Roots and Rhinestones, and what is culture anyway?

I love airports. Airports always make me nostalgic and pensive, and make me want to write. I feel like I could write on everything, everywhere, on every piece of this seat I am sitting on, every piece of the barren wall in front of me, on every inch of my own skin. The words I have right now would spill over the ceiling of the library’s walls and run marathons over its bookshelves. Sometimes I wish my brain just wrote everything down somewhere every time I thought it. But then I would have an entire novel for every day of my life, and I would never have time to read them all.  

Airports make me think about my roots. I am at the waiting area. There is a sign in front of me that says Tulsa, Oklahoma. I remember the last time I was here - is that crazy? I know the exact last time I walked through the corridor into United gates b76-80 in the Houston airport.  I was leaving for the first big adventure of my life, but Mother Nature chose to make me wait, showering her power over the US South with one of her famous June Thunderstorms. After all the built up anxiety and anticipation, Michael and I would have to spend an extra night in a smokey hotel room in Houston before we could officially begin our Trip Round the World.  I remember the naivety I possessed that rainy night, hiding my fear behind a feigned excitement, hiding my insecurity behind a feigned love. Or maybe it wasn’t feigned, it was just young. I wonder if I am truly any older than I was that night, walking through this same corridor. Maybe older doesn’t even matter. Maybe there is no older, no more mature, no better understood. Maybe its all just different experiences and they all need to be told.

Now I’m back in that same corridor, flying back to that same place I came from, Oklahoma – where the wind comes right behind the rain. There is a family sitting behind me boasting their country-ness, that Thing I have always been so turned off by, or so ready to refute from my roots. This guy has a giant belt buckle with a big “OU” engraved on it, an emblematic artifact of sorts that explains where our values lay. One of the daughters is showing off the sparkly rhinestones she got after her recent visit to the Natil salon, and telling Mom she is disgusted by Starbucks’ recent decision to start using Greek yogurt in all of their fruit cups.  There seems to be a Family Brawl a brewin’ regarding who has what seat, next to whom, and in what boarding group. I have yet to look at my plane ticket.  I have spent $8 on a damn fruit cup in the airport (not from Starbucks but yes, with Greek yogurt). I’m confused - is the fruit sweeter here or something? Maybe its this weird perception us expats get when we fly back into the States, like our mind plays tricks on us with all the fanciness and we begin to think everything is just nicer here. Maybe it’s the impossibility of it all, like my brain can’t process the idea of sweet pineapple in April in Texas, so it imagines it to be some miracle. Sometimes I wish I didn’t know what a fresh, tropical pineapple tasted like so I could stop complaining about these things. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.

But things are fancier here. And I judge myself for not participating, and then I judge others around me for participating, and then I judge myself for judging. The last time I had mangos and pineapples I was sweating in a tropical cornfield. I watched a slight breeze blow my skirt back and I remember literally thanking ‘god’ for the phenomenal movement, then praying that the well water used to wash off the pineapple didn’t give me parasites.  During that particular fruit fest I licked my hands and my face, and used that same skirt to wipe my sticky fingers before heading back to the open fire where the tortillas were being prepared. During today’s particular fruit fest, I have three times as many utensils than I need, all of them made of unrecyclable plastic that will contribute to a landfill soon, wrapped in five napkins that I can’t figure out the reason for. I still can’t seem to keep myself clean. I dropped a strawberry on the ground, a perfectly red and perfectly quartered strawberry on the ground.  Oops. Here comes the judgment.

I sat next to a man from Sololá today. His eyes agape and his adrenaline skyrocketing, we lifted off and he captured every moment on his digital camera. He told me it’s his first time on a plane. He is going to Nebraska as an exchange student. I asked him if he was excited, as if his smile didn’t tell me enough. “It’s hard to leave my family, my community, Sololá.”  I thought about all the times I have gotten on a plane, eager to escape my family, my community, my culture, whatever I thought it was. Yesterday I wrote down a question for our Semilla Nueva Community Survey – “Usted pertenece a algun grupo indigena?”  Now I find myself asking the same – “Y tú Kristina? To what group or culture do you belong?” Isn’t it so funny how my culture, the X, Y or whatever letter they are calling us now, this generation of middle class yuppie twenty somethings with too many things to choose from – we run from our culture. We justify this by citing our society’s lack of culture. We run looking for culture. We say the US is just a big melting pot of materialism and obesity and narrow-mindedness. And here I am next to a young man from quite a narrowly-defined culture who is running towards that melting pot, running toward the diversity and opportunity and ‘culture’. Damn, I guess the grass really is always greener on the other side.

