Rugged beginnings

I like Guatemala.

Some things that are just the quirks of travel, still make me smile, like a trunk full of carrots.

A gift from the national staff in the capital city to the staff in the province where we work. May as well, since they were picking me up. :)

But long after the novelty of travel has worn off after many years of spending many months of the year around the world, I’m still happy to be here, to be working here.

Hearing the decades of history of communities in the storms of conflicts with the government and private companies.

I like these meetings a lot. Meetings about the current political crisis in Guatemala and the subsequent collapse of the medical system, and how we could possibly help respond by sending medicines and medical supplies to hospitals and clinics run by non-government organizations. Meetings about how we can continue to work with the wonderful staff we know in Guatemala, many of whom spent their childhoods collecting water from dirty rivers, and who now dedicate their lives to helping other communities access clean drinking water, sanitation, and health. Meetings with community leaders from remote villages being threatened to lose their lands and livelihoods to hydroelectric dam and mining projects, who never knew until recently that they stand a chance to keep their homes because of a thing called law and human rights. Long, seemingly boring, but insightfully captivating meetings.

Benito and Benedicto, from a community 12 hours away, deciding how to best spell out my name in their mother tongue after our meeting... after much deliberation, they decided on "Shokoq'aabm" :)

The simple beauties amid and within the complex challenges that people face here are sometimes hard to really appreciate. Life seems to be a struggle for everyone – be it the communities in need, our selfless staff, or the long-time friends here I call family. It's more rugged than quaint, more rough than pretty, and I think the fact that it is sooo cold in this mountainous province adds to that sentiment, so mere survival seems more a reality – at least for the cold blooded being that I am!

But I am happy to be here, to appreciate the people and the depth of stories rooted in decades of resistance and struggle befure, during, and after civil war – those that lived through three decades of armed conflict, fleeing their homes to forge an existence in the mountains, slipping silently from temporary homes to secretly planted patches of corn and beans so as not to be found all those years, until the armies left and they returned to rebuild their lives, and hope for more security for their children. Those children who, now grown, in the same courage, leave their village, one of the few times in their lives, to travel 12 hours to come meet with me, to speak for their fathers and their communities in hope of support to gain title over their land before it is lost to mining companies.  

To appreciate our simple staff, whose wealth of formal education and informal experience and knowledge you would never know, or the hundreds of villages they have befriended and humbly shared their expertise with; who, between available work, migrate to the south coast along with all the other men in their village, to be peasant migrant labourers cutting coffee and sugar cane on large plantations, their young children in tow.

To try to gather something of value to convey this rugged reality to people who don't know it, and to invite them to enter into these rugged stories, and to help make them something a little bit gentler, a little bit smoother, a little bit lighter and easier to hope and to work for better things.

Me; one of my heroes Luisa - Attorney in Land Conflicts, Legal Expert in Guatemalan law and indigenous peoples issues, tireless defender of human rights; community members from two communities facing threats to their land and livelihoods.

And so I am happy to be here. And happy that I know that these rugged beginnings are just the start of good, not simple, sometimes not pretty, but beautiful – things.