Sundays in Xela

Towns shut down on Sunday.  I had finished my language school, but wanted a few extra days in Xela to see some sights and finish my weaving class. I moved myself to a lovely pension, set in a renovated old house near the central park, and owned and run by a Dutch woman.  I felt right at home checking in when one of her cats, Poes, hopped up and stood on the registration book as the owner was trying to sign me in.  It turned out Poes needed me as much as I needed her, and whenever I would sit down, for breakfast or to use the pension's computer, Poes would get on my lap and start to purr, and she would snap at me if I tried to get up.  We got along famously.

Breakfast at my lovely pension.

Poes the cat up for her morning lap.

Part I:  Tiptoeing Past the Dead

Anyway, with all shops, museums, and almost all restaurants closed on Sunday, what is a tourist to do?  I resolved to walk the city, poke into far-flung corners, and try to find out what the Guatemalans were doing.  And this is how I found myself edging through the Xela cemetery, senses on alert, late in the afternoon on Sunday.  Because it turns out that two of the most interesting things locals do on Sunday is  1.)  They go to the huge open air market and 2.) They visit their dead relatives.  And cemeteries in Latin countries are very, very interesting places.

First of all, I had been wanting to go to the cemetery all week, but did not have time, and the school had specifically warned us not to go alone. When you get there, and are walking alone down row after row of crypts and tombs, you see why. But on Sundays, it's a safer time to go, as the cemetery is full of families, couples strolling, kids kicking a ball around, and oh yes, funerals...

The cemetery is walled off from the rest of the city.  I found the entrance by accident, thinking I had wandered into the flower-selling district (which I had) but then I put it together:  flowers, Sunday, families busily buying bouquets...I was right outside the gates to the cemetery.  I passed through a huge gate with wrought iron doors, and entered a long, tree-lined promenade.  Rows of tombs cut off from the main paved street, and stretched as far as I could see.  Many were very ornate, with angels and statues, family crests and flower holders.  Some were faded glory:  head-less angels, cracked marble, slanted bases, dead flowers. Some were just walls, with the tombs lined up like drawers, and each drawer painted a vibrant color.  If you've never seen a Latin cemetery, they are wildly colorful.

The late afternoon sun slanted through the rows, and Volcan Santa Maria rose picturesquely to the south.   The tree-lined promenade was full of people.  As soon as I turned off it, however, following the grassy rows down a line of tombs, it quickly felt lonely, with just the occasional glimpse of another couple in a distant row, or a kid hand in hand with his father. In truth it felt creepy.  The dead are very close in Latin cemeteries--not least of all because they are all above ground--but also because of the activity, the color, the chaos.  People come here.  There were bones. I knew they were animal bones, dragged in by stray dogs no doubt, but it still added to the feeling that the dead are close.

I didn't feel comfortable straying too far from the main promenade.  I walked for a while, headed toward a hill in the distance.  Just before reaching the hill, I passed through an opening in a second wall, this one low and simple.  The scene changed abruptly.  The graves became simple dirt mounds, packed close together. Some had markers, and flowers.  Some had plain wooden crosses. Some had poppies or flowers growing on top. And some were fresh dirt mounds, unadorned, so sparsely mounded with dirt I feared I'd see something unwanted, like a dog digging or a hand sticking out.  I had entered the cemetery of the common person, the graves of the poor.  I wanted to turn around but I wanted to see. Smoke was drifting over the hill.  I could see one or two groups of people sitting by grave sites, but it was otherwise eerily still.  Finally I saw the source of the smoke:  piles of burning grass. I put it together:  fresh grass, fresh graves, fires that must be kept burning to keep up with the demand.

Flower vendors outside the gates.

This sign hung above the gate at the cemetery entrance:  The memory of the living makes the life of the dead.

Colorful rows, but still eery.

A fancy tomb, gone to neglect.  There are so many heads missing from statues around Xela that I kind of wonder where they all end up.  Is there a big pile of statue heads in some thief's collection somewhere?

The common person graves.

