Think of this as a visual representation of Guatemala's high illiteracy rate.
Recently in guatemala Category
We have finished our three weeks of Spanish study, and now have our heads and notebooks full of knowledge that we'll need to put into practice in order for it to stick. We both thought we were very well-matched with our teachers Marvin and Nancy. Nancy was both nurse and teacher to Kelly for several days when Kelly came down with a bacterial infection, a model of patience and flexibility. Marvin graciously entertained all my historical questions and told me his own story of displacement and hardship due the civil war. He was the one who told me the "joke" about the CIA, KGB, and G2.
Here we are, soldados de español.
So, the CIA, the KGB, and G2 (the Guatemalan secret police) get together in Guatemala and have a little competition to see who can find a certain rabbit.
The CIA goes first. Using GPS, night vision goggles, helicopters, and other highly advanced techniques, they find the rabbit in 24 hours.
The KGB follows suit. Although their technology is a little less advanced, they are also able to find the rabbit within a day.
Then the G2 gives it a try. A day passes. And another. And a week. By the second week, the other agencies start to wonder and decide to go looking for them.
In the forest, they find a battleground: trees chopped down for acres, dead birds with their chests ripped open, and general chaos. They follow the clearing down to the river, finally discovering the G2 agents.
One agent has a donkey by the throat, and while the others threaten with arms of various types, the agent snarls, "You are a rabbit, aren't you! You are a rabbit!"
We hiked to see a volcano. We didn't see the volcano, really, but we did see some beautiful pasajes.
The largest earthworm I´ve yet to see, or eat.
Where we live for the moment with our host Elvi. Our room is the last door on the left.
Some women observing the corpus cristi parade. When I asked if I could take their picture because they were so beautiful, they said, "sure, if you pay us."
We´ve had quite an introduction to Guatemala.
We arrived in Guatemala City on Monday at about 2pm and walked out a long, narrow corridor to the airport parking lot, where hundreds of people were waiting, lining the corridor like papurazzi at the oscars, but with more dignity. There were women with their bulky, brightly colored traditional dresses, rental car representatives, many children, and one woman with a sign that read "William and Kelly".
While we waited for her to bring the car, we had the opportunity to see one of the other sides of the immigration question. We had flown over with about half Guatemaltecos, and stood in line with several of them to check luggage, where it appeared that they were bringing an entire household in their bags. And now we landed with them, mostly men, returning after who knows how long in the States. A man came behind us with shiny snakeskin boots, a elean white Stetson, a crisp button-down shirt with the top two buttons left open, and jeans fresh from the store. I had noticed him on the flight, mustached and clean shaven, stoic. But when his family surrounded him with kisses and embraces in the parking lot, tears fell down his face and his hands trembled.
On Tuesday at school, they informed us that we would be taking a trip that afternoon to Zuníl to visit a very old church and the shrine to San Simón. Sounds great, we said.
Zuníl is, according to my teacher, world famous for its agriculture, and we had the opportunity to see some of its fruits: carrots the size of my forearm, brilliant white onions, beets, lettuce, cabbage, all grown intensively in raised beds on hillsides. It was impressive.
We went inside the church, passing by maybe a dozen figurines of various saints, while Marvin explained to us that many people came to church just to pray to one or two saints.
Then we followed a winding cobblestone street up a hill to a nondescript house which was the home of San Simón. Also known as Maximón, San Simón is a syncretic saint that has been expulsed from the Catholic church but is venerated by many nonetheless. We paid 5 quetzals each to enter, and if we had brought our camera could have paid 5 more to take a picture of the saint. In a small, dark room, lit only by 15 or 20 candles on the floor in front of the throne, a handful of people gathered around San Simón, gazing at him imploringly, talking quietly to one another. At two tables fortune tellers or witches or espirituistas sat "helping" some people with their problems. And San Simón? He is a life sized wooden doll fully dressed in a black cowboy hat, aviator sunglasses, and a bandana. He actually looked a lot like Michael Jackson, strangely enough.
There´s more about San Simon, including a picture of him, at this website: http://www.answers.com/topic/maxim-n
and here http://www.thresholds.net/zunil/index.html
On an upstairs patio were some priests performing a ritual for a woman who was sitting nearby. One priest poured sugar in a pattern on a wide cinderblock shelf, while the other unwrapped packets of what looked like horse manure. Around them were empty bottles of alcoholic beverages and the ashes of things that had been offered to San Simón.
On our way out the door, we noticed one of the espirituistos outside talking on his cellphone. He was well-dressed, all in black, and I thought that he must be making a pretty good living helping people with their problems.
As we stepped off the bus in Xela, the sky exploded and rapidly turned the streets into rivers. Without umbrellas or raincoats, we were very quickly soaked to the skin.
And that was our first day in Xela.
Today we worked on more reflexive verbs and talked for almost two hours about war and corrupt government. Nancy, my teacher, said some very interesting things about the Latino perspective, one that totally blew my mind. She told me that there are two main theories among the Guatemaltecas concerning the war with Iraq. The main theory is that 911 was an intricate plan construed by George Bush in order to get Americans to back his desires to go to war. Many people believe that the attack was planned at a time when Latino workers were the primary occupants of the buildings – cleaning offices and floors. For this reason Bush didn´t mind blowing up the buildings. The other, less common theory, was that Iraq attacked in order to prove to the world that the United States was not invincible. We also talked about the rich having a responsibilty to care for those poorer than themselves, and what that looked like.
One of the most exciting things for me about Xela is that every laundry mat has a woman who is in charge of washing and drying all the clothes. You are not allowed to do it yourself. When she is finished she carefully folds the clothes and packs them away in a bag. So, I affectionately call my time in Xela my month off of laundry.
