A month has passed. Blogging is not a discipline I’ve
developed well. So many stories…
I spent a week in
Chukmuk Dos, a community of families displaced by Hurricane Stan and spent
afternoons dusty and sweaty from games of futbol, basketball, and chasing my
host brothers and cousins around the yard. In transition I spent a few days in Panajachel
and danced with a drunken man in the deserted plaza while my trio of amigos/hostel-neighbors
played Old Crow Medicine Show on the violin, harmonica, and guitar. Jim’s
wisdom: “It’s a lot easier to distinguish where you’ve been then where you’re
going. That’s for damn sure.”
The past few weeks, I’ve been WWOOFing (World Wide
Opportunities on Organic Farms) in the tiny village of Tzununa. I am staying at
a small hostel with the other woofers and we walk up the mountain to the farm
each morning. The shower is buckets of cold water over a stone floor (and I
always inhale sharply and involuntarily at the first splash.)
“There’s not
much there,” I said to a Guatemalan friend.
“There’s nothing there,” he corrected.
“There’s nothing there,” he corrected.
There are churches.
At night, it sounds like the worship services are happening in my room.
The nearest church is 100ft behind, but the speakers seem to project the
vibrations of keyboard notes and prayers straight through the thin wood panels
of my room. The prayers of the leader (and maybe tongues) are chanted in
repetitions with an eerie yet alluring undertone of response or simultaneous
prayer, “ayudame espirita sancta.” In
YWAM we used to call this “Korean style” (everyone praying aloud at once.)
The farm
consists of terraces of vegetables, a permaculture food forest, goats, chickens,
straggly paths, and orchards… and occasionally scorpions. Nicholas found three
in the rock pile we were moving and held the third out to me after cutting off
the stinger. (The knowledge of their
presence has given me a not completely irrational fear of stepping anywhere in
the dark.)
Shad, the farmer, is
full of knowledge, passion, and humility. He often says, ‘I should have…”
recounting the lessons of this land he’s gained through mistakes. Explaining his permaculture system he talked
of how what excite him are the unexpected things that happen in the in-between
spaces, the borders—the things that grow in the space between the terraces and
the future-pond space, between the goat house and the orchard. “You have to let
the land unfold itself. It’s a patient process.” It made me think of my own fascination with
borderlands, on the crossings that create unexpected things in our selves.
Bonhoffer wrote, “I discovered later, and I’m still discovering right up to
this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns
to live by faith.” I’ve been milking
goats, making cheese and yogurt, picking coffee, planting/transplanting, and
weeding. These tasks are like praying
the rosary I think, quiet and repetitive, the mind growing quieter. It is the
body’s way of listening for God.
I walk thirty
minutes into San Marcos most afternoons to buy vegetables or drink café. Kyle and Kayley, the two servers at Cafe Fe are like old friends. After it rains the air is pressed
with the scent of herbs and flowers. Over the past month, I’ve made a group of
Guatemalan friends in San Marcos and explored, gone to grand openings, celebrated Halloween, and crashed on the floor of
stranger-friends. Yesterday, a group of
teenage boys riding in the back of a truck shouted a comment about my tattoo,
then their truck rattled to a stop and I followed their motioning to scurry
over the tailgate for a ride home. Their Spanish is rapid and I listen first
for the verbs, still piecing together my sentences but it is becoming easier. I am surprised how I find similar souls no matter where I go, find conversations flowing towards issues that lay on my heart. It's going to be strange to say goodbye to these pueblos that have grown so familiar over the past five weeks.
