Am about to leave Cuzco and the Sacred Valley for Chiclayo tomorrow. Been around here since the 25th of February, with the exception of a short trip to Lake Titicaca. Nice to see the antiplano from the bus. Easy ride, cheap, comfortable. We just got our tickets from the bus station and off we went. The islands in the lake are super. The floating islands not so much, but Taquile is beautiful and that was worth it.
My impressions of the people hold true still. They are so warm. I have made acquaintances with a lot of people. Of course, it helps to be able to chat people up some. My spanish isn´t that great but it is enough to do that. Claudia and Miluska from Chez Maggie on Plateros have been particularly warm. That is where I found my first piano and they were so nice to me, telling me to play whenever I wanted, when the place was full or empty, nevermind when. And lots of kisses all around. The folks at the various hotels have been quite nice, too. My favorite has been Noemí at Suecia 1, so I´ll have to go back to see her.
What thing that surprises me is that there seems to be no central clearing house and info center for volunteer activities in Cuzco department. Both in Antigua and Xela, GT, there were organizations dedicated to keeping a list of organizations and their needs and wants with respect to volunteers. Also a completely unrelated thing is there seem to be no places to go and hang to watch film. I am thinking perhaps to combine the clearinghouse for volunteers with a place to show films. The film fee could support the volunteer organizing work . . . . and if it were possible to sell beer to movie goers, even more money could be raised for the charity side. I have always wanted to have a movie theater anyhow . . . . and there could be a POPcorn machine. Too much fun.
Anyhow, I did finally meet Luz, who Art referred me to and by a ridiculous coincidence someone else I know took spanish lessons from her in the past (canoers we know). She is great! And it turns out that she comes to Seattle and has friends there, so it will be great to see her again. She and her friend Birgit are interested in Art´s stove project. Will discuss this when get back.
My favorite things have been the trips to the sacred valley and every town there so far where I spent any time at all I like. Ollantaytambo and Chinchero and Pisac. With their easy access to Cuzco, any one could be a good place to work, at least a couple of days a week in a clinic, or in some other way. I haven´t spent time in Urubamba, just blown through. It would be good to come back and visit the rest of the towns in the valley.
Cuzco is so very touristy and in that way reminds me of Antigua. We have lived right off Plaza de Armas and one gets solicited constantly because of the color of one´s hair and skin. I think my face has become familiar by now and so it has let up a lot. And when you are first there you feel you should at least say no gracias, but now I rarely acknowledge the solicitations with anything but a smile while continuing to walk straight ahead. It is rather dehumanizing, the whole thing. I have yet to meet anyone who isn´t majoring in tourism at school. Really. And I have met a ton of people. Never any incidents of theft or attempted theft.
My abiding feeling about this place, this department, and Peruvians at this point is that they are very warm, work very hard to put it together, and are proud of their culture and heritage, as well they should be. The inka buildings in Cuzco and around are massively impressive. And of course the Spanish created churches on top of many inka buildings are amazing for their gold leaf and intensely decorative wood carvings.
The crafts as I have said before are mindblowing and are a must for anyone interested in textiles.
I don´t think I mentioned that while the weather is very changeable at this time of the year, the only time we really got skunked is when we went to Machu Pichu, a bummer because it is a journey that takes time and costs a fair amount of money. Oh well! We had about a half hour of nonpouring down rain where you could actually see something. When I get the fotos up for that part and forward for the trip, you will notice how cloudy and wet even the good 1/2 hour was!
The weather is now turning colder and rainier . . . ........... kind of falling apart-- so it is good to be off to Chiclayo on the north coast of Peru where it is 75 and sunny. It will be a nice change. Talk to you then! And I will try to put up more fotos either on facebook or some other website
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Monday, March 7, 2011
Peru, 2011, Feb-March
This is my first post on this blog since ending my central american work in march of 2009. I have not been out of the country since then. I came to Peru with a friend from Seattle and her sister. This is the first time I have been in Latin America as a tourist. I knew when leaving it wouldn´t be easy for me to be a tourist and because my friend and I have different interests. My interests are in the people, how they live, the politics of the country, the history including AFTER the pre-colonial period. I like ruins okay, but after a while, they look similar. Reading about the live of the indigenous people precolonial is interesting to me and after too, but just roaming around ruins all day, not so much. Also, my friends like to shop, shop, shop and I don´t have any use for it. So, it is challenging. But I go along to see the countryside and to chat with people and to see the people.
