First off: What am I doing in Guatemala?
I am currently working for two organizations, Highland Support Project and the Asociacion de las Mujeres del Alitplano (AMA). They are sister organizations that together work to support and encourage Mayan communities in and around Xela, especially the women and children.
A little about these communities: For centuries the Mayan population of Guatemala has been marginalized and displaced, their culture repressed and discriminated against, and the people largely forgotten. Most of the communities I’ve been to speak Quiché or Mam with a scattering of Spanish. Most of the women are married by the time they’re fifteen (or earlier) and have children from the same age. Most of the men are farmers and the average income is 100 American dollars a month. The women are primarily homemakers – the cook over open stoves inside their homes all day, cleaning and taking care of children. Most of the children don’t go to school – there are barely any schools in their native languages and transportation to Spanish schools is hard to come by. The cost of books, uniforms, school supplies is too high for most families and those that can scrape it together mainly send only the boys. Girls don’t need to be educated, as they usually don’t hold jobs. This means that almost all the women are illiterate.
Last week I went to the first training session of the “Bombero Boys,” a group of eight middle aged men from communities in rural Xela who want to learn to be public safety officials. There are many landslides, hurricanes, earthquakes and floods but no doctors, nurses, firemen, policemen, or ambulances. The communities are hours from the nearest hospital and without vehicles to take patients there even if they were close enough to get there in time for it to be useful. A Bombero is a firefighter, but not in the American sense. Here the police are so reviled that many people refuse to let them help in times of need – it’s pretty dangerous to be a policeman. So the Bomberos are the safe medium – the whole public service system rolled into one organization. The eight men who want to learn to be firefighters only speak Quiché and only two are semi-literate. Marvin is a Bombero who works for AMA part time and is teaching the class. He only speaks Spanish. Tony, who is living here at the AMA house, was a firefighter in the states for fifteen years, and is helping advise the classes. He only speaks English. Because the men have to make a living, they can only meet two days a month. That’s not very much when it comes to learning to save lives, especially with every sentence having to be translated laboriously and without being able to study handouts at night. The day I watched the bomber boys learned the basics – to keep a patient’s neck straight, to bandage a wound with a clean cloth. They have no equipment and no knowledge of the human body (most were shocked to learn the brain controls the appendages) but they want to be able to help and I think that’s pretty awesome.
Back to the women: AMA works primarily with the women in the pueblos. For fifteen years it has been forming women’s circles in communities and to be honest the different between the pueblos AMA has worked with for awhile and those without women’s circles is incredible. The women’s circles are formed to create a unity between the women and teach them to fight for their rights and not accept their standing as second or third hand citizens. Many are single mothers whose husbands have left them or are working in the states, and the circles teach them the importance of education, the basics of health, self esteem, and to be proud of their culture. Guatemala is a society based on machismo, or sexism. For example, the indigenous men wear modern clothing while the women can’t wear pants and always have to wear their traditional garb. Regardless of being Ladina or indigenous, they are not equal to men. But indigenous women have the double curse of being female and Mayan. They are not treated in hospitals, given jobs in the city, and in some cases refused entry to bars and restaurants. They are seen as uneducated, dirty, and stupid by many westernized citizens of Guatemala, those of Spanish descent, called Ladinos. (Latinos is something different, it means Spanish speaking and usually refers to citizens of Central and South America). They are clearly marked by their language, clothing, and names. The Mayan people are losing their history, their art, and their religion to the pressure of money and success in a country that has tried to crush them for years.
So AMA teaches them to be proud of their history, to teach their children their stories and arts and cooking. Part of AMA is called MAP, or the Mayan Arts Program, and brings art supplies into villages to teach children traditional forms of art so they’re not forgotten. AMA teaches women to organize and take control of their communities. In the pueblos with long standing women’s circles the women have organized clinics, gathered scholarships for girls to go to college and learn to be teachers and nurses who then return to the communities to serve them. They use the money raised from selling textiles and crafts at AMA’s store in Richmond, Alternatives, to build playgrounds and community centers. Xiabaj is one such community, and is in the process of building a basketball court and Mayan ball court for the school that they built. They don’t want their children to forget how to play the traditional game, which has incredible significance in their traditions and religion.
After the women have participated in the circles they are able to apply for a stove. HSP is in charge of this part – it organized volunteers to come down from the states and donate money for supplies and help build stoves in the homes of the women who are in the circles. Because they cook over open fires inside the homes, breathing issues are a huge problem with women and children. Open fires take a lot of fuel and have to be constantly attended to. The HSP stove are fuel efficient, remove the smoke through a chimney, and cut cooking time in half so the women have more time for themselves and their families. Unfortunately, the stoves are made from pretty expensive materials and take four people a day to build. So the volunteers pay the cost and build the stove. Last week a group of older women from a church in Virginia were down here and build nine stoves. The village women kept remarking that they never knew American women could work with their hands. Surprise. They weren’t being judgmental; they also said they never realized that women in general could build something like this. It’s a whole other world, believe me.
Most houses here are made by the government and are concrete block with corrugated tin roofs. Usually in many pieces, with car doors and hub cabs stuck on to block the holes. Electricity is a maybe, and most running water is in the forms of outdoor sink. Laundry is done in rivers and streams and most of the roads are dirt and stone (and extremely hard to drive over). When it rains – you can’t leave. And believe me, it rains. This has to be one of the wettest places on earth. I feel bad saying that now because it is sunny and beautiful and I don’t want to jinx myself, but I’m just saying. Yesterday I saw the huge towering volcanoes around Xela for the first time because there were no clouds.