The colors of the cemetery.  Note the mounds of fresh grass from the new graves.  These were the piles that were burning.

Part II:  No Livelier Place

A good market in a Latin city is the source of endless fascination for me. As eery and somber as the cemetery is, the market is the polar opposite:  a seething mass of humanity, fighting to sell every carrot, every pineapple.  Pushing through the crowds, bargaining for every Quetzal saved on your sponges, calling out to your potential customers.  In short, it is a fantastic place to watch the people go by.  And folks were so busy with their buying and selling and bargain-hunting, I could at times simply stand to the back and take it all in, and hardly anyone glanced my way.

My favorite market scenes:

Fresh chickens in this section. And a lot of people wearing purple all of a sudden!

The fresh sponge and wooden spoon vendor.

So.  Much. Good.  Fruit.

Limes large and small, but I do not know what the bowls of tiny green fruit are.

The "back door" of the "shop" contained the refuse, cast off as these vendors prepped their veggies for sale.

Pick-up of eggs!  And plantains--an excellent (and common dinner option) combo.

Clase de Tejido!

 The Best Thing I Did:  Weaving Class

One of the reasons I wanted to go to Xela, and the Mayan Highlands, was to ogle the textiles. But when I read that I could actually learn something about the process of  making them, I was beside myself with anticipation. The day I signed up for my weaving class I was giddy with excitement, skipping home cackling to myself.  Yup, pretty much a crazy gringa.

For reasons I can't quite put my finger on, I have a deep visceral connection to fabric, and the more colorful the better.  I have carted home rugs, throws, wall hangings, napkins, wraps, and swaths of fabric from every country I have been to.  The idea of producing something myself took it to another level. The fact that I could learn it from an all-women's cooperative and practice my Spanish in the process was just gravy.  So many men were killed or just disappeared during Guatemala's incredibly long (30+ years) and recent (ending in 1996) civil war.  Many women were left without husbands, brothers, sons, etc. and this usually meant a serious lack of income as well. Cooperatives like this one were not uncommon, and allow these women a way to earn a living while also keeping alive a very old skill, one that dates back over 5000 years (according to Xela's weaving museum!)

The style of weaving most commonly practiced in Guatemala is called back-strap weaving, because the weaver wraps a belt around her body and uses it to create tension in the weaving project.  Tension allows the weaver to pass the cross-thread back and forth through the long thread, thereby slowly weaving your project together.  I obviously don't know any of the technical terms, but here are my photos of the process.  

Day 1:  Rolling thread into balls takes a long time 

One and a half hours, to be exact, to roll four balls of thread.  Oh boy, this could take me a looooong time.  Still, it was exciting, and it was my birthday, so it was off to a good start!

I selected 4 colors of thread, and rolled two strands together into a ball. One loop of thread went around each of the wooden turn-styles in front of me, and these rotated as I rolled. Pretty simple-- but still somehow took me 1.5 hours!

The scarf is the sample I chose to mimic--I will weave this same pattern, using my colors (rolled and ready in the basket!). The notebook was done by my teacher, and it lays out the pattern that I will wind my thread into for the next step--which will eventually turn into the scarf pattern!

 Day 2:  Next you wind, then you weave!

On Day 2, I spent the first hour under the very watchful eye of these 2 fabulous women, as I wound my thread, in order and according to my pattern count.  So I am winding,  following the numbers of the notebook--i.e. wind 10 blue strands, followed by 15 stands of base color, 5 strands of lilac, 15 stands of base color, repeat.

There are two key things happening here.  1.)  You are laying out the entire length of your scarf, in order of your color pattern, and 2.) You are winding your thread into two Xs, thru which you will later pass your cross thread (over and over again) to weave your scarf together! 

See the 2 Xs at the far end of my project.  That is why the women had to watch--if you mess up your Xs you really can't weave anything together. Also they counted my pattern for me, as I continually lost my count, concentrating as I was on not missing my Xs!!