There is culture here. Maybe I never wanted to see it before, or maybe I saw it and didn’t like it. Or maybe I’m just an XYZ generation yuppie who constantly needs something new. But there is culture here. At least half of the clothing worn on this plane is either Carhart material or OU propaganda. There are more cowboy hats than huipiles and more gawdy silver jewelry than machetes.  These are my roots, and so what? A que cultura pertenece tú Kristina?

Homage to History, Homage to Art

Tonight I knelt down on the cool, concrete floor of the Centro Intercultural de Quetzaltenango. This is a building that I have known in passing, those few times I wander outside of Zone 1 of the city I live in.  It’s a public place, maybe a community center of sorts, with a name that touts an idea that welcomes art, and creativity. But, at least until now, the reputation hasn’t lived up to its name. It has taken a long time, a long history of starting as a train station, passing to the hands of the military during a perilous civil war, and finally being returned to the people. I find myself enjoying the coolness of the floor along with the heat of the creativity flowing in the air. I am proud to call myself a friend of some incredible artists that put the sweat and tears into enlivening this place, making the Centro Intercultural really live up to its name.

On March 30, 1930 while the rest of the world waited for the word of the Germans and the results of the first  World War, Guatemalans were swimming in pride and celebration in honor of the opening of the Ferrocarril de los Altos. This was the first train station installed in the country, representing a literal and figurative opening of opportunity – trade, commerce, transportation, recreation. They had good reason to celebrate, although I doubt the campesinos struggling to make a living working on large Spanish plantations had the time to attend the festivities. Yet the glee was short lived – only three short years later the celebrations ended along with the train station. A revolution was stirring in the countryside with the landless peasants, which meant commerce was down, and the government determined the train station could much better serve the people as a military training station. This famed, old, dark and damp building remained in the hands of the military from those days through the revolution, the land reforms, the gory years of the 36-year civil war, and managed to eek past the Peace Accords in 1996. Eventually, the Municipality of Quetzaltenango, the second largest city in Guatemala and arguably the most progressive, made a decision to return the space to the people.  A community center, an inter-cultural center, a museum of indigenous traditional wear, a soccer field for the locals, and a somewhat abandoned warehouse in the back.  Abandoned, until March 30^th 2014.

84 years after the famed opening of this building, here I am, this gringa kneeling on a cold floor, eager to soak up the history of the grand space I am in, eager to fill the space with my own history. My friends Bonifaz and Lucas, two Quetzaltecos with endless imagination and expression in a number of other projects, organized the Homage to the Ferrocarril de los Altos.  I can only begin to imagine all that has passed in the privacy of these tall walls and broken windows in years past, all of the commands whispered, the trainings conducted, the atrocities planned. But I am fairly sure this is the first time these walls are experiencing such an explosion of innocent creativity. The Homage was a history of the building, presented through a myriad of artistic expression – from historical photographs and cello music, to shadow puppets and the traditional marimba, to interpretative dance and afrobeat. I should also mention a stellar tap performance from a fragile, elderly woman and some local university students broom dancing. I have lived in Quetzaltenango more than 1.5 years now and still struggle to find genuine representations of art and expression. The city is not lacking in artists, you find them everywhere. Perhaps what it is lacking is the cultural value of art and expression. I like the Spanish phrase they use here, sigamos la lucha, lets continue the struggle to take back these spaces, take back the culture, take back the art.

I don’t consider myself much of an art connoisseur, and often find myself almost intimidated by the eliteness of it all. I am not an artist, in the typical sense of the word. Sometimes, I find my art is my presence, my participation.  I, twenty something extranjera, kneeling on this cool floor and breathing in the energy of history, creativity, and inter-culturalism in a building that has represented so much of what is wrong with my culture, my country's history, my peoples involvement in a horrid history of this country. My art is being here, sharing and representing what is new about this space and helping take back the culture.  I give my apoyo to these activists, my friends and my fellow Quetzaltecos, transforming the history of this building, this city, this country, and making the name Centro Intercultural mean something again. 

In the mountains of Sololá

Friday night I drove through misty mountains and torrential rains, literally over “Paso Misterioso”, into a quaint little quiche town in Sololá with Katie Miller, our new director of development.  My clothes reeked of mildew, my body reeked of sweat, my mind reeked of a week’s hard work.  I stripped down and wrapped myself in a towel before scurrying quickly but carefully through the rain across the muddy hillside into the family’s very own tamascal.  On hands and knees I made my way inside the miniature sauna, my naked bum cozying comfortably on an old wooden bench.  The coals sizzled as the rain drops slipped off of my neck and onto the fire as I leaned over.  The buckets of well water – one cold, one hot – patiently awaited my arrival.  I will build one of these for my house one day. I will bathe in it every week, I told myself.  The raindrops played their common concerto, moving forcefully in and out of the chorus of pouring. At 8,500 feet I sat in this little cave, feeling nothing but warmth and hearing nothing but calm.

