Category Archives: central america

touching peace upon

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Where does one feel sadness?

It’s not in the head. Not the heart really either. For me it sits at the bottom of my ribcage, quivering, where if it decided to make a run for it, it would escape by the way of my esophagus; a wrong way exit where words would scrape against the walls and form into something wretched on their way out.

Maybe it’s our efforts to restrain and contain that squeeze tears from our eyes in exertion. Because the more I live and see, the more I feed that small beast that quivers in that cave; it has grown to a size that makes crying one of the things I do best. Not only in sadness, but in anger, happiness, compassion, love, shame, horror, bliss and even emptiness. In fact, I would say my emptiness-onset tears are my most beloved and sacred – as when they are shed, I feel heaviness relieved and lightness filled, lifted closer to something divine in leaving a body of self-fullness behind. But emptiness tears are not those I cry today. Today my tears are heavy. They pull my shoulders down. They wring my neck. They choke my throat. The pinch my mouth together. They crease my forehead and scrunch my eyebrows. They plant my feet into the floor and make my whole body want to cringe close to the ground. They take my hands from the keyboard and make me put them over my mouth. Not wanting to let escape that wretched sound.

Wailing.

That is the term that was used to describe the women and children on the streets outside of the morgue in Guatemala City. I know. I knew Hanley well enough to understand why those women wail. Because I witnessed a few, I can see every; moment that she stepped into a life and handed a mother of seven a rice sack full of food, or provided antibiotics to a waning infant, or put shoes on the youngest daughter and sent her to school or offered skill training and a job to the oldest son, or sent a social worker to listen to the story of a missing father. I know why those women wail. Because having grown accustomed to the dark of living life in shadows, the one person who unexpectedly reached out, touched them, and acknowledged their existence and right to live, has died. And do we dare even ask, will she take the only hope she had inspired in all of us with her? No we don’t ask. We don’t want to know. It’s easier to wail and cry.

I have written about Hanley Denning a number of times on this blog. She was first my boss and then my friend and mentor. Today, I clutch my chest and hold that quivering still for a second, thanking every star that aligned in my favor to give me the opportunity, last fall, to hug her and tell her face to face, “Hanley – you are the most inspiring person I’ve ever met in my life.”

In six years of travel around the world, I have never met anyone who personally molded humanity to higher goodness more than this woman did with her own hands. She is. She was the most valuable player I’ve ever encountered, and I simply cannot rationalize why, of all on this planet, she should be sacrificed.

I don’t cry because I miss Hanley. Hanley would not miss Hanley. And Hanley would never, ever cry for Hanley. Hanley did not leave behind possessions or offspring or life partners or personal passions. She never did anything but work tirelessly to care for everyone else. In a way, there was no Hanley. She was nothing but her goodness and gifts to others. And now that I reread that sentence, maybe I can summon some of those sacred emptiness tears too. For if ego grounds us, then Hanley never lived among us. And is she was only her goodness, then she immortally walks alongside us. And if she is what she inspired, then those right intentions and actions can only be shared and grow on cumulatively.

Although I do feel the world right now cringing in her absence, after the wailing, comes always a calm. And now that I have cried, I find that it isn’t her absence, but rather her continued presence, that touches peace upon that which quivers within me.

*****
Crash kills poor children’s ‘angel’ – Portland Press Herald

I Have Lice - 2001 Reflection on Volunteering with Safe Passage

www.safepassage.org – Hope, Education, Opportunity

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*sol bows her “namaste” and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and Merc for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

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wheel-ing

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Some go to movies. Others go climbing. Many go to bars. But MY idea of a good time…

…is meeting a group of total strangers for a weekend crash course in rueda de casino style salsa. (Click above to view the clip.)

So we’re a little sloppy; but I’ve only danced rueda (“the wheel”) one time before (while living in Ecuador) and this was a fast and crash course covering basic to advanced moves in only a few hours.

Our ratio of laughs to fumbles was perfectly par; and that’s all that matters…with anything in life really.

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*sol bows her “namaste” and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and MercuryFrog for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

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the last turtle

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14.1, 3.1, 2.1

15.2, 3.4, 2.3

12.5, 2.7, 2.0

“Oh my gosh, this one’s so little!” I put the slide rule down and, with two careful fingers, lift the little creature up. His width, as measured exactly to be 2.0 centimeters, is small enough to make my eyes cross when I hold him up to my nose for closer examination.

His little eyes blink back at mine but, blinded by will power, he shows no fear. For with the clockwork and inexhaustible motion of a wind-up toy, this flawless miniature replica of an adult Olive Ridley turtle paddles with impressive and indiscriminate strength against sand or hand in search of the swim in the sea that he will spend the rest of his life in.

I look into the wire mesh enclosure that circles the sand where this nest hatches and a dozen tiny sea turtle heads poke their exhausted beaks from the sand. Despite that they appear to be identical hund-lets, here already the hatchlings begin to demonstrate their individual character as, upon the same first breath of fresh sea air, some collapse in relief and other are re-invigorated to a new full charge towards the sea. And both are quite validated responses, for after being abandoned by my mother, breaking out of my egg and spending the next 48 hours digging out of my own birth-grave, I too would fancy myself deserving of a break — either from work or for the water.

