I realized that I haven`t posted one on my current `home`. Quetzaltenango, more commonly known as it`s Mayan name, Xela, is the second largest city in Guatemala, after Guatemala City. I didn`t feel that it`s all the big until I went up to the mountain and was able to look down on this sprawling city packed with rows of corrugated iron roofs. It is a laid back town up in the Western Highlands and has a population of about 100,000 of mostly Mayans. Spanish is the predominant language in use but two other Mayan dialects are also spoken in this region, Mam and Quiche (pronounced kee-che).
One of my friends here, Karen `Dos` from New Zealand (Karen 2 in spanish. I am Karen `Uno` because I got to school first) said something that I find true for myself as well, that we have learned to accept the differences being in a third world country, and that difference is quickly becoming our normality. As I started thinking about where Charlie and I would go traveling when he arrives, I got a weird sad feeling, just like when I left home. I am amazed at quickly I have made this place, somewhere so different from where I have lived, where poverty is a harsh reality, home.
My daily routine consists of being woken up by firecrackers at 6am (don`t ask me why, they play with firecrackers at all times of the day and night here), breakfast at 7:15am with the family. I walk along rough cobbled stone streets, passing women in colorful fabrics, some carrying huge baskets on top of their heads. Quite likely at least one drunk asleep on the side of the street.
I have one on one spanish class from 8am - 1pm. But my Spanish lessons don`t end there. We chat with the family back at home during lunch and after that my brain really start to hurt. My school, Kie-Balam (something-Jaguar in Quiche) is in a relatively big house with a courtyard in the middle. When it`s warm out we would have our lessons outside. Most days we have optional activities at school, from visiting the nearby markets or a women weavers cooperative, a talk on natural medicine or on women in Guatemala, to learning to cook a typical Mayan dish or watching a movie in Spanish. I have made a group of friends, all girls taking spanish at my school who are also traveling alone and share my interests - a side note, i think i have met more girls then guys traveling on their own here. We frequent the same cafes for emailing and studying over coffee. A few of us also just started helping out at an organic farm a couple afternoons a week. I am also looking into working with Habitat for humanity so my afternoons will soon be even busier.
This might be a third world country but they do have high speed internet access. I think a bunch of cafes have sprung up with the rising popularity of Xela being a premier place to study Spanish. I definitely recommend learning Spanish here over Barcelona. The cafe we go to most is Cafeteria.net. You would never have guessed that it is a cafe in the third world. All the computers have Windows XP, CD burners, etc. They also have good coffee and chocolate cake. There aren`t too many places where you can get good Guatemala coffee because they can`t afford not to export it all.
By dinner time I am so tired I can hardly think, much less in Spanish. But I usually manage to spit out a few sentences about how my day went and sometimes even a conversation on interesting facts about Guatemala, Hong Kong, Chinese culture, and life in general. As if I didn`t already have enough to do, I decided to work at a cafe a few nights a week, for no pay, just a free meal or a beer in exchange. Cafe Q is a really laid back hangout frequented by spanish students, musicians, and locals alike serving vegetarian food, beer, coffee, tea, etc. It is attached to my school, owned by the same woman, Marlo. Perhaps it will help my spanish and I might learn a few interesting recipes.
So yes, life in Xela is busy. I love it in a very different way that I love San Francisco and other places I have lived. Perhaps I like the fact that I am getting fully immersed in a culture not so easily understood by those who have never spent time in this part of the world. The hardships these Guatemalans, especially the indigenous people, have had, and are still going through are beyond imagination. Women can hardly survive on their own, much less feed their children. Lots of young kids shine shoes so that they could eat. Most of them don`t have homes to go back to. The only skill indigenous women have is weaving, basically lots of work for hardly any money. Drinking is a problem because that`s one way men cope with not having jobs and being poor. The young people living outside of the city don`t have schools to go to. That being said, many young people have the opportunity to go to University in the city, while working one or two jobs during the day. It is almost hard to imagine that the 30-year civil war had ended just 6 years ago because the people are so lovely and friendly here. Xela, as I have learned from the locals, was not as affected by the war as were other indigenous villages up in the highlands and the eastern part of the country. The presidential election is coming next year and there is a chance that the ex-dictator Rio-Montt, charged with Genocide, might get nominated. If that happens, it will be a even longer time for peace to become a reality.
Posted by Karen at November 20, 2002 10:27 PM