Additional Notes

While I am not going to expand very much on the two previous posts, there are some clarifications and excerpts I would like to add.

In terms of how most people view the land issue, Che Guevara puts it quite eloquently, summarizing what he feels the people of Cuba and Latin America feel:

"But what is Cuba´s main problem if not the same as of all Latin America, the same as even enormous Brazil with its millions of square kilometers and with its land of marvels that is a whole continent? The one-crop economy. In Cuba, we are slaves to sugarcane...We must diversify our agricultural production, stimulate industry. And we must ensure that our minerals and agricultural products, and -in the near future- our industrial production, go to the markets that are best suied for us and by means of our own transportation lines."

Putting aside the common view of Che as a revoluntionary who subscribe to a system of violence for social change, we can appreciate his political and social insights. The ideas he supported and wrote about can be a valuable tool in the dialectical conversation between "developed and developing." Perhaps through the insights of Che and an agricultural people, we can have a more socially-orientated look with organizations such as USAID, World Bank, IMF, etc. I think this will serve as a good jumping point for the next part of the discussion concerning the current problems facing Agricultural Horticulturalists as well as those desiring Agrarian policy and a more Industrialized nation.

We have had beautiful weather in San Lucas lately. It has not rained for a couple of days and the bright sun really dries the clothes quick. The Aquaculture/Hydroponics project is moving along. The other day an engineering student working for the Parroquia was out and the final measurements were recorded for the plans and layouts. I now have a roommate in Casa Madre and living with a nun. Sister June returned, she has been living here for 6 years, from a trip to the States and the rooms were consolidated. She is a blast and has a quick attitude. She is really giving me a run for my money with the sarcasm. Tomorrow I am waking at 3am to hike Volcan Attitlan. It is supposed to be a 10-plus hour hike. There are some girls from high school going too so I am imagining it to take a bit longer. I took some girls over to CFCA today who were interested in sponsoring a child. As far as I know, CFCA (The Christian Foundation for Children and the Aging) sets donors who are interested in providing financial assistance directly with a child or elderly person in need. I am sure many people reading this already do something of the sort, if not CFCA specifically. I think I am going to go ahead and share my thoughts anyways, in a way to sort them out for myself. I am a justice orientated person, I tend to think and feel more strongly about the hows and whys of injustices. Now I am not saying Charity is wrong, because we are clearly called to love tenderly and act justly (while walking humbly, if I may add that). Charity, to me, often seems to be a band-aid on a wound, possible even a wound that is getting worse. While CFCA and the like clearly are a very charitable and loving organization with an important mission, I think it is necessary to ask ourselves if that is enough? I fully support the work that they are trying to do, but I feel like I am left with the impression that the mission is being left misunderstood. I do not know what the solution is, all I know is that some of the language I hear being used in regards to this ("My kid", "I want to pick out a child", etc.) Some will probably say I am too caught up in linguistics, but I really believe that the language we use reveals our attitudes (and yes Mom, I know I have a dirty mouth but I am not sure what that is revealing about me). I think ideally, I would like the relationship to be more of one based on experience and respect, as opposed to an emphasize on money. Charity done without a true and authentic respect for an individual´s dignity seems, to me, to be done more for the person giving, than a true desire to enable another person to fully realize the self through previously unavailable resources. I think I lost myself in this and probably upset a number of people, which really was not my itention. It was just on my mind and I am trying to find the balance between Charity and Justice and how to do both. So with that, check out CFCA.org (I think that is the website) and think about the possibility of opening an opporunity for another person, not because it makes us feel good about ourselves, but because that person and and justice demand it of us.

Well, as my friend Mary likes to say, Justice Out.

A treatise on Globalization (part 2)

(I apologize for the poor formatting of the last post. I typed it in word and pasted it into my email. The first part of this continuation begins below in the previous post.)

So we left off exploring the right to choose a way of life. There are many different directions to go here and there is a British journalist, Paul Kingsforth (something like that), who cites specific examples of communities and cultures asserting this right successfully and sustainable (One No, Many Yesses). We will be sticking strictly with the Mayan people in the highlands of Guatemala.

There is an anthropologist/sociologist from the States who identifies five characteristics or categories of cultures (Gerhard Lenski):
1: Hunter/Gather communities - typical of the Bedouins or the Dakotas for you Great Plains people.
2: Simple agriculture/horticulture - Stick and hole type farming predominant in Africa
3: Advanced Agriculture/horticulture - Small, local farms without heavy machinery. People own their own land, set own prices, make own decisions among a community basis. Rousseau would most likely support such a community as the best option for man to live in.

It gets a bit fuzzy here but this is how Father Greg presented the remaining two.

4: Agrarian - mechanical farms, mostly one cropping leaving the farmer with no say in the value of the product. (Che Guevara writes extensively on the social ills that Cuba suffered because of such a policy with regards to Sugar Cane) In up and coming countries looking for assistance with their development, what typically happens is the World Bank or IMF dictate a specific commodity or resource or product to become the sole means of production for a state, pumping all resources into the development of this product for the world market. This often leaves little political or economic leverage for a newly developed nation to negotiate prices, values, tariffs for their own resources, but rather rely on the whims of the market. A look at the collapse of the coffee industry a few years ago and how many Latin and South American countries suffered is an example of this (simplified of course!!!).

5: Industrialists - typified by high energy consumption, waste and want, the need to buy as the dominating force is the market. The brain child of Adam Smith and John Locke. In real terms, the G8: US, Canada, Britain, Germany, Italy, France, Russia, Japan. This would also include China but they are excluded from the table. For the most part the culture is democratic and capitalist with neo-liberalistic policy toward trade. The criteria for what makes a country developed is GROWTH. Growth = Profits. In the simplest terms, nations want to produce at a low cost and sell it at a high price. These principles, unfortunately, do not encourage respect for markets as the motivating force is the philosophy to always find and create new markets. Even the technology and laws that a nation adheres too support this economic principle driving the ability to respect other cultures further out of grasp.

How does this apply to the situation in Guatemala and San Lucas? Father presented three sources of evidence that propel the belief that an Advanced Horticulture/Hands On Agriculture is best for this region. These also serve as an indication of how the struggle to achieve it will unfold.

1: Heritage - the Mayan people have a deep, religious and spiritual connection to their land and the fruit they reap from their land. I wish I could go further into this with more concrete examples and stories, but I do not have my books or notes with me right now.

2: Support of the Episcopal Conference (Bishops of Guatemala) - Religious, especially the Bishops, are very revered and respected here in Latin America, generally much more so than in the U.S. In the past 20 years, they have published two pastoral letters decrying the injustice of land distribution in Guatemala. In 1988, The Cry for Land spoke for the people in their desire to own their own piece of land. Again, in 1992, celebrating 500 years since Columbus "discovered" the New World, the Bishops released another letter, written by a Spanish graduate student, finding that all the land grants written and given out by the Spanish government in the past few hundreds of years, it still remains in control of some 22 extended families. That translated into roughly 94% of the land to some 7% of the people. Some years later, Prensa Libre, one of the two main newspapers in Guatemala, found that of all arable land, approximately 80% of it is in the hands of some 2% of the people (foreign and domestic owners).

3: Newspaper/ Journalistic Accounts - At least twice a week, without fail, there is some article, demonstration, movement, op-op-ed piece concerning the need for better ownership.

So Land is clearly on everybody´S mind (even in the U.S. how land is valued can help us appreciate the need for a person to have a place to call their own). So what does all of this add up? A culture that values and desires to be Advanced Horticulturists (to some extent). This is not true for the entire country as there are many parts developing rapidly in tourism and industry, but we will touch both of these at a later time as it is beginning to rain and I need to run back and get my clothes off the line).

By the way, I have like 6 blisters today from shoveling dirt into a wheelbarrow and taking it about 15 meters away, dumping it, and doing it all over. But I´m not complaining, I love it here and keeps me out of too much trouble. Paz y Amor.