Although instinct (alone) has taught this hatchling the dangers of the swooping shadows of predators, the collective unconscious of this species has yet to imprint the intuitive instructions on how to swerve the myriad traps human beings have put in place to successfully impede the survival of these little life seedlings. The literal “dead ends” of the sea turtle’s life path are extensive, and almost exclusively the fault of fallout from (what I can only assume is) man’s suicide mission here on earth. Pesticides and heavy metals from the mass pollutants dumped in the sea cause a multitude of mutations and fatal diseases. Heavy ship traffic results in numerous propeller collisions. Shrimp trawling and fishing drift nets entangle and drown untold thousands of adult turtles. Trash, particularly plastic bags, are confused with jellyfish which are then eaten and cause suffocation. Nests are excavated at industrial levels with the eggs sold as purported aphrodisiacs throughout Latin America. Pregnant turtles are captured on their way to nest and are slaughtered for their meat, liver oils and/or shells which are used in making jewelry marketed to tourists. Artificial lighting caused by developments on beaches both dissuade mothers from nesting and disorientate hatchlings, leaving them lost so long that they die from dehydration in their unsuccessful quests to find the ocean.

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I put the hatchling into the bucket and as he crawls upon the backs of his brothers and struggles so desperately to climb the impossibly slick walls, his frustration with this woman-made obstacle is obvious. But what the hatchling doesn’t know is that 45 days ago, a poacher followed his mother during her annual adventure from the sea, waited for her to give birth, stole her eggs from the nest, and saved his chance of survival. Yes, saved. For another fact unknown to this hatchling is that that thanks to our massive global pollution of the Earth and a phenomenon that men in suits to this day deny, the black sand beaches of Guatemala have warmed to temperatures that make the land nothing but an underground oven that bakes the nest at lethal temperatures and cooks each and every hatchling alive. The poacher that spared this hatchling only did so because he is mandated by Guatemalan law to donate a percentage of the eggs he collects to the local hatchery (the one I am volunteering at).

But the good fortune of this hatchling neither starts nor stops here. For his mother was the very lucky one in 5,000 of her species siblings to reach the age of sexual maturity that brought her back to nest on this beach. This beach, by the way, is the exact same beach that she herself was born on. Despite the fact that it’s been over a dozen years and thousands of annual miles migrating to far and foreign seas since she hatched and crawled across this sand to her first swim, she still knows her way back and returns to the very same beach that she herself was born on. This navigational marvel still humbles the best of human scientist: some say sea turtles travel in alignment to the stars, others hypothesize that they feel the subtle gravitation pulls of the moon, and still others theorize that they simply follow their noses recognizing the most delicate and directional smells of the sand that once housed the outer womb of their first home. In any case, it’s a mystery we do not, and most likely will never, solve. For every single type of sea turtle found in the ocean today is endangered. Leatherback turtles have been swimming in the Earth’s oceans for over 150 million years; they actually swam with the dinosaurs! Yet on my last night strolling the beach scouting for nesting females (while volunteering for the Leatherback Conservation Project in Costa Rica in 2003), I asked one of the long-term local workers if he thought the leatherbacks had any real chance of surviving the age of humanity and he replied, “if things continue the way they are now, there won’t be a single leatherback in the ocean in ten years.”

I turn my attention back to the next hatchling I pull out of the nest. I struggle to hold her still as she tirelessly does consecutive push-ups on my palm in her impressive attempt to paddle herself out of my hand.

When and by what hand was this adamant will to live wound, I, with admiration, wonder?!

I don’t know. But I pledge to her my support. The statistics are indeed dismal, but quite an equal match for the enormous will exhibited in my palm. And if she thinks she can do it, or even only asks for a chance, I will match her instinctual willpower with my intentional optimism.

Finally I manage to measure her weight, length and width…

14.9, 3.1, 2.2

She is the last turtle. I mark down her measurements, put her into the bucket and carry her out to the sea, whereupon I find a nice spot a few meters from the water line and delicately dump the pile of hatchlings out. I turn those upside-down right-side up and then quickly walk down into the water and turn my flashlight on to help guide their way, on this moonless night, towards (what would be) the natural light of the sea. The salty air and damp sand instantly invigorate even the sleepers and the race towards the water, towards a lifetime, towards opportunity, is on. Their hydrodynamic and streamlined flippers are hardly appropriate for land travel, but they make so light of the first of many disadvantages they will encounter in this life. They struggle forth making fast and outstanding gain towards the water and finally, the first far-reaching wave and fastest paddling hatchling collide. As she catches that wave and rides, I swear I hear her sigh. I watch her tumble with a wicked current into the adventure of her lifetime and realize that the shared sigh of longing and hope for life — was mine.

Feeling inspired to adopt a turtle nest of your own?

< Adopt a turtle nest at the ARCAS Hawaii Hatchery in Monterrico, Guatemala.
They do not yet have any way to receive online donations, so if you trust me (I do), I’m very happy to collect donations ($15 USD per nest) through paypal and will make sure the name and donation are handed over to my friends running the center in Guatemala. For a detailed explanation on what it means to, “Sponsor A Nest” at Parque Hawaii in Guatemala, go to: www.sponsoranest.com.

