March Madness

March was a whirlwind of visiting groups, MCC meetings, and crazy traveling around Guatemala. In short, another month of blessings. 

The first week, we had a group visit from the Foods Resource Bank, which partners with MCC in funding the projects for small farmers here in Sibinal. I missed the first part of the visit (which means I missed the cool soap-making workshop they did....I was pretty sad), but I went along for the rest of it.Within the first day, I made a connection with the director of FRB, Bev Abma, who turned out to live in Byron Center, Michigan, about two miles from where I grew up. Small, small world. The visit was a great time of learning for everybody. I got some more practice translating as we visited peoples plots and even got put to work as we helped Aníbal, one of the farmers, harvest his potato crop.

 The second group came only three days later, a learning tour from Rockway Mennonite Collegiate in Ontario, Canada. This group was ridiculously full of energy, although maybe that´s not so surprising, since they´re all about seventeen years old. We did the "Trout Trail," in the community of Vega del Volcán, learning all about the impact of Hurricane Stan on the community, its response with trout production projects (supported by MCC), and new agro-ecology projects. Later that week, I finally bit the bullet and climbed that pesky volcano I´ve been living next to for seven months.

It´s called Tacaná, it´s the second highest peak in Central America, at 4,092 meters (13,425 feet), and here I am at the top, with fellow MCCer Nancy Sabas and our patient guides Roman and Limber!

I had the opportunity to tag along for the second half of Rockway´s trip, in which we journeyed (after a quick stop to some hot springs) to Nebaj, an area in northwest Guatemala populated by another Mayan ethnic group, the Ixil people. We had a chance to share with young men and women from three small Ixil communities. MCC is also supporting projects there that give young people alternatives to migration, as well as projects that celebrate Ixil knowledge and ways of life, uniting the pueblo against the many injustices they suffer at the hand of the government and multinational corporations. 

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One work project involved building chicken sheds using sticks, clay, dirt, water, and pine needles. I was the group monkey, dancing around barefoot to mix it all together.

Canadian and Ixil youth after a day in one of the Nebaj communities 

The next big even was MCC´s partner meetings in Guatemala City. I don´t have any exciting pictures of this, since we mostly just sat in a big room and dialogued, but the dialogue itself was actually pretty darn interesting. We talked violence; how it manifests itself in different ways in Guatemala and El Salvador, and what each partner is doing to reduce it. For example, there is quite a bit of alcoholism where I´m living in Sibinal, which results in domestic violence, and many men, women and children suffer. Many times this habit develops in men because they are the ones who are paid and also the ones marketed to. Projects in Sibinal address this by involving more and more women in the generation of the family income, and promoting a livelihood shared by the family, in which the whole family works to maintain the farm and reap the benefits together. Pretty exciting stuff. No, really, it is, and it´s inspirational to see fiesty women taking charge of their households in a new way. 

The last week of March was the Holy Week, and because the MCC partner organization I work for is the Catholic Diocese of San Marcos, I got quite a bit of time off. I of course used this time to go get incredibly burned on the black sand beaches of the Pacific coast, see friends, and go dancing. It was an incredible time. A highlight was Good Friday, which I spent in Antigua, with its cobblestone streets, colonial Spanish architecture, and unbelievable Holy Week celebrations. 

A Holy Week tradition is the creation of sawdust carpets, which are laid out on the street a couple hours before a procession is scheduled to walk down it. You can see that on the left is the finished carpet in all its glory. On the right is the same carpet halfway through a big procession with a float of Jesus on the cross followed by a float of Mary.

This week, I´m back to work with all my regular activities. One of these activities is teaching English in a middle school in Vega del Volcán. Because there´s very little transportation to this community, I go every other week, but teach three days in a row, staying with this lovely host family. They have the model farm for agro-ecology, which means delicious organic veggies, plus María (below with her adorable daughter Sheily) is an EXCELLENT cook. She´s also excellent in a lot of other things, but I think I´ve rambled on enough in this blog, so I´ll leave it at that. 

To sum up, I am blessed. So many experiences have opened up for me this year, and I continued to be humbled and inspired by the people around me. It doesn´t hurt that the all around me is this gorgeous view :) God is good.