A quick update

I have found out that Rigoberta Menchu is polling at about 2 to 3 percent of the vote right now. However, that is not as bad as it sounds because there are nearly a dozen candidates running, and the three major establishment parties and their respective candidates are expected to garner the majority of the votes in September. It therefore seems likely that this election is simply an initial entry into politics for Rigoberta Menchu, establishing herself as a serious Guatemalan politician and activist for the long term.
As for me, I have spent the last few days organizing and preparing for a series of projects that are going on next week at the Long Way Home and in Comalapa. Next Wednesday, the Long Way Home is going to host a free Dia de Diversion, where girls and boys will come to the Home and get organized into age-grouped leagues which will compete throughout the summer and may become permanent.
In addition, my fellow volunteers and I have been going around to the local schools and asking if they need any assistance or support with education curriculums. We have more interest from the schools than we can handle right now. For example, Rosie and I are going to teach a little history, english and basic environmental education for two hours a day, every day next week in the main school in Comalapa.
Most of the free schools here are funded by the Catholic Church, and nearly all are underfunded and overcrowded. It is an interesting and telling commentary on the state of rural schools here that there is so much interest in having foreign gringos come and teach whatever we would like for however long we would like in their schools.

First day on the job...

Ok, so not surprisingly I have a lot to write about now that I have arrived in Comalapa and have settled in a bit at El Proyecto Chimiya. I´ll be breif and allow you to use your imagination to understand the excitement and genuine pleasure I have been experiencing in the last twenty-four hours.
First of all, my fellow intern, Rosie, and I found our way to this small rural town on a series of short but eventful ¨chicken bus¨ rides. The roads are never straight and you are constantly surrounded by imposing ravine drops, sheer cliffs and far away hill-top maize farms terraced on seemingly impossible angles. All of the farm work is done by hand here because of this geographic exigency.
The grounds of the project include a new basketball court, a soccer field, an ecological park with a nature trail and new schoolhouse, two housing cabanas, a solar shower and facilities. The mission of the Long Way Home is essentially to fill any type of educational or recreational void that exists in Comalapa. Children in Comalapa only spend a half-day in school, so for most, the rest of the day is spent either helping or watching their parents work their corn or strawberry fields. In addition, nearly all of the people here are wholly ignorant of basic environmental concepts, which is common in most developing nations. There is not recycling, trash is thrown wherever, rivers are the the dumps, forested property is cut down for firewood to cook with and environmental protection is a luxury most think they can ill afford. The Long Way Home is attempting to change this with education on local tree varieties and by slowly communicating to the community its role and its future benefits from sustainably using its natural environment.
But we are not just about lecturing, we wouldn´t get very far if we were. Instead we have to get people involved in a fun and exciting way, which is why participating and encouraging athletic activities is key. So, for instance, today I woke up early and went with my fellow intern, Ben, a former peace corps volunteer, and spent two hours coaching an 11 and 12 year old girls basketball team! They are the champions of the Chimaltenango department(i.e. state) and are going on Wednesday to Antigua to compete in the national championship tournament for their age group.
Their local coach asked us gringos to help him coach because both Ben and I have extensive playing histories and I have a coached a little. I lack a knowledge of specific basketball terms in spanish, but somehow through demonstration and persistence we were able to drill them on proper chest-passing technique, general movement on the court, layups and defense. They had recieved very little formal training like this before and it was great to see them improve right there in those two hours. I think we all had a great time and learned something.
Afterwards, Ben took me around town to meet the locals that the Project works with and is supported by. A local communtiy development group called Chuwi Tinimit owns the property where the Project is located and the head of the board of that group is running for mayor of Comalapa in the upcoming elections. We are officially supporting him. I met him, along with the crew of workers that are building the new schoolhouse and the local weavers whose indigenous crafts we sell in the US for funding. All are very committed to the Project and strongly believe that we are filling an educational and environmental awareness need here.
However, the best was yet to come. As we left a pizza parlor and were heading to the Internet cafe that I am writing from now, a politcal rally of some sort started filtering past us playing loud music, waving signs and attracting a large number of people to it. The rally was for the political party and campaign of Rigoberta Menchu, the indigenous Gautemalan Nobel Peace Prize winner. If you have not heard of her and are interested in learning more about Guatemala I strongly recommend that you read I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala. It is the testimony of her life during the civil war period here, and it is for that which she won the Nobel Peace Prize.
In any case, she was the one drawing the large crowds, shaking hands, talking with the locals and looking very much the politician. And in fact, she recently announced her candidacy for president, no small thing in a primarily indigenous country that has been run by white, male Ladinos for centuries. I shook hands with her and took her picture as she was embraced by the people who obviously love her. There is for the first time in many decades an excitement about the political process that is taking place in this election cycle, there is more participation, and more recognition of indigenous rights, as is evident in other Latin American countries recently as well. This movement is attempting to change the long-standing political and economic status quo, which is not without its inherent divisiveness. In fact, one of the opposing parties to Menchu´s uses the symbol of el mano blanco in its political campaign, the name and symbol of the former campaign of state terror that was directed towards the rural indigenous populations during their years of civil war.
After all of this, believe it or not, we are headed back to the Project site to hook up another, better solar shower for us interns. I am hoping it lives up to the hype because I could certainly use a hot shower.
Just remember, this was my first day on the job...