Official PayPal Seal

OR…

< Adopt a nest at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium in Florida

< Adopt a nest at the Sea Turtle Restoration Project in San Diego

< Be a turtle benefactor at Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge

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art of alchemy

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3 times stranded without cover in sudden rainstorms. 3 expeditions sent to “get help” to pull our minivan out of the mud. 20+ group efforts to push or pull our car out of muck-ruts. 6 snapped towropes. 1 dead engine. 30 miles of ankle-to-knee-deep mud. 700 mosquito bites (averaging 50 per person plus Raphael’s 200). A fair number of unmentionable words sworn. 1 jaundiced leader suffering from a (as of now) confirmed case of Hepititis A. 1 nail-less big toe. 11 pairs of squishy boots. 4 expressed emotional breakdowns (unknown private ones). 4 mysterious rashes. 1 mule stuck in the mud. 1 dead tarantula. 1 hour walking in the dark with 1000 sets of shiny spider eyes reflecting the light of our headlamps. 2 tarps short of covering the hammocks and cooking fire from a sudden downpour…

2 tarps suddenly found to save our dry clothes (and souls) from another drenching. Numerous hysterical laughs when one could do nothing with the situation but crack. 11 of the best Snickers bars ever tasted. 8 hours of the most exhausted, and thus sound, hammock sleeping. 1 graceful surrender for the sake of safety. 1 sunrise at the top of a pyramid at the ruins of Tintal with views of the jungle-covered temples of Mirador and Nakbe peeking above the canopy of the Peten rain forest. Many sightings (and soundings) of both spider and howler monkeys. 5 AMAZING local trek guides with unlimited energy, enthusiasm and knowledge of the forest and its animal and plant inhabitants. 100’s of enormous bright blue Morpho butterflies flaunting their easy flutter as we sludged along. 2.5 oranges per person, per day. 11 bodies surrendered fully and finally to the mud. Dozens of unexcavated ruins left by ancient Mayan civilizations lining, like small rolling hills, both sides of our trail. 5 girls laughing so hard they were mistaken for monkeys. 2 royal “throne” jungle outhouses. 1 ballpoint mustache. 1 impressionable sight of a full chicken bus coming to our tow-rescue. 2 video remakes of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” 11 excited hoops of hurray when the minivan was finally yanked out of the mud. 1 angel sent from heaven with a 4×4 pick-up truck to save us from being stranded. 1 unforgettable experience scarred from skin to soul.

Dear Students,

Our last day was, by any Hero’s definition, “epic.” And although it felt much longer than the 24 hours that a day usually confines itself to, dizzy with disbelief of each unfathomable moment as it fell upon us, I somehow lost the time to communicate my congratulations to you.

I suppose we each have a point where we (think) we can take no more. And to my (perhaps sick, yes) delight, I witnessed many of you reach that point this week. But my satisfaction comes not from seeing you suffer, but from witnessing you each successfully limbo what you thought to be your bar of ultimate endurance. Tears were cried, words were sworn and the existence of hell realms on Earth were certainly questioned. But it is only through these soul-shaking and reality-challenging encounters with our limits that we have the opportunity to push our walls in life an inch out, up, higher and lower; creating some space (in the box of Life that limited perception creates) for us to sigh, breathe, play and grow in confidence.

And isn’t it such a peculiar and relieving confidence that is inspired, not by conquest, but by surrender? Just when we think we have reached the wall of our will, the unfathomable pushes us right through it and we suddenly find ourselves on the other side with the realization that the walls of what we think we can do in this life are actually illusions. And suddenly we are laughing out loud at the all the unnecessary time we spent dreading, worrying, expecting, defining, avoiding, denying and hesitating…

Remember on our first day when we set out in our dry and clean clothes? We took enormous care to scout and then hurdle ourselves to each dry island along the path. We employed machetes to hack down what we thought would be a faster track. At each rest stop we took twigs and scraped the mud from our boots. We cringed at each raindrop that landed on our dry clothes and threatened an entourage behind it. And with such desperation we dug through our bags for our expensive Gortex jackets when the clouds grew dark. But isn’t the rain one to humble even Mr. Gore himself? For as we clearly saw with Storm Stan, is there anything that Rain can’t eventually drench, uproot, sweep away, flood, or famish? Despite what any REI clerk will claim, in the ring between Gortex and a tropical downpour, poor (but expensive) breathable plastic never stood a chance.

And thus we were drenched.

But, really, how often do we humans get truly, thoroughly and without resistance, wet? Looking at my own history of umbrellas, ponchos and shelter-sprints, I’d say I’ve spent a good portion of my life skirting, swerving and scowling at the sky’s natural showerhead. So imagine my surprise when, after observing the unrelenting rain go from saturating my “protective barriers” (2 minutes, by the way, Mr. Gore) to forming an impressive drainage system along the natural divots and divides of my skin, I realized (or remembered?) that the only completely impermeable and breathable material on this Earth is skin. And eyebrows and eyelashes work together as an impressive windshield-wiper team. And, (oh blessed surrender to my 7-year old self!), stomping in knee-deep mud to the tune of a full volume storm is invigorating and liberating!

“Surrender” has gotten such a terribly undeserving bad name in our dualistic-minded society. (But then so have Surrender’s friends “emptiness”, “minimalism”, “death”, “stillness”, “different” and “darkness” – but wouldn’t that be an essay.) Yet in my life I continue to learn that it is not my conquests that make me stronger, but the experiences that humble me in beauty, bigness or recognized brotherhood. Contrary to all I was socialized into believing, it’s the events and visions that make me feel smaller that make me feel more comfortable in my proper (little) place in this world. It’s the ocean, the sunset, the full moon, the dark sky, the pyramids, the jungle, the thunder, the lightning, and yes, a full pummeling by a storm that make me realize just how small I am — and just how “okay” it is to be small.

So we did not reach our original destination. But we did push our inner and collective endurance to heights and horizons that make the pyramids of Mirador look small. Many of us have admitted that some of our most challenging days on this semester, and in the field of Life, took place on that muddy little path this week. But it was certainly an experience worth the lesson of coming to know (intimately) the depth of the mud that we can successfully trudge through. And isn’t it exactly the swamps of life that allow us to walk with renewed appreciation for the ease of the drier paths in Life’s more maintained and manicured parks?

In Buddhism, a “bodhisattva” is one who is enlightened, but consciously chooses to stay on Earth to “participate in the sorrows of the world with joy.” When I look back at the epic tale of adventure that we wrote last week, it’s the picture on the last page that I most remember. It’s the vision of you all — knee deep in the mud, covered in dirt, car broken down, sun setting, mosquitoes swarming, hours away in either direction from any shelter — and smiling. And not just smiling, but laughing, dancing, singing, and sighing at the sight of the near full moon putting a fantastic sunset (and epic day) to bed; participating with joy in a situation that would by most definitions be defined as miserable.

So congratulations to you on an ace on your first exam in Alchemy. For you have all shown yourselves as promising Alchemists — whose art is only that of changing obstacles into chal
lenge, the horrific into epic, the unknown into adventure, misery into magic, metal into gold.

*****

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on the altar of humility

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October 13th, 2005
Xela, Guatemala
Tropical Storm Stan Evacuee Camp

“psssst!”

I look around the room, but there is only an old woman stooped over a broom sweeping the floor.

People have been hissing at me all day, discretely calling me over to this or that corner and whispering a request to politely fetch them an additional bag of beans, extra bottle of water or second sweater beyond that which has been sanctioned to them.

Hesitant to source the hiss and address its subsequent plea, I return to my task of untying a difficult knot that cinches together another black bag of donated clothing. I pull out a tiny pair of jeans fit for either an 13-year old or an American celebrity and deliberate which pile, “girls” or “women,” is appropriate…

“pssssst!”

The woman with the broom is now standing erect and points at something on the floor near me. I follow her finger and find the destination of its direction to be that of a naked doll which, with no appropriate pile, lay abandoned, awkward and alone on the floor. The old woman’s manner is that of an experienced grandmother with a command and resolve that negates all hesitation and demands only immediate attention.

“Well pick it up!” she furrows her brow and says with noted impatience for my delayed comprehension.

With the loyalty and respect of a granddaughter of an age fitting into the jeans I hold, I immediately obey her command. The old woman resumes sweeping and when I collect the doll and hand it to her, she looks up at me as if I have gravely disturbed both her sacred work and sanity and then rolls her eyes at my obvious idiocy. “Not for me! Go upstairs and give it to the child! Give it to the girl taking care of her baby brother!”

Not because I can’t find the right words in Spanish, but because I can’t find my comprehension in any language, I stand silenced between my desire to comply and confusion over the command. Accentuated by an exhausted sigh, the old woman finally realizes the foreign nature of whom she is addressing; she gracefully leans her broom against the way and then gathers both her compassion and my hand and leads me through a door.

As she leads me up the stairs she explains, “You see, there is a child here that I want to have this doll. Her mother went back to their house to recover what items she could before they fled during the storm to take rescue in this evacuee center. The mother left her young daughter here to care for her baby son, but the girl is too young to be caring for the child, and she keeps leaving her brother alone, and I think that perhaps if she has a toy, she will not go straying out into the hallways and will instead stay in the room and care for her brother.”

When we reach the top of the stairs, we begin to walk down the hallway of, what appears to be, an old school building. The old woman, still holding my hand, pulls me into one of the classrooms. Against one wall a dozen miniature-people-sized school desks that are piled upside down on top of each other confirm that the building is indeed a school in its off-Storm-Stan-evacuee-house hours. On the floor thick blankets are spread marking the territory, and fencing the limited rescued possessions, of each family of evacuees that occupy the room. The old woman shakes her head that this room is not the one she seeks and tugs on my sleeve and wandering eyes to move along.

When we move back into the hall, the old woman’s ears suddenly perk and her steps fall with renewed certainty as we follow the wail of a small child towards a neighboring classroom. Blankets, here too, patchwork the floor into individual camps marked by one or more sleeping bodies sprawled across each site. On the blanket nearest the door, a child, owning not more than two years, sits with back erect and mouth open, crying for the return of familiar company that’s evidently disappeared.

A small group of young boys kick at a makeshift ball nearby and the old woman grabs the attention of one with a firm hand. The boy stands quickly to attention and I see that I’m not the only one that falls into order under the observation of my companion commandant.

“Who is the guardian of this crying child?!” she assertively questions. The young boy turns and takes notice, as if for the first time, of the toddler with the red and tear-stained face sitting nearby. Suddenly silenced by a binky of unaccustomed attention, the toddler’s wail stops as he too falls into the same silent trance graced upon all by the old woman’s grandmotherly gaze.

“Well?!,” she continues in demand of an answer.

The boy lowers his head, heavied by grandmotherly-inspired guilt, and shrugs his shoulders in shamed uncertainty. One of his playmates jumps to his rescue and says, “I think his sister is caring for him, she’s in the hall.”

Perhaps intuitively sensing that she was being called upon the small sister makes an appearance in the doorway.

I am shocked. The girl could not be any older than six years old. She’s a year younger than my little niece who isn’t allowed on the street sidewalk alone. And this child’s duty is to care for a toddler of whom she is, at the most, four years senior?

“Come here child,” the old woman commands softly and the girl obeys.

In a voice on a bed of compassion and love the old woman instructs, “You are a very good girl to be taking care of your little brother when your mother is gone. But you must stay close to him, in this room, so that he knows that you are near and doesn’t feel lonely. Now look, we’ve brought you a present…”

The woman cues me with a nudge to offer the doll. I squat to the girl’s height and offer her the gift. The small girl’s eyes widen with wonder and delight as she eagerly embraces her new toy.

“So you stay in this room and take good care of these babies okay?” she finishes with a loving pat on the girl’s shoulder. Then with the safe soft hand she takes mine again and leads me out to the hallway.

On my way out, I turn and look back at the mat where the baby brother is now gurgling giggles of joy at the dancing doll that the small girl bounces in front of him in a successful effort to entertain them both.

Three babies.

Sometimes I think that humanity is long overdue for a huge dose of Humility that Pachamama (Mother Earth) will be all too happy to administer with a reality -crashing and -questioning course of tsunamis, hurricanes and earthquakes. Having to silently witness the rape of the world on a daily basis, I find myself sometimes secretly cheering for her well deserved slaps back. Very aware of the red on my own hands, each morning, I offer my own existence for sacrifice on the Altar of Humanly Humility, alerting the Earth that I would be honored to donate my life to the lesson that will humble humans to their proper earth-kissing place on this planet.

But it’s never me.

It’s always the poor, the young, the sick, the old, the homeless, the dark-skinned, the disadvantaged and those that live closest to the earth that get humbled to it first. Babies, today, sit innocently on altars in Guatemala, Mexico, India, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and in every other country, state, county and camp in the world. So what will are we willing to sacrifice before we finally learn our lesson?

For in (merely our) end, even if we Humans continue to discriminate, Pachamama, teaching by example, will not.

And oddly enough, that brings me peace.

******

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silence squeaks

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bean and corn field outside of Nebaj

Like a child who has witnessed a tragedy beyond their vocabulary of comprehension, my mouth has been closed in silent surrender of the search for fitting words that don’t exist.

For who am I to speak? In every country I travel to, and with every firsthand story I hear, I am forced to look at the color of my skin, my country’s obvious inheritance, my deafness to ugly truths, my addiction to numbness, my aversion to action and realize that although I may be a witness, I am anything but innocent.

The following words aren’t mine; they belong to Santos and Santiago, our Guatemalan walking guides that led us through the Cuchumatanes mountains (and the history of the “civil” war) in the highlands of the Ixil Triangle in North Western Guatemala.

******

I indicate to the long grass growing in thick patches along the trail. Santos kneels down, grabs a patch of it, pulls on it to demonstrate its strength and begins to explain to me its history as he has done every other plant on the path…

“This is an excellent grass. It’s very, very strong. We used to use this grass to make roofs for our houses. The roofs would last through more than thirty years of sun and rain before needing to be replaced. But in the 80’s, when the army came, they too realized how functional these roofs were to their needs. They learned that by setting fire to these roofs, they could burn an entire village down with one torch. This grass still makes for a perfect roof, but we don’t ever dare use this grass for construction of our houses again. Now we use concrete, because it doesn’t burn.”

When Santos finds me admiring a purple flower with vines crawling low to the ground he explains, “Yes, it’s a beautiful flower. Its roots are edible. After the army burned down the villages, the survivors escaped by hiding in these mountains. The army killed all our livestock and burned down our bean, potato and cornfields as well, so we had nothing to eat. But our ancestors lived in these mountains, and we remembered how to live off of what grew wild. This flower’s roots are similar to that of a potato. We had no salt, but we mixed it with wild herbs and ate this for sustenance for the years that we hid in the mountains.”

When we pass through a small town, Santos stops to explain, “This is Acul. After they bombed it and burned it down, the Guatemalan government returned, resurrected it and called it the first “model village,” an example of a new order of discipline and development. They forced every man in the town to join the, “civil patrols,” which they instructed on how to clean the town of “subversives.” Anyone suspected of siding with or aiding the guerillas was tortured, murdered or “disappeared.” In this way the government turned neighbor upon neighbor and brother upon brother. In this way, they turned our people upon our people.”

We sit down to dinner in a small wooden house with dimensions no bigger than 20 by 8 feet. A brand new and full drum set takes up half the space of the house and an American flag spans the width of one wall. Obviously a son of this household has successfully crossed the border and is sending cash and presents home. I ask Santiago, our other guide, of the risks of trying to cross the border into the United States.

“Risks? Yes. There are risks. Many people die trying to cross the border. But what is that risk when you face death every single day of your life in Guatemala? When you watch your brothers and sisters die here of malnutrition, what is the risk of crossing the border to a country where you can make in one month more than what a Guatemalan can toil for twelve hours a day in manual labor to make in one year? “

He continues…

“When I was seven years old, my parents both died. I had four younger siblings. But they all died from malnutrition. To survive I went to the market and stole fruit; a mango, some bananas, a melon. I used to cut down branches from avocados trees and bury the fruits in the ground like a dog. Then I’d return in a few days and dig them up. I didn’t have salt. I didn’t even have tortillas. But I would eat the ripened avocados and they kept me alive. When I was 11, I went to the coast of Guatemala where I found work on a sugar cane plantation . After working for a month, I got my first money. I went out and used all that I had earned to buy two pairs of pants and two new shirts. And the next month, I had enough money to buy myself a pair of shoes. Wow, do I remember that day! I felt like I was in heaven. I was so proud that my new shoes felt like they never touched the ground.

It was always my dream to travel on ships to far away lands, so one day I went to the boat docks and asked for a job on one of the fishing boats. The boss gave me a job. And I was so happy. There, I met my wife. Before I knew it, I was married and had a new baby son. I was 18 years old. But I had nothing. No house. No land. We moved back to the highlands. My wife was pregnant again. I wanted to go to school and study. But then, one day, I realized that I didn’t want my children to live such a hard life as I did. I realized that they didn’t know how to work hard, but I did. So I decided that I would work hard my whole life so that I could provide a life to my children where they could go to school and reach the dreams that I always wanted for myself.

