Written by: Brionne Janae
Its 6:45 AM. The birds outside my window have been demanding I get up for about a half hour. I've ignored them of course. My host family has been awake for a while, getting ready for work and school. The two youngest, Chaito (age 4) and Estephanie (age 1) are probably following everyone around laughing, crying and getting in the way.
I get ready as quickly as possible in order to catch our 7am truck ride up the mountain with my group. I slow down as I enter the kitchen and offer polite good mornings to everyone and smile at the babies. No one in my host family speaks a single word of English, and with my Spanish being somewhat lacking, I try to make up for it with frequent smiles. My host mom attempts to convince me to sit and eat. The offer is really tempting; on a good day when I'm actually on time, she makes pancakes with bananas on top, and a cup of yummy Guatemalan coffee. But today, like too many other days I'm late, so I quickly grab some pan (bread) and rush out the door to meet the rest of my group. Elena (my host mom) shakes her head and smiles, probably thinking something like silly American always in a hurry.
A Day in Guatemala Photographs
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Going up the mountains in a van is always interesting. Going up the mountain standing in the back of a pick-up truck is nothing short of an amazingly beautiful, terrifying thrill. On Lake Atitlan the pick- up truck is a very common type of taxi. People squeeze into the back of the trucks like sardines and hold onto the rails that run around the truck bed and through the center. In many ways going up the mountain in the truck is an incredible experience. The combination of the bumpy road that literally lifts your feet of the ground, the bugs dying on your face, the crisp morning breeze ridding you of last minute sleepiness, the skidding of the truck tires around near death turns, the view of the towns seated near the lake creeping gradually up the mountain, and the growing greenness of everything along the ascent, is altogether beautiful.
Once our group arrives at the summit, we drive a ways down an alternately dirt and paved road surrounded by corn fields until we arrive in the town of Palestina, and are deposited on the side of the road by our driver. Here our group divides, half of us taking the truck to plant the first garden, while the other half meets up with some local girls for a "groupo de mujeres." The houses in Palestina are inaccessible by car so another volunteer and I follow the giggling group of 14-16 year old girls down the tricky uneven dirt road to one of their houses.
Inside the group gathers in a circle and gets started. First we go around in the circle and ask them to give their name and a word to describe how they are feeling. The word of choice is typically "feliz." Next we give them all journals and ask them to describe themselves and their community, and then go around and share afterwards. The purpose of these groups is to give adolescent young women a space where their voices and opinions can be valued and heard, as a means of increasing their sense of self-worth. Today the girls mostly write about their families, and some share dreams of becoming a teacher when they grow up. One of the girls however is very unique and writes about her experience as an indigenous woman, and expresses a desire to someday improve her community after first educating herself. Hearing things like this always makes me happy that I came on this trip and wish I could do more.
After the group is finished we head back to the road. A group of children spot us coming and run towards us shouting "Gringo Gringo!!!" before they giggle and cover their mouths as they remember it is not polite to shout "Gringo!!!". They offer to lead us to our friends, and we follow them up the hill and into another family's back yard. There the rest of our group has begun dividing the family's garden box into quadrants where we'll plant eleven different kinds of vegetable seeds. The primary purpose of this project is to help improve nutrition among the impoverished farmers who have difficulty buying food on a regular basis. The secondary purpose is to teach women and their children how to maintain the garden so that the women can have something to contribute to their families, and so the children can learn the value of good nutrition at an early age.
As the group begins planting each individual seed we coax some of the children to come and join us. For them it becomes like a game. Two little boys race back and forth between the garden and a volunteer quickly stretching their hands up high eager to get the next seeds, trying to see who can plant the most. Before long the seeds are planted and it's time to move on to the next family. The remaining seeds are given to the families so that they can continue their garden box even after we are gone.
We typically try to plant five garden boxes a day, and head back down the hill around one. But today we're running a bit late, because Lorenzo, our charismatic and tireless guide, decided that today we should try planting 6 garden boxes. As a result we don't make it back to San Pedro until 2:30pm, and I wind up rushing back to my host family's home for a quick lunch. The first thing Elena does when she's sees me and the other volunteer I live with hurrying towards the house is shake her head then hurry into the kitchen and put lunch on the table. Fresh tortillas, her special flavored rice and vegetable, and an avocado salad: my favorite lunch. "Provecho," she says, after we mutter our "Gracias's" and start eating. She smiles and says something about how much we're working. We eat quickly and then rush off to Spanish lessons, I had intended to do my Spanish homework before lunch but of course never found the time. As I hurry to my three hour Spanish lesson I try to figure out how to say "my dog ate my homework" in Spanish.
After Spanish lessons I take a quick nap as I wait for dinner. La Cena is probably one of my favorite times of day in San Pedro. My whole host family gathers at the table, both parents, all five kids ages 18 to 1, myself, the other volunteer, and the occasional stray dog that wanders in the front door. As the family talks it amazes me how fluidly they slip back and forth between Spanish and T'sutujil (the local Mayan dialect). It also amazes me how well I'm able to follow the conversation (when it is in Spanish), and how I am slowly getting more and more comfortable trying to use my meager amounts of Spanish to communicate as well.
After dinner our group gets together to hang out, count seeds, and plan for the next day. Once I finally get to bed I'm exhausted, but my mind is racing as it tries to remember every face, phrase, shade of sunlight hitting the lake, tone of choppy sharp tongued Maya, and stray dog running to claim his territory or say hello. I drift slowly into sleep, my mind still racing, dreaming of it all.