So, arriving in Cuzco at almost 11,000 feet with no sleep for well over 24 hours, it was exhausting. But we had a little hotel reserved in the center of Cuszco and it was fine, if cold and a bit more expensive than necessary. Because of snoring on my friends´part, I found another place that cost less than the triple for a double and a single and right off the plaza de las armas, the center of cultural Cuzco, so we are good. Also it is hard to sleep for several nights I think because of the altitude. My friends bought the general boleta that you need to get into several sites in and around Cuzco and in the Sacred Valley but I did not. I decided to pick the places to go, although some you cannot enter without the general boleta. But it is not a big deal to me. I feel as if I will come back here anyhow, probably with Pat and Dorcas, my friends from DC.
Impressions now are that Cuzco is a much safer city than Antigua. People are out at all hours and it feels okay. Sure, probably if I were coming home and not taking care very late, especially alone, it might not be okay, but so far, we have felt great about it. Also, it is easy to walk just about anywhere in town. After you leave the center, it gets more hectic and more polluted, but the cultural center is quite civilized. of course you have to be careful not to get hit crossing the street.
The weather has been like Seattle only warmer most of the time. Betwee 40s and low 60s in Cuzco, with rain mostly at night. We went out by van to Ollanta last Wed. with this little agency where I met Julio, who owns it. Very cute. And then onto Aguas Calientes (Machu Picchu city) by Peru rail, which was a wonderful ride, all along the Urubamba river, which is roiling and full of mud because of the rainy season we are in. Every now and then the trains have to stop to clear slides from the way or shore up the tracks, but we were able to proceed as planned. Unfortunately, the day we chose to go to MP, it rained all day. We had about a half hour of dry, visible time at the ruins and that was it. It costs a lot of money to go there, get in, the bus, the train, etc. and we got rained out, but at least we saw a small part of it. There are of course so many inka ruins around here that it is no great loss, I guess. And a lot of the fun is going down on the train and viewing the countryside, which is absolutely spectacular. On the way back, we stopped in the Sacred Valley and stayed two nights in Ollantaytambo (Ollanta), which is just spectacular. A small village with beautiful stone walls and inka ruins going straight up behind the little town and all around, really. it is closed in by massive peaks littered with inka ruins. I would go back to Ollanta and spend a lot more time hiking around and outside of it. Then we went on to Chincero, a small village between Ollanta and Cuzco, and we were fortunate to see the year´s Carnaval in progress, with the whole Quecha village in traditional dress and performing traditional dances all day. We stopped in a textile coop that Carol knew of from a prior trip and she knows the diretor who has set up these coops all over Peru to benefit the indigenous women who do wonderful work. She and Judy her sister bought tons of things all day, and every day they buy things either in Cuzco or in the Sacred Valley.
The scenery in Chicero is equally gorgeous and of course there are inka ruins there, too. I cannot describe how beautiful the landscape is here in the highlands. The landscape is very open with broad fertile valleys growing maize, papas (80 plus varieties), peas, squash, you name it, and dotted with sheep, llamas, alpacas, cows, horses, and people in traditional and not so traditional dress (the older ones more traditional of course) wandering around in the landscape living their lives, driving sheep herds, etc.
The artinsenary of the people is amazing. Using and carving calabeza with intricate inka designs, and using and weaving alpaca, sheeps wool, etc into everything imaginable. Also beautiful water color paintings are sold by students in the streets of Cuzco. Every manner of textiles made into hats, scarves, gloves, pants, shirts, belts, sweaters, shawls. So gorgeous it boggles the mind. For me, just to look, see and appreciate is enough. I don´t want to possess them, although I realize that buying helps the people. I can´t carry these things on my back already I have a heavy load. So I invite you to come and see for yourself! Especially my sister in law who weaves and anyone else who is a weaver would so love to see, feel, appreciate this work.
We also took a day to go to Maras and Moray and the Salineras there. Only a ruin and some salt flats, but again a nice ride in the countryside with a lovely young man from Urubamba with a wife and two children making a living driving a taxi around the valley. He was so kind, patient, and a great driver, very honest, etc. I have to say that I have not met or interacted with anyone here who is not kind, fun, patient, and just simply lovely. It is a contrast with experience in Guatemala and Nicaragua. That was okay, but really, I am just knocked out by the Peruvians so far.
Today I will do laundry, look for a book store, take a walk up to a very important ruin, go to the bank to get change to pay my debts, and I hope meet again Julio, our driver from Wednesday, who is adorable and fun to talk to. Then I hope we go up to Pisca in the sacred valley in the next couple of days. Plans are to go to Arequipa next, after Carol´s sister goes home, and then to Lima and the beach perhaps before coming home. We might stop in Puno for a night on the way to Arequipa so I can see the Lake (Titicaca).