My First Days...

Well, after sitting in Seatac for 5 and a half hours, I am finally here in Guatemala. On the flight from L.A. to Guatemala City I sat next to a Guatemalan couple who allowed me to practice my feo spanish with them in a pleasant, yet stunted conversation. The couple was wonderful, they both worked in a hotel in Santa Barbara and traveled to Guatemala to visit their family, once a year. During the take-off and landing the woman crossed herself multiple times, along with her husband and me. Without knowing much about me and in a custom unknown to North Americans, they invited me to breakfast, to their granddaughters quinceañera, and offered me a ride to Antigua. I of course accepted all of their incredible gestures of hopitality. Unfortunately, I cannot attend the ceremonial birthday celebration. However, I arrived in Antigua sooner than I would have thanks to them and gained a quick appreciation for the people here.
Today, I walked through a public coffee plantation and got a free lesson on coffee cultivation and the classes of the local jade from one of the neighboring locals named Juan Fransisco Garcia. He took me to his sons jewlery workshop, where he made beautiful jade and silver earings, necklaces and pendants. Juan told me how Guatemalans grew their coffee in the shade of the Grabilea tree, so as to protect the coffee plants from being burned by the hot tropical sun(I have also heard that this is a much more sustainable way to grow coffee for both the health of the land and the pickers of the beans). It was a gorgeous place, muy tranquilo, with no tourists, which is always a unique experience in a tourist trap like Antigua.
Juan also told me about his job in a local fabrica or factory, which is owned by Nestle Corp. He packed 90 packages of dried soop a minute, for eight hours a day, five days a week. He said it was a good job in Guatemala, very steady, with good pay and not in the exposed coffee or sugar fields. It appears that Juan, along with the family I met in Guatemala City, are part of the Guatemalan middle class or maybe upper class, although neither was visibly wealthy by any North American standards. They were also non-indigenous as far as I could tell, Ladino is what they are called here. Therefore, I have yet to see or experience the poverty that I saw in South America. It is quite a different economic state here in Guatemala, because the disparities are not quite as dramatic or as visibly dichotomous as they are in Buenos Aires, for example. However, I have not been to the rural, indigenous areas of Guatemala and therefore cannot speak with any certainty on this subject. But I am eager to get a sense of the differences between the conditions of the poor in Argentina's villas and Guatemala's rural, indigenous communities. Hopefully, the Long Way Home will immerse me in that exploited and forgotten world. I´ll let you know....