http://www.usaid.gov/gt/elections.htm
I am putting this link up for everyone because a lovely woman I met at Lake Atitlan took them when she was working as an election monitor in Quiche. Her name is Maureen Taft-Morales and she was serving as a Senior Democracy Fellow with USAID when I met her.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Monday, April 14, 2008
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Last Letter Home -- for Now
Last letter home-April 5, 2008
It seems fitting to complete the series of letters home with some thoughts about my return to Guatemala from Nicaragua and on the impressions and emotions that crowded in when returning to Antigua during Semana Santa and the week following.
I arrived on Tuesday of Holy Week and was fortunate to find a place to stay in a residence where I had spent a fair amount of time in the past because I knew some people who had or who still lived there. It was familiar territory and near my old neighborhood, and thus easy to visit old friends and haunts – although nothing in Antigua is very far from anything else in Antigua, one of the charms of this beautiful little town known as the “Disneyland” of Guatemala.
Re-entering Antigua during Holy Week was very emotional. Although I am by now used to processions, Semana Santa’s processions are a step up, with alfombras (pictured on the blog) being richer and more beautiful than any I had seen before. My two favorite processions (there are many every day, especially on Good Friday) were naturally those in which I had some small personal interest – one with Oscar, the son of my friend Ingrid – the ninos procession, and the other that went through my old barrio east of San Francisco, because I got to see my old neighbors and hang out at Amparo’s house with Otto and Claudia and Lulu and Ingrid’s kids, Jennifer and Oscar, watching everyone make the alfombras, and then waiting and watching as the procession came through. Our neighborhood had the thickest array of alfombras I saw all week, some humble, some elaborate, but all of them right on top of each other, their denseness magnified by the fact that the tiny, self-contained neighborhood of Colonia el Pensativo has small, narrow streets.
On Good Friday, I was out in the streets fairly early watching a procession west and uptown, and then went to the Cathedral in central park where the faithful were filing into church, standing in line to touch the crypt of Jesus, who lay there dead under glass. I stood in line with my fellow Guatemaltecos and found myself suddenly in tears, unable to control the weeping. I, too, touched the coffin with the little piece of cotton given us by the acolytes as we approached the coffin, and then I had to sit in a pew for a while to collect myself, again not being able to stop weeping. It seemed that the tears were for the unresolved losses of my life, because although my father died at this time of year and recently, I never weep for my father. His long life allowed me to go through my disillusionment with this imperfect man whom I had idolized as a child, came to know his faults as an adult, and had the time to realize that while he was imperfect in many ways, in the end, I still loved him immensely. Thus, when I think of my father, it is never with sadness, but only with warm understanding and a feeling of completeness.
Still fighting back tears, I lit a candle for the first time in many, many years, praying that for the unresolved losses, and that somehow the sadness would find its way out and that I could take positive steps to replace those feelings of loss with new opportunities for love and understanding.
In the first several days after returning, I thought I wanted to leave immediately, that I was done with being in central America. But as the time wore on, I realized that it was really a new beginning. I determined to go to Xela, a city I have been wondering about for quite some time. I had spent only “tourist” time up in the highlands in the past (Chichicastenango, Lake Atitlán), but tourist time, while it can be fun and interesting to a point, is not what I seek. I always want to go to the heart of things.
I got a very bad infection in one of my toes and it became very difficult to walk. This became painfully apparent a day before I had planned to go, and couldn’t decide whether to go or stay in Antigua and go to the doctor. My friend Renee encouraged me to go anyhow, and so I did, with much pain over the 6-hour ride in a crowded collectivo to Xela. But I was glad I did. I stayed in a perfect place and everything I experienced there was positive.
I found two pianos in the old, huge, city theater, and, what is more, a marimba teacher who, when he found out I like to work on indigenous issues, said he wished he was indigenous (flirting is even more fun in Spanish!). I also came upon an energy machine of a young German woman who overheard our conversation and took me to one of the pianos behind the stage to play a bit and then insisted that I could not return to Antigua the next morning as planned, but had to stay to be in a music festival that she put together for musicians all over Guatemala that was happening the very next day. She is a very special person who I hope to have the pleasure of seeing again one of these days in Xela (I couldn´t stay for the festival, unfortunately).
Then I met some lovely people at Entremundos, a group that helps volunteers find appropriate organizations to work with in Xela, sponsors educational programs weekly at its offices for the community on burning political, environmental and human rights issues (which are really all the same on some level), and publishes a great little newsletter; finally met Tom of Xela Pages, who has been kind to me on several occasions over email not knowing me from Adam, as we say; and I had a great chat with the folks at AIDG, who are right down the street from Xela Teco, which they helped get off the ground (a small company that makes solar water heaters, biodigesters, micro-hydroprojects and other renewable energy applications). I have thought about Xelo Teco a lot, hoping to visit someday, since Brad Burkhartzmeyer, who had volunteered with XT, gave a presentation about renewable energy projects in Nicaragua and Guatemala early last year at a Shoreline Solar Project meeting. So it was a moving moment for me when I walked the quiet streets of Xela (quiet, that is, after rush hour!) and turned a corner and looked down to the end of the block to see the real Xela Teco, looking wonderfully shabby and not at all glamorous like it looks on its website, but there, really there, in front of me.
My unconscious expectations in Guatemala and Nicaragua about how things will be, how they will look, and the like, remind me a lot of how I experience spring in Seattle. One always has a picture in one’s mind about how something will be, whether we are conscious of it or not, and for spring here, it never turns out that way. As much as I have experienced spring here, over and over, as cold and rainy, there is still this unconscious part of me that expects it to be sunny and increasingly warmer, as it was in the Midwest and on the east coast. But it is never like that. It is always like it is, not like some place else is. “June-uary” is what we get, not June.
So it is with one’s image of how something will be in central America. There is this initial disconnect with the image in front of you, based on the way things look in the states, and then you settle into reality. And so it is with people. The only exceptions for me have been Lago Apoyo and Volcan Masaya in Nicaragua, which are, just naturally, beautiful. And every now and again we are lucky to meet some people like that, too!
In Xela, I also visited with a guy who has a small, four-person organization that works on organizing community development councils in the 5 departments including and surrounding Xela. And I had a great experience at a community health clinic, where they not only were kind, but charged me the same as they would have anyone off the street – 25Q ($3.33), for a doctor to look at my infected toe, clean it, dress it, and give me a prescription and instructions how to care for it (which prompted a donation from me the next day after learning that the clinic serves the poor communities surrounding Xela, and anyone off the street). Xela had a lot of positive energy, I thought, and it seems more politically engaged than Antigua, but what do I know. These are just uninformed impressions.
The trip back from Xela to Antigua was a wicked, 8-hour ride through the highlands, with torn up highway impeding our travel. But I still immensely enjoyed a concert of Trovas that night in Antigua (my newest music interest is learning Trovas on the guitar), and treasuring my last time with friends, finally falling in love with Antigua, something I had resisted for so long. But after the heat of Managua (which actually caused me to break out in a heat rash in my midsection, something that happens to delicate types in the tropics on occasion, the internet informed me), and the relative nippiness of Xela, neither being a match for Antigua’s beauty, it was impossible not to admit that Antigua is special, even if affected and infected by way too many foreigners.
The most important part of central America for me, however, is its people. They value each other and spend time just sitting together, like I imagine people here used to do before everything speeded up and became “auto” mated. (I remember thinking many years ago that soon Americans would never have to talk to anyone else to get by. How sad). Because the relative slowness of life, the fact that I walked everywhere for 6 months and thus encountered people constantly (they are all out walking, too!), is something that I already miss, having been back here only three days. That I could go anywhere in Antigua or Xela on foot and get what I needed, and enjoy the process of doing it, was wonderful. It seems to bring out the best in me. And there, it seems, my emotions are raw and open, and I am vulnerable. And I treasure that.
Sure, there are enormous problems, with education, with crime, with poverty. Simply enormous. But there are also rich traditions and a very high value placed on interpersonal relationships. What is a truly rich society? What makes the “happiness index” (as in Bhutan) move higher? For me, it is having Josephina recognize me in the street and grab my arms and hug me. Or Letty comfort me with hugs when she knows I am blue. Or the fact that I can sit on top of Cerro de la Cruz, looking down at Antigua and across at Volcan Agua, while chatting for a half an hour with a police officer in Spanish about crime in the country and how we both perceive it and what can be done. These seemingly small interactions mean a lot to me. So much so that I don´t know how long I want to stay away from them.
Love to you all. Hope to see many of you very soon. And the rest of you, even sooner!
It seems fitting to complete the series of letters home with some thoughts about my return to Guatemala from Nicaragua and on the impressions and emotions that crowded in when returning to Antigua during Semana Santa and the week following.
I arrived on Tuesday of Holy Week and was fortunate to find a place to stay in a residence where I had spent a fair amount of time in the past because I knew some people who had or who still lived there. It was familiar territory and near my old neighborhood, and thus easy to visit old friends and haunts – although nothing in Antigua is very far from anything else in Antigua, one of the charms of this beautiful little town known as the “Disneyland” of Guatemala.
Re-entering Antigua during Holy Week was very emotional. Although I am by now used to processions, Semana Santa’s processions are a step up, with alfombras (pictured on the blog) being richer and more beautiful than any I had seen before. My two favorite processions (there are many every day, especially on Good Friday) were naturally those in which I had some small personal interest – one with Oscar, the son of my friend Ingrid – the ninos procession, and the other that went through my old barrio east of San Francisco, because I got to see my old neighbors and hang out at Amparo’s house with Otto and Claudia and Lulu and Ingrid’s kids, Jennifer and Oscar, watching everyone make the alfombras, and then waiting and watching as the procession came through. Our neighborhood had the thickest array of alfombras I saw all week, some humble, some elaborate, but all of them right on top of each other, their denseness magnified by the fact that the tiny, self-contained neighborhood of Colonia el Pensativo has small, narrow streets.
On Good Friday, I was out in the streets fairly early watching a procession west and uptown, and then went to the Cathedral in central park where the faithful were filing into church, standing in line to touch the crypt of Jesus, who lay there dead under glass. I stood in line with my fellow Guatemaltecos and found myself suddenly in tears, unable to control the weeping. I, too, touched the coffin with the little piece of cotton given us by the acolytes as we approached the coffin, and then I had to sit in a pew for a while to collect myself, again not being able to stop weeping. It seemed that the tears were for the unresolved losses of my life, because although my father died at this time of year and recently, I never weep for my father. His long life allowed me to go through my disillusionment with this imperfect man whom I had idolized as a child, came to know his faults as an adult, and had the time to realize that while he was imperfect in many ways, in the end, I still loved him immensely. Thus, when I think of my father, it is never with sadness, but only with warm understanding and a feeling of completeness.
Still fighting back tears, I lit a candle for the first time in many, many years, praying that for the unresolved losses, and that somehow the sadness would find its way out and that I could take positive steps to replace those feelings of loss with new opportunities for love and understanding.
In the first several days after returning, I thought I wanted to leave immediately, that I was done with being in central America. But as the time wore on, I realized that it was really a new beginning. I determined to go to Xela, a city I have been wondering about for quite some time. I had spent only “tourist” time up in the highlands in the past (Chichicastenango, Lake Atitlán), but tourist time, while it can be fun and interesting to a point, is not what I seek. I always want to go to the heart of things.
I got a very bad infection in one of my toes and it became very difficult to walk. This became painfully apparent a day before I had planned to go, and couldn’t decide whether to go or stay in Antigua and go to the doctor. My friend Renee encouraged me to go anyhow, and so I did, with much pain over the 6-hour ride in a crowded collectivo to Xela. But I was glad I did. I stayed in a perfect place and everything I experienced there was positive.
I found two pianos in the old, huge, city theater, and, what is more, a marimba teacher who, when he found out I like to work on indigenous issues, said he wished he was indigenous (flirting is even more fun in Spanish!). I also came upon an energy machine of a young German woman who overheard our conversation and took me to one of the pianos behind the stage to play a bit and then insisted that I could not return to Antigua the next morning as planned, but had to stay to be in a music festival that she put together for musicians all over Guatemala that was happening the very next day. She is a very special person who I hope to have the pleasure of seeing again one of these days in Xela (I couldn´t stay for the festival, unfortunately).
