January 5, 2015

I awoke to the sound of big winds outside my room even with my earplugs in. It was around 6:30 AM, clear outside, but very windy. I was unhappy I had woken so early, not my plan at all - today I had no schedule at all and had hoped to sleep a little later. Oh well, I stayed in bed for a while, then got up and dressed. About 7:50 I walked over to the restaurant, found breakfast was served starting at 8. I made return trip after 8 and learned continental breakfast was included - bread and jam, orange juice, and coffee. I really like breakfast, so I ordered the crepes with fruit and yogurt as well.

The plan for today was to explore Santiago Atitlan. I had spoken with Lydia, the woman at the desk when I checked in, and she had told me she could arrange a guide. We started working on that after breakfast and the best she could come up with was one man who didn't speak much English or another person who did speak English and was going to charge almost twice the going rate. I was about to settle on the first when she suggested that I could use Leonardo who was behind the bar chopping vegetables for the restaurant. She told me that although he was supposed to be working in the hotel he spoke English and had studied some tourism and could be my guide. I thought that was a really good idea, so he put down his knife and pulled a folder out of the filing cabinet, and I picked up my bag and the two of set out. I learned from Leonardo that he is 23 and the other vegetable chopper at the hotel is his brother. This past September he had been sponsored by a non-profit organization to go to Cincinnati, Ohio, for a two week English language immersion program. Each week he stayed with a different American family. His favorite activity while there was going on a camping trip which he had never done. So it was easier to talk with him as he had experienced the U.S. in a similar way that I was experiencing Guatemala. His dream for the future is to open a museum that will preserve the traditions of the local people while showing also the contemporary society. He told me he has collected some photographs as a first step.

Our first stop was to visit a woman to demonstrate how to put on a X'cap, the traditional woman's halo-like headwrap. He was not quite sure where to find her, so we walked up and down a few streets as he asked people in Mayan. We got to the house only to discover that the grandmother, the expert was at church. However, her daughter began the demonstration but could not get it on tight enough. Her sister emerged and demonstrated flawlessly. So what is the X'kap? (information from the weaving museum later visited on my own.) It is from the earlier half of the 20th century. It is made from one long continuous woven cotton belt with the outer surface at the end decorated. Originally it extended one inch from the head, but later became wider and larger. So one is wrapped around the woman's ponytail and then it is all wrapped around the head in many layers, ending with the colorful decorated part on the outside. It is a traditional headdress of Santiago Atitlan. After the demonstration, we sat for a while talking with the two women who only spoke the local Mayan dialect. The one who successfully demonstrated had two children there, a daughter age 12 and a son who appeared about 5. We learned that her husband is an alcoholic and does not provide for the family at all. There had been some sort of domestic violence, but it has stopped. There is no money to send Elena to school; she would like to study business and work in a bank. They have had connection with some aid organizations. She pointed to a carton of milk carton boxes and said she had received that milk for her son, but it was of no help because all of the milk had passed the expiration date. The women work hand stringing beads into these pieces of jewelry that seem local to this area. The home we were in actually looked sort of nice. We were sitting on a tiled sort of patio that had a stainless steel refrigerator. Behind us were three rooms with beautiful wooden doors and wood framing around the windows. I was curious as to why this very poor family had a house that had some really nice features. Leonardo asked and was told that in the past the grandmother owned some property that she had sold, and the money from the sale was used for those nice features of the house. I gave them a little extra money than they had asked for the demonstration. Elena, the daughter, gave me her e-mail address.

We departed and walked to the market. We walked around the different sections, fruits and vegetables, fish, chicken, meat, etc. It was not a big market day. Most of what I saw I had seen in other markets, but it was interesting , as usual, to see this two story market.

Across the street was the central square where there is a stone sculpture featuring Guatemala's 25 cent piece which features a woman wearing the X'cap, Up the stairs from the central plaza was the plaza in front of the Iglesia Parroquial Santiago Apostol. This church, dedicated to St. James the Apostle was built between 1572 and 1581, and has been restored and reconstructed several times after significant earthquake damage. It has three altarpieces representing the three volcanoes that tower over the village. Along both sides of this church inside are wooden carvings of the saints dressed in some pretty outlandish clothes, like one set all in what look like pink raincoats and another group in flowered tunics. There are some wooden panels under the statues behind the pulpit that tell the story of the creation of Maximon (more about him later). In the front, there is a memorial to Father Stanley "Apla's" Rother, Catholic pastor of the church who was assassinated in the parish rectory adjacent to this church on July 28, 1981 during the thirty years war Guatemala suffered. The people of Santiago Atitlán asked that his head and blood remain in the village. They are buried in the martyr's monument in the south west arch of the church. The violence in Santiago continued through 1990 claiming a deacon and many other church members.