I love hearing the folks in the country mixing Quecha and spanish and even english. It is a kick. And I am SO enjoying using the Spànish on a daily basis. So much fun to joke with people. I have not done anything about learning about politics so far and I am not sure if I will have time or not . . . . But one could always return to Peru and work for several months. I would like to get some basic health clinic volunteering under my belt. Perhaps back in Seattle in preparation for further work here in the future? There are opportunities, especially in the countryside. ANYhow, all for now. So glad I came here. The people, especially the indigenous people in the country, are gorgeous in every way.
So, arriving in Cuzco at almost 11,000 feet with no sleep for well over 24 hours, it was exhausting. But we had a little hotel reserved in the center of Cuszco and it was fine, if cold and a bit more expensive than necessary. Because of snoring on my friends´part, I found another place that cost less than the triple for a double and a single and right off the plaza de las armas, the center of cultural Cuzco, so we are good. Also it is hard to sleep for several nights I think because of the altitude. My friends bought the general boleta that you need to get into several sites in and around Cuzco and in the Sacred Valley but I did not. I decided to pick the places to go, although some you cannot enter without the general boleta. But it is not a big deal to me. I feel as if I will come back here anyhow, probably with Pat and Dorcas, my friends from DC.
Impressions now are that Cuzco is a much safer city than Antigua. People are out at all hours and it feels okay. Sure, probably if I were coming home and not taking care very late, especially alone, it might not be okay, but so far, we have felt great about it. Also, it is easy to walk just about anywhere in town. After you leave the center, it gets more hectic and more polluted, but the cultural center is quite civilized. of course you have to be careful not to get hit crossing the street.
The weather has been like Seattle only warmer most of the time. Betwee 40s and low 60s in Cuzco, with rain mostly at night. We went out by van to Ollanta last Wed. with this little agency where I met Julio, who owns it. Very cute. And then onto Aguas Calientes (Machu Picchu city) by Peru rail, which was a wonderful ride, all along the Urubamba river, which is roiling and full of mud because of the rainy season we are in. Every now and then the trains have to stop to clear slides from the way or shore up the tracks, but we were able to proceed as planned. Unfortunately, the day we chose to go to MP, it rained all day. We had about a half hour of dry, visible time at the ruins and that was it. It costs a lot of money to go there, get in, the bus, the train, etc. and we got rained out, but at least we saw a small part of it. There are of course so many inka ruins around here that it is no great loss, I guess. And a lot of the fun is going down on the train and viewing the countryside, which is absolutely spectacular. On the way back, we stopped in the Sacred Valley and stayed two nights in Ollantaytambo (Ollanta), which is just spectacular. A small village with beautiful stone walls and inka ruins going straight up behind the little town and all around, really. it is closed in by massive peaks littered with inka ruins. I would go back to Ollanta and spend a lot more time hiking around and outside of it. Then we went on to Chincero, a small village between Ollanta and Cuzco, and we were fortunate to see the year´s Carnaval in progress, with the whole Quecha village in traditional dress and performing traditional dances all day. We stopped in a textile coop that Carol knew of from a prior trip and she knows the diretor who has set up these coops all over Peru to benefit the indigenous women who do wonderful work. She and Judy her sister bought tons of things all day, and every day they buy things either in Cuzco or in the Sacred Valley.
The scenery in Chicero is equally gorgeous and of course there are inka ruins there, too. I cannot describe how beautiful the landscape is here in the highlands. The landscape is very open with broad fertile valleys growing maize, papas (80 plus varieties), peas, squash, you name it, and dotted with sheep, llamas, alpacas, cows, horses, and people in traditional and not so traditional dress (the older ones more traditional of course) wandering around in the landscape living their lives, driving sheep herds, etc.
The artinsenary of the people is amazing. Using and carving calabeza with intricate inka designs, and using and weaving alpaca, sheeps wool, etc into everything imaginable. Also beautiful water color paintings are sold by students in the streets of Cuzco. Every manner of textiles made into hats, scarves, gloves, pants, shirts, belts, sweaters, shawls. So gorgeous it boggles the mind. For me, just to look, see and appreciate is enough. I don´t want to possess them, although I realize that buying helps the people. I can´t carry these things on my back already I have a heavy load. So I invite you to come and see for yourself! Especially my sister in law who weaves and anyone else who is a weaver would so love to see, feel, appreciate this work.
We also took a day to go to Maras and Moray and the Salineras there. Only a ruin and some salt flats, but again a nice ride in the countryside with a lovely young man from Urubamba with a wife and two children making a living driving a taxi around the valley. He was so kind, patient, and a great driver, very honest, etc. I have to say that I have not met or interacted with anyone here who is not kind, fun, patient, and just simply lovely. It is a contrast with experience in Guatemala and Nicaragua. That was okay, but really, I am just knocked out by the Peruvians so far.
