Journal JANUARY
| DECEMBER | JANUARY | FEBRUARY | MARCH | APRIL | MAY | JUNE |
Thursday 1 January 2004 New Year's Day
Needless to say, we sleep late! Our first breakfast in the apartment is
in the lovely little garden whose back walls are part of the old ruined
palace of the Spanish governors that faces Antigua's main square. We have
fresh orange juice, Antiguan coffee con leche, french bread, bananas, yogurt,
and granola. Besides more arranging, we spend some time walking around town
and 
visiting
various churches to see the famous nacimientos of this area. We speak with
various friends, and, at about 5:30 my husband Paul goes into the square.
More fireworks begin and we are in time to see a Procession of the Host.
A large golden monstrance is carried through the streets showing a piece
of the communion bread, accompanied by music, numerous devotees, balloon
sellers, and......firecrackers!
Sunday 4 January 2004
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Today we go to Tecpán to visit our friends Lidia and Florencio. They are
well known at K'inal Winik because they have visited Cleveland several times
to participate in programs with us. Their young son Alex is almost two and
full of energy. They invite us to eat lunch at a famous local restaurant,
El Pedregal, where we have multiple courses and enjoy eating on the patio.
On the way back to Antigua we stop by the home of doña Tila Cucuruchich,
also well known to people at Cleveland State and in the community because
of her participation in a month-long weaving residency in 1999. She was
very surprised to see us and we were surprised to see that she has a month-old
baby named Joseph. She and her family, along with Florencio and his, send
many greetings to their friends in Ohio.
Wednesday 7 January 2004
Paul and I go into Guatemala City with doña Aura who wants to show us the
enormous store called HiperPaiz. We walk to the taxi stand by the Antigua
cathedral and are immediately greeted by a familiar-looking driver. He turns
out to be Lázaro, the very same driver who took me and my fellow linguists
all over Guatemala in the early 1970s!
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After visiting HiperPaiz - doña Aura is correct: it is enormous! - Paul and I go to Landívar to visit my new colleagues at the Instituto. We arrive in the midst of exciting news. People are sitting around a radio listening to the announcement of the cabinet members in the newly elected Berger government, which takes office next week. Among the appointees are several Landívar personnel, but the significant one from the perspective of people interested in the revitalization of Mayan culture is Manuel Salazar (Instituto Linguistica y Educacion ILB). He is a Maya and former dean of Humanities and Director of the Institute. At K'inal Winik (KW), we have been using his analysis of Mayan cultural values in our teacher workshops. His appointment is a very hopeful sign about the new government. Everyone at ILE is most pleased, as are we are also.
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After greeting all the ILE staff - who show Paul exactly which cubicle is mine - we have lunch with three of my new co-workers, all native Maya trained in linguistics: Ajpub' Pablo García Ixmatá (Tz'utujiil), Martín Chacach (Kaqchikel), and Jorge Raimundo (Q'anjob'al). I am feeling very excited about my projects with them.
Thursday 8 January 2004
Another day of errands, phone calls, and visits to PLFM and OKMA. OKMA
is an internationally recognized linguistic training and research group,
founded by Dr. Nora England (University of Texas), that has prepared nearly
every native Maya linguist working in Guatemala today. The current team
members, representing a variety of different Mayan language groups, are
hoping I can do some teaching for them in my specialty areas of Mayan discourse
analysis. It will be fun to work with them. Ajpub'Pablo, himself a former
OKMA student, comes with his family to visit us for evening coffee, bringing
along their newest member, Ajpub'ito, born on 4 December 2003. Although
Ajpub' has visited us in Cleveland several times, this is the first opportunity
for his wife Ix'aj and his two daughters, Ixajpu' and Ixch'umiil, to meet
Paul. It is a pleasure to visit with this charming Mayan family. They invite
us to their home for dinner tomorrow, Paul's last night in Guatemala. Much
of the day is devoted to preparing for Paul's departure early Saturday.
He will be carrying back many materials for use in the educational projects
of the KW Cultural Center, including tiny ceramic buses, little baskets
woven of straw, and various textile pieces. These items will be part of
the Center's
Expedition Box collection, materials that are borrowed by teachers,
libraries, and museums for use in their teaching programs. He will leave
Antigua with a good sense of what my daily life will be like for the next
several months. He will also take back memories of all the friends and colleagues
I have nearby who will make my stay here both productive and pleasurable.
By far the most extraordinary moments of today are provided by the spectacular
evening eruption of Fuego
Volcano!
We watch it well into the night but sometime after midnight the volcano
calmed down and we are left with the smell of ash in the air.
