Hi Ariel!
Sorry for the long delay in communication! We’ve been doing a lot of traveling and I neglected to find a good time and place to write. But now we’re back in San Marcos and things are a more settled, so here is an update:
-Two weeks ago Kirk and I left La Cambalacha to do some traveling around the country, to get a broader perspective on Guatemala outside of the tiny town of San Marcos, with the intention of returning here to finish our volunteer work. We made a big loop northward and visited both big cities and small rural areas. Our itinerary was thus: Antigua, Lanquin, Semuc Champey, Flores, Tikal, back to Flores, Rio Dulce, Livingston, Guatemala City, then finally back to San Marcos.
-in Flores, we met a German archaeologist named Mareike who was doing her PhD work in modern Mayan art, and had written her master’s thesis on Tikal (an ancient Mayan city in the rainforest of El Peten, northern Guatemala. Guatemala began marketing it as a tourist destination in the 1970s, and even though it’s still not fully excavated it’s extremely accessible.) We went with Mareike to Tikal and the ruins of Uaxactun (a military rival of Tikal). She gave us incredible lectures on Mayan history, the iconography on the temples, the structure of the pyramids and the social / political structure of ancient cities like Tikal. I have many notes. I also managed to convince the night guard (with very basic Spanish and some extra quetzales) to let us spend the night on top of Templo IV (the tallest pyramid in the complex). It was incredible, if I can sum it up in a word.
- in Livingston, on the Caribbean coast, we immersed ourselves in Garifuna culture, which is a mix of Afro-Caribbean and Guatemalan culture. I became friends with a local named Luis, whose family is descended from the African slaves that were shipwrecked there, and he taught me a lot of the garifuna language, which I have written down safely in my notebook. Garifuna is only spoken in Livingston, in a couple of towns on the coast of Honduras, and in Cuba.
- The rest of the trip was an education in what it means to be a tourist in Guatemala. It’s a very strange culture and I don’t like it. During the times when I was traveling and not doing anything very specific, I read a lot from a book I found in Antigua called Voices From the Silence: Guatemalan Literature of Resistance, which descriptively paints the picture of Guatemalan social and political history since the Spanish Conquest. It was hard to enjoy myself and read this book at the same time.
-Back in San Marcos, at La Cambalacha, I am starting up again with my Spanish lessons and with teaching classes. I helped two students, Diego and Juana, to write a short skit in English for Teatro en Ingles, which I hope they will be able to perform next week. I am having very intense discussions with my Spanish teacher about Guatemalan politics, the state of the Mayan people, the problem with capitalism, the tourist industry, and life in general.
I am overwhelmed with knowledge and I don’t quite know what form to put it all in. I am thinking about writing a series of essays when I get home, but much of my knowledge is experiential and not solidly researched in terms of academic texts, so I almost want to make this a writing contract and just write about everything narratively. Any advice about how to put it all together would be most appreciated, since the learning here spans many different subject areas. (Maybe that would be a more productive discussion when I get home, too).
Okay. I apologize for the lengthiness. I’ll keep in touch!
Blythe
