A Tuesday at Pronino

April 17

Today was insane. It started out as such a great day, I got to bed early, it wasn’t steaming hot at night, I slept so well and dreamt of having a coffee with my mom.

Tomorrow is Gerardo and Margarita’s last day at Proniño (they are a couple from Holland who come every year for two months to volunteer), so I thought it would be nice to have the kids make cards for them. I thought…we can use some paint and make handprint cards and that will be nice.

One of the projects Gerardo and Margarita and I did last week was paint two of the classrooms at La Montana. It was a lot of work, and they look really nice. So the handprints seemed appropriate, yeah?

So in the morning I got everything together outside the school. The first group came up for English class and I told them we were doing the cards first. Then Osiris, one of the educators at the center (who’s first day back from vacation was today), came up to the beautiful, newly painted, cleaned, organized classrooms and starts taping and gluing all sorts of Pooh and cartoon foam things on the walls. And I tried explaining that we are going to paint pictures on the walls with the kids, like they had done at Las Flores

PICTURE OF LAS FLORES PAINTING

But she hasn’t seen that and she didn’t care. I tried telling her how much work scraping off all the old glue was, how hard we worked on the painting. But no. So I was frustrated about that, and then came out to start the cards with the kids…to find that they had knocked over both, big, half full cans of bright red and yellow paint. It’s flowing like giant lakes of ketchup and mustard, mixing together and pouring down the steps of the school. And the kids are playing in it, swirling it around, stepping in it, walking all over in it, smearing it on each other, on clothes, on the water tank…

And I’ve no idea how to clean up ½ inch deep of wet paint off cement stairs. So I start scooping it up with my hands and dumping it in a bucket. The kids who are usually such willing, tough workers are not helping and think this is the funniest thing they’ve ever seen.

Even while I was so frustrated, so fed up, while I was scraping my hands against the concrete, I was thinking… sometime soon this will be funny.

So my new Proniño strategy is: The hours and the days that I am the most frustrated, most angry, fed up and ready to quit…if it is not funny after twenty four hours, then I can cry. But everything makes me laugh the next day.

Semana Santa in Guatemala and Mexico (Will put photos up soon!!)

Have had a busy few weeks, and have been terrible at writing here. For Semana Santa, I went to Guatemala and Mexico. I had to renew my visa (it’s only good for three months at a time)…and you need to renew it by leaving the country (but then it can’t be El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua…the closest ones you can renew it are Mexico, Costa Rica or Belize).

We (I went with Tess, who had come through Mexico and Guatemala before coming to Progreso to volunteer) went by bus from San Pedro Sula to Guatemala City, then from there to the border, then to San Cristobal de las Casas in Mexico. We left San Pedro Sula at 2:00 in the morning and arrived to Mexico at 3:00 in the morning… such a long trip. But it was strange to have crossed between three countries in one day. I could have still been going across Pennsylvania in that time…

The border between Guatemala and Mexico was also a bit strange, literally a metal bar across the road that we just ducked under. Bienvenidos a Mexico.

San Cristobal was a really nice town. Very relaxed and clean, so much cleaner than Progreso, so different. And so cold! I bought a wool sweater there for $12 and slept in it most of the nights. San Cristobal de las Casas is close to a Zapatista community and there is a huge culture of Zapatista art and social movements. There are little shops that sell books, videos, art, and even small dolls of indigenous women with the Zapatista black cloth around their faces. We watched a film in a small café about a bit of the history.

The people seemed very politically motivated. Everywhere on the walls in the streets was graffiti about current events, leaders, etc. Even this interesting portrait…

After Mexico for a few days, we traveled back down to Guatemala, to Lago Atitlan, a beautiful fresh water lake that was formed when a volcano collapsed in on itself. It’s surrounded by other volcanoes, too. We stayed in San Pedro, another relaxed, small town full of European backpackers and people claiming to be learning Spanish at one of the schools there.

From the lake we went to Chichicastenango, supposedly the largest market in all of Central America. However… apparently it is not the largest market in Central America during Semana Santa. What we saw on Thursday was a bit smaller than I had expected, but still plenty to buy and choose from.

And the colors of everything were beautifully surprising the entire time in Guatemala. The people’s clothing is a work of art. All handmade, colorful and determined to be practical.

After Chichi, we went off to Antigua for Friday and Saturday. All the while riding these beautifully painted, incredibly crowded old school buses from the states. Full of colors, bags, chickens, mangos, babies, old men, school kids. And me trying to watch my bag above me, hold another on my lap, squeezed against a woman and her toddler, while an old man with his hat falls asleep on my shoulder.

And I was glad to have only brought a backpack and a small bag, that the drivers always let me keep with me on the bus. Otherwise, it would have been thrown on top with all of the other things…

We arrived in Antigua on Good Friday. A half hour after we set our things down where we stayed, a procession began on our street. One hour of people in black marching past, with the stations of the cross, floats, incense, and a complete band. The people pay to be in the procession and then their black costumes cost a lot of money as well. First the men went by, then the women with their float, but always there were children; tiny replicas of the adults in their black suits.

Photo of Procession (these two were taken by Matthias...

my camera doesn't take such nice photos)

Little girl with her giant can of coke

The processions continued until Sunday, when we left. At every time of day…in the early morning, afternoon, evening, the middle of the night…never stopping. Sometimes we had to go the most backwards way to a place only because we couldn’t cross the streets. It was at once inspiring to see their faith in their religion, and ironic in the ways they processed with their cell phones and iPods and the money they had to pay to do it in the first place…

Left Antigua at 7:30 in the morning and finally arrived back in Progresso at 8:00 at night.

Such a trip.

Here are some other photos...

Fruit vendors in Antigua

One of the floats in the processions in Antigua

Lava from Volcano Pucaya in Antigua...five yards away from us