Every Guatemalan I meet is in someway my superior (thank you Emerson), and each offers me something to learn.  All these different cultures, languages, names, sounds.  That the ingredients you put in your recado may define where you were born.  Perhaps it’s the lack of culture I’ve always felt in my own history that draws me to places like this.  Ella was born in Uspantan, Quiche (and thus makes her atol with honey and chocolate). Studying social work in Xela, she cozied up with a nice Quiche fellow from Sololá and thus transformed her life her. From a family of nine, Ella is 33 and only has two children with little plans to have any more.  She woks with peace corps projects, teaches literacy classes to local women, and seems to have a healthy banter with her husband, something resembling an equality I don’t see with many couples here.  I wonder how she started her education, how she blossomed to be this diamond in the ruff of sorts, a courageous independent female among a sea of oppressed.  Still donning her traditional huipil  and corte, where does her tradition and modernism meet and who brought her to that intersection? 

Malawi

As we drove down the surprisingly wonderfully-paved highways of Southern Malawi, spectacular mountains adorning the landscape, I couldn’t help but think of all the similarities between Guatemala and Malawi.  Trucks from the United Nations might drive down the left side of the road here, but they still kick up dust in the paths left behind them.  Bicycles are plentiful here, just like Guatemala, toting thrice the weight previously thought possible, the most accessible mode of transportation for farmers.  Women walk with a similar grace here, that uncanny ability to balance heavy loads atop their heads and wear an insatiable smile while they’re at it.  The markets are busy, the children are running in the street, the truck almost just hit a goat, the communities still shyly giggle and whisper about the incoming gringos (here in Africa, Mzumus) wandering their streets.   Malawians mill their corn and make porridge, we boil and mill our corn to make tortillas.   The farmers might have less land, the average landholding size here is 1 hectare (about 2.2 acres); in Guatemala our farmers a lucky enough to hold out a few more than that – average 8 acres. The women might cook their pigeonpea differently, grounding up peanuts and making a paste, but their children still play tag.  Running up and down the narrow dirt pathway meandering through endless fields of pigeonpea, bare feet scurrying over dead corn stalks and kicking dust into the joy-filled air.   It is these moments when you see an undeniable connection among all of humanity.  Martin Luther King Jr. said, “We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny.   What affects one directly affects all indirectly.”  And pigeonpea, this humble little bean crop, is doing that.  From the coastal plains of Guatemala to the mountainous terrain of Malawi, pigeonpea is transforming lives and landscapes, and facilitating an international collaboration of NGOs to do it. 

Malawi

As we drove down the surprisingly wonderfully-paved highways of Southern Malawi, spectacular mountains adorning the landscape, I couldn’t help but think of all the similarities between Guatemala and Malawi.  Trucks from the United Nations might drive down the left side of the road here, but they still kick up dust in the paths left behind them.  Bicycles are plentiful here, just like Guatemala, toting thrice the weight previously thought possible, the most accessible mode of transportation for farmers.  Women walk with a similar grace here, that uncanny ability to balance heavy loads atop their heads and wear an insatiable smile while they’re at it.  The markets are busy, the children are running in the street, the truck almost just hit a goat, the communities still shyly giggle and whisper about the incoming gringos (here in Africa, Mzumus) wandering their streets.   Malawians mill their corn and make porridge, we boil and mill our corn to make tortillas.   The farmers might have less land, the average landholding size here is 1 hectare (about 2.2 acres); in Guatemala our farmers a lucky enough to hold out a few more than that – average 8 acres. The women might cook their pigeonpea differently, grounding up peanuts and making a paste, but their children still play tag.  Running up and down the narrow dirt pathway meandering through endless fields of pigeonpea, bare feet scurrying over dead corn stalks and kicking dust into the joy-filled air.   It is these moments when you see an undeniable connection among all of humanity.  Martin Luther King Jr. said, “We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny.   What affects one directly affects all indirectly.”  And pigeonpea, this humble little bean crop, is doing that.  From the coastal plains of Guatemala to the mountainous terrain of Malawi, pigeonpea is transforming lives and landscapes, and facilitating an international collaboration of NGOs to do it. 

Stress

I feel like I’ve lost myself a little these days.  My knuckles crack loudly when I pop them, but the tension doesn’t go away. I find myself repetitiously cleaning the dirt under my fingernails, as if they might crumble by sitting dormant for even two seconds. I feel something in my heart, my chest, my throat, what it is I can’t quite pin down.  Its something heavy, something hard, something stuck.  And the real problem is that I haven’t thrown up that something onto these pages in a too long of a while.

What is stress, really? Being stretched to thin, being pulled in opposite directions, a something trying to figure out how it can do thrice the amount of its intended use.  Welcome, Kristin, to adulthood. You better bite it in the ass while you still can.

