The quiet life

Tuesday, Feb 8, 2011

The pace of life here at the mountain school is muy tranquilo. The school is situated in the countryside adjacent to two small settlements: Fatima and Nuevo San Jose. Both settlements are populated by people who were displaced from the large coffee fincas (farms) during disputes with the management. The people in Nuevo San Jose had been working at the San Jose finca for two years without pay. They kept asking for their money, but the managers refused to pay them because they were broke too. Although the finca owners could have compensated them with land, they just kept promising to pay them and never did. It got so bad that several children died of malnutrition and eventually the campesinos (the poor workers) took them to court and sued for their back pay. Incredibly, they won and finally got their money, which they used to purchase the settlement they currently occupy. Unfortunately, unemployment is extremely high in this area and many of the men travel great distances each day looking for day labor. Some days they work and other days they don’t, but they have to pay the bus fare regardless, so whatever they do earn is reduced significantly by their transportation costs.

The school is a major boon to this area. They provide jobs for local men and women who work on the grounds and in the buildings doing maintenance and keeping things really clean. Also, each student has his or her own teacher, so when the school is at max capacity (14), it provides jobs for at least 7 teachers who otherwise would not have work. The job of feeding us is contracted out to various families in the settlements and that is a huge benefit for those who provide meals. The women who do the cooking generally have children to look after and could not work outside the home even if jobs were available, so getting paid to cook helps them out a lot. Each week, the students rotate to another family for their meals. Because there are more women willing to feed students than there are students to feed, rotating is the only way to make sure the work is distributed equitably.

In addition, the school has several community projects that have been very successful including scholarships for local students. They are currently fundraising to build a library for the community that will employ a teacher to staff it. Many of the students who are able to go to school have no quiet place at home in which to study and/or no electricity after dark so the library will provide a lighted, quiet space and the teacher will be available to help them with their homework.

We have been taking our meals this week with Maria, who is married to the school handyman, Jorge. Maria is a very good cook and we’ve enjoyed everything she has put in front of us. She uses a lot of very fresh vegetables, and I’m getting great ideas of how to incorporate more veggies into our diet once we get home. There are ALWAYS fresh corn tortillas on the table (hot from Maria’s cook fire), but I find she give us plenty of rice or pasta or potatoes so I don’t need the extra carbs from the tortillas. Jeff really enjoys them though, and always has a few with his meal. Jorge is also a bit of a horticulturist and maintains the herb garden here at the school. He can brew up an herb tea for any number of ailments, which is good since “la gripe” has been going around. He also grows several different vegetables and herbs in his garden at home, so we benefit by enjoying them in Maria’s cooking.

There is a salad here in Guatemala that is quite typical and we had it for lunch at Maria’s one day. It is made entirely of shredded radishes with just little fresh lime juice squeezed over it. The radishes here are really big, but very mild and the salad is extremely yummy and refreshing. I’m already thinking about how I might find a seed catalogue that sells Guatemalan radish seed. Somehow I don’t think the salad would be the same with the spicy radishes we have at home. Another typical salad is sliced cucumbers and tomatoes with fresh lime juice – muy yummy.

Another typical food in Guatemala is the guiskl. It is a small green squash (I think) that, when cooked, has the texture of a boiled potato, but just a bit more flavor. It’s quite good and is quite plentiful right now. We had a big bowl of soup that was nothing but broth and guiskl, so it’s a good thing we both like it.

Each class day we have a break at 10am, and there is always some type of fruit cut up for us to eat. Watermelon is in season, so we have a lot of that – it’s really sweet and delicious. There are always lots of bananas available too, so sometimes that’s our treat. There are tons of mangoes in the market right now, but the Guatemalan mangos are fairly small and really hard to cut up, so we don’t have those for snack. You pretty much just have to score them with a knife, then peel the skin down like a banana and eat the mango from your hand, working around the gigantic pit in the center. It sure beats a candy bar!