como no?

'Como no?' - 'Why not?' A recent saying I've picked up while travelling around beautiful Nicaragua.

After a few nights in Guatemala's capital accompanied by wonderful city-dwellers, I hopped on a bus to Managua to track down Michelle G, a fellow TIEger from Ecuador 08/09. The idea is to do some meandering until the beginnings of 2012... lately, 27 hours of bussing over three days, to San Salvador, Managua and up to Somoto in Nica's north -- a town that reminds me of a living version of magical realism or a novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: maniquered streets, open porches with wicker rocking chairs, cool breezes, mountains looming. Then to Leon: joking Sandinista veterans singing FSLN songs and telling stories of Sandino, the war, the contras...  murals of resistencia, and, a few blocks away, the place where Somoza himself was shot dead by a young rebel.

I have to make it down to Costa Rica to renew my visa in the C-4, so we are heading south: Granada and Ometepe, then at least 72 hours (says migracion) in a national park on the Costa Rican border. 

Nicaragua is stunning, and safe to travel in. Feels like it is worlds away.

la capital

no to the fascist coup d'etat in Honduras, no more militarism

con buena onda

As November winds down the nights get cooler and the rains cease – a chance to finally use my wool sweater, ‘winter’ sprung. Days disappearing: barely two weeks before vacations begin, when I’ll take a bus south, to Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras … to visit the museum of the revolution, a liberation theology mass, hikes, wanders… For now, promises of painting and translation, costume-making for the Rabinal-Achi dance. At home: sawing, building, planting, juggling between less-clumsy fingers.

Last week Sandia and I coordinated a book-binding workshop – real bees wax, a few sheets of paper, paints, string to sew the folded pages; a full morning of using our hands, each book a different Nawal. The idea is that if we bind our own books we'll buy and waste less - in January each teacher can pass on the workshop to students. My search for materials brought me to a man who cares for bees, 'apicultura' just a kilometre outside of town, real honey and wax by the litre... 

In a 'salon' that shaded us from Friday's afternoon sun, ECAP (Estudios Comunitarios con Aplicacion Psicosocial) awarded diplomas of ‘cultura de paz y participación para el desarrollo’ to over 60 local teachers  – i.e. recognizing their participation in ECAP seminars all year long, and their contribution to historical memory, peace, and community building here in Rabinal. Students performed a series of ‘dramatizaciones’ - skits on gender, poverty, cultural difference - followed by a meal to share to the beat of a marimba band: chicken, rice, tortillas, fresco... 

'roots of poverty'

proud graduates: FNE teachers

Then a BTS 'reflection weekend' in Monterrico, croaky buses on highways winding at dawn, pacific waves and bird-watching - yet another world; black sand and white bellies, salty skin. 

lately

5:30am runs
to the water tanks, up a winding dirt road
that climbs to San Rafael, red sunrise on blue grey mountains;
gathering soil between corn fields, a rooftop garden to be built from used wood,
Guatemalan reggae in the afternoon heat
and chicken-coop engineering for red lay hens;
one-two-three kittens on my patchwork quilt, folded together,
away from the seeds planted in pop bottles,
juggling balls and jibberish hand-gestures that arise
at an overcrowded kitchen table

nuestra minería

Yesterday I stumbled upon a beautiful spoken word piece of Rachel's, 'Lot 8'. A fellow intern this year, Rachel visited mining communities around Guatemala then performed this poem for a G20 resistance slam last spring: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_7inUJdS9FM#

Also worth a watch: human rights activist Graham Russell speaks about Canadian mining here in Guatemala on Face to Face, shedding a little light on what it means to be Canadian in Central America: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71mB0JuJSpE

mural in san juan (photo by joanne!)

ps. out of curiosity, who in Russia is reading this?

yo no sé nada

lovely poem by argentine poet oliverio girondo

Yo no sé nada 

Tú no sabes nada 
Ud. no sabe nada 
El no sabe nada 
Ellos no saben nada 
Ellas no saben nada 
Uds. no saben nada 
Nosotros no sabemos nada 
La desorientación de mi generación tiene su expli- 