Today I will do laundry, look for a book store, take a walk up to a very important ruin, go to the bank to get change to pay my debts, and I hope meet again Julio, our driver from Wednesday, who is adorable and fun to talk to. Then I hope we go up to Pisca in the sacred valley in the next couple of days. Plans are to go to Arequipa next, after Carol´s sister goes home, and then to Lima and the beach perhaps before coming home. We might stop in Puno for a night on the way to Arequipa so I can see the Lake (Titicaca).
I love hearing the folks in the country mixing Quecha and spanish and even english. It is a kick. And I am SO enjoying using the Spànish on a daily basis. So much fun to joke with people. I have not done anything about learning about politics so far and I am not sure if I will have time or not . . . . But one could always return to Peru and work for several months. I would like to get some basic health clinic volunteering under my belt. Perhaps back in Seattle in preparation for further work here in the future? There are opportunities, especially in the countryside. ANYhow, all for now. So glad I came here. The people, especially the indigenous people in the country, are gorgeous in every way.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
3rd and Last Letter Home, March 25, 2009
Well, this will be my third and last letter home this trip to central American. I left Managua on February 14, flying to Guatemala City and then traveled to Antigua for a couple of days before going up into the Western Highlands to Xela. The days in Antigua were uneventful, and all I did was say hello to a few people and get a haircut, recaptured my coffee grinder, went to brunch at a beautiful hotel in Antigua with a friend, and generally just drank in the beauty of Antigua.
The night before I left Managua, I went out with Susan, Richard, Douglas and a friend from Seattle who was visiting some old friends of hers in Nica and was having mixed feelings, but I always get this way when leaving some place. I had had very mixed feelings about leaving this fall for central America from Seattle. So I guess that says that there is enough good about every place that I feel nostalgic about leaving.
I was happy to arrive in Xela and immediately took up residence in barrio San Bartolomé, southeast of the center of town. I am renting a small efficiency apartment that is very pretty and also very much of a fish bowl, with windows opening onto the hotel’s indoor courtyard and into my neighbor’s courtyard, so I keep the drapes drawn much of the time, unfortunately. But it is really convenient, with a pila outside and a lot of clothesline up over the upper patio and in the back, so I have continued to wash my clothes by hand, although not forced to here, as there are even auto laundries. I had become so used to washing by hand in various forms over the past few months that it actually seemed like a luxury to have a pila right outside my door and a clothesline that actually works! (the line I used in the countryside of Nicaragua was either of barbed wire – not too great for the clothes – or was a metal line on which my prensa ropas (clothes pins) slid and often I would find various pieces of clothing way out at the end of the line, up in a tree, basically. It was funny).
Anyhow, I settled into this very cute, tiny apartment quickly and got started doing work for AIDG, which is only a couple of blocks from here. It is an organization based in the states, very small, that has an office here in Xela, and one in Haiti, and its aim is to help start small appropriate technology businesses to serve the rural poor. It has done that with a group called Xela Teco here in Xela. I am doing research on microfinance orgs for Xela Teco, so they can place their high efficiency wood stoves. The stoves are $130 and people don´t have that upfront. The problem is that almost all micro-financing is for people´s businesses, not to finance their buying a high efficiency stove, or anything else, for that matter.
This work experience with AIDG has turned out to be very limited in scope and not at all rewarding. Part of this is my fault, I guess. Because I have wifi here at the apartment and it is very comfortable and convenient to stay here and work, I have done my work mostly in the apartment. It has been very boring because it required no interaction with anyone. Moreover, the times I did go to the office, the people there were glued to their computers and really didn’t seem to have any time to talk or make friends. No one offered to tell me about or show me what projects were going on, nor did anyone offer any opportunity to take a trip into the countryside with folks doing real things . . . and so I didn’t make an effort, either. There were random invites to a couple of AIDG parties at the intern house (not formally made to me but I sort of found out about them from one person), two of which I went to, but the sameness of them (people standing or sitting around a fire outside freezing to death and drinking too much) led me to not go to a 3rd one and eventually I just stopped going to AIDG at all, except to meet with someone to hand over my work. I was glad I went to the second party, however, because there I met a guy from Michigan who grew up and worked for many years very near to where I grew up. He is a volunteer in San Lucas Tomilán near Lake Atitlán and had sold out of his family business early. He spends quite a bit of the year working as a volunteer at a Catholic mission in San Lucas. He is a very nice man and he was here taking Spanish for a couple of weeks to try to improve, and we fell in together and did a lot of things together during those two weeks. It was great to have someone to hike with, explore and go out to dinner and events with.
Although AIDG has been a bust, I continued to work with Grupo Fenix in Nicaragua via internet, mostly on copy and design for the website but also on other random things, and that is fun for me. I also encountered happier work here with another organization called Entremundos, the director of which grabbed me immediately upon finding out that I was an environmental lawyer. She is a lovely person and I have worked pretty steadily with a small group of four of us on the problem of plastic bag litter and what could be done. Entremundos would like to get national legislation passed to address the problem. Having just seen this whole thing develop in Seattle was a help, and now I know more than I thought possible about bans, green fees, and other types of remedies for this problem. It is of course complex, like anything else. In some places, especially where there are no good solid waste management strategies in place, as is the case in many developing countries, it is a very serious problem and results in infrastructure and health issues when storm drains are blocked, for instance. In any event, I really like the people I have been working on this and while I think that there are LOTS worse problems to get a grip on here in Guatemala – air pollution being one of them, and of course the things that everyone knows about Guatemala – the violence, the mob killings, the drug violence, the poverty of the indigenous communities, huge mining issues, on and on and on – indeed, just yesterday in Guate, 4 bus drivers were killed in the same day --- I still agreed to work on it and have been working this issue quite a bit. If I come back here, I would like to be involved in issues that I find more basic, more important. On the environment score, just thinking about the health of the population (and, selfishly, my own health, as I have developed some asthma just as a result of living here), air pollution is a very big one for me. It is just awful here in Xela, and what a shame, because I really like this town and the people here and everything about the way it feels, except the air pollution is killing me, probably literally. I cannot go out without a handkerchief to stem my running nose and eyes. I cough all morning every day, and when I go out, I often find myself having a hard time getting my breath. The pollution is partially from cars and buses in these incredibly narrow streets, from which black toxic smoke spews right onto the people who are squished up against the cars and buses. You simply cannot get away from it. Antigua is better because the streets are much wider and the buses are not in the center of town. Here, they run everywhere. But the pollution is from other sources as well. There is a ton of particulate matter from open construction areas, from garbage burning and burning to clear fields for cropping. In adddtion, I was told by one local friend yesterday, the cobblestone streets are held together by a lime like substance instead of cement, and it dries out and becomes airborne with the slightest touch. Xela is also subject to inversions, as it sits in a high mountain valley surrounded by volcanoes, and boy, is that a mess.
I have told you before that Xela is in the Western highlands of Guatemala, at 7,600 feet. It is cold in the am and evening and sunny and warm, usually, during the day, but no more than the 70s during the time I am here, and often the breeze makes it feel cooler. People here are very friendly and I get on with folks very well. Although it is the second biggest in Guatemala, it is NOTHING like Guatemala City. Nothing. People are lovely, it feels like a very small town (I think it is actually about 300,000), and I am situated about as well as one could hope for for the work I am doing, in the southeast part of town and only about 10 blocks to central park.
My experience here, though, is very different from my time in Nicaragua where I lived much of the times in the community of Sabana Grande. First, I am living alone, which is very different from the fun (and dirt) of living with Alejandra and Marcio and the kids in Sabana Grande and the constant stream of visitors at the house, people passing by, etc. I miss that a lot. I wish it were possible to live in the community in a little house that I could somehow keep clean and yet be a part of all of that activity. I love going by Marta’s and talking to Rosita the parrot, or going up to someone’s birthday party celebration – everyone in the community is related -- and the thought of growing my own papaya and banana trees.
It is SO hard to find the right balance in life, but being here alone in Xela maybe is what the universe planned for me to realize that it is important for me to be with people in a very real way. When I went to “get away” in Nicaragua, I was also with people all of the time as well, at the Laguna. And that was great, too. I love the Laguna and the way one could be with people or not, as one liked. But I have to admit that the BOREDOM factor in the countryside was great, too, and the fact that you just don´t talk on the same level with folks about the things that are swirling around in my head all of the time, the great questions of life, the bigger world issues, the workings of the development projects, all of that more intellectual stuff. The people there are just so removed from that . . . in the daily work of getting food grown and on the table, so much work to do to keep the kids feed. And there is the constant of the TV, one channel, filled with trash, and many of the middle age people there are not very educated.
So each place has its pluses and minuses. And if I come back to Xela I will try to live more communally and it will be cheaper, too. I like very much having my own kitchen and 24 hour wifi, but some things must be sacrificed for community and price! I LOVE the market here, the one known as La Democracía, which is just sprawled out in the streets several blocks north of central park. One of my largest treats is my weekly journey there to get pineapple, avocados, tomatoes, onion, garlic, eggplant, cilantro, blackberries, strawberries, carrots – the most amazing tasting carrots imaginable – squash, little potatoes, limes for my potato salad dressing (which I use instead of vinegar to put in the olive oil-mayonnaise dressing I make, with a spot of honey), red peppers, melons, you name it, La Democracía has it, along with a ton of other fruits and vegetables that I am ignorant of. I haven’t had a bad interaction or one that hasn’t been very positive. The people are beautiful, as you know, and the mix of the city with people in their native dress is gorgeous.
