Antigua, eco filters and margaritas

We are staying in a hotel that is so comfortable I could live here and wonder why I don't live this way in the u.s.  I suppose it is just too much trouble and expense, but it certainly is delightful as a treat.

Yesterday I hiked up to Cero de la Cruz to begin a walking tour of the city.  I felt so footloose to set out on my own while my friends did their shopping that I walked at a brisk clip, getting a modicum of exercise for the first time in days.  Oh joy!! 

These are the ruins of the Iglesia de la candelaria, just extraordinary...

Then, there is the Iglesia de nuestra señora de la Merced, a church that looks more like a birthday cake than a church.

This arco de Santa Catalina was used so that nuns could cross the street without being seen when this was a convent in the 17th century. Now it is a very fancy hotel.

This is one of my favorite depictions of the textures and colors of Guatemala,the bus at the side giving an indication of the festive painted decorations on the busses.  Color is everywhere, and j think it works here because the temperature is so ambient, the humidity so low.  A brilliant blue and a hot pink are not going to make the viewer swelter.

This morning we meet with an expert in Eco filters which are being used in three rural areas where people are sharing the filters to cut down on sickness and death as a result of polluted water supplies; however, without more supervision and better funding, these programs srr difficult to oversee and support.  I put a photo of my elegant breakfast because it was so beautiful when the light hjt those huevos rancheros that I was compelled to photograph the .  Also, I want to document that Guatemala is not completely diabetes drive .

Finally, we ate at a restaurant called Frida's last night where they were having a two for one special on margaritas, and I think anyone in her right mind would accept the challenge.  I believe tequila may be the new champagne!  Stand back, neighbors!!

Tomorrow is our last day, and we go to Guatemala City, flying home Thursday.  I have loads to digest, to research and to write as I ponder the eternal questions about mission work and volunteerism.

Iglesia, Father's Day and Farewell

Today the bishop met us at the church, and he was wearing red vestments with green sashes.  To his credit,when I suggested that he looked like Christmas and then said maybe Santa Claus, he responded that he needed a white beard, at least that's what I think he said, but then I tried to piece the sermon together with words I know like "cow" and "honey," which worked not at all.  Why, oh, WHY does my Spanish never seem to get better?  I did, however, belt out those hymns they sing with no accompaniment in voices that sound more like an alto yell than a melodic celebration.  After the service they attendees pushed back the pews, dragged a heavy wooden table into the middle of the church, and they Mayan parishioners all dumped bananas, strawberries, cookies, tomales and rolls onto it.  We were "invited" to help ourselves, but after I politely took one banana, the kids were let loose and the food was decimated rather forcefully and directly.

I didn't take many photos because it has become apparent to me that the photographing of poor people's houses is a sensational kind of tourist voyeurism that I cannot tolerate, but these cuties warranted a photo if for no other reason than to let them ogle the photo after I'd taken it.

After we left the church, it was back to the shopping that Terry and Anita do to bring back things to sell so that they can send the p rockets back to the scholarship fund here in Guatemala.  I read a startling fact yesterday that 1.6 million people come to Guatemala for mission work every year, spending 2 billion dollars to get here!  Is this a tourist racket or what?  I haven't unraveled this one yet, but I'm trying to stay positive, knowing what I know about the children, the people involved, and the two people with whom I am traveling who are wonderful, patient, kind people.  

Sunday is market day, and I went out at around 7:30 this morning to watch the people set up their stands, stuffing baby pigs into plastic satchels, carrying turkeys upside down by their feet, and hauling enormous tables, chairs, planks of wood, etc... It was a picture perfect day, and as the people were setting up, little girls sold plates of food, men squeezed juice, and tons of women clapped out their dough for tortillas.

These are Juan and Thomasita whom I met in the morning and then went back to buy a big glass of fresh orange juice from the afternoon when they were selling a woman a glass with a raw egg in it...

She gulped it right down, letting the egg yolk slide down in the first sip.

These women are all selling flowers on the steps of the Iglesia Santo Tomas where only Mayans are permitted to use the steps and the front door.  I did go in the side entrance, but I was accosted immediately by three people asking for money.

These women were clapping, clapping their tortilla dough, and I stepped up to learn how they made them while Anita took this photo.  Their aprons and dresses were so gorgeous that it was hard to believe they were working.

