Second Letter Home

Second Letter Home - Post November 9

Well, I will try to make this as short as I can, but there is a lot to say because I have seen a lot in the past about 3 weeks since I wrote.

First, the biggest event is that I am no longer going to be working with Ignacio or Nahual. I have decided that he is a disaster for me. There are SO many aspects to this and I am weary of the whole mess, so I won’t go into it here. Suffice it to say that Ignacio is not at all what I expected and, it turns out, not someone I like as a person, and not someone I want to work with. What I have experienced as a result of knowing him is very rich., however, and because I am cutting off ties, I probably will not have these kinds of rich, very “inside” experiences in the future. But that is the price I have to pay for my sanity at this point.

So far, I have taken only a week of classes of only 2 hours a day, during my first week or so, because during October, I was working so much for Nahual – every day, a couple of nights a week and on Saturdays at the kite making workshops that my life was totally used up. At some point, because Ignacio and the office were driving me crazy, I started working more and more from home, and just last week I took 6 hours of Spanish for the week with a private teacher here in my neighborhood. She makes twice as much by having me as a private student than she does at the school where she teaches Spanish; and I pay half as much as I would were I taking at school. Although I need more hours and more disciplined teaching and I need to do homework. So, I am hoping as I go through this week that I will figure out a better schedule for the gym, for school, and find some worthy work.

One day this past week was lost because I awoke to no water and no gas, and then the coffee grinder I borrowed from Ignacio took on a life of its own and sprayed coffee all over the kitchen. But there was no water to clean it up. And no gas to make the shower hot. You get the picture. Today when I went to take a shower at 3:30 in the afternoon, there was no water. That was a first. Usually there is no water after 10:30 pm. There are days like this here. The drinking water guy shows up whenever. There is no gas gauge, so the only way you know it is time for a refill is that you have no stove or hot water. These are minor annoyances and they don’t bother me anymore.

ANYHOW, at work I rewrote the Nahual brochure that I had written in the first place in the states. This had to be done because when I first wrote it (the first version I included with my letter to you all asking for donations back in May and June), I didn’t really understand how Ignacio was trying to organize the work of Nahual. When I got it, I knew the brochure had to be rewritten. It is good now, but WAY too wordy. That is because the website isn’t up yet. I was going to work on populating the website with a lot of the material I have about Nahual, both in computer files and in the brochure, but I am reluctantly leaving that behind with a lot of other organizational development work I was going to work on, like strategic planning, workplans, and of course a funding plan and implementation of the funding plan. This is the real meat of the stuff I came to do for Nahual and there is so much more. Ah well. I will miss the work a LOT, but . . . .

I tried to put the brochure on the blog but I cannot upload it. I will either figure that out or send it as an attachment to the notice of the posting of this letter. It’s cool that my friend Laure Dunne and I were able to work on it together, and. . . she is still my friend, too! (;~) For those who don’t know of Laure, we have known each other since 2d grade, she was a graphic design major at IU, and she is coming to meet me in Nicaragua for a 2 week trip together in January.

About the middle of the month or so, on a Friday evening, Ignacio, and a couple other guys and I went to this delightful performance of something called The Happy Prince or some such. It was inside some amazing old enormous Spanish colonial building that immediately puts you outside again under the sky, and under a huge tent because it was raining a lot – rainy season still being with us in October . . . and it was delightful. Just two guys, a couple of clotheslines and clothes pins on stage, and cut outs of the moon, the prince, clouds, and such, and these two guys, who were a mix of clowns, mimes, and story tellers . . . . with physical comedy but not goofy so much as light and graceful . . . it was a lovely evening after a couple of days where I could see things with Ignacio were going south . . . . and the last really pleasant time I can recall with him. . . . It is things like this that I probably won’t know about in the future, as they are not listed anywhere and you find out by word of mouth and being at the office . . sigh.

I am not sure if I told you about the kite workshops or not . . . I think I did. They were every Saturday during October at Nahual . . . . and much more low key than I expected. Ignacio worked himself up over them for no reason that was apparent to me. Anyhow, that’s a long story, but I did enjoy seeing some of the folks come in and chatting and working the crowd for Nahual. So, there are a few pictures I posted of the kites at the office and a few people that were there . . . .