For the first 3 weeks or so here, I walked up in the high hills in back of my neighborhood, straight up a steep way from 7,600 ft, through deep dust areas and then by two houses with dogs that snarled after me almost every time I went up there. I quickly made friends with everyone in one house and all of those dogs, who then left me alone. But no matter how many times I went by the other house, and how much I talked to the people in that house and tried to get the dogs to quit terrorizing me, it never stopped. Finally, after facing that fear every day for weeks and never having it improve, I gave up that hike, to my chagrin but to my relief as well! At first I had this philosophical argument ready for myself every morning about how important it is to face and overcome your fears. And then I realized I could take another walk that would not be quite as steep and probably not as helpful to my heart, but at least I didn’t dread it every day! So much for facing fears. I was attacked by a German shepherd as a kid alone in the woods, and of course one never gets over that. Every day I went up in the hills, chills ran up and down my body as I approached the houses with the dogs.
One major plus for me here in addition to Rick and work with Entremundos was the fact that I was able to attend 4 different performances of an international jazz festival that Xela was lucky enough to have happen here. They were really excellent and the tickets were free and the performances held in this wonderful old municipal theater. It was quite the thing, and really gave me something wonderful to look forward to. Apparently while the jazz fest came to Guate many years in the past, it never before brought the performers here to Xela. I hope the audience response, which was wildly enthusiastic, will mean that the Jazz fest will be here again next March.
I have met a mix of foreigners and Guatemalans and all have been good. I like it so much when I am able to mix with Guatemalans and one family that I have gotten to know a bit because they run the coffee shop where we have many meetings now has a family member who lives up north of me in Everett, WA and she has been visiting the family this past week, so I met her. We say we will go out to salsa. We shall see! She comes down to go to China Harbor on occasion, so . . .
Well, I don´t have anything profound to say, dammit. Just that I always find it rewarding to meet Chivos here and talk or just say hey when I see someone riding his bike up the huge hill up to the Baul, the lookout high above the city, where I like to hike, or in the street, or wherever we interact. Or when I get to play peek a boo with little Enrique down the street from me. These kids are so damned adorable, it is ridiculous. Or just wandering around a street fair thrown up for the weekend near the church that is having a procession that weekend in preparation for Semana Santa, sampling the roasted whole pig with a Washington state apple in its mouth, or the incredibly greasy and delicious fried sweet dough and any number of other tempting treats for sale in the makeshift booths lining the streets, bringing everyone out of their houses to talk, eat, and generally enjoy the afternoon and evening. I love the way people are out, interacting in the streets. This is what small towns with small streets do for people, at least when people are not in their cars. And boy, do we need much more of that in the US.
Well, that’s it for this season in Central America. I hope to see many of you soon and at least communicate with those of you too far from Seattle to see in person.
XOXOXO,
Katherine
The night before I left Managua, I went out with Susan, Richard, Douglas and a friend from Seattle who was visiting some old friends of hers in Nica and was having mixed feelings, but I always get this way when leaving some place. I had had very mixed feelings about leaving this fall for central America from Seattle. So I guess that says that there is enough good about every place that I feel nostalgic about leaving.
I was happy to arrive in Xela and immediately took up residence in barrio San Bartolomé, southeast of the center of town. I am renting a small efficiency apartment that is very pretty and also very much of a fish bowl, with windows opening onto the hotel’s indoor courtyard and into my neighbor’s courtyard, so I keep the drapes drawn much of the time, unfortunately. But it is really convenient, with a pila outside and a lot of clothesline up over the upper patio and in the back, so I have continued to wash my clothes by hand, although not forced to here, as there are even auto laundries. I had become so used to washing by hand in various forms over the past few months that it actually seemed like a luxury to have a pila right outside my door and a clothesline that actually works! (the line I used in the countryside of Nicaragua was either of barbed wire – not too great for the clothes – or was a metal line on which my prensa ropas (clothes pins) slid and often I would find various pieces of clothing way out at the end of the line, up in a tree, basically. It was funny).
Anyhow, I settled into this very cute, tiny apartment quickly and got started doing work for AIDG, which is only a couple of blocks from here. It is an organization based in the states, very small, that has an office here in Xela, and one in Haiti, and its aim is to help start small appropriate technology businesses to serve the rural poor. It has done that with a group called Xela Teco here in Xela. I am doing research on microfinance orgs for Xela Teco, so they can place their high efficiency wood stoves. The stoves are $130 and people don´t have that upfront. The problem is that almost all micro-financing is for people´s businesses, not to finance their buying a high efficiency stove, or anything else, for that matter.
This work experience with AIDG has turned out to be very limited in scope and not at all rewarding. Part of this is my fault, I guess. Because I have wifi here at the apartment and it is very comfortable and convenient to stay here and work, I have done my work mostly in the apartment. It has been very boring because it required no interaction with anyone. Moreover, the times I did go to the office, the people there were glued to their computers and really didn’t seem to have any time to talk or make friends. No one offered to tell me about or show me what projects were going on, nor did anyone offer any opportunity to take a trip into the countryside with folks doing real things . . . and so I didn’t make an effort, either. There were random invites to a couple of AIDG parties at the intern house (not formally made to me but I sort of found out about them from one person), two of which I went to, but the sameness of them (people standing or sitting around a fire outside freezing to death and drinking too much) led me to not go to a 3rd one and eventually I just stopped going to AIDG at all, except to meet with someone to hand over my work. I was glad I went to the second party, however, because there I met a guy from Michigan who grew up and worked for many years very near to where I grew up. He is a volunteer in San Lucas Tomilán near Lake Atitlán and had sold out of his family business early. He spends quite a bit of the year working as a volunteer at a Catholic mission in San Lucas. He is a very nice man and he was here taking Spanish for a couple of weeks to try to improve, and we fell in together and did a lot of things together during those two weeks. It was great to have someone to hike with, explore and go out to dinner and events with.
Although AIDG has been a bust, I continued to work with Grupo Fenix in Nicaragua via internet, mostly on copy and design for the website but also on other random things, and that is fun for me. I also encountered happier work here with another organization called Entremundos, the director of which grabbed me immediately upon finding out that I was an environmental lawyer. She is a lovely person and I have worked pretty steadily with a small group of four of us on the problem of plastic bag litter and what could be done. Entremundos would like to get national legislation passed to address the problem. Having just seen this whole thing develop in Seattle was a help, and now I know more than I thought possible about bans, green fees, and other types of remedies for this problem. It is of course complex, like anything else. In some places, especially where there are no good solid waste management strategies in place, as is the case in many developing countries, it is a very serious problem and results in infrastructure and health issues when storm drains are blocked, for instance. In any event, I really like the people I have been working on this and while I think that there are LOTS worse problems to get a grip on here in Guatemala – air pollution being one of them, and of course the things that everyone knows about Guatemala – the violence, the mob killings, the drug violence, the poverty of the indigenous communities, huge mining issues, on and on and on – indeed, just yesterday in Guate, 4 bus drivers were killed in the same day --- I still agreed to work on it and have been working this issue quite a bit. If I come back here, I would like to be involved in issues that I find more basic, more important. On the environment score, just thinking about the health of the population (and, selfishly, my own health, as I have developed some asthma just as a result of living here), air pollution is a very big one for me. It is just awful here in Xela, and what a shame, because I really like this town and the people here and everything about the way it feels, except the air pollution is killing me, probably literally. I cannot go out without a handkerchief to stem my running nose and eyes. I cough all morning every day, and when I go out, I often find myself having a hard time getting my breath. The pollution is partially from cars and buses in these incredibly narrow streets, from which black toxic smoke spews right onto the people who are squished up against the cars and buses. You simply cannot get away from it. Antigua is better because the streets are much wider and the buses are not in the center of town. Here, they run everywhere. But the pollution is from other sources as well. There is a ton of particulate matter from open construction areas, from garbage burning and burning to clear fields for cropping. In adddtion, I was told by one local friend yesterday, the cobblestone streets are held together by a lime like substance instead of cement, and it dries out and becomes airborne with the slightest touch. Xela is also subject to inversions, as it sits in a high mountain valley surrounded by volcanoes, and boy, is that a mess.
I have told you before that Xela is in the Western highlands of Guatemala, at 7,600 feet. It is cold in the am and evening and sunny and warm, usually, during the day, but no more than the 70s during the time I am here, and often the breeze makes it feel cooler. People here are very friendly and I get on with folks very well. Although it is the second biggest in Guatemala, it is NOTHING like Guatemala City. Nothing. People are lovely, it feels like a very small town (I think it is actually about 300,000), and I am situated about as well as one could hope for for the work I am doing, in the southeast part of town and only about 10 blocks to central park.
My experience here, though, is very different from my time in Nicaragua where I lived much of the times in the community of Sabana Grande. First, I am living alone, which is very different from the fun (and dirt) of living with Alejandra and Marcio and the kids in Sabana Grande and the constant stream of visitors at the house, people passing by, etc. I miss that a lot. I wish it were possible to live in the community in a little house that I could somehow keep clean and yet be a part of all of that activity. I love going by Marta’s and talking to Rosita the parrot, or going up to someone’s birthday party celebration – everyone in the community is related -- and the thought of growing my own papaya and banana trees.
