David
Walford
Missives
from Guatemala
Episode
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Episode 2
Todos Santos: January 31, 2005
The warm sun rises over the hills. Hills! These are mountains. Town in a crease between tumbling slopes cultivated to ridiculous heights. Borne of necessity, lifestyles adapt over generations to call it normal. Yet changes are afoot, and lures beckon.
The valley is swathed awhile in woodsmoke from morning fires. Rising sun generating currents of warmth, dispelling smoke and stiff cold of night.
Everything here is uphill. Cobblestone streets. Ancient, rough, uneven as the land. Of course the buildings higgledy-piggledy. We passed by the best place to eat in town a couple of times. Jumbles of roofs. Tin, tile angles jammed. Café Comedora on the low side of the street. I have to duck to enter. Bunches of stuff piled in front. Hunch down. Into the kitchen. Three women cluttered around a traditional wood stove, red light glowing from coals of wood. Pots on top. Steaming, boiling. Beans/ vegetables. Pans to fry in colour in the dark. Smiles. Conversation not a bit understood. Smiles. More smiles. At least if smiles are what is required, we can be depended upon, and smiles are basic currency around here.
Through the kitchen. Rough tables. A covered balcony looking over a steep drop. How did it suddenly go so far down? We have walked only about 5 metres from the road. The land crashes. Breakfast - beans, eggs or chicken. Steamed vegetables. A cactus called wisqile, rice. Or a meal at any other time of day. The view: town and valley.
Sunday, 13 Feb 2005 13:42:59 (EST)
Dear friends,
Sun shines in the high mountains around the isolated Guatemalan village where
we have been learning Spanish for two weeks. I yearn for the warmth of the
sun in the early morning when the family I am staying with gets up. It's
high here. And cold. Not as high as
It's high enough to let me know that I am not in super shape when
I climb hills, and everything here is on a hill. Everything.
High enough to be cold. Cold in the morning
and indeed at night not long after the sun sets.
The thin smoke of woodfires drifts into the clear
night sky, as people burn their uniquely styled cook
stoves throughout the valley. The smell of juniper
is everywhere. It burns well... slow... fragrant. Junipers. Giants here. Thrusting 50 metres and more. Up
from steep slopes. flashes of orange and
red sprouting from high branches: bromiliads. No
northern boreal forest bonsai here.
I yearn for the warmth of that sun when I get up. I didn't expect the cold.
It's six thirty and the family is stirring.
Time speeds by as my daughter Shola and I struggle with the world of a new language. Ahh
memory, where is my memory? Spanish. Necessary
in this wonderful and deeply wounded land. They say it is a simple
language to learn. Thank God.
In the mornings, with my host family in their one room mud brick home, it
is the soft round gutteral sounds of Mam,
the local Mayan language that I hear. It seems oddly comfortable to one whose
ears have heard Nisga'a and Haida.
But Spanish is necessary, and so on our second day in the country, we found
ourselves in the village of Todos Santos after an
insane wonderful bus ride, up out of the northern capital of Huehuetenango,
across the high altiplane, then carreening
down more switchbacks than I've ever been on in my life. A valley of crashing hills that never seem too steep to be able to
be cultivated.
Each of us is housed with a local family; Shola
welcomed into one with lots of children and I with
a poor even by local standards indigenous family.
A widow Eusebia and two daughters,
Marcella aged 19 and josepha,16. Not to be forgotten is grandson Rigoberto,
aged nine. We have come to know each other despite
the lack of language. Through a good deal of nodding,
smiling and laughing we have forged bonds which can
only be understood in the present tense: warmth,
an open window to the sun, quiet, laughter filled,
with common rhythms.
As we sit in the one roomed earth brick house with a dirt
floor which the family has lived in all their lives,
we reach toward the heat of the small fire of the
flatish cook "stove". It is morning.
Cold. Fingers cold. The roosters have been crowing in the valley
for far too long. Choruses of dogs barking and howling rising wildly and falling. Sometimes they can
be heard at a distance, and I wonder how long before
the instinct to respond hits the three dogs outside
our door.
Ahhh yes, the house. Small. and don't think level dirt floor. It too is sloped with a big hump in the
middle, as if with an odd grace purposely reflecting
the topopgraphy. Somehow strangely appropriate.
It is dark inside as the window is only one foot
square. Clear mountain light coming in. Steam from
the kettle with sweetened coffee in it rising showing itself against the
dark walls. Smoke too rising from the fire as we
gather round while one of the girls makes tortillas.
Slap slap slap between practised hands, formed, flattened,
edges appropriately round: then onto the metal
surface of the cookstove. Along with the broth
of vegetables and potatoes, or sometimes huevos (eggs) and vegetables, the
everpresent black beans, and what they call bread (pan) bought from the bakery although it is really cake; sweet and not a bit of yeast involved- to dip into the coffee.
So breakfast is sipped and eaten, baby chicks scouring
the floor for droppings and all things are just dropped
on the floor. If the chicks don't get it the dogs
certainly will. By the time the meal is eaten the
waste is also in some stomach or other. There is no
waste. Scraps from preparation of course go to the
pig.
A wondrous sense of being in a holy place, repeated a
million times across the globe. Heart, hearth, home.
Those universal words. Gathered
in the cold. Eating tortillas and drinking hot broth, steam rising
in the dark room caught by a window's light. Morning radio with
local announcer. The language mostly Mam with occasional Spanish phrases crackling in the background.
Tinny marimba music following. Always the tinny
marimba music.
Breakfast in my host family. Laughter.
Flowing soft guttural language. Smiles
in the dark. A sense of warmth in things shared. Being together.
Joy at having a guest. Not a small dose of respect.
And then we are off. Off into the cold morning.
The house of my host family does not get the early
morning sun as it is in the lee of a small steep
hill right on the edge of the densely settled part
of town.
All is well with us. We are soon to leave Todos
I must go now. A thousand vignettes remain. Some will
get to you I promise. Soon. as
more gather. Windows into a world. Thank you for
your journey with me fair friends. Hope to see you
soon.
love David (elfnomad)
elfnomad@yahoo.ca
Missives
from Guatemala
Episode
1 Episode 3 Episode
4
artwork by Jose Fernando Pinzon
editor's note:
David Walford is from Smithers - a town in Northern British Columbia, Canada. He is an ordained Anglican priest currently on leave.
This is the first in a series of "missives" that follow David's recent journey into the heart of Guatamala's mountain region, where he travelled with his daughter Shoala. Together they steeped themselves in the wonders of the culture.
These ongoing accounts are the first stages of what will be David's first book. David is presently on a second excursion, sponsoring artist Jose Fernando Pinzon to the World Development Forum in Caracas, Venuzuala.
