Fragments

OK so I did really well for awhile writing blogs but sometimes it feels like I have so many things to write about getting them down is daunting.  This week I went to Xeabaj to measure the site for the mayan ball court that the school is building. All the kids speak Q'uiche, but the director spoke spanish and told us a lot about the town. It used to be located in the forest in the mountains but Hurrican Stan demolished the town and everyone had to relocate to their current location which is more sheltered. There are very few trees, limited water, but it's safer. Evidently the first level of school is free, through sixth grade, but after that you have to pay and walk about eight kilometers to the bus to get to Xela.  The director told us that when he went to secondaria he had to walk twenty four kilometers to school and since his parents didn't have enough money to help him he worked in the fields every day after school to get enough money to go. He's a really cool guy, he helped organize the rebuilding of five communities in the area that were destroyed in the Hurricane and found foreign aid from all over the world to help. He knew all about every student there.  Besides the Mayan Ball court they want to build a basketball court and a soccer field. I had to measure up and down this fifty degree inclined hill in order to make a plan and it wore me out beyond belief - I was chugging up and down this mountain while little kids were shooting past me giggling. Ugh. At first I was kind of...put off...by the idea that this school is planning on spending so much money on sports.  Isn't there anything else that could use that money? Books? More teachers? Paper?  BUt then the director explained that most of the kids never get a chance to play. He said he never once played a game when he was in school becuase he had to work so hard and was always so tired, and he wants to give the students a chance to be...children.  After he explained it that way I realized that games are something that we take for granted, but they're definitely a luxury.  I saw three tiny little girls playing jacks with walnut shells and a tennis ball. How does something like jacks get passed along? 

Yesterday Kirsten and I went to a school in Cantal called Nueva Amanecer to teach a Mayan arts class.  We brought paint and construction paper and had the kids paint their Nahuals or favorite animals. They had a blast, and took it so seriously. Every kid knew his/her Nahual and what they meant, and we learned more from them about their history than we taught. This school is great, you can tell all the kids are so happy to be there and all the teachers love them so much.  They need so many supplies though, everything from desks and seats to scissors and trash cans. Oh, and paper. Paper is expensive.  I'm thinking of starting a collection at WAAC this fall - architecture students spend small fortunes every week on drawing and modeling supplies, and if every time they spend money they donated a dollar, or bought a dry erase marker, then in a few months I could send down a supply box for the school.  It's so hard not to want to solve every problem myself. I think about all the pairs of scissors and stacks of paper sitting just in the office of my house and it makes me so sad. But this is not a sob story, the school is doing great.  When Kirsten and I walked down the road leading to the school the four and five year olds saw us and a cry went up of "Los gringos! Los gringos!"  and when we walked in the gate they sang this song that goes "Bue-nas Di-as, Pase Adelante! Mucho gusto y come esta usted!!!!"  It was pretty adorable.  When we left I noticed this little girl who couldnt have been more than four sitting outside the gate watching the other kids play. I wish I had taken a picture of her but it seemed like she was so wistful I didn't want to interrupt her moment or seem unfeeling. The whole day really made me nostalgic for elementary school.

This weekend an art center in Xela is teaching a class on the connection between art and math that I really want to go to. But I have a lot of work to do. And i don't know if my vocabulary is advanced enough to keep up. AMA is paying for teachers from all the schools we work with to go to the class. 

Last night Lupe, the woman who runs AMA, Laurel, who is a fashion designer from Richmond designing bags down here to sell at Alternatives, Rachel, the other intern, Karen, a ballerina from richmond who is teaching dance classes in the Mayan schools for a couple of weeks, and I all went to a sulpher sauna on a volcano.  It's literally a hotel perched on top of vents that release sulphuric steam from the magma below.  It felt incredible even though it was almost impossible to breathe it was so hot in the sauna.  We went there after dinner and it was closed but they let us in anyway and I have never slept so soundly as afterwards.  

What else?  Lupe told us a really cool story over dinner the other night. When she was 21, in 1991, in the middle of a civil war, she decided to go work in an orphanage near Tikal during her two weeks vacation from working at a place that approved phone lines.  It was the first time she'd ever been in a plane, and this one only held two people besides the pilot. When they were landing it was in the middle of a thunderstorm and there was a horse on the "landing strip" that wouldnt move, but they had to get out of the lightening.  They ended up hitting the horse with the wing, which was destroyed. The horse was fine. So Lupe was in the jungle, bathing in a river infested with crocodiles, in a place with only one hour of electricity from a generator.  The other volunteer who had come in with her just happened to be a welder, and had just happened to bring his welding supplies to teach the older children a trade so they could go to the city and make money.  In the one hour of electricity every night they got in contact with a World War Two vet in Michigan who knew how to fix their plane.  He gave the welder instructions every night for two weeks and during the day the welder would work on the wing.  After two weeks it was repaired and Lupe went home.  I think that's incredible. 

Ok, back to work, but I will write more later when I remember something interesting. 

Oh, you know that phrase "don't let the bedbugs bite?"  Well, evidently there really are bedbugs.  In my bed, in fact.  Rachel and I are covered with clusters of little red bites and that's the only thing we can think of since we haven't seen any spiders or fleas. Not fun....