Dear familia y amigas/os.........

The journey has changed and changed and changed again. And at this crosscurrent, looking at all the options, intuition took us on the flow down and to the west. Considering we had little plans to begin with, what is to be expected. We were interested in global politics, volunteering, and learning Spanish. But we are just flowing and everything has become as it should be. A few weeks ago we made a trip to Guatemala and found the thing which I think had been living in our hearts somewhere. We were two weeks living and eating with the campesinos of La Florida. A simple life. A working life. A life with lots of kids and crowded houses. A life without TV, toilets, hot water, cars, refrigerators, privacy.

We arrived at the finca by camioneta……which is to say we arrived standing packed into the back of an old Toyota Pick-Up truck. The ride from town was spectacular. Roads cut into the steep dense mountain slopes. Cool wind kissing my cheeks. Obscure isolated Guatemala. Fincas(large agricultural holdings/plantations), small towns, ugly cities, and campesinos. Land of coffee. Land of the poor. Land of life.

The community of La Florida is in the western highlands of Guatemala. In the jungle. Near the coast. Near la frontera de Mexico. There are approximately 80 families living out here……..trying to work the land collectively. Listening to their histories I am brought toe to toe with the life realities of the people who live in the other world created by western excess. There were 20 some families that illegally occupied the abandoned finca of La Florida for 2 years and 2 months. They lived with their children in plastic and corrugated tin shelters. They had no money, no houses, no schools, no medical clinics, no land. Rene and his wife Wilma had their first child during the occupation. The collective dream here was to get a loan to buy the land. This community has an $800,000 dollar interest free loan which it must pay back in 8 small years. They are struggling like hell to keep the life that they know, love, and understand. To avoid the forced move to the city to work in factories or to join the informal sector of selling goods on the street. And to avoid the last resort which is leaving your family, country, food, everything you know to migrate north to the facade of the American Dream. There is much to learn from the lives that our lives create.

In the evening, as the sun set, the kids came to get us. It was time for dinner and we headed down the dirt road, avoiding the dog shit, led by little dirty foreign hands, mumbling little foreign words we couldn’t understand. Downdowndown the road……..past the make shift houses of decaying wood, cinderblock, rusting corrugated tin, plastic, whatever they could get their hands on. Past the curious young deepdark eyes and gentle deeply lined faces.

The littlest kids smiling, embarrassed, waving. THEN, -Maria, venga conmigo y Ryan alla-. What!? We don’t eat together??? I feel a moment of panic. On my own. No one. No help. No cushion. I have no idea what to expect. To do. But it’s going to happen…….and the little hand leads me. She is so pleasant. So light. A little shy. Front teeth coming in crooked. No shoes. Estoy nervioso. But she’s pulling me in……...toward her humble house.

When I stepped into the dimly lit room I felt only the polite silence and my own sense of awkwardness. A small plastic stool is pulled out from beneath the small wooden table, which is the only furniture in the room besides four beds and an old cabinet with pale blue chipping paint. And I am seated to eat. The queen. La gringa. Their guest. Their income. Araceli brings me a plate of food, a stack of warm tortillas wrapped in cloth, and a mug of warm water. The food is simple but nice. The kids surround me, quietly staring. Studying me. Pushing closer. Hesitating. Hungry. Uncertain. Fidelino, the man of the house, controls them with his eyes and quick short sounds. He sits near me and asks questions……polite, getting to know you stuff. The kids are still there, watching. I feel like an asshole. This is really awkward……making small talk at their small table in their small house in my nice clothes with my healthy teeth, struggling to understand their campesino Spanish. Breathe.......................

Ryan shows up and the spell is broken. Introductions. I am free. That was weird. And we walk back up the dark road toward our room in la casa grande. I slept well that night……despite waking and walking across the deck…..down the stairs…..and across the corridor to use the bathroom. And despite the scratching of the rats in the walls.

The morning was lovely……waking to birds calling new songs, roosters, the distant mumbling of men on their way to the fields, fresh air pushing through the cracks in the window. Back down the road for breakfast……and the girls were waiting for us outside. Playing. Giggling. Smiling. Ryan to his house and me to mine. Araceli smiled shyly. –Adelante-. The girls followed me to the table eagerly while the boys got ready for school. Fidelino wasn’t around…..already working, I guess. I quietly ate my food and tried to get all their names straight. Who was who and who was how old and how do you say your name again??