cación en la dirección de nuestra educación,cuya 
idealización de la acción, era - ¡sin discusión!- 
una mistificación, en contradicción 
con nuestra propensión a la me- 
ditación, a la contemplación y 
a la masturbación. (Gutural, 
lo más guturalmente que 
se pueda.) Creo que 
creo en lo que creo 
que no creo. Y creo 
que no creo en lo 
que creo que creo 
«C a n t a r d e l a s r a n as»
¡Y     ¡Y      ¿A       ¿A     ¡Y       ¡Y 
  su     ba       llí        llá      su       ba 
   bo       jo          es           es        bo         jo 
   las      las          tá?            tá?       las        las 
     es        es          ¡A                 ¡A           es          es 
      ca       ca            quí                    cá            ca          ca 
       le        le            no                          no             le           le 
         ras      ras          es                              es             ras        ras 
         arri     aba         tá                                   tá            arri        aba 
         ba!...    jo!...       !...                                       !...            ba!...     jo!...

así es

Well, I have good news and bad news. I’ll start with the bad news.

Yesterday, 4 million Guatemalans took to the polls to favour former General Otto Perez Molina with 54% of the vote (out of a population of roughly 14 million, 4 million voted - about 30%). As the global media will tell you, Perez is the first military man to take office since the country’s transition to civil rule in 1986. He vows to bring security back to Guatemala with an iron fist, by increasing military spending, employing at least 10,000 more police, expanding video surveillance, lengthening prison sentences, building prisons, and lowering the age of criminal responsibility. Perez has strong ties with the US embassy and the Mendoza family, allegedly one of the largest narco powers in Guatemala. 

According to the Guatemalan Human Rights Commission, Perez was a graduate of Guatemala’s National Military Academy, the US-run School of the Americas, and the Inter-American Defense College. Known as comandante ‘Tito’, he is a man formed by the army and was the general in charge of the Ixil triangle from 1982-83, when the government’s “scorched earth” policy massacred 80-90% of the region’s population.

In the 1990s, Perez was National Director of Military Intelligence, at the same time that the government systematically tortured and executed captured prisoners, including guerilla commander and husband of American lawyer Jennifer Harbury, Efrain Bamaca. When heading Guatemala’s most feared military intelligence unit, the G2, Perez was stated to have directed a secret torture centre on the Mariscal Zavala military base while on the CIA payroll.

For more on Otto Perez Molina's past and what his presidency means for Guatemala, see a Rights Action report here.

I wish that I could write something to make sense of all of this.  I've heard many times the voiced feelings of fear in what a military government could mean for Guatemala and for Rabinal - places with a past that is too often buried by impunity, whose resources and media continue to be dominated by the powerful elite: the miltary men, the plantation-owners, the drug-traffickers... those who get a seat in politics. I'm still in digest-mode. Even just walking the streets of Rabinal, you can feel that something has shifted... but I can't yet put my finger on exactly what that feeling is.

...And now, if it’s possible, the good news!

It’s personal, and Gwen-centred (and I kind of wish I had written it sooner in a different post).  I have found a lovely collective to live in in the heart of Rabinal, with 4 rabinalenses who all happened to have met at circus school; we have juggling balls, stilts, cats, worms, a big clumsy dog, stories and food to share - a stunning view of the mountains and countryside from our kitchen and rooftop. A little love to make this big world feel a whole lot safer. 


So yep, that’s it. Elections in Rabinal were tranquilo, other than a larger-crowd-than-usual in the plaza for Sunday’s market. Otto Perez Molina won here, too, getting more than 58% of the vote... así es.  

ayo the kitten from our rooftop

graduacion

Yesterday another ceremony took place: graduation. A beautiful morning, despite it beginning with Catholic mass and the national anthem - speeches by Tono and Jesus, a not-so-smooth live band, a duet by Heidi and I that had me shaking, students speaking, then marching down the graduation aisle arm in arm with their parents to receive diplomas (strangely wedding-like...), followed by a meal to share... students organized everything, from the set-up to programming and food - muy impresionante.

y por la madrugada...

In Monday’s heat I took a tuc-tuc (motorcycle taxi) to Correlajbac, meeting Juan at the Institute to finish hammering wood on wood, box-building for banana peels. I brought a blanket, dinner, and candles – for the Mayan offering, to begin at 1am. We fit hinges to the door we’d put together last week, finished stapling chicken-wire to the edges, and brought the box out for use...

Before dark I toured the empty grounds:  healthy fattened worms, beans grown from the seeds we planted, corn stalks chopped, hibiscus blooming yellow flowers.

