De donde viene la miel?

I was glad to have access to the Mazda 2013 – that’s right, we now have to distinguish between our two Mazdas by year because we have two of them. I can’t believe how much we achieve and it all gets overshadowed so quickly by the next big thing we have to do, project we have to redo, crisis we have to solve, grant we have to win.  Right now I’m feeling insecure about my work, and a lot of pressure to kick some major ass this week and impress Curt. 

So last Saturday I took that Mazda 2013 and drove down that route that has become so common to me, like a piece of “home” here, outside of Xela, past the rotunda, round the corner to the Cantel and Zunil, coasting out of those beautifully green highlands and into the tropical heat of the coast. I played podcasts and Radiohead music and hung out with this crazy head of mine and all of its thoughts. Oh how I love the solitude, whether it’s with coffee in the clouds or a cold agua pura in the coast.

I stayed at Noes house that night, although there wasn’t much to report. Its crazy how much slower life moves out there in the rural farmlands of the coast. Its quiet. Its like being at grandmas house. Theres not a lot to do but sit around, play with the kiddos, eat a little bit and swing in the hammock before you go to bed. I wonder how different it will all be in another generation – will these hammocks still swing or will they be replaced by western-imported recliner chairs? Will the kiddos’ favorite satuday night game still be scooting across the concrete floor? Will the chickens still eat the scraps thrown out beside the pila? At the same time that the life moves slow, the industrial evolution is happening ever so fast. The cocacola sold down the street cheaper than water, the television blaring Toy Story 3, the neighbors that just pulled up in a 2014 Hummer. Its like this place, and perhaps all the rural places of the world, are some giant mixing bowl where all the great fads of the world slyly sneak their way in, for better or for worse – what I wouldn’t give to see some raw food fad slip into the local scene.

It doesn’t always make for a good mix - the Catholic priest steadfastly upholding community morals on Sundays, trying to maintain attention while a Miley Cyrus concert blares on the television at the tienda next door. We have passed the point of return – there is no preserving that ideal bucolic life in some static vacuum. I believe that. Change is the way of the world, and the best we can do is vow to aid and abet in making the most peaceful, just and environmentally sound new mix of rural life.

Noe Estrada is one of the best smallholder farmers I have ever met.  An orphan of sorts, raised by grandparents and earning his first quetzales working long hours on a foreign-owned plantation. Noe stuffed those $2/day earnings deep into his teenage pockets until he had enough to buy a piece of land for himself, the parcel he currently calls home with his wife and three daughters. 

But this is no typical 18 acre plot suffering the ails of chemically-drowned, monoculture corn farming. Noe grows corn, sesame, Chaya, avocado, limes, a variety of local herbs and even sweet potato. And unlike the rest of the farmers on the block, Noe is not subject to the cruel limitations of the once-a-year market run by coyotes (middlemen) who pay – if you’re lucky – $0.12/pound of corn.  Noé kept stuffing those few quetzales in his pocket, saving enough over the years to build himself an irrigation system. He plants a new corn crop every two weeks, allowing him to collect a continual corn harvest throughout the year and enjoy a hefty price increase for his corn in the dry season. And when the coyotes still refuse to offer a good price, Noe uses his corn harvest to make elote, a local favorite sold to his neighbors throughout the year.

“Why limit yourself to such a fluctuating, unproductive crop?” Noe tells me, speaking of the tradition of monoculture corn across the region. “Diversify, that’s what I tell my neighbors.” Enter the most beautiful, perhaps smallest and most productive part of Mother Earth’s great ecosystem: honeybees.  While beekeeping and honey production may be one of the most lucrative options for smallholder farmers in the region – few inputs required, low labor costs, low competition – most farmer won’t give it a shot for fear of the infamous behavior of the bees, explains Noe.

Noe was not scared. Working on a sesame harvest one year for some extra cash, he met a fellow farmer and friend who was raising bees. “I’ll give you one box, with ten panales and a Queen. Just try it.” his friend said. That one box turned into two, and the next year two boxes will turned into four, and soon Noe had his own little colony of honebees. Today, Noe has three different forested areas where he keeps colonies of bees, a total of about 150 boxes full of queens and worker bees working ceaselessly, producing a sweet, simple, healthy and pure product that he can sell locally to his neighbors and for export – literally tripling his annual income. 

On love at the moment. Maybe brave love someday.

