It's a hot sunny morning and I'm sitting on my balcony outside my bedroom watching white smoke gently float out of Volcano Fuego ("Fire"). It's actually a couple of kilometers from where I live and partially behind the larger Volcano Acatenango. No, I haven't felt any tremors nor heard anything from it, but people say it's definitely more active than usual. I'm now in the habit of checking it every morning to see if anything is seriously spewing from it. I've seen grayish white smoke numerous times and a couple of times columns of blackish smoke with orange red.
Actually the other volcano behind me, Volcano Agua, is more dangerous due to water runoff. A week ago last Tuesday we had torrential rain for a couple of hours in the afternoon/evening and a little town just south of here suffered mudslides, landslides and and flooding. Impoverished people have cut down the trees for firewood for cooking (every afternoon I hear a woman yelling "firewood for sale") and they have also built squatter houses in some of the washouts on the side of the volcano. So when the heavy rains came, the water created a mess across the highway, damaged many people's homes and buildings, and blanketed the local organic macadamia nut farm with boulders and debris. Though this only happened a kilometers south, I didn't even find out about these landslides until a few days later when my family showed me an article in one of the national newspapers. In a way this event isn't completely unexpected. This same Volcano Agua spilled water from its crater in September 1541, enough to overwhelm the then recently founded (now former) capital of Guatemala, Ciudad Vieja, which in turn motivated to citizens to move their capital to Antigua -- which was later destroyed by an earthquake. The fact is is that there is no safe place here on earth.
Religion seems to permeate most aspects of life here. Every Monday night during Lent, the people of Ciudad Vieja walked in little processions, groups of approximately eight to twelve people singing hymns, carrying candles, and stopping in front of different peoples houses. This is the via cruces -- the Stations of the Cross. In advance, many people set out small tables covered with linen on top of which they place one or more candles, a crucifix or religious picture, and perhaps some flowers or greenery. Women in their medium length skirts and men in the groups kneel down on the uneven cobblestones in front of each of these little tables reciting prayers and more or less performing the Roman Catholic Stations of the Cross. My guess is that their knees would be pretty sore by the end of the evening.
I remember three Mondays ago, I walked outside of the house to watch the processions after dinner. I was playing with some of the neighborhood kids (actually grandchildren of Papa Neto) when their mom Angelica came outside to take the children along to participate in the Stations of the Cross. The kids invited me to walk along with them, so I did. After we got to the second house blessing/station, I scanned the crowd and saw another neighbor Don Gabriel smiling at me -- I had shared a few beers with him a few nights before. He invited me not only to watch but to participate, so I did. It brought back memories of going with my parents during Lent to a Catholic church to say the Stations of the Cross, but this of course was different. People would come out of their houses to watch or to accept the house blessings. Children meandered through the groups playing and making me smile, and almost giggle, at their antics. Meanwhile other groups of faithful folks were gathered down the street also doing the same thing. The stars twinkled above in the sky as candles flickered amidst the religious icons and flowers. What I was participating in was very normal here, yet I found it hard to picture such an event happening in Eureka/Arcata or even in the town of Wausau, Wisconsin where I grew up.
If you see my Lenten procession pictures on Kodak Gallery, you can probably appreciate the fact that it takes all night and sometimes longer for a group of people to create one of the marvelous alfombras ("carpets"). I was fortunate enough to be able to work with my Spanish language school, Centro Linguistico La Union, to dye some sawdust and a week later to help create an alfombra from start to finish. Good Friday here is incredible in Guatemala. The tradition here in Guatemala for Good Friday is: no showering, no sex, and no hitting one's children(!). But surprisingly many people do eat red meat on Good Friday, partly so they can have enough energy to walk all day in the processions. I got up before 4 a.m. to take the bus into Antigua so I could start photographing the processions and alfombras. Out of of the 400 plus pictures I took, I selected what I thought were the best to share. On Easter Morning I was also honored to not only walk in one of the processions in Ciudad Vieja, but was invited to help carry one of the andas ("floats") for one block. Later I was invited to a neighbor's house for breakfast. There were no colored Easter eggs, but I did eat plenty of fried eggs with salsa, black beans, freshly made tortillas, mangoes, and instant coffee. The few middle-class and upper-class Guatemalans mostly enjoy freeze-dried instant coffee made from Guatemalan coffee beans. It's ironic that poor Guatemalans have to grind their own beans, but the middle class/rich enjoy Nescafé.