Another great thing that happened a student (anthropology) of a friend of Ignacio’s from University of Montreal was supposed to spend a few months in Quiche somewhere doing a project of teaching kids how to juggle, make masks, make balloon figures and all the other elements of a low key circus, for the purpose of violence prevention or some such. Something happened in the community where Alexis was supposed to do his project, so Martin asked Ignacio if he could help him set up the project in and around Antigua. So we were lucky enough to get him.

He is still in undergraduate school, speaks French of course, and also Spanish, and quite a bit of English. He is a delightful young man, as I hope you can see from the fotos. He has already taught me the beginning of juggling in just 5 minutes after that “Cultural Thursday.” So far, the clases haven’t been well attended and that is because it takes a long lead time here to get people’s attention . . . who knows if Alexis’ project will work out for him.

The other really interesting thing I did was go with Ignacio and others to Santiago, where they have the giant kites on Day of the Dead, but on the Saturday night before, for the choosing of the Queen of the Barriletes (kites). Santiago is an indigenous town about 40 minutes or so by bus from Antigua (we take a bus first to San Lucas and then transfer – a chicken bus of course; that night that we went, the bus was so packed that you didn’t even have to hold on while standing. It was like sardines.). Ignacio wrote a beautiful piece about this tradition in Santiago which I have sent some of you and will try to post on the blog (at this point I wonder who really wrote it; certainly someone translated it beautifully if he wrote it in Spanish).

Anyhow, that evening was great. All of these women and girls were dressed in traditional dress. Women came from all around Sacatepéquez and beyond – actually, my favorite traditional dress was from Xela, which isn’t even in Sacatepéquez – and they were all announced and came in dancing this very stylized way . . . .after an incense burning Mayan religious ceremony by some Mayan priest like folk . . . the music and the sound system was deafening, by the way . . . . and after all of this procession, finally the major candidates for Queen of the Barriletes gave their speeches in both their Mayan language and Spanish, and I gotta tell ya, more graceful and poised women I have never seen. And their topics were serious ones, like the place of the 23 Mayan languages in the grand scheme of the country, or the place of women in present day society and what it SHOULD be, and such. They were dramatic as hell while also being poised. No shrinking violets, these women, They spoke loud and clear and with poise and grace and great authority. I was knocked out. I will try to upload as many fotos as I can . . .

The following Thursday we made the trip again, only this time in the daylight. And the buses were not crowded and we got to sit the whole way! We were going back to Santiago on November 1st for the flying of the kites and the gathering of the people and all of the traditions and festivities that the people in the town engage in on that day. It was a total mob scene by mid-day. We left at about 7:30 in the morning, so we got there before it was too crazy.

One of the first things I did after we walked through the cemetery was to go back towards the market through town and pick myself out a GREAT kite. I was too ignorant to know that I had to put a cola or tail on it, but one of the teachers of the kite workshops just appeared next to me in this ridiculous crowd and he was SO kind to me . . . we went back up the hill to the cemetery to get some space to fly the kite and for him to find me a tail. I did get to fly it for a bit, and every kid within 100 feet was helping me . . . but the wind was a bit crazy and so was my cola and the kite kept dive bombing. Eventually its delicate bamboo skeleton broke in a few places and I decided to stop trying before the poor kite was ripped from stem to stern. At least I had a few moments of joy with it.

I am posting fotos of Santiago and the kite festival, of course. Alexis also performed in the big meeting area there in town (where the Queen and Princesses from Saturday were in attendance), and at first, he was clowning and juggling around and no one was paying attention. After about 15 minutes, however, he had a HUGE crowd of kids . . . . .
I am also going to post some fotos of the Antigua cemetery, which is just gorgeous. I went there on Nov. 2 and just wandered through and also listened to a band play very mournful music for quite a while. This apparently only happened on the 2d, but both days, families came through and decorated the tombs with fresh and plastic flowers.



