Good News

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After a time of struggling, this has been an excellent week. I have continued to feel better each day, and am now back to normal. That may not be good news to some of you, but I feel great! I resumed my classes at the school on Tuesday, and have learned a lot, though I continue to struggle with understanding the spoken Spanish. My teacher says I am well advanced in grammer but still pretty weak in understanding what is said. On the plus side, I was able to talk a little with 2 or 3 people at church this morning and make myself understood. I even understood a lot of what they said! Fueled by Gatorade diluted half and half with water, I am attempting to be more deliberate in approaching others and asking questions.

This week I´ve had some interesting experiences. On Wednesday I went back to Fuentes Georginas (yes, again!) in the afternoon. It was warm here at noon, but there is was very foggy, and since it was also mid-week it was almost deserted. I saw only two families, and spoke to both but was unable to get a conversation going. But on the shuttle with me were a high school teacher from Mexico (probably close to my age) and a young woman from Alaska who spoke both English and Spanish. So I visited quite a bit with her and some with him, and also spoke briefly with a woman who seemed like maybe she was part of the place and was very friendly. We were back in the city around 6:30 (wow, the colon is actually under the key which it is marked for!) (The "a" on this keyboard is very sticky. as are other keys, so I do a lot of going back and correcting).

Thursday I walked downtown to inquire about shuttle to the Capital and also to see if anything had worked out about a tour of a coffee farm. I had no luck wth the latter, but Friday late afternoon I learned that two people had booked a morning trip to a coffee farm as part of a full day tour, and they were coming back here before the second part. As a result, I was able to go with them on Saturday. It was about a 1 1/2 hour drive, and the last part was extremely rough because the road into the farm is terrible (broken rock "pavement" and then closer to the farm lots of holes. The owner lives in Retelaheu and comes about once week.

But the tour itself was great. Our driver acted as our interpreter, though I understood about half of what our guide said. The other two were a young couple from Ireland. We visited their processing plant, where they also process macademia nuts. It is primitive by our standards, but there´s a lot to know about the process, and the machines they now have eliminated a huge number of jobs. Basically, the outer shell of the coffee is peeled off, and it is soaked in water before sitting in a vat for several hours or days (cannot remember). Then it is floated through a two foot deep channel and sorted into three grades. The heaviest is the best, and sold as number one. Some sinks only part way, and is number two. The third grade stuff floats on top, and is consumed in the local market. Like lumber in Canada, the best stuff is exported.

After sorting, the coffee is dried on an outdoor concrete¨"patio" or in cool damp weather in a wood-fired dryer. The latter process takes about 24-30 hours I believe, whereas the natural drying (its not as warm) takes about a week. The coffee is then bagged and sent elsewhere for removal of another "skin" and roasting. A lot of the roasting is done by large companies outside of Guatemala (sounds like Saskatchewan crops eh?)

The second part of the tour involved a quick conversation with a young American doing some sort of research in the yard of one of the 30 workers who lives there. The worker has a cage with several f the same animals we saw in the nature reserve at Panajachel (can´t remember that name either) and several hives of very small wild bees (the hives are 15 inch long chunks of some kind of tree hollowed out, about 6 inches in diameter. Then we walked to the fields to see the growing process. First we saw the eating area and barracks where dozens (maybe 200) harvest workers stay. Harvest is from August to January on that farm. They we saw a shelter where seedlings are grown in plastic bags and then repotted into plastic tubs, where they stay under shelter of some small trees for about a year, and are babied with chemical weed control and a fungicide or insecticide to prevent problems. The healthy trees are then about three feet tall I think (maybe less) when they are taken and planted in the field.

Many trees we saw had green coffee ¨beans" on them, and he explained that there are three possible threats to the crop. I have this part on audio tape, but the most serious occurs mostly when it is very dry (like now) and the trees loose all their leaves. If that happens, they die. The trees are cut back to about a foot high stump every 8-12 years when production begins to decrease. Many new shoots grow, but only two are left on the tree, the idea being that the year with no crop after cutting them back is quickly made up by having two trees in one.

In amongst the coffee trees are planted a fruit tree thet bears a small round green fruit (don´t have the name with me), possibly golf ball size and mostly exported I think but very nutricious. The trees complement one another, the coffee being a much faster plant to establish but the fruit being a little more profitable once established and also harvested somewhat earlier I think. The fruit trees are fertilized with about 10 pounds of organic fertilizer. They make this by putting macadamia shells in long shallow troughs in a shed (to keep the birds away), in which also live thousands of special red worms, about 2 inches long and very skinny. Once the nuts are completely converted to fertile soil, they are shoveled to one end of the trough, and new shells are put in the former aprt of them. The worms, being smart (and hungry) move themselves to the new material, and the process begins again. Apparently some of the small worms do not move, and are manually removed before the fertilizer is applied (doesn´t sound lke much fun to me!) to the trees. IN another shed, they are experimenting with some sort of liquid fertilizer and hoping to sell it to other farmers in the near future once the process is perfected. They are using it themselves on some fo the trees.

On the way back we saw a cocoa tree (45 seeds to the pod) and a grapefruit tree, as well as some banana trees with fruit and a flower at the same time. We also were shown a stick from a cinnimon tree. At the end of the tour, which included crossing a swinging bridge (most of the boards were OK), and seeing in the same ravine where they have four zip lines you can use, they served us a very nich meal in a covered outdoor eating area. We had potatoes, brocoli with a bit of local cheese sprinkled on it, a nice piece of pork, and to drink a cold tea made of hibiscus flowers (very good!) We also, of course, were offered a cup of coffee, which was very strong but good. ON the way out, our driver pointed out a bunch of trees which he said were rubber trees, rather newly planted I assume because they were not very big around and looked like white stakes 6 or 7 feet high. There was also some bamboo growing along the road in one area, and who knows how many other plants. The far is a lot lower in elevation than here in Xela, and so a lot hotter. Apparently they do grow some shade coffee, which is not as succeptible to insects or diseases (or both?) as what is grown in the sun, but they claimed that because they are high enough from the sea level that extensive shade is not required.

So ends my sermon for today! After a short stop at the house (Adrelina does door to door pickup) I headed for a Scout meeting at San Marcos, most groups meeting at around 3PM on Saturdays. But I never did get there! About four blocks fro the house I spotted a young man in full Scout uniform walking along the street enar me. I spoke to him and discovered that he was the troop leader for a group on the far side of the park. I invited myself to the meeting and he agreed. They meet at a small park called Simon Boliver (with the appropriate statue) that I had not seen before as it is in a different area. Once here I gave the leader, whose name sounded something like "Eddie", a couple of badges, some head bandanas, and some flags and a Canada "Cat in the Hat" to give the kids for accomplishments or whatever. Again I was given a necker, and also a badge this time. I believe they have around 70 or more kids, but yesterday there were about a dozen Scouts, a half dozen older youth, maybe 12 to 15 Cubs, and also a number of Beavers. We all walked to an open area on the edge of town, from which the Cubs and Beavers then left for a hike and maybe other activities. I stayed with the scouts, who climbed up the hill a ways into a shaded area with trees. They were to learn the bowline and perhaps another knot. Anyway, the leader who is 19) proceeded to shimmie up the branchless tree about 20 feet, throwing a rope over a sturdy branch up there, tying some sort of know, and then returning to the ground. He ended up going back up to untied the know which was supposed to slide but didn´t, and a third time part way to get started. The idea was to tie a bowline around your waist, and try to climb the tree on your own. None fo the youth could do it, so they began using the other end of the rope to help pull the person up. One girl made it almost to the top, and one guy about half way. Some barely got three feet off the ground, though most made it 6 or 8 feet. Next came tying a different knot ion a pole but they were huddled n a circle and I could not see exactly what they were doing. After about 1 1-2 hours they returned to the clearing at the bottom of the hill and began some games which included a couple of relay races, a game in which half of them tied themselves in a human knot and challenged the others to pry them loose (the first group did but the second was more tenacious), and anoher game which involved joining hands in a circle and trying to drag somebody into the rope circle in the middle. Yet another game involved forming a circle with one person in the centre swinging a rope with a backpack attached with ever increasing speed, and which players had to jump or be eliminated. Needless to say here were a number of cuts and bruises when it was all finished. One of the relays involved dragging yourself with your elbows (not using your feet or legs) and the ground was more dirt than grass. This went on for quite some time, and it was about 6PM when we walked back to the park. The Cubs and Beavers had gone back a little ahead of us.

Walking out incuded quite a bit of singing (some Scout tunes I knew), and coming back involved very loud singing of the same songs, attracting lots of attention (but remember this is a city with lots of noises). At the aprk, mos of the kids seemed to be waiting for parents to pick the up. I sat on the edge of a concrete fountain (it had no water in it) and in not much time was surrunded by a half dozen Cubs and Beavers fascinated by my camera and having lots of fun "posing" and running around. A few of the older kids came over and sat enarby. Two kids dragged their fathers to meet me and the conversation was very limited given the noise and my lousy Spanish (the kids had a great laugh once when I answered a question with "si) and had obviously totally misunderstood ( actually a lot of the time I hadn´t a clue what they were asking me!)

Today was my sencond and last Sunday a San Macos. It happened to be a baptism, a which the family had hired a photographer to take video of everything and paid for many stands of flowers which half blocked the narrow aisle. The church was packed to overflowing. Luckily I had picked the pew in which an older man I had met the first Sunday sits, and he sat beside me and helped me a lot with finding pages in the books. The actual baptism was at the back of the sanctuary in one corner, very crowded but with the photographer and his camera fight up close to the action! After, I said goodbye to Roberto, but missed Cnythia as she was busy at the front with rehearsing music and the family all piled back to the fromt for pictures.

When I got back to the house after a leisurely second walk through the very busy market and taking pictures, the extended family was there, including some I´d not met before. One boy of 7 had (as far as I can tell) been asking his grandma about me, and along with his sister and cousin 5 and 6 yers old was anxious to see me Since I had planned to give the kids something I went upstairs after our 2PM lunch and brought down some small Canada flags, and some Canada tatoos. I also gave some to grandma for the five year old I´d met earlier at his birthday party but who was not there today. One of the moms said she was a kid too and wondered where hers was, so I got a couple of those head bandanas and gave her one, which ended up on the head of her daughter. Carlos, the older boy (and I think her brother), was also obviously wanting one, so I tossed him the other and he put it on. Much waving of flags and running in the house followed, before I got my camera and had some pictures of me and the kids taken. The kids were a little hyper, so I got my video and took more picures of them. But soon everyone left and I left to find the internet cafe. This one includes very loud music, but my favourite is not open Sundays it seems.

It´s been a great week, and now I have only four days of studying left. I will leave here Thursday afer lunch, possibly spending a night in Panajachel, and possibly taking a trip to Copan across the Honduran border. They tell me its very different than Tikal.

Now I´ll try to upload a few pictures, probably to my photo website (http://duckesq.albumpost.com) rather than here but we´ll see.

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Comments

[SCOUTER RAY]

coffee
Good to hear you are well again and are drinking coffee .you will have to visit a brewery and then tell us how the cerveza was. Do not try to much and get lost .Hope that you will bring back some Scout expearence and Spanish for your students here.Your BLOG is good.Keeps us thinking and enveying you . ENJOY