kindred vids

 

the deeper in

Last weekend a couple friends and I visited a coffee and macadamia farm not far from the Pacific coast for a day and a night. We took a bus to the city Reu and then another bus until we realized we were lost. So we hung around on a corner for half an hour with some kids and dogs until we decided just to pay an old cab 100Q (~$12) to struggle the 25 kilometers up to the farm. It turned out to be pretty far in, embedded within a jungley rainforest out of which are carved a number of coffee farms. All of them are along this single uphill road,  a mosaic of jagged rocks, supposedly as old as the farms themselves.

view from the finca:

The place wasn’t so remote, but you also couldn’t get to a store, clinic or pharmacy in a flash. The only bus runs every day at 6am (we had a rough morning the next day, albeit rewarded with a gorgeous sunrise) and, you can catch a ride on a pick-up, but they weren’t reliable, we were told, often not coming for hours. For my city-adapted self, these trips are something between an oasis and anxiety.

All my life I have lived close to things. Never more than two blocks from a tienda to get a diet coke in the middle of the night. Always fifteen minutes from a major hospital. When I grew up in LA, I didn’t live up in the mountains around the city, and in SF, I didn’t have an apartment deep in the Presidio. But even those places would have been close to everything, more or less. So too here in Xela, my host-family lives about five minutes from one of the city’s private hospitals.  The only time in my life I ever have distance is when I travel on vacations. And it’s always kind of pleasantly jarring, discomforting for me.  But it also feels like this absurd luxury to be so remote. Like it’s a selling point in the “eco-tourism” experience geared towards some urban elite.

When we were at the farm we met a high school student who lives the opposite life. He’s fourth-generation in his family to work on that land. He works Monday to Saturday and on every Sunday morning takes a pick-up at 6am to Reu to attend classes all day. When he returns in the evening, there are no more buses, so he walks home, the 25 kilometers, three hours, along the precarious road, inclines and descents, possibly in the rain.

Here in Xela, I spend a lot of time talking with my teacher Byron (or more so listening to him talk) about history, politics, wealth distribution, education, etc, in Guatemala.  For all the bummer punch lines that these conversations end in, he still emphasized to me that here in Xela (the second-largest city in the country) people have it better: there are schools, universities, buses, resources – people have the means to try to get ahead, to learn, to earn more, but the people in rural areas have it real tough.

Early Sunday morning, our 6am bus rumbled along the uneven road, emerging from the farms in the hills. It turned onto a main drag lined with skyscraping palm trees, and I thought of Beverly Hills as we pulled into Reu. A misplaced association, but I guess it only amplified the contrast or emphasized some irony I can’t quite locate.

waiting for the 6am bus:

sunrise:

last weekend in reu

last weekend in reu, which is short for a longer name i can’t pronounce and has an incredibly beachy feel to it. only like an hour away, towards the coast, but a totally different climate.

two multicolors

paint on paint on paint — this place:

close up:

and this, pageantry on parade:

hombres de maiz

near the daycare center where i’ve been volunteering in the area of llano del pinal.

nor cal

the buses (“chicken buses”) here are recycled american school buses. usually they totally repainted in sharp, neon-y colors, but this one still had all the info on it from its former life in marin county, a lush, mountainy terrain, similar to here in the western highlands.

san francisco el alto

visited the friday market in san francisco el alto, thirty minutes north of xela. largest market in the country. not much in the way of touristy stuff here, but pretty much everything else you could want.

my excitement got the better part of me when it came to all the textiles.

but i also really enjoyed the livestock section, where you could get a cow, sheep or pig.

i’m not carrying a hat, crushed in my backpack, all the way back to the states for my dad. especially since i never see you wear that fez i got you, dad. but here’s a picture for you:

privilege blanco

white privilege discotheque

Bananas of Atitlan

lots of rain last weekend when we visited lake atitlan. the upside to traveling during the rainy season here is that everything is incredibly green, lush, rainforest-like. we spent one of the nights on the lake in this overgrown hotel in san marcos built into the side of a mountain or something. lots of pretty birds.

in between the downpours, i went hiking along this trail that hugged the low cliffs along the lake, dotted with a couple large flat rocks where i sat and tried to meditate. the entrance to that trail had a big sign with a couple words in a native language and “tierra sagrada” – sacred grounds – written on it. we occasionally saw some other travelers on the path and the woman at the hotel said it was ok to explore. but that night i had this dream that, while hiking on the path, i broke my arm and it was understood that i was being chastised for walking on the sacred ground.

i had planned to wake up the next morning at dawn to go sit on one of those rocks but, after the dream, i settled for a different spot

pacholo looming on one of those rocks: