Me Gusta Caminar

Homeward Bound

2009-04-29T14:11:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody,
I changed my flight so that I arrive this Saturday instead of next. I'm disappointed that my time in Mexico City wasn't the glorious end to a wonderful 4 months, but that's life.
I'm very excited to get home and see you all (those of you in the Bay Area anyhow) and be HOME. What with living in New Mexico before the walk, I haven't lived at home since the beginning of August. For now, home will be my mom's house while I earn some money and look for a place.
I might just keep up this blog. It's been pretty fun and the most consistent form of journaling I've ever done while traveling. And, once I get a camera again, I can keep putting pictures up, which seems to be a big hit.
So, until next time...

Swine flu bananarama

2009-04-27T16:06:00.000-07:00

So, more people are dying and the city is getting more scared, understandably. Yesterday about 50% of people were wearing masks outside. Today was more like 65%.
The Reunion General, the Quaker thing in Monterrey, was canceled, as was the wedding I was supposed to go to. So, I'm thinking about coming home early. I wouldn't mind being in Mexico City for two weeks if everything wasn't shut down and my life weren't in danger. Sigh...
Also, my camera broke yesterday. It got knocked out of my hand while the lens was zoomed out and it landed right on the lens and bent it and it won't open or close or turn on at all. I'm kind of bummed (and you might be too, because I will have no pictures to entertain you with) but at least it didn't break while I was still visiting new places. I've never destroyed two cameras in one trip before, so that's a new record.
I'll let you know what day I decide to fly home. Think healthy thoughts.

Back in Mexico City

2009-04-26T18:22:00.000-07:00

First of all, if you've been paying attention to the news, you might be worried about the fact that I'm in Mexico City. Yes, 80 people have died of the swine flu, but I anticipate that I'll come home alive and well. Schools, museums and public places are closed. Soccer games are still happening, but with no spectators and Mass was cancelled today. About half the population are walking around with face masks (the other half are living dangerously, apparently) and working from home when possible. There's still lots of people out and about, but considering this city has a population of 20 million, it feels slightly ghost townish.
I'm happy to just hang out with my friends and not go out too much, but it is strange to be in Mexico City and not take advantage of all the great culture.
I'm supposed to go up to Monterrey this coming weekend for Reunion General, a gathering of Quakers in Mexico. I'm playing it a little bit by ear because this flu scare might affect travel. Hopefully they'll get the epidemic under control before there are more deaths and life can go back to normal.
I don't have any pictures for this blog, sorry.
Oh, one cool story from San Jose: I met the President of Uruguay on Friday. He was giving a talk at the Institute for Human Rights and Rolene's friend invited us to go as her guests. He didn't say anything too revolutionary, but talked about hope and other stuff I couldn't understand. After the talk we strategically placed ourselves in his path and got to meet him for a minute. Rolene quickly told him about the walk and he officially invited her to Uruguay. After shaking my hand he touched my arm. I am here as witness to the fact that President Vasquez has very soft hands.

It's good to be in Mexico again. I'm pretty distracted from feeling sad about leaving the walk. Actually, I had a couple days of feeling really sad and emotionally overwhelmed, but once the day came to leave I felt pretty ready. I'm glad to have these two weeks in Mexico to slowly transition home and it's great to be here with my friends.

I'll try to have pictures for you soon.

Barra Honda y Playa Tamarindo

2009-04-23T08:44:00.000-07:00

This will be a kind of short blog posting because after leaving Monteverde, I had a pretty uneventful week and didn't take many pictures.
We camped at Parque Nacional Barra Honda for two nights and it was HOT! The day we arrived it was 104F in the shade and pretty humid. We walked into town and Rolene talked to a school and the principal gave us the fruit. Strange and beautiful, no? And, very tasty!
The last three shots are from Playa Tamarindo, on the Pacific Coast. Rolene's family came to visit so she stayed with them and I stayed in a hostel in town. It was kind of lonely, but I think it was good to have that down time to process and get ready to leave the walk.

I'm in San Jose now and on Saturday I fly to Mexico City for two weeks, and then I'm homeward bound! I can't believe it's the end of my trip. I'm so sad I can barely think about it, so I'm not. This is not to say that I'm not excited to come home, because I really am, but these 4 months have been wonderful to say the least--life changing is more like it. I'm nervous to come home to "real life" with jobs and school and trying to find a place to live and paying bills and all that stuff I haven't had to think about. Luckily I have so many of you to lean on when I need it.
One curious difference in my life that I didn't anticipate is that I've been eating a mostly vegan diet for a couple weeks and I like it. I never had any interest in it before, but a series of events led me to try it out and I feel really good and plan on continuing to eat almost no meat or dairy (though I've had some fish, and in this area it's really hard to fully avoid animal products). I'm no purist so I'm not worried about cutting everything out, but after reading the first 3rd of a book called The China Study, I was convinced. Plus, for whatever reason, for the few weeks before reading that book, I had been reacting badly to meat and dairy anyhow, so I was ready to hear what the author had to say about eating animal protein.
Anyhoo, enough about that.
I hope everyone is happy and healthy, wherever you're reading this from.
Abrazos a todo!

Monteverde

2009-04-22T15:29:00.000-07:00

It's been so long since I last wrote I kind of feel like sticking my head in the sand--it feels overwhelming to try and catch up and fill you in on all that's happened. I'll write about Monteverde this time and the beach and San Jose next time.
We were in Monteverde for a week. It was supposed to be 4 or 5 days, but we loved it so much we could barely make ourselves leave.
Monteverde is a community in the cloud forest of Costa Rica, started by a few Quakers who moved there in 1951 after being jailed for refusing to sign up for the draft during the Korean war. They chose Costa Rica because it is the only nation without a military and because the area of Monteverde was a good place to move their dairy farming. They started the Monteverde Cheese Factory, the Quaker Meeting and the Friend's School in the first few years and later started the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. This picture is of the Meetinghouse and Friend's School.
This is the home of Joe and Jean Stuckey, who have lived in Monteverde for about 30 years. They are dairy farmers and Jean runs the icecream parlor in town. Joe took us on a great hike on their land, most of which is saved as forest. Rolene stayed with Jean and Joe and I stayed with other friends, Veronica and her son, Stuart. The roads are not paved in Monteverde and many people walk wherever they need to go. It has become a tourist destination because of the Reserve and the cute town, but it still has a small community feel.
From just outside the entrance to the Cloud forest reserve.
It was hard to get good photos of the Reserve because it was so big and beautiful. This was taken from a hanging bridge so it was easier to get some perspective, but I want to stress how much more beautiful it was than the photos show.
A carnivorous snail...run for your lives! Their only prey is other snails because they can't catch anything else.
This is the endangered Quetzal, taken with Rolene's camera through a telescope. The last time they were counted, about 15 years ago, there were only about 300 Quetzals left. We also saw monkeys, lots of insects and many kinds of birds. 20% of the worlds species are found in the Monteverde Cloud Forest.

Just outside the Reserve is a hummingbird garden. I've never seen so many kinds of hummingbirds! I read that there's 45 kinds of hummingbirds in Costa Rica. Big ones, small ones, purple ones, green ones...
In this one, I'm standing inside a strangler tree, looking up. It's not actually a tree. Where I was standing was once a tree that was slowly covered by these roots and vines and the tree inside died and rotted away. Now there is a shell, that appears to be a tree. Neat, huh?
This was taken from the edge of Jean and Joe's land of the San Luis Valley. The clouds are where the Reserve is and they basically stop right there. As they move west, they evaporate and the land to the west is markedly drier just a few kilometers away.
Cremita, the baby sloth! Benito, the son of one of original families to move to Monteverde, is nursing it back to health and will release it to the wild once it's well. It's mom was killed by something and it was injured quite badly. I never imagined how soft a sloth's fur was. She goes most everywhere with Benito, and is a hit around town in Monteverde.
This is Stuart. I stayed with him and Veronica for the week. He is the most open, loving person I've ever met. One day we were drawing and he asked if I wanted to sit on the floor. I said I'd like to sit at the table. He said, "Then I want to sit at the table too because I want what you want because I love you so much." He is a playful kid, but can follow grown-up talk too. We had a really good talk about spirituality. I'm going to keep an eye on this kid because he is a teacher in every sense of the word. Do I need to say that I love him, or is that obvious? Veronica, his mama, is also amazing and loving and insightful. She helped me figure out a lot of emotional stuff in just a few days. Sometimes (or always) people come into our lives for a reason and at just the right time.
Rolene, me, Joe, Jean, Veronica, Stuart at my birthday party. My birthday was great! There was morning worship at the Meeting/Friend´s School and all the students and Meeting members sang to me. Then I went to Jean and Joe´s house and prepared lunch for my birthday party. I made pita bread by hand and a veggie stir-fry kind of thing, and Jean made hummus and soy meat something-er-other to put in the pita bread. Sounds like a strange lunch, but it was delicious. Veronica and Stuart brought fruit salad and Rolene made a lemony cake. And they gave me presents. In the afternoon, I read a little then checked email and went to Veronica´s for a little salad for dinner. Then Rolene and I went to the Monteverde Choir´s final rehearsal for their concert on Saturday, followed by a great concert put on by Annie and Jordan and their visiting friend, Emmy. The last song of the night (a band with guitar, banjo, fiddle--kind of flolky, sometimes bluegrassy, sometimes soft and beautiful music) was a birthday song for me that one of them wrote for another friend, but she adapted for me! It was such a special day.

Monteverde is definitely a place where I could live long term (don't worry, no plans yet!). The sense of community and care for the earth are very strong. If you ever have a chance, GO! But be prepared, because you won't want to leave.

Nicaragua to Costa Rica

2009-04-10T13:36:00.000-07:00

We are now in Monteverde, Costa Rica. I'll tell you about it in the next post. For now, I'll tell you about the last 10 days...
These first 5 pictures are from Isla de Ometepe in Lake Nicaragua. It was so ridiculously beautiful there. I'm disappointed because I didn't remember to put most of my photos onto my flash drive, so I only have a few to share.

This is from the shore before we got on the ferry to go to the island. I climbed the smaller volcano on the right, Volcan Madera. It's a long story, but let's just say that it was the absolute hardest physical challenge I have ever put myself through, including the marathon I did. It took 10 hours to go up and come back down and it was so steep I had to pull myself up with my hands sometimes and much of it was so muddy, my boots sank all the way in and I fell countless times. I thought I might not make it down before dark and I was all alone and scared and tired. I cried when I finally got back to the hotel. It's a good story now, but at the time I was cursing the volcano and my decision to climb it.
This is the other volcano, the one I didn't climb. It's still active.