A treatise on Globalization

My weekend in San Pedro was a blast. It was great to get out of San Lucas and to a place that was not as touristy as Pana. San Pedro has an amazing international feel to it and we spent the evening partying with the youth/hippie culture, consisting of folk from Guate, Austria, Holland, US, Canada, Argentina, Mexico, Guatemala…The trip back to San Lucas was a bit tiring as we took a lancha, a small, quick boat, from San Pedro across the lake to Pana, then a much larger boat to Santiago and then a pick up to San Lucas. Quite a trip and we were pretty tired by the end of it. I promised in the last post about an update on the mission and here it is:

(The following is taken from lectures given by Father Greg, the priest who assists the running of the mission and parroquia and by Dr. Garcia, a Guatemalan doctor who brings students here from University of Nebraska, as well as a bit of my own opinions added in. I will do my best to reference and clarify and add further resources)

The history of Guatemala, the modern history, is really a story about globalization. In reality, then it is ultimately a story about capitalism. There are two award-winning authors who assert the undeniable influence of the capitalist model on the world. Thomas Freidman, in his book, The World is Flat, provides numerous examples of this. Sachs, a renowned economist and consultant with the UN (most recently famous for his book the End of Poverty) lays out two basic principles that are primarily related to developing countries: (1) Women in Bangladesh walk an hour to work, work almost 12 hour shifts straight, walk back, get up, walk to work, work…etc. (2) When enough money is saved between a group of women (approximately $50), they invest in a microloan to set up some sort of small-business…Step (1) leads to Step (2) and Step (2) is the beginning step out of poverty…The free trade and capitalist model says this is economics working and making better lives for people, Fat
her Greg says it is unbridled capitalism and nothing short of immoral and inhumane. Economics are meant to serve people, not the other way around.

What is globalization? It is about making the world flat, making it instantaneous. It is about communication. According to Father Greg, it is about coming to know you, coming to know all about you. In a sense, I agree with him. However what scares me is asking what are the motivations for coming to know you? I think it is advertising and anyone who has watched foreign television in another country for a “free world product” will notice that it is an ad that we would never see in the U.S. Also, stories of companies coming in with slogans and ad campaigns that totally backfire because of a lack of understanding the language comes to mind as well. Needless to say, this way of communicating globally seems to be an attempt to understand the world in order to impose another view of the world (Confessions of an Economic Hitman is one man´s account of having such job). It is a world where there are predetermined lines of Rich/Poor, Haves/Have Nots, North/South. A simple co
mparison of newspapers will reveal this. Listen to the language people use, the assumptions that are inherently made in their statements. Often times it reveals an Us/Them view of the world where We have it Right and They have it Wrong. Father Greg cites an international summit held in the 1960s. During the early stages of the Cold War there was an international gathering in Budapest where 120 nations were presented the choice to either be democratic and capitalist, or communist and socialist. 2/3 said Other. Now what this Other was is, unfortunately, left to speculation. The assumption Father Greg takes is that the said some form of government and economic policy that supports “hands-on agricultural.”

In 1999, during the last few months of the Clinton administration 25 were invited to develop a plan for globalization in regards to the Third World (or Developing World or Countries that are not fully Capitalist). All of this was directed under the World Bank, IMF, etc. and that is a much more complicated issue that will not be fully dealt with here. Anyways, at the same time, 77 other countries met in Cuba (our “unfriendly” neighbour to the South that no one can seem to remember why we have economic sanctions with them) to discuss development. The answer was roughly “our own country.” (The majority of this is according to Father Greg and his sources. Anything added in on my own was prefaced by an “I think, I feel, etc.”)

This is roughly translated into presuppositions of the industrialized, dominating First World about how the rest of the world should live. This leaves us asking the question of why are there poor people in the South? There are perhaps three ways to answer this question (Fr. Greg):

1) Empirical Lens – because the poor are dumb and lazy. The solution is charity. We feel sorry for them, call them Pobrecito, and shed some tears without really changing anything.
2) Functional Lens – because the poor are uncivilized. They are outside the 20th/21st century. The solution is through intentional programs. We will show you how to be like us. This is what the World Bank and IMF does. It is perhaps even done with the best intentions in the world, but the results are piss poor and often leave a country worse off than before because now they have no internal resources or structures and a huge amount of debt. We need to ask, after decades of aid and trillions of dollars, why are some of the same countries not alleviated from their poverty. Check with Make Trade Fair and the BBC for more on this.
3) Oppressed Lens – because the poor are not able to live as they please. The solution is to let people live their own way. A dialectical conversation and experience is what is needed, and it is what the mission hopes to achieve in San Lucas between a partnership between Mayans/Guatemalans and Americans in the context of the Catholic faith. Dialectical often makes some people nervous as it has some philosophical intonations with Marxism, but simply put, it is looking at reality in an objective way – asking people what they want.