These are the two main women of Trama Textiles, but there are lots of others who help out.  The older woman (pink shirt) told me she's been weaving since she was 10--for over 50 years!  All my instruction was in Spanish, which made it even more fun!

Setting me up for the next phase:  actually weaving. She is doing the hard part, which is looping a thread between every single strand of my long threads--you can see her orange/yellow threads attached to the wooden dowel. I will then pull  up on the wooden dowel, which will in turn pull up my long threads, allowing me to pass my cross-thread through...and weave this thing together!

Finally weaving:  this was hard to get the hang of at first, and this child, popping bubble gum in my ear and "helpfully" doing it for me did not speed things up.  Poco a poco, as they say, in learning Spanish and learning weaving. 

"Like this, see?"  Ummm, nope!  (But note how she is pulling up on that dowel with the yellow/orange thread--she will then pass the wooden tamp thru, and use it to create more tension and to pass the cross-thread thru.  Looking back now, it doesn't seem that hard!)

After I wrested my weaving tools away from the little girl and did it myself for a while, I began to get the knack.

 Days 3 - 5:  Weaving it all together

After my first day of weaving, wherein I wove for  2 1/2 hours and got the steps pretty well imbedded in my brain, the rest of the days were independent.  The women would just help me get set up (get the backstrap on, nice and tight so there was tension) and help whenever there was a problem, like a thread breaking or snarling.  But otherwise weaving is a peaceful, slow process, and I just chipped away at it, listening to the chatter in Spanish around me and watching the comings and goings, while passing my cross-thread back and forth, back and forth, and moving my "pattern stick" every seven rows (to create a pretty little pattern in the scarf) and studiously not looking at how much remained to be done.

I timed it one round:  4 minutes 30 seconds to weave 7 rows and move the stick.  In 45 minutes I wove about 10 inches. It took me 12 hours total for the project, with 9 of that being spent on weaving itself.  It is worth pointing out the obvious:  my pattern was quite simple, and my thread was heavy and easy to work with. To get a picture of what it's really like for these women, imagine a much, much more complicated pattern, with very fine silky thread, and weaving oh, about 100 times faster!

On a roll now!  Note how I'm creating tension with my left hand, pulling up on the wooden tamp.  Next I'll pass the cross-thread (wound on a stick here) thru this space, then tamp it neatly and tightly into place. Voila--one row! 

Close up of my project--the "pattern stick" gets pulled out and moved up every 7 rows.  You can see that it leaves a pretty little space behind in the weaving each time you move it up.

Happy weaving.  Sometimes I would get cold and have to get up and do jumping jacks. But it's hard to get up--you are literally fastened to your project by the backstrap, so you have to think strategically about breaks.

The colors of the trade.  The green piece is the backstrap that goes around your hips.

Other student projects, waiting for the weaver to return and start up again.

A friend from my Spanish language school was also making a project.  Angel was Chinese, living in the US, travelling in Guatemala, with poor English and no Spanish.  I admired her even attempting this project!  And it was fun for me because I helped her translate in Spanish.  She is making a "sampler" and not the full scarf, since she had less time.

Showing up at Trama Textiles every day is enough to make anyone happy!

Sooooo very close to the end! 

One of the women finishing it off for me.

Deftly tying pretty little knots.

Ta DA!  Done and DONE!  And check out the long line of women weavers on the wall behind me!

Making Xela Pretty

Xela is the second largest city in Guatemala, and it is still vastly smaller than Guatemala City (4.1 million versus 167,000 ), but still it is a large, bustling city, full of diesel pollution, narrow sidewalks, roaring buses, and dog poop.  Autos rule in Latin cities.  It's not like a bus would try to hit a pedestrian. But they don't slow down, either.  So walking in this city is not very relaxing--you have to stay alert.  Greenery is decidedly absent in Xela.  In many tropical cities, even the weeds are lovely, and homes have small gardens or potted plants, but Xela just did not have very much of this.  I walked for miles and miles in this city.  What follows are my best efforts to find the prettiest spots. 