At dusk teachers and students trickled off Julio’s green school bus. We built a fire to roast tortillas and rice, hands and bodies crowded  – flames to keep warm from the coldest night we’ve had in Rabinal, before wandering away to a dome-lit sky, ample stars glowing. Heidi and I lay on wet grass making up stories - jaguars and nahuales, venus and egg-twins, shooting stars and satellites, dipped ladles and orion, andromeda and cassiopeia... 

Sweet short sleep to a snoring Baudillo then awake again so soon, 1am. Up on the hill, by fire, the ceremony had begun. From start to finish it was in Achi, so my understanding comes from the hand-gestures and occasional Spanish word thrown in… We began with offerings: white, yellow, red petals to circle the fire, liquid from glass and plastic bottles thrown over flames, an urn spitting smoke, herbs and candles eaten by the yellow-red. Then a prayer for the dead, followed by names, to be blessed (plenty of Christianity spinning here and there). More offerings, coloured candles by nahual. My nahual is Q’anil, which means seed, food, or harvests. Green, white, grey candles. Nahual by nahual we crowded around the fire, huddling heat, shaman-voiced explanations to decipher old meanings of new know-how …  

That same evening, a Breaking the Silence delegation arrived. Tortillas, beans, and dim-lighting at Q’achuu Aloom, meals cooked by Magdalena. An early hike up Ka’jup. Breathtaking beauty. I wish the path wasn’t so dangerous to wander on your own, it would be a perfect running trail… incredible ruins, too. Milpa lining crumbling rock.

hum drum

Hello blog I have been neglecting!

As you may have heard, the torrential rains have been especially torrential these last few weeks - whole roads were washed away and landslides lined the curving highways from north to south, Lago Atitlan to El Peten. Rabinal had so much water that the pipes broke, leaving none running. Ceaseless rain kept pipes submerged, so by sheer strength we were left without any water at all for 18 days. Folks filling barrels by the river, buying Salvavidas, or visiting the municipality to collect water... and day in day out, the ringing words of "cuando viene el agua?"

Since I last wrote, the school year has winded down - classes ended, exams were  written, some final ECAP talks given (cycles of poverty, gender equity, sustainability). On the last day we climbed up el Camino de la Memoria along a narrow path of mud and blue green mountainside and tree-planted 500 seedlings with palms, shovels and machetes.

Yesterday Juan and I nearly finished a second composter box. I didn't realize putting together a few pieces of wood could be so complicated - nothing drawn, so we resorted to hand gestures and crooked angles, sawing off the bits that didn't fit so well... at one point I got a piece of chicken wire stuck in my arm, and was sent to the nurse... so proud of hammering in the nails all by myself (si una mujer se puede!). The idea is that after getting through round one, our next structure will be straighter...

Next week the ceremonies begin: a Mayan tradition with nahuales ('spirit animals') at the dawn of Tuesday's 2am, graduation for grade 9s, a Canadian delegation that will roll in for a 5am mountain summit followed by food to share and museums to behold, along with a few remaining compost boxes to build with Juan... final touches on the year. Classes start again come January.

This means plenty more time will be spent within office walls: funds to catch with flashy screens and fluorescent light bulbs, word to string together, logistics to plan for whatever lays ahead...

milpa milpa milpa

Some photos from this morning's corn harvest...! 

seed for thought

"To love, to be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated, or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget"      


-Arundhati Roy

wall-street-inspired ranting

I learned last week that 73% of Rabinal lives in poverty (on less than 2$ a day), and 32% in extreme poverty (less than 1$ a day) – that translates to almost 30,000 people who are barely able to meet their basic needs, in an area that is about twice the physical size of Knowlton, Quebec.

It's strange that the sheer force of numbers seems to make the inequalities I see everyday feel more solid... It's all too easy to brush poverty away as being part of 'cultural difference'... Even just sitting down and trying to compare struggles at home felt like a slap in the face, with some 10 million Guatemalans living in poor circumstances – 71% of the population. 

Some wisdom from Cornel West at Occupy Wall Street:

In June, the US gave $300 million to the Guatemalan government to "fight the war on drugs".  

Funny enough, the actual UCN government was classified as 'narco' by the US itself (says a Wikileaks cable), and both presidential candidates in the upcoming runoff elections have been linked to the drug trade.

Orange fists have sprouted all over, from walls to computer screens: Perez Molina spent more than 7.3$ million on his political campaign before September elections, with Baldizon trailing right behind him. Wealthy elite on glossy posterboard, mounted high across the country to stamp on the poor majority, one shady business deal at a time... impunity reeling.