As Father Greg put it, “there is an obligation to enter into dialectics that is rooted in faith in a monotheistic god because within one god is the same beginning.” In one God is one People.

I think this is enough for now as I am running out of time on the Internet and have no more money on me. Also dinner is soon. A short story before leaving though. This afternoon, Katie and I accompanied Father Rich, a diocesan priest from New York who is friends with Father Greg and Father John here in San Lucas, up to a small town in the mountains to say Mass. Driving in a stick shift car with over 200k miles and a broken speedometer, no shocks, loose seats is somewhat an experience when the clouds and fog are so dense that you cannot see any more than 15 feet or so in front of you. Anyone who has been down South in the early mornings will know what I am talking about…But, and this is somewhat typical in Guatemala, there was no mass to be found and after looking for a woman named Isabella, we found there were about four Isabellas in the community (including the one we were talking too!!) We left the twilight zone shortly thereafter.

Hasta luego amigos. Tienen una buena semana.

de San Pedro La Laguna

Buenas Tardes amigos...I am currently in the lakeside village of San Pedro, on the opposite side of the lake from Lago de Attitlan. I am having some difficulty typing today (either from the wacky keyboard I am on or from the day spend watching La Copa de Mundial in the bars here), just kidding...but seriously. This keyboard is messing with me quite a bit and I am having to hit backspace quite a bit so before leaving you emptyhanded with this weeks adventures, I will give you a bit of a teaser until tomorrow or Monday (at the latest). This week was a celebration of a friend´s birthday in San Lucas, the disappointment of the elimination of the U.S., much hard work at Nueva Providencia on the aquaponics project, and two fabulous lectures at La Parroquia by Padre Gregorio and a medico Guatemalteco, Dr. Garcia, watching slapstick comedies in Kaqchikel...This morning I came to this small, rather bohemian village with a German couple I met in San Lucas to enjoy a weekend away. As great as San Lucas is, it is quite tiresome for me to be there a full week. I plan to spend at least a week or two traveling around the country (maybe head up to Tikal for a day or too, Xela, Chichi, possibly even swing down through Honduras into El Salvador on my way back to the mission) in between staying in San Lucas and studying Spanish, solving the worlds problems, etc. Pues...hasta entonces amigos, tienen un buen fin de semana. Hope all is well at wherever you may be reading this and if you aren´t living on the edge, YOU ARE TAKING UP TOO MUCH ROOM.

Domingo, Domingo, Domingo

I am writing to you from Santiago Attitlan, a village on the coast of Lago de Attitlan and near San Lucas. This morning there was a boat tour for volunteers, mostly the groups who come for a week or two weeks, and it is chance for them to see more of the area. I decided to tag along today to use the internet (its cheaper than in San Lucas) and to find a book at one of the English bookstores in Pana.

There was no Futbol game Friday, we ended up working all morning and I was caught in the middle of a somewhat tense situation between Rick, the American who is working on the project and Kush, the Mayan who knows the most about the former Coffee Finca and the structures there. Kush kept telling me how Rick doesn´t understand and keeps asking foolish questions and Rick wasn´t buying the answers Kush was giving. It was really a clash of cultures that made me quite uncomfortable and somewhat embarassed. I tried to make the best out of the situation and joked around with both of them. Kush and I get along great and it is hard because Rick is left out of the loop with the language barrier. I think if he would at least learn Spanish he would have an easier time getting along and getting by with everyone.

The mission is crowded again with groups ranging from high school students to older adults. There is sort of an ongoing joke with people who spend more than a few weeks here how it can be a vacation. In many ways this is certainly true. Guatemala is a lot more affordable for any American or European to splurge in ways that they normally could not afford to do. Many of the economies here seem to thrive on the tourism and the markets. This is hard for me to deal with because I didn´t come down here thinking I was going to be on "vacation" but at times it feels like it. Life in general is just much more laid back and perhaps this is where I am getting that vibe from.