The Parque Central is always a sure bet to find an oasis of greenery in the concrete jungle, and Xela's was lovely, ringed by colonial buildings and an ornate church, and bustling with families and tourists and small-scale entrepreneurs alike.

Parque Central panorama

Feeding pigeons on Sunday in the park. Women line the sidewalk here, selling tiny bags of seed. 

I'm always struck by how many children are out rustling up business in the park, as this young shoe-shine boy is doing.  I think about all the American children, doing anything but shining shoes to earn a living. I wonder how much this boy earns in a day, and where he lives and what it is like.  Children also sell things like peeled oranges, tiny popsicles, sticks of gum...I mean, how much money can you earn selling sticks of gum???

Happily having some more comfort food--a bagel!!  With some sort of vegetables!!  I also liked this cafe because it had the rare garden setting, in a little patio out back and away from the street., so I returned here often.

Xela's main church, and cityscape from the hill

It is a stretch to call this pretty, but I included it because a little garden with flowers like this was, in fact, so uncommon, that I worked it as best I could to find an attractive angle here. 

But what Xela lacks in green spaces it makes up for with other colorful accents. 

Pop Wuj Projects

One of the best elements of my school was that it works closely on community projects, and I feel like my money is making a difference here.  One very visible project is the stove project, which assists community members with the materials and building skills and labor to build a new, more efficient wood-burning stove for their house.  Since many people still cook over open fires in the middle of a one room, dirt house, with no ventilation, the stoves reduce wood consumption by 50 %, improve ventilation and ease of cooking all around.  It's not the school's most important project (that would be their local student scholarship program), but it is an easy one for us foreign students to get involved with, and it has tangible results every week.  The task the week I was there was delivering the stove materials to 7 chosen familes (later students would help construct the stoves).

The families are required to be part of the process, since the stoves do cost money to build and must be cured properly before use, etc. so the families must be invested in the outcome, too, and they do pay a small amount.   We students were excited to be out on the streets, doing something useful, riding in a big dump truck, gathering supplies from various shops in town, talking and joking in English.  I didn't even notice the families at first, since they blended in with all the other Mayan-accented locals, but as we gathered and moved supplies I suddenly noticed them, as they were right there with us, carrying items. There were six women and one young man.

What really got my attention was when I realized they were all dressed up.  I know because they all had their nice shoes on.  Seeing these families, dressed in their town best, in their good shoes, made me want to cry.  These are folks who live in one room dirt-floor shacks, and getting these elemental, wood-burning stoves was such an event of import in their lives that they had all taken the time to look their very best, even though we were all hauling dirt and bricks around.  We who have so much take so much more for granted, and those who have very little take every small thing with such gratefulness and gladness.  We have camping stoves fancier than these wood burning stoves we were building.  But to them it meant so much. 

First stop: hardware store.  Loading the stove tops into the truck.

The families, including a little boy in his footy-pajamas, getting bags of clay and sand.  Note the pretty blue ribbon in the braid of the woman on the right--a traditional look.

Students and families loading the sand and clay. 

Bricks, stove pipes, stove tops, and chimney vents.  Along with cement blocks and cement, this will build stoves for 7 families.

Truck full of students, families, bricks and dirt.  Everyone is sitting on the bricks!

I didn't get many pictures of the families as we delivered the materials, as I was too busy carrying bricks and cement blocks!

Hello, Xela

[the following is excerpted and edited from an email I sent while travelling]

Chicken bus, chicken bus, just my luck

I trust some of you are singing along to this old song, if you know which one I mean!

So yes, I left San Pedro via the chicken bus, on Sunday.  One good sign in heading for Quetzeltanango (known universally as Xela, pronounced ¨Shay-la¨) is that no tourists buses went, at all, from San Pedro on Xela.  San Pedro is a lovely setting, but I was not sad to go.  It's a town divided, and the gringo scene which dominates the pretty lakeside is just, well...totally and utterly 100% not my thing.   Reading my guidebook now, I see that it does refer to San Pedro as a "party town with a certain reputation" but I think all I read was "volcano hikes." I would describe the scene as:  Blissed-out barefooted, tatted and dreaded-out, beer goggling, crass and completly lacking in any cultural sensitivity type crowd, there for the happy hour and the cheap beer and drugs. So, adios, San Pedro!