And so history repeats itself.... everywhere...

Inspiring and exciting times on Wall Street. 

for the love of vegetables and alfalfa

¿y que de la soberanía alimentaria?

After having a grand time riding around in Julio's truck, stacking together chicken wire, nylon, buckets, papers, screws, nails, branches, and WORMS, then picking up wooden planks from a woman's courtyard I'd previously wandered into on a side street in Rabinal, things were all set in Chiticoy for composting.

Julian arrived at 8am by bicycle (on TIME!) to lead the vermicompost intro. An organizer from Qachuu Aloom ('mother earth' in Achi, a local organic agriculture cooperative that does capacity building in communities throughout the municipality), he was kind enough to offer to help us out when I wandered into the organization's office last week and clumsily explained my ideas of a composting project. Apparently vermicomposting is all the rage here in Rabinal, and red wrigglers ain't cheap, either: one pound goes for about 1,500Q (roughly 200$USD). Qachuu Aloom gave us 25 worms free of charge, to start.

So, after spending weeks translating, formating, budgeting, and collecting materials, this morning was a whirl of bin-building, bed-mixing, and worm prraising with primero A and B (grade 7).

Julian says youth are our hope: a farmer who has been spraying his crops for 20 years is not likely to stop just because someone explains its harmful effects and gives potential alternatives, but, a kid who learns real possibilities and is empowered can change minds and matters a hundred times over.

After almuerzo, I rode my bicycle to ECAP for another charla. Lucky me: today's talk was on FOOD SOVEREIGNTY and la Via Campesina. I am not exagerrating when I say I jumped up and down excitedly as we broke into groups to discuss. Faciltators asked what some essential elements of the idea are, after passing around a guate-related reading. Some thoughts floating were:

• respect: for human beings, mother earth and our ancestors
• self-determination: the right to have rights, to determine our own food system
• space: secure territory/ land access/ control
• community and household sustainability
• gender equity: recognize and (re)value women's role in food
• food is political; (re)value the labourer and farmer
• solidarity

ECAP is wonderful. It makes me sad there are only 2 more sessions like these before the end of the school year, with January a blur to future charlas... Vermicompost was mentioned: taking back our soils, one worm at a time..!

...

And, after a fruitless room-search in Rabinal, I've settled into the great-grandmother's eroded estate – it really is beautiful once you clear away the grey cloud that had been blurring my vision last week. I painted my walls red, hung herbs, lit candles – reclaiming my room from the bugs and mildew. Floors have been fixed (no more flooding!). Good to have my own space, finally, with only the sound of crickets and fireflies at night, jungle on the other side of my window... and the occasional salamander on my wall.

mano dura vs. mano dura...

Ah yes, elections... long story short (as you have probably already heard), two extreme right candidates will be facing off for the presidency come November: Perez Molina, a retired General accused of human rights violations (including genocide) who vows to bring "security" back to Guatemala with an iron fist, and Baldizon, a business man with strong ties to the oil and gas industry who advocates a retroactive death penalty. Great.

"Politics is the basis for the accumulation of capital. This is a central aspect of how these groups operate. By being elected to public office, mainly in municipalities and for congress, they are able to create wealth, through the control of public works contracts, the business world, and networks of political clientelism." -says The Peten Report

The Guatemala Solidarity Network and Aljazeera have wonderfully critical reviews of the current situation and BOTH candidates... 

marejada

It's been a while since I've written, and for good reason...

After getting overwhelming support for the start of our compost project (thank you!!), three scary letters under our doorstep sent me and two fellow interns reeling to Guatemala City. Extortion is common in Guatemala - too common, actually, for anyone who owns a business or is related to someone who does (and in rural guate everyone is related... so...yea). Apparently the home we were living in has been extorted many-a-time over the last few years, belonging as it is to one of the more powerful families in Rabinal. Although the city is safe (and so are we), it gave us a scare - and so after a group trip to the capital to visit some BTS advisers, I fled to San Lucas Toliman, on the south shores of Lago Atitlan, to stay at the Mesoamerican Permaculture Institute (IMAP) with a friend until elections boiled over and things could return to 'normal'.

IMAP could be a meditation retreat in any part of the world: circular sleeping room under green canopies with a view of the lake, an outdoor kitchen with a door turned onto its side as a table, tiny stools on a stoop between the brush. It was healing to just BE there - diving into clear Atitlan in the mornings, devouring Chomsky books from the self, cooking real meals, getting my hands deep in dirt beneath shaded trees.

