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I stare out the window, maybe a little
bit high on diesel fumes, of an old American schoolbus that moves to the beat
of reggaeton. Guatemala is an amazing and strange intersection between
traditional culture and modernity, I watch a woman board the bus carrying a
basket on her head with a cellphone against her ear. In Xecam, I hop out
the back door, something that still makes me giddy after years of
prohibition, and begin hiking my way upwards towards Nueva Xetinimit. This
trail has been used since time immemorial to traverse the highlands, it was
hewn by the feet of thousands of Quiche villagers, the feet of guerillas during
the civil war
and the well shod feet of those who want to see a Guatemala
through from a different perspective. The long dry season is nearing its end,
dust billows out from under my feet with each step. I step to the side of the
trail into the pines as mules pass, straining under loads of firewood that arc
over their backs. Men hurry alongside with machete in hand, we smile and greet
one another with a long drawn out Buenos deeeeas that I learned to mimic after
spending months crisscrossing the altiplano as a guide.
The trail opens up into fallow fields
furrowed with the already sown with maize that awaits the rain. A few moribund
pines dot the landscape, the sheetmetal roofs of Nuevo Xetinimit shimmer in the
distance. I am going to write about this experience, I walk thinking about how
to capture this place, I feel a love for Guatemala that is difficult to
express. I greet a family working in their milpa and gaze out over the fields
blotched with cloud shadows. A love this… grrrr….FUCK! I feel something clamp
down on my ankle and instinctively break it loose and drive it directly into
the cloud of fur and dust whirling around my feet. I shout obscenities and
impotently fill the air with a cloud of dust as I pick up and release a fistful
of dust at the retreating dreadlocked mongrel. The family shouts as a friendly
gesture, but we quickly break out into laughter after a moment. No rabies..no
rabies..The only casualty is my sock.
I walk into Nuevo Xetinimit and
approach two women sitting alongside a deep, dusty scar that cuts through the
overgrazed and overworked plain. I greet them in one of the few Quiche words
that I know, saqui’rik. I ask them how they are doing and they respond in
Quiche accompanied with a hand gesture that says someone is going to come who
speaks Spanish.
The farmers here, as in much of the
highlands, scratch out an existence by planting corn, beans and potatoes in
marginal soils on steep mountainsides. They hand plant a traditional milpa with
beans and corn, harvest firewood for cooking and live in simple adobe or block
homes. They lead a precarious existence; it is a harsh landscape where there is
either too much water or not enough. In the end of October 1998, Hurricane
Mitch dropped a years worth of rain that fell nearly horizontal with high
winds. The cornfields that provide the year’s sustenance were destroyed by the
wind and water. Above Xetinimit the deforested landscape and sloped fields gave
way, unleashing a torrent of rock and mud that left dozens of houses destroyed
and two lives lost. Central America was left reeling.
Most of the villagers left to try again
elsewhere and Nueva Xetinimit was born. Multiple families shared small houses
for years as they tried to get back on their feet, there was nowhere else to
go. Several children from this area have have passed through a school for
children who would not otherwise have access to education called Escuela de la
Calle. Escuela de la Calle and Hogar Abierto are the primary projects that the
funds generated by Quetzaltrekkers serve to fund. Quetzaltrekkers has maintains
close relationships with many of the communities that we hike through: in Nueva
Xetinimit alone guides have joined forces to build a bridge, donate bicycles
and provide school supplies.
 |
| Manuel grinning in the tunnel. |
What am I doing here? The village has
spent that past 240 days working collectively to carve tunnels into the
hillside in search of potable water. A project they undertook on faith, someone
had an intuition that they would find water here. They dug two tunnels between
5-10 meters in length into the hillside, each one 1.5m high by 1m wide, before
they found two trickling veins of ground water. Manuel, our liason with the
committee tasked with building the project hands a candle out to me and points
towards the tunnel. It feels like an affront to my manliness, I grab the dainty
candle and plod my way through the running water, crouching as I move further
into the darkness and feel a rising panic as I think about the mass of earth
towering over my head. Here, right now? In this tunnel? What if I died? They
spent months in this tunnel, it is fine. But everything is fine until it isn’t fine
anymore! I am too large! I feel like Alice. I try and balance myself against
the ceiling and walls, but worry that this will only weaken the structure. I
look and see Manuel’s grin lit by his cellphone at the end of the tunnel. He
points to the water as it emerges from nowhere. I awkwardly turn around,
quickly moving towards the light. Always move towards the light.
 |
| La lavadera. |
The guides from Quetzaltrekkers have
agreed to provide the necessary materials to fortify the water source and carry
water to the lavadera below. The lavadera is a washing station that currently
sits almost empty, but will serve as a source of water for household
consumption for several dozen families who currently walk several hundred
meters to retrieve water. I am here to help organize the project.
Six women are clustered around the
washing station as I approach, soaping, rubbing and rinsing the days wash. I am
often cynical about aid from a theoretical perspective, critical about
dependency and the inability of aid to achieve lasting results, yet I look on
and imagine clear, potable water pouring out of a pipe and the effect that it
will have on these women’s lives; it is beautiful.
I run back down to Xecam with a rock in
each fist, ready for the cantankerous cur that never appears.
The Delivery
 |
| Victor |
On a crisp and clear Xela morning I
walk out the door of Casa Argentina with Santi to find our friend Victor
leaning against his pickup truck with a new dapper mustache above an unsmiling
mouth and mirrored shades. He says nothing as we approach, until I stick my
hand out.
‘Les gusta el new
look?’ He bursts forth and starts cracking up.
We pile into the back of his pickup
truck and head out to Tubofort. I think about the name Tubofort on the ride
there, going back and forth: pipes are definitely sold there, but it isn’t a
fort. Fort is also not a word in Spanish. I ultimately decide that the name is
great: succinct, yet it has some flair. We wrangle and rope three dozen 6 meter
PVC tubes into the back of the truck I sit in the back and watch Xela fade away
as we head up to…Alaska?... the strangely named highpoint on the entirety of
the Pan-American highway.
 |
| Dust devil sweeps across the landscape as Victor takes a leak. |
Manuel stands on the roadside grinning
as we approach. He piles in and we drive into Nueva Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan
to buy the rest of the materials. There is also a Santa Catarina Ixtahuacan
where most of the locals here used to live they had the chance to change the
name and instead kept it and added three more syllables.
We arrive in Santa Caterina (the town
will be referred to by this name to avoid adding several extra pages) only to
be informed from the woman at the hardware store that the estimate she
previously gave us was wrong: someone from the city called yesterday and the
global price for steel rebar went up. Her gilded teeth wink at me as she
explains the unfortunate position in which we find ourselves.
 |
| Santi with continued excessive tortilla consumption |
We arrange for another pickup and a
truck to carry materials. We load them down with cement, blocks and rebar
before caravanning along dirt roads towards the project. Through the cloud of
dust I look out on the volcanoes around Guatemala City and Lago de Atitlan
stacked in the distance, clouds gently rising on their flanks. I only catch
glimpses through pines as they blur past. I spend half of the time airborne
while trying to hold together the rebar bundles that are coming undone without
pinching or crushing my hand. Classic Guatemala.
I once read about a study by Geert
Hofstede on the cultural dimensions of different nations around the world,
where Guatemala ranked as the least individualistic country with a mere 6
points relative to the most individualistic country, the United States, with a
score of 91 points. This can conversely be interpreted to reflect the degree of
cooperation, or collectivist ethic, within a society. I feel this when I am
here, it seems to permeate society and I think it may be what keeps bringing me
back.
We arrive with the materials in Nueva
Xetinimit and dozens of villagers hop to their feet, ranging from old women to
young men with gelled hair. Blocks are stacked on backs, bags of cement are
passed from person to person, rebar is carried in pairs, bundles of tubes are
snaked up the hillside. Thousands of pounds of materials are unloaded in just a
few minutes. The trucks leave and then I begin the descent to Xecam on foot
with Santi.
The Inauguration
I am out working on other projects for
a couple of weeks; the only news that I hear from the project is that it was
short two sections of PVC pipe, which Santi carried up from Xecam on his back.
I arrive slightly before Amir and Santi
on morning for the inauguration; old men and women in traditional dress,
teenagers in second hand clothes from the United States and little kids wearing
a mix between the two lie around in the grass as I approach. We all sit
admiring the project with mugs of atole de maiz in our hands. Everyone has come
together and I marvel at the outcome. Manuel steps forth to express his
gratitude for our collaboration on the project. One woman stands up and says
the following, which Manuel translates to Spanish and I transcribe roughly:
‘Aqui tenemos la
voluntad y estamos bien organizados. Terminamos con el proyecto en pocos días,
pero no se pudiera hacerlo sin la ayuda de ustedes. Gracias a dios que hay
personas con corazones como los que tienen ustedes.’ ‘Here we have the will and are well organized. We finished
the project in just a few days, but it couldn’t have been done without your
help. Thank god there are people like you with hearts like those that you
have.’
Another woman steps forth and hands me
a hand knitted sign thanking the organization to hang in the office. I also
receive a diploma to add to my ego wall, once I have a wall that I can call my
own and can afford to have it framed. We walk the length of the project and I
see the sight I imagined weeks before: clear water gushing forth into the full
lavadera. A few women look up and smile they knead their clothing against the
washboards already down from just a decade of use.
Guatemala is incredibly rich in a way
that is vastly different than the United States, it has taught me much about
life. I want to give back and support what I see as right in the world.
Projects like this and the myriad of NGO’s operating in Guatemala, like Quetzaltrekkers,
demonstrate a beautiful side of humanity.
It is about coming together and working
towards a better future one step at a time. Each step moves more than just a
foot. – Alex Jahp. Write that down.
