learned, not instinctive, traits.
It’s ok to be disappointed and want to do more, it’ll keep you working and it’ll keep you honest.
Abandoning anything is not an option, even with the promise of coming back. Be prepared to let it run without you and take the turns that it may or have the strength to kill it yourself.
Be open, alert, flexible, aware of both sides of every issue, non-judgmental, and adaptive.. just in case your plans change.
Protect the people that mean the most to you, even if it means not punching someone that insulted them in the face. Figuratively and literally.
People with good hearts still do shitty things.
People who seem shitty can have good hearts.
Human nature will surprise you. For the better and especially for the worst.
It’s better to walk into a room and assume that everyone likes you, then make relationships from there. At least then you’ll be able to give yourself the chance to change their minds.
Look up, not down. The sky’s much more interesting than your feet.
Sometimes pigeons are cute. Especially when a really old lady wearing a mardi gras necklace like legitimate jewelry keeps two as pets on the counter of her tienda. Especially when they have their own little cardboard box house and beside it a hoard of shiny objects and bottle caps.
Things work out. Usually I have no idea how. A little responsibility and flexibility seems to help.
Nobody knows what you just went through unless they did it with you.
Get over yourself. Get over myself.
The world is not small. It’s interconnected, but it’s not small.
Good hot chocolate can solve alllll your problems.
Some things I’ll be happy to return to:
Potable tap water
Septic tanks
Vehicle exhaust laws
A general respect for women and people of different races.
A personal vehicle
Thai food
MY CATS
Domesticated dogs
Strong coffee
More than 3 pairs of pants, without 2 always being dirty
Dancing that doesn’t need 6 months of practice before it’s presentable
Weaving
Making art for my own sake
A different watch that doesn’t smell bad
Being able to pick out my groceries, rather than asking someone to bring it to me from behind a counter
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Starting to say goodbye
This last week here, I have realized some things that I believe are wrong with the world. It's taken me a full 3 days and a day long bike ride to actually quit bitching about it. One day I'd like to write about it, but right now it's still too raw, and can also lead to negative reactions from people who I don't want to hurt. So one day.
As for today, Hugh and I went for a bike ride at 8:00 am and didn't get back till 3! I am super curious how many miles that was, but am a little afraid to ask. up in the dozens of dozens. We met at Vrisa, the english language bookstore that also gives bike tours ever Saturday, and were the only ones that showed up to go besides the two guides. Didn't bother them any, so we headed out. I'm not exactly much of a bike rider, the only ones I've ever had until recently have been cruisers with pedal brakes and no gears, and then after those one with only 6 gears. So first thing was that I had to get Sandra, one of the guides to teach me how to use the gears, as we're riding. We're going down this wide well paved road and I'm already thinking that if we don't get there soon, I'm going to start having some problems. I knew in the first 20 minutes that I was way over my head. Hugh, meanwhile, is up with the first guide, all being athletes and whatnot.
We crossed a river and stopped on the other side, where Rodrigo explained that during Hurricane Stan the water rose and you could see where all the buildings around it were sunken into the ground at bizarre angles. Then he said it was just 15 minutes farther to our first sight, and we set off again. One crazy vertical hill, intense nausea, and many rest breaks later (for me.) we come through the village of Salcaja to see the oldest church in Central America- built in 1524, only a few years after the conquest from Spain and the fall of the Aztecs. From there to this little tienda where they sell traditional alcohol- a sugary thick yellow rum made out of egg yolks tasting like custard, and a Caldo de Frutas, which is really just plain old moonshine. I had to get some moonshine, we've got to celebrate our departure here somehow, and the more Guatemalan, the better.
Then we headed off for Cantel, to see the glass cooperative Copavic. I'm a little confused at this point because Cantel seems to me to be in the opposite direction from the city as where we are. We come out of Salcaja and go onto some dirt roads, which go on FOREVER and take us through corn fields among corn fields. Every time I had to get out and walk, everyone said good morning to me, and when we were riding quickly through, they all said adios. It was nice to be in a good, safe, small place again. The road took us into the cornfields and under the mountains. Cantel is seriously the cloud kingdom. I don't know what it is, you'd think being so close to massive mountains you'd feel low, but you don't. You feel on top of the earth, surrounded by even higher land that goes up and touches the sky. I love it there. Then something like 2 hours riding up and down hills on the dirt road that has disintegrated into gulleys and rocks. Every time I made it up a big hill, panting and sweating and yet smiling somehow, they cheered for me at the top. They were good people. Then we'd take an air gathering break and head out again. Every time we made it up a hill, Rodrigo would say "last one! I promise! From here it's all straight or down!" What a good liar. Hugh, I repeat, is hanging out with Rodrigo up front. Just relaxing, not breaking a sweat. Whoa.
We continued under the mountains for a while, and the road turned into pavement again finally and we got to cruise down for a long time, at some point passing my bus stop where I always get out to go to Juana's house to teach my class in Cantel! I was really excited about this, also realizing that I just rode a bike WAY out of the way to get to a place that usually takes me 30 minutes on a bus. That's an odd and unfamiliar sensation for me. All the way down this spectacular hill, which felt so good and made me so happy, seeing all the things I usually see from behind a bus window. When we got to the bottom, we rode on the curb beside a main road to the Copavic glass co-op. We got there right before they closed and got to see some glass blowers. We were there a year and a half ago, and not much has changed. It would have been nice to get a gift there for some leftovers on my list, but after buying a bottle of liquor, I wasn't about to add even more weight on.
From there we went down an EVEN MORE RIDICULOUS slope off the main road, near a river that I see every time I leave Xela. This one was really two dirt or mud paths cut into the grass by truck wheels, and when it got too steep and crazy, just one path cut by the feet of the people that live there. We passed a field of cilantro where women were picking the crop, and it was so strong it burned your nostrils. We threw ourselves over rocks, with the river on one side and the cliffs from the bottom of the mountains on the other. It was so.. so... beautiful. When I was able to breath and feel things other than my muscles dying loud and terrible deaths, I was also able to think about how spectacular was the place I was in, and how interesting and out of the ordinary was the way I was doing it. It was more fun than walking, admittedly, and closer to nature than I've been in so very long. Plus I was riding through a ravine that I see all the time from the foggy windows of busses, wishing I could explore it. After a long time we got to a natural hot spring, one not very well known, called Chicobix, where I realized I had forgotten my bathing suit. I ended up wearing Hugh's undershirt and an extra pair of shorts Rodrigo brought. It was worth the awkwardness of wearing a strange man's shorts. We soaked in the pool, with the sound of the river nearby and little kids learning to swim in front of us, for about an hour. Talking with Rodrigo about books and movies and life. Then we got out and onto those damn bikes again, and I tried to drag my demolished butt up to the place where we could catch a bus. In the process we walked our bikes over a hanging foot-bridge above the river, which made me REALLY happy. Then we got to Zunil, the location of my FAVORITE indigenous dress. We sat there for a while waiting for the bus and I got to admire the super detailed, embroidered skirts, and one woman who had really elaborate and unusual animals embroidered on her top, many of which I couldn't recognize.
Then a 30 or more minute chicken bus ride back to Xela, locking up the bikes again, rigorously thanking our guides, and trying to convince them that I had an amazing time, was sooo happy that I came, and was so content to have them be so patient and encouraging. It really was yet another defining moment in my time here, and made me realize a few things about how I'd like to live after this. One being that hikes, rides, and general rigorous outdoor exploration is a major passion and source of joy for Hugh, and I'd like to be able to take part in that with him. The other being that this kind of stuff feels really, really good. The whole idea of focusing on your body rather than your head is beautiful. When I got back I felt fresh and alive (miraculously) and happy and content. Not bitchy and weepy like I've been the entire week before. Plus the food I ate and the shower I took were TAN RICO. (so rich.) I'd like to exercise more often after this, if for no other reason than that it makes my brain feel good, not to mention the health benefits and all that whatnot. The last thing I got out of this was a chance to part with Xela. I was in it. I got it up close and personal, and it was beautiful and it was really freaking physically destructive. So I got enough of it to feel full, and also I got the memories of pain that will come back every time I think about Xela, to help me miss it maybe not so much.
As for today, Hugh and I went for a bike ride at 8:00 am and didn't get back till 3! I am super curious how many miles that was, but am a little afraid to ask. up in the dozens of dozens. We met at Vrisa, the english language bookstore that also gives bike tours ever Saturday, and were the only ones that showed up to go besides the two guides. Didn't bother them any, so we headed out. I'm not exactly much of a bike rider, the only ones I've ever had until recently have been cruisers with pedal brakes and no gears, and then after those one with only 6 gears. So first thing was that I had to get Sandra, one of the guides to teach me how to use the gears, as we're riding. We're going down this wide well paved road and I'm already thinking that if we don't get there soon, I'm going to start having some problems. I knew in the first 20 minutes that I was way over my head. Hugh, meanwhile, is up with the first guide, all being athletes and whatnot.
We crossed a river and stopped on the other side, where Rodrigo explained that during Hurricane Stan the water rose and you could see where all the buildings around it were sunken into the ground at bizarre angles. Then he said it was just 15 minutes farther to our first sight, and we set off again. One crazy vertical hill, intense nausea, and many rest breaks later (for me.) we come through the village of Salcaja to see the oldest church in Central America- built in 1524, only a few years after the conquest from Spain and the fall of the Aztecs. From there to this little tienda where they sell traditional alcohol- a sugary thick yellow rum made out of egg yolks tasting like custard, and a Caldo de Frutas, which is really just plain old moonshine. I had to get some moonshine, we've got to celebrate our departure here somehow, and the more Guatemalan, the better.
Then we headed off for Cantel, to see the glass cooperative Copavic. I'm a little confused at this point because Cantel seems to me to be in the opposite direction from the city as where we are. We come out of Salcaja and go onto some dirt roads, which go on FOREVER and take us through corn fields among corn fields. Every time I had to get out and walk, everyone said good morning to me, and when we were riding quickly through, they all said adios. It was nice to be in a good, safe, small place again. The road took us into the cornfields and under the mountains. Cantel is seriously the cloud kingdom. I don't know what it is, you'd think being so close to massive mountains you'd feel low, but you don't. You feel on top of the earth, surrounded by even higher land that goes up and touches the sky. I love it there. Then something like 2 hours riding up and down hills on the dirt road that has disintegrated into gulleys and rocks. Every time I made it up a big hill, panting and sweating and yet smiling somehow, they cheered for me at the top. They were good people. Then we'd take an air gathering break and head out again. Every time we made it up a hill, Rodrigo would say "last one! I promise! From here it's all straight or down!" What a good liar. Hugh, I repeat, is hanging out with Rodrigo up front. Just relaxing, not breaking a sweat. Whoa.
We continued under the mountains for a while, and the road turned into pavement again finally and we got to cruise down for a long time, at some point passing my bus stop where I always get out to go to Juana's house to teach my class in Cantel! I was really excited about this, also realizing that I just rode a bike WAY out of the way to get to a place that usually takes me 30 minutes on a bus. That's an odd and unfamiliar sensation for me. All the way down this spectacular hill, which felt so good and made me so happy, seeing all the things I usually see from behind a bus window. When we got to the bottom, we rode on the curb beside a main road to the Copavic glass co-op. We got there right before they closed and got to see some glass blowers. We were there a year and a half ago, and not much has changed. It would have been nice to get a gift there for some leftovers on my list, but after buying a bottle of liquor, I wasn't about to add even more weight on.
From there we went down an EVEN MORE RIDICULOUS slope off the main road, near a river that I see every time I leave Xela. This one was really two dirt or mud paths cut into the grass by truck wheels, and when it got too steep and crazy, just one path cut by the feet of the people that live there. We passed a field of cilantro where women were picking the crop, and it was so strong it burned your nostrils. We threw ourselves over rocks, with the river on one side and the cliffs from the bottom of the mountains on the other. It was so.. so... beautiful. When I was able to breath and feel things other than my muscles dying loud and terrible deaths, I was also able to think about how spectacular was the place I was in, and how interesting and out of the ordinary was the way I was doing it. It was more fun than walking, admittedly, and closer to nature than I've been in so very long. Plus I was riding through a ravine that I see all the time from the foggy windows of busses, wishing I could explore it. After a long time we got to a natural hot spring, one not very well known, called Chicobix, where I realized I had forgotten my bathing suit. I ended up wearing Hugh's undershirt and an extra pair of shorts Rodrigo brought. It was worth the awkwardness of wearing a strange man's shorts. We soaked in the pool, with the sound of the river nearby and little kids learning to swim in front of us, for about an hour. Talking with Rodrigo about books and movies and life. Then we got out and onto those damn bikes again, and I tried to drag my demolished butt up to the place where we could catch a bus. In the process we walked our bikes over a hanging foot-bridge above the river, which made me REALLY happy. Then we got to Zunil, the location of my FAVORITE indigenous dress. We sat there for a while waiting for the bus and I got to admire the super detailed, embroidered skirts, and one woman who had really elaborate and unusual animals embroidered on her top, many of which I couldn't recognize.
Then a 30 or more minute chicken bus ride back to Xela, locking up the bikes again, rigorously thanking our guides, and trying to convince them that I had an amazing time, was sooo happy that I came, and was so content to have them be so patient and encouraging. It really was yet another defining moment in my time here, and made me realize a few things about how I'd like to live after this. One being that hikes, rides, and general rigorous outdoor exploration is a major passion and source of joy for Hugh, and I'd like to be able to take part in that with him. The other being that this kind of stuff feels really, really good. The whole idea of focusing on your body rather than your head is beautiful. When I got back I felt fresh and alive (miraculously) and happy and content. Not bitchy and weepy like I've been the entire week before. Plus the food I ate and the shower I took were TAN RICO. (so rich.) I'd like to exercise more often after this, if for no other reason than that it makes my brain feel good, not to mention the health benefits and all that whatnot. The last thing I got out of this was a chance to part with Xela. I was in it. I got it up close and personal, and it was beautiful and it was really freaking physically destructive. So I got enough of it to feel full, and also I got the memories of pain that will come back every time I think about Xela, to help me miss it maybe not so much.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
17 days left
I'm terrified.
Sometimes when I wake up early in the mornings, I think I'm already back in the states feeling like I'm still in Guatemala, and I feel strange for knowing that the last major part of my life is only memories. Then I really wake up and realize I'm still here, and I realize how much I'm dreading losing the reality of it. I don't want for this whole time to only be memories and pictures and souvenirs. Doesn't it deserve more than that? I hate having an awareness of great moments in my life. I hate the awareness that everything's moving away from where I was last. I don't mind the moving, I mind the cognizance. I should probably be happy for it, since it gives me a vivid and long-reaching memory, but it gives me pain for the unavoidableness of "The End." Who doesn't feel that kind of force, though. It's like the universe is about to shift. It's not going to be until 17 days from now till I really know where and how I've changed, if it's for the better, if it's something I"ll need to recover from. The anticipation is killing me inside, and there's no way for me to differentiate between the hope and the dread. I don't have a life here. I could never stay, and I would never want to. I am in need of going home. I have to go home- an internal psychological obligation compels me. But I am not ready. What an escape from reality this has been, and face plant into the concrete it will be.
1. jobless
2. homeless
3. without the comfort or security of my life's savings
4. pursuing a profession that is all I want and next to impossible to attain
5. forgetful of american culture and unwilling (at this point) to re-assimilate
6. far away from hugh
7. worlds away from my home here
I have a home here.
Sometimes when I wake up early in the mornings, I think I'm already back in the states feeling like I'm still in Guatemala, and I feel strange for knowing that the last major part of my life is only memories. Then I really wake up and realize I'm still here, and I realize how much I'm dreading losing the reality of it. I don't want for this whole time to only be memories and pictures and souvenirs. Doesn't it deserve more than that? I hate having an awareness of great moments in my life. I hate the awareness that everything's moving away from where I was last. I don't mind the moving, I mind the cognizance. I should probably be happy for it, since it gives me a vivid and long-reaching memory, but it gives me pain for the unavoidableness of "The End." Who doesn't feel that kind of force, though. It's like the universe is about to shift. It's not going to be until 17 days from now till I really know where and how I've changed, if it's for the better, if it's something I"ll need to recover from. The anticipation is killing me inside, and there's no way for me to differentiate between the hope and the dread. I don't have a life here. I could never stay, and I would never want to. I am in need of going home. I have to go home- an internal psychological obligation compels me. But I am not ready. What an escape from reality this has been, and face plant into the concrete it will be.
1. jobless
2. homeless
3. without the comfort or security of my life's savings
4. pursuing a profession that is all I want and next to impossible to attain
5. forgetful of american culture and unwilling (at this point) to re-assimilate
6. far away from hugh
7. worlds away from my home here
I have a home here.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Volunteers
Wellll. It's pretty late for me (past 10 PM!? what am I, still a teenager? My butt should be in bed by now!) but if I'm in the mood, I've got to write or else I won't do it later, it seems.
Last Saturday AMA picked up some new volunteers: 1st is a woman from Virginia who wanted to come with the groups but couldn't work it out with her schedule, so she came by herself. Hilda and a driver in the truck picked her up at the airport and she's been staying in the house in the room Lupe used to be in. She's a 7th grade civics teacher in the DC area, and has plenty of pluck, as Hugh puts it. She's really just normal. Everything you'd expect a 7th grade civics teacher to be except that she's not phased at all by Guatemala, has a good sense of humor about the things that are annoying, and is one of the more adaptable 50 year olds I've met. Oh yeah, her name's Bonnie. Bonnie wanted to help with the kids in the MAP program, so she's been tagging along with Dilma (the new art teacher we hired, and my old student) to the schools with her on her first week of working with the kids (Dilma was only just hired.) Hugh's also been tagging along as translator. She actually knows sufficient Spanish to function, but it seems like having someone fluent is better for everyone, plus he likes going. They've come back with lots of stories of well, and poorly behaved kids. Smart kids, dumb kids, manipulative kids, and I hear a lot about runny noses. Bonnie and Hugh are also really pleased with Dilma, even with it being her first week of work. Ben expressed reservations to me about hiring her because she was so quite and calm, thinking that she wouldn't be able to entertain a classroom, and that she'd be too dull to latch on to the project, which was wrong wrong wrong wrong, and I have pain for it. I tried to tell them that she was super smart, and expressed to Lupe that maybe it was a better idea to have someone calm and collected in a classroom full of screaming kids with paintbrushes than one that's egging them on, which seemed to sooth her at the time. Now Bonnie's taking every opportunity to tell Ben that Dilma's perfect, perfect, and so patient, and a good teacher too in many respects besides being able to control children gone mad. I was very relieved to hear this. She has done a bit of a personality transformation since she's been working too, where she came in shy and quiet and scared to mess up. After a week of being in front of kids, and in charge of the lessons, and getting used to working in the house she's so relaxed and confident and smiles all the time. I love talking to her, now that I kind of can, and I can understand her spanish more than when we were in classes. I still don't know if she wants the bead-superviser job. I'm afraid it's going to be a no, but I'll get to that when it comes.
Then there are the two girls from Seattle- Ashley and Sara, who have come independently of AMA, but are working with them, doing a photography project with the women's group in Espumpuja. They are grad students studying art-therapy, and two people who I have really connected with in a fast and sweet way in the last week. I'm really, really happy to have met them and look forward to living together for the rest of the month. Anyway, they came with the project already planned and funded, and were placed in Espumpuja by Hilda because of a past project with this girl named Sharon. Sharon had a photography project there that functioned really well and the women loved, but then she got a job in the East and just up and left without ending it or even giving the women their pictures. What it's come out as is that she was using this project more for her portfolio than to help the women.. Anyway, she promised to return in October (which is a 6 month wait for the poor women, and not good for the organization, blah blah blah.) So the but the new girls there not only because the women already had some experience, but also because it was a well structured plan that would give closure to Sharon's project that left the women feeling abandoned. So at some point Sharon found out about the new girls in Espumpuja, and actually called Hilda's phone WHILE she was introducing them to the women, and started screaming at HIlda (who screams at Hilda??? ) about how it was HER project, and how DARE these girls steal it, and WHY didn't they talk to her, and how stupid of Hilda to forget she was coming back, repeating the phrase "MY PROJECT. MY PROJECT. MY PROJECT." to which Hilda (by witness angry but within voice control) "MY organization! MY time! MY passion! I've built this community and this group for 7 years! this isn't your project! I didn't forget you! I chose to move these women on, you're not seeing it from their eyes, and shame on you!" She told me this later over lunch, saying to me "I don't let foreigners talk to me like that. She was trying to make me feel stupid and below her and it's discrimination." So good for her. This Sharon girl's a trip. She's like the most difficult person in Guatemala from the rumors. She hates all the white people who live here, as if they don't belong and she does. She came to the house one day, totally iced off Vladimir who was the friendliest guy ever, and when she passed me I said "hola!" and she just looked at me like I was a child and said "HELLO." and very deliberately walked away. From the sound of it AMA's done with her. Poor Ashley and Sara for being caught in the middle of it. They were actually standing right next to Hilda, in the community, in front of the women, when the whole conversation happened. They say the women looked embarrassed, but kind of happy, as if they were really relieved Hilda was standing up for them. They're going back tomorrow to continue with the project and pick up the pictures to develop them. We're all anxious to see them.
In other news, I've been participating in none of this, doing minimal work besides cleaning with the jewelry project, and weaving my little fingers off. I'm happy to say I've become famous at the weaving school, as "la chica con la tejida verde" (the girl with the green weaving.) Because I actually know how to weave, enjoy it, and have done a lot harder patterns than this, and they love giving me a challenge. Mom, imagine trying to teach 5 Guatemalans a day who don't speak your language and just don't get it. Gross. Frustrating. I picked the hardest project they offered, a table runner with embroidery, for which they looked at me doubtfully and asked me more than a few times how much time I was planning on staying in the city. It didn't seem appropriate to begin my first conversation with them with "You say this project takes 20 hours, and then most people need a few weeks? I can put 20 hours in in 3 days." So I'm almost finished now a week and a half later, and they're cute around me. Oralia, one of the women who I refer to to other people as so Zen it's amazing, calls me maestra.
Well. the two women that run the organization are Oralia and Amparo. Amparo is short and squat and Ashley says she laughs like Gus-gus from Cinderella. She tends to explain better, and scoots around like a little bumble bee. Oralia is so Zen. She speaks more or less in a calm, sweet monotone, and does more floating than scooting. She dresses traditionally, is really, really pretty, and somehow just reminds me of a geisha or something. She's also got three kids, the youngest of which, 2 year old Carla, get's her kicks and her babysitting in among the students and volunteers. For a kid who has so many emotions, it's hard to believe she doesn't know any words. We'll have whole conversations with her, us speaking English and her speaking gibberish. And she's the sassiest baby EVER. She'll plain put her hands on her hips and tell you what's up. The opposite of her calmer than calm mother.
I should be finishing my table runner tomorrow, which I'm SOOO excited about. Then hope of hopes, Hilda will have a loom for me from Espumpuja for me to practice with and take home. I can buy one from Trama, but it's cheaper and has more street cred if I get it from the village. By the way, fun note for mom and other weavers- The warp in Spanish is called the pie (pee-ay) or translated-the foot, and the weft is called the trama (trah-mah) which also means food. If you think about it, when you put the weft through the shed, it's like you're feeding the weaving. So the joke in Espumpuja when we were there watching them weave was that after they had the loom set up and someone was winding a shuttle for them, they complained that their scarf was hungry.
ENOUGH I SAY ENOUGH.
bedtime.
Last Saturday AMA picked up some new volunteers: 1st is a woman from Virginia who wanted to come with the groups but couldn't work it out with her schedule, so she came by herself. Hilda and a driver in the truck picked her up at the airport and she's been staying in the house in the room Lupe used to be in. She's a 7th grade civics teacher in the DC area, and has plenty of pluck, as Hugh puts it. She's really just normal. Everything you'd expect a 7th grade civics teacher to be except that she's not phased at all by Guatemala, has a good sense of humor about the things that are annoying, and is one of the more adaptable 50 year olds I've met. Oh yeah, her name's Bonnie. Bonnie wanted to help with the kids in the MAP program, so she's been tagging along with Dilma (the new art teacher we hired, and my old student) to the schools with her on her first week of working with the kids (Dilma was only just hired.) Hugh's also been tagging along as translator. She actually knows sufficient Spanish to function, but it seems like having someone fluent is better for everyone, plus he likes going. They've come back with lots of stories of well, and poorly behaved kids. Smart kids, dumb kids, manipulative kids, and I hear a lot about runny noses. Bonnie and Hugh are also really pleased with Dilma, even with it being her first week of work. Ben expressed reservations to me about hiring her because she was so quite and calm, thinking that she wouldn't be able to entertain a classroom, and that she'd be too dull to latch on to the project, which was wrong wrong wrong wrong, and I have pain for it. I tried to tell them that she was super smart, and expressed to Lupe that maybe it was a better idea to have someone calm and collected in a classroom full of screaming kids with paintbrushes than one that's egging them on, which seemed to sooth her at the time. Now Bonnie's taking every opportunity to tell Ben that Dilma's perfect, perfect, and so patient, and a good teacher too in many respects besides being able to control children gone mad. I was very relieved to hear this. She has done a bit of a personality transformation since she's been working too, where she came in shy and quiet and scared to mess up. After a week of being in front of kids, and in charge of the lessons, and getting used to working in the house she's so relaxed and confident and smiles all the time. I love talking to her, now that I kind of can, and I can understand her spanish more than when we were in classes. I still don't know if she wants the bead-superviser job. I'm afraid it's going to be a no, but I'll get to that when it comes.
Then there are the two girls from Seattle- Ashley and Sara, who have come independently of AMA, but are working with them, doing a photography project with the women's group in Espumpuja. They are grad students studying art-therapy, and two people who I have really connected with in a fast and sweet way in the last week. I'm really, really happy to have met them and look forward to living together for the rest of the month. Anyway, they came with the project already planned and funded, and were placed in Espumpuja by Hilda because of a past project with this girl named Sharon. Sharon had a photography project there that functioned really well and the women loved, but then she got a job in the East and just up and left without ending it or even giving the women their pictures. What it's come out as is that she was using this project more for her portfolio than to help the women.. Anyway, she promised to return in October (which is a 6 month wait for the poor women, and not good for the organization, blah blah blah.) So the but the new girls there not only because the women already had some experience, but also because it was a well structured plan that would give closure to Sharon's project that left the women feeling abandoned. So at some point Sharon found out about the new girls in Espumpuja, and actually called Hilda's phone WHILE she was introducing them to the women, and started screaming at HIlda (who screams at Hilda??? ) about how it was HER project, and how DARE these girls steal it, and WHY didn't they talk to her, and how stupid of Hilda to forget she was coming back, repeating the phrase "MY PROJECT. MY PROJECT. MY PROJECT." to which Hilda (by witness angry but within voice control) "MY organization! MY time! MY passion! I've built this community and this group for 7 years! this isn't your project! I didn't forget you! I chose to move these women on, you're not seeing it from their eyes, and shame on you!" She told me this later over lunch, saying to me "I don't let foreigners talk to me like that. She was trying to make me feel stupid and below her and it's discrimination." So good for her. This Sharon girl's a trip. She's like the most difficult person in Guatemala from the rumors. She hates all the white people who live here, as if they don't belong and she does. She came to the house one day, totally iced off Vladimir who was the friendliest guy ever, and when she passed me I said "hola!" and she just looked at me like I was a child and said "HELLO." and very deliberately walked away. From the sound of it AMA's done with her. Poor Ashley and Sara for being caught in the middle of it. They were actually standing right next to Hilda, in the community, in front of the women, when the whole conversation happened. They say the women looked embarrassed, but kind of happy, as if they were really relieved Hilda was standing up for them. They're going back tomorrow to continue with the project and pick up the pictures to develop them. We're all anxious to see them.
In other news, I've been participating in none of this, doing minimal work besides cleaning with the jewelry project, and weaving my little fingers off. I'm happy to say I've become famous at the weaving school, as "la chica con la tejida verde" (the girl with the green weaving.) Because I actually know how to weave, enjoy it, and have done a lot harder patterns than this, and they love giving me a challenge. Mom, imagine trying to teach 5 Guatemalans a day who don't speak your language and just don't get it. Gross. Frustrating. I picked the hardest project they offered, a table runner with embroidery, for which they looked at me doubtfully and asked me more than a few times how much time I was planning on staying in the city. It didn't seem appropriate to begin my first conversation with them with "You say this project takes 20 hours, and then most people need a few weeks? I can put 20 hours in in 3 days." So I'm almost finished now a week and a half later, and they're cute around me. Oralia, one of the women who I refer to to other people as so Zen it's amazing, calls me maestra.
Well. the two women that run the organization are Oralia and Amparo. Amparo is short and squat and Ashley says she laughs like Gus-gus from Cinderella. She tends to explain better, and scoots around like a little bumble bee. Oralia is so Zen. She speaks more or less in a calm, sweet monotone, and does more floating than scooting. She dresses traditionally, is really, really pretty, and somehow just reminds me of a geisha or something. She's also got three kids, the youngest of which, 2 year old Carla, get's her kicks and her babysitting in among the students and volunteers. For a kid who has so many emotions, it's hard to believe she doesn't know any words. We'll have whole conversations with her, us speaking English and her speaking gibberish. And she's the sassiest baby EVER. She'll plain put her hands on her hips and tell you what's up. The opposite of her calmer than calm mother.
I should be finishing my table runner tomorrow, which I'm SOOO excited about. Then hope of hopes, Hilda will have a loom for me from Espumpuja for me to practice with and take home. I can buy one from Trama, but it's cheaper and has more street cred if I get it from the village. By the way, fun note for mom and other weavers- The warp in Spanish is called the pie (pee-ay) or translated-the foot, and the weft is called the trama (trah-mah) which also means food. If you think about it, when you put the weft through the shed, it's like you're feeding the weaving. So the joke in Espumpuja when we were there watching them weave was that after they had the loom set up and someone was winding a shuttle for them, they complained that their scarf was hungry.
ENOUGH I SAY ENOUGH.
bedtime.
Mex(h)ico
What did I do this week? I think we went to Mexico. Man, I've got to get back into writing this stuff again. I don't want to forget it.
Well.
Saturday we got up at 5:30 to catch a bus to mexico. 3 buses later we're there.
That sounds really not so bad. But it literally took 3 different busses to get us where we needed to go, which was actually pretty good when you think about how far that is. First we rode 2 hours to San Marcos, then caught the bus to Malacatan (I think) which was about 2 or 3 hours. That bus actually took us all the way to the border, where it was hot and gross and shady. We were planning on staying the night, so I brought a full backpack that managed to be really heavy, even though I thought I packed light. For so long we've been only going places that are cold, I just assumed to take a sweater and my rain coat (always) and I wore a jacket, then we get there and it's amillion degrees, duh. YUCK. Sooo. we've been all concerned (more me than Hugh) about the 90 day limit on our tourist visa, which had expired 3 days before, and I was very afraid that there would be some major money, we'd be detained, wait in a million lines, I don't know, be questioned viciously in Spanish.. But we get there, go one place go to another, pay a bit of money and that's it. Claudia stayed with us to translate and make sure we didn't get screwed, and there weren't any problems. The border though, gross. We got out of the bus and were surrounded by trash and the smell of rotting garbage, along with the obligatory dogs and so many dudes that were practicing their nonsensical english catch phrases on us. Then we're bombarded by a hundred men waving money at us trying to get us to change our Q's for pesos. One guy Claudia bribed into helping us navigate the offices in return for a gauruntee we'd change our money with him. He was wearing this badge around his neck, and shoved it in the pocket of his shirt when he was within sight of the officials at the station. These are just dudes who bring a bunch of bills and probably a concealed weapon to the border every day hoping to slight tourists out of some bucks in the process of changing. Anyway, the Guatemala side is horrible and stinky and crowded and scary, and then we go through the buildings of the station to Mexico and it's clean and fresh, the road is well paved, and nobody's harrassing us. About the opposite of what you think of (or see on tv since I don't live in a border state) about the border with Mexico/US. AAAAnd we walk to this line of little stores and restaurants and jump on a bus, and sweat our teeth out, and drive about half an hour through the department of Chiapas, Mexico, to whatever city we went to which I can't remember, and got out. Ugh. Heat and crowds. It's more like a busy american city than what I'm at all used to in Guatemala. There are wide sidewalks and functioning roads, and all the cars aren't belching black smoke, and there are people everywhere. It was a Saturday after all, and we were in central park. We walked around looking for an affordable meal and landed on this taco joint where I admittedly had some of the tastiest tacos and orange juice I've had in a long time, definitely since coming to Guatemala. We decided there that we weren't going to stay the night, it was an uncomfortable city with not much for us to do, and unbelievably expensive. The Quetzal is in favor of the peso, and the prices were still way out of what we could do, even just for some tacos it was way more than we'd have to pay here. So I lugged around this big bookbag for nothing, which sucked. We walked around the city for a bit, looking for some wire for me. I've been trying to find the "alambre alpaca" (really, nickel wire) for a while to make these mandalas that this guy at Yoga House showed me how to make, but I need really hard wire for it and I can't find it anywhere. What we discovered is that a. you can't get alambre alpaca there, and b. Mexicans speak way different spanish. It was very direct and forceful, and almost rude. When a guy selling pirated movies is putting on the bargain in Guatemala, he says "tell me how much you'd like to pay for this and I'll see what I can do." In Mexico, the guy said "how much you want to give me?" It caught Claudia off guard. I did buy a long necklace of red bean beads from a hut on the sidewalk, and got Claudia to bargain it down 10 pesos. I wanted the beads. They're significant in Mayan culture because they're abnormal. Red beans come from white or black bean plants, and when you plant them they make white or black beans, and when you cook them they turn the same color as white or black beans, but they're one of those unexplainable phenomenons of nature that's supposed to remind you that God is always making miracles, or something to that effect. Plus red has a special significance, being the east, the sunrise, and the figurative aspects of passion, power, love, aggression, etc. So I've been trying to collect them, and got a good couple hundred off this necklace.
Well, we had about enough of the heat and the culture and headed back to the busses after only really about 2 hours. We literally only came to Mexico to get our passports stamped and eat some tacos (and sweat.) When I got back on the van to get to the border, I noticed my bookbag was open and didn't think about it, just shut it thinking I'd managed to pull it open when I climbed in. (2 busses later, I actually thought about it and got pretty nervous about my camera, which was the only thing of value in it. Rest assured, when I got home, I checked and everything was still there. I've learned, and everyone else should too, that if you're carrying a big bag, you're a big white target, and at least being dumb and bringing winter clothes afforded me the advantage of stuffing a sweater and two jackets on top of everything worth keeping. In the other pocket that was open I only had toilet paper and tampons !HA!) We got to the border where we were harrassed again by guys waving money at us, and we changed it, and then realized later I was one of those tourists that they slight out of 50Q, which sucked, but I was too hot and tired and nervous to get in a Spanish argument about money. Keep it just leave me alone. We rode one of those karts that has a moped in the back that's connected to a rickshaw in the front to the gate where we got some passport decoration (hooray!) and another 90 days here in Guatemala. Then passed back into the nastiness of the no-man's-land of money changers, cat-callers, and English-language-offenders, yet another van for who knows how long. Another chicken bus to San Marcos, another chicken bus through San Marcos, another chicken bus out of San Marcos! another bus through Minerva!! and HOME at 8:30. All that fun (NINE BUSSES WORTH OF FUN) in only 14 hours. I feel like we weathered it pretty well. By the time we got back we felt like our butts had been flattened a little bit, and definitely felt a lot closer.. physically.. to our fellow Guatemalans. Really enough affection to last us for a long time. And well that was that.
Well.
Saturday we got up at 5:30 to catch a bus to mexico. 3 buses later we're there.
That sounds really not so bad. But it literally took 3 different busses to get us where we needed to go, which was actually pretty good when you think about how far that is. First we rode 2 hours to San Marcos, then caught the bus to Malacatan (I think) which was about 2 or 3 hours. That bus actually took us all the way to the border, where it was hot and gross and shady. We were planning on staying the night, so I brought a full backpack that managed to be really heavy, even though I thought I packed light. For so long we've been only going places that are cold, I just assumed to take a sweater and my rain coat (always) and I wore a jacket, then we get there and it's amillion degrees, duh. YUCK. Sooo. we've been all concerned (more me than Hugh) about the 90 day limit on our tourist visa, which had expired 3 days before, and I was very afraid that there would be some major money, we'd be detained, wait in a million lines, I don't know, be questioned viciously in Spanish.. But we get there, go one place go to another, pay a bit of money and that's it. Claudia stayed with us to translate and make sure we didn't get screwed, and there weren't any problems. The border though, gross. We got out of the bus and were surrounded by trash and the smell of rotting garbage, along with the obligatory dogs and so many dudes that were practicing their nonsensical english catch phrases on us. Then we're bombarded by a hundred men waving money at us trying to get us to change our Q's for pesos. One guy Claudia bribed into helping us navigate the offices in return for a gauruntee we'd change our money with him. He was wearing this badge around his neck, and shoved it in the pocket of his shirt when he was within sight of the officials at the station. These are just dudes who bring a bunch of bills and probably a concealed weapon to the border every day hoping to slight tourists out of some bucks in the process of changing. Anyway, the Guatemala side is horrible and stinky and crowded and scary, and then we go through the buildings of the station to Mexico and it's clean and fresh, the road is well paved, and nobody's harrassing us. About the opposite of what you think of (or see on tv since I don't live in a border state) about the border with Mexico/US. AAAAnd we walk to this line of little stores and restaurants and jump on a bus, and sweat our teeth out, and drive about half an hour through the department of Chiapas, Mexico, to whatever city we went to which I can't remember, and got out. Ugh. Heat and crowds. It's more like a busy american city than what I'm at all used to in Guatemala. There are wide sidewalks and functioning roads, and all the cars aren't belching black smoke, and there are people everywhere. It was a Saturday after all, and we were in central park. We walked around looking for an affordable meal and landed on this taco joint where I admittedly had some of the tastiest tacos and orange juice I've had in a long time, definitely since coming to Guatemala. We decided there that we weren't going to stay the night, it was an uncomfortable city with not much for us to do, and unbelievably expensive. The Quetzal is in favor of the peso, and the prices were still way out of what we could do, even just for some tacos it was way more than we'd have to pay here. So I lugged around this big bookbag for nothing, which sucked. We walked around the city for a bit, looking for some wire for me. I've been trying to find the "alambre alpaca" (really, nickel wire) for a while to make these mandalas that this guy at Yoga House showed me how to make, but I need really hard wire for it and I can't find it anywhere. What we discovered is that a. you can't get alambre alpaca there, and b. Mexicans speak way different spanish. It was very direct and forceful, and almost rude. When a guy selling pirated movies is putting on the bargain in Guatemala, he says "tell me how much you'd like to pay for this and I'll see what I can do." In Mexico, the guy said "how much you want to give me?" It caught Claudia off guard. I did buy a long necklace of red bean beads from a hut on the sidewalk, and got Claudia to bargain it down 10 pesos. I wanted the beads. They're significant in Mayan culture because they're abnormal. Red beans come from white or black bean plants, and when you plant them they make white or black beans, and when you cook them they turn the same color as white or black beans, but they're one of those unexplainable phenomenons of nature that's supposed to remind you that God is always making miracles, or something to that effect. Plus red has a special significance, being the east, the sunrise, and the figurative aspects of passion, power, love, aggression, etc. So I've been trying to collect them, and got a good couple hundred off this necklace.
Well, we had about enough of the heat and the culture and headed back to the busses after only really about 2 hours. We literally only came to Mexico to get our passports stamped and eat some tacos (and sweat.) When I got back on the van to get to the border, I noticed my bookbag was open and didn't think about it, just shut it thinking I'd managed to pull it open when I climbed in. (2 busses later, I actually thought about it and got pretty nervous about my camera, which was the only thing of value in it. Rest assured, when I got home, I checked and everything was still there. I've learned, and everyone else should too, that if you're carrying a big bag, you're a big white target, and at least being dumb and bringing winter clothes afforded me the advantage of stuffing a sweater and two jackets on top of everything worth keeping. In the other pocket that was open I only had toilet paper and tampons !HA!) We got to the border where we were harrassed again by guys waving money at us, and we changed it, and then realized later I was one of those tourists that they slight out of 50Q, which sucked, but I was too hot and tired and nervous to get in a Spanish argument about money. Keep it just leave me alone. We rode one of those karts that has a moped in the back that's connected to a rickshaw in the front to the gate where we got some passport decoration (hooray!) and another 90 days here in Guatemala. Then passed back into the nastiness of the no-man's-land of money changers, cat-callers, and English-language-offenders, yet another van for who knows how long. Another chicken bus to San Marcos, another chicken bus through San Marcos, another chicken bus out of San Marcos! another bus through Minerva!! and HOME at 8:30. All that fun (NINE BUSSES WORTH OF FUN) in only 14 hours. I feel like we weathered it pretty well. By the time we got back we felt like our butts had been flattened a little bit, and definitely felt a lot closer.. physically.. to our fellow Guatemalans. Really enough affection to last us for a long time. And well that was that.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Cantel y Xela
Hugh and I left to go to Bake Shop, so I took a break. Now to talk about my other classes.
The last three weeks I've just been sending materials home with the girls to make in their houses and bring back. It seems to be working well, and smoothly, but the problem is that I've noticed little improvement. My new designs are much harder than my old ones, and take getting used to and practice to understand the nature of the wire they're working with. I taught how to do it, and they steadily got better with the wire, and actually, that part is usually perfect when the earrings come back. The problem is that they're not looking at the earrings after they finish them. They put the pieces together, throw them in the bag, and send them back. I was really mad with my Xela group because there was just stupid stuff wrong with them. Connections weren't closed, or one didn't look like the other. It made me a little upset, so I wrote a note saying what was wrong with them and sent almost all of them back. Sylvia told me the next day that they were coming at their normal class time so I could teach them some more, since they didn't think they could finish them on their own. I was kind of expecting them to be frustrated or maybe even a little mad with having to mess with them again, but they ended up coming in like puppies, and pulled out their earrings saying "I know these are so ugly, I'm really sorry, how can I fix them?" I think I made a lot of progress just in the hour they were here, and I hope I don't get any more like the other ones. I'm now worried about the girls in Cantel. Olga looked like she did the same thing, not paying attention to the finished product, and Juana, well Juana has problems even when I'm there, and I expect has a hard time doing them on her own. The problem with Juana is that I don't think she can see what's wrong with them. She does get better, it's like a battle with her hands. She's used to some very hard labor, running that house with all those little kids. We made a lot of progress in the first few months, doing the simple techniques, but now that it's harder, and the designs take finesse and a hard eye, she's just not handling it well. And she wants to do it soooo bad. I'm going to keep on working with her till I go, but after I leave I don't know if she'd be able to keep up with it. Hopefully she'll gain some more skills in that time. Olga I think just needs the same note my class in Xela got, and another hour of practice.
Next is my ongoing quest to make sure this thing keeps running when I leave. Making the little bags of materials is no big deal, volunteers can do it, and tallying up who's made what earrings is no big deal either, the girls can do that themselves when they return their products. What I'm worried about is the quality control, and what's going to continue to persuade the girls to turn in good earrings after I leave and am not here to send home little angry notes. What I think we're going to do is work with Dilma, my best student from Cantel, who is now also the MAP project coordinator. In my first entries I went on and on about how Dilma was a teacher and I wanted her to work with me and I thought she'd be great with kids and all this. In my second class with her after Hilda told me she went to school to be a teacher, I told her she'd be good to run MAP (the Maya Arts Program.) Serendipitously, they hired her about a week ago for it. She goes to something like 4 or 5 schools throughout the area, once a week, and teaches art lessons with mayan themes. It's meant to at one time be both a way to preserve their dying culture as well as teaching new methods of creative understanding that most schools in the area lack. So she works here in the office now 5 days a week, and is very busy, but I'm hoping she'll take on this small job with me too. Lupe talked to her about it, and said she was ready for me to start training her as soon as she has time. Also, the other thing is that the system has to change a little bit, where Dilma doesn't make earrings anymore, just checks them and repairs them, and for every pair of earrings she checks she gets a small amount of money. If she has to repair any, we have to take that amount of money off of what we're paying the girl who made them. I think it's a good idea to keep quality up with the girls at home, too.
Also, Lupe just took every pair of earrings we've made, 150 of them. It was kind of sad to watch them go! So.. Check AlterNatives in the next few weeks. If you saw the ones that were there back in June, you will be surprised. I'm really happy with the new designs, and proud of them, and go buy some! If people buy them quickly we can start paying the girls more, and I really really want that.
The last three weeks I've just been sending materials home with the girls to make in their houses and bring back. It seems to be working well, and smoothly, but the problem is that I've noticed little improvement. My new designs are much harder than my old ones, and take getting used to and practice to understand the nature of the wire they're working with. I taught how to do it, and they steadily got better with the wire, and actually, that part is usually perfect when the earrings come back. The problem is that they're not looking at the earrings after they finish them. They put the pieces together, throw them in the bag, and send them back. I was really mad with my Xela group because there was just stupid stuff wrong with them. Connections weren't closed, or one didn't look like the other. It made me a little upset, so I wrote a note saying what was wrong with them and sent almost all of them back. Sylvia told me the next day that they were coming at their normal class time so I could teach them some more, since they didn't think they could finish them on their own. I was kind of expecting them to be frustrated or maybe even a little mad with having to mess with them again, but they ended up coming in like puppies, and pulled out their earrings saying "I know these are so ugly, I'm really sorry, how can I fix them?" I think I made a lot of progress just in the hour they were here, and I hope I don't get any more like the other ones. I'm now worried about the girls in Cantel. Olga looked like she did the same thing, not paying attention to the finished product, and Juana, well Juana has problems even when I'm there, and I expect has a hard time doing them on her own. The problem with Juana is that I don't think she can see what's wrong with them. She does get better, it's like a battle with her hands. She's used to some very hard labor, running that house with all those little kids. We made a lot of progress in the first few months, doing the simple techniques, but now that it's harder, and the designs take finesse and a hard eye, she's just not handling it well. And she wants to do it soooo bad. I'm going to keep on working with her till I go, but after I leave I don't know if she'd be able to keep up with it. Hopefully she'll gain some more skills in that time. Olga I think just needs the same note my class in Xela got, and another hour of practice.
Next is my ongoing quest to make sure this thing keeps running when I leave. Making the little bags of materials is no big deal, volunteers can do it, and tallying up who's made what earrings is no big deal either, the girls can do that themselves when they return their products. What I'm worried about is the quality control, and what's going to continue to persuade the girls to turn in good earrings after I leave and am not here to send home little angry notes. What I think we're going to do is work with Dilma, my best student from Cantel, who is now also the MAP project coordinator. In my first entries I went on and on about how Dilma was a teacher and I wanted her to work with me and I thought she'd be great with kids and all this. In my second class with her after Hilda told me she went to school to be a teacher, I told her she'd be good to run MAP (the Maya Arts Program.) Serendipitously, they hired her about a week ago for it. She goes to something like 4 or 5 schools throughout the area, once a week, and teaches art lessons with mayan themes. It's meant to at one time be both a way to preserve their dying culture as well as teaching new methods of creative understanding that most schools in the area lack. So she works here in the office now 5 days a week, and is very busy, but I'm hoping she'll take on this small job with me too. Lupe talked to her about it, and said she was ready for me to start training her as soon as she has time. Also, the other thing is that the system has to change a little bit, where Dilma doesn't make earrings anymore, just checks them and repairs them, and for every pair of earrings she checks she gets a small amount of money. If she has to repair any, we have to take that amount of money off of what we're paying the girl who made them. I think it's a good idea to keep quality up with the girls at home, too.
Also, Lupe just took every pair of earrings we've made, 150 of them. It was kind of sad to watch them go! So.. Check AlterNatives in the next few weeks. If you saw the ones that were there back in June, you will be surprised. I'm really happy with the new designs, and proud of them, and go buy some! If people buy them quickly we can start paying the girls more, and I really really want that.
Xeavaj
It's about high time I write about what's going on with my classes.
Let's do the hardest one first: Xeavaj. This class was my favorite in the beginning, and then had a big downward spiral halfway through, and now I don't want to continue classes there at all. All I can really say is that this is an example of a community that has been spoiled by the relief organizations that come through and just give things away. So they receive, receive, receive, and then lose interest in working for anything when they know they can beg it out of somebody. I didn't realize it at first, but after a couple heavy conversations with Lupe, that's what's going on. Hurricane Stan wiped out the village, and HSP and a lot of other places helped rebuild them, and Americans still go back handing crap out.
So here's what's happened. I had that terrible class about a month or two ago where some strange boy asked me to marry him, Marta was putting it on heavy for me to give her my materials, and then they tried to pressure sell me a huipil that I didn't think I agreed to buy. After that they laid off on the selling, and I tried to have my class as efficiently as possible. The girls in my class trickled down to 3, Marta and Pascuala were always always there, Marty screwing things up and taking advantage of her time with me to try to get me to buy her stuff, and Pascuala silently working in her peaceful little way. Then the third or sometimes fourth girl changed every week. Sometimes Francisca, or Maria, or Juana. And every time one of these women would join me they hadn't been to a class in weeks and I'd have to reteach techniques, wasting everyone's time. I had to ignore the two who were working with silver to focus on the two who were still practicing with steel.
Then the tourists came. HSP has eco-tourism trips that bring groups of 10-30 americans from schools or churches to build stoves or teach art lessons, or whatever they've planned, the same thing Hugh and I did when we met here a year and a half ago. Well, some of the groups were working in a village near Xeavaj, and some donations from the people on the trip were going to build a patio for their school, and they're a community of weavers, so AMA brought them through Xeavaj for a demonstration of different village practices like weaving or making atole de maiz, and to buy their weavings, and also to buy my students earrings. AMA did this twice, the first time with a church group of 10, and I came with them and we had a class so the tourists could see us making earrings and hear us talk about the experience, to try to get them to buy more, basically. That was the day before I got so sick. Marta spent the entire time on her phone with her boyfriend, so didn't even finish most of the earrings she started. And the tourists hardly bought anything, so it was just kind of a long stay in the cold for not much. The next week there was a group of thirty, and we had our class in a small office room of the school that was still very cold and dark. This time It was just me and Marta and Pascuala, the other women didn't want to participate for some reason. This group was very excited about the activities and the women's work, and ended up going home with a lot of the products, and a lot of the earrings. So as my other flaky students are standing there watching people buy their earrings, they quickly come to the classroom and want to make more. As soon as they see money change hands its a race to the materials. And this was stressful for me, because Lupe was bringing groups through the room to talk to me and to us, and Juana is getting angrier and angrier waiting for me to cut a piece of chain for her that she should already know how to do. That was what changed this day. They started getting angry at me and at Lupe because she was in charge. The thing was that the other weavings the women brought from their house, and we sold them there to the tourists with basically all the money going straight back into their hands. AMA didn't provide the materials or teach them how to do it, they don't have any title to the money. The earrings were AMA's, not the women's, so when someone handed over money for the earrings, the money didn't go into a woman's hand. It went to materials and gas and my plane ticket, and then we were going to pay them the next week per hour for what they did. The other thing is that most of the earrings for sale there were not made by the women in Xeavaj. As I said, they were usually flaky so they really didn't make all that many compared to my other classes, and so the women there didn't really have a claim to money changing hands anyway, and that was something that should have been either obvious or easily explained (which Hilda did, I watched her.) And so class is continuing, more and more people are cycling through, and the women are cycling through and acting very strangely. Speaking spitting Quiche so I couldn't understand them, and Marta, more and more and infuriatingly more, is complaining about making the earrings. I finally ask her why everyone is so upset and she explodes into this tirade about how we're not paying them for their earrings. I admit it had been too much time between when they made their first pair and when we paid them for it, but when they've only made 3 or 4 pairs, there's just not that much money to give, I was hoping to wait until there was a bigger sum to make it look more worth while. And Juana Carrillo was pissed. I mean pissed, and bringing Francisca and Maria in on it, and of course whenever there's money involved Marta is in on it, stoking the fire. So they're mad at me. I'm sorry, I say, there's nothing I can do about it, I don't have the money. So they tell me "go talk to Lupe! do it now! we want our money!" so Lupe of course is busy translating for the groups, I grab Hilda and tell her how mad they are and she goes in to talk to them and explain the project AGAIN and what they need to expect AGAIN. Then another tourist group comes in and the women are spitting and hissing while I'm trying, cheerfully, to explain what the project's about, how we hope to help, how much fun it's been... And in between Marta is catching my attention and saying "see how dark it is in here! Feel how cold! How much we suffer, Caitie, how much we suffer! and you haven't paid us! See this earring? How much value! How much value it has to me! I should be paid for this!" What can I do? We are paying you, Marta, just not this second. I have to organize your earrings and count how many you've made and count your hours, just like normal workers. I have explained this to you at least twice, when the project started and later during conversation, and then Hilda's explained it at least twice. It was just impatience and manipulation. It made me sad. I have felt for a long time that Marta was trying to manipulate me past the point of me continuing to regard her as a friend. Now I don't want to go back. They'll be angry at me, make me feel guilty, try to get me to make up for it. And I don't think I deserve it.
I talked to Lupe about this for a long time aftwerwards. What was interesting was that she was surprised at who my students were. I took out a picture I had of the AMA group, and she pointed to a few women who she said she started this project specifically for, who haven't been in my class since the first day. She also told me that Marta is not part of the community (she lives with her boyfriend's mom) and is also not a member of AMA. Also, past that, Marta has an education, and could be a teacher if she wanted to, but that's the thing. She doesn't want to work. Same with Juana carrillo and her sister, Marta's mother-in-law. They apparently received money from someone in the US to go to school to be teachers, and when they graduated they quit getting money, but they also didn't get jobs. Lupe told me that they called her at her house a year ago asking for money. Then they asked her to take them to the US. Which isn't what AMA does! They then asked her to print the pictures she had of themselves to send to the people who sent them through school to send to them to ask for money, asked Lupe to write the letter and everything. She told me it was ridiculous. That these women in particular learned the system for manipulation, and now that's the only form they function in. She said it's sad. It's what happens when rich people come in and give shit away, it creates dependency. I don't know. It kills me. So I feel like my whole class has been a waste there. They aren't interested in learning skills, or having a new trade, or coming together as a group. They're not interested in making well made earrings, by the looks of their finished products and the amount of care they give their materials. They're just interested in what happened that fair day. Money coming into their hands. I can't keep giving materials to people whose earring's I'm going to have to spend as much time fixing as selling. I don't know what's going to happen there anyway though. A lot of the weavings they brought to sell were dirty. As if they picked it up off the kitchen table to hang up to sell. I guess they just don't get it.
There's another community very close to Xeavaj where the tourists built stoves. The women there weave too, and really wanted to participate in AMA and weave for us. So Hilda told them she'd give them yarn for this specific project, and then I guess couldn't make it up there. So the women WALKED to her house to find her to get the yarn. This community is almost 2 hours by car, and was a four hour walk. Then when they got to Cantel to find Hilda, they didn't have phones to call her, didn't know her last name, just wandered through the town asking people on the street if they knew where "Hilda, the woman who works with the gringos" lives. They finally found her house and HIlda. But my God, they were so intense about weaving and excited about working with AMA that they walked 4 hours to Xela to get their yarn. There's the difference. When AMA had their weaving in Xeavaj, they kept sending out dirty scarves and demanding more money. So Lupe said fine, I'll give you more money, but you have to improve the quality and wash them before you give them to me. Sound business advice to me. So they said that AMA had to buy them soap then, and Lupe had to tell them, I can do that for you too, but it will take away the extra money you want.
Ok, well, that's enough for now. I'm just so disappointed with this class I can't stand myself. For a long time I felt like I had failed them as a teacher, that's why they weren't interested enough to come to every class, that's why they didn't care enough to have good craftsmanship when I know full well that they are capable of it. But I think it's just the nature of the beast. And not the whole community is like this, I just managed to get the worst ones when Marta volunteered her house for the classes.
Let's do the hardest one first: Xeavaj. This class was my favorite in the beginning, and then had a big downward spiral halfway through, and now I don't want to continue classes there at all. All I can really say is that this is an example of a community that has been spoiled by the relief organizations that come through and just give things away. So they receive, receive, receive, and then lose interest in working for anything when they know they can beg it out of somebody. I didn't realize it at first, but after a couple heavy conversations with Lupe, that's what's going on. Hurricane Stan wiped out the village, and HSP and a lot of other places helped rebuild them, and Americans still go back handing crap out.
So here's what's happened. I had that terrible class about a month or two ago where some strange boy asked me to marry him, Marta was putting it on heavy for me to give her my materials, and then they tried to pressure sell me a huipil that I didn't think I agreed to buy. After that they laid off on the selling, and I tried to have my class as efficiently as possible. The girls in my class trickled down to 3, Marta and Pascuala were always always there, Marty screwing things up and taking advantage of her time with me to try to get me to buy her stuff, and Pascuala silently working in her peaceful little way. Then the third or sometimes fourth girl changed every week. Sometimes Francisca, or Maria, or Juana. And every time one of these women would join me they hadn't been to a class in weeks and I'd have to reteach techniques, wasting everyone's time. I had to ignore the two who were working with silver to focus on the two who were still practicing with steel.
Then the tourists came. HSP has eco-tourism trips that bring groups of 10-30 americans from schools or churches to build stoves or teach art lessons, or whatever they've planned, the same thing Hugh and I did when we met here a year and a half ago. Well, some of the groups were working in a village near Xeavaj, and some donations from the people on the trip were going to build a patio for their school, and they're a community of weavers, so AMA brought them through Xeavaj for a demonstration of different village practices like weaving or making atole de maiz, and to buy their weavings, and also to buy my students earrings. AMA did this twice, the first time with a church group of 10, and I came with them and we had a class so the tourists could see us making earrings and hear us talk about the experience, to try to get them to buy more, basically. That was the day before I got so sick. Marta spent the entire time on her phone with her boyfriend, so didn't even finish most of the earrings she started. And the tourists hardly bought anything, so it was just kind of a long stay in the cold for not much. The next week there was a group of thirty, and we had our class in a small office room of the school that was still very cold and dark. This time It was just me and Marta and Pascuala, the other women didn't want to participate for some reason. This group was very excited about the activities and the women's work, and ended up going home with a lot of the products, and a lot of the earrings. So as my other flaky students are standing there watching people buy their earrings, they quickly come to the classroom and want to make more. As soon as they see money change hands its a race to the materials. And this was stressful for me, because Lupe was bringing groups through the room to talk to me and to us, and Juana is getting angrier and angrier waiting for me to cut a piece of chain for her that she should already know how to do. That was what changed this day. They started getting angry at me and at Lupe because she was in charge. The thing was that the other weavings the women brought from their house, and we sold them there to the tourists with basically all the money going straight back into their hands. AMA didn't provide the materials or teach them how to do it, they don't have any title to the money. The earrings were AMA's, not the women's, so when someone handed over money for the earrings, the money didn't go into a woman's hand. It went to materials and gas and my plane ticket, and then we were going to pay them the next week per hour for what they did. The other thing is that most of the earrings for sale there were not made by the women in Xeavaj. As I said, they were usually flaky so they really didn't make all that many compared to my other classes, and so the women there didn't really have a claim to money changing hands anyway, and that was something that should have been either obvious or easily explained (which Hilda did, I watched her.) And so class is continuing, more and more people are cycling through, and the women are cycling through and acting very strangely. Speaking spitting Quiche so I couldn't understand them, and Marta, more and more and infuriatingly more, is complaining about making the earrings. I finally ask her why everyone is so upset and she explodes into this tirade about how we're not paying them for their earrings. I admit it had been too much time between when they made their first pair and when we paid them for it, but when they've only made 3 or 4 pairs, there's just not that much money to give, I was hoping to wait until there was a bigger sum to make it look more worth while. And Juana Carrillo was pissed. I mean pissed, and bringing Francisca and Maria in on it, and of course whenever there's money involved Marta is in on it, stoking the fire. So they're mad at me. I'm sorry, I say, there's nothing I can do about it, I don't have the money. So they tell me "go talk to Lupe! do it now! we want our money!" so Lupe of course is busy translating for the groups, I grab Hilda and tell her how mad they are and she goes in to talk to them and explain the project AGAIN and what they need to expect AGAIN. Then another tourist group comes in and the women are spitting and hissing while I'm trying, cheerfully, to explain what the project's about, how we hope to help, how much fun it's been... And in between Marta is catching my attention and saying "see how dark it is in here! Feel how cold! How much we suffer, Caitie, how much we suffer! and you haven't paid us! See this earring? How much value! How much value it has to me! I should be paid for this!" What can I do? We are paying you, Marta, just not this second. I have to organize your earrings and count how many you've made and count your hours, just like normal workers. I have explained this to you at least twice, when the project started and later during conversation, and then Hilda's explained it at least twice. It was just impatience and manipulation. It made me sad. I have felt for a long time that Marta was trying to manipulate me past the point of me continuing to regard her as a friend. Now I don't want to go back. They'll be angry at me, make me feel guilty, try to get me to make up for it. And I don't think I deserve it.
I talked to Lupe about this for a long time aftwerwards. What was interesting was that she was surprised at who my students were. I took out a picture I had of the AMA group, and she pointed to a few women who she said she started this project specifically for, who haven't been in my class since the first day. She also told me that Marta is not part of the community (she lives with her boyfriend's mom) and is also not a member of AMA. Also, past that, Marta has an education, and could be a teacher if she wanted to, but that's the thing. She doesn't want to work. Same with Juana carrillo and her sister, Marta's mother-in-law. They apparently received money from someone in the US to go to school to be teachers, and when they graduated they quit getting money, but they also didn't get jobs. Lupe told me that they called her at her house a year ago asking for money. Then they asked her to take them to the US. Which isn't what AMA does! They then asked her to print the pictures she had of themselves to send to the people who sent them through school to send to them to ask for money, asked Lupe to write the letter and everything. She told me it was ridiculous. That these women in particular learned the system for manipulation, and now that's the only form they function in. She said it's sad. It's what happens when rich people come in and give shit away, it creates dependency. I don't know. It kills me. So I feel like my whole class has been a waste there. They aren't interested in learning skills, or having a new trade, or coming together as a group. They're not interested in making well made earrings, by the looks of their finished products and the amount of care they give their materials. They're just interested in what happened that fair day. Money coming into their hands. I can't keep giving materials to people whose earring's I'm going to have to spend as much time fixing as selling. I don't know what's going to happen there anyway though. A lot of the weavings they brought to sell were dirty. As if they picked it up off the kitchen table to hang up to sell. I guess they just don't get it.
There's another community very close to Xeavaj where the tourists built stoves. The women there weave too, and really wanted to participate in AMA and weave for us. So Hilda told them she'd give them yarn for this specific project, and then I guess couldn't make it up there. So the women WALKED to her house to find her to get the yarn. This community is almost 2 hours by car, and was a four hour walk. Then when they got to Cantel to find Hilda, they didn't have phones to call her, didn't know her last name, just wandered through the town asking people on the street if they knew where "Hilda, the woman who works with the gringos" lives. They finally found her house and HIlda. But my God, they were so intense about weaving and excited about working with AMA that they walked 4 hours to Xela to get their yarn. There's the difference. When AMA had their weaving in Xeavaj, they kept sending out dirty scarves and demanding more money. So Lupe said fine, I'll give you more money, but you have to improve the quality and wash them before you give them to me. Sound business advice to me. So they said that AMA had to buy them soap then, and Lupe had to tell them, I can do that for you too, but it will take away the extra money you want.
Ok, well, that's enough for now. I'm just so disappointed with this class I can't stand myself. For a long time I felt like I had failed them as a teacher, that's why they weren't interested enough to come to every class, that's why they didn't care enough to have good craftsmanship when I know full well that they are capable of it. But I think it's just the nature of the beast. And not the whole community is like this, I just managed to get the worst ones when Marta volunteered her house for the classes.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Un Millon fotos nuevos
I just spent an hour or more uploading more than 40 new pictures.
Check them out, they're fun!
Check them out, they're fun!
Saturday, July 26, 2008
La Reina de la Traigo
Oh how I've been avoiding writing on the blog. It's been 2 weeks! I used to write almost an entry a day! I will sum up to say that the week before last was depressing for me. I was unhappy with a lot of things involving my health, the city, the organization, the project. I don't want to focus on any of that, and I don't want to yell to the world all my complaints with none of the redemption. I've felt better this week, not a little because I went to Tejutla with Claudia's family last weekend which returned some good warm feelings.
If I could even remember much of the week before last I'm not sure if I'd tell it. Most of my discomfort was caused by realizing that I can never escape the business world, even as I'm trying to focus on art and creativity, I will always have to work and deal in the world of money. There's something dirty about it to me, some people not earning enough of it for reasons hard to understand, and others being given too much for reasons even more difficult to comprehend. Claudia's father, Don Cesar in Tejutla, sat Hugh and I down and asked "why is gas Q36 here? Why does your president make a war? Why is your country deporting our relatives and friends? Why is the dollar falling? We can't compete in the world of the Euro. Don't you know that your money is our money? I can't know these things because I live so far away, but you can tell me." Of course we can't tell him. We're educated, and have common sense, and know the difference between life in the 1st world and life in the 3rd, and there was no way we could even begin.
And then there's the life of a non-profit organization, which I admire, but hope to never have to deal with from the business end. How does AMA get the money to do its projects? How does HSP support itself? How do Lupe and Ben and their two sons eat? Who pays the rent here, what money buys my super expensive materials? I learned a little bit of it recently, which is what started the business depression. There isn't any money. That's what it's all about. The only way for one of these things to function is to always be living in the red. AlterNatives, the store HSP works through, burned down last December. All the merchandise and the entire interior. Where does the money come from to put in the new floors and walls, to buy all new merchandise, to reopen it? Apparently quite a lot of it's on a credit card. My earrings, and this I knew from the beginning, were supposed to be something that the store could make money off of. And that's where I started. I knew AlterNatives was in trouble, the rent in CaryTown is so expensive, and if I could make something to help the store get back on its feet, that was good enough. And then I came down here, made so many relationships with so many people, all of my students, and the focus changed to helping them make all the money. So when I found out the ratio of how much money went to the girls and how much was absorbed, I got really, really sad. And then I was brutally reminded by Lupe when I fought so hard that how much of that went to materials, which hasn't even been paid off the credit card yet, and how much of that went to my plane ticket, how much of that goes to my rent and expenses and food here, and then, after all that, how much goes to rebuild the store that offers the market to a group of people who would have no market at all without it. So both of those things hurt my heart badly. And I don't know where the limit is. I don't know where the business starts and the charity ends. Something's got to keep this house down here running, something does, it's just too good to go under, and since anything like this can very easily go under, I guess I've got to let go of the money thing. It's not my battle.
Now I'd like to completely change the mood and subject by describing our trip to Tejutla. Last weekend was the Fair of Tejutla, the biggest event in the town all year, and lots and LOTS of people come there to see it. We left Xela after Claudia's english class at 10 am, and suffered something like 3 chicken busses to get there. Not till 2. The first bus we had was probably the nicest chicken bus I've ever been on. The whole front panel was decorated, from velvet tasseled drapes to gilded crucifixes to a novelty license plate from New York with the word BITCH on it.. I know. Also, above the driver's seat was one of those portable dvd players playing Hispanic music videos while the stereo piped the music through the whole bus. So on the 25 minute drive to the main bus station to the north of Xela, we got to watch an overweight, greasy dude sing a very happy-sounding, almost polka influenced song in with extreme, almost heartbreaking body language at the loss of his clearly out of his league girlfriend. Then the guy in the yellow 3 Amigos suit, with the cartoon mustache and the Speedy Gonzalez sombrero, then the song about being on the road, with the music video of a guy in a plaid shirt with the sleeves torn off driving a semi. It was good fun. The rain was terrible when we got out, plus it was mid morning on a saturday, so when we got on the next bus to San Marcos, it was totally packed. We all sat 3 in a seat, just like when you were 10 on the school bus, except we're (almost) all adults and jamming a bunch of grown Guatemalan butts on a seat made for 10 year olds just doesn't work all that well. I was lucky, and landed a seat with 2 small butts. Hugh sat with Claudia, another butt, and Luie's butt on Claudia's, which wouldn't have been so bad if the seat across from him wasn't overflowing. In this way, there was absolutely no space between he and the person on the other side of the row (to the point where I times I think Hugh might have been supporting her side that wasn't on the seat) and whenever new passengers got on, he had to stand up to let them through, which often meant when he sat back down, the standing passenger he just let through has taken advantage of the extra room evacuated by his back, and he couldn't really sit back down again. So an hour of that, and then we got off at San Marcos and jumped on another bus to Tejutla. This one was not crowded at all, so we rode in relative comfort for the rest of the way there. Yanessi's two adolescent brothers had been in Xela the night before, so the three of them were riding along with Hugh, Claudia, Luie, and me. I was somewhat surprised and definitely heart warmed by the way siblings here act. Everyone is just so warm here. And personal space (obviously) is just not a big issue. I mean, this is a group of people that kiss each other every time they meet (I get 8 kisses every wednesday in Xela with my class, 4 when they come and 4 when they leave) and, of course, ride 3 in a seat for hours at a time. Yanessi and her younger brother Cris (who's around 13) cuddled the whole way to Tejutla. In the same way Luie was leaning on his mom's shoulder, Yanessi and Cris would trade off sleeping on the other's shoulder, with one arm around the other to keep them from falling out of the seat. Just not anything that ever happens in the states. I mean, there have to be some very affectionate families that do, but it's not all that normal. And the opposite is normal here. I like it, though I know when I was her age I never EVER would have let anyone cuddle with me on a bus. Cultural differences.
We got to Tejutla, walked only a few blocks and came to Claudia's house. This is the same place where their parents raised Lupe, Claudia, and their other 3 sisters- Irma, Chiki, and Lourdes. Dona Melida and Don Cesar have one side of the compound, a living room and two bedrooms attached to a beautiful small patio with the bathroom and kitchen on the other side of it, so that you have to walk through the rain to take a shower. On the other side, connecting through a doorway on the patio, is Irma's house, where Yanessi and her 3 little brothers live with their mom. On the other side of Don Cesar's house is his work shop and showroom, where he carves marble for gravestones and commemorative plaques. He gave us a tour the next day, which was super exciting. He has a machine from Italy that carves out the letters using a guide system, and in the only second floor room in the house he has a shop where he uses air compressors to hand carve the sculptures of flowers or angels that people want. He gave us a demo, I wanted to play with his tools but didn't feel appropriate asking. Claudia's already told me about her time right after she had Luie that she forced her dad to let her work in the shop. He didn't want her to, so she taught herself how to do everything, and still wants to return to take over his business, but he insists it's not the right work for her, she should go to school and be an accountant and work at a desk. She did, and she hates it and she still just wants to carve marble. She talks about it all the time.
Anyway, after we got there, we ate some unbelievable lunch, made-with-love style, and tried to recover from the bus ride. We laid down, Hugh took a nap, and I read, then we had a tamale for dinner, and a long conversation with Don Cesar. At first he didnt' think we spoke Spanish, so he kept repeating the few phrases he knew in English. "What is your naaame?" and then after a few moments "What is your naaame?" in the same inflection.. We couldn't tell if he couldn't remember or if he just didn't have anything else to say. We finally explained to him that we've lived here for 3 months with Claudia (we've also met him at least twice before this) and we know enough Spanish, it's ok if he wants to speak it. He never really got it though, I guess because we speak worse than we understand, and when he was showing us around the marble shop he kept saying "Thees ees my work." "Thees ees my work." " I work with marmol." "Thees ees my work." This is also the point where we had that hard and dark conversation about north american politics and economics. None of us were prepared with enough spanish words for that one.
Afterwards we went to the main event of the fair, which is a 4 night long festival, the beauty pageant. Actually, there are 3 different pageants, Friday night the Queen of the Maiz, Saturday night the Queen of the Wheat, and Sunday night the Infant Princess (roughly translated). Tonight was the Queen of the Wheat, and the biggest of the pageants. It was completely, utterly, jam packed. They don't just stop selling tickets here. They don't just quit letting people on the busses. As long as someone wants to suffer enough to stand on someone else's feet to watch, they will take your ticket money. We were lucky enough to get a seat, on the back row, so there was a lot of pushing and shoving, but still better than the alternative. The pageant was SO WEIRD. First the 5 contestants came out, wearing a long sleeved belly-shirt and a miniskirt out of metallic red and gold fabric, along with a marching band style hat and white boots, as if they were majorettes or something, and all of them marched their dance number, a 5 minute long ordeal to some bad american hip-hop,-holding a trumpet behind their backs. I will never understand what they were going for except sexy-marching-band, which just blows my mind with oxymorons. After that was over, the first outfit change act came on- a greased up man in a suit with a cravat who sang emotional songs and used hand motions and body language that my friends and I use when we sing "Total Eclipse of the Heart" at parties. Then there was the swimsuit section. Which was horrible, and I always hate it. These girls were hardly 17, they just looked gangly. Then the next act was this girl group from El Salvador who had their own stage and everything off to the left side of the stage. They had a live band, which was great, but they were.. well kind of gross. It was four girls in short-painted-on-shorts, tube tops, and those stupid fuzzy boots, and they danced and sang. At this point the crowd was overflowing, and the whole section behind the chairs standing was almost completely young men, who turned into nasty little boys as their numbers increase and the show got more and more sexed out. It made me increasingly uncomfortable. When that was over, and the crowed completely whipped up into a frenzy, men especially, another solo singer took the stage in some super tight pants, which spurred the crowd in the back to chant "vuelto! vuelto!" "turn around! We wanna look at your butt!" Which she mostly ignored. She was more or less professional. Lots of technical problems with the sound equipment, but she kept up with it. Then there was another solo woman, who was completely different from everything else that had come on before her. She was old and large and wore this huge flowing mumu type dress made out of a dozen layers of hot pink tulle and lace. She was my favorite singer, with a voice that only a 40 year old obese woman could have, blowing you off your seat. My favorite part of it, though, was when some guy in the rowdy back section yelled "mucho ropa!" which basically means "too much clothes!" and she didn't even need to blink, just basically said "oh, so you wanna be my boyfriend?" After that I couldn't stay awake. It had been like 3 hours of this, and after that bus I just couldn't do it. Hugh and I both fell asleep, along with Luie, and Claudia got us all up and out of the hall before the winner was announced. What I heard the next morning was that the crowd didn't like the winner, and shouted "fraud! fraud!" when they crowned her. Oi.
We had planned on leaving early Sunday, but decided to stay and enjoy the next night of fair activities instead. Claudia showed us around the town on a walking tour. It is so beautiful. On top of it's own little hill, and seemingly surrounded by valley on all sides then abruptly ringed in by huge, green forested mountains after the plunge. The people also were so nice, everyone says hello. There were plenty, not a lot but plenty, people in the streets, which Claudia said was really unusual for the fair. Usually it's completely quiet. I can see why she comes here every weekend, despite the bus ride.
Then we helped cook lunch, which of course was delicious, and I love how the meals are a family affair. There were 3 sisters there, the parents, and Yanessi, Hugh, and I, and we all peeled potatoes and steamed corn and sat around the warm stove. Dona Melida cooks on a wood-heated stove like the women in the villages. It's the warmest part of the house. Then I sketched the patio some, and took a nap, and we went to the little girl pageant, which was, if you need any description at all, just like Little Miss Sunshine. How terrifying. 6 year olds in a swimsuit competition? Yikes. And the costume change act was this grown woman in a college girl halloween costume style superhero outfit. Complete with super short skirt, white high heel boots, and long black wig. She lip synced retarded kids songs and played awkward games with the kids in the crowd. It went on intolerably long. She was awful. Jon Carlo-Yanessi's little brother and Luie's cousin, was an escort for one of the little girls at the end in the "evening wear" competition, and his partner ended up winning, which made the family very happy. I liked her the best, too, if for the only reason that in the dance numbers, all the other little girls looked at her to remember their steps.
The next morning we got up at 5:45 and I didn't even have enough time to use the bathroom before the bus-honking insanely for the approaching ten minutes- picked us up directly outside the house at 5:55. I assume I got everything that was mine before we ran out the door. I haven't missed anything yet. The lucky thing here is that that early in the morning the bus goes directly to Xela, so we didn't have to stop off and wait at San Marcos, and it was only a 2, or more, hour ride to Xela. Oh how sweet was the house and my bed after that. We had to sit towards the back of the bus, behind the last set of wheels, through the duration of the ride, which meant every cobblestone we went over sent us through the roof. The other interesting and beautiful thing that happened to us on this bus is that we finally experienced the reason for which chicken busses are named as they are. When we sat down in Tejutla we just noticed that it smelled kind of bad, and figured it was the bus. Who knows what happens on these things. and then we just figured that the seats in this one were especially squeaky. And then we hear scuttling over our heads, and finally figure out that we're sitting under a cardboard box full of baby chickens. So I can now leave Guatemala feeling fulfilled. I have ridden on a chicken bus with the chickens.
If I could even remember much of the week before last I'm not sure if I'd tell it. Most of my discomfort was caused by realizing that I can never escape the business world, even as I'm trying to focus on art and creativity, I will always have to work and deal in the world of money. There's something dirty about it to me, some people not earning enough of it for reasons hard to understand, and others being given too much for reasons even more difficult to comprehend. Claudia's father, Don Cesar in Tejutla, sat Hugh and I down and asked "why is gas Q36 here? Why does your president make a war? Why is your country deporting our relatives and friends? Why is the dollar falling? We can't compete in the world of the Euro. Don't you know that your money is our money? I can't know these things because I live so far away, but you can tell me." Of course we can't tell him. We're educated, and have common sense, and know the difference between life in the 1st world and life in the 3rd, and there was no way we could even begin.
And then there's the life of a non-profit organization, which I admire, but hope to never have to deal with from the business end. How does AMA get the money to do its projects? How does HSP support itself? How do Lupe and Ben and their two sons eat? Who pays the rent here, what money buys my super expensive materials? I learned a little bit of it recently, which is what started the business depression. There isn't any money. That's what it's all about. The only way for one of these things to function is to always be living in the red. AlterNatives, the store HSP works through, burned down last December. All the merchandise and the entire interior. Where does the money come from to put in the new floors and walls, to buy all new merchandise, to reopen it? Apparently quite a lot of it's on a credit card. My earrings, and this I knew from the beginning, were supposed to be something that the store could make money off of. And that's where I started. I knew AlterNatives was in trouble, the rent in CaryTown is so expensive, and if I could make something to help the store get back on its feet, that was good enough. And then I came down here, made so many relationships with so many people, all of my students, and the focus changed to helping them make all the money. So when I found out the ratio of how much money went to the girls and how much was absorbed, I got really, really sad. And then I was brutally reminded by Lupe when I fought so hard that how much of that went to materials, which hasn't even been paid off the credit card yet, and how much of that went to my plane ticket, how much of that goes to my rent and expenses and food here, and then, after all that, how much goes to rebuild the store that offers the market to a group of people who would have no market at all without it. So both of those things hurt my heart badly. And I don't know where the limit is. I don't know where the business starts and the charity ends. Something's got to keep this house down here running, something does, it's just too good to go under, and since anything like this can very easily go under, I guess I've got to let go of the money thing. It's not my battle.
Now I'd like to completely change the mood and subject by describing our trip to Tejutla. Last weekend was the Fair of Tejutla, the biggest event in the town all year, and lots and LOTS of people come there to see it. We left Xela after Claudia's english class at 10 am, and suffered something like 3 chicken busses to get there. Not till 2. The first bus we had was probably the nicest chicken bus I've ever been on. The whole front panel was decorated, from velvet tasseled drapes to gilded crucifixes to a novelty license plate from New York with the word BITCH on it.. I know. Also, above the driver's seat was one of those portable dvd players playing Hispanic music videos while the stereo piped the music through the whole bus. So on the 25 minute drive to the main bus station to the north of Xela, we got to watch an overweight, greasy dude sing a very happy-sounding, almost polka influenced song in with extreme, almost heartbreaking body language at the loss of his clearly out of his league girlfriend. Then the guy in the yellow 3 Amigos suit, with the cartoon mustache and the Speedy Gonzalez sombrero, then the song about being on the road, with the music video of a guy in a plaid shirt with the sleeves torn off driving a semi. It was good fun. The rain was terrible when we got out, plus it was mid morning on a saturday, so when we got on the next bus to San Marcos, it was totally packed. We all sat 3 in a seat, just like when you were 10 on the school bus, except we're (almost) all adults and jamming a bunch of grown Guatemalan butts on a seat made for 10 year olds just doesn't work all that well. I was lucky, and landed a seat with 2 small butts. Hugh sat with Claudia, another butt, and Luie's butt on Claudia's, which wouldn't have been so bad if the seat across from him wasn't overflowing. In this way, there was absolutely no space between he and the person on the other side of the row (to the point where I times I think Hugh might have been supporting her side that wasn't on the seat) and whenever new passengers got on, he had to stand up to let them through, which often meant when he sat back down, the standing passenger he just let through has taken advantage of the extra room evacuated by his back, and he couldn't really sit back down again. So an hour of that, and then we got off at San Marcos and jumped on another bus to Tejutla. This one was not crowded at all, so we rode in relative comfort for the rest of the way there. Yanessi's two adolescent brothers had been in Xela the night before, so the three of them were riding along with Hugh, Claudia, Luie, and me. I was somewhat surprised and definitely heart warmed by the way siblings here act. Everyone is just so warm here. And personal space (obviously) is just not a big issue. I mean, this is a group of people that kiss each other every time they meet (I get 8 kisses every wednesday in Xela with my class, 4 when they come and 4 when they leave) and, of course, ride 3 in a seat for hours at a time. Yanessi and her younger brother Cris (who's around 13) cuddled the whole way to Tejutla. In the same way Luie was leaning on his mom's shoulder, Yanessi and Cris would trade off sleeping on the other's shoulder, with one arm around the other to keep them from falling out of the seat. Just not anything that ever happens in the states. I mean, there have to be some very affectionate families that do, but it's not all that normal. And the opposite is normal here. I like it, though I know when I was her age I never EVER would have let anyone cuddle with me on a bus. Cultural differences.
We got to Tejutla, walked only a few blocks and came to Claudia's house. This is the same place where their parents raised Lupe, Claudia, and their other 3 sisters- Irma, Chiki, and Lourdes. Dona Melida and Don Cesar have one side of the compound, a living room and two bedrooms attached to a beautiful small patio with the bathroom and kitchen on the other side of it, so that you have to walk through the rain to take a shower. On the other side, connecting through a doorway on the patio, is Irma's house, where Yanessi and her 3 little brothers live with their mom. On the other side of Don Cesar's house is his work shop and showroom, where he carves marble for gravestones and commemorative plaques. He gave us a tour the next day, which was super exciting. He has a machine from Italy that carves out the letters using a guide system, and in the only second floor room in the house he has a shop where he uses air compressors to hand carve the sculptures of flowers or angels that people want. He gave us a demo, I wanted to play with his tools but didn't feel appropriate asking. Claudia's already told me about her time right after she had Luie that she forced her dad to let her work in the shop. He didn't want her to, so she taught herself how to do everything, and still wants to return to take over his business, but he insists it's not the right work for her, she should go to school and be an accountant and work at a desk. She did, and she hates it and she still just wants to carve marble. She talks about it all the time.
Anyway, after we got there, we ate some unbelievable lunch, made-with-love style, and tried to recover from the bus ride. We laid down, Hugh took a nap, and I read, then we had a tamale for dinner, and a long conversation with Don Cesar. At first he didnt' think we spoke Spanish, so he kept repeating the few phrases he knew in English. "What is your naaame?" and then after a few moments "What is your naaame?" in the same inflection.. We couldn't tell if he couldn't remember or if he just didn't have anything else to say. We finally explained to him that we've lived here for 3 months with Claudia (we've also met him at least twice before this) and we know enough Spanish, it's ok if he wants to speak it. He never really got it though, I guess because we speak worse than we understand, and when he was showing us around the marble shop he kept saying "Thees ees my work." "Thees ees my work." " I work with marmol." "Thees ees my work." This is also the point where we had that hard and dark conversation about north american politics and economics. None of us were prepared with enough spanish words for that one.
Afterwards we went to the main event of the fair, which is a 4 night long festival, the beauty pageant. Actually, there are 3 different pageants, Friday night the Queen of the Maiz, Saturday night the Queen of the Wheat, and Sunday night the Infant Princess (roughly translated). Tonight was the Queen of the Wheat, and the biggest of the pageants. It was completely, utterly, jam packed. They don't just stop selling tickets here. They don't just quit letting people on the busses. As long as someone wants to suffer enough to stand on someone else's feet to watch, they will take your ticket money. We were lucky enough to get a seat, on the back row, so there was a lot of pushing and shoving, but still better than the alternative. The pageant was SO WEIRD. First the 5 contestants came out, wearing a long sleeved belly-shirt and a miniskirt out of metallic red and gold fabric, along with a marching band style hat and white boots, as if they were majorettes or something, and all of them marched their dance number, a 5 minute long ordeal to some bad american hip-hop,-holding a trumpet behind their backs. I will never understand what they were going for except sexy-marching-band, which just blows my mind with oxymorons. After that was over, the first outfit change act came on- a greased up man in a suit with a cravat who sang emotional songs and used hand motions and body language that my friends and I use when we sing "Total Eclipse of the Heart" at parties. Then there was the swimsuit section. Which was horrible, and I always hate it. These girls were hardly 17, they just looked gangly. Then the next act was this girl group from El Salvador who had their own stage and everything off to the left side of the stage. They had a live band, which was great, but they were.. well kind of gross. It was four girls in short-painted-on-shorts, tube tops, and those stupid fuzzy boots, and they danced and sang. At this point the crowd was overflowing, and the whole section behind the chairs standing was almost completely young men, who turned into nasty little boys as their numbers increase and the show got more and more sexed out. It made me increasingly uncomfortable. When that was over, and the crowed completely whipped up into a frenzy, men especially, another solo singer took the stage in some super tight pants, which spurred the crowd in the back to chant "vuelto! vuelto!" "turn around! We wanna look at your butt!" Which she mostly ignored. She was more or less professional. Lots of technical problems with the sound equipment, but she kept up with it. Then there was another solo woman, who was completely different from everything else that had come on before her. She was old and large and wore this huge flowing mumu type dress made out of a dozen layers of hot pink tulle and lace. She was my favorite singer, with a voice that only a 40 year old obese woman could have, blowing you off your seat. My favorite part of it, though, was when some guy in the rowdy back section yelled "mucho ropa!" which basically means "too much clothes!" and she didn't even need to blink, just basically said "oh, so you wanna be my boyfriend?" After that I couldn't stay awake. It had been like 3 hours of this, and after that bus I just couldn't do it. Hugh and I both fell asleep, along with Luie, and Claudia got us all up and out of the hall before the winner was announced. What I heard the next morning was that the crowd didn't like the winner, and shouted "fraud! fraud!" when they crowned her. Oi.
We had planned on leaving early Sunday, but decided to stay and enjoy the next night of fair activities instead. Claudia showed us around the town on a walking tour. It is so beautiful. On top of it's own little hill, and seemingly surrounded by valley on all sides then abruptly ringed in by huge, green forested mountains after the plunge. The people also were so nice, everyone says hello. There were plenty, not a lot but plenty, people in the streets, which Claudia said was really unusual for the fair. Usually it's completely quiet. I can see why she comes here every weekend, despite the bus ride.
Then we helped cook lunch, which of course was delicious, and I love how the meals are a family affair. There were 3 sisters there, the parents, and Yanessi, Hugh, and I, and we all peeled potatoes and steamed corn and sat around the warm stove. Dona Melida cooks on a wood-heated stove like the women in the villages. It's the warmest part of the house. Then I sketched the patio some, and took a nap, and we went to the little girl pageant, which was, if you need any description at all, just like Little Miss Sunshine. How terrifying. 6 year olds in a swimsuit competition? Yikes. And the costume change act was this grown woman in a college girl halloween costume style superhero outfit. Complete with super short skirt, white high heel boots, and long black wig. She lip synced retarded kids songs and played awkward games with the kids in the crowd. It went on intolerably long. She was awful. Jon Carlo-Yanessi's little brother and Luie's cousin, was an escort for one of the little girls at the end in the "evening wear" competition, and his partner ended up winning, which made the family very happy. I liked her the best, too, if for the only reason that in the dance numbers, all the other little girls looked at her to remember their steps.
The next morning we got up at 5:45 and I didn't even have enough time to use the bathroom before the bus-honking insanely for the approaching ten minutes- picked us up directly outside the house at 5:55. I assume I got everything that was mine before we ran out the door. I haven't missed anything yet. The lucky thing here is that that early in the morning the bus goes directly to Xela, so we didn't have to stop off and wait at San Marcos, and it was only a 2, or more, hour ride to Xela. Oh how sweet was the house and my bed after that. We had to sit towards the back of the bus, behind the last set of wheels, through the duration of the ride, which meant every cobblestone we went over sent us through the roof. The other interesting and beautiful thing that happened to us on this bus is that we finally experienced the reason for which chicken busses are named as they are. When we sat down in Tejutla we just noticed that it smelled kind of bad, and figured it was the bus. Who knows what happens on these things. and then we just figured that the seats in this one were especially squeaky. And then we hear scuttling over our heads, and finally figure out that we're sitting under a cardboard box full of baby chickens. So I can now leave Guatemala feeling fulfilled. I have ridden on a chicken bus with the chickens.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Tengo Tos que no saldra
oh no! It's been so long since I've written that I can't remember anything that's happened to me in the last week! I can probably recount it by the days I've been sick.
Well let's see. The week after the ride in the back of the truck I didn't do much of anything. After Ben walked all over my little ego his first day here, I went into a little nosedive of self doubting and fruitless redesigning and constant questioning. If he doesn't like this, then would he like this? Is it this that he doesn't like? If it's that, then I can try to change it with this... But then this looks just like that... and that's not possible... and dammit, I liked my idea. If he doesn't, he can figure it out for himself. So through the entire week I sat at the table and cut and glued and sewed and worked every day but didn't end up changing a single thing. I couldn't. I tried and tried. Changed and changed. Thought and thought. and I just couldn't do it. Nothing I made looked better, nothing looked even different. I just kept doing the same thing over and over again, my hands couldn't stop themselves. So I just gave it up and came to the conclusion that if Ben doesn't like what I made, well he doesn't have any other choices from me so he either has to take it or find someone else to design what he wants. I can't do it. I tried and I can't. It was a nasty and painful defeat that I don't want to admit. I should be able to do it, I can't think of anyone more qualified. I guess it's experience and view that I'm lacking. I need more practice.
Friday I finally came down with the nasty cold that had me shut up in my room most the day. I saw it coming from that horrible 3 hours in the back of the truck, and fought it and fought it and by friday it won. Saturday it started to let up, which made me happy, what a quick cold, but the cough lingered. We really didn't do hardly anything this weekend. It was really boring. I wanted to take a bike trip somewhere, but the cold kept me inside.
The first group of tourists/volunteers came in on Saturday and went to Panajachel at Lake Atitlan for the weekend. I was told to go to Xeavaj on Monday with Hilda because they were bringing the group through for a tour of the town and they wanted to sell crap to them so it looked good if my class put on a little show so the group knew where the products came from. First though they had a ceremony to kind of bless the efforts of the volunteers in the courtyard of the school where we met. It was basically the same thing as what we saw that time by the lake with the other students from the school, only in a less picturesque place but with actual Mayans participating and so more valid and interesting to me. Once again he lit a fire that was solely incense and candle wax. It's supposed to be a holy, cleansing smoke, but boy did we get cleansed in it. Also it was an exceptionally cold day in Xeavaj that was accompanied by the necessary amount of damp fog and wind to really get through to you. I spent as much time as I could walking around while the tourists got different demonstrations of weaving and atol-making, but I had to start my class after not too long. Then i sat in the freezing cement box that had standing water in one corner and worked with the girls for a couple hours. We showed the tourists what we were doing, there were 10 of them from a methodist church near DC, but it didn't seem to make too much of an impact. They did buy something like 3 pairs though in the end. I also bought a bag that Marta's mother in law made, which I was very excited about but tried to keep secret. Marta asks me a million very accusing questions every time she has a reason to suspect money has passed or will pass hands. She has consistently pestered me about these pictures that I somehow in my unknowing nodding to her unintelligible Spanish agreed to print for her. She finally had to get Hugh to translate to me what exactly it was I agreed to do because I didn't know and she STILL insisted on holding me to it. So after 4 weeks of not being able to because my computer doesn't print here and they're digital pictures, etc, she finally was like "I'm not stupid, take your memory card to the quickfoto in parque central and print them already! I promised my boyfriend those pictures 3 weeks ago for god's sake!" (more or less) so we freaking did it, and it actually cost a good bit of money, and we FINALLY bring them to her. First she complains that she looks black in them (don't know what she was expecting there.) and then said that I didn't print the right one (I printed 6 for her) and I needed to bring it next week. It was the one she promised her boyfriend. And then while we're sitting waiting for class to start she says, nonchalantly, "Hey, Maria wants a picture too." at which point I put my face in my hands and said "I can't!" which she took to mean "I have no film in my camara!" so she pestered me about the camera Hugh was using, which I explained belonged to Tony, the guy who's filming, not Hugh, which she kind of asked if Tony could develop some for her, but didn't pursue it much farther. Augh. That woman is really freaking annoying sometimes. Always trying to get something out of me. Anyway, I gave Hugh my money and made him buy it, since I knew it would result in a million questions about how much it cost etc. Later I hear Marta ask Hugh how much his girlfriend spent on that bag. I don't know how but she has like ex-ray money vision. I thoroughly understand the fact that money is extremely important and she and her community don't have much of it.. But the whole reason I'm there is so they can make it, not so Marta can get it out of my pockets. I can tell that Marta likes making jewelry out of a learning-a-new-trade kind of interest, but I don't think she takes it seriously that she can actually try to earn a living with it. The other girls in my class seem well aware and basically leave me alone about that crap, I don't know what it is about Marta. Anyway. The tourists and everyone else piled in their van to go home, and the truck had left to take the priest back to Xela right after the ceremony, so me, Hugh, and Tony had to wait at the school for another hour or more waiting for the truck to come back. We made it. Different driver- Javier from Chichi- and God is he rough.
That night I was organizing my new materials and started to feel really off and out of it around 9. Just out of nowhere. Then when I changed into my PJs I got so cold I started shivering, got under all the covers and didn't stop shaking for hours. I had a nasty fever that set my teeth chattering most the night. In the morning my muscles ached from it. I slept all morning while Hugh was out helping to translate for the volunteers, and when I got up decided I had a respiratory infection. I can only imagine that the day in Xeavaj was too much for my cold-weakened body. After that night though I haven't had any more problems with fevers, and most my symptoms went away except that today my cough got pretty bad after inhaling some car fumes and fire-pit smoke in a village. It's driving me crazy. Cough syrup doesn't help.
Well my computer's battery is about to go out and I'd rather turn it off than bring in the power cord. So if there's any more to write, I'll do it later. Buenas noches!
Well let's see. The week after the ride in the back of the truck I didn't do much of anything. After Ben walked all over my little ego his first day here, I went into a little nosedive of self doubting and fruitless redesigning and constant questioning. If he doesn't like this, then would he like this? Is it this that he doesn't like? If it's that, then I can try to change it with this... But then this looks just like that... and that's not possible... and dammit, I liked my idea. If he doesn't, he can figure it out for himself. So through the entire week I sat at the table and cut and glued and sewed and worked every day but didn't end up changing a single thing. I couldn't. I tried and tried. Changed and changed. Thought and thought. and I just couldn't do it. Nothing I made looked better, nothing looked even different. I just kept doing the same thing over and over again, my hands couldn't stop themselves. So I just gave it up and came to the conclusion that if Ben doesn't like what I made, well he doesn't have any other choices from me so he either has to take it or find someone else to design what he wants. I can't do it. I tried and I can't. It was a nasty and painful defeat that I don't want to admit. I should be able to do it, I can't think of anyone more qualified. I guess it's experience and view that I'm lacking. I need more practice.
Friday I finally came down with the nasty cold that had me shut up in my room most the day. I saw it coming from that horrible 3 hours in the back of the truck, and fought it and fought it and by friday it won. Saturday it started to let up, which made me happy, what a quick cold, but the cough lingered. We really didn't do hardly anything this weekend. It was really boring. I wanted to take a bike trip somewhere, but the cold kept me inside.
The first group of tourists/volunteers came in on Saturday and went to Panajachel at Lake Atitlan for the weekend. I was told to go to Xeavaj on Monday with Hilda because they were bringing the group through for a tour of the town and they wanted to sell crap to them so it looked good if my class put on a little show so the group knew where the products came from. First though they had a ceremony to kind of bless the efforts of the volunteers in the courtyard of the school where we met. It was basically the same thing as what we saw that time by the lake with the other students from the school, only in a less picturesque place but with actual Mayans participating and so more valid and interesting to me. Once again he lit a fire that was solely incense and candle wax. It's supposed to be a holy, cleansing smoke, but boy did we get cleansed in it. Also it was an exceptionally cold day in Xeavaj that was accompanied by the necessary amount of damp fog and wind to really get through to you. I spent as much time as I could walking around while the tourists got different demonstrations of weaving and atol-making, but I had to start my class after not too long. Then i sat in the freezing cement box that had standing water in one corner and worked with the girls for a couple hours. We showed the tourists what we were doing, there were 10 of them from a methodist church near DC, but it didn't seem to make too much of an impact. They did buy something like 3 pairs though in the end. I also bought a bag that Marta's mother in law made, which I was very excited about but tried to keep secret. Marta asks me a million very accusing questions every time she has a reason to suspect money has passed or will pass hands. She has consistently pestered me about these pictures that I somehow in my unknowing nodding to her unintelligible Spanish agreed to print for her. She finally had to get Hugh to translate to me what exactly it was I agreed to do because I didn't know and she STILL insisted on holding me to it. So after 4 weeks of not being able to because my computer doesn't print here and they're digital pictures, etc, she finally was like "I'm not stupid, take your memory card to the quickfoto in parque central and print them already! I promised my boyfriend those pictures 3 weeks ago for god's sake!" (more or less) so we freaking did it, and it actually cost a good bit of money, and we FINALLY bring them to her. First she complains that she looks black in them (don't know what she was expecting there.) and then said that I didn't print the right one (I printed 6 for her) and I needed to bring it next week. It was the one she promised her boyfriend. And then while we're sitting waiting for class to start she says, nonchalantly, "Hey, Maria wants a picture too." at which point I put my face in my hands and said "I can't!" which she took to mean "I have no film in my camara!" so she pestered me about the camera Hugh was using, which I explained belonged to Tony, the guy who's filming, not Hugh, which she kind of asked if Tony could develop some for her, but didn't pursue it much farther. Augh. That woman is really freaking annoying sometimes. Always trying to get something out of me. Anyway, I gave Hugh my money and made him buy it, since I knew it would result in a million questions about how much it cost etc. Later I hear Marta ask Hugh how much his girlfriend spent on that bag. I don't know how but she has like ex-ray money vision. I thoroughly understand the fact that money is extremely important and she and her community don't have much of it.. But the whole reason I'm there is so they can make it, not so Marta can get it out of my pockets. I can tell that Marta likes making jewelry out of a learning-a-new-trade kind of interest, but I don't think she takes it seriously that she can actually try to earn a living with it. The other girls in my class seem well aware and basically leave me alone about that crap, I don't know what it is about Marta. Anyway. The tourists and everyone else piled in their van to go home, and the truck had left to take the priest back to Xela right after the ceremony, so me, Hugh, and Tony had to wait at the school for another hour or more waiting for the truck to come back. We made it. Different driver- Javier from Chichi- and God is he rough.
That night I was organizing my new materials and started to feel really off and out of it around 9. Just out of nowhere. Then when I changed into my PJs I got so cold I started shivering, got under all the covers and didn't stop shaking for hours. I had a nasty fever that set my teeth chattering most the night. In the morning my muscles ached from it. I slept all morning while Hugh was out helping to translate for the volunteers, and when I got up decided I had a respiratory infection. I can only imagine that the day in Xeavaj was too much for my cold-weakened body. After that night though I haven't had any more problems with fevers, and most my symptoms went away except that today my cough got pretty bad after inhaling some car fumes and fire-pit smoke in a village. It's driving me crazy. Cough syrup doesn't help.
Well my computer's battery is about to go out and I'd rather turn it off than bring in the power cord. So if there's any more to write, I'll do it later. Buenas noches!
Thursday, July 3, 2008
FOTOS Nuevos
There are some in the Flickr album.
By the way, I've been meaning to say this: Our connection here sucks, so I have to shrink and kill all of my pictures, which is why they're so crappy on the site. If you see any you'd like to have (for your desktop, etc, mom and dad) let me know which one and I'll email it to you full form.
By the way, I've been meaning to say this: Our connection here sucks, so I have to shrink and kill all of my pictures, which is why they're so crappy on the site. If you see any you'd like to have (for your desktop, etc, mom and dad) let me know which one and I'll email it to you full form.
Puchica
The rain is like clockwork. Starts between 4-5, ends at 8. Every night. The hardest downpour is always around 7.
On Saturday we did something. I can't remember. One part involved going with Ben and crew to the travel agent to pin down the cost for a trip to Tikal. Hugh and I really wanted to go, but couldn't decide till we knew how much. We were kind of expecting $100 american. It turned out to be $300, so we had to back out. $300 is more than a month of living here, and it came down to the realization that if we went to Tikal, we'd be coming home a month earlier that we were hoping. So that went down the drain.
Sunday they wanted to get some video footage of this coffee cooperative in Rethaleleu (I cannot pronounce that) for part of, or a different, I'm not sure, documentary. Ben and Marvin up front, Summer (the biologist from the science museum) and Tony (the filmer) and his equipment in the second row, Hugh and I in the bed of the truck. It was a gorgeous day with blue skies and a warm wind, so we were more than happy to absorb some vitamin D in the back, even if it did mean grinding some of the bones off our butts on the bed-liner. We got to witness up close the change in the foliage from Highland shrubbery and pine trees to lowland tropics. On the way down the mountains, we passed within close view of a really grand and pointy inactive volcano, with a smaller attachment below it, which seemed to be smoking. I kept thinking to myself "what farmer would be burning off farmland in the rainy season? and what farmer would plant anything on the tip of a small mountain? Oddballs." An hour and a lot of miles later, we end up on a thin road in the middle of sugar fields, staring straight at these two mountains. We're facing backwards in the the back, so we don't why but the truck stops, Tony gets out with his camera, and Summer yells back to us "There's a volcano erupting!" and we look up over the cab, and sure enough, the little smoking mound has a plume of thick gray smoke rising out of it. It was just a "burp" as Hugh called it, nothing like orange lava or ruined country side, but pretty wild none the less. So after we packed it up and got back in and headed out once again, we made it through this odd landscape of cobblestone roads and wild impatient flowers to the top of a large hill where the co-op is located. Yes, mom, impatients actually grow somewhere in the wild, not just flower beds! And they were all over the place, little squarish bright pink blossoms all over the ditches beside the road. Adorable. When we got there, there was some commotion over the video camera.. apparently they didn't have any warning for filming (Claudia's job) and they wouldn't allow it on the spot. So. No coffee plantation for us. We observed some stuff around the place, they process pure water and nuts as well as coffee, and have a little hotel up there for eco-tourists. Mostly students from the spanish schools in Xela. We managed to get some interviews with the staff, and heard the story of the co-op.. It used to be owned by a Patrone who basically owned all the people on his land as well as the plants. All their rent and food were taken out of their pay, and he could easily kick a person out of their job, house, life very easily if he wanted to, and apparently made a habit of it. After the coffee industry hit bottom years ago, he couldn't afford to pay his workers for over a year, yet continued to work them. Something happened where he tried to sell the land and skip out but the community took him to court for their owed wages, at which point he filed bankruptcy. So the land got funneled down to the government, which also couldn't or wouldn't pay them, and finally after years, the people were able to win the land they worked as a settlement for the wages they were owed. So this is where it came from. That system, by the way, is how the great majority of coffee plantations (and many other crops) are run. Jairo was telling Hugh that he was once touring a finca where the manager was giving a tour of a certain room, and the woman who worked there came in. The manager introduced her to the group "this is susie, she shell the beans!" and they walked out, and the man locked the door closed behind him. One of the members of the group asked why he locked her inside, and apparently his reply "her son is sick. We don't want her leaving work to go check on him." so there's that.
After we ate lunch there at the hotel we got back in the truck and Ben asked if we'd like to see the ocean, since it was pretty close. Yes was the answer, so 45 minutes later we're standing on a beach with very black sand and very many Guatemalans in speedos. This wasn't a tourist beach, it was definitely a Guatemalteco beach. We got a lot of leers. If it wasn't for being a young woman, it was for being white. I didn't like it there too much. At one point along the road, riding in the back with Hugh and Summer, who is prone to violent carsickness and joined us for a while, a man at a bus stop said in unnatural english "yuuu white bitches." That was about all I wanted of that place.
On the way back, it was gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous cloudy cooling off oh shit. Rolling, violent looking black clouds surrounded over our heads, and out on the flat distance of the sugar fields we could see bolts of lightning and rain miles out in the distance. It spat some angry drops at us, but we somehow, through luck and Marvin's driving abilities (yes, I believe that Marvin is such a good driver, he can avoid thunderstorms on a completely straight road) missed the thunderstorms and came out on the other side of the cloud, all of the noise and light staying towards the west. Unfortunately, and to our great and tragic sadness, we came directly out of the afternoon thunderstorm and instantly into the evening clockwork rainy-season-you-knew-this-was-coming steady downpour. We hit that right as we hit traffic. So Summer and Hugh and I camped out under some ponchos for a good hour as the asses behind us continued to honk, though it was clear, as in all cases, honking was not going help the situation whatsoever. We weren't, at least, the only poor idiots huddling in the back of a truck. We were in Guatemala after all. Eventually Summer deserted us for her warm and still empty seat inside, and Hugh and I huddled in our wetness alone. It would have been a little easier if we hadn't soaked the lower parts of our pants already in the Pacific Ocean. There was hardly a reason to even try to stay dry. Not like some little ponchos in the swimming pool of a truck bed are really going to do much anyway. Finally, and with many hours behind us for one mile, we sped out of that hellhole and back up the mountain, where we traded the evil of rain for the evil of car exhaust. One truck after another after another after a bus was passed, each one killing more and more of my precious remaining brain cells. And then it was dark. And cold. And wet. And windy. Sorry, I tried not to complain much during the ride ("Hey! Wow! Isn't the scenery beautiful at dusk!?") but now I'm thinking back on it and BOY DID THAT SUCK. I will say that was a defining experience in my trip though. There's nothing like being able to see the landscape without glass between you and it, and going through it after the sun went down really was spectacular. The ghosts in Guatemala, when they're not wandering around after an earthquake, stay in the cloud-stuck mountains outside Almolonga. That's a fact. There's no other explanation for those puffed white clouds, just sitting in the air right outside the tips of the trees. No billowing or shrinking or even any of that licking that fog is wont to do. Just suspended as if on wires. Plus it had that reflected glow of gleaming whiteness that was missing in the thick dense farm and forest. The houses didn't even possess the life that the clouds did.
When we got back, damp and shivering, I took what felt like the hottest shower of my life and got in bed. Since then I've had some nasty allergy problems. I know all the exhaust stripped out the back of my throat, and I guess it's either the rain or new sensitivity that's got me now. bah! I'm sitting here with a tissue shoved in my left nostril right now! Anything to prove a point.
Enough for now. Later I will do some more art ranting.
On Saturday we did something. I can't remember. One part involved going with Ben and crew to the travel agent to pin down the cost for a trip to Tikal. Hugh and I really wanted to go, but couldn't decide till we knew how much. We were kind of expecting $100 american. It turned out to be $300, so we had to back out. $300 is more than a month of living here, and it came down to the realization that if we went to Tikal, we'd be coming home a month earlier that we were hoping. So that went down the drain.
Sunday they wanted to get some video footage of this coffee cooperative in Rethaleleu (I cannot pronounce that) for part of, or a different, I'm not sure, documentary. Ben and Marvin up front, Summer (the biologist from the science museum) and Tony (the filmer) and his equipment in the second row, Hugh and I in the bed of the truck. It was a gorgeous day with blue skies and a warm wind, so we were more than happy to absorb some vitamin D in the back, even if it did mean grinding some of the bones off our butts on the bed-liner. We got to witness up close the change in the foliage from Highland shrubbery and pine trees to lowland tropics. On the way down the mountains, we passed within close view of a really grand and pointy inactive volcano, with a smaller attachment below it, which seemed to be smoking. I kept thinking to myself "what farmer would be burning off farmland in the rainy season? and what farmer would plant anything on the tip of a small mountain? Oddballs." An hour and a lot of miles later, we end up on a thin road in the middle of sugar fields, staring straight at these two mountains. We're facing backwards in the the back, so we don't why but the truck stops, Tony gets out with his camera, and Summer yells back to us "There's a volcano erupting!" and we look up over the cab, and sure enough, the little smoking mound has a plume of thick gray smoke rising out of it. It was just a "burp" as Hugh called it, nothing like orange lava or ruined country side, but pretty wild none the less. So after we packed it up and got back in and headed out once again, we made it through this odd landscape of cobblestone roads and wild impatient flowers to the top of a large hill where the co-op is located. Yes, mom, impatients actually grow somewhere in the wild, not just flower beds! And they were all over the place, little squarish bright pink blossoms all over the ditches beside the road. Adorable. When we got there, there was some commotion over the video camera.. apparently they didn't have any warning for filming (Claudia's job) and they wouldn't allow it on the spot. So. No coffee plantation for us. We observed some stuff around the place, they process pure water and nuts as well as coffee, and have a little hotel up there for eco-tourists. Mostly students from the spanish schools in Xela. We managed to get some interviews with the staff, and heard the story of the co-op.. It used to be owned by a Patrone who basically owned all the people on his land as well as the plants. All their rent and food were taken out of their pay, and he could easily kick a person out of their job, house, life very easily if he wanted to, and apparently made a habit of it. After the coffee industry hit bottom years ago, he couldn't afford to pay his workers for over a year, yet continued to work them. Something happened where he tried to sell the land and skip out but the community took him to court for their owed wages, at which point he filed bankruptcy. So the land got funneled down to the government, which also couldn't or wouldn't pay them, and finally after years, the people were able to win the land they worked as a settlement for the wages they were owed. So this is where it came from. That system, by the way, is how the great majority of coffee plantations (and many other crops) are run. Jairo was telling Hugh that he was once touring a finca where the manager was giving a tour of a certain room, and the woman who worked there came in. The manager introduced her to the group "this is susie, she shell the beans!" and they walked out, and the man locked the door closed behind him. One of the members of the group asked why he locked her inside, and apparently his reply "her son is sick. We don't want her leaving work to go check on him." so there's that.
After we ate lunch there at the hotel we got back in the truck and Ben asked if we'd like to see the ocean, since it was pretty close. Yes was the answer, so 45 minutes later we're standing on a beach with very black sand and very many Guatemalans in speedos. This wasn't a tourist beach, it was definitely a Guatemalteco beach. We got a lot of leers. If it wasn't for being a young woman, it was for being white. I didn't like it there too much. At one point along the road, riding in the back with Hugh and Summer, who is prone to violent carsickness and joined us for a while, a man at a bus stop said in unnatural english "yuuu white bitches." That was about all I wanted of that place.
On the way back, it was gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous cloudy cooling off oh shit. Rolling, violent looking black clouds surrounded over our heads, and out on the flat distance of the sugar fields we could see bolts of lightning and rain miles out in the distance. It spat some angry drops at us, but we somehow, through luck and Marvin's driving abilities (yes, I believe that Marvin is such a good driver, he can avoid thunderstorms on a completely straight road) missed the thunderstorms and came out on the other side of the cloud, all of the noise and light staying towards the west. Unfortunately, and to our great and tragic sadness, we came directly out of the afternoon thunderstorm and instantly into the evening clockwork rainy-season-you-knew-this-was-coming steady downpour. We hit that right as we hit traffic. So Summer and Hugh and I camped out under some ponchos for a good hour as the asses behind us continued to honk, though it was clear, as in all cases, honking was not going help the situation whatsoever. We weren't, at least, the only poor idiots huddling in the back of a truck. We were in Guatemala after all. Eventually Summer deserted us for her warm and still empty seat inside, and Hugh and I huddled in our wetness alone. It would have been a little easier if we hadn't soaked the lower parts of our pants already in the Pacific Ocean. There was hardly a reason to even try to stay dry. Not like some little ponchos in the swimming pool of a truck bed are really going to do much anyway. Finally, and with many hours behind us for one mile, we sped out of that hellhole and back up the mountain, where we traded the evil of rain for the evil of car exhaust. One truck after another after another after a bus was passed, each one killing more and more of my precious remaining brain cells. And then it was dark. And cold. And wet. And windy. Sorry, I tried not to complain much during the ride ("Hey! Wow! Isn't the scenery beautiful at dusk!?") but now I'm thinking back on it and BOY DID THAT SUCK. I will say that was a defining experience in my trip though. There's nothing like being able to see the landscape without glass between you and it, and going through it after the sun went down really was spectacular. The ghosts in Guatemala, when they're not wandering around after an earthquake, stay in the cloud-stuck mountains outside Almolonga. That's a fact. There's no other explanation for those puffed white clouds, just sitting in the air right outside the tips of the trees. No billowing or shrinking or even any of that licking that fog is wont to do. Just suspended as if on wires. Plus it had that reflected glow of gleaming whiteness that was missing in the thick dense farm and forest. The houses didn't even possess the life that the clouds did.
When we got back, damp and shivering, I took what felt like the hottest shower of my life and got in bed. Since then I've had some nasty allergy problems. I know all the exhaust stripped out the back of my throat, and I guess it's either the rain or new sensitivity that's got me now. bah! I'm sitting here with a tissue shoved in my left nostril right now! Anything to prove a point.
Enough for now. Later I will do some more art ranting.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Diferencias de creatividad
This afternoon, joy of joys, Ben came into town, with a videographer and scientist in tow, no less. Ben, if I haven’t explained, is Lupe’s husband, and the other half of the head of this organization. The first, and I mean very first, thing he did, was not even to introduce me to the people he brought with him, no, it was to ask where my new designs were. I went into my room to get them (my room! My space! Private! For me!) where he followed me, and I sarcastically said (more than once) “thank you! This is MY room!” as in “hey! My space! Wait outside!” and I’m fairly sure he got it, but he’s not the type of person to let something like my boundaries bother him. I made him follow me back outside, and showed them to him, which he critiqued negatively in front of everyone. Within the first 5 minutes of arriving. I haven’t had time to prepare my defenses! Not fair!
HIS CRITIQUE… was that the material looked cheap and hippie-ish. Now… here is my conundrum. His wife picked out the fabric. I also happen to like it, and Claudia has given me her praise many times for the design, as well as I have been wearing them around town to see what people say (and also because I like them) and I have received a lot of good attention for them. What they are, and what I made them to be, is something rather cheap that we can make a lot of quickly and sell quickly. They utilize the typical fabrics of the area, making them super appealing to tourists as well as anyone in the states who is part of that new trend of tribal themed accessories, which according to my sister is very popular. The weavings here are so incredibly full that anything that’s done with them has to be done with a really minimalist hand or else they end up looking like a preschooler’s coloring book. Here I am dealing with the same exact thing all over again as when Lupe came. He’s got this idea in his head, he knows is so easy to do, but the idea is vague and lacking the technical details to bring it into physical reality (which is what I am here for) and so he has no idea what it takes to do it. He just wants me to do it. Sure sure, fine fine, but how do I tell someone with no experience with the nature of making textiles and with the nature of making jewelry, that it is physically impossible? I think it would have to come down to what happened with Lupe. Here you go, all your materials.. Pick up those scissors and show me exactly what you want me to do with them.. and then he sees that when he cuts this one little thread, the whole thing disintegrates, and when he adds one more color of embroidery, it looks like throw up, and square is always “square.” There is nothing weavings lend themselves to better than quadrilaterals, and there is nothing less flattering on the human body than one. This is also what I’m here for. What do you want? I can do that. What do you want? Not going to work. Let me show you another way. So this is where we are now.
Specifically, what Ben wants is “sophisticated, complicated, expensive.” The idea stems directly from an isreali designer that they carry at the store who makes extremely large, complicated, and admittedly gorgeous jewelry out of all ribbons. It’s breathtaking, and absolutely impossible. Ben is thinking something like this, in the price range upwards of $300. Here’s my take on that: You want a pair of earrings made out of fabric worth 300? I can do that for you. You want me to design that, then teach how to make it, and expect my students who are all rural housewives working out of their home to sustain the level of quality necessary, even after I leave the country.. and you want me to do it before I go home in something like 2 months. Absolutamente, positivamente, sin dudo, no es posible. Here’s my next problem with the idea.. Gas is something like $4 a gallon and food is getting more expensive and gold and silver are incredibly high, and you think people are going to keep spending 300 bucks on earrings? Made out of fabric?? One of the very BEST things about using fabric for jewelry is that it is incredibly cheap. When the economy tanks, middle class people (your market) don’t buy jewelry. They save their money, or use it on gas and food. If they encounter a pair of $10 earrings, they’ll splurge for that.. You’re an economist, you should be able to predict that. That’s how I am! I made these earrings to be cheap, and I told him that, and then I told him briefly about the market I was after, and he shook my hand. That may or may not mean that he gets me. It was too brief an encounter to get the full side of any of it. I was also a little too miffed by him constantly coming in and out of my room. I’m an adult, please treat my personal space with respect. I keep Vladimir out, Luie and Claudia are kind enough to leave me be, please learn from them. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d cleaned in the last 3 weeks. But of course I had half the house’s tea cups on my dresser. Augh!
Then after that he went through Sylvia’s workshop, where he at the same time expressed his dislike for the indigenous fabrics and praised many of the items made out of them. What Ben has is ideas. He has an idea that the indigenous weavings don’t sell (they haven’t in a long time, I don’t blame him) so he philosophically wants to discourage from using them. I think, as a novice designer, that what you want to do is work with the strengths.. I mean come on! Duh! These women’s craft, culture, lives are weaving. These patterns, these colors, they may not be what’s been there since the beginning of the Mayan calendar, but it’s what they do now! So.. instead of trying to take them out of what they know and into something that they don’t fit into, take what they have and elaborate on it. Something that has a ton of color and pattern gets a very simple form and vice versa. All that art foundations crap. As I told my dad in my last email, you just can’t take a volkswagon bug and try to make it look like a Porsche. The best thing you can do is accept it’s goofiness. Giving it a sleek paint job and a bunch of chrome is only going to make it look uncomfortable. What’s also incredibly working in our favor is that fashion is turning around and bringing hippie style into popularity. Bright colors, bold patterns, contrasting everything. The opposite of the last ten years of monochromatic style. GO WITH IT.
Anyway, though, as I had started to say. He disliked the idea but liked the end product, which goes to show that good design is good design no matter what, and if I can make things that sell, he’s going to like it out of principle if not out of philosophy. The good thing is that I knew this from the beginning. The bad thing is that I knew this from the beginning. My first idea when they asked me to do this was to use fabric. I’m not kidding. They asked me to design jewelry, I knew cost would be a factor, and I suggested fabric. Ben Blevins told me that he didn’t like the idea. Now with the metals market they come to me like it’s something brand new. I don’t know. I expect it’s just how the world works. I can’t imagine all my bosses to have the design logic of my art professors. I’m doing what I gotta do. And I’m getting some damn good experience while. So I’m going with it. Hopefully in the next few days I can write more posts about how I misunderstood some things and that I’m not on an island with Sylvia against the tide of Blevinses. Let’s see how it goes.
HIS CRITIQUE… was that the material looked cheap and hippie-ish. Now… here is my conundrum. His wife picked out the fabric. I also happen to like it, and Claudia has given me her praise many times for the design, as well as I have been wearing them around town to see what people say (and also because I like them) and I have received a lot of good attention for them. What they are, and what I made them to be, is something rather cheap that we can make a lot of quickly and sell quickly. They utilize the typical fabrics of the area, making them super appealing to tourists as well as anyone in the states who is part of that new trend of tribal themed accessories, which according to my sister is very popular. The weavings here are so incredibly full that anything that’s done with them has to be done with a really minimalist hand or else they end up looking like a preschooler’s coloring book. Here I am dealing with the same exact thing all over again as when Lupe came. He’s got this idea in his head, he knows is so easy to do, but the idea is vague and lacking the technical details to bring it into physical reality (which is what I am here for) and so he has no idea what it takes to do it. He just wants me to do it. Sure sure, fine fine, but how do I tell someone with no experience with the nature of making textiles and with the nature of making jewelry, that it is physically impossible? I think it would have to come down to what happened with Lupe. Here you go, all your materials.. Pick up those scissors and show me exactly what you want me to do with them.. and then he sees that when he cuts this one little thread, the whole thing disintegrates, and when he adds one more color of embroidery, it looks like throw up, and square is always “square.” There is nothing weavings lend themselves to better than quadrilaterals, and there is nothing less flattering on the human body than one. This is also what I’m here for. What do you want? I can do that. What do you want? Not going to work. Let me show you another way. So this is where we are now.
Specifically, what Ben wants is “sophisticated, complicated, expensive.” The idea stems directly from an isreali designer that they carry at the store who makes extremely large, complicated, and admittedly gorgeous jewelry out of all ribbons. It’s breathtaking, and absolutely impossible. Ben is thinking something like this, in the price range upwards of $300. Here’s my take on that: You want a pair of earrings made out of fabric worth 300? I can do that for you. You want me to design that, then teach how to make it, and expect my students who are all rural housewives working out of their home to sustain the level of quality necessary, even after I leave the country.. and you want me to do it before I go home in something like 2 months. Absolutamente, positivamente, sin dudo, no es posible. Here’s my next problem with the idea.. Gas is something like $4 a gallon and food is getting more expensive and gold and silver are incredibly high, and you think people are going to keep spending 300 bucks on earrings? Made out of fabric?? One of the very BEST things about using fabric for jewelry is that it is incredibly cheap. When the economy tanks, middle class people (your market) don’t buy jewelry. They save their money, or use it on gas and food. If they encounter a pair of $10 earrings, they’ll splurge for that.. You’re an economist, you should be able to predict that. That’s how I am! I made these earrings to be cheap, and I told him that, and then I told him briefly about the market I was after, and he shook my hand. That may or may not mean that he gets me. It was too brief an encounter to get the full side of any of it. I was also a little too miffed by him constantly coming in and out of my room. I’m an adult, please treat my personal space with respect. I keep Vladimir out, Luie and Claudia are kind enough to leave me be, please learn from them. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d cleaned in the last 3 weeks. But of course I had half the house’s tea cups on my dresser. Augh!
Then after that he went through Sylvia’s workshop, where he at the same time expressed his dislike for the indigenous fabrics and praised many of the items made out of them. What Ben has is ideas. He has an idea that the indigenous weavings don’t sell (they haven’t in a long time, I don’t blame him) so he philosophically wants to discourage from using them. I think, as a novice designer, that what you want to do is work with the strengths.. I mean come on! Duh! These women’s craft, culture, lives are weaving. These patterns, these colors, they may not be what’s been there since the beginning of the Mayan calendar, but it’s what they do now! So.. instead of trying to take them out of what they know and into something that they don’t fit into, take what they have and elaborate on it. Something that has a ton of color and pattern gets a very simple form and vice versa. All that art foundations crap. As I told my dad in my last email, you just can’t take a volkswagon bug and try to make it look like a Porsche. The best thing you can do is accept it’s goofiness. Giving it a sleek paint job and a bunch of chrome is only going to make it look uncomfortable. What’s also incredibly working in our favor is that fashion is turning around and bringing hippie style into popularity. Bright colors, bold patterns, contrasting everything. The opposite of the last ten years of monochromatic style. GO WITH IT.
Anyway, though, as I had started to say. He disliked the idea but liked the end product, which goes to show that good design is good design no matter what, and if I can make things that sell, he’s going to like it out of principle if not out of philosophy. The good thing is that I knew this from the beginning. The bad thing is that I knew this from the beginning. My first idea when they asked me to do this was to use fabric. I’m not kidding. They asked me to design jewelry, I knew cost would be a factor, and I suggested fabric. Ben Blevins told me that he didn’t like the idea. Now with the metals market they come to me like it’s something brand new. I don’t know. I expect it’s just how the world works. I can’t imagine all my bosses to have the design logic of my art professors. I’m doing what I gotta do. And I’m getting some damn good experience while. So I’m going with it. Hopefully in the next few days I can write more posts about how I misunderstood some things and that I’m not on an island with Sylvia against the tide of Blevinses. Let’s see how it goes.
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