From the church we walked to the home of Maximon, one of seven such sites in Guatemala. Maximon also called San Simón, is a folk saint venerated in various forms by Maya people of several towns in the highlands of Western Guatemala. The veneration of Maximón is not approved by the Roman Catholic Church. Maximón is believed to be a form of the pre-Columbian Maya god Mam, blended with influences from Spanish Catholicism. It has been suggested that the name Maximón is a combination of Simón and Max, the Mam word for tobacco. The legend has it that one day while the village men were off working in the fields, Maximón slept with all of their wives. When they returned, they became so enraged they cut off his arms and legs (this is why most effigies of Maximón are short, often without arms). Following this, he somehow became a god, or perhaps prior to this he had been possessed by the god. Where Maximón is venerated, he is represented by an effigy which resides in a different house each year, being moved in a procession during Holy Week. During the rest of the year, devotees visit Maximón in his chosen residence, where his shrine is usually attended by two people from the representing Cofradia who keep the shrine in order and pass offerings from visitors to the effigy. Worshipers offer money, spirits and cigars or cigarettes to gain his favor in exchange for good health, good crops, and marriage counseling, amongst other favors. The effigy invariably has a lit cigarette or cigar in its mouth, and in some places, it will have a hole in its mouth to allow the attendants to give it spirits to drink. Maximón is generally dressed in 18th-century European style, although with many local variations.

Several people from the group last week visited Maximon and were there with a shaman and reported much activity from the shaman, spitting on the floor, sprinkling of alcohol, and people giving offerings. All was very tame at this site. The attendants were there and told me I need to pay 10 quetzales to talke a picture (about $1.40). In this small room, there was another case that appeared to have a supine statue of a dead Jesus and some other statues of saints. There were balloons on the ceiling. I was told this was the last holiday of the year, the festival of the kings, and there would be party that evening starting at 4 PM and I could come. The day on which children receive Christmas gifts in Guatemala is January 6, Epiphany, called Three Kings' Day -- el Día de los Reyes Magos (also known elsewhere as Twelfth Night, as in Shakespeare's play by that name).This explains why Christmas decorations have been up and restaurants have been playing Christmas carols. We left Maximon's house and I thanked Leonardo and told him I wanted to walk around some more. I walked back down the main street, looking at the shops selling paintings, weavings, and all the other Guatemalan crafts. I passed a weaving museum and went in. A young American woman introduced herself and told me she was in Guatemala for a year with a non-profit organization somehow in conjunction with graduate school. This was the Cojolya Weavers Museum and store. There are displays explaining various aspects of and types of weaving. The materials and things for sale are very high class, not folk art, but with patterns based on traditional art. At the end I mentioned to the woman there about the young girl Elena that I had met who lived only a few blocks away. It turns out she also volunteers with another non profit that provides assistance to middle school girls. I gave her Elena's e-mail and she said she would present this to the organization. I hope some good would come from this networking opportunity.

I went down to the boat docks along an extension of the main street with many vendors with booths set up. As I walked back up I stopped in the El Dorado café, not really hungry, but wanting something. I ordered a frappuccino and ended up talking to a young couple from Brazil for a while, she an attorney and he an engineer, from Sao Paolo. That was a nice break. Then I walked back up via the market to Maximon's house for the party. There was no party when I got there. The men were still putting up balloons and were working on crepe paper streamers. After a while, a band set up and was playing in the back area where all these men who were most obviously drunk were just lying in the dirt. I walked outside and across the walkway was a woman at an outdoor stove and some other women in front of the next doorway. So I ended up talking with them and their children for a while. When they learned I was a doctor, they wanted to know where the heart was. Turned out the husband of one who came a short while later had some serious heart disease. From what I could gather, he probably has two vessel coronary artery disease and did not respond to treatment with a cardiac cath and needs surgery. He was probably in his early 50's. He is supposed to be taking some kind of medicine, but has no money to buy it. The women told me the party would continue the next day. I thanked them all and departed and found a tuk-tuk back to the hotel.

I had passed the day before a little building near the driveway into the hotel with a sign on that said something like Gone fishin, be back Monday. It was some sort of little restaurant so I thought I would try it - Los Lagartijas. Turns out it is Trip Advisor #1. It is this little one room place with a few tables, owned by an American couple from near Sedona, AZ. Food is mostly Mexican, very reasonably priced, and really good. There was another couple there, two doctors from Vancouver, BC who have been coming down here for about 15 years to do volunteer medical work at the hospital in Antigua. She does primary care and he is an OB-Gyn. It was nice to talk with them and the two owners of the restaurant and have some company during dinner.

Once finished, it was just a short walk back down the driveway and into the EcoBambu to my room for a "good-night."