It is SO hard to find the right balance in life, but being here alone in Xela maybe is what the universe planned for me to realize that it is important for me to be with people in a very real way. When I went to “get away” in Nicaragua, I was also with people all of the time as well, at the Laguna. And that was great, too. I love the Laguna and the way one could be with people or not, as one liked. But I have to admit that the BOREDOM factor in the countryside was great, too, and the fact that you just don´t talk on the same level with folks about the things that are swirling around in my head all of the time, the great questions of life, the bigger world issues, the workings of the development projects, all of that more intellectual stuff. The people there are just so removed from that . . . in the daily work of getting food grown and on the table, so much work to do to keep the kids feed. And there is the constant of the TV, one channel, filled with trash, and many of the middle age people there are not very educated.
So each place has its pluses and minuses. And if I come back to Xela I will try to live more communally and it will be cheaper, too. I like very much having my own kitchen and 24 hour wifi, but some things must be sacrificed for community and price! I LOVE the market here, the one known as La Democracía, which is just sprawled out in the streets several blocks north of central park. One of my largest treats is my weekly journey there to get pineapple, avocados, tomatoes, onion, garlic, eggplant, cilantro, blackberries, strawberries, carrots – the most amazing tasting carrots imaginable – squash, little potatoes, limes for my potato salad dressing (which I use instead of vinegar to put in the olive oil-mayonnaise dressing I make, with a spot of honey), red peppers, melons, you name it, La Democracía has it, along with a ton of other fruits and vegetables that I am ignorant of. I haven’t had a bad interaction or one that hasn’t been very positive. The people are beautiful, as you know, and the mix of the city with people in their native dress is gorgeous.
For the first 3 weeks or so here, I walked up in the high hills in back of my neighborhood, straight up a steep way from 7,600 ft, through deep dust areas and then by two houses with dogs that snarled after me almost every time I went up there. I quickly made friends with everyone in one house and all of those dogs, who then left me alone. But no matter how many times I went by the other house, and how much I talked to the people in that house and tried to get the dogs to quit terrorizing me, it never stopped. Finally, after facing that fear every day for weeks and never having it improve, I gave up that hike, to my chagrin but to my relief as well! At first I had this philosophical argument ready for myself every morning about how important it is to face and overcome your fears. And then I realized I could take another walk that would not be quite as steep and probably not as helpful to my heart, but at least I didn’t dread it every day! So much for facing fears. I was attacked by a German shepherd as a kid alone in the woods, and of course one never gets over that. Every day I went up in the hills, chills ran up and down my body as I approached the houses with the dogs.
One major plus for me here in addition to Rick and work with Entremundos was the fact that I was able to attend 4 different performances of an international jazz festival that Xela was lucky enough to have happen here. They were really excellent and the tickets were free and the performances held in this wonderful old municipal theater. It was quite the thing, and really gave me something wonderful to look forward to. Apparently while the jazz fest came to Guate many years in the past, it never before brought the performers here to Xela. I hope the audience response, which was wildly enthusiastic, will mean that the Jazz fest will be here again next March.
I have met a mix of foreigners and Guatemalans and all have been good. I like it so much when I am able to mix with Guatemalans and one family that I have gotten to know a bit because they run the coffee shop where we have many meetings now has a family member who lives up north of me in Everett, WA and she has been visiting the family this past week, so I met her. We say we will go out to salsa. We shall see! She comes down to go to China Harbor on occasion, so . . .
Well, I don´t have anything profound to say, dammit. Just that I always find it rewarding to meet Chivos here and talk or just say hey when I see someone riding his bike up the huge hill up to the Baul, the lookout high above the city, where I like to hike, or in the street, or wherever we interact. Or when I get to play peek a boo with little Enrique down the street from me. These kids are so damned adorable, it is ridiculous. Or just wandering around a street fair thrown up for the weekend near the church that is having a procession that weekend in preparation for Semana Santa, sampling the roasted whole pig with a Washington state apple in its mouth, or the incredibly greasy and delicious fried sweet dough and any number of other tempting treats for sale in the makeshift booths lining the streets, bringing everyone out of their houses to talk, eat, and generally enjoy the afternoon and evening. I love the way people are out, interacting in the streets. This is what small towns with small streets do for people, at least when people are not in their cars. And boy, do we need much more of that in the US.
Well, that’s it for this season in Central America. I hope to see many of you soon and at least communicate with those of you too far from Seattle to see in person.
XOXOXO,
Katherine
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Monday, February 2, 2009
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