Mostly, it goes away in the mornings.  When the doors of my eyelids naturally creep their way open, sleepy dust and all, to a misty, smokey 6 o’clock sunshine sneaking through the opaque curtains of my little cuartito.

These are the things that defeat my stress.  The absolutely, boringly, simple miracles of reality.  They have no budget, no deadline, no grant networking, no operations manual, no broken down car in the campo.  They are a reality that has existed for thousands of years.  Thinking of these realities, these commonplace, quotidian simplicities leads me… boringly.. into a realization that I am a small speck of a being in a much bigger carbon cycle of miracles. I look up at the sky, remember how much I don’t matter, and breath easier. 

I want to do this more, I want to revel in these boring simplicities of my life, and savor every last delicious bite of their pedestrian nature.  I want to walk – but really waaaaalk.  I want to become entrenched and betrothed by the steps I take, the miracle of my body taking them. I want to smell the tortillas toasting, hear the teenage girls gossiping, feel the innumberable cracks of these shitty Guatemalan sidewalks.  I want to cook, without hurry, without schedule, without worry to conserve or to waste, to achieve or disappoint, to nourish or to not.  I just want to fall in love with that moment where the only cracked wooden spoon I have swirls its way around a tiny pan of colorful vegetables. 

In my garden, my therapy, my refuge. Even there I find myself making plans, having anxiety – will the seedlings make it through the rain? I should have intercropped the carrots! Why isn’t my kale growing as big as Juan Pablo’s?  I want to dig my fingers into heaps of dirt and sleep there.  I want to dream myself a worm and wake up in the dizzy daydreaming inside a pot of compost.

In those sweet mornings when I take that first breath, I want it to be my saving grace. I want to smile at its ability and its freshness, and the way the chill of Xela mornings tickles my nose. I want to fold over, touch my toes, and pine for the way my body aches in its creaking and cracking, opening its doors and creating new spaces.  I want to hang there, dangled over, my head below my heart inverting my bloodflow and thinking shit, this just feels good.  No explanation.

Miracles. Dirt, sleepy dust, pot bellies, smiles, compost, bouganvilla, the smell of coffee, an creamy giant coastal Guatemalan avocado, a nap in a hammock under the tree, bug bites, scars from bug bites, cold bucket showers after a long day in the sun, a seed, more seeds, the mist lifting over Santa Maria volcano at sunset, getting out of breath walking up the hill to the market at 7,000 feet, rain, floods, rain that makes you feel like your in that romantic movie at the end when just when you think he has left your prince charming comes running back and kisses you soaking wet, wet muddy shoes, a frustrating day at the office, a magical day at the office, that 10 minute window where you can sneak out of the concrete slab of the house sit by the compost pile and feel the 2 o clock sun stream across your face, the cemetery, enchiladas from Doña Clemencia, the way the señoras tell me Buenos dias on the street in the morning, the way the Mayan girls giggle when they see me on the bus, the way my plants dangle over my bookshelf, wool socks on cold Xela nights, the smell of fresh rosemary, stretching my hips, dancing salsa, singing silly songs in Spanish, and once in a while, a good cigarette.

A thousand tiny hands

Driving through those mountainous hillsides, clouds covering up the pueblos like the country’s best kept and most shameful secret.  All the overpopulation, the poverty, the indigenous, the brisk, red, wind-burnt cheeks carrying firewood down the mountain.  The clouds are shading them, hiding them from the rich elite that might be passersby on the carreterra.  Yet like development and aid projects abounding, these clouds come and go and they can’t hide these secrets forever.  Out from the clouds emerges those rebels, those little hoodlums, those curious little niños who without even knowing it have ventured from the pueblo to the highway to reveal this best kept secret.  So many tiny hands waved at me on my drive back from Lake Atitlan on Sunday.  I gazed out the window thinking about all the stories hidden from my eyes by those clouds.  It was the best moment of their day.  It was their adventure.  It was their trip to the airport to watch the planes fly overhead.  It was their forbidden peaking through the cracks to observe the rich next door neighbors. I’m not sure if they had to sneak out to do it.  They just sat there, in groups of four of five, holdig each other with the most innocent intimacy, and the most apparent excitement and curiosity.  Gigantic smiles draped from ear to ear, eyebrows raised in the hopes of a wave back.  Every car, and I mean every car was honored with a wave from these kiddos, like beauty pageant stars that are never ingenuine and never get tired of waving. 

I was distracted long enough from my novel long enough to ponder all these tiny, scarred, Moreno hands waving at me all afternoon.  What is it they were hoping for?  What is the feeling they got when I waved back at them.  Do they dream sometimes, at night in those clouded, shaded, cold hillsides, that someday they could drive in the car on that highway.  If they did, would they wave back?