Third Letter Home

December 1, 2007

Third Letter Home:

Hello Everyone!

First thing I should tell you is that I have posted a LOT more pictures, both in November and December, so check back in November for a LOT of fotos after you read this letter. I just discovered (I am a ludditte) that my camera takes movies, so I am now filming some of the clown activities you will read about in this letter (I think!). Days go by so quickly, and even though I have had a lot of emotional turmoil, I still treasure my time here and feel a very special bond with this place. Argh. ANYHOW, read on my sweets!

I am here in beautiful Antigua, Guatemala. As I predicted, things are not as interesting as they were hanging around Nahual. I am TRYING to fall into a routine, but it just doesn’t seem possible. Light comes here at 6 am and leaves at 6 pm everyday, so the best thing would be if I were able to arise at 5:30 and have coffee and read a bit and then begin to be out at the gym at 6:30. But I am a night person, so this just doesn’t happen. I have managed to get up at 6:30 a few times. But I have not once mastered 6 am. Tomorrow thankfully is always another day and a new start.

You will find a lot of new pictures posted for November, which I just put up. They include fotos of some people I met at the residencia of my friend Fred (this is a place I almost moved to, but decided against it for various reasons); fotos of the house where I have lived since the beginning; and an assortment of fotos of the clown (payaso) training and performances I have been somewhat involved in. An explanation is in order.

First, I met Alexis, an anthropology student and a clown from Canada, through Nahual. I explained that in my last letter home. I love Alexis. He is just the greatest person I have met in a long time. There is a beautiful innocence about him while at the same time he is clearly highly intelligent and accomplished. He can juggle anything, including just picking up juggling fire here in the past couple of weeks; he improvises balloon animals (remember the crocodile he made for Ignacio’s head?), he does magic tricks, he can do acrobatics, and it goes on. He speaks three languages, going from one to the other in a sentence seamlessly. Most important, he is unfailingly positive about people and life generally.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, this guy name Fred from the US had been down here independently working on some education projects, one of which was a project to have a clown in every pueblo in Guatemala on Sunday afternoon in the central square teaching kids various exercises and games that would prepare them for more a more successful school experience.

He is a former manager, basically, and spent some years in Washington state, actually, of all things, with Weyerhauser. He most recently lived in and maintains ties with Arizona. He got involved as a volunteer with Common Hope, known here as Familias Esperanza, and as an outgrowth of that became interested in starting a project of his own to augment his work at Familias, because there, he takes assigned jobs as they are needed, mostly maintenance of the facilities. They have a big complex up the road from Antigua, near San Pedro, and it takes a lot to keep it running. He most recently has been working on an interior remodeling project. ANYHOW, he wanted to get more into the substance of things, I think, and through private Spanish lessons, began to talk to his teacher about trying to address the huge drop out rate of children in primary school in Guatemala. Familias is principally about sponsoring children in school and then helping them succeed as they identify problems that are holding them back, and trying to address those problems, which have been primarily health and housing. The statistics for primary and secondary drop outs and completion are overwhelmingly depressing. Only slightly more than half of primary school entrants complete primary education and 30% either drop out after, or must repeat the first grade. So, Fred started a couple of projects to try to better prepare children to learn and to intervene in primary school. You can read about his work at http://web.mac.com/frederickzambroski


I met Fred through another acquaintance about the same time as I was disconnecting with Nahual, and latched onto his work as a way to keep me occupied. Well, through a twist of fate, Alexis and his girlfriend Maud moved into the same residence as Fred, so Fred had dropped in his lap a professional clown to use for a training series he had already planned for November. Unreal. Fred views this as spiritual karma or grace (I named it grace for him); I on the other hand think it was instead a lovely coincidence for both of them. It has also been great for Alexis, whose planned project for Guatemala had not gone at all as hoped, either in Quiche, where it was supposed to happen, or here in Antigua with Nahual, which was a back up for the first plan. But Fred’s training and performances in the villages on Sundays have been a godsend for Alexis, too, and of course, it has been a great attraction for the clown trainings to have this visiting professional clown from Canada.

I have not jumped in to Fred’s education projects with both feet point because I have to have lead time on things to fully understand them and then to see if I am in political and philosophical agreement with a project before committing time and energy. In any event, I am unable to do so if I don’t fully agree with the premise. I have done little at this point except to try to understand, and to observe.

Moreover, my recent experience with Nahual has left me unable to become terribly enthusiastic about anything else right now. And while the need is great here for any kind of intervention to help individuals, I am philosophically committed, as I have been all of my political life, to seeing people demand that their government, which I believe they have to be active citizen participants in, properly tax the populace and turn those tax receipts into educational, infrastructure, transportation, health, and other governmental services for the public. This seems so basic. But it doesn’t happen here. So, to me, that is the core work that needs to be done, and I am not terribly enthusiastic about anything else.

In any event, many of the more recent fotos are of the Sunday morning training sessions for clowns, or of performances in the pueblos, the most recent of which was last Sunday in San Juan de Obispo, a 15 minute ride by bus from Antigua up in the hills a bit, with an impressive view of Antigua, below.

At least thinking about being a clown on Sundays and thinking about a big performance I can take part in at Familias Esperanza on December 16th helps me feel a bit better. But last night, I ran into Tony (Ignacio’s brother) and Ignacio at a café here in town where Tony was singing, and it just destroyed the good mood I was in and made me realize I really have to get out of Antigua to avoid these meetings and move on.

So, I think I will direct my energy over the next couple of weeks, instead of to Fred’s projects, to instead figuring out what would be a good place for me to go for the next 3 months, and to Spanish! Of course, two weeks will be in Nicaragua with my friend Laure Dunne; and perhaps longer, if I want to stay a few more days. I could stay in Nica or return and go to another city, like Xela, up in the highlands, and just study Spanish and try to have some fun, until I return on April 1st. That is supposed to be a better place to study Spanish, as there are fewer English speakers there. It is also the second biggest city in Guatemala. And I am going to see what other organizations are doing the kind of work that Nahual is trying to do here in Sacatepequez. If that is a fit with Xela, I may go up there after I return from Nicaragua.

That’s about it for now! Love to you all!