These next photos are from Playa Madera, just north of San Juan del Sur in southern Nicaragua. It was a long, rocky, dusty road to get there, but very worth it. We stayed at a surfer hostel right near the beach. It think we were the only non-surfers in the whole area, but we got along just fine. It's very hot on the coast so we did a little walking but didn't push it.

Howler monkeys! These little monkeys are the second loudest animal on earth, after the blue whale (or so I'm told). They sound like a cross between a dog, a bear and a T-Rex and they're the loudest at dawn and dusk. Good thing I sleep with earplugs (but they still woke me up a few times). The babies looked to be about the size of big kittens and the adults like very large cats. I also saw capuchin monkeys but didn't get pictures.
There really is nothing like swimming in the warm-ish Pacific ocean until dusk, then sitting in the sand to dry off while the sun sets.
I am in love with these yellow trees. I've posted a picture of one before, back when we were in El Salvador. But they are everywhere here! The hills are dotted with them. The Costa Rica countryside reminds me a little of Oregon in the summer and a little bit of Napa Valley in California, and sometimes of Mendocino. In any case it is very beautiful. So far, Costa Rica seems more middle-class. We haven't seen any poverty yet, but we've been in rural areas almost exclusively.
This is a coati. We saw it and others at Palo Verde National Park in Costa Rica, where we camped for two nights. The lizard in the picture below was about 3 feet long. There were lots running around.

Look at this crazy vine/branch. I was amazed because this was the first one we ran into on a hike, but then we saw lots more. It was a gorgeous trail with interesting plants, animals, rock formations. If it had been about 15 degrees cooler, it would have been perfect.
The forest had my favorite yellow trees and the floor was littered with the flowers. It was like someone went in front of us and spread these to make our walk beautiful.
The view from the highest point on our hike. Awesome!

Masaya and Granada

2009-03-31T15:42:00.000-07:00

Hiya folks,
We are currently in Granada, Nicaragua, which is right near the shore of Lake Nicaragua. It's partly very pretty and colonial and geared towards tourists (US food prices and all) and partly a good example of foreign wealth juxtaposed against local poverty. I struggle between feeling uncomfortable with my relative wealth next to their obvious lack of wealth and being happy to have delicious organic green vegetables and comforts like wireless internet available to me.
Most of these photos are from Volcan Masaya. This was my first active volcano experience, as far as I can remember. Very cool...or hot, depending on how literal you are.

This is Jeanette McDermott. She's traveling with us for a couple weeks and filming a movie about Walk With Earth! She's a journalist with a long history of environmental and social justice work and is a generally wonderful person. We laugh a lot and have great conversations about justice issues and spirituality. I'll let you know when the film is posted to YouTube.

This is the group of us who went with a guide to the bat caves at Volcan Masaya. I've been to more impressive caves, and seen more bats at one time before. However, I've never been this close to bats (the pics are too dark to be very cool) and we went down into the caves with flashlights. When we got deep into the cave we all turned off our lights and sat in the pitch dark. It was so dark, there was no difference when my eyes were opened or closed. We learned that where we were sitting was where the indigenous people of long ago had an altar and celebrations after offering sacrifices (animals, virgin women, children) to the volcano gods. Kinda spooky, but mostly just really really dark.
Cemetery near Granada.
This is the street that leads into the market area of Granada. Imagine, a few blocks away is and area with beautiful buildings, cobblestone streets and lots of tourists paying lots of money for lots of things. Strange, to say the least.
On the walk somewhere near Masaya, the town near the volcano. I have a love/hate relationship with the buses. Mostly love because they are frequent, cheap, fast, and interesting. The assistant hangs out of the door to ask people if they are getting on with a flip of his hand while yelling the final destination of the bus. I can't think of anything I hate about the buses right now. Maybe I only have a love relationship with them.

I'll probably say this a lot over the next month, but I'm very aware of how little time I have left. I don't want to leave and I can't wait to come home!
Oh, yesterday was Rolene's 60th birthday. The whole restaurant sang to her at dinner and a Canadian bought us bad wine. It was lovely.

Ciudad Sandino

2009-03-26T19:34:00.000-07:00

This photo was taken today on our first walking day since before the conference. It's so very nice to be walking again. This was Rolene's first walking day since the accident a few weeks ago so we took it easy and only did 8k. As you can see it's pretty dry. We've been told that if we were here a few weeks later, we would be in a lush green wonderland. Oh well, we can't be everywhere at the most beautiful time of the year.
Garbage on the side of the road continues to be a sad eyesore. I usually put lots of pretty pictures on this blog, but there's lots of ugly stuff too. In general, Managua is pretty rundown. They had a huge earthquake in '72 that destroyed a lot of the city, which used to be the most modern and happening city in Central America. They still haven't rebuilt a lot if it and we heard that many of the ruins were just cleaned up in the last couple years. Samosa, the last dictator, basically stole all the money that came in to clean up and rebuild so not much happened. There are like 19 fault lines that run under the city, so there's a reticence to rebuild big buildings but there also seems to be an overall feeling of hopelessness. It kind of feels like a ghost town. There really isn't a city center or downtown and someone who has been living here for a while couldn't think of anywhere that she would recommend we visit within the city limits. Rolene feels compelled to walk through Managua today, so we'll do that. I hope we see some beauty so it's not too depressing. ***It's later today now and we did walk through Managua. We were trying to walk as far as the University but a guy pulled over and said that he thought some guys were planning to rob us and that we should walk on the other side of the street. Then a minute later a cop came by on a motorcycle and said we shouldn't be walking around in that area and escorted us to a taxi. Well, there ya go. I don't really know what to say about that.
Ciudad Sandino, where we stayed Wednesday night, is the poorest area in Nicaragua. This little house is made of scrap metal, cardboard and black plastic.
It pisses me off that in the poorest area someone decided to take advantage and put in a casino. And it makes me even more mad that they're probably making a lot of money. Nobody here has money to burn.
We were walking along the highway and saw a sign for a reserve so we took a detour and ended up in Xiloa, where there is this pretty lake. It's not connected to super-polluted Lake Managua but during hurricane Mitch the water levels rose enough to connect the two lakes for a little while so some of the contamination came over from Lake Managua. But, people were swimming so we took off our shoes and waded in a little.

The place we stayed, Jubilee House Community, has two monkeys. This one is Bella and she's very sweet. I've never been this close to a monkey before. It was sort of like holding a baby except that she was holding on to me more than I was holding her. When I tried to put her down after a half hour she wrapped her arms around my neck, clung on with her feet and wrapped her tail around my leg. It kind of broke my heart because she seems lonely. I gave her one of the many mangoes that had fallen from the trees in the yard but she was still mad at me for leaving.

This is bales of organic cotton and part of the cotton gin at Jubilee House. Technically they are the Center for Development in Central America, but the community of 7 adults and 5(?) children who live there are JHC. They are a very cool group who have been working with and for the poor for 30 years, 15 of them in Nicaragua. The work they do is recommended and prioritized by the local community leaders and everything is a partnership with the communtiy. They anticipate providing credits for 100-150 small farmers to grow organic cotton. They also support the cotton gin and baler, an up and coming spinning plant and Genesis, a sewing co-op. They are the only worker owned Free Trade Zone in the world, which means that they can do business with all the Free Trade rules, or lack thereof, but their workers are treated well and paid farily.
The JHC/CDCA also supports organic coffee and sesame cooperatives, a security co-op, a community health clinic, a community pharmacy, and dental clinic. They also provide technical training, a Shared Risk Investment Fund, they produce biodiesel, provide volunteer opportunities and host delegations. I'm sure they do more, but you get the point--they are great!
This is Becca and her daughter Orla, who are part of JHC. It turns out that Becca and Rolene's niece are old friends. Small world, eh?
If you want to know more about JHC or to support their work, go to www.jhc-cdca.org

The Conference!

2009-03-25T10:49:00.000-07:00

The conference was a raging success! The event was called Foro Nacional de Technologias Apropiadas (National Forum of Appropriate Technology). There were groups doing work with solar technology, recycling, biodiversity, alternative energy, organic farming and production, sustainable building, bio-diesel, alternative health, free software, education and more. I don’t know exact numbers, but a couple hundred people came to the evening speeches and discussions and about 4,000 came through the tabling fair on Saturday and Sunday. We had a booth with information about Walk With Earth, solar ovens for sale (we sold all of them within a few hours), and art activities and games for kids. Our coolest feature was the “Arbol de Esperanza” or “Tree of Hope.” We drew a trunk and branches on a big piece of butcher paper and asked people to write or draw their hopes for the earth on paper leaves. People got way into it and the tree is now going to live at Universidad de la Tierra in Oaxaca.

Here’s the Arbol de Esperanza on Saturday morning, then on Sunday afternoon. The woman with the piece of paper is Renata Austin. She is from Berkeley but is living in Oaxaca until August. Rolene hired her to help with the conference planning and she is a great organizer and friend.
This is Gustavo Esteva who founded Universidad de la Tierra, the major co-sponsor of the conference. There were about 10 people on the planning committee, but Gustavo was the major organizer. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to spend much time with him because I was sick before the conference and then we were all too busy during the conference. He is planning on doing another conference in 6 months since this one went so well.

Rolene led a workshop based on the work of Joanna Macy. We talked in small groups and shared with each other as if it were the year 2039 and we had already made great changes and had learned how to live in harmony with the earth. We got to talk about how bad “it used to be” back in 2009 and the challenges we faced in making it better.
The next activity was called “Council of all beings” and people volunteered to wear a mask and speak for the animal they were representing. The masks were pretty hilarious, but people were emotional in their responses and spoke very deeply about their concerns for the environment. This was a very cool way for people to talk about their fears and passions. Mr. Cheetah spoke about how scared he was about the loss of habitat and how he didn’t know if he could care for his children.

This group, CAMPO, built a small house in two days right in the middle of the tabling fair. They made the frame and then poured dirt in and compressed it with a machine and then moved the frame up to make the next layer. If they were making a permanent house they would then mud the walls to seal it, but at the end of the conference they just knocked it down and hauled all the dirt away.

bike-powered water pump

We were in Oaxaca for the first day of Spring. Part of their celebration was this parade. The kids were all dressed up and needless to say it was CUTE!

We just got back to Managua, Nicaragua and are headed out to visit friends of my friend, Lisa, today. I only have a few more weeks of walking, then back home after a couple weeks in Mexico. Time flies!