After breakfast there was work. A long peaceful stroll out the myriad winding paths. To the coffee. To the maiz(corn). To collect wood for cooking. Working in the mosquito wet heat. Machete attacking the ever advancing jungle. Una Guerra entre los humanos y la naturaleza. Two hours and I am suffering. The heat. The physical. But I am determined. I cannot think about anything…..myself……how bloody hot it is, the mosquitoes, my hand cramping around the machete, how thirsty I am. I just do the work. We work at our own pace. There is no boss. No time clock. No rules. No paychecks. I can work as hard as I want for as long as I want……or don’t want. It all depends on me. But Senora Maria, with her 70+ years and her small but strong dented frame must fight the jungle that endlessly swallows the coffee, daily, until the day she dies. For her there is no choice, no decision to make. And finally we relax…….in the shade of the bushes and the banana trees. Sipping water. Munching. Chatting. And we are done with this work for the day. Back down the winding paths toward the community. Carrying on our heads bundles of leaves for making tomalitos(small tamales) or bundles of wood for cooking. My strength is sapped but I am denying it. Back at la casa grande I drop to the chair.....sweaty and exhausted, but light. It’s only 11:30am. It’s still sunny. And I still have the entire day. Some afternoons we do nothing. Some afternoons we learn to make cheese or to toast and grind cacao (seeds that make chocolate). Some days we play with the kids and take pictures. Some days we explore the finca. Some days we play futbol(soccer) or backgammon. Some days we attend community meetings. And some days we tour the ancient coffee processing machinery. And I simply can’t fathom what it means to live their life. It’s do or die. They don’t have the privilege of deciding to leave tomorrow, or next month, or even next year.

Many afternoons as I sat in the small room eating the rain would begin to fall. Jungle rain. Waterfall rain. The kind of rain you just have to accept. And it makes you feel clean and alive. These afternoons were my liberation. To relax in the small dry room enveloped by laughing children. Content to wait out the downpour. Eating fried potatoes and salsa. Sipping the sweet atole(thick drink made with maize, sugar, cinnamon). Ryan would join us and eventually we would walk back up the mud river street to the la casa grande.

Some evenings I would watch Araceli, from my stool in the room, working in her make-shift candlelit kitchen. A space set next to the house made with cinderblock and plastic walls….with a muddy dirt floor. I watched her cook over an open fire without a chimney to carry away the black smoke. The candlelight makes the scene look vaguely romantic and not like the rugged reality that it is. The room they live in has one dim light bulb dangling from the ceiling. The community’s electricity is generated by water running through some huge antiquated machinery. But Araceli’s cooking space hasn’t been fitted with electricity yet. And I am always surprised by the simple yet lovely food she manages to cook without any of the basic conveniences we imagine can’t be lived without.

And meanwhile mi familia is becoming my family. Meals are lively and warm. I eat with the kids while the chickens, chicks, ducks and dog pad around the dusty concrete floor praying for crumbs. Ruth sits on my lap while the boys try to show off—pushing and fighting. Their humble living space penetrating my culture shock. Araceli sits with me while I eat and offers me a piece of her life: That she had her first 3 boys(Ernesto 15, Marduquenio 12, Eduardo 11) with another man, her first husband………he died. Then she married Fidelino and they had 4 more children, one boy(Chelbin 9), and the three youngest are girls(Adelina 7, Ruth 6, Ingri 4). Araceli is my age. Sometimes she would look at me in this way…..it’s difficult to define. It was like sad curiosity. Not jealously. Never jealousy. But as if she were wondering why she is in her life and I in mine. She is a quiet women. a little shy. A little ashamed. Of what, I’m not sure. Her lack of education, her hard life, her bad teeth, her poverty, worn out clothes, who is to say. I wish that I spoke better Spanish so that I could understand her more as a person. When I came to say goodbye on our last day she gave me a beautiful and sincere hug that I can still feel. I really like this family and their 7 kids, 2 cows, a calf, 5 ducks, 3 chickens, endless chicks, a rabbit, and their flea ridden diseased looking dog. I even like crazy little Ingri, that mad terror of a child.

Everyday that I was there my affection grew. My culture shock diminished. My happiness, my peace of mind, my excitement, my frustration at children and chaos melts into deep affections. I am content in the present. Life expands and two weeks becomes infinite. As we hiked down the road to the path through the jungle I can see the expanse of the countryside drifting on into forever. We slip past the small plots of frijol and maize. Heavy with our backpacks—the weight of our material possessions. We slip off the finca as we slip off our shoes at the end of the day. As the noon sun quietly slips behind the gathering clouds. And the impending rain threatens our departure. Then a drop. Drop drop. drop Drop DROP. pelt PELT. Here it comes! And by the time we reach the bus stop we are soaked to the pore and headed to the city…. toward that anticivilization.

la paz para todos............mary
ps. lots of new photos to see!