Wanderlust

(An Internet photo album of photos I took of Nebaj and Chajul is at album.) Nebaj is my most remote destination in Guatemala and the only one where I have never been before. It is the fulcrum of three indígena villages that form the Ixil triangle (the x pronounced like sh), nestled in the Cuchumatanes mountains in the northern part of the Western Highlands, the only part of Guatemