Comitancillo

We arrived in San Marcos after an 8 hour bus ride. Meeting currently serving volunteers, they quickly escorted us to Red Chayna, the Chinese restaurant famous for pizza. Not only was it two for one day but it was also the anniversary of the opening of the restaurant. Pine needles were scattered across the floor, balloons clung to the ceiling and TV and radio crews bounced from table to table. Each of us had our turn at the microphone, boasting the glories of the pizza topped with hot dogs. Aron was even wearing his Mao shirt.
I parted ways with the municipal development volunteers and ventured to meet with my own kind, the aggies. Kelly, who would be hosting me for the coming 3 days, lives in Comitancillo, San Marcos. Comi is the poorest community in Guatemala according to a UN report. It is an hour and a half bus ride from the city of San Marcos down a dirt road that precariously winds up, over and through high rolling hills. As we capped the final hill and the city of Comi came into view, my initial reaction was that it looked like the pictures I have seen of the Holy City of Tibet, Lhasa. Perched on a hilltop, big cement buildings with arched balconies dominating the small houses surrounding. The gorges gave way to muddy swiftly flowing rivers and the clouds hovered in the gorges.
The next morning Kelly and I took a 15-minute bus ride back into the mountains to meet with a group of women she has been working with. We arrived at the house of la promotora only to hear that she was visiting another town for their feria. We opted to walk back to Comi via a road that had been closed due to landslides. About an hour into the walk, we encountered the slide. Massive boulders splintered and fell from the mountainside by the 50 foot waterfall draining from the foliage above. About 20 men worked slowly breaking the boulders down to manageable pieces with sledgehammers. We were still an hours’ walk from the nearest village.
The next morning we took a bus to another village in the hills to visit another group of women. We brought worms with us and helped the women construct a vermiculture box. They are going to use the fertilizer from the worms in the tree nursery project they already have going. The trees are pines and cypress and will help prevent soil erosion, a serious problem in this area of Guatemala. After a snack of eggs and tortillas provided by the women, again we decided to trek home. This time we wandered down footpaths through the woods. Pine, madrone and cedar sheltered our path on the slopes while bananas and brightly colored flowers lined the riverbanks. We stumbled into a small settlement of homes and found women hand-forming beautiful chocolate colored pottery from clay they had dug from the hillside. The last leg of the walk we were accompanied by the afternoon rains and we arrived home soaking wet after 2 and a half hours of walking.
As the bus climbed the windy hills away from Comi early the next day the clouds hovered on the shoulders on the slopes. The sun broke the clouds for the first time since I had arrived forming a rainbow over the valley. I was sipping chocolate con leche and my boots were still wet from the hike the day before.