It is difficult to see many people come down here with a "vacation" like mentality and really miss out on a fantastic learning opportunity. This country is a resevoir of knowledge and customs that, if given the chance, can be quite fascinating. Maybe this is one of my critiques about the mission: It spends too many resources on making their volunteers comfortable that it is easy to miss both the struggles and destitution that people live with as well as the natural beauty of the land and its indigenous people. It is something I am constantly trying to keep in my foresight and trying to figure out how to mesh what I am learning with my American heritage...I will let you know how it goes!!! (It seems like I am giving a lot of promises that I have yet to deliver, so if anyone has any questions or what not, please ask and I will do my best).

Well I have about 45 minutes before my boat heads back to San Lucas. I think I am going to go grab a beer and finish reading my newspaper. Lots of news going on here, there are political elections and the world cup takes up most of the paper. After U.S. tying Italia yesterday and Czech losing to Ghana, we still have a chance. Keep those fingers crossed, we play Ghana Thursday morning.

Also, an interesting side note, yesterday was Father´s Day in Guatemala. Whoever invented this holiday did a great job on their international marketing. So Happy Father´s Day out there to all you Dads. You too Dad, thanks for everything and now I am going to go try and call you.

Adios.

Esto Viernes

We have a football match set up for Friday morning against some of the guys we are working with: Gringos vs. Guatemaltecos. I will let you know the results. There are currently some German students staying in the mission and I have been watching some of the matches with them. Today´s game of Germany/Poland was a close one and Sean, if you are reading this, my friends here tell me to have fun (or be careful) tonight in Germany!!! The U.S. plays Saturday and we need a decisive victory. Most people here cheer for Brasil or any other Central/South American team that isn't Mexico. Not sure why yet but they all make fun of this fella Kush for rooting for Mexico.

Everyone always laughs at me when I tell them: Mi equipo favorito es Estados Unidos y vamos ganar la copa...I don´t know why they laugh at that either.

desde la semana pasada

Pues mis amigos, ha sido mas que una semana desde mi poste pasado. It was so long ago that it will take some time to do this chronologically...so I will summarize and expand when necessary. My weeks are pretty straightforward and simple. Breakfast at 8am, work, lunch at 12:30pm, work, dinner at 6pm. The type of work varies each day and is left totally up to me as to what I feel like doing each day. I have spent some time at the reforestation project filling little garbage bags with dirt. It´S pretty complicated so they put their best man on it...all kidding aside it is a very important project as the Solola region and area around the lake suffers terribly from mudslides. Because trees are cut down regularly for fire wood for both heat and food, erosion is a growing problem. We regularly see roads washed out. Anyway the Proyecto de Arboles is intended to help curb this problem by distributing and selling saplings to communities. Also, at the project, they make hand made spoons out of left over wood. They are beautiful and we make them using a saw, a machete, and a file. Machetes are probably the most essential tools around here and people regularly carry them.

Other projects include the ever so famous coffee project. The Juan Ana coffee is fair trade coffee guaranteed to give the farmers a sustainable living wage. Since the worldwide price of coffee is quite unstable, there was a massive drop a few years ago which was devastating to this area, the project provides much needed income and reliable work for farmers who were previously were forced to rely on the whims of market prices controlled by large, corporate farms and fincas. Fair trade projects are becoming more popular all over the world, especially in developing countries. Oxfam and Catholic Relief Services are excellent resources for obtaining more information and links to fairly traded goods and commodities.

The Mission in the process of building a Women´s Center. It is located in a beautifully forested area with amazing views of the lake. It is intended to be a place to provide recreation and education for women. Guatemala, especially the more traditional Mayan Guatemala, is predominately a patriarchal society. Women are responsible for all of the household chores, laundry, meals, and taking care of children. The men, who do more of manual labor such as wood cutting and farming, are able to enjoy some recreation time that many women cannot. The hope of this center is to provide some relief to the constant demands made of women by a male-dominated society.

The Rebar project, of which I have grown quite a liking to, provides structural support for the many construction projects that the mission undertakes. Currently much of the rebar is used in the rebuilding of homes for people who suffered losses from Hurricane Stan last fall.

Perhaps one of the most important projects is the securing of land and permanent homes made of cement and block. This allows people to get off the fincas into localized communities, as I mentioned previously.

So there is quite an array of different projects going on here, but being here semi-long term, the work becomes very tedious and monotonous. I think I was expecting to be doing more work than I actually am, and because I am not working as much as I expected, I end up feeling quite useless. But of course this is not the case. I don´t think very much work is expected out of volunteers, as most of them come for a week or two, and their experience is meant to serve as a learning opportunity rather than a work camp. And this is great, people need to learn and experience the realities of the world around them, but I feel that I am past this stage. Speaking with one of the fellas who works at the mission, he said I could start pretty much anything I wanted to. But alas, my language skills are not nearly good enough (nor my confidence) to do so. So I feel like I have a lot of energy that is not being used and there is only so much "experiencing" I can do. It is probably more a lack of specialized skills than anything else. Many med students and doctors have quite busy days full of specified work such as basic physicals, check ups, etc. But I am sure I will find my place here in San Lucas and exactly what it is that called me to this place (which I really do believe I am called here for a specific reason). I might have already found it but do not want to jump the gun on it so to speak.

A guy from Michigan, Rick, who has spent some 10 weeks here and is back now impermanently, is heading up a project with the mission and an engineering student named Carlos. On a former coffee finca, they hope to build an aquaponics farm. I am still learning the basics of it but it basically is a series of open tanks that recirculate water, extracting the poisons and converting it into highly nutrient rich material for fish and plants. I will provide more info as I learn about it, but basically what is happening now is trying to come up with measurements and a model that will work on the structures and land available. So far my time with Rick has been spent as translator (well as best I can, but I have been surprising myself with how much I can speak and understand) and helping him take measurements. This project will take many months, if not years, but I am doing what I can. Today we used laser levels to map out measurements of the water levels to see how high the walls need to be built. It's a pretty ragtag job (we are measuring it on our bodies because there are no other structures to use)but it works. We are going back out Wednesday with shovels and machetes to hack away the overgrowth. So it is nice to kinda be part of something a bit more long term and important.

Now for the philosophical reflections of this experience. There is a saying that goes God´s work was being done before you were here and will be done after you will leave. I think about that quite a bit as we are nothing more than instruments in a master plan (Oscar Romero put it much better in saying that "We are prophets of a future not our own"). So should the work I am given I accept no matter what? Did God send me down here to fill bags with dirt? I don't know. I want to say I hope not, but is that just me being self-important? I have been grinding the beads lately (=rosary analogy) praying for what I guess you could call a vocation. The first morning after doing so, Rick asked if I wanted to tag along with him and I just sort of fell into the translator position...and honestly, they would have been out there quite a while if someone who didn't know at least some Spanish had been there. I guess I will just try to remain patient and carefree and really live this experience with the people I am with. It is hard to meet people because we live and eat together, all of us gringos. But slowly, as the language becomes easier to learn, I am speaking more with local Mayans and appreciating the culture more.

This is not to say that I have not met some really cool gringos either. In fact I really enjoyed my time spent with the Loyola Med students here in San Lucas and in Pana. In fact one guy, Dan, I was browsing the market with met a girl from the same area as us (Chicago) and got her email. Pana is quite an international and American city, but it didn't´t seem as touristy as Antigua. Also Steve, one of the doctors with the group, was invaluable the medical advice he gave me: Don´t Drink on your Medicine. Yes friends, I am sick. Upon arriving to San Lucas, I was pooping after every meal. At first I thought it was traveller´s diarrea but in fact I had amoebas. The medicine I was given, which I have to take for a week and have two more days, is pretty nasty stuff.

