San Marcos, Lake Atitlan!

15.04

After spending some time at Lencho´s place in order to pass the data (Actually it took us longer than we thought) we had to move in order to see new places and live new experiences! When we were asking other travellers about places that worth to see, there was a place that everybody mentioned. And this was the Lake Atitlan, Around the lake, there were located a lot of communities, with different characteristics each. Our choice, was San Marcos which was a more relaxed place, deep into spirituality and known to possess a trapping energy!!

And indeed, this place was kind of.. Magic! The landscape was pretty strong, and the energy surrounding it quite intense, also due to the nice people around it. We camped in our hostel Kaivalya in which we found amazing people that helped us a lot when we needed it. In general you could find in the place a lot of spirituality: yoga courses, mediation meetings, reiki sessions, reflexology, medicinal plant excursions etc etc etc, all in considerable (European) prices.. And this made us a bit frustrated. However we learned to cope with it, abstaining from consuming for spiritual purposes, and try to find our way in the place! And this is when we first heard for the cacao ceremony!

In a small yard with a biiiig huge garden all around, we first met Keith (the cacao shaman, as people refer to him), Barbara, as well as plenty of happy beautiful beings (some of them with substantial features, others with ethereal etc.). The ceremony included the drinking of a powerful dose of cacao while calling the cacao spirits, and a deep meditation guided by Keith afterwards.

As they are inviting the cacao spirits! 

The ceremony was quite intense. In the beginning is difficult to shut your logical mind and only feel with your soul. But once you achieve it, everything comes on its own! You learn to smile passionately (go to glow as he was referring to it) and to transmit all the good energy that you have inside you, to your beloved ones.. We hope that all of you felt, the excessive amounts of love that we send you during those days! :D
Something special about this place, is that Keith was asking more for a donation and not a strict payment, which could also be a voluntary work for a morning in his beautiful garden! And that´s what we did. If you want to know more about Keith and the cacao ceremony you can take a look here: http://ceremonialcacao.blogspot.com/. Keith is planning an excessive tour in Europe, where is going to curry out the ceremony, with fellow cacao mystics of the world!

As you can see this time, the photos are not ours, as we forgot to take (care of) our camera! But no hard feelings at all. After all we learned that there are not mistakes, only lessons to be learned! And this is the best thing that we got out of that place. Lessons that make you improve, and be a better person.
Lessons and beautiful, helpful people. And with these powers, we go on..

The Mayan ceremony

Wednesday 13.03

We were expecting this day since we first arrived in Rio Negro  The story of the massacre is described before from Nere here. The short version is that 20 years ago, bastard millitars massacred 177 women and children.
In a commemoration day for the lost people, like every year there is a kid of festivity on the very same place of the massacre. A school from the closest city as well as numerous other families which relocated after the massacre, visited in order to pay the respects. Our little village was full of new faces and a loot of voices.
The way to Pakoxom (the place of the massacre) was like a pilgrimage, that will end up in a Mayan ceremony (and a Catholic as well, but we don´t care!) lasting around 6 hours.

Our expectations were bigger than the actual thing that happened but still it was something really sacred and deep, at least for us and for few more people. The majority however, was tired from the long walking, the unusual for them overnight ceremony or more interested in the subsequent Catholic ceremony.

The place were the festivity took place (Pakoxom)

The ceremony was consisting briefly of offerings to the lost ancestors and to the Gods (I suppose from the actions of the Mayan priest).

After placing all the offerings in the altar, and the expected sacred smoking, the altar is set on fire. And the ceremony begins!

Big devoutness and a huge respect for the  indigenous people, who are still victims in an ongoing genocide...

Back to "civilization" and reflections about Rio Negro

The fieldwork in Rio Negro went quite good. Although, as Dimitris said in the previous post, the women were less open than men, so it took me a while to gain the respect and friendship of them (which was essential to interview them and get some information!). Therefore, I spent the first week cooking with them, trying to make tortillas (not an easy job) and trying to get some words of them, their live, how they make their crafts (they make beautiful textiles - bags, clothes, etc...), ... and I even tried to saw something (way simpler) in order to get closer to them. Well, it wasn't easy, they were talking in their language (Achí) all the time, and were answering me nearly with monosyllables... I was a little bit frustrated because I tried with all my heart to be closer to them and they were quite rude :( But, little by little I started gaining them, and after that week they decided in assembly that we were welcomed to  do our research with them! :D

An aggresive bitch!!

