Dispatch from Guatemala: November 11, 2009
The rest of our time in Panajachel (Pana) we spent taking day trips to different communities in the area and distributing water filters in San Pedro La Laguna, and conducting evaluations on the use of water filters in the communities of San Andres Semetabaj and Patanatic. Our last day we installed a cooking stove in a home, which was previously burning a fire on the floor with no ventilation whatsoever.
Juan, our coordinator with Heart to Heart Jorge’s brother who works in Guatemala with ACONANI, gave me more of a context of the precarious living situations of some of these families. He explained to me that during the 36 year civil war (in which about 200,000 people were killed), many people were driven from their homes into the mountains, given the option of fleeing and giving up their land or having their family or themselves killed. While I was walking through alleyways and remote passageways in each community with our community leader (who could translate from Spanish to the traditional Mayan language of that community), I never felt unsafe and I always felt very welcomed, and I thought to myself that it takes a lot of courage and resilience for these communities to trust outsiders like us given such a tumultous past.
Our last day in Pana, Jorge, our coordinator, arranged for a special dinner. The principal of the primary school we visited in Patanatic and community leaders involved in helping us take this project from the school to the community level also came. Jorge presented them with one of our red “Heart to Heart” and “Rotary International” t-shirts, which they had expressed that they wanted so that they could be recognized and respected as leaders in this and future projects in their communities.
We had traditional Mayan music at dinner – marimbas, maracas, drums, and flutes. It was really beautiful and really touching. The father of two of the marimba players is very dedicated in preserving this aspect of Mayan culture, a tradition that is slowly being lost to modern pop culture music. The father of the two girls told us that he had heard the marimba (like a xylophone played with rubber clad sticks) being played once with his daughters, and loved it so much that he had them promise him that they would learn how to play it. Classes proved to be too expensive so the girls eventually just learned to play on a small makeshift marimba until a man walked by one day and said that he had a nice full sized marimba at home that they could borrow. This happened on two separate occasions so that the two girls were soon playing on two large, full-sized marimbas and were eventually able to earn enough money, by playing music, to buy their own. They were truly amazing, young musicians, and in between songs their father explained to us a little bit more about Mayan culture (there are about 23 different languages, and many different types of dress showing animals or symbols of significance to that area) and the history of the songs. And, of course, at the end, we all got up to form a giant Congo Line around the marimba players and through the entire length of the restaurant, and sang along to the “Guate-Guate-Guatemala” song!
When we left Pana we went to the first capital of Guatemala, the ancient Mayan city of Ximche. We were able to marvel at the 500+ year old ruins, buried and in some cases overgrown by trees, and to get a glimpse of what a Mayan city looked like. I tried to imagine vendors coming to the market, bartering and bargaining goods when we were standing in what was once the central town plaza. We even saw a ceremony being conducted by a Mayan priest for a newborn baby who had evidently been recognized as one of the “chosen ones” (how that is determined and what that actually entails is still a Mayan mystery to me). We tried our best to walk by unnoticed and to not interfere with this very important ceremony.
Then we headed back to Guatemala City (about a two hour drive, but first we had to pull over a couple of times for policemen to inspect our vehicle and for me to vomit after getting thoroughly sick of inhaling diesel fumes on a windy road). In the capital we attended a Rotary meeting at Guatemala Sur, which, to my surprise, still at this day in age does not admit women! The next day we all left early and luckily half of our group was on the same flight (we weren’t quite ready to say goodbye just yet). We had lunch, reflected on our trip, and had a few last laughs. It is truly amazing how close an experience like this can bring a group together in such a short period of time.
I really enjoyed seeing the beauty of Guatemala – the greenery, the mountains, the volcanoes, the lake, and most importantly, the people, and to get a glimpse of the daily lives of a few of the Mayan people with their elaborate, colorful, unique, beautiful traditional dress, to hear people speak a languaged unchanged for centuries, to see homestead growing their own crops or raising their own livestock or weaving their own clothes, and to see a way of life more elemental than our modern way of living that is much more removed from nature.
Going on this trip definitely makes me feel grateful for all of the basic services that we have readily available to us in the US with the turn of a spigot, turn of a knob, or flip of a switch. It also makes me sad or overwhelemd at times because there is SO MUCH still to be done.
For those interested in joining a trip like this, just be aware that this is not your standard “vacation”. We were up early and worked all day – not to say that it wasn’t enjoyable and rewarding in itself. I think that a trip like this is so important for Rotarians to take to see the project that they helped make happen all the way through – to ensure that the intended beneficiaries receive their filters, and to truly understand the impact that these filters will have on people’s lives.
Every single contribution, great or small, counts, and I’m glad that I had the opportunity to make clean drinking water (or a cooking stove) readily available to at least a few Mayan families in Guatemala.