Elections happened on Sunday, and San Lucas was shakier than the rest of the country: two ballot boxes lay uncounted after UNE announced that it's candidate had been reelected mayor. "Winning" by a slim 42 votes, ANN, the opposing party, was not pleased - crowds multiplied in the parque central to protest while someone burned the remaining uncounted ballots, threatening to torch the municipality as the opposition hunted down the apparent victor with yells of lynching and murder (remember: we were tucked away in the woods, isolated 3km from town). Gas bombs went off in the distance, helicopters flew in the mountains overhead. I lay tucked in bed, nose buried in Profit over People.

By Tuesday chaos had subsided and it was time to leave paradise, so I caught a bus at dawn to the capital. Legs tucked into the plastic covered seats of a used American school bus, I sat with my backpack at my feet and my 'sack' under my arm. I nodded off after fiercely sticking my cheek to the window to avoid a man carrying a guitar who was determined to make me believe in God's salvation. Somewhere between my missed conversion and sleep, my wallet disappeared. I stupidly had not put extra cash into my backpack or my pocket, so stepping off the bus into a roaring, honking Guate, I was left with 25 centavos in my pocket. Lucky for me I still had my cellphone. I called a friend who called another friend, and in no time Humberto rolled up in his falling-apart 1960s box-car, in a whirlwind telling me stories of his years in exile in Mexico before putting me on a bus to Baja Verapaz. I reached Rabinal before dark.

Elsa and I have a new home, for now: a teal green house on the other side of the city, run by a great-grandmother from Guatemala City who moved here for her "bones". The house's concrete walls are decayed, a grandiose poise to the place that has long been overgrown and buried.

Last night I unrolled an old mattress to sleep, bags still packed. 'My' room smells of mold and has already flooded... ants, spiders, moths and salamanders to keep me company. Tomorrow I'll begin a more thorough search for a new home - hopefully this one will last longer. Seems I don't have a very good track record...

Instituto Comunitario Bilingue

en Chiticoy, Rabinal, Baja Verapaz

fellow classmate

igualdad, libertad, solidaridad

Yesterday I sat in on an ECAP – Estudios Comunitarios con Aplicacion Psicosocial (Applied Psychosocial Community Studies) – lecture, with grades 7 and 8. Facilitators asked students to define three ideas: equality, freedom, and solidarity. First we journalled, then discussed, then got together in small groups and wrote out our ideas on paper, to present to the class for a larger discussion. Some ideas voiced were: our inherent human rights and social obligations, respect for difference, free space, participatory democracy... the necessary interdependence of equality, freedom, and solidarity. It was overwhelming to be in a class of grade SEVEN and EIGHTS who were discussing ideas that I had barely heard of when I was 12 (or in university?). Issues that are so real here in Guatemala (AND in Canada!), especially for the indigenous population (most students at the fundacion are Maya-Achi) – in land, identity, recognition (or lack of). They spoke about the need for agrarian change that will bring well-being and dignity to those who work the land (in a country where 80% of arable land is controlled by less than 2% of the population, creating a close-to slavery indentured labour supply), the backwardness of how the community of Rio Negro remains without electricity when the majority of it's population was massacred for the creation of a government-backed hydroelectric dam (that now sells power to the rest of the country), and how theory must be followed by action to have any substance: here, in the classroom, we need to recognize that we are equals and support one another via solidarity so that we can have a free community.

Wow.

rumbo...

On Wednesday Heidi arrived, a blue-eyed grad student from the maritimes who is writing her thesis on the fundacion's education metholodology. It's been so nice to have her here -plenty more wholesome n' less lonesome.  A teacher in Nunavut for the last few winters, she's been appointed to teach English, with me as her assistant. Its true I've been avoiding the idea of teaching English since I got here, but it seems to be one of the few things I am actually qualified to do, and it's a chance for me to get more comfortable in a classroom, speaking out, while getting to know students – so do it I will. 

Compost is rumbling right along – I've finished a small zine on how-to and whys, and am onto riding my bicycle around town to collect materials. Sandra has told me to make a wish list of all things “sustainable” and “compost-y” to put in a grant application we are sending off to Pangea. We're even tossing around the idea of adding a recycling project – starting small, with just plastic bottles and paper. Any neat ideas on how to reuse bottles?...

