Over the past few days, we have learned and experienced countless things, one of them being how to get comfy in a our small micro bus for our long rides. These days have been some extremely impactful ones for the Guat squad.
On Tuesday, we took a boat across Lake Atitlán to get to Anadesa in the town of Santiago Atitlan which is a small, indigenous community. It was cloudy, yet the view didn't shy from amazing. There, we met and were graciously hosted by the workers of Anadesa. That night, we went to stay with our host families and had lots of fun playing with the children who seemed to multiply as soon as we brought out toys. We learned from them as they taught us Tz'utujil words to add to our vocabulary. The language barrier was very strong, considering some host mothers barely even spoke Spanish. Still, we were treated with the same generosity and greeted with open arms. On Wednesday, we spent the morning working by the lake moving mud. We did this in order to help create what will one day be a multifunctional lakefront for women to wash clothes and Anadesa workers like us to go swimming. The day was sunny and many of us got burnt as we worked. (The team has failed you Anita!) We later went to a lookout point where we had a beautiful view of the volcanos and farm land. We also hiked to an ecological site that was run by Anadesa. Our group tried our best to clean ourselves off because by this point our legs were covered in mud- but it didn't really work! We then took a tour of the Peace Park outside of Anadesa. The park is dedicated to the people who died in the shooting of 1990 during the overthrowing of the military presence in the town. We also saw the site of a mudslide that occurred in 2005 that destroyed hundreds of homes and killed many of the people in the community. These occurrences are very real to the people we were staying with, as many of the townspeople had lived through them and were and still are greatly affected. After that we went for a much needed swim at a resort on the lakefront that included dock to jump off, a hot tub and a pool that looked out at one of the volcanoes. So if we hadn't gotten all the mud off us by then, nothing could help us. Following that, we walked back to Anadesa for a cultural night. We learned a lot about the Tz'utujil cultural practices and we tried some traditional food. We got to flex our muscles grinding the corn used in making tortillas. Women would pound 15 (or more) pounds of corn a day! Pathetically, our group of fifteen people could not even make it through 1. In addition, Erika and Katie got their Tz'utujil on when they tried on some traditional headdresses. We all found the information that they shared with us very interesting.
The next day we went to the cathedral in Santiago. We learned about Father Stanley Rother who was an influential priest. He was murdered for his impact in the community and his "communist" values that were considered dangerous. He dedicated his life to helping the poor people of the community and publicly speaking out against the government. He bought a large portion of land and gave it to the community to utilize and that was deemed as "communist". We were moved by the impact that he had on his community.
Afterward, we went back to Anadesa and we learned the valuable skill of beading. We watched as Jim flaunted his beading "talents " and as a worker quickly went to fix the work he produced. We then took the long twisted (BUMPY) road back to our home base of Semilla in Guatemala City while counting stray dogs to pass the time. We are extremely lucky to have experienced the strength and generosity of the community at Anadesa. What we saw, learned and experienced will not leave us for a long time as we all left with a lot to think about.
(Written by Jade Peters and Alexa Nicolle)