Continuing preparations to return... Even though so much time has now passed since I've been there, the pull to go back and live with and learn from these people remains immense. Really the biggest thing in the way is the language. I need to focus on this.

A friend of mine from my volunteer group in Chocola just sent me a link to the language school she went to in Antigua, Guatemala. She took me there when we spend a couple of days in Antigua after our time on the dig. They teach immersion Spanish and K'iche Maya! When I go back, I want my first few weeks to be at this school - Dina's spanish was fantastic, considering she had only taken spanish in High School, like me.

I'm combining a number of approaches to build my spanish: I'm listening regularly to music by a Mexican band called Mana, that Dina turned me on to. I've bookmarked a couple of Guatemalan newspapers online, to read regularly, thinking this will help with my vocab. I also have a copy of The Rosetta Stone PC software, which seems very effective, if I could only stay devout enough to use it every day!! I also have asked the language department here if I can audit an intermediate spanish class next semester...

Reading what I just wrote It sounds like I'm better at spanish than I claim.. maybe I am - Dina did tell me regularly that my problem wasnt not knowing the language but lacking the confidence in it..

From Philip's personal Journal... dated 06-05-2005
"We went to see Don Nicholas, a Maya Shaman in the pueblo of San Pablo, to meet and consult with Maximon (St. Simon), a powerful local deity. The walls of his foyer were covered with letters from a hundred and one recipients of Maximon's miracles, each with a photo of the sender in the corner. He was a surprisingly androgenous figure, with masculine hands but a feminine figure and voice. He served us some kind of juice as we waited for him to finish preparing Maximon's altar.


"The effigy of Maximon was a frightening, life-size wooden mannequin, with empty eye sockets, gagged at the mouth, dressed in the clothes of a traditional Mayan campesino. Candles, piles of pom (incense), and circles of sugar and maize surrounded it in an esoteric pattern. The largest pile of incense, sugar and corn at the center was lit into a huge blaze. Every so often the incense would catch fire in a certain way to create a tornado of smoke and flames. Nicholas served us all sips of Johnnie Walker Red, after first pouring a generous amount into the mouth of Maximon. Nicholas repeated some unintelligble prayer, over and over, as he continued to feed liquor to us and to the effigy. Between the blaze and the whiskey every part of me was on fire.

"One by one Nicholas led us to a chair facing the effigy. Maximon's cowboy hat was removed and placed on our heads. He asked me if i was married or had any children. He asked me if there was anything that I lived with that I was sorry for. He told me my father missed me.

"I felt like all the toxins in my body, chemical and psychological, were escaping through the sweat the fire brought. All the badness that had built up in my lifetime was leaving with the smoke and the steam. I took another sip of whiskey...

"The ceremony over, I felt the same way I felt the first time I jumped out of an airplane: I didn't want to leave. I wanted to be there, be involved with anyone else who was about to feel the great release and rebirth I had just felt. I wanted to share it. And Ididn't want mine to fade."

It hasn't.

I spoke today with the head of the anthro department. I'd been getting a general feeling from much of the faculty that I might be in the wrong place to study Central America. In all honesty I can understand such a response. When I applied to UAF I hadn't yet been to Guatemala. I applied with the intentions of studying circumpolar anthropology. I'm a technologist, not a Mayanist. He was remarkably supportive though, he talked a lot about cross-cultural similarities, universalizability, and the benefits of keeping a wide focus. "This is an anthropology department in the north, not of the north."

I don't yet know what my master's thesis will be about, even if it will involve the Maya, ancient or modern. But Peter's words definately gave me some comfort that I'm not in the wrong place to develop these passions.

To see what's left of the ancient splendor of the Maya, one can pay $99 US for a flight from Guatemala City to Tikal. But to shake hands with the Maya as they are today, one needs to visit a small co-op village like Chocola. They may be a far cry from the civilization builders of an earlier time, but despite the cultural turmoil and poverty they’ve been forced into, many of the ancient culture’s hallmarks still shine through. They are a resourceful, practical, and intelligent people, with a straightforward and egalitarian family, social and political structure. They prefer efficient, multi-use tools and disposable pottery. Maize and beans are still their primary staple foods. They value Jesus, a tangible, chthonic deity they can see, touch, and yell at when things go wrong. They even still love a good ballgame, although in soccer they don’t ritually sacrifice the losing team. :)

I want to go back. There are schools in Antigua that offer immersion classes in Spanish, but also in dialects of Maya, which most of the Chocolenses speak in their homes. I spoke with Jonathan and some of the other volunteers, and there's talk of organizing some sort of non-profit to help Chocola get out from under the heel of globalization. Anything will grow there, but noone will buy it.