I am a little crazy for this town because e light and the colors change throughout the day, but here are some samples...

At the end of yesterday I took some afternoon photos before we went out for a well deserved daiquiri...

The daiquiri, the margarita and the dramboui - however one spells it - beckoned, and we wolfed down those pumpkin seeds as well after having visited a good ten family houses to talk to the scholarship students, an utterly inefficient way of meeting with them, but as I said, this may be tourist voyeurism.  Isn't all tourism a it like that though?

Tomorrow we go to Antigua, probably for more shopping (sigh.  Not my thing) but also a dinner with another bishop where I will try to be on my best behavior.  Or not.

Chichicastenango and challenges

We arrived by 10 and headed right away to visit one family that lived far from the mountainous, twisty, curvy road, which was hard enough to pass through because there was a dead standstill on a rather treacherously steep bend in the road where an old U.S. Mail truck had gone over a railing and into the river.

A tow truck was trying to drag it out, and in the meantime, traffic was backed up both ways.  I got out to investigate but found myself among only men, giving me the impetus to keep going.  Just as I reached the bridge,the traffic began moving, motorcycles careening past me, and I had to race back up the hill to our van.  We got going and began to climb and dip along the endless roller coaster of a road until we got to the turn off for the dirt road where we encountered a group of really nasty vigilantes who had put long planks of wood with four inch nails poking out of them across the road.  We stopped.  They insisted we pay 500 quetzals even though the bishop kept telling them we were a church group; clearly he hasn't gone to visit this family Ina good long time.  The thugs pressed against the van as I photographed the boards.

Once we got through that debacle, we drove for what seemed like days on a skinny road that had a steep drop off straight down the mountain until we stopped at the foot of another, narrower twisting road that went up and up, this one cement the width of a narrow sidewalk.  The bishop walked us first one way, then another, clearly befuddled by the location of this family. When we finally got there, he made no effort to converse with the children or family, and conversation with us was stilted and uncomfortable.  I hated it and felt that driving all this distance to see three scholarship students was a form of sensationalism, only drawn out by the required photograpns of said students.

I had about had it with mission work, thinking the whole thing a sham and the hierarchical structure of formal religion a smarmy political game that was beyond what my own sense of spirituality and godliness were.

Lunch in the town brought back my spirits, and we met the bishop again at 3:00 for yet another family visit.  This one required a man to pull down some of the laundry so that we could each perch on a plastic stool while we talked and the mother did her gorgeous embroidery.

These two little pumpkins made the afternoon totally worthwhile.  Just look at those faces!

The drive back was less of an adventure, and the three of us ate dinner and drank a Gallo beer at Don Carlos where I had a vegetarian platter to die for with steamed broccoli, beans, zucchini, carrots, etc... And the inevitable frijoles and guacamole.  Tomorrow we are back at it In the morning... How this all amounts to mission work is beyond me, and the more questions I ask, the more I realize that there is very little accountability on the part of the episcopal church with respect to these funds.  I think it is just guilt money that is sent over so that parishes in Pennsylvania can pat themselves on the back and tell themselves they are helping when in fact they are throwing money around wrecklessly and ineffectively.

Santiago to San Antonio to Panajachal

We seem to spend an inordinate amount of time shopping for things to sell at the church, sending the profit back to Guatemala for the scholarship fund, and I'm not too great at shopping for very long.  I am trying to maintain my patience and my mindfulness.  The air is ambient, the people are colorful, and the textures are varied.  My eye is happy.

Caps for sale in the center of Santiago reminded me of the children's story.  When I saw several women playing ball, I joined them and then took their photo where they frolicked full of glee and giggles, my favorite part of any travel...

I took some photos of the city because I loved the textures and the doors.

Here are the striped pants that all the men seem to wear.  Santiago is a town of striped fabrics all over the place.

And then there is this gorgeous Atitlan Lake that reflects the sun as though some higher spirit were just touching down to remind us of our mortality - or our sacredness, hard to tell which, and I suppose it really depends on your state of mind.

Onto San Antonio where we bought scarves and walked around a bit, and now we landed back in Panajachal from whence we took the boat across the lake to San Lucas the other day.

