Saturday, April 01, 2006

Coming into my service here in Cobán, I was definitely expecting there to be a lot of down time. However, up until now that has really been a non-issue. These last few weeks have been especially busy and all over the radar. For one, Brandon, my old roommate came down to visit and travel. I also had my ¨Reconnect¨meeting in Antigua with the rest of my training class to sort of regroup and talk about where we´re at. At the moment, I´m back in sight after a fairly grueling week.

Getting out to travel a bit was an exhaustive but good experience. We took a few days to go visit the Eastern side of Guatemala. We started out by going to Río Dulce, a small river town about 20 miles in from the Caribbean. From there, we took a boat out to the mouth of the river to Livingston, a Caribbean Garifuna village that looks more like Belize than Guatemala. The river tour was by far the highlight. The area is thick with jungle and Africa hot, however there is hardly any development or residents for that matter. Unlike most other places I´ve seen, it was a pretty untouched piece of Guatemalan nature. Contrastingly, Livingston was dirty and fairly rough around the edges, yet it was interesting to see this completely different culture. From Belize on down the coasts of Guate, Honduras and Nicaragua, there are small populations of Garifunas. They are of African descent, speak their own language and hold onto their own traditions far different from those of indigenous Guatemala. Livingston is the center of Garifuna culture in Guatemala. Beyond the village scene, we were able to walk up the coast a few miles where we found a cool beach. Livingstone was interesting and all, but after a full day of bus travel, the hammocks on the beach were a welcome sight.

After Livingston, we took what was quite possibly the worst bus trip ever. Going from the Eastern seaboard to Antigua requires that one passes through the arid and desert-climate departments of Guatemala. Our bus was a jalopy and only had flat backed, narrow vinyl seats. What´s worse is that we were both having pretty serious bouts with stomach bugs. So, that sucked, basically. Luckily, with Antigua as our destination, we got to enjoy the mountain climate for the rest of the week. We climbed Volcán Pacaya the next day before Brandon left for Atitlán and I went to my reconnect meetings. It was great to just have a relaxed week in Antigua with all my friends that I hadn´t seen for months. The whole experience felt like training again; pointless meetings and no responsibility-a definite break from my hellion 3rd graders. I also got to spend a day catching up with my old host family from training. Leaving was something of a downer as I really enjoyed my time in that part of Guatemala.

Coming back to site this week has been a bittersweet experience. Workwise, I got a lot done planting with my women´s group every day. However, on Monday I got news that one of the coop kids, Bryan, who is the 8-year old son of the president had died while I was in my reconnect meetings. I haven´t been here that long, but I knew him briefly. He was adorable and was close with all the past volunteers. When I got back to site, they had already had the funeral, so it came as a big surprise frustration as I couln´t be here to deal with it. They don´t really know what it was. All I got was that he died from an "internal pain." He got sick one day and died the next. This is what is so depressing about the whole matter. While he came from a family that had done relatively well for themselves, they still had no access to even nominally adequate medical care. It´s just plainly frustrating and sad to see someone die who had been climbing out of the poverty that afflicts almost everyone else.

It has been interesting to watch how people here come to terms with death. Superficially, people just returned to work and seemed to go about their way. I know mothers who have given birth to 20 children and lost 8 of them. With those types of experiences and everything that happened with the war, it is easy to imagine that people just deal and move on. From my point of view, I just can´t imagine it possible to be attached to so many children with death lurking all over the place. However, while I was planting with a mother from my women´s group, we started talking about it. She said losing a child was "un dolor que nunca se quita, que se queda toda la vida" or "a pain the never takes itself away, one that sticks with you all your life." People are careful where to express themselves, and it mostly comes off as if they are really simple and subdued. Though given this experience, I can only imagine how much there is behind it all.