My Dry Hot Guatemalan Summer

It’s nearing the end of “summer” in Guatemala – the hottest time of the year, as well as Lent/Holy Week season. This is appropriate, as my job has grown to feel ever more like a return to my days as a summer camp counselor. I wake up with the sun, spend every meal with my team, answer the same questions and lead them through the same schedule of activities as the last week's team, and the one before that. When plans go awry at the last second, I come up with a new plan on the spot. I make sure every little need is met at every turn, then go to bed exhausted knowing it won’t be enough sleep before the alarm rings again. But, I love it. Just as I experienced at camp, the day-to-day wear and tear is a worthwhile trade for the growth and discovery I see people experience. I get to know people in weak moments and in shining ones. I witness my team members fighting discomfort and fear in favor of trying something new and challenging. I watch them form bonds with our students that transcend language barriers, cultural differences, age, and socioeconomic status. I see smiles and laughter and spirit. And frustration. And new understanding. And I am privileged enough to play some role in it all. Just like at summer camp, I get to be part of small but significant change.

As this “summer” rolled along, the Lenten season in Antigua incited a barrage of purple banners, street vendors, and heavier-than-usual traffic. Swarms of people from the City and surrounding towns flocked in to view the town’s famous Lenten processions. In the words of my roommate’s brother, Bertram, the processions are, “like a bad school play.” Small crowds of men wearing long purple robes march slowly through the streets, a few in gladiator costumes to represent the Romans, with women in white dresses and veils. A select number (maybe 20 at once) carry a long, heavy platform supporting statues of the day's designated depictions of Christ. Amid dense clouds of incense, they file along to the sound of the band that brings up the rear. The songs are… theatrical. Think, a 25-member out-of-key brass band, accented by a few drums and cymbals. At an overdramatic, low-budget school play, performed in your high school's parking lot. But at such a profound level of public reverence. When a procession passed the only Irish bar in Antigua on St. Patrick's Day, for example, the bar stopped the music out of respect. Despite the outsider's impulse to critique, these traditions are part of Antigua's history, its identity. And that we can appreciate.

So, during Lent, the processions wind through Antigua on a maze-like path, most beginning at 1 in the afternoon and ending around 10 or 11 at night. The route is a mystery, but you will know a procession is heading your way when you see people preparing “alfombras” - carpets. This is the coolest part, much cooler than the processions themselves. People create this artwork in the middle of the street using colored sawdust and a variety of other materials (grass, wheat, flour, glitter, seashells, flower petals), laid out in the design of a bright, beautiful, religiously-themed carpet. When then processions pass, they walk over them, and then what remains of the carpet is gathered into a bin and burned. It’s like an offering, but the practice also has ties to indigenous traditions and the theme of impermanence. Where the processions are, for me, underwhelming, the carpets that precede them display wonderful expressions of personality and community.

Lent culminates in Holy Week, which in Central America equals vacation. Schools and businesses shut their doors, and everyone takes to the beach. Other than a couple previous half-day trips (I visited a macadamianut farm and a homemade chocolate operation), Holy Week was my first opportunity to experience Guatemala as a tourist. My boyfriend, Jon, flew in for the adventure. First stop: Guatemala City. After a lively, mildly crowded chicken bus ride, we successfully rendezvous’d with Jon’s friend, Delia, who had generously volunteered to “kidnap” us. She took us to the National Museum of Archeology and Ethnology for a glimpse of indigenous art and history. Then, we hit a delicious pizza restaurant, and the city’s central plaza. Our plaza visit fell on the occasion of an annual demonstration, in which students from the University of San Carlos put on a march in mockery of all things authority-related: The University President, the government, and the Church. They wore hooded robes in the university colors and carried statues modeled after the Lenten processional statues, except with figures portraying, for example, a skeleton carrying a cross. Very interesting. We followed a few students to the bars to wrap up the day.

Next, in an attempt to escape the Holy Week mayhem, Jon and I shuttled out to Lake Atitlán, in the western Guatemalan highlands. We stayed in Panajachel (or simply “Pana”), the second-biggest lakeside town. Pana’s docks offer picture-perfect views of the two volcanoes just across the water, and at night, small clusters of light reveal the other towns at their base. By day, we explored these towns: Santiago, the largest but ugliest, home of “Mayan God” turned tourist trap, Machimon. San Pedro/San Juan, where we had a pleasant lunch of artisan cheese and sangria. San Marcos, the scenic hippie haven. Pana itself, most notably its nature reserve with rope bridges, waterfall, and spider monkey playtime. And San Antonio Palopó, most traditional of the towns we saw, where everyone speaks Kaqchiquel (the native language), and all the women wear indigo blue “trajes” (woven blouses and skirts).

To get to most of the lakeside towns, it’s most common to take a public “lancha” – small ferry boat. But between Pana and San Antonio, the preferred method is to jump in the back of a pick-up truck with the women in trajes and hold on tight. In either case, the postcard-worthy scenery and fresh wind in my hair made these rides almost a destination in themselves.

After the Lake, we returned to a people-saturated Antigua for the final three days of Lent and the biggest, longest processions of the season. On Good Friday morning, the processions begin at 4 a.m. and go all day and night. We witnessed the crack-of-dawn carpet artists preparing the streets for these processions at 5:30 a.m., on our way to catch the shuttle to VolcánPacaya. We climbed the volcano, an easy hike by anyone’s standards, in a tour group comprised of ourselves, a Spanish couple, and 7 or 8 teenage Israeli girls who I can only describe as princess types. They all rented horses to ride up instead of walking. While we made the ascent huffing and puffing, they were saddled in, smoking cigarettes and taking selfies on their iPhones. Lookin’ cozy. Anyway, in less than two hours, we reached the farthest point our guide would allow us to go, where the weeds and dirt under our feet were abruptly replaced by rough, dark volcanic rock. It looked like the surface of the asteroid in Armageddon. Towering above us, the mouth of the volcano steadily emitted giant wisps of white smoke that conjured up images of an enormous cauldron cooking some mysterious potion. It was like nothing I’d ever seen. On the way back down, we could also see two other volcanoes in the distance – Agua and Fuego, and Fuego was smoking chimney-style the whole way. It was a fascinating little adventure.

Good Friday (Volcano day) was the height of summer’s action. After that weekend, things have really quieted down. I find myself wondering what happened to all the people. Like me, they’ve all returned to their homes and their routines. My team’s driver, Jorge, tells me it’s about time for the heat to go away, too. “And then it will be winter, when the rain comes,” he says. Without getting into the semantics of what classifies different seasons, I nod in anticipation. Let’s just see what the next season brings.