Tomorrow we headto Chichicastenengo where I believe we meet with families of scholarship children, but nobody early knows what will happen next.  I'm just glad I am not going to dig any more trenches as I did in San Lucas and still feeling its effects!  

Beauty, beans and bread

This post is a jumble because I cannot quite get the blogger right on my iPad.  Bear with me.  First we took the boat across lake Atitlan to San Lucas, checked into our hotel where was given a room in the back where the trucks and the laundry are.  We walked around the town and along the water,and then went to the mission for dinner where we had soup with chicken stock,so once again I had bread,plantains and rice; however, once they leader learned was a vegetarian,she brought me a big old bowl of black beans.  Life is good.

Tomorrow we tour the projects of the mission workers and then join a work group in the afternoon.  It will be an adventure, and despite the cold shower and potential bedbugs, I have been promised a hot shower on Wednesday night when we leave and go to the next place.  So, read these photos backwards and try to make sense of them.  Lake Atitlan is gorgeous and the place from which we took the boat.  To bed.

This was a little outside place with a television and a group of young men watching the soccer game between Guatemala and Bermuda, the game that was tied in Guatemala now played in Bermuda.  We didn't stay to see who won.Walking along the lake we spotted these wonderfully  crafted rowboats and saw women washing clothes along the rocks, pounding and lathering, as children swam, washed and played in the water.

The town of San Lucas -

😌Today we took a small boat across from pochotal to San Lucas where the big mission is located.

We walked around the small town, checked into our hotel, only to learnt that there really wasn't a room for me, so I am In a dark, dreary room at the back where the laundry hangs.  

Church, prison and more tomales...

Yesterday we drove to pick up Roberto who was carrying heavy plastic bags full of the sandals we had brought from the u.s.  He also carried three cakes in boxes piled on top of each other and one small zippered, plastic bag the size of a Dopp kit.  We were told to leave everything but our psssports in the car.  After knocking at the enormously forbidding door, we were let into a dark windowless room with high ceilings.  We handed the young armed guard our passports as I whispered a prayer that I would see mine again, and we were stamped two times on our arms with big black ink circles.  Then, we were searched before being permitted into the women's prison.  Roberto, always laughing infectiously, led us into the little chapel where women we had never met gave us welcoming hugs and then strew their merchandise across the top of the altar table so that we could look and buy what they had knit, crocheted or made.  We selected several hats, wallets, but not many things and then settled into our plastic chairs while Roberto went up to the altar with his little Dopp kit and began to prepare communion for his service.  We sang with no accompaniment hymns from shiny red books and followed a familiar service in Spanish.  Roberto gave his sermon sitting in a plastic chair, engaging the women with questions and an accessible sermon to which they seemed to relate.  The liturgy was familiar, the pace quick, and the ritual comforting.  We lined up for communion where we had wafers and wine, all produced from that little kit, and then we sang some more.

Afterwards we were ushered into a small open courtyard, surrounded by dark, windowless rooms where women came and went, doing chores, lugging clothes, and or chatting amongst themselves.  A table was pulled out of nowhere, and the women came flocking around us, one insisting that the other hats we had not bought would really fit if we would only try them.  One of them pushed me down into a chair and began to pull and shove one after another hat onto my head to prove the point.  We were all laughing so hard at the hats jammed onto my head, my hair and ears poking out every which way, struggling for survival, that we just about collapsed in heaps, at least Anita and I did.  Soon a small table and several other chairs appeared out of nowhere, and we were served tomales (again) and slices of the cakes that Roberto had brought along.  The women, instead, sat along ledges of the courtyard, eating their cake and talking in hushed tones.  There was one small boy with a toy cell phone who peered shyly at us from behind a column as we tried to coax him out to see us.  The courtyard let in the only light, making the halls and the rooms look dreadfully dark and dreary.  The women, on the other hand, were cheery and lovely.  Roberto had told us about one woman who had a tattooed rosary around her neck; he had thought it a religious symbol, but it turned out to be a symbol used within one of the most vicious gangs in Quetzaltenango.  Because I was curious to see it and her, he called her over, and she showed us ALL her tattooes, including the names of her three children and two other names on her breasts.  I never found out why she was in prison, but most of the women had been imprisoned because I they had been used by drug dealers or had stood up to abusive husbands.  The woman who seemed by far the most educated and capable chatted with me extensively, and I learned that she had been in Houston for some years and had worked in the travel industry, speaking Spanish, English and French.  I asked if she read and she assured me that she would love to have more books to read, which, of course, touched my soul and made me yearn to provide her with reading material.  I learned later that she was in prison for murder - just goes to show that you cannot judge a book by its cover?