Oaxaca

2009-03-18T19:32:00.000-07:00

Hello from Oaxaca (again)! We’re here for the conference Rolene has been planning along with other environmental activists in Oaxaca. At this point, about 50 environmental groups from outside of Oaxaca have registered and we’re expecting several more from within Oaxaca. I’ll have to fill you in on more conference details later. Honestly, I’m a little out of the loop about the conference stuff because this is the first time since Sunday that I’ve been out of bed.
I got hit with a bad case of amigdalitis. Sounds fancy, huh? It’s only strep throat so don’t get too excited. I’ve been pretty miserable. Being sick far from home is somehow worse. Luckily, we arrived at the hotel in Oaxaca before I started feeling really terrible, so I haven’t had to camp or travel while super-sick. I saw a doctor and got antibiotics and they are starting to kick in, thank goodness.
Sorry I've been so slackerish about writing and posting pictures. I have my excuses (less internet opportunities in Nicaragua, having too much fun in Mexico City to sit down and write, getting sick) but I'm sorry anyhow. Also, it makes it harder to write a good entry when I'm trying to remember what has happened over the last two weeks instead of the last few days.
Here's the short story: We (Rolene, Juan, Kent and Carol from New Zealand, and myself) left Marcala, Honduras and moved to La Tigra National Park, where we camped for two nights. Then we crossed the border into Nicaragua and stayed a night in Ocotel and a night in Estelli before going to Managua to catch our plane up to Mexico City en route to Oaxaca. We left Kent and Carol just outside of Managua and Juan caught a bus home from Managua the same morning of our flight. We stayed in Mexico City for three nights because it's so hard to leave that place, what with the fun and friends, and came to Oaxaca by bus on Sunday. I've been in bed since then, and that's that.

These two photos were taken in La Tigra National Park.

This was at the park too, but inside the truck. Who wants to play Canasta (Kanasta?) when I get home? It's my new favorite game. Even better than Rummikub, if you can believe that.

I saw this tree while walking with Juan. Rolene hasn't walked since the accident but Juan, Carol and I walked. The walk must go on!!! It's very different to walk without Rolene. We have a rhythm and a pace that we fall into and having other people isn't better or worse, just very different. The walk this day was very difficult for me. Not sure why exactly, but I was much more tired than I usually am. Maybe I missed Rolene.

In Nicaragua, between Ocotel and Estelli. We had to hotfoot it through the first part of Nicaragua in order to make our flight on the 12th, so we did more driving than walking. I'm looking forward to getting back and walking for a few weeks through Nicaragua and getting to know that country more intimately.

Our family portrait the day we were going our separate ways. It's amazing how close you can feel to people after only a week of traveling together. It was sad to say goodbye but Rolene and I have a feeling we'll be seeing these friends again.

The grand reunion with Jenny Barry, aka Yenny. We volunteered and lived together at the Casa de los Amigos back in 2006 and haven't seen each other since. Even though we only lived together for three months, Yenny quickly became one of my forever friends and it was more than awesome to see her again. She has recently moved back to Mexico City from Baltimore. Just another reason to keep going back to good ole' Mexico City!

I only included this because it's hilarious. To us, at least.

Agnita, daughter of Nick Wright and Jill Anderson, from the Casa de los Amigos. Kids these days won't let you take their picture without wanting to see it right away. It's a new generation.

Alright, that's it for now. I'll try to write more frequently--I don't want to lose my loyal audience...you guys are still out there, aren't you?

Ilobasco and Perquin

2009-03-04T06:56:00.000-08:00

Hi! Long time, no write. We had little or no internet for a while there and the few days we did have internet I wasn´t in the mood to write. The last week or so has been really intense so I´ll do my best to recount the most important bits. There will be some depressing information in this post because we were in areas that were very affected by the war.

These yellow flowering trees are pretty common and very striking. The only plant I can think of from home that is this yellow is a daffodil, but this is like 5,000 daffodils all bunched together.

We left Suchitoto last Thursday and headed east to the town of Ilobasco. On the way, we stopped in Cinquera at a bioreserve, which was a guerilla camp and hospital during the war. We took a beautiful hike with a guide and saw where the soldiers cooked (they had an oven like the ones used in Vietnam. The smoke is directed through a tube and exits far away from the camp so that if the army saw smoke and bombed the area, they would miss the camp) and there were still rough cots made of sticks from the hospital area. This tree is a ceiba. It has these spikes when it´s young but they come off once the tree is bigger.

This is part of the campus of Moje, a trade school for youth in Ilobasco who have dropped out of high school, or never made it there in the first place. They teach ceramics, woodworking and metalworks. They let us park on campus and camp out there.

This is in Perquin, in the state of Morazan. This area is very pro-FMLN, which is the political party made up of leftists, many of whom were guerilla fighters. These young people are painting a sign for the FMLN presidential candidate. The elections are on March 15th. According to a friend, the last elections were totally corrupt so the Arena candidate won. Some people have said that if that happens again, there will be a violent response from FMLN suporters. This country really doesn´t need more fighting so lets pray that doesn´t happen.

Near Perquin is the town of El Mozote, which was the site of the worst massacre in contemporary Latin American history, December 11th, 1981. This is a wall with some of the 1600 people who were killed by the El Salvadorean army, 450 of whom were children. The women, men and children were separated and killed, far enough from each other that they couldn´t see each other, but close enough that they could hear each other screaming. Only one woman, Rufina Amaya, survived. She was last in the line of women who were to be killed and she was able to sneak into the woods where she hid for 6 days until someone found her half-dead from starvation, dehydration and surely heartbreak. When her story reached the US, the Reagan administration denied it´s validity because they didn´t want to admit to having supported (we´re talking billions of dollars) a corrupt El Salvadorean Army. 10 years after the massacre, Argentinian archaeologists began excavation and quickly found hundreds of skeletons. Rufina Amaya died in her 70´s from a heart attack.

This is the mural in memory of the slain children of El Mozote.

Juan Franco is travelling with us now. He is an English teacher at Moje, in Ilobasco. He thought he would join us for a couple days, but is now planning on joining us as far as Managua, Nicaragua. It is really nice to travel with him--he is very sweet, thoughtful, faithful and easy to be with. I´m really glad he got to go to El Mozote with us because, though he is from El Salvador, he had never learned about the massacre. His family was very affected by the war. His family is Seventh Day Adventists, so they don´t go to war (the pacifist in me can appreciate that!). So, they were threatened by both sides and his father was almost killed three times. Each time his mother bought him back from the army or the guerillas. His mother was caught in crossfire three weeks after his older brother was born and still has shrapnel in her back. They had to leave their home town or be killed for not joining the war, so they left Chalatenango and now now live in Ilobasco.

Perquin is mountainous enough to have lots of pine trees, but still hot enough to grow bananas.

Me, Juan, Rosa, Karla, Iris. Karla is the 15 yr. old daughter of the family we stayed with in El Gigante, a small community about a kilometer from Perquin. The parents are Salvador and Reina and they also have a 7 yr. old son, Ali. El Gigante is a cooperative made up of people who all fought together with the guerillas. Salvador joined the guerillas when he was 11 years old because the army was killing boys his age if they didn´t join the army. He and Reina met and married during the war (she was a soldier too). Her whole family fled to Honduras because they were threatened with death by the army for living in guerilla controlled territory.

The fence at the entrance of a preserved guerilla camp next to the war museum in Perquin.

A 500 pound bomb dropped on this site, which created a crater the size of a house. The sign tells us that the bomb was made in the USA.

The view from the top of a hill in Perquin, looking north towards Honduras.

Reina and Ali at their home in El Gigante.

Salvador and Ali took us on a walk to see the land where he and Riena grow (organic) bananas, mango, cafe, oranges and several others. They also have more than 30 bee hives which produce excellent honey. We took a short cut through the forest to get back to the house because the sun was going down. It was absolutely gorgeous.

Salvador and Ali at a restaurant on our last night in Perquin. Ali got sick and Salvador was holding him so sweetly. It was wonderful to be with this family that so obviously love and care for each other. It turned out that Ali was really sick, so we cut dinner short and Rolene took him and his parents to the clinic. From there he was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. It was really scary because it seemed that he might be having a reoccurance of a blood infection he had several months ago, but we just called them today and found out it was a parasite and he´s back at home with medicine.

Whew, that was a lot of picture-loading and story-telling.

We are now in Marcala, Honduras. We had a really scary time getting here over a really terrible mountain pass (this is the worst road I have ever seen--huge holes, rocks, dips). When we got to the Honduras border, Rolene lost control of the truck and slid backwards a little and went into a ditch. She got out of the truck to look at whether the wheels were touching the ground. When she was out of the car (Juan and I were in the back) it began sliding backwards again and the open drivers door knocked her down, crunching her legs between the door and a big cement block. Then she went all the way down and we rushed out of the camper to help her. She was screaming, ¨Get me out!!!¨ When we got around to the drivers side, we saw that her legs were trapped under the front wheel. Juan and I pushed as hard as we could and moved the truck just enough so that Rolene could slide her legs out and then we couldn´t hold it any more. We let go and the truck slid back another 10 feet before crashing into the mountain wall. The miracles are threefold. 1)As Rolene was going down, she had the sense to turn the wheel to the left so the truck would hit the mountain instead of going over the side of the cliff, possibly saving Juan´s and my life and certainly saving the truck. 2) Somehow Juan and I were able to push a 6,000 pound truck uphill far enough that Rolene could escape. 3) Rolene is bruised and sore, but she has her legs and her life. If I didn´t believe in divine intervention before, I do now.
We´re taking it very easy while Rolene heals. Today we are headed to a El Tigre National Park near the capital. A few other things were amazing about the accident and the past couple days since then. 11 people, some border agents and some people just passing by, dropped everything to help us. Also, while our accident was happening, a bus pulled into the border area and broke down. A couple got off and asked us for a ride. We didn´t want to at first because we just wanted to get to Marcala (a couple hours away on the terrible road) and take care of Rolene, but we decided to help them out. Then we stopped for 4 more people and two of them happened to be Carol and Kent, New Zealanders we met back in Suchitoto. So, we had 9 people and all their stuff in the truck. It was really great to be able to help other people after our traumatic event. It took our minds off of what happened and gave us good company and extra support. Kent fixed the driver´s side mirror and is working on the door, which got pretty bent and Carol gave Rolene some healing medicines and did some body work on her. They are coming with us to the National Park, which we are very glad about.
Well, if you´ve gotten this far I applaud you. Send Rolene healing energy and keep us in your thoughts and prayers.

