Go Fish and Other Games with Cards

Because Hendrick is the main source of my entertainment here, I feel I need to represent him proportionately on my blog. So here he is once again, this time with a fresh hair cut. 

"Pregunteme para el siete." Ask me for the seven, Hendrick whispers to me. He knew I was looking for it and got one on his last draw; or just realized he had one all along.

After the game is over, Hendrick likes to play "Throw the Cards Around the Table". It is not my favorite game. 

Notice the crumbs on his lips. This kid is rarely without a cookie in his hand and he rarely shares. 

The Caballero himself. 

Cotzal to Cunén

Leaving the town of Cotzal after tasting the best chuchitos yet in Guatemala, we began to climb slowly but steadily on a gravel road. After about an hour we approached a small town, and men with shotguns approached us. There was a blockade on the road and a fire under a make-shift hut to the left. Men from this town take turns keeping armed guard to protect their town from the gangs that had been making their presence known in other villages around the area. After a short conversation the men searched our packs and let us pass, wishing us well. 

After passing through town we took a turn up a dirt path. A few stream crossings and even more darting under barbed wire and we were still climbing. 

At this point and path led us into the forest. A tunnel entrance on a rocky path that had to have been ancient. 

The forests were amazingly lush with big trees draped in moss and in-navigably thick underbrush.

The story goes that a while ago someone wanted to start a zoo or a wildlife park in this area. The zoo failed and the proprietors decided to just let the howler monkeys go. Supposedly these monkeys have adapted to the drizzly and cold weather and are thriving. We didn't hear any that day; probably because it was drizzly and cold. 

Nic demonstrates the enormous size of the ferns. 

Just like home.

After reaching the ridge, completely socked in, we stopped for some nourishing PB & J. The decent emptied us onto a beautiful wetlands area with this promising green path leading the way out.

And the sun came; after 6 hours of hiking in cold, drizzly, view-obstructing weather as we were finishing our decent. This valley was farmed with wheat, still green in the forefront of this photo and finally gave us a view of the Chuchumatanes Mountains area. 

Don Juan

I feel as though I have been negligent in giving proper recognition to the man I see every morning, afternoon and evening; who is probably, by these associations, my closest Guatemalteco friend. 

This conviction of under-recognition burdened me this morning as I was filling up a pot of water at the pila to boil to wash my hair. I glanced to my right and there was Don Juan, sitting on a wooden chair in the dirt yard, eyes squinting in the morning sun, a red silk bandana tied around his head like a turban, trimming his right big toe nail with a machete. 

I watched him for minute, him carefully working the tip of the machete on his nail, his bare foot rested atop his shoe with no laces. I thought about offering him my nail clippers and then recalled other times I've seen Don Juan going about necessary activities. 

I remembered watching Don Juan while he was shaving. He was again in the small, wooden chair in the dirt yard, this time placed before the faucet head, Don Juan's eyes squinting in the sun. He had his shirt off but his felt hat still on. He was slouched back in the chair with a long knife. He was dry shaving by feel. 

Another time he had returned from some work on his land. He seemed hurried as he cleaned and put his tools away. When I stepped out of my house again, I saw Don Juan standing, again shirt off and again in front of the faucet and again with his hat on. He was filling small buckets of water and splashing them on his slender body. It was afternoon at this point, but it was still a chilly day. Don Juan utilizes what is functional; a machete will cut his toe nail. Cold water out of the tap will clean him. And that is good enough for him. 

Don Juan comes from the old school. He sleeps up here, in his one room and me in another room on the other side of an adobe wall. His wife sleeps with one of their daughters, below at the houses. When she comes to speak with him, she sits at his feet. 

He will enter his room with incense in the evening and mumble prayers by candle light because his room has no electricity for hours on end, the piney scent of the incense creeping over the wall and filling my room.

Don Juan addresses me after I address him with the polite morning, afternoon and evening salutations, and beyond that we rarely chat. At first, I thought this is just because he is a serious man. But when Nic was around, Don Juan would get chatty, even laugh, but only with Nic. Then when Johnny came for a visit, even with Johnny's limited spanish, Don Juan would seek him out, chat him up for a few minutes. After Johnny left, Don Juan recalled to me what a good man Johnny is. I don't take this personally, that Don Juan doesn't chat with me even though we share a common living space. I have learned now not to. 

I feel connected to Don Juan, even though he seems very distant.  Maybe it is sharing these intimate moments, these everyday activities of living a life, keeping a house and maintaining hygene that bond me with him. 

The other day Johnny and I stopped by the cooperativa to get some stuffs for the road. We had our backpacks on and were headed north for the weekend to do some hiking. Don Juan was also there, buying minutes for his cell phone. "Ah, my family is leaving", he lamented. "Really, you're family is leaving?" I answered perplexed; the family doesn't travel all that much. "Where are they going?" I asked. Don Juan paused a minute and said "You. You live in my house, you are my family."

John, Don and Tigger

Here Johnny sports the traditional traje of the men from Solola while an obliging Mayan women patiently waits to haggle with us for it.

What?  

Don runs a self-sustaining hostel/killer restaurant/nonprofit in Nebaj called Mayan Hope. All proceeds go towards schools in the Ixil Triangle area; the area hit hardest by the war. Here he takes a cigarette break after cooking all 12 of us hearty breakfasts with the help of a volunteer wait staff of one. 

Don's cat, Tigger takes advantage of the break as well. Ya know how people say that sometimes pets look like their owners?   

Don Diego

About once a week I walk 40 minutes to sit in this room with this man. Don Diego Adrian speaks five indigenous languages and a bit of English and German. He has traveled to many countries teaching about Mayan culture and language. He is a Mayan Priest. He literally wrote the K'iche dictionary. Every time we have class his warm wife, Pascua greets me with a smile and a hug.  Also every time we have class roosters crow just behind me in the yard, his grandkids dodge in and out of the room, always looking at me unblinkingly and a cat or two is shooed out of the house. Always to my left is an alter of mixed devotions with a bucket of wilting flowers. He gives me lessons on a small, green chalkboard that hangs crookedly on the wall. 

K'iche is a really difficult language to learn; not so much because of it's structure, as it is similar to English, but because the sounds are so strange to my American ears. Although class can sometimes be frustrating because of the difficulty of the language and also because Don Diego is aging and can sometimes loose track of the lesson, I always leave happy I was there. Last week, Don Diego taught me the words for about ten different birds. All of them, as he described, "are about this big (making a small cupping motion with his hand about 5 inches above the table), black (or blue) and live in the corn". 

This is the scene Johnny and I were greeted with as we walked home after a day of travels. Something always seems to remind me of how beautiful this place really is. 

Buddies and Banana Cakes

Hendrick displaying his poker face for a game of Go Fish.

Johnny is here for a visit. Hendrick always takes a minute to warm up to new gringos around as he is quite the jealous kid. He tells me that I don't need him as a friend because I have a new friend. But, when Hendrick does come around, he really comes around. He stayed with us for a few hours, playing cards into the night. 

Monday morning I baked some cakes with the committee. Here, Hendrick observes carefully in anticipation of a piece of warm banana cake. 

After demonstrating how to make the first cake the women worked together to make the second.

Team work: Doña Ana, Teresa, Katarina and Feliciana.