I talked as well as I could to many of the women sitting around the edges of the courtyard, and when we left, I gave them huge hugs and felt that we had touched each other in ways that women who share time and space do.  When w got into that dark entry room, I quickly looked for our passports and felt enormous relief when mine was returned to me.  Roberto left, his laughter echoing through through those dank corridors, his little kit tucked under his arm.  The street was filled with families waiting to get into the prison to visit their woman.  There were babies, people changing clothes, bundles of food, and people sprawled all along the street.  We nipped into the car and sped away to Roberts church where we waiting on the porch for the English service to end so that we could attend his Spanish service.  The church was decorated with balloons and festive decorations because it was a young member's quinzeano, and she, looking ravishing as a new bride, stood outside the church with her bouquet of flowers as people congratulated and hugged her.  Below is a photo of Roberto and the young girl:

Church in Totonicapan and gay pride parade in Quezaltenengo

I took no pictures in Totonicapan where we attended a service on a Saturday for the people who bring their wares to the big market; however, the only people at the service were the grandchildren of the priest and one indigenous family with far too many children, one of whom disrupted the service so often that I thought if the family didn't take him in hand, I would have to!  The priest told us he hadn't held services for two months because of some hold up with the bishop on money, and his father had been sick.

After the service we went to lunch at Church's Chicken, which I believe is a chain, another opportunity for chicken, rice and tortillas.  Then, we went to meet a woman who was receiving scholarship money and heard her difficulties.  I began to feel that the people needed to complain and thought that induced us to give more money, but it really made me dig my heels in.  The vibe was negative, the problems insurmountable, and the ownership absent. 

We drove back to Quezeltenango for the gay pride parade where Roberto was going to speak, and boy, did I get photos to show a very different mind set and outlook!

There were two rallies going on at once, a practice that seems consistent with this culture of overlapping sounds, discourses and intentions.  One was a political rally because the president of the country is being investigated for corruption after the Vice President was ousted. The second rally, and the one we came to see, was the gay pride one, which was wild for a small, poor catholic country.  This was the homofopjia monster, and these are some of the people in the crowd.  At one point, Anita turned to me and said, "Look at the two elderly women over there," and I had to disappoint her by telling her that they were not women...

When this young man began to gyrate on the stage to roars of approval and hoots of delight, I wondered about the very large woman on stage behind him, and when more and more scantily dressed transvestites paraded and danced on the stage, I wondered if she thought about the way we were defining gender.  Who was usurping whose role?  Did she feel coopted, or have we women given over the frivolous facets of our womanhood to men who yearn to play that role?

As the dancing became more and more seductive with men dressed and presenting themselves Ina more sexual way than I have seen any women in this country present themselves, the crowds roared.  Here a very thin man, jiggled and shook and sang his/her heart out.  But when the dancer from Costa Rica bounced up on stage, I ran to catch some shots.

He began with a little skirt but very quickly took it off to reveal his very bare bottom with only 

a thong.  After the performance, I found him to ask where she was from.  Puntaranus, she exclaimed, distracted and reeking of alcohol.  Father Roberto arrived, hugging and chatting with his friends whom he has worked with in the streets late at night when he distributes condoms, advice, help, etc...  He asked that I take this photo where he looks as delighted as the man  on the left looks dismayed, disdainful, or frightened.  These ar definitely his people!

At the end of the dancing and singing, Roberto held up a candle and asked everybody to light one and parade around the square just as dusk was dropping down.  As we rounded the last corner of the square toward the stage, he was preaching about no more discrimination in Guatemala for homosexuality, etc...  I wasn't really sure what he said, but it sounded at the end as ough he was declaring that God was near, and just at that moment tremendous display of fireworks went off right above our heads.  I thought I'd never pull myself together.  It was quite extraordinary.  Onto tomorrow when we go to the women's prison....