My first son, now he’s a policeman with a uniform and a motorcycle and a helmet and dark glasses. And my second son? In two years he will finish his schooling to become a teacher. And my baby girl; she knows how to type and is very good on computers. And you know what I have in my house? We have a toilet made out of white porcelain. Not even the teacher in my village has a toilet made out of white porcelain.

All I’ve ever wanted is for my children to have what I didn’t; for them to be able to purse the dreams that I couldn’t. You must respect your parents. For this is the desire of every parent, in Guatemala or in the United States; for their children to have the opportunities that they didn’t. It makes me crazy to see people fighting with their mother or father or brother or sister. For this is the only thing I still wish with all my heart. I would give anything to only be able to say to my family, “I love you, Mom.” “I love you, Dad.” “I love you, brother.” “I love you, sister.”

They are not here, and so I cannot tell them these things. But yours are. So don’t fight. Give thanks to God that you have your family. Respect them and tell them you love them.”

******

<More information on the massacres that took place in the Nebaj area in the early 1980s.

******

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white and red aliens

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I close my eyes and step out of my house in Oregon.

I shuffle down the driveway to the mailbox to pick up the morning paper and right before I cross the street a black fume-exhausting bus with flamboyant red, orange and blue-tipped flames painted across its sides stops in the center of my street. There are block characters written across the front of the bus but I am not familiar with the language and thus can’t read the script. A door opens and strange music and voices pour out. The instruments and rhythm playing on the radio inside are foreign and awkward to me, but it’s the strange tone and alien chatter of the inhabitants that startles me into an uncomfortable shyness.

Someone from inside the bus yells a command in a harsh voice and I assume it means, “get out” for suddenly a river of small and dark people drain out of both the back and front of the bus. The people that fill the street are like nothing I’ve ever seen; they all wear the same red striped pants with what look like black chaps that wrap around their waists and snap with strange buttons in the front. Their long sleeved shirts are also of a same uniform color, but with huge collars and cuffs of finely woven material with intricately knit symbols that I imagine as a code to which I’m illiterate. Baskets are suddenly tossed from above the bus to their individual owners who, with long leather straps that wrap around the bodies and rest the weight on their foreheads, delicately heave up their luggage onto their backs and into carry-ready stance. Despite their obvious intrusion into a reality where they stick out sore, the people possess a oddly unwavering confidence that they are in the right place.

My 7-year old niece (who lives next door) hears the commotion outside, opens her door, yells a good-morning greeting and begins to run down towards me on the street. When I turn my attention back to the visitors, I see that all the people in red pants are jostling excitedly in their baskets, where upon they all pull out paper and pencils and begin to sketch notes and little picture likenesses of my niece. One of the observers smiles and points curiously to my niece’s blue denim jeans. Another steps to the front of the group, points at my niece’s pants, and starts explaining something in a calm and confident voice. The group responds with collective “oh”s of understanding.

I turn around and shoo my niece back to her house and when I speak the group suddenly hushes each other to hear my words. The apparent leader stands on her toes again and seems to translate what I’ve said, for the end of her sentence is met with a group grunt of comprehension.

I finally muscle up my courage and step up to this strange leader, “Who are you? Where do you come from? And why have you come here?”

The leader translates my questions to the group and then turns to me and speaks in a strangely accented but comprehensible version of my mother tongue, “Why, we’re people from a land far away called, Todos Santos. And we’ve come here to study your culture, your language, your clothing and your traditions. Can we make some pictures of your house, your family and of you?”

I open my eyes.

But it’s still so impossible for me to imagine.

What could the indigenous people of Todos Santos possibly make of the white alien invasion of blond-haired, blue-eyed, tall and pale-looking strangers with heavy backpacks and bug-eyed black sunglasses that wander through their streets with huge cameras, strange languages, awkward confidence and silly questions?

Or do I dare ask at the cost of my confidence being rightfully shaken?

*****

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all saints

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The bus ungracefully bumbles its way along a long unpaved road. Its full load of passengers jiggles and jostle more to the tune of the bumps on the gravel path than that of the reggaeton blasting from the stereo. We are packed four to each side’s bench seat (where a decade ago two American children sat) with two or three standing on either side of where the center-sitters’ hips meet. Although there are many hypotheses as to why these modes of transportation are called, “chicken busses,” the one that theorizes that it’s because passengers are packed like poultry in a coop, at the present moment, seems most suiting.

I lean forward and fold my arms across the back of the seat in front of me and as I do so, I feel the lungs of my neighbors expand as the absence of my shoulders, suddenly pulled out from the horizontally stacked backbone of wall to wall bodies, relieves some of the pressure and gives way for some well-needed wiggles.

Using my folded arms as a cushion, I rest my forehead against the back of the seat in front of me and quickly fall back into a perforated sleep of exhaustion. I don’t usually sleep on busses but for some reason find this case of sleepiness, which is shared by all the other tired souls that fill this space, contagious

The bus breaks over a particularly large crack in the road and as the wheels clunk down, a majority of the heads all stir awake from slumber for just a single brief moment before they find their chins again bobbing towards their chests.

My head too turns up. But a fleeting image of that which I saw last behind my closed eyes and on the stage of my subconscious startles me awake. It was a vision of a baby’s face; eyes rolled back under closed lids, black charred skin flaking black and grey, facial features bloated out of grotesque proportion.

I look around the bus. It’s a flood of reds, greens, pinks, yellows and blues; the striking and beautiful colors of the traditional “traje” (suit/costume) of the indigenous Mayans that people these highlands.

I close my eyes again and find that the child’s face has branded the blackness with its image. The vision, scarred into my memory, silently stares back at me.

My mind suddenly races. Where would I ever get such an image? Have I seen it before? On the television while lunching at a local comedor? In a movie? Or book? I search my memory, but can find no source for the vision so three-dimensional that it couldn’t possibly fit into any picture I’ve seen in a movie or magazine.

“Just a dream,” I tell myself. And I fall asleep again.

The bus bumbles on. Passengers with swaddled children or sacks of corn get on and off. It’s market day and delicately wrapped baskets are carefully heaved on and off the roof of the bus, which both above and inside packs tighter and tighter as we arrive closer to our destination.

A pig squeals from somewhere up front and I am rustled awake from a sleep I never realized I’d entered. I don’t lift my head but I turn my face and look into the isle; and there I see a masked man; his features heavy and so defined it seems to me they must be hollow, as if only bones give shape to the black hood that hides his face. He’s holding a rifle. And although his eyes are hidden by the mask, I know he’s starring at me.

I close my eyes as fast as they blinked open and calm my racing heart with a intuitive meditation that I drop into out of both instinct and routine. It’s a prayer that I make regularly, not for my health and not for my safety, but that, “if this be the day I die, may I do so with grace, compassion and consciousness.” I don’t want to, but I open my eyes again.

And the man is gone.

The bus comes to a final jolting halt, the doors open and people begin to flood out of both ends of the bus. One of my travel mates, previously lost in the sea of seated people, climbs her way to my seat and wakes me from my startled state; “We’re here!”

In the evening I crawl into bed and my thoughts are finally granted the freedom to wander and wonder about the visions of the burnt child and masked man I’d seen on the bus. One voice inside dismisses them as dreams. Another smiles and says, “you’re crazy” (which I’m perfectly fine with being). Another voice is silent, but wants desperately to cry for a reason I’m not yet allowed to know. And then there is another voice. One that claims she is of Reason. And she says this:

“Guatemala’s 36-year civil war officially “stopped” nine years ago. The Peace Accords were perhaps signed, but the war continues for little has changed and nothing has been erased from the memories and hearts of the people who surround you and the land which grounds you. The terror, brutality, torture and rampant murdering and massacres (of which many would call genocide) that left over 200,000 people dead, over 1,000,000 displaced and countless others “disappeared” touched the lives (with a knife) of every single person in this town and on that bus. You are furious. You are furious because of the fact that the Guatemalan military has been recognized as responsible for the majority of these murders. You are enraged that in 1954, your very own country, The United States, started this civil war when the CIA orchestrated, trained and equipped an invasion from Honduras led by two exiled Guatemalan military officers who ousted the democratically nominated President Juan Jose Arevalo, who (how dare he!) tried to re-distribute unused lands “owned” by the American United Fruit company that had wrongfully and violently been seized from the indigenous Mayans in the first place. In the hills that your bus climbed through today lie mass graves, some without a single cross to mark the sites of massacres where the military, with American-made and paid arms, buried entire villages of civilians into a brutal history that went without mention in the American press aside from a few headlines to the sound of the, “Peaceful Liberation of Guatemala” (from communism!), which rings *deafeningly* in your ear at the same tone of China’s “Peaceful Liberation of Tibet” (1.2 million murdered) and America’s current, “Peaceful Liberation of Iraq” (25,000 *and counting* civilians reported killed by military intervention in Iraq). You are disgusted. You are furious. You are devastated. You are horrified. You are raw. And you didn’t even see it. Your mother was not raped in it. Your brother was not tortured by it. Your sister did not flee to Mexico from it. Your father was not “disappeared” in it. Your child was not orphaned by it. But every person in this town was cut and numbed by it. And did you really think you could travel untouched by it? When the scars of the war have not even yet scabbed, but still actively bleed from the souls of those (living and dead) that surround you?”

My travel mate drops into the room and I confess to her my visions, frustrations, furiousity and fears. She confesses her own, shares with me a heavy sigh, and notes how suiting the name of the town we’re in is; “Todos Santos”…

“All Saints.”

*****

(The US’s malicious involvement in Guatemala is by no means conspiracy theory. It’s all a quite well documented hisory that even ex-President Clinton finally eventually admitted was a “mistake” (but this “apology” of sorts saw so little press, I can’t find a direct quote online). For more information, an excellent movie documentary is, When The Mountains Tremble or pick up a copy of Unfinished Conquest: The Guatemalan Tragedy by Victor Perera or, I Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala which finally brought international attention to the plight of Guaemala’s indigenous population and won Menchu the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1992. Although the “mistake” is never mentioned in any of our history books, it’s considered enough as common-known-fact to be documented even in the Lonely Planet Guatemala guidebook.)

*****

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de nuevo

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Nope. You did not accidentally click on the archives of September of 2003 or March of 2002. By the time you read this, I will be on a plane back to the country that has hosted more of my adventures than any other; Guatemala.

And speaking of Central American adventures, here are a few while I get going on making the new:

I Have Lice: A ramble on my experiences volunteering with the squatter community of the Guatemala city dump.

The School of Life: When and where my real education began.

Defining Utila : A dictionary of island lingo for aspiring Divemasters of the Bay Islands.

Adventure Incognito: The divine synchronicity of “misfortune.”

How the Chicken Bus Crossed the Road: An experiential answer to the age-old chicken question; “Why do they call them chicken busses?”

And The Road Goes Ever On and On: An essay on returning “home.”

Stick Men with Guns: Confession of an armed robbery victim.

And on the theme of thievery, since I do have such a stellar robbery resume for Guatemala (three times already) I am especially low with my bow of gratitude to World Nomads for continuing to sponsor my travels with their excellent travel insurance packages (made exactly with the long-term backpacker in mind). I’m now carrying a laptop, digital camera and Ipod (all items which their policies specifically insure) and the relief I feel for having these tools (essential to my quest) covered is really without price. So thank, thank you, thank you World Nomads!

*****

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The School of Life

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“Ah! Such fascinating work you have! Whatever did you study in school?”

With a laugh and shrug I deliver one of the punch lines of my life; “Business.”

Today my hundred thousand dollar investment in my private school education delivers little more to me than a terrible little white envelope in the mail each month reminding me that I will owe them a check for the rest of my life.

And when exactly did my education lose my respect, I wonder?

Because I do remember a girl that took pure delight in finding the point of equilibrium on the supply-demand charts of economics courses. I remember a girl that spend three summers doing internships creating company surveys and reveled in the cleanliness of statistical analysis. I remember a girl that could work the numbers on an accounting balance sheet with the swiftness and enchantment of aligning one of those little sliding number puzzles. What happened to that girl?

My favorite course was Economics. My teacher was brilliant.

I remember one day when he declared to the class, “today I am going to show you the actual dollar value of a human life.” He then proceeded to use statistics of how “high-risk” jobs (street construction work) pay higher salaries in direct relation to the value of risk of death. From there he found a dollar unit value of life. And two hours later, with a whirlwind of white chalk power wafting in the air, thirty 20-year olds dropped their jaws in awe and declared in unison, “why yes, it makes perfect sense, a human life is worth exactly that little point on that graph!”

Another day he declared to the class, “today I’m going to show you that the best thing we could do to save the whales, is to give them to the poachers themselves.” And once again, in a flurry of swift statistics and sloping curves, he produced the ingenious answer, “privatization of the whaling industry!”

His rationale made pure and perfect sense.

Little did he know that his teachings would one day suffer from one of the very laws he taught me; The Law of Diminishing Returns, which I fondly remember as, “the more burritos you eat, the less you want to eat a burrito.”

Whales and Life are one thing on a chart, but they are another on a silver platter. And I declined my business school education on one life-changing day when they were delivered to me together in a formula that my Economics professor had never taught me…

I was frolicking in the last low and golden lights of another beautiful day on the beach of Tamarindo, Costa Rica when two men on horses galloped down the beach with unusually hurried speed. They abruptly stopped at my camp, where I was working with a sea turtle conservation effort.

The alarm in their faces was crudely accentuated by the red streaks of blood on their arms and shirts.

“…we tried to push it back in…but it won’t go! It’s smashing up against the rocks and it’s bleeding everywhere….I’m not sure what it is…it looks like a baby whale or something…”

The local managers of our camp, without a single moments hesitation, grabbed their gear and ran with race-worthy speed down the beach. My own steps fell behind their feet, but I found their natural pace quickly outdistanced mine.

The tide was coming in and, with parts of the beach inaccessible, I summited a small cliff to get to the final strip of rocky beach where the animal reportedly lay. At the top of the cliff, I delayed my dash for one minute to turn around and witness a single glimpse of the most beautiful sunset light I have ever seen grace a land. The red dirt of the clay cliff flared the bush, sky and water into an array of technicolor that blinded me to the reality of life.

The world swam around me and finally stalled long enough for me to briefly wonder, “Is this real?” Distant shouting turned me back to the path and sent me scrambling down the cliff to where my co-workers stood huddled waist high in the crashing waves of the incoming tide around a black thrashing mass.

I slowed my step considerably as I approached the shiny, coal-colored creature that it took three men to restrain.

“What is it?!”

“Is it alive?!”

“A porpoise.”

“Barely.”

I stepped deeper into the water and reached out to the creature. I placed one hand near its pale and desperate eye.

Tears welled up behind my own and threatened to break with the tide.

And suddenly I remembered something that I had read online in the news that very morning…

A large pod whales had beached themselves “for no apparent reason (although there was a recent experiment with seismic airguns in the local area of water)” on the coast of Tasmania, Australia that day. Despite all local efforts, the whales could not be moved back into the sea and the whales all lay awaiting imminent death.

My heart turned back to the porpoise. My hand rested gently upon her resigned life. Life was slipping from her like the water gliding down her oiled skin. And as I reached out to her and touched that moment inbetween life and death, my heart lept across the world and felt also the pulse of her great sisters of the sea, as their despair grew to match their enormous size and their pulse diminished to match their will to live.

Life stalled again. My heart with it. And I felt the pulse of all life weaken.

My despair clenched my throat around my own breath of life and something inside of me screamed and fell down on its knees. The tide of my inner cry crashed violently against the rocks of my being.

“THIS is life! THIS is life!”

Life is not a number, or tool, or factor of an equation, or possession to be owned, or statistic to be manipulated, or point of equilibrium on a chart! It’s not clean, or mechanical or predictable! It’s here! THIS pulse is life! And it beats in pace with all living creatures, just as it resonates with my own. And when it fades, mine does also!

And suddenly the bowels of the porpoise broke. And the water we stood in turned black with waste and blood. The man restraining the tail of the creature let go of the fight that had faded with the heart.

And it was somewhere there in the soiled water of death, and in the silence of life lost, that I let go of my education, and stood in understanding.

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