On Saturday I went up to Santiago Attitlan with two other folks from the Twin Cities area. We took a Chicken Bus, which is basically a converted Yellow School Bus into something out of Scooby Doo Cartoon. They are painted fantastic colors, decked out with intense horns, and spit out plumes of choking black smoke. The U.S. passes them to Mexico, Mexico passes them South. Anyway, it started pouring in Santiago and we wanted to leave. Unfortunately there were no more buses headed back and we couldn´t find a pick up. (Pick up trucks are the other main form of transportation here, just hop in the back or hold on standing on the bumper). We got ripped off by some little smartass kid who would only tell us where we could find a truck after paying an outrageous amount (close to $30 for three of us). I knew he was ripping me off, told him he was ripping me off, but no where else could we find a ride. So we told him we would pay him when we got back to San Lucas. Arriving back, I was only going to give him like 70 Q, which would have been like 10 bucks and way way more than the actual cost of maybe 10 Q, at most. Everyone in the truck were waiting for the gringos to be ripped off then pay their own fair. I didn´t know what to do...do I create a scene and become "that guy" or let them rip us off. Well we let them rip us off, granted it was only 10 bucks each for us, but I don´t like how letting this happens reinforces what he is doing. Shit, the kid should be in school but instead he chooses to do this, and why not, he probably makes a fortune ripping off gringos. If it hadn´t been raining and cold we would have walked back. Ok, I´m done ranting now, but this episode is really troubling me because it highlights the social order here. Kids skip out of school, which they are suppossedly "forced" to go to make money. The lack of concern the government has for it citizen´s is appalling and really makes one appreciate something as basic as education, even at the public level of some cities in the States.

Sunday was a much better day. We got to see the sun for the first time in a week and I did my laundry. Laundry is done completely by hand, very few machines around here. It is done in a pila, a wash basin or sink with two trays on the side to scrub your clothes with a brush. Thankfully, this is how I washed my clothes in Europe so having an actually area to do this is nice compared to just a sink and no brush. I rented a kayak with a friend and we spent about an hour or so on the lake. I hope to kayak all the way around one Sunday morning but need to find out how far it is. Other than that, nothing really new. I get to drink beer again in a few days which is nice as that is what we do most nights. Not a lot, but just hang out at one of the bars or in someone´s place.

I will see what I can do about pics and links to some interesting stuff later on. Paz y Amor.

De San Lucas Toliman

I arrived in San Lucas Toliman Wednesday afternoon. I met my friends at the airport and we met our driver who would take us the nearly 3 hours to San Lucas. It poured the whole time. Guatemala has two seasons: lluve y sol. It is now the rainy season so it pours everydays, mostly in the afternoons. It is essential for the coffee farmers here. The place I am staying in is Casa Madre, a former convent started by the School Sisters of Notre Dame. I have my own room and we have a kithen, living room, patio, etc. A very nice place. The past few days have mostly been spent orientating myself with the mission, the town, the language, and the people. There are many projects going on here at the mission and most of my time will probably be spent in assisting the Mayans with building a women´s resource center. I am fed three solid meals a day with all of the other volunteers, short term and long term. So far it has been early nights and early mornings here. Andres, one of the men who works for the parish, has helped me to understand the mission of the parish in trying to empower the Mayan people to better themselves without losing their own culture. Father Greg, the padre who helped organize the mission, is very sensitive to the Mayan so that the gringos do not tell them what to do. We are in their country and homes. It is something that I have noticed some people do very well while other volunteers are often insensitive to the culture here, although not intentionally. It is a very delicate situation but amazing work is still be done nonetheless. Roughly 18 families own all of the land in Guatemala and of those 18, 5 or 6 of them, both national and international families own the coffee finces. Fincas are very much akin to the 19th century plantations of the south. The workers (slaves) live in barely sustainable conditions while across the yard the owners live in beautiful, well-kept colonial homes. It is devestating to see. Fortunately, the parish, with the help of U.S. financial assistance, has been able to procure land to slowly move familites away from the fincas into their own communities. It is a slow process, but there is a lot of hope in it. The people of San Lucas hope it will serve as a model to the government of how they should go about land redistribution and more equitable living for all of its citizens, both ladino and Mayan.

There are many volunteers here, mostly from the Midwest. Lots of med students and nursing students. There is group here from Loyola Med School and I tagged along with them today down to Pana. I was warned by some friends to steer clear of here because of its tourist vibes, which it certainly has, but I am only here for the afternoon. I needed to get to a larger place than San Lucas, if only for a few hours. Much of my free time is spent en mi casa reading and studying spanish. I have high hopes for it as everyday it becomes easier to communicate.

There is much more to write about and explore, but I am growing weary and feel my stomach growling. I hope all is well with all of you. Hasta luego y espero tienen una semana buena.