After all was said and done in Nicaragua (and I may add more about Nicaragua later on), Ben and I hopped on a midnight bus from Managua, Nicaragua to Guatemala City, Guatemala. 18 hours and two border crossings later, there we were: Huge buildings, sprawled malls, bright lights, and fast food restaurants. It seemed to me that we had re-entered the civilization that I had left in New York. Nowhere in Nicaragua did I see a big brightly lit building such as the ones here! But don't be fooled, those bright lights were contained to the 'new town' area of Guatemala city. A bit further in we reached the "old town", full of brightly painted, small, Central American style homes all connected by the same walls.
My memories of the capitol are fleeting; after Ben and I exited our bus Luis, our main man in Guatemala, picked us up and we were off to a hostel for the night. The next day, early in the morning, we borded another bus headed for Solola', a city overlooking the famous Lake Atitlan... and the place that was to become my home for the next two and a half months. As though on perfect cue with the change in environment, my stomach began rumbling tremendously, and my first step off the 2 hour bus ride in Solola ended with my vomiting all over the main square. Welcome to Guatemala! ... Classic.
The next few days are a swirl. I had gotten really sick... perhaps from some soy yogurt I'd eaten in the bus terminal of the capitol, perhaps from something else... but I couldn't eat, could barely drink, and had some really horendous nights. Ben took care of me, and we stayed first in Luis' house in Solola, then afterward in Santa Maria, the village just outside of Solola that I was to live in for the next couple of months.
Solola reminds me somewhat of Granada, Nicaragua. A small colonial city, Solola has a beautiful main square lush with flowers, trees, and grass, and is overlooked by a slightly gaudy but still beautiful cathedral. The market starts underneath this cathedral and sprawls outward, revealing rows and rows of tomatos, carrots, potatoes, strawberries, corn, corn, corn and more corn. You can truly get anything in this market, and vendors come from all over the area to sell their crafts here... specifically remarkable are the Tuesday and Friday markets. But however much Solola may seem at times familiar, the village Santa Maria is a world that I have never experienced before... a completely new and mind-blowing place.
My first step in Santa Maria was surreal. Six or so boys around 7-10 years old were playing soccer on a field right next to the main road. They ran up with shy but smiling faces, and explained that they were part of the Futbol Sin Fronteras Santa Maria team... that although there hadn't been a practice in a month or so, they were still playing every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. They had one tattered ball, but their smiles said that they didn't care... that they were just stoked to be playing. I introduced myself as their new coach, and I had a team. Woah.
An hour or so later we had our first meeting with the community, and it was there that I first heard Kaqchikel, the Mayan language spoken in these hills. This ancient eery language drips of a long gone civilization, and sounds like nothing I've ever heard before. Kaqchikel is at times gutteral and at times uses complex throat and tongue patterns, and is accented often by Spanish segue words (such as entonces), proper nouns, and numbers (most that speak Kaqchikel cannot count past twenty in their language, thus Spanish numbers have become commonly appropriated). Most generations living in Santa Maria speak both Kaqchikel and Spanish, with the exception of babies and grandparents who at times only speak Kaqchikel, and it is certainly the language of choice in most of the homes in the village. That is, Kaqchikel seems to function by binding the community together, whereas Spanish enables them to communicate with the rest of the world.
After our meeting, which consisted of instant coffee and about a million "gracias por su apoyo y ayuda" (thank you for your support and help) from all parties present, we made our way to my new home. Literally in the middle of a cornfield, my new home sits snuggled in between recently harvested (and thus the skeleton form of) cornstalks, jutting up an odd angles in the sky. Tiny dirt trails lead from one cornpatch to another, and to several houses all hidden amid the high corn. During the next two weeks of my time here many farmers have cut down the stalks, but when I first arrived I felt on another planet altogether. It's hard to truly describe this experience, other than to say... woah. I'm here, living in a Mayan village, communicating only on Spanish with my family, neighbors, and soccer teams. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. More to come with the people I've met.
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