 

I live in Guatemala. I live in Guatemala as a single, white, 28-year-old female who is confused about what she really wants in a relationship at the moment. Or maybe this 28-year-old single white female knows what she wants but is too afraid to admit it. This article is a little bit about what its like to be a single white female in Guatemala, and a little bit about what its like to be a 28-year-old empowered female in the 21st century trying to define words like dependence, love, trust, vulnerability and casual. 

In 2012 I got a cigarette put out on my ass. That’s right, some asshole 18-year-old who wanted attention from his friends outside of a bar one night put his cigarette out on my ass, burning a hole in a pair of my favorite jeans, among other emotional damages. In 2013 that same ass of mine was grabbed a total of 6 times in the street, with sporadic additional events to the likings of a few public masturbation occurrences, some tongue-sticker outers, and even a ‘!Que rica tu pusa!’ from a passerby – How exactly does he know how delicious my pussy is?  In 2014 thanks to pepper spray and an increased level of both self-confidence and absolute disgust in the male race, I have managed to escape any major sexual harassment issues – that is, until I was recently robbed at gunpoint in the middle of the day at 2 o clock. But let’s be fair, that probably had nothing to do with gender. 

Sometime around Fall of 2013 came the Fall of Kristin’s love life. In the midst of the catcalling, the disgusting words whispered to me on the dance floor at the salsa club, the realization that independence and empowerment were not the laws of attraction in this country, I voluntarily decided to crawl into celibacy. I’ve had a healthy list of lovers in my twenties, I thought I would give conservatism a try for a while. And something about the way I had been treated as a female in the past year and half made it sound pretty delicious to avoid contact altogether. I made it nine months. That’s right, NINE MONTHS WITHOUT SEX. And I learned a very important lesson, among others, that sex is a very healthy and natural thing. The clitoris is the only organ in all the history of human organs to have one sole purpose: TO HAVE AN ORGASM. That’s right ladies, pleasing your clit is an act of evolutionary worship to the gods that made you. 

So I started off the new year right. ON a trip back to the States I founded a pleasant, bearded beauty to who kissed me at midnight and added another notch to the belt of Romantic Sexual Adventures with Beautiful People.  A few other mostly meaningless (at least in the long run) interactions later, and a string of bouts with emotionalism over the fear that I might turn 30 without ever having a healthy, real relationship, I met Fernando. He is the artistic, expressive, deeply loving type that does yoga with me, reads me poetry, and sips dark, bitter coffee while watching the sunrise peak over the Central American mountains. We started over a sunlit-filled morning building a compost pile, followed up with afternoon strolls through the farmed hillsides of Xela, and with wine buzzing through our bloodstreams we traced the contours of each other’s naked bodies, singing the praises of the life, beauty and wisdom we see in the other. This is that kind of relationship that’s based on a foundation of beautiful friendship. 

But the inevitable occurred, of course. That ever-present questioning of monogamy, of dependence, of trust in another human being. Sometimes I wonder if we’re all too intellectual for our own good, like we can’t recognize and accept simple happiness when it’s starting us in the face. As I struggled with whether to let myself want a real relationship or not, Fernando struggled trust. As we both struggled through vulnerability, we chose the path of least resistance – pulling away from each other. We began to stroll in and out of each other’s list of life priorities like we were strolling through the market, the colorful array of fruit our emotions, often indulging and too often poorly valued.  

Then, along came Mauricio. I met Mauricio through common friends and my poor little heart fluttered at the thought of good-looking, intelligent, well-traveled Guatemalan with a Golden Retriever named Marley who might be interested in a girl like me. A couple drinks and cumbia dances later I discovered two things: 1) Mauricio is the best sex of my life. 2) Behind the initial facade, Mauricio is a party-boy, play-boy who owns two local bars, drinks and smokes too much, in his own words “can’t figure out how not to hurt people’, who got divorced last year after cheating on his wife – a story that unfortunately seems to be the norm among Guatemalan men.  

