My last week in Xela was a whorl win of emotions from leaving PLQ, a place that represents peace, tranquility and understanding (among so many other positive emotions), leaving my host family who are some of the most generous and gracious people I've ever had the privilege of meeting to walking the streets of a city that has truly touched my heart for the last time.....until I return:) Friday night was graduation from PLQ and a traditional Guatemalan marimba band that sent us off in our dancing shoes.
Saturday morning we headed off to Santa Anita in the mountains of the Guatemalan country side. Santa Anita is a cooperative community of coffee farmers that began as refugees of the armed conflict who have since come back to the country to live off the land. That original members of this community are former guerrilla force members who for various reasons had to flee to Mexico at some time during the conflict. When the war ended they came back together and formed this cooperative to provide 100% organic coffee cultivate completely by free Guatemalans. There was a documentary made about them called "Voice of a Mountain" and I would highly recommend purchasing it (or viewing it for free on youtube:) We only spent one night and just over a day of total sun light there but the views were breath taking when we took a hike through the jungle (and part of the plantation) Sunday morning. We also got to spend some bath time in and beautiful waterfall tucked in the jungle in the middle of the hike. The rest of the time was spend resting and recharging around the grounds preparing for our next home stay in the campo (countryside) of Guatemala in a small community outside the city of Cantel.
Staying on the campo opened my eyes to the value of living simply in a way that has never happened before. It showed me the simplicity of happiness and the value of family and community. Chuitziribal is a community of about 75 homes containing families of 4 or more. Some times up to 4 generations living under one very small roof. We all split up into pairs to stay with these families. My friend Hannah and I stayed with a family of four. Cornelia, Josue and their two boys Byron (9) and Herman (6) shared their lives with us for four days and five nights. Their house was a very simple four room house made of cinder blocks with no running water. While Hannah and I stayed with them they all shared one bed to allow us to use the other two they had. Each morning I would wake up to the sound of Cornelia patting dough between her hand to make tortillas around 5:30 before Josue headed off to Xela for work. We all continued our Spanish class from PLQ during this last week. The church in Chuitziribal let us borrow the church for a week and each morning our teachers would be transported the 20 min up to the campo for class. The church sat on a little hill that over looked the community and most days Rufina and I would walk up the hill a little further on a path behind the church and sit and watch the sun spread over the earth and we drank coffee and spoke Spanish. I will never forget the feeling of looking at that marvelous country side early in the morning, feeling as if the sun has reached you just a little before the rest of the earth because your so high on the mountain. I will never forget sharing those moments with Rufina one of the most special Guatemalans forever etched in my life because of this experience.
We had our normal class hours in the morning and then in the afternoons we had various activities. On Monday we had a cooking class in the church kitchen where we learned how to make a traditional Guatemalan dish called envueltos . This involves chopping carrots and a local vegetable called wiskil. Then you make a batter out of egg whites and a little flour and pan fry the vegetables in this batter. We made a tomato sauce and a spicy chili sauce as well as fresh tortillas. Hannah and I had already had a minny lesson on tortilla patting from Cornelia but let me tell you it is not easy. Tuesday we all went down to Cantel to see a local glass blowing factory. This was a really successful and empowering business because it was owned completely by the employees and served basically as a form of cooperative. The employees even invented and made a lot of the machines they used in the factory. It was really cool to watch them literally crank out these beautiful glass wear pieces in minutes. Wednesday we went to a local natural healing doctor. This was an incredibly interesting presentation for me. This woman is both formally and informally trained in traditional western and natural medicines respectively. She has a medical degree in Guatemala and but was also taught natural medicine by his parents who are both natural healers. She has a garden and make many natural medicines in shop at her home. We also went to a hot spring bath house. For each of these trips out of the campo we got the thrilling experience of riding in the back of pickup trucks, with make-shift metal cadges in the beds. This was actually really fun holding on and we made the bumpy dirt road trip up and down the mountain side. Thursday we heard a presentation about the stated of education in Cantel and local campos such as Chuitziribal. He spoke about the state of corruption in the local and national governments and what this was doing to the educational system. Many in power are trying to completely privatize education starting from the 6th grade up. This would virtually eliminate the possibility for people living in communities like Chuitziribal to educate their children and thus continue the cycle of poverty for the country. He also talked about how the funding situation is very shady. The majority of the time the local school in small campo communities are not fulfilled to even 15% of what they are suppose to get each year. Yet despite all of these clouds over their desire to be educated the communities are still fighting to learn with what they do get. I saw this desire clearly living with Byron. He has very minimal material to work with, yet every night he wanted to share his homework with Hannah and I and read to us. He was so proud of what he was learning and I could see the desire in him to continue. Usually at night we would all play with all the ninos in the village who were eager to organize massive games of tag among various other. Or to go on adventure through the jungle surrounding the village. Or Byron, Herman and myself would hang out inside coloring and doing homework together. As I would fall asleep I could hear the laughter of my Chuitziribal familia in the other room and would think to myself how amazing it was that people with so little could still be so happy, a lesson I'm sure they didn't realize they were teaching me.
Also a small fun fact. There are a couple million Guatemalans living in the greater Atlanta area. Cornelia actually has a brother living in Atlanta and when she showed me a picture of him standing in a parking lot next to his car I realized that he was standing in Loemen's Plaza a place I have been many many times.
Leaving Chuitziribal was a very emotional experience for all of us. It was amazing how quickly we formed bonds with our host families here after staying for only a week. They all walked us to the church and waited with us for the pickups to come get us. Even harder was saying goodbye to Rufina. After spending the better part of my days with her for 5 weeks and slowly building my confidence speaking Spanish with her we shared many good times. I truly feel luck for having her particularly as a teacher at PLQ. While all the teachers were great people I got along with very well, there was something about Rufina that just clicked with me. We shared the same sense of humor and passion for certain social issues. She also taught and a woman's institute in the afternoon and was a dedicated teacher and advocate of woman's rights in a place where the traditional way of life is dominated by the machismo attitude. Often times after studying grammar for the first 2 1/2 hours we would just find a sunny spot in the PLQ court yard or on the terrace and literally just BS for the lat 2 hours. She is an amazing woman who has over come many obstacles in her life to be able to support herself and her son on her own. She is another prime example of the spirit of the Guatemalan people persevering to be happy despite the fact that life throws everything at them, including the kitchen sink, to try and prevent this.
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