Now that the rains have started, albeit early, the coffee picking season is pretty much over. Last week I went on a bicycle trip with fifteen or so other Spanish-language students from our school to a local coffee plantation which also has a small processing operation. We paid approximately $4 each to rent the school's bicycles and to have a guided tour. There are two main types of coffee grown in the world; Guatemala is known for its shade grown beans. However coffee is not native to the Americas but rather comes from Africa. Coffee was originally grown in Ethiopia where the story is that a priest asked the local shepherds how they stayed awake all night. Supposedly the shepherds learned about coffee from their goats that stayed awake after eating a certain kind seed/bean. The shepherds figured out how to shell the bean and roast in grind it to create a black drink. The priest was so intrigued that he started serving this black drink to his congregation to help them stay awake during his homilies/sermons. As I stated earlier, religion seems to permeate everything here.
The assistant director of the school asked me to be the English translator for our proximately 17-year-old tour guide at the coffee plantation. I was honored, but therefore didn't get to take many pictures. Our young tour guide explained how the coffee is picked by hand, weighed, washed, then de-hulled. Then it is dried, heated, and the inner shell opened, before sorting it. Any beans with blemishes (mold) or not wholly intact beans are removed as part of the final process. Are these beans simply discarded? Of course not; not much is wasted here in Guatemala, at least as far as material things go. These blemished beans are used locally here in Guatemala. All the rest are for export, mostly to North America or to Europe. And as I stated before, in Guatemala the rich get the processed instant coffee, and the poor get the beans, but both rich and poor are treated to the same inferior beans.
Earlier I said, "picked by hand." Please understand what this means. During harvest season, December to April, Dad will probably get up at 3:30 a.m. to start working by 4:00 in the morning. Mom and perhaps five to seven kids will start helping pick coffee beans at 6:00 a.m. No, there is no school for those kids even though the government says education is mandatory. Besides, families of plantation workers can't afford the necessary uniforms, pencils, books, etc. even though the government claims that education here is "free." The fact is is that the family must pick at least 100 pounds of red coffee beans before 7 p.m. or they will not be paid anything. How much are they paid for all those hours of work? 30 quetzales, approximately $4 -- the same we each paid to use the bikes and to tour the plantation. Please understand that this was one of the better plantations; they had bathrooms, running water, etc. And this is not $4 per person, this is for the entire family. Just enough to buy tortillas, salt, and hopefully some black beans each day. Of course, if they accidentally pick any green coffee beans instead of the red ones, their "salary" is reduced. I'm not telling you this to make you feel guilty, but if at all possible, please pay extra for your coffee and purchase "fair trade" coffee. The extra money you will pay can go a long way here (and in other coffee producing countries) so that the workers can be paid a more just wage so perhaps the kids can eat better, wear some better clothes, and perhaps attend school. Children in Guatemala often start drinking coffee when they are six months old or when they are weaned. We were told by the guide that caffeine does not stunt the growth of children. This is one reason why farm workers down here have so many children, because if they all work hard enough, perhaps they could pick 200 pounds of coffee in a day. Realize that if they pick 199 pounds, they are only paid for 100 pounds. By the way, how much does an espresso cost in Starbucks nowadays? The coffee plantation workers are normally only paid a very small fraction of what we North Americans usually pay for coffee. Remember: BUY FAIR TRADE.
Okay, I'll get off my soapbox and start working on my homework again. Monday through Friday I have Spanish-language class from eight till noon, and I've had usually 4, and sometimes 6 hours of Spanish reading, writing, and grammar homework. It hasn't left me a whole lot of time to get in trouble, but I have started doing some volunteer work which I'll tell you about later. Thank you to all the people who have written kind and generous words of encouragement regarding these travelogues. They usually take me approximately five plus hours to write as I am not the world's fastest writer.
Other news: I finally found a place to buy tofu. My host family finally changed the calendar from January to April 2007 in the dining room. Mom and Dad are coming 6 June and staying until 24 June, nine days of which we will be in El Salvador.
By the way, if you no longer want to receive these travelogues, please let me know. I try to get on the Internet at least twice a week, although it is slow, I pay by the quarter hour, and the computers are not in the best shape regarding viruses and such.
Blessings and peace from America, Central America that is,
William Straub
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