Then I met some lovely people at Entremundos, a group that helps volunteers find appropriate organizations to work with in Xela, sponsors educational programs weekly at its offices for the community on burning political, environmental and human rights issues (which are really all the same on some level), and publishes a great little newsletter; finally met Tom of Xela Pages, who has been kind to me on several occasions over email not knowing me from Adam, as we say; and I had a great chat with the folks at AIDG, who are right down the street from Xela Teco, which they helped get off the ground (a small company that makes solar water heaters, biodigesters, micro-hydroprojects and other renewable energy applications). I have thought about Xelo Teco a lot, hoping to visit someday, since Brad Burkhartzmeyer, who had volunteered with XT, gave a presentation about renewable energy projects in Nicaragua and Guatemala early last year at a Shoreline Solar Project meeting. So it was a moving moment for me when I walked the quiet streets of Xela (quiet, that is, after rush hour!) and turned a corner and looked down to the end of the block to see the real Xela Teco, looking wonderfully shabby and not at all glamorous like it looks on its website, but there, really there, in front of me.
My unconscious expectations in Guatemala and Nicaragua about how things will be, how they will look, and the like, remind me a lot of how I experience spring in Seattle. One always has a picture in one’s mind about how something will be, whether we are conscious of it or not, and for spring here, it never turns out that way. As much as I have experienced spring here, over and over, as cold and rainy, there is still this unconscious part of me that expects it to be sunny and increasingly warmer, as it was in the Midwest and on the east coast. But it is never like that. It is always like it is, not like some place else is. “June-uary” is what we get, not June.
So it is with one’s image of how something will be in central America. There is this initial disconnect with the image in front of you, based on the way things look in the states, and then you settle into reality. And so it is with people. The only exceptions for me have been Lago Apoyo and Volcan Masaya in Nicaragua, which are, just naturally, beautiful. And every now and again we are lucky to meet some people like that, too!
In Xela, I also visited with a guy who has a small, four-person organization that works on organizing community development councils in the 5 departments including and surrounding Xela. And I had a great experience at a community health clinic, where they not only were kind, but charged me the same as they would have anyone off the street – 25Q ($3.33), for a doctor to look at my infected toe, clean it, dress it, and give me a prescription and instructions how to care for it (which prompted a donation from me the next day after learning that the clinic serves the poor communities surrounding Xela, and anyone off the street). Xela had a lot of positive energy, I thought, and it seems more politically engaged than Antigua, but what do I know. These are just uninformed impressions.
The trip back from Xela to Antigua was a wicked, 8-hour ride through the highlands, with torn up highway impeding our travel. But I still immensely enjoyed a concert of Trovas that night in Antigua (my newest music interest is learning Trovas on the guitar), and treasuring my last time with friends, finally falling in love with Antigua, something I had resisted for so long. But after the heat of Managua (which actually caused me to break out in a heat rash in my midsection, something that happens to delicate types in the tropics on occasion, the internet informed me), and the relative nippiness of Xela, neither being a match for Antigua’s beauty, it was impossible not to admit that Antigua is special, even if affected and infected by way too many foreigners.
The most important part of central America for me, however, is its people. They value each other and spend time just sitting together, like I imagine people here used to do before everything speeded up and became “auto” mated. (I remember thinking many years ago that soon Americans would never have to talk to anyone else to get by. How sad). Because the relative slowness of life, the fact that I walked everywhere for 6 months and thus encountered people constantly (they are all out walking, too!), is something that I already miss, having been back here only three days. That I could go anywhere in Antigua or Xela on foot and get what I needed, and enjoy the process of doing it, was wonderful. It seems to bring out the best in me. And there, it seems, my emotions are raw and open, and I am vulnerable. And I treasure that.
Sure, there are enormous problems, with education, with crime, with poverty. Simply enormous. But there are also rich traditions and a very high value placed on interpersonal relationships. What is a truly rich society? What makes the “happiness index” (as in Bhutan) move higher? For me, it is having Josephina recognize me in the street and grab my arms and hug me. Or Letty comfort me with hugs when she knows I am blue. Or the fact that I can sit on top of Cerro de la Cruz, looking down at Antigua and across at Volcan Agua, while chatting for a half an hour with a police officer in Spanish about crime in the country and how we both perceive it and what can be done. These seemingly small interactions mean a lot to me. So much so that I don´t know how long I want to stay away from them.
Love to you all. Hope to see many of you very soon. And the rest of you, even sooner!
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