Which leads me to my next point: This is the most beautiful place on earth. The roads wind over and around mountains and so even on a short drive I can see for miles and miles around me. Farms are usually tall narrow strips of land winding up the hills in patchwork patterns. Everything is green and black and blue – it looks like the whole country is a crazy quilt scattered with colorful specks of houses and people. The people here are extraordinarily beautiful as well, not just their clothing but everything about them. Most women in villages that AMA has just started are still scared of westerners, or gringos, and I hate walking around taking pictures because it makes the children hide. They’re not sure if they should smile back, but usually one intrepid little girl will come touch my hair or wave and the rest will realize that I’m just another person. The other day I went to the closing ceremony after the church group finished their stoves. The women were so incredibly grateful, they gave bouquets of lilies wrapped in woven cloths and cooked lunch for everyone. Afterwards they displayed some of their wares for sale and were shocked and delighted that we actually bought things. I bought a long embroidered sash and an apron and the woman who wove the stash asked me (in gestures) if she could show me how to wear it as a head covering. I knelt down in front of her and there was instantly a crowd around us, pointing and laughing (in a nice way) and playing with my hair, touching my face, watching. At first I felt silly and a little bit like the gringa princess who surrounded by handmaidens, but then I realized what it meant to them that I, someone they saw as privileged and worldly, thought what they had made was beautiful. To them their clothing carries their history and stories, but it’s also a symbol of who they are, whether the connotation is good or bad. And they couldn’t believe that I would want to wear their clothing too, that I would want to look like one of them. When I say their clothing carries their history I mean it literally – the patterns tells the stories of creation, the history of the people, the family, and the community. You can look at a woman’s skirt, and if you know what you’re looking at, be able to tell how many children she has. The story of an entire people is hidden in cloth and if the knowledge of weaving disappears so will their history. When the Spanish came they destroyed the glyphs and paintings that had the history so it became solely oral and woven. Hidden in plain sight. Obviously I don’t speak Quiché but I tried as hard as I could to express my gratitude and I was followed out of the houses by a gaggle of giggling children who begged me to take their picture and let them see it.
Ok more personal stuff: I live in the AMA house, which is kind of a compound of rooms and an office, a kitchen, two bathrooms, etc., centered around two open courtyards. All the corridors are open too so when it gets cold at night the whole place gets cold. Rachel and I live next to each other in the back. Right now I am sitting in the main courtyard trying to keep my body in the sun and the computer screen in the shade. It feels soooo good to be warm. I want to savor it while it lasts.
Last night I went with Claudia and Kirsten to see a Mayan Sacerdote who was a professor of Claudia’s at university. He was this magnetic man just buzzing with energy. He reminds me a lot of my grandfather, actually, even his room that we sat in looks exactly like Dang Dang’s den. Wood paneled walls, tons of books, a computer, and nametags from a thousand conventions. He talked for awhile about how he became a sacerdote, his family, his history. He spoke very softly and even though Spanish is his second language his vocabulary was way out of my league. He lives in a compound of a bunch of houses in which live his children, nieces, nephews, cousins, brothers, etc., in the heart of Xela. His house is the first three story building I have seen since I got here that wasn’t built for the government. He told us about our nahuals, which is kind of like a guiding spirit or energy. It’s a little like a horoscope because it’s based on numbers and astronomy, but in the Mayan religion it’s more than just predicting the future and saying what kind of person you are. Your nahual is like the animal or natural spirit that created or is embodied by the day you were born, and under whose protection you will be your whole life. Even though it’s not my belief exactly, it was really cool, and unbelievably accurate. Though evidently my nahual is one that indicated I am a healer as well as that I am very capable of communicating with spirits and the dead.
What else? I haven’t electrocuted myself in the shower yet, nor have I learned to cook. I have eaten Tacos de res every day since I found the restaurant (they are unbelievable). The bathrooms have for the most part stopped grossing me out. I’m still not used to the streets here – the sidewalks in some places are a foot wide and two feet off the ground, full of slants and crooked steps. Sometimes they just disappear. Most of the streets are made of stones that get really slippery in the rain, aka all the time, and cars do not acknowledge pedestrian right of way. The city of Xela is divided into eight Zonas. I live in Zona 1, which is more historical and cultural. Zona 3 has all the best coffee shops; Zona 2 has the Zoo (I think). I haven’t explored the rest because honestly all the streets look the same and they repeat names like crazy. There’s a 6 Calle in every zone. I think more than one in a lot of them. People are in general friendly and open and willing to help, and I’m getting better at understanding the directions when they’re given to me.
I’m so incredibly happy to be here, the experience is irreplaceable and I am quickly falling in love with this country. I miss home a lot, mainly just my family, but I am trying to see and do as much as possible while I’m here. I wish my Spanish were better so I never had to miss a detail of any story due to slow translation, I want to know everything possible about the lives of the people I am meeting. More on what I’m actually doing next blog, I have to go eat some tacos.
Also, I have been posting pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/39818307@N08/
If that link doesnt work go to flickr.com, search for jessieinxela, then go to people. That's me!
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