After that we spent the days walking from one side to the other to talk with people, which was not always easy, some people were living couple of km away from our hut and the heat was unbearable, and finally when we were getting there, the person had left for some days... oh shit!
But we finally did it! We even went to the school to interview those little rascals, it was the first time I was standing in from of a classroom to explain something and get something out of them. Just big smiles, lollipops and it went very smoothly :)

For the last day of our staying in Rio Negro we arranged a forest walk with our key informant to collect some plants. That morning we woke up and waited for him... we wait and wait and he doesn't come to us... oh nooo. At midday the chief of the village (who had to arrange our boat and pickup to get out of there the next morning) appears in our hut completely drunk!!! he almost could stay standing! It seems that we won't get out from here... We go to see our key informant at his place and we find him laying down on the floor... he was also completely wasted... we wake him up and with a smile he says, "ahhh, someone invited me.... "
Later that day we found out that the two of them had been drinking since the previous night until midday next day! No bad thoughts, we just postponed our forest walk one day and we got to our meeting in the university later.

Both of us, while emptying a cactus for making aour specimen collection . And it was not easy! We ended up with few spikes in our hands!! 

Finally, we can say that we spent a marvellous time over there, we really got to love the people and the kids... oh the kids were lovely! It was very peaceful to be in the middle of nowhere, without electricity, clock or phones. It was great to have the time to reflect, and we brought all the people we love in mind, childhood friends, teenage friends, netherlands friends, Copenahgen friends and family... and a lot, a lot of stories! And it also makes you realize that in the end the modern world also has it's good parts: music, information access, being able to speak with family and friends...

With my Achi grilfriends!! :P

Family coming back from their fieldwork

Margarita making tortillas!!

A tribute to Rufi...!

He was sad (and horny) for our leaving!!

Finally we hit the water!!

So now here we are, after one month of fieldwork we have arrived to Guatemala city. The city has, in my opinion, an unexpected charm. I heard that is an ugly dangerous place, and that it doesn't deserve even to get in... Maybe it's the lack of expectations and the fact that is quite different to the rest of Guatemala that makes me like it.
We have taken a cheap room at Pension Meza, where the majestic Che Guevara slept once, yes, at our bed :p
We are eating gorgeous vegetarian food, japanese food, italian food... yes, I know we are in Guate and it's time to eat local food, but we have been overloaded of  the invariable diet of rio negro, which included frijoles (beans) and tortillas (maize thing) for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We missed veggies and fruits, a lot! :)

So now we are trying to find out where to go next, relax and work peacefully! And next days we will post some new photos!! (Remember that you can click on them to make them bigger :p)

Lots of love to you all!!

Rio Negro

Saturday 02.03

Human without electricity = fish without bicycle!

Around two weeks ago we first arrived in Rio Negro. The scenery is majestic: 2 big mountain lines with a river in the middle. An overfloaded river, due to the stupid dam, which we had to travel for around 45 mins by boat in order to arrive to the "aldea" of Rio Negro. A community completely built in a couple hillsides of the mountains. You can take a look here:

However is the summer period, the hot is unbearable for 3-4 hours per day, and thus the mountains quite dry. This dissapoints us a little bit, in terms of our research but also in terms of the jungle that we expected to live in. Every obstacle for good. Let´s see. Life here seems easy.

Around 17 families with 90-100 people in total (yes families are overpopulated!) live here. The men sustain families with agricultural ativities and fishing while women cook and kneat beautiful and colourful guipils, bags, belts and other things that they can sell in close markets tha once in a while visit.
As you can understand electricity exists sparsely (for any turist group activity, or any celebration through generator), internet is an unknown word and mobile signal only for selective mobiles in one spot of the village. Our living spot is the "house of adobe" in the educative center of the village. A beautiful "cob" style hut mostly built out of mud , containing few beds and a table.

When we are not working with villagers, we pass most of our time in our verada, on a table which we use to study, make interviwes, eat and play cards. And these are the stuff we do when we are not around the village.
Just under our house is located a "kitchen" where different women of the village cook for us 3 times/day.

Our food is really simple and repetitive. We eat beans with pasta for breakfast, fish with rice for lunch and beans with eggs for dinner. Always with big amount of tortillas. that´s all. Every day. Every week. Yes we got bored already and we miss cooking and eating what we want and the times that we want. But is a minor problem.
The people of the village are different. The men are quite open and willing to share the knowledge, the women more closed, and we feel that we have to "gain them" somehow in order to interview them. The young people lost between religion and the wannabe westernalised and for the kids we are the "weirdos": they look at us, they inspect us and they play around us.We are something completely new and different for them, and we also enjoy it when we play with them!!