Rabinal at night: view from our rooftop

martes

I sit in Tono's office – a cool classroom, with watery coffee brewing near. It's morning so the sun hasn't hit properly yet, and I haven't started sweating profusely. As usual, the bus skirted by the Fundacion at 7am sharp, and I got on, coffee in hand, to be squished among the other 70 bodies that crowd the blue school bus. A rickety ride from Rabinal to Chiticoy, a few kilometres northeast. Blue mountains, cornfields and grazing cattle greet us, among the cabaña-like school houses that lie at the foot of these hills. I line up and wait my turn to hop off the bus, then wander out passed the fields to check on the hortalizas (vegetable patch). Raddishes, lettuce, carrots, cabbage, onions, and chard sprout from rectangular beds lined with pop bottles. A huge, mounted concrete basin collects water for crops - it's the wet season, so torrential rains hit nearly every afternoon. Even so, soils are dense: cracked and dry from lack of rain and nutrients.

Don Juan, a founder of the fundacion, leads me to the middle of a corn field to show me the abonero orgánico that students built last year. It is a big hole in the ground, hardly 2 metres wide, cow manure and leaves that will sit in the earth for 6 months before it can be used. Manure is used as a fertilizer because it's plentiful and free. Still, in Guatemala, insecticides and pesticides are subsidized by the state, so organic agriculture is a rare find. These crops are sprayed regularly. Garbage collection isn't so hot either - lacking formal infrastructure, most pollutants are burned.


In light of this and my weightlessness, I've given myself a project in attempt to become grounded: composting (i.e. writing up a zine, making bins, getting worms, & sorting goodies). And so, here I sit on a tuesday morning, experimenting in logistics and vocabulary, keyboard humming to the drip of watered down coffee. 

rabinal

so, I suppose I owe an explanation for this 'Guatemala business'  - I mean, I haven't said what I'm doing here, or why I've chosen to come. I guess the explanation is long-winded (hence me avoiding giving it...) but, well, there is no time like the present when it is pouring rain and one can't leave home after dark...!

Officially, I am a "Human Rights and Agriculture Intern" at the Fundacion Nueva Esperanza, with the Breaking the Silence network (BTS). BTS is a solidarity network between the maritimes and Guatemala, existing since 1988, when Guatemala was slowly attempting a transition back to a civil (rather than military-led) government. BTS and organizations here in Guate have continued to work together and support each other since, sending delegations back and forth, fundraising, spreading information, training interns and international observers, as well as pressuring the Canadian government to act more responsibility in its regulation of Canadian companies abroad. The network currently has connections with 6 organizations in Guate - 2 around San Lucas Toliman, 2 near Chimaltenango, and 2 in Rabinal, Baja Verapaz (But for real info on BTS see: http://www.breaking-the-silence.ca/)


This is what our 6 weeks in Tatamagouche were mostly about: solidarity. BTS likes to use Lila Watson's notion of working together for a common liberation: "If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together."
To me, a quote by Guatemala's Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi sums up the idea: "To open ourselves up to the truth and to bring ourselves face to face with our personal and collective reality is not an option that can be accepted or rejected. It is an undeniable requirement of all people and all societies that seek to humanize themselves and to be free". Yep, the idea of solidarity is a big one... with plenty of folds, flaws, and harmonies to boot. But I'd rather not get into that here... or not yet. 

Arriving in RABINAL

Last week, after an emotional visit to the capital, we met Jesus and caught an alamo bus to Rabinal (population 30,000, a few hundred kilometres north of the capital). Despite all the stories I'd heard of Rabinal, I wasn't prepared for the beauty of this place - the tall green cornfields, looming mountains, narrow streets and elaborate markets. The Fundacion's Instituto Comunitario Bilingue (Bilingual Community Institute), an alternative human-rights geared middle school located in the aldea of Chiticoy, was an even greater sight to get used to... an instititution that learns by doing, applying classroom lessons via agricultural projects. (If only Dalhousie University could have been so wise...) There are veggie gardens, fields of maiz and yerba de haimaica, fruit trees, broiler and lay-hens, medicinal plants, and cattle! (which graze all over the canchas de futbol, natural lawnmowers...). An inspiration to say the least!

I've found a home about a block away from the Fundacion's central office in Rabinal, at a boarding house run by two sisters. They're wonderful, beautiful, solitary women, and are hard to describe - warm, kind, peculiar, and contrastingly different from one another. Along with two other BTS interns, Betsy and Elsa, three forestry workers from Coban, a Guatemalan evangelical 'rockstar', and Maddie, a summer intern with the Buefe Juridico (legal clinic).