But I repeat number one for emphasis – Mauricio is the best sex of my life. And the feeling is pretty mutual. So, I thought, what the hell. Maybe Mauricio is the perfect sexual partner – its easier to do this whole numbness of emotions when you know you’re not interested in the guy as a long-term partner, when you’re not really desperate for him to call you or meet your friends or ask you about work. It’s kind of the chicken or egg first conundrum – I’m not sure if the lack of feelings or the immaculate sex came first, or which one causes the other, but I like it. I don’t want to think about consequences and responsibility and goodness – I don’t want to think. I want fingers running through my hair, I want tongues on skin, I want unashamed, unafraid erotic indulgence, sex for the sake of sex. Mauricio will never go on a hike with me, or fall into the endless nuances of Walt Whitman’s poetry. So I’ll keep looking for the guy who will, and in the meantime I’ll imbibe in sensual dreams, orgasmic adventures, and erotic exploration on the kitchen counter, the back patio, the public bathroom, the dance floor, the…. Oh god. 

 Regardless of what Fernando would say, what would I do? What would I like to do? It is as much my fault as it is his. I don’t know what I want. I look at Fernando and there is something in my that KNOWS it will never work. If we explore the mas de nosotros, it will fail. And I’m not ready for it to be over, so I keep avoiding or putting off the mas. But you can’t have moments like this, love like this, beautiful expression like this, and NOT confront the mas. Sooner or later the mas is going to bite us in the ass. And I think its going to hurt me a lot. Is that just the risk? Is it worth it? 

So there I am, going back and forth between these two men, these two “casual” relationships, neither of which are what I think I really want in life. With both, I continue to numb my feelings. It’s like I have come to believe, somehow, that this is what it means to be an adult in the 21st century. And the truly scary part is that I’m getting better at it every time. I’m getting better at playing love and leaving. I’m getting better at not feeling anything. I’m becoming numb to the nervous, butterfly feelings that define what it means to have a crush. And why? 

Yesterday I woke up at a man’s house. We are not dating. He has never seen my house, he’s never met my friends. He has never bought me flowers, or even a fucking drink for that matter.. But I woke up at his house. I woke up to snuggles and kisses and morning sex, and then a long talk about how he really isn’t over his ex-wife, nor is he really over what he did to make her his ex-wife, and how he’s not really looking for anything ‘serious’. Of course of course, I say. Me neither. 

Women have come so far in the world. We have careers, we are CEOs, we vote for presidents and governors, we have babies in our late thirties in life or possibly never, we wear scandalous clothes, we climb mountains, we change policy. And yes - we have casual sex. Society is starting to wake up to the idea that women just may have the same sexual desires (shall we call them needs?) as men, and what may have began in the sixties has revolutionized itself to a woman of the 21st century who actively participates in the hook-up culture.  I am a women who is taking advantage of these advances, not only in the sexual sense of course. I like to think of myself as an independent, progressive, new-age woman. I live on my own, in Guatemala. I am 28 and single, I pay my own bills, I take weekend bike rides on my own, I choose not to take birth control,  and of course I choose who I want to sleep with. 

But whatever happened to a little bit of chivalry? Traditionalism? Whatever happened to respectful relationships? I am a single 28 year old female and I Have never been taken on a date. I have never had a nervous, awkward first date, in which flowers or dinner or a movie might be involved, in which the obvious questions are asked and hopefully lead to a somewhat deep, stimulating conversation, in which the night may end in a simple, “Wow. This was fun, we should do it again sometime.” 

I love my independence, but what if I want healthy dependence too? Does it somehow make me a non-independent woman if I decide I want a little traditional romance in my life? Perhaps the question is: Does independent mean being alone? Or can/should it mean the ability to be alone, but with the empowered decision to choose not to be? Are men afraid of independent women? We send them running in the other way for the weaker, sweeter, seemingly softer female breed, running away from what somehow gets judged as intimidation and radical feminism. 

I think love has to be Brave. I want a brave love. I want multiple Brave loves – with my friends and my family and a life partner someday.  I think Brave Love can’t be lazy.  Brave Love stares the awkward first moments of giddiness and nervousness right in the face, and holds those precious moments dear.  Brave Love recognizes and realizes the insecurities and the ever-changing emotions, and idolizes them, puts them on a pedestal and honors them for making life real with its feasts and famines. Brave Love is not sure. Brave Love is confusing. Brave Love is hard. Brave Love is not one decision, in one moment. Brave Love is a constant decision. Brave Love is vulnerable.  Brave Love is boring, in oh such a beautiful way. Its boring enough to pick weeds on a Saturday morning over coffee. Its boring enough to platicar en silencio. Brave Love has the right effort.