Guatemala Is...

Guatemala has been a teacher.  Rich and feminine.  Flowers and dust and trash.  Dogs and roosters.  Community, chicken buses rolling through dry hillsides.  Taking turns getting sick. Markets full of fruit like I have never before seen.  Today marks a week that I have arrived in this new land, though time stretches and shifts shapes here...the journey feels like it has been much longer.  I sit in an internet cafe writing this on the streets of Panajachel.  Tomorrow morning I will leave the group of nine others whom I have shared so much with to fly to Costa Rica.  It is hard to say goodbye to a land, and to mi amigas.  What follows are a few excerpts from my journal written in the village of Chacula, a returned refuge cooperative of indigenous people, where I spent the majority of the last week.

January 9
I awaken to a  cocophony of roosters crowing.  It is dark.  Outside water continues to patter  against the tin roof.  A few minutes later my other ´modern´alarm goes off.  As quietly as possible, I unzip my sleeping bag, crawling out to greet the day, my compadres still sleep.  My fingers stumble around searching for yoga clothing, clock, headlamp, agua.  In the other small room adjoinging our cinder block sleeping room I find a pile o straw woven mats.  I unfold one, placing it on the cool concrete floor, and this is how my day begins.  Breathe, breathe again.  As dawn arrives I pause in my practice, to peak out the window.  Really?  I am in Chacula? yes.  The dirt road has become mud overnight.  Women walk the road, carrying baskets atop their heads, and baskets too in their arms, filled with corn that has been boiled and is being taken to the mill so it will be ready to make tortillas for the day.  Connie joins me in yoga for a bit before going to put water on for tea and coffee.  I decide to drink tea seeing as coffee is served at all meals.  Here, coffee is brewed ´cowboy´ style, very weak and very very sweet.....

and on to another day...

January 11
Tonight a most dignified man, strong of heart and mind, came to share his story and that of this community, these people.  Telling of the war waged in the eighties against the indigenous-the fleeing to Mexico- where still they were threatened by the guatemalen and mexican government.  Twelve years in the refuge camp with such little support-not able to work, to make money...And then the story he tells of the solidarity movement-the organizing- coming together to set into actions the proposals and agreements that brought them here, to create the cooperative of Chacula.  As he spoke many thoughts poured through me- thoughts of interconnectedness, of family, happiness, food, community, love- and politics, justice, movement.  That somehow there seemed to be a sense of belief in the ´magic´of life in the face of So Much injustice.  Thoughts of how self respect, and truth, honesty, and clarity are interconnected to representing and defining how one can be available for the larger world at hand, for community, for revolutios, both big and small.  There is no apathy here.  Constant movement, forward, circular kindness.  Genuine ´being´in the now, despite a histroy which includes vast tragedy, and a now that still holds so much poverty and minimal needs being met- materialistically, politically, simply day to day.  Natural resources being threatened, borderlines not being respected.  It seems to be an old story- of indiginous people, who only ask to be able to live with simple, simple rights, asking nothing in return but to have the right to life, to eat, to have family, to love... are so unfairly, denied.

January 12
It is an incredible day.  The weather continues to be windy and cold, but we all bundle in blankets and prepare to go out, because today Rigoberta Menchu, nobel peace prize recipient in 1992, is to arrive here!

This is what I will share for now. This journey is so rich, and there is so much more to tell.  I am so thankful, for this world, for possibilities, for all of you who have supported and inspired me to jump on out here, to take this world in.  And I hope that in a small way, in sharing my story, I am giving back.