Did I tell you about the procession that happens every year from Escuela de Cristo? (a church near me). Usually it happens on the Sunday after Day of the Dead but because the national runoff election for President was on that Sunday (last Sunday), this year the procession, which has about a 40 year life now, was the Sunday before Day of the Dead. I just happened to go to my little hotel from last year and found Carmen, the owner, there, in from Guatemala City. We caught up and she told me the procession was starting at 3, as usual, but was that day! So I went with Carmen, which was great, as her father was president of the cofraida of Escuela de Cristo for about 15 years and both of her brothers were in the procession. I have amazing fotos of it from last year and a few from this year and I will see if I can upload them for you. The procession started as a result of hundreds of deaths due to floods from hurricanes, I believe. They chose the Sunday after Day of the Dead to ask god for better weather and to send off all of the poor souls that died that year. It became a tradition. It is very serious and very moving. They begin at 3 from the church and take this monstrously huge sarcophagus of Jesus with all manner of decorations on it around town with only human power until 9 or 10 at night. At one point this year going around a corner I thought all the men on my side were going to fall over and drop the whole thing. It must weigh a ton, literally. Anyhow, people cry, remembering their loved ones . . . . Sonja and Tiernan, my goddaughter, saw it last year. This year, it looked quite different. Carmen said every year the decorations on the huge anda are different . . . .

I love my house but after having visited some folks who live not too far from me in a large residencia where they have their own rooms and share a kitchen, I am thinking that I may move in there. I am lonely now that I am not working day and night for Nahual, so that might help. Actually (update!!) a friend who lives in this house is leaving at the end of this month and I may just move in his room until I leave for Nicaragua in January, if that is okay with the owner here, because I do need the company and the social interaction now that I am not working . . . . I am sorry, Dorcas and Pat, but I have to save my psyche first! I would probably move on to Nicaragua right now if it were not for your trip in late December and early January, as I really don’t have any compelling reason to stay here in Antigua now. I will try to make the best of it with language school, which I really need to resume next week . . . , and do a bit of volunteer work. The community mobile library I was hoping to work on does not operate in November and December, because school is out, which seems counterintuitive to me, but oh well.

In the meantime, I will take some fotos of my place for you. The house has a huge mandarin tree which was grafted with lemon-limon. So I have two different kinds of fruits, and they are all coming ripe, and there are a zillion mandarin oranges and not quite as many lemon-limons, which are edible lemons. Never in my life did I know such a thing existed: they look like lemons, smell like lemons, but are sweet, but not too sweet, and MILD. It is heavenly eating them. I am feeding half the neighborhood with the madarines.

I have a friend from the city coming tomorrow. He is a Guatemalteco, about 30, who lived in Mexico for 15 years and is just coming back to Guatemala. He grew up in Solala. He seems like a lovely young man, and has lost I think his entire family and has no one but himself in the world. Apparently someone is writing his life’s story . . . I am interested to find out more about Santos. I met him in Santiago at Day of the Dead, along with a gal named Lillian, from Switzerland. I just loved Lillian. I invited both of them to come to Antigua that day on their way back to the city. She is working for some accompanying organization, the name of which I forgot. This country has more internationals coming here to “help out” or “accompany” or build houses or build libraries or you name it, internationals are here trying to fix things, which is part of the problem. I agree with Ignacio that Guatemalans have to learn to help themselves, and that on some level, all these international organizations could be slowing down the process.

I continue to go to my gym, which is literally around the corner and a half a block up. It is a great little gym by Guatemalan standards and it keeps me sane. When I don’t get there, it is not good. I haven’t really met anyone there, but I feel at home there.

The owner of my property has been coming down to fix up the apartment next door and to get a grip on another lot next to mine that is vacant that she owns. It was overgrown with weeds 8 to 9 feet tall and as big as trees practically. She is a good egg, and we went out to dinner when she was last here (a big treat for me) and spent what seemed like zillions at this Japanese place close to my house. I think the bill was 385Q (divide by 7.6) and that included two alcoholic drinks she had before I got there (I didn’t have any). The food was very good.

I met a few new people this last Sunday, thank god, and one is a very lovely man who is about my age who is working with Common Hope and also has begun his own preschool project with clowns in town squares who will be working with the kids on different exercises that get them interested in learning. The literacy rate is only approximately 40-50% here and the school drop out rate is enormous by about grade 5 or 6. Fred is the one who is leaving for a month and a half and whose room I may take over if I can get out of my rental.

Well, that’s about all I can think of right now . . . . this letter has been a few days in the making and just today, I really formally cut my ties with Ignacio. The events of the last few days have made it abundantly clear that there is no way I can work with him. I feel empty and lost, but glad I made this decision. And I am starting to eat again. Already my clothes are not falling off!