Suchitoto

2009-02-25T14:03:00.000-08:00

This is the chapel at the Art Center for Peace in Suchitoto. It's spooky and romantic and beautiful. When funds appear it will be fixed up. Sister Peggy who runs the Center has lots of good plans for the future funds. They already have a hostel and offer art and music classes to the locals and show movies once a week, but once the building (which was a convent and has a rich history, including scary stories from during the war when the nuns were threatened and forced to leave) is paid for, it will become an amazing community space.

This is the lake right next to Suchitoto (which is think is called Lake Suchitoto). You can see it from a few places in town. Sadly, it's too polluted to eat from or swim in, though I'm sure people still do.

We took a boat taxi across the lake to the town of El Sitio Cenicero because we met a woman named Cami who is volunteer teaching at the school for a few months. She invited us to come visit.

While Rolene talked to the 6th graders, I hung out in the yard with the kindergarten class...

...and took cute and lots of silly pictures with the kids. They love getting into silly poses and then seeing the pictures I take of them. I wish I had pictures of them looking at the pictures I take of them because they crowd around the camera and crack up. I won't add the silly pictures because many of you don't care. If you are in the group of people who really want to see endless pictures of cute children, we'll get together when I get home and have CuteFest 2009.

Walking from the school in El Sitio to catch the boat taxi back to Suchitoto.

We went out to Rio Quetzalapa today and then walked the 6ish miles back home. It was a short walk, but so freakin' hot, and mostly uphill. Sweat was dripping down my arms and off my fingertips. We didn't mind the short walk today, especially because we were headed back to town for ice cold smoothies. Ahhhh, heaven.

The river was cold, as I am attractively demonstrating here. And, there were thousands of tiny fish that nibbled our feet and legs. It was really nice to walk with wet clothes, except that we were dry in about 20 minutes and then it was hot again.

Remember the pictures of the highway and the awesome ditches from Guatemala? Well, we haven't walked on a road like that for quite a while. We've been able to find small roads, some of which aren't even paved, with little traffic and beautiful scenery. I can't even start to explain how much more pleasant it is.

The view while we were walking today.

We're leaving Suchitoto in the morning, which makes me sad because it has felt like a mini-vacation these past few days. The walking has been beautiful, the town is safe and lovely, and I've thoroughly enjoyed connecting with old and new friends.

Unrelated point: I have many mosquito bites, mostly on my feet and legs. Why do mosquitoes exist? Are they a necessary part of the great web of life? I just don't see what function the serve and I vote to eradicate them...who's with me?

Santa Ana to Suchitoto

2009-02-23T16:26:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone! We´re in Suchitoto now, north of San Salvador. I was here in 2007 for about a week and it´s so nice to be somewhere familiar, to know where things are and to see old friends. Today was a bust. I woke up and thought I was getting an ear infection but I think I just have some conjestion in my ears or something. In any case, it feels like my head is underwater, which makes me feel woozy so I didn´t do anything today. I´m disappointed because I missed out on visiting a village called El Bario, where I stayed for a night in 2007 and I was looking forward to seeing people there again. Oh well, I´ll just have to come back again someday! Suchitoto is pretty awesome. It´s a pretty town close to a lake so it attracts some tourism and is a central point for several different volunteer groups so there are lots of interesting people from the US and other places. I´ve become friends with a woman named Elizabeth from Kentucy who´s here working on an organic farm and I met two other neat people, Jess and Memo, last night. These are the kind of people that I could never see again, but would love to stay in touch with. Thank god for Facebook, right?

This message is stenciled on the wall of many houses here in Suchitoto. It says ¨In this house, we want a life free of violence towards women¨ This was a project started by Sister Peggy, a Catholic nun who has been doing work in El Salvador for like 30 years. She´s not just a nun...she´s a kick-ass nun! (Is it okay to refer to a nun as kick-ass? Oh well, she´s so kick-ass, she wouldn´t mind.) She runs the Art Center for Peace in town and is one of those all around great people who ¨get it¨.

Check it out, they put up signs so people would know Rolene and I are coming! Sweet.

These next four photos are from the land of a great family we met while walking between Santa Ana and Suchitoto. We were walking along and someone called out in English, ¨Hey, they look like Americans!¨ I don´t know what gave us away...
We went over to say hi and learned that Alex and his brother and parents were working on developing the land that has been in the family for a few generations. They all lived in San Jose, CA for about 30 years but in the past few years have all come to work on the land, planting cacao, coffee, and other trees. They dug out a pool and have started farming talapia and have lots of great ideas for making the land productive and sustainable. We got the grand tour and cold drinks. It was wonderful.

Alex and his parents.

I had no idea that this is how cashews grow. When it matures, a fruit grows above the cashew, kind of in the shape of a pear, with a seriously funky flavor. The fruit is called maraona (or something like that) and is just as important, if not more, than the nut here.

On the road near Santa Ana.

I love it when something useful is done with all the tires that usually end up in garbage piles by the side of the road.

Azacualpa, El Salvador

2009-02-19T17:55:00.000-08:00

This is what Rolene and I look like when we cross in to El Salvador. I wonder what we'll look like when we cross into Honduras?

The beautiful Lake Guija. We camped on the public beach for our first couple nights in El Salvador.

We walked along the lake as far as we could before having to cut up towards the road. These women were doing laundry. I have to say that I love washing machines, but if I had to do my laundry by hand, I'd like to do it in the lake or river while chatting and gossiping with my friends.

The trail we walked up from the lake to the road. I love how they plant trees in straight rows to use as their fence posts.

That's Reina up in the tree picking jocotes (I have no idea if I'm spelling or even saying the name of this fruit correctly) for us. We met her earlier when we visited her school and she walked with us as far as her house, which was about a mile.

Not a half-bad place to camp, I'd say. Lots of bugs, but few of them were mosquitos.

The rest of the photos are from the two classes we visited. Azacualpa is a tiny town on the lake with only a primary school with once class in the morning (1st-3rd grade) and one in the afternoon (4th and 5th grades). The first picture is of the three younger grades. When Rolene does her talk for little kids she brings those great masks along and does an activity called "Council of all Beings," which is borrowed from the work of Joanna Macy. The kids wear the masks and then Rolene talks to them as Mr. Crocodile, Ms. Dolphin, Mr Bird, etc. She gets them talking about their habitat and how they live and then goes into asking them about how they feel about the polution, deforestation, and destruction of their homes. Finally she asks them what they would like the humans to do to make things better. It's a really good way to get the kids talking and thinking about the environment. As soon as they become an orca whale, some of the shyness goes away and they get excited about answering questions. They were so unbelievably cute, I couldn't help but add a bunch of pictures of them.

The kids are looking at the tiny seed of the Sequoia, which they have just learned is the biggest living thing on earth.

Adios Guatemala, Hola El Salvador!

2009-02-19T10:01:00.000-08:00

Hello! We made it to El Salvador, safe and sound. It feels great to be here and to look back on this past month in Guatemala with gratitude and awe for all that I learned, saw, contributed, enjoyed and suffered.

I know Guatemala as few know it…actually, possibly only Rolene knows it the way I do. Not that the way I know it is better or worse than any other way to know this country, but I can’t imagine that many foreigners know the highway as intimately as I do, nor have they been to as many schools or evangelical churches. I got to see great beauty and serious ugliness. I was welcomed into several families for a few days at a time and left each one with a heavy heart, sure I couldn’t possibly meet another family as kind, warm and generous. I was proven wrong again and again.

I started off thinking I would walk across every kilometer of Central America and the perfectionist in me didn’t like how often we skipped sections in order to get somewhere on time or avoid dangerous or very unpleasant walking. But, I suppose we are only human, after all. We have this support vehicle that helps us get where we need to go, houses us, and makes us freakishly conspicuous with the locals. It seems a bit ironic to have a car for a project called Walk With Earth (especially since we’re asking people to eliminate the use of gasoline within 10 years), but again, if this trip is to succeed, perfectionism needs to be left at the door.

I don’t know how I might sum up Guatemala. I usually know a place by the friends I make and the snapshot memories that stand out in my mind, which makes it hard to answer questions like, “How was Guatemala? Did you like it?”

It was nice and, yes, I liked it.

I was struck by how different it felt to be in the western highlands the first two weeks as opposed to the eastern section of the country for the last couple weeks. The climate was different (high-elevation mountains in the west and low-land, semi-Mediterranean in the east), but I don’t think that the climate accounted for much of the difference. Most of the indigenous population lives in the west so their cultural influence was obvious, but even this isn’t necessarily the difference. The simplest way I can say it is that the air in the west felt sadder and angrier than in the east.

My sense is that the 36-year civil war, which ended in 1996 with the signing of peace accords, weighs heavily on the psyche of the people in Guatemala, and most heavily in the west, which suffers much more poverty and indigenous discrimination. During the war, hundreds of thousands of people were killed, hundreds of villages were exterminated and more than 100,000 fled north to Mexico and the US. To add insult to injury, they had a series of natural disasters that left tens of thousands dead and homeless. So, they have reason to be traumatized and it is unsurprising that people were more closed off, more suspicious, more inclined towards a sideways glance than I remember from my other travels. Not that the people in the east were not affected by the war, but it seems that their more middle-class status either spared them some of the horrors, or has allowed them the resources to rebuild life more quickly. Of course, these are generalizations and should be treated as such. The individuals we met and stayed with were as open-hearted as any people I have ever met and the joy I felt in their homes was more acute than the dull depression of the general population.

That said, it was a relief to get to Zacapa and Chiquimula in the east because the sadness that settled into my bones in the west was lifted a bit and I can’t deny that it was nice to have the comforts of a more prosperous area. It was also nice to put my long johns away because we were finally out of the chilly mountains and into the hot, hot, hot climate I expected of Central America.

Our time in Chiquimula was pretty jam-packed. Christian Sosa had set up numerous appointments for us to be on TV, radio, and talking at about 20 schools and churches in a week. I didn’t go to all those appointments because, as I said in my last post, I was fried and opted out of some gigs. While I really love the Sosa family who generously put us up for 4 nights, it’s also nice to have a break from the expectant and obligatory socializing and the many meetings with conservative and evangelical folks.

Christian with his sister, Landy, and his brother, Lester.
Their parents, Edwin and Amanda.
With his grandma, Amanda. I tried to add a photo with us with the whole family, but it didn't load.

I’m not sure if anyone from Guatemala is reading this, but if you are please accept my deepest gratitude for your warmth in welcoming me into your lives and your patience with my insufficient Spanish (which I’m glad to say is actually measurably improving) and foreigner’s misunderstandings of social etiquette. I will remember this fascinating country in all it’s natural glory and all it’s faulty humanity and can only hope that the rest of this trip is as rich as my time in Guatemala.

Zacapa to Chiquimula

2009-02-13T19:15:00.000-08:00

Yes, they are that cute! We tried to go to a dinosaur museum in Estansuela but it was closed. There was a school next door so we went to see if Rolene could talk to some kids. While we waited to get permission to talk to the 6th graders, the 4th grade class has recess. We were ambushed! Luckily we were ambushed by sweet children instead of guerrilla fighters or a pack of wild dogs. It could have been worse.

One of them held my hand for a while. I almost put her in my pocket to take her home with me.

We were joined by Lynn, Vivian and Marilyn on Thursday and Friday. It was really fun to have the company and their local expertise.

The family we stayed with in Zacapa. Walter and Noemi and their son, Oscar. On our last night with them, Rolene played harp, they lent me a guitar, Walter played keyboard, Oscar played his drum set and Noemi sang. We were quite the little family band.

On the road to Chiquimula. Oscar (age 9) didn't have school on Friday so he walked with us. What a trooper! He must have sweated half his body weight, but didn't complain once. It was HOT today. I drank like 3 liters of water while walking and still felt dehydrated.
We had a little time to kill on the way to Chiquimula so we stopped at this school, which ended up being a military school. We didn't expect to be let in, but they were very welcoming. We interrupted the boxing matches they were having for physical education. That's the students agreeing to plant trees.
We met Keenan and Jeff on the road today. They are biking from Canada to Argentina with Ride for Hope. They are raising funds to help the people in the Dominican Republic who were affected by the recent hurricane.
We were led into town by a group of girls from a school in Chiquimula. They had signs and posters and sang songs, honked their horns and cheered as we walked the 1/2 mile to the center of town. It was sort of awesome and sort of embarrassing. There were supposed to be three groups of kids but the others came too early and waited almost 2 hours for us and gave up. We were also supposed to be welcomed by the mayor, but he was called away on some last minute business.

Instead of the mayor, we were welcomed by a man from the evangelical Quaker church, Edgar Madrid. We got a trophy with our names on it. We are going to put it in our trophy case as soon as we get a trophy case. The whole day was hilarious and sweet and overwhelming and confusing.

I put myself on timeout today. I reached a point this morning where I was tired of meeting new people, tired of learning new words, tired of eating strange food, tired of feeling confused, tired of not feeling like I can be myself. We are staying with incredibly kind families who range from somewhat to very conservative and who are all evangelical. This reality is so far out of my experience, I just needed a break from it all. So, I skipped out on the two TV interviews, layed on my bed and watched a movie about black guys and white guys playing basketball together for the first time in Texas in the '60's. I listened to music and wrote in my journal and watched Rolene on TV. It was a good day.
It is very strange and pretty difficult to be on a journey that is both physical and spiritual. The difficult part is constantly adjusting to new people, places and things. The strange part is that while I am in a part of the world where everyone I meet is devoutly religious, I'm not sure how to relate my spiritual reality to/with them. We have very different assumptions about the world and I'm not sure how much to share about what I believe. I don't like feeling like people think I need saving because there is nothing about my spiritual path that has anything to do with "saving" myself or others. On that note, I don't feel a need to save them from their beliefs either, so I'm left in a funny place of realizing that it's assumed that I believe the same thing they do when I don't share my differing views. Partly, it's a language barrier--I don't even know how to have that kind of conversation in Spanish. Though, even with English speakers I am reluctant to have that conversation because...well, because it's tiring.
Hence, my time out today. I'm tired. After my break from the world, I'm feeling much better. I'm hoping/assuming I'll feel better tomorrow and will be willing to venture out into the world again.
I'm trying to both challenge myself and be gentle with myself...a hard balance to hold onto.
Send me happy and loving thoughts and I'll send some back to you all. Right now I'm going to go eat a pupusa. Yay!

Teculutan

2009-02-10T06:41:00.001-08:00

With Christian Sosa from Chiquimula. He is really friendly and easy to be around and has helped us so much. He set up many many many activities for us when we get to Chiquimula. We're apparently being welcomed as distinguished guests by the mayor and governor and we'll be on the radio, on TV, talking to the University...surreal, to say the least. I'll let you know how it goes. Christian is taking me to some pretty town today while Rolene talks to a school or two.
The Quaker church we visited last night.
A monument by the side of the road to those lost in the big earthquake in 1976.
In general, Lain America has really compact cities. When we were leaving Guatemala City, we were only 10 miles from the center of town (population 3 million) and already in rolling hills with very few houses. But, Guatemala has discovered the wonders of gated suburbia...coming soon!
We walked 10 miles to find this world famous international night club...darn.

As you can see, our route has been pretty beautiful over the past few days. We are off the main highway, headed east towards Chiquimula. It's wonderful to have a break from the heavy traffic. Also, we're out of the big mountains and in warmer climates. It's sort of desert-y and sort of tropical, but whatever it is, it's hot. I love it! I was so tired of being cold, and it felt even colder than it probably was because we didn't expect to be that cold for that long.

After leaving the Nazarene seminary, we stayed at a nice hotel for two nights. It had a swimming pool, which was wonderful, considering our newfound heat. We are now staying with a family in Zacapa and have 4 days to do 2 days worth of walking, so we're relaxing for a bit.

Okey dokey, I think Christian is here to pick me up, so I'll sign off. "Talk" to you soon!

East of Guatemala City

2009-02-07T06:26:00.000-08:00

From the road, of the road ahead.

Lots of barbed wire. I haven't been brave enough to take a picture of the many many armed security people carrying semi-automatics. We're not just talking outside of banks. These armed guys are at gas stations, stores, as passengers in delivery trucks--basically anywhere where money is handled and sometimes for no apparent reason. Not everything here is beautiful.

But many things are beautiful. We have been up in the highlands of Guatemala since we arrived. We're now at about 5,000 feet but we've been as high as 8,000 feet and the plants and trees are as they would be most anywhere at this elevation. We're headed to more tropical climates soon, but as of now, I'm wearing long underwear under my pants, a down jacket and a scarf. Bet you didn't imagine that I'd be cold on this trip, did you? Yeah, neither did I and I'm kind of over it.

Cute boys at a school Rolene talked at.

More kiddos.
During her talks Rolene asks the kids to raise their hand if they commit to planting ten trees, eliminating the use of gasoline in 10 years and praying or meditating for a beautiful, sustainable and peaceful earth for 10 minutes every Sunday evening. They almost always raise their hands, though the gasoline one doesn't always get unanimous support, especially from kids and universtiy students who are old enough to drive.

A payphone! When's the last time you saw someone using one of these? Not that it worked...

I'm a little afraid of heights and this bridge made me woozy, especially when big trucks would go by and the whole thing would shake.
Byron and Jonathan who painted the logo on the side of the truck. Byron was always that smiley.

We're leaving the Nazarene seminary today. We walked the last three days from Guatemala City towards Chiquimula, but the road started to get dangerously curvy and much of it had no shoulder. We're going to skip that section and go a bit further ahead and then walk backwards for a couple days, if there's safe road to walk on. Rolene's friend Chirstian Sosa is joining us today and walking for the next week, when we'll arrive in Chiquimula (where Christian lives, and the place with all the Guatemalan Quakers).

Hope all is well back home!

Little post from la ciudad

2009-02-05T13:34:00.001-08:00

Just a quick note, with no pictures.
We are now walking between Guatemala City and Chiquimula. Each kilometer brings us away from the city and therefore away from the heavy traffic, which is nice. There were moments (of about 10 seconds) today where there wasn't a big truck or car passing us. It was heavenly--to breathe without fumes, to have no chance of being hit, to hear ourselves think for a bit. It's very loud on the highway. It would be nice if there were reliable and safe rural roads to walk on, but the highway is the only way we can reliably know where we are and that we are safe, relatively speaking of course. There just aren't side roads that go the same direction as the highway, so it's what we've got. Also, there's not much camping here in Guatemala. Rolene did a lot of camping in Mexico, but camping is not common here and certainly not close to where we need to be. We've mostly stayed in people's homes with a few nights in hotels and in the truck. Right now we are staying in the dorms at a Nazarene Seminary, of all places.
We talked to a school today, middle school aged. They were very sweet and mostly attentive and then crowded around us to talk and ask questions. I'll post pictures next time, maybe even later tonight. Later, alligators!

Parramos

2009-02-02T12:03:00.000-08:00

These pictures come to you by way of my new camera. I had a fun adventure in Guatemala City, comparing prices and talking to clerks in several stores, before finding the one I wanted and could afford. I think electronics prices are more expensive here than in the US. I´m not just talking about standard of living but that I paid more US dollars than I would have back home. Doesn´t seem fair, does it?

The buses are...full. Rolene snapped this picture before another 10 people got on. I know that people who have travelled in India, Latin America, Egypt, etc all have stories about crazy buses and overly fully taxis, so this may not impress anyone. But, this bus was made to comfortably seat 36 people, plus the driver. I counted 75, not including babies in arms. It wouldn´t be so bad if we were going straigh at a resonable speed, but instead we´re going really fast around mountain curves.

These next three are in Antigua, a beautiful colonial town pretty close to Guatemala City. It was the original capital at some point. There are ruins and crumbling churchs and convents all over the place. There are lots and lots of ex-pats in Antigua and lots of tourists so I saw more non-Guatemalan people than I have since the SF airport. This was strange, but honestly it was also nice to be anonymous (we had this some in Panajachel, but even more here) for a few days. Also, the friend we stayed with, Martha (an ex-pat Quaker from New York) took us out to Indian food. It was wonderful.

This is in the courtyard of the Hotel Santo Domingo, the only 5 star hotel in Guatemala and the Clintons stayed here, or so I´ve heard. The hotel is built around the ruins of this church and there is now a covered area where mass is still held. It´s hard to say how gorgeous this place was.

There was also a museum at the hotel, but it was closed when we got there. We snuck into one room though, and it had skeleton remains under glass and then this big pile of bones in the corner.

With Carolina, sister of Jaime, who works at the Mayan Scholarship fund in Parramos. She walked with us for a few days.

A pretty farm between Chimaltenengo and Guatemala City.

A recently clear cut hill. Not sure why I included this one.

The highway we are walking on, with more trees and less fumes than usual.

¨Oooh, a ditch...great!¨

From near the shot of the highway--that´s Guatemala City out there. population 3 million, I think.

Didn´t mean to put this twice. I don´t like ditches that much.

On the walk between Parramos and Antigua.

Typical cemetery--lots of color, tucked in behind some trees right next to the road.

A sometimes-still-active volcano, with corn planted up the side of the hill.

The sign says ¨No dumping garbage.¨ This is an especially bad section of road, garbage wise...though there are many especially bad sections.