I rolled out of town on the chicken bus, and I admit I was nervous and feeling weepy.  Travel days just suck.  And chicken buses (old US school buses painted in the most fabulous ways you can imagine) have a reputation for being late, crowded, and driven by maniacs.  Lucky for me, the first bus was not crowded at all at 7 on a Sunday morning, and while the second one was packed I did manage to get half a butt-cheek on a seat, and we did not die on the curves. So I was feeling good to arrive in Xela early.   Things dipped downhill in Xela. Main bus terminals are nerve-wracking affiars, and in a new city your best bet is to get out of there as fast as possible, keeping all your bags in tight grip.  I caught the first taxi I found, a filthy rattletrap, with a young driver. In the short and not-very-fast drive to my school, the driver hit a dog.  It was horrible. We did not kill it.  When we got to the school, my fine young taxi driver arbitrarily upped the price $10Q, and though we'd agreed on the price at the start and I  did not mis-hear him.  Feeling traumatized by the dog incident (and lacking exact change), I didn´t argue, but I felt disgusted and annoyed (the 8 minute taxi ride now having cost almost two times my 3 hour bus ride).  The ribbon on top of this little package was that I was standing in front of my school, which I have to say looked a little scruffy and forlorn, on a virtually abandoned street (everything is closed on Sundays), and my school was closed up tight as a drum to:  no one home, nada, cerrado.  So there I was with all my stuff, hangry and thirsty and feeling annoyed with humanity.  And of couse I had no idea where I was in town.

After seething on the doorstep of the school, having an appropriate mourning period for the dog, and reminding myself that the taxi driver had only ripped me off $1.30 worth ( and heaven knows he needed it more), I gathered up my stuff, asked the first person I saw how to get to the central park, and took myself on down to the park.  Everything is closed on Sunday mornings, but I saw in my guidebook an Indian place that opened at noon (supposedly), and I was in need of some serious comfort food.  I lingered hopefully outside the restaurant, salivating, and was relieved when at 12:15 they did indeed open, and it was indeed a wonderful restaurant.  Fortified by a huge delicious vegetarian lunch and an even bigger pot of chai tea, I walked back to the school (now open) and got myself settled in with my family.

Halfway through a meal that restored all my faith in humanity. 

Xela is a big city, no doubt about it, and as such of course it has its city drawbacks. It is high, about 7700 feet, and therefore chilly. Sunny during the day, tho, like 70s, and I did bring warmer clothing for the evenings.  My family here in Xela consists of one grandmother who is very sweet. My room could only be described as a cell, and it does not have a window (!!!argh!!!)  but I only go back when it is dark, when I do homework, eat, read, and then go to bed.  I eat all my meals with my family.  It is a 5 minute walk to the school.

My colorful cell at my homestay in Xela.

My very sweet abuela, Ceclia, in her kitchen. Note that this is quite a bit more modern than my house in San Pedro. Every morning she sat and drank her hot tea while I ate my porridge.  One morning she served me Fruit Loops. I have never eaten Fruit Loops before.  I did not realize that in addition to their toxic-chemical-coloring, they come in a disgusting variety of fruit flavors, what tasted something like banana-mango with kiwi-strawberry, that kind of thing!  My abuela asked if I preferred Aveena (a watery cream-of-wheat type hot cereal), and I gratefully said "Me gusto mucho Aveena!"  and therefore I happily ate porridge for the rest of my breakfasts.   

Pop the School

The school, Pop Wuj [Mayan word],  is run by a teachers collective, and is night and day difference from the one in San Pedro.  I could not be more pleased!!!  Our first day we had a great intro to the school and its various missions (student scholarships to rural children, a kitchen stove improvement project to replace open fire pits, and a medical clinic).  I´m signed up on Wed to help deliver materials for the next round of stove building.  There are students here learning medical Spanish and helping out in the clinic. Everyone lives with another family.  All the students are here to learn (not learn-while-drinking).  There are fun activities planned including one this weekend led by a teacher up a smaller volcano. I´m already signed up for that, too, of course!!