Sunday 18 January 2004
Doña
Aura finally feels recovered enough from her bout of pneumonia to begin
walking again. She is known all over town as that lady who walks every morning
at 6:00 a.m.! But she hasn't felt strong enough since November, and we have
been thinking every day that it's time. So today is the day! I can't really
agree to SIX in the morning and she says it's still too dark and too cold
at that hour, so we arrange for seven. The morning is lovely and clear,
and the streets are less crowded than they are later in the day (though
still, as she points out, MUCH more crowded than at six!). We talk a southern
route and end up near the Calvario church, along a route lined with former
coffee fincas being converted into condominium communities.
Wednesday 21 January 2004
Today is another day in the capital. First at Landívar, I meet with
the Vice Rector, my friend Guillermina Herrera, to discuss various pending
projects, and I spend some time at the Institute and go to lunch with the
investigators.
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Then at 3:00, I must go to the US Embassy for the oft-postponed required security briefing. As a US citizen, I must say that the Embassy in Guatemala is a forbidding place, and never more so than in these days of heightened terrorist alerts. The atmosphere all around it is of isolation and inaccessibility, a true state of affairs, and deliberately so. As I approach the garita (guard station) - a reinforced box with a bell to ring inside a small metal grid - I find myself behind two young American women who are trying to get into the Embassy grounds through the one-way (the other way) revolving metal gate. They stop to ask me how to get in ..."We're Americans and we've never been in a US Embassy before and we just wanted to look. Is there anything interesting to see?" I reply that there isn't much and point to the guard station, following them to the door, and pushing the button, which they failed to notice. The unsmiling guard asks them their business, using English of sorts, and they, now very nervous and confused, repeat what they have told me: "We just wanted to go in. We're Americans and have never been to an Embassy before." The guard asks if they have an appointment, which of course, they do not, and tells them that they cannot come in with an appointment and brusquely turns to ask me what I want. The girls move off without ever learning that around the corner is the office that tends to American visitors, a fact I do not myself learn until I report this incident to the security officer during my "briefing"!
After my session with the security officer and a pleasant visit with the Cultural Attache, Dr. Heckenbach, I meet the Landívar Research Director, Dr. Peter Marchetti, who has come to pick me up. We are able to get out of Guatemala City expeditiously and, once in Antigua, we have dinner at Las Catalinas, a lovely restaurant beneath the Santa Catalina arch. The convent at this site was formed by four nuns from the Concepción convent and has been, to the gringo eye, attractively restored. Dr. Marchetti and I enjoy a very nice dinner, discussing church history in Guatemala, various common projects, and the lively stories of the early Jesuits. Indeed, a full and interesting day!
Friday 23 January 2004
Today I have breakfast with don Gaspar Pedro González, Q'anjob'al
novelist and poet, and scholar of Mayan literature and culture. We are reviewing
the 2003 report of sales of Yax Te' books in Guatemala and the US. We are
also making decisions about the future of book representation in Guatemala
because don Gaspar is tired of having 10K books stored in his garage, and
tired, as well, of being responsible for sales. He is a very busy man, with
an important position at FODIGUA, a quasi-governmental agency that develops
project in support of Mayan communities. In addition, he is a faculty member
at the Mariano Gálvez University and director of a cultural activities
group called B'eyb'al. He is also an artist and painter. He has family responsibilities,
and, of course, is working on various manuscripts for Yax Te'! I am anxious
to lighten his load because he has given me the draft of a new book on Mayan
culture, which I hope to publish this year. I am delighted to hear that
he is also working on a third novel, about Mayan women.
All in all, it is a successful meeting, in part because I have already reached agreement with ILE to relocate the book inventory there, so we are able to close on that problem immediately. We develop a job description for a Yax Te' book representative, we agree to royalties for the past year, we agree to reprint 1000 copies of La Otra Cara, his first novel which at last is being used in university classrooms here, and we discuss several project ideas for future collaborations. Don Gaspar has been a friend of K'inal Winik for years, and meeting with him always a pleasure, as well as informative and enlightening on issues of Mayan identity and culture. He has been a welcome guest in Cleveland and sends many greetings to his friends there.
The last week of January 2004
My first intensive workshop for the Institute is impending in mid-February,
and when I begin to work seriously on its design, I find it takes me much
more time than I predicted. Since I have decided to base my own remarks
on a computerized presentation program - and it's the first time I've used
it! - that takes its own learning curve time. But the real problem is that
there are so few materials available in Spanish on discourse analysis as
I want to present it. Searching for materials, translating what I need,
building a strategy of presentation that will not bore the more advanced
participants and yet not leave the novices behind, and creating slide sequences,
using unfamiliar software, that will fill twelve - twelve! - hours......well,
the whole thing is just a little daunting and, in the end, eats up the last
days of January. I hardly notice them pass.