I just like this one.

It´s been a week or so since I last posted, which makes it hard to remember what has happened. I´m sure it´ll come to me. I´m feeling a little better now but I´m pretty cranky today. I´m a little homesick and a little stir crazy because we haven´t walked in three days and a little frustrated about trying to buy my plane ticket from Costa Rica to Mexico City (the old plan was that I´d come home from Costa Rica, but I realized I was scheduled to go to a Quaker thing in Monterrey in early May and then found out my friend from Mexico City, Betty, is getting married May 8th so I´m coming home via Mexico City May 9th).

A few further explainations--

homesick: I actually miss you all less acutely than I did the first couple weeks (this does not mean that you should stop writing to me!) but I miss feeling comfortable. I´m not constantly uncomfortable, but I´m also not home. I miss knowing the people around me and not having to explain to a disbelieving audience what I´m doing. I miss knowing where I´m going to be tomorrow and eating food I recognize. I think I got a little spoiled in Antigua because we were staying in Martha´s beautiful an comfortable home and hanging out with other people from the States and eating good food. I´m anxious to get walking but it´s also a bit of a letdown to come back from our mini-vacation. I love going on these adventures and I´m eternally grateful for the support I´ve been given to have these opportunities, but I´m also realizing that I basically like being at home and won´t mind staying put for a while once I get back.

stir crazy: it´s Tuesday and we haven´t walked since Saturday. It was nice to have a couple days off to relax in Antigua and we happened to be there for the monthy Quaker meeting in town. But, we were supposed to come back to Parramos this morning to pick up the truck and head to the east side of Guatemala City (we´re not walking through the city because too many people have warned us that it´s too dangerous) and start walking again. Jaime´s brother is painting the Walk With Earth logo on the side of the truck and he´s not done so we have to stay here another night. We´ll be moving tomorrow so if we might not have time to walk. Oh well. I´m having a hard time going with the flow today so I kind of want to throw a temper tantrum but I guess I won´t.

frustrated: i´m going to try to buy my ticket again after I write this, but if it still doesn´t work I might just have that temper tantrum.

So, we walked between Chimaltenengo and Guatemala City and to Antigua and when we start walking again we´ll be going about a hundred miles to Chiquimula where there´s a bunch of Quakers. Those of you who are of the Quaker persuasion know that there´s more than one kind of Quaker, but as it turns out, many of you aren´t Quakers. I´m not going to go into the history, but I´ll just say that there have been splits in Quakerism and there are a few different branches. The Quakers in Latin America and Africa are almost entirely Evangelical Quakers. You might be thinking, ¨but wait, Quakers don´t proseltize!¨ Well, the branch I´m a part of doesn´t and many people believe ¨my¨Quakers are about as similar to the evangelical ones as we are to conservative Presbyterians. So, going to the Quaker churches here is very different and very interesting. I´m pretty good at finding similarities to focus on and I have some practice with the skill of spiritual translation (where I try to hear the part I relate to and to figure out how their words could mean something for me even though they are so different than my words).

I´m sure there´s specific stories from the days we walked but I can´t remember them now. I mostly day dream for the 3 or 4 hours that we walk each day. I think part of the stir-crazy is that I haven´t had sufficient time to run around in my own head!

I´ll write again soonish, though I´ve heard that it´s less populated between Guat. City and Chiquimula so there may be less internet cafes. I promise to be safe, so don´t worry!

Tecpan

2009-01-28T16:07:00.000-08:00

A few people requested more photos and less words. I can´t guarantee less words, but here´s some more photos. Sadly, tragically even, my camera broke. I don´t know why, but yesterday it shuddered as it took its final breath and looked at me as if to say, ¨It´s been real, kid...but my work here is done.¨ The thing is, it´s work wasn´t done. Shucks. Oh well, I´ll get a new one when I get to Guatemala City in a few days. Hopefully Rolene´s camera, iffy as it is, will hold up till then so I can keep posting photos.

From the road on the way back from Lake Atitlán with Volcán San Pedro and Volcán Tolimán behind it. The bus ride down there was atrocious. It took two hours from Chimaltenengo and for the first hour I was the third person on a seat made for two so I was only halfway on the seat, going around crazy twists and turns. When we finally got there, carsick and cranky, I wasn´t sure that the ride was worth it, but it most definitely was. This is the deepest lake in Central America at about 5,000 feet deep.

The two aforementioned volcanoes on the left and Volcán Atitlán on the right. This shot and the next were taken from our table at a restaurant called Sunset in the town of Panajachel. It was ridiculously beautiful and only a little bit chilly (it´s been cold in the mountains--cold enough to see our breath and there was ice on the ground a few nights ago, in Xela).

Sigh...as we ate, we chatted with Melody, from San Francisco and a man from Holland. It was lovely, and the wine didn´t hurt either :)

Somewhere between Tecpan and Chimaltenengo. These ¨from the road¨ shots start to blend together and it´s hard to remember where exactly we were. Not a terribly exciting shot, but a typical view of farmland with the hills in the background.

These guys were walking, in the opposite direction, on the highway near Tecpan. They´d found an injured bird and were taking it home to try and nurse it back to health.

From the road on our way from Xela to Tecpan. It´s beautiful, but you can also see the deforestation in the hills. Lots of clearcut mountains around here.

The family we stayed with in Tecpan. Miguel Angel, his two kids Gaby and Angel and their grandma and great-aunt came to check out our truck before we left town. Juanita, Miguel Angel´s wife, had already left for work (teaching 4th grade).

Angel is a real ham. Cute as a bug, easy to laugh and very full of personality.

Miguel Angel and the kids watching Rolene play her harp.

Gaby is very smart. She´s 5 yrs old and can read upside down. She unknowingly gave me a vocabulary lesson when we were playing one night. She has a toy cell phone and it would ¨ring¨and I´d pick it up and pretend to talk to whoever she said was on the phone. I talked to Jesus, a sheep, a angel, her dad, grandpa, the Virgin. Then she told me it was Santa Claus and I asked her what she wanted for Christmas and we named about a thousand nouns. I think I only remember a few of them by heart, but it was fun and we cracked up a bunch of times.

We are now in a small town called Parramos, staying in the home of Lauren Lasalle, who is in the States right now. This is also the office of the Mayan Scholarship Fund, which gives money to Mayans who are doing work in the community.

Miguel Angel, from the pictures, is the director of MSF. It was really great to stay with his family. Having little kids around is always fun for me and when the adult Spanish-talk got too overwhelming I could go goof around with the kids. The first day I felt really cranky (and my stomach, though not keeping me layed out as it did when I was really sick, was still a little shaky) and I felt shy/unwilling to sit around and not understand a lot of the chatting. I took some time to be alone and listen to music, which really helped. Rolene and I get along quite well, but we are basically always together. I need more alone time to sit with my thoughts and quietly process my day. This is true when I´m in a regular routine back home, and even more so on this constantly stimulating trip.

We are getting into a good routine with walking, doing about 10 miles a day with breaks on the days when we move the truck to a new town and need to resettle. I feel strong and healthy and only have one small blister so far. I´m much happier on the days when we are walking than on the days where we move to a new town. The constant state of transition is hard for me and once we´ve stayed somewhere for more than one night I want to call it home and settle in. So, each time we move it´s a readjustment and on the first day I think that there´s no way that this new place is going to live up to the last place and I don´t like it very much. Then, I get comfortable with the people and we start walking and I cheer up. I´m seeing this pattern happen, so I can just relax and take it a little easy on the first day, knowing that I´ll feel better the next day.

A few mostly unrelated notes: After the hot showers at Miguel Angel´s the cold bucket of water sponge bath here in Parramos leaves something to be desired. I hate bus/truck/car fumes and the smell of roadkill. I hate roosters. I love the hours of daydreaming while walking. I love long underwear. I miss you guys.

Quetzaltenengo II

2009-01-23T17:50:00.000-08:00

Here's Rolene and Marco Antonio playing music together. It was such a nice family feeling to have everyone sitting around, more or less doing their own thing but doing it together.

Marco Antonio and Sandra, the parents of the Rivera family. They have three kids--Jonathan, Shesnarda, y Pedro Pablo. I miss them already.

Here's a shot from the road in Chiapas, on our way to Guatemala. I don't have any photos of Guatemala near the border because we hid our cameras and money in case we were robbed. It was unlikely that we would be since we followed advice to cross before 2pm, when it's safer.

This is Maria, my friend from Las Palmas, which is a little island in the middle of the mangrove swamp. She walked around with us and was completely charming. I like talking to kids because they don't ask me complicated questions.

Here's a shot from the shore of Las Palmas. It was so amazing to be there because there were no cars! Not even one and there probably had never been a car here ever. We met a archeologist from UCSB, Barbara, who was leading a group (one from Texas and two from Chile) of archaelogists who were studying the mounds of discarded shells in the swamps. They have found evidence of human civilization as far back as 7.5 thousand years ago.

Mangroves. Amazing. We could hear lots of birds, but they were in the canopy above us so I didn't see many. We went on a boat taxi through the swamp and out to Las Palmas.

The beach we camped at in Perto Arista, Mexico. Right after taking this picture I saw at least 4 dolphins swimming really close to shore. It was magical and I was the only one out on the beach as far as I could see so I got/had to enjoy it all by myself.

The baby sea turtles at the reserve we went to near Puerta Arista. These tortugas had just been born and were to be released that night at 9pm. I hope they made it! Each one was about half as big as my palm.

There were a couple things I forgot to say last night. One is that I love it when I hear sentences that I've never heard before. When Rolene and I were walking into Quetzaltenengo yesterday, the shoulder came to an end and Rolene exclaimed, "Oooh, a ditch! Great!" I've never heard anyone so excited to see a ditch by the side of the road, but when one has been walking through Mexico and Guatemala for 10 months as she has, one's priorities change. Sidewalks are rare here, and very nice to have when they exist. Cars, trucks and buses go really fast and when there's not even a shoulder to walk on it can be dangerous, so we won't do that unless we have no other options.

The other thing I meant to say is that I think it's so cool that cities have nicknames here. We use acronyms, but not nicknames as much...Well, I guess we have The Big Apple and The City of Angels. The nicknames here are different. Quetzaltenengo is called Xela, and Retalhuleu is Reu. I just learned, as I was writing this, that when the Spanish conquerors came here they brought soldiers from the north (what is now Mexico) of the Nahuatl people. Quetzaltenengo and Retalhuleu are Nahuatl names and Xela and Reu are the Mayan names. One place we went today is called San Antonio Xecul, which is a combo of the Spanish name and the Mayan name.