Mom asked what I´ve been eating.  It varies widely, but it does seem to almost always involve fresh homemade corn tortillas--which I love and hope desperately to replicate in WA.  I practiced making some with my family in San Pedro.  The families know and seem to try to provide a wide variety of food to us foreign students.  I honestly could eat rice and beans and tortillas every day, and some of that has been served (along with plantains, a favorite!), but my first family tried hard to serve other things like pasta.  There are veggies, but it´s still heavy on starches.  Lettuce or cucumber salads at times. Fresh and delicious queso blanco once, but otherwise almost zero dairy.  Often eggs, for dinner or breakfast or both.  Strawberries are in season around San Pedro, so I always had those and/or pineapple, which is cheap here too.  The only thing I really have not cared for is a very mushy form of tamale served in a leaf, usually with chicken inside that I pick out.  The cornmeal is so mushy it just feels slimy, but I eat it anyway.  We had cake for New Years!  It´s a tradition, for dinner and at midnight!  I also tried a local rice/chocolate drink (like drinking hot rice pudding with chocolate) and a plantain drink (tasty, made by my very sweet 11 year old family member in San Pedro, so that I could try it).  My stomach has gurgled at me once or twice in a mildy threatening manner, but that has been it (knock on wood!!!)

Taxi drivers aside, I can honestly say Guatemalans are an extraordinarily friendly and tranquil group of people. While walking down the street, you often look up to find the other person peering at you and smiling.   I was sitting in the park yesterday and a nice older man named Carlos struck up a conversation with me.  I learned about a neat train museum I will need to check out for Dad (Latin Ameria´s first train ran from the coast to Xela).  The best part about this little story is that we conversed in Spanish, and I can honestly say I understood most of it!  I proudly moved my self-described Spanish level up to "conversational" based on that incident alone (tho I confess it goes the other way at times, too, when I suddenly forget even the present tense of a common verb and my head wants to explode).  Poco a poco, as mi maestro said in San Pedro.

Today, I signed up to take a weaving class from a local women´s cooperative!  I was so happy about this I skipped as I left (having set it all up in Spanish, too).  My interest in Guate textiles was one of the primary reasons I wanted to come to Guatemala in general and the highlands and Xela in particular.  The lady who I talked too seemed very nice, and when she smiled I could see that all her teeth were edged in gold, and she had gold stars inlaid in her 2 front teeth.  I think all the lessons will be in Spanish, so that could be interesting, but I trust that show and tell will get me 90% of the way there.  I do know the Spanish word for weaving: tejido!!

I am so pleased with Day 1 in Xela it´s tempting to stay on my third week, but I feel strongly that I must get to the jungle and see some birds, and that means going lower and traveling a bit more.  So right now I am laying plans to leave Xela around about Jan 13 and make my way to the El Peten region, which is also Tikal, which I am thinking I really cannot miss. And, the birding in Tikal is supposed to be oustanding, as one of Tikal´s unique featuers is that it rises straight from the jungle, so that will really be a two-fer.  That will be fully on the gringo trail again, but I think it is a "don´t miss" spot. I miss the birds and butterflies so ubiquitous to my travels in Costa Rica, Nicarauga, Panama, and the Yucatan.

That is all for now!   I know this is a mini-novel, but I am excited to share some of my experiences. Travel is an up and down affair, tho, so all news, stories, ordinary happenings and whatnot from the mother ship are always appreciated and read eagerly when I get online.  Hope the weather is being kind to all, and that all are well.

Hasta leugo,
Rosemary

With my teacher, Zulma, at Pop Wuj School.

Detail of a hand-embroidered wall-hanging I bought from Catarina, a woman who comes during the Pop Wuj breaks and sells to the students.   I loved the bird and butterfly motif.