So far my 'job' has consisted of me trying to figure out just what it is that I am suited to do. A task that's easier said than done, especially when trying to get oriented in a new place... I've got plenty of digging to do! (pun intended)

mudanza

materialized, grown flesh...

we walk down la octava avenida,

posters of the disappeared still faded against brick,

“en donde estan?”

hijos de los desaparecidos (children of the disappeared)

- 15 years since

three generations of "internal conflict"

when over 200,000 were killed,

50,000 disappeared, more than a million displaced,

military and government for genocide,

"draining the water to kill the fish" -

and here we are, on the streets of Guatemala, la capital,

faces stare amongst the pasted brick and graffiti:
"en donde estan?",
a shopping mall just down the street, buzzing

the city hums, purrs, tiny explosions
somewhere in the distance,

fireworks in daylight...

Para comenzar...

I want to write to stay connected... to be, to see, to watch, to feel, here (hear?) and there... somewhere in between this time, place, sensation.

Yet I'm unable to begin in the present (nothing ever seems to..?). So... stepping back....

These last few months have been (more so than usual) marked by movement. Last summer in Yukon was followed by a stint return to Halifax (in attempt to finish my BA, grow with the food movement, and run a dozen more red-faced 5ks). Longing for home and the North brought me back to Quebec in December, and a move to Montreal opened a flurry of love for me (though not the particular kind I was looking for): there I met old friends in an uncanny pleat of crossed paths, faces and names that seemed to overlap and (re)connect time and time again. A real Montreal winter was a beautiful thing to experience: skating and walks on Mont Royal and Lafontaine, 5 feet high snow banks, bone-chilling winds, bus rides and bicycles on ice. Yukon loves who migrated south. Songs to sing, in my bedroom and on city streets. Dreams were more life-like than they've ever been, and sometimes life took on a dream-like feel: from the imagined lives of strangers and my attempt to fall in love each day, to finally having the Quebecois language ring in my ears for the first time in moons, coupled with a lasting exposure to the swaying rhythms of city life: night, day, the in-between.

Collective living on de Lormier went a step further than Tortilla Flat in Dawson. Paths would have it that I moved in with a wonderful Nova Scotian (among the other beauties), who once took me on a bike tour of Plateau dumpsters in the pouring rain. And so I started to learn the know-how of shared meals, the nature of navigating prosperous back-alley waste, a saga of shifting rituals, routine and stocked shelves...

March hit, and the snow (stubbornly) trickled away. I once spent an afternoon in sunshine and snow on my balcony, picking the guitar and (likely) bellowing to the street below: fresh tar, exhaust, and honking traffic. The uncertainty of the end of the certain hit: university unwinding. I applied for a job and didn't get it. I applied for an internship and did.... it was in Rabinal, Baja Verapaz, Guatemala.

In May I left Montreal. I packed all yearly possessions into my backpack (yet again) and took a bus to Gaspesie, Quebec. It dropped me off on the side of the highway near Gaspe, and I hitched to the provincial park; then to Perce (QC), Campbellton (NB), Bathurst, Shediac, Charlottetown (PEI), Antigonish (NS), and Halifax. In two weeks I had rounded the eastern shore of the Maritimes. I have only good things to say about hitch-hiking: that swinging door of trust and dissolved boundaries, two strangers linked by a shoulder of highway and the tales that come with it. 

In Nova Scotia, I met the other 7 interns with the Breaking the Silence Maritimes-Guatemala Network and began 6 weeks of self-reflection and Guatemala-geared learning on the shores of the Northumberland Strait. (Sights of Tatamagouche, NS, population 800, include: Fables' Pub, a human labyrinth, an ancient set of railroad cars, Saturday morning markets, the murky French river, and Northumberland tides...)

Last Saturday, July 10, we left the north shore and traveled to Houston (Texas-shaped waffles for breakfast), Guatemala City, and, finally, to Quetzaltengango (“Xela”), Guatemala.

Now, here I am, in Xela for another quick pleat in time before moving north to Rabinal. These cobbled streets mark a new rhythm, the beginning of my time here in Guate. It's hard to describe the strangeness I feel in this familiar yet unfamiliar place, a seemingly parallel universe... in Latin America, but... in Guate!

       Xela: vista del baul