I'm having a really hard time uploading the photos onto this post. I was going to end here and then do a new one with photos and stories from today. But, I think I'll tell you about today and hope to get some photos up too.

We walked along the highway for a while until the shoulder disappeared and then asked where we could safely walk. We were directed to go through some farmland and up through a tiny puebla I mentioned above, San Antonio Xecul. We saw the school so Rolene went to go see if there were kids to talk to, but school wasn't in session today. The teachers were there though so we hung out with them and talked about the walk and they shared what they were doing with their students. They're doing a reforestation project with the kids, which was exciting to hear. When we were leaving they told us to go see a man in the town nearby, Salcaja, because he runs the local TV station and might want to broacast something about the walk. When we got there he took us up to his studio above his house and we talked about the walk (well, Rolene did most of the talking) and then found out that he'd been broadcasting live. I was on TV! I'm gonna be famous! What a funny day.

We also heard that the oldest Catholic church in Guatemala, built in 1524, is in Salcaja so we went to go see it. It's always impressive to see such old bulidings, but it mostly made me sad. Churches like this one are a symbol of the conversion of a people from their native, earth-based religions...and were mostly likely built with slave labor. So, it was interesting, but not joyful to visit there.

It's now Saturday morning. I tried to post the above last night and it failed, so I'm trying again now. We're headed out and will park the truck in some town between here and Guatemala City and do some walking. Not sure when I'll have internet again, but I'm sure it won't be long. Until then...

Quetzaltenengo

2009-01-22T19:32:00.000-08:00

Hola a todos!
It´s becoming abundantly clear to me that I´m not going to be able to tell you about all the places we visit on this adventure. I have notes in my journal of stories that I want to write about, but the last time I had a chance to write to this blog I only had time enough to tell about Oaxaca and Tuxtla. Since then we´ve stayed on the beach in Puerta Arista, Mexico, crossed the border into Guatemala, gotten lost and then found, blind and then seen...no wait...I mean we got lost and then found our way, I got super sick for about 24 hours from something I ate, and now we are in Quetzaltenengo, Guatemala at the home of a lovely family who we met through a Guatemalan Quaker named Christian Sosa. I haven´t met Christian yet but he´s joining us once we get to Guatemala City. Soooo, hope springs eternal, but I don´t think I can tell you about all of that in one or three posts. I´ll just tell you about today and hope that the stories from the past few days will come out in their own time.
Before I proceed I want to put out a request, a plea, if you will: write to me! I can´t tell you how wonderful it is to get news from home, even boring news. It´s very sad to open my email and only have one from my credit card saying my bill is ready and another from Netflix wondering if I want to open an account. That is not exciting, not at all. Tell me stories about how you went to work and an idiot pissed you off, or how you had dinner with a friend and they paid the bill, which made your day, or how you didn´t do anything today except eat saltines and watch the entire first, and only, season of My So Called Life. Tell me anything about your life or just tell me you love me (if you do) and miss me (you must by now!). Ok, end plea.
I can´t add any pictures today because my camera cord is out in the car. Let me explian the car situation because when I told you all I was walking across Central America I was mostly correct, but slightly uninformed. This is a project built around walking. However, when Rolene was getting ready to set out, she was happy to take a burro (como un burro!) and just start walking. Walk With Earth is a non-profit started by Rolene, but run by a board of directors who have some say over how the walk goes. They insisted that Rolene have a support vehicle in case of emergency, medical or otherwise. We have this small RV that we can sleep in when we aren´t taken in by generous people like we were tonight. It´s calming to know that if one of us got sick or hurt or if some danger presented itself, we could get to help quickly. But, the truck presents us with complications also. At the beginning of the walk, in northern Mexico, Rolene´s friend was driving the truck ahead of Rolene and the other walkers. At this point, we don´t have a driver so we have to drive to a town and find a safe place to leave the truck, then bus backwards and walk to the truck, or walk forward and take a bus back. Kind of silly, but we don´t have another option (unless YOU want to come join the adventure, for any amount of time, and drive for awhile. It´s a really fun and cheap way to travel and see this beautiful area of the world. Think about it, you will not regret it!).
Today we left Retalhuleu, where we spent the last two nights in a hotel (I was way too sick to travel, even by car, so instead I lay sweating through the sheets of my bed while Rolene did a bunch of work on the computer) and arrived about an hour and a half later in Quetzaltenengo. The drive was beautiful, with sharp mountains covered in pine trees and precarious looking corn fields on either side of us (the Sierra Madres mountains, I believe). The curves were reminicent of the drive to Stinson Beach, north of San Francisco. Rolene had a speaking gig at the Universidad San Marcos at 5pm so we had enough time eat lunch and take a bus a few miles out of town and walk back to the University. The walk was easy, though the traffic offered us a healthy dose of fumes and dust. When we got back to the University we had a little time to rest before Rolene spoke to a group of agriculture students about the walk and her ideas about how to move towards a sustainable human existence on earth. The 30 or so students were very interested and receptive, and were kind enough to stay for the talk after finishing an exam. I´m not sure that, if I were in their shoes, I would have stayed to hear a strange gringa talk, but either they are more obedient than I, or maybe more polite.
Alex, who came to the talk, then took us to his aunt and uncle´s house where we were given a delicious and simple dinner of scrambled eggs, refried black beans, and fresh tortillas. After dinner, two of their kids came home and in conversation we learned that they lived for two years in Las Cruces, NM! It was very exciting to hear this because a) I was just living there with my sister, Brooke, her husband, Issa and my new nephew, Kouli; and b) it means they speak some English! My brain gets so tired of constantly listening to Spanish and trying to respond appriopriately. It´s nice to let my brain relax for a little while. Granted, Rolene speaks English with me, but still...
As I was writing this, Rolene was playing her harp (not a full-sized one) and Marco Antonio, the father, was playing the guitar and people were singing. It was beautiful and peaceful and altogether lovely. It´s time for bed now. I´m so grateful to be where I am right now and am excited to wake up and see where tomorrow takes me (about 10 miles, give or take, from where I am now). Goodnight and buenas noches!

Oaxaca to Tuxtla-Gutierrez

2009-01-19T17:30:00.000-08:00

sorry about the sideways pictures...this is the Parachico celebration. it takes way too long to download pictures so that´s all you get for now.

These are from Monte Alban. Pretty cool, right?

I didn´t mean to include these two photos, but now I can´t take them off...look at them, but not with as much interest as the ones I meant to include.

These past four days have been very full. We were in Oaxaca for two days, Tuxtla-Gutierrez for one and a half days, a tiny ocean town called Puerto Arista for one night and now we are in a small town called Escuintle, really close to Tapachula, the border town just this side of Guatemala. It might be boring if I told you everything that has happened, but it amazes me how much can fit into four days, so I want to at least tell you the highlights. I´ll write each leg of the trip in a different post so that this one doesn´t get too long. Sorry if I say too much for those of you who like the short-n-sweet, and if I say to little for those of you who want all the details. Oh, if you´re interested in what Rolene has to say you can check her blog at www.walkwithearth.org.
I didn’t do much on Thursday in Oaxaca because I have some sort of illness that involves a sore throat. It ended up not being the pollution in Mexico City because it got worse when we left and I was pretty worn out. I´m finally feeling a little better today, which is a big relief because I was getting tired of being in constant pain every time I swallowed.

However, Friday was pretty awesome even though I was still sick. I felt well enough to go to some ruins called Monte Alban, about ½ hour outside of Oaxaca. I’ve never been to ruins like this before and I was totally impressed. Monte Alban was inhabited for 500 B.C. to 850 A.D., when it was abandoned for unknown reasons. The Zapotecs built it and later the Mixtecs arrived and buried high status people in the Zapoteca tombs. I’ll include a couple pictures, but as you know, the pictures don’t really capture the whole experience. It was a very windy day and only mildly warm. I was there by myself because Rolene had already been there twice. I haven’t done many touristy things like this by myself, and I was surprised to find how nice it was to wander with only my own agenda and walk quietly with my thoughts, not needing to articulate them to anyone.

I pissed some Zapoteca spirits off and then saw a disappearing man. Enough said….
Just kidding, I’ll tell you about it. Before going down into the main plaza of Monte Alban, I walked through the surrounding buildings, some of which were ceremonial buildings and some were houses, and almost all buildings included tombs. I approached one house and read the sign outside that said it was an unusual home because it contained 4 tombs instead of one. I walked through the front hallway and as soon as I entered the first room, I got really uncomfortable and my mind kept saying, “Get out of here, get out of here.” I told myself to chill out and stop being so dramatic, but the “get out of here” continued so I left and apologized to whoever didn’t want me there. Then I turned to go back toward the main plaza and saw a little hill with a man in a white shirt sitting on top. I was a little freaked out by what had just happened so I thought I’d ask him if I could sit with him. I walked up the hill, practicing how to say, “can I sit with you?” in Spanish, but when I got there, he was gone. I don’t know how he could have gotten down except for the way I came up because it was all brambles and steep drop offs. I sat on that hill for a while until I felt normal again. When I got back to Oaxaca and told Rolene about my experience, she told me that when she’d been to Monte Alban before she’d had really bad feelings by the exact same house. Word to the wise: stay away from the house with 4 tombs on the far north side of Monte Alban--you are not wanted there! Or, I wasn’t anyhow, and I’m choosing to not take it personally.

That night Rolene and I got on an overnight bus, headed for Tuxtla-Gutierrez in Chiapas, where the support car was parked over the holidays. The bus was comfortable enough, but the ride was horrible. I had worn myself out going to Monte Alban so my throat hurt like crazy and I just wanted to sleep, but after the first hour, the road was so curvy I had to keep my eyes opened and keep all my energy focused on not puking. Rolene wasn’t so lucky, but I managed to make it through the hours of windy roads and we both got a couple hours of sleep eventually. We arrived in Tuxtla at 7am, exhausted, hungry and and zonked-out. After hooking up with the guy who had watched Rolene’s car for the past few weeks, we had to charge the car battery, get a new tire, get the brakes fixed and then finally we ate breakfast with Tony, a gringo friend who is living with his wife and her family in town.

Tony told us that we had come on a good day because not only was his family having a party to celebrate the day baby Jesus first sat up (oh, did you think that Christmas was over weeks ago…wrong!! Christmas is still going strong here. Yeah, maybe he was born on the 25th (though that’s historically debatable) but he apparently did a bunch of stuff after he was born. Christmas goes almost until Easter here. Bet you didn’t realize what a bunch of holiday slackers we are back home!), but we were also in town for the festival of the year, going on about 45 minutes away in Chiapa del Corzo. I have to say, though, that I think there’s about 15 “festival of the year”celebrations. In any case, Tony told us that we were required to go to Chiapa del Corzo for Parachico (para=for, chico=boy or more loosely, child). If we didn’t go, his family would be mad at him for not making us go. Rolene and I were so bone tired, but we had a couple hours to kill while the brakes were being worked on and nowhere to sleep anyhow so we got in a taxi and slept on the way to Chiapa del Corzo.