Actually we enjoy a lot the tranquil life in the silent village. here you can get plenty of time to think, to read, to have beautiful conversation, to reflect. There is no big light apart from the moon, so you can take the advantage and see millions of stars every night. Here I encountered the most star-full sky of my life and the most free time to spent looking at them. And something that we have misses: The most time to spend with each other under them!! And is wonderful!
And take some photos till next time:

This is our friend Patty or Pulgi!!! :D

This foto is dedicated to my friend Ilias who was ensuring me that I can find plenty of tobacco, filters and  rolling papers in such a country!! This is my rolling paper! Is baking paper which I had to buy from a bookstore!!!! Yes I lick a lot, and it is not always working!!! 

People we miss you all, and we send you lots of kisses and hugs!!

El Rabinal y Río Negro

Wednesday 13.02

On Wednesday we headed to El Rabinal, one of the three cities of Baja Verapaz Department. Here we were hosted by an organization who works in rescuing native seeds and distributing them among communities. One of its members is original from a community called Río Negro, settled in the river Chixoy.
Río Negro has suffered a very sad story... back in the 80, in the middle of Guatemala's civil war, the government and the electrification company of Guate wanted to build a dam in the Chixoy river. 33 communities would be affected by this plan, and were supposed to be relocated to another smaller and less fertile land...The inhabitants of Río Negro refused to leave their beloved and fertile land. As a result, the military committed terrible massacres accusing them as guerrilleros (you can read more detailed information of internet, just google Rio Negro Massacre ).
From 800 people, around 177 people were assassinated and many disappeared. The same day of the last massacre, the dam got approved. The people that survived run to the mountains, to feed themselves out of leaves, fruits, roots and whatever they could find. Some people stayed up to 5 years in the mountains. Finally, they accepted the relocation to the settlement created by the military to control guerrilleros in Pacux.
In 1994, some families went back to start up their community again. Nowadays, 16 families live in the new Rio Negro. Although the most fertile lands remain under water and the community is almost isolated they are back in their land and claim justice for the lost relatives.

If you are asking yourself, why do we want to go there to do our study? Well, the answer is that the people that lived in the mountains developed a knowledge about edible wild plants out of "trial and error" method and following the advise of their grandparents. Nowadays, it is preferred to cultivate food plants or just purchasing them in the market, rather than walking in the mountain to gather them. No one is blamed for that, but this pattern changes are worth to study and to document a knowledge before it is completely lost.
And how can the community benefit from the study? Well, I want to believe that the information we will gather about what they can find in their surroundings is valuable and they can use it sometime. From the other side, their story spreads a little bit more as now you know about it, so it doesn't sink into oblivion. Plus, having two guests living with them generated some good revenue.

As it is quite difficult to arrive to the community and we have to wait for a permit to get there. We have to wait one  week to depart... so we have decided to explore new places in this spare week... ;)

The second community

Friday 08.02

Today our appointment was early and worked perfect.. 8 o´clock in a 4x4 pick-up car, with me outside on the trank of the car to visit our second community with Kumi. The travelling time was much more and taking into account that the road was really bad, the bumps on my ass was a fact!!
The community was much bigger than the previous one, inhabiting around 900+ people. The family of Don Anastasio that we visited was maybe the bigger that I ever met, as except him and his wife they had also 17 children...!! Unfortunately we met ONLY the 8 of them!  The scenario was set in a mountainous area close to a forest and Don Anastasio´s "garden" was inhabiting the whole hillside.
He was pretty explanatory and it is a pity that we didn´t record his knowledge as we thought that we would come back...
He and his family treated us with so respect and gave us to try his medicine that according to him can heal every aliment that he encounters. Indeed it was so powerful and as we tasted it, we woke up and stand still with eyes wide open immediately! When we asked him the synthesis of it, he told us that contained over 40 different herbs from his garden! Astonishing! And when Nere suffered after a while with urine infection, he reliefed her with a herbal tea from his garden! They offered us a tasty lunch with yuca, peanuts and tomato sauce (all from the garden) and believe me it was more delicious, fullfilling and nutritious than you can imagine!! Ah and for the end , we drunk the super sweet-sour sugar cane juice that we made our own!!

They also accepted us to leave with them, btu we still have to see one more community to decide..
In the end of our day there, we took Don Anastasio, and his 8 children and went for a tour at the Maya ruins lying next to that community. The ruins of Mixoc Viejo..
The photos are speaking on their own!!