We arrived in Chiapa del Corzo right on time for the procession to start (or at least one of the processions. There are apparently more than one and the one we saw was probably not the biggest) and got a good spot for taking pictures. I have a rough understanding of the signifgance of Parachico and I´ll try to piece it together here. Back in the 1500´s there was a rich Spanish lady in Chiapas and her son got sick. The locals dressed up with masks and head dresses and danced to make the boy better. Since then, Parachico is still celebrated, but honestly, I´m not sure why. As I understand it, the boys who are involved in Parachico don´t just participate in the one parade that we saw. It´s more of a devotional practice in that they do a bunch of prayers and preparation before Parachico. One the actual day, they dress up in the costume (there´s pictures above) and do the march/dance for hours. Keep in mind that this is Chiapas, Mexico and it´s really hot. The costumes are dark and heavy and with all the dancing for hours, many boys reach an altered state of consciousness, according to Tony. The girls and women wear these incredibly beautiful dresses (also pictured above) and the effect of the whole things is generally overwhelming and beautiful. Parachico only happens in Chiapas, and I´m not sure if it is celebrated in all of Chiapas or just this region.

When we finally got to Tony´s house we had a few hours to sleep before the party. I came downstairs just as the religious part of the party was starting. We all had candles and the kids who had been chosen at a previous party also held figurines of baby Jesus sitting on the throne. They sang a beautiul song while we stood in the entrance to the house, then everyone went inside and they sang another song while they put the figurines around a little altar. People were lighting sparklers and the littler kids were running around. This was a religious ceremony, but it was also just fun and relaxed. After this part ended, it was just a party. There were about 60 people there and they were all from Maria´s (Tony´s wife) fathers side of the family, who come from the Zoque indigeonous group. Maria´s mom´s family is Zapateca and they live further away so they weren´t at the party. The families who were chosen as the baby Jesus holders at the last party are also epected to bring the food for the party. Tony warned us that Chiapas is the poorest state in Mexico so the food would be made from ingredients that people could afford. I was really grateful to be included in this family party (it´s not every day that a couple of gringas get to go to a family party celebrating the day Jesus sat up...come to think of it, Jesus was pretty advanced to be able to sit up at one month old...). I can´t say, though, that I was very interested in the hotdog/mayonaise combination on top of a mini tostada shell or the other hotdog dishes available. But did I eat them? Hell yes, I did, thanking them profusely the whole time.

Ok, this post is getting REALLY long. I´ll stop now, and put the Tuxtla to Puerto Arista leg of the trip in the next entry.

Mexico City, after the fact

2009-01-15T17:24:00.000-08:00

Here's Rolene and I in the Alameda, some nice park blocks near the Zocalo, which is the square at the center of Mexico City.

Rolene and I are now in Oaxaca City, about 6 hours SW of Mexico City. Now that I've left Mexico City I can think about it more critically. I don't know if it's just part of my personality that it can be hard for me to discuss something as it's happening, or if Mexico City is so overwhelming that it's essentially impossible to talk about concisely...in any case, I've had some time to think and can now try to express those thoughts to you all.

A friend commented in an email a couple days ago that I seem to be comfortable here and asked me how it felt to be in Mexico City again, if it felt the same as when I lived here in 2006. I told him that I'm comfortable, in a funny way. It feels like home in that I feel like myself the way I do in the Bay Area. But at the same time, things are new and exciting and Spanish challenges me, so I have to pay more attention, which in some ways makes me feel more like myself than I do at home.

I'm sure that this challenge with language is fairly universal for people who have traveled and had to speak in a new language. I find myself suddenly without the ability to articulately express myself verbally, which is a area I am very confident in at home and which is part of my identity. I am a good speaker; I feel heard and respected when I share my opinions. Without that skill, who am I? How do I define and express myself? I have to trust that people will try to understand my intentions, as I do theirs, even if our words fall short.

In this new culture, nothing can be assumed and the rhythm of life is so different than it is in Berkeley. While it can be tiring to be constantly assimilating and incorporating new information (new words, new sense of direction--no hills and bay to help me tell east from west, new body language and customs), I appreciate how it allows me to see how there is more than one way to move through the world and interact with those around me.

One of the reasons I feel so comfortable here is that the sense of community is so much stronger than in the States. We are very individualistic, as a culture, in the US. Well, at least in the parts where I've lived and visited. I love that when people enter or leave a room they greet each other with a handshake or a kiss on the cheek, even if they don't know each other or have any reason to know each other. I love that people stop to talk on the street even if they are already late (this may account for the infamous "mexican time") and that they call out to each other and talk to one another on the bus. How strange it must be for a Mexican immigrant to get on a bus in Berkeley and be encountered with silence and see everyone wearing headphones keeping their eyes down, because god forbid we make eye contact with one another. Now, this is not to say that I don't sometimes wish that people would stop talking to me or trying to sell me something, but I guess I prefer telling people to go away to wishing someone would chat with me as we roll down San Pablo Ave.

I also love how unabashedly people are in love here. Teenagers, or old people for that matter, make out on park benches. Couples run across the street, giggling and holding hands, and fall into an embrace in celebration of making it, miraculously, across the street alive. People don't look away from these public displays of affection and whisper behind their fingers to their friends, "Get a room, already!"

I feel connected to strangers here. This is partly the Mexican culture--all the handshakes and kisses and exchanges of "buenos dias" with people I may never see again. But, I think this sense of connection may be another effect of traveling, wherever one might go. When traveling, we have to trust that people are giving us good directions (although, don't trust that too much here because people are so eager to help they will give you directions even if they have no bloody idea where you want to go...so ask a few people before heading out), or that they are giving you a fair price, or that they are trying to help you rather than take you for a ride. We have to trust people, or we end up missing out on the kind of interactions that make traveling what it is. The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation has a line that says, "As viewed, so appears." If we think of the world as a dangerous place, our mind will pick out dangerous people and places. If we view the world as safe and abundant, that is what we will see when we look around. When I move through the world with this philosophy and assuming that my needs will be met, I find myself experiencing a life beyond my wildest dreams. This is what traveling does for me--it stretches me and opens my eyes to a greater reality.

Well, I've got to go now because Rolene and I are headed to Chiapas on an overnight bus and we have to get a taxi. There's a parade going down the street our hotel is on, which could make it hard to get to the bus station. I don't know when I'll have internet again, but I will soon tell you about Oaxaca and visiting the ruins at Monte Alban. It was amazing. Love to you all...

Tuesday morning and all's well...

2009-01-13T07:34:00.000-08:00

Hello from Mexico City (still)!
We are still here, tooling around the city...well, I'm tooling around. Rolene has a lot of work to do as far as planning our connections, sending umpteen emails, trying to call people on Skype, etc. I can only help so much with that stuff so I've been hanging out and visiting with friends here in el DF (this is what Mexico City is called in Mexico- el Distrito Federal).
I saw Betty on Sunday, for the first time since I lived here two years ago, and it was like no time had passed at all (except for the fact that we had new stories for each other, like how she has a new baby and is getting married in May!). I've been working hard on my Spanish so it was really fun and helpful to play Scrabble in Spanish with her. I learned a bunch of new words, some helpful (cerro is hill, as opposed to montaña) and some that I'm not sure I'll use on a daily basis (pato is duck, which is a word I rarely use in English so I wonder if it will come in handy).
Yesterday I had a great lunch with Rolene, her neice Rachel (who walked with her for 6 weeks last summer and is now volunteering at the Casa), and Christel, my friend and the Quaker in residence here at the Casa. Rachel was talking about her time on the walk and I asked her about how is was for her to have very little Spanish when she arrived and she reminded me about how generous and forgiving locals are with travelers who attempt to speak Spanish. We commiserated about how un-funny we are in Spanish (as opposed to how hilarious we are in English...) because humor is so nuanced. She gave me a good tip- at any point in a conversation she says "Como un burro" ("like a donkey") and whether it makes sense or not, people crack up. I may use this tactic if I get desperate.
Yesterday was a good day. Rolene and I planned our itinerary for the next month by looking at a map of Guatemala and figuring out how far we want to go each day and which towns we want to stay in. Most of it is fairly flexible. We have to go to one place called Quetzaltenango to get insurance for the support vehicle, we want to hit Antigua, and we'll spend a few days in Chicquimula, where there's a small pocket of Quakers. Other than that we are pretty fexible, which is nice because we have the freedom to hear about a cool town or some beautiful nature place and take a detour. I like having a goal/plan but not having to be too strict about how we get there.
Later in the evening I got to hang out with my friend John, from Ireland. He was a long term guest at the Casa when I was working here and is now in school in el DF, working on a Masters to become a therapist. We had a great time, talking talking talking (with some eating and drinking mixed in there) for about 7 hours. One place we went was a cool restaurant/bar in Colonia Roma (the Colonias are like neighborhoods) where we had mezcal reposado, which a relative of tequilla and mezcal zarzamora, which was blackberry flavored. Delicioso!
It is wonderful to be back in el DF and at the Casa, with it's wacky cast of characters. I feel very at home here and, except for the fact that I can't wait to start this amazing walk adventure, could easily stay for many more days. However, the pollution is pretty bad right now. When I've been here in the past the air was more clear because it was right after the rainy season. My throat hurts most of the time, which is another reason I'm looking forward to starting off on the walk.
We leave for Oaxaca tomorrow morning and will be on a bus for about 7 hours . Rolene has a meeting on Thursday with Gustavo Esteva, the founder of la Universidad de la Tierra in Oaxaca. He is working with Rolene to plan a conference for Mexican environmentalists, which will go on March 19-23. Rolene and I will be somewhere in Nicaragua by then so we'll come back up to Oaxaca for that. We will be in Oaxaca City, which is another 7 hours from the coast, so I don't think I'll get to eat fish tacos...but I'll have some delicious molé so I think I'll survive. I hope to write again in the next few days. Abrazos a todos!

Mexico City

2009-01-10T19:43:00.000-08:00

Hello! I've arrived in Mexico City and will be here for 3 nights before heading to Oaxaca for a couple days and then on to Guatemala to start walking. I'm super tired and irritated by this keyboard with different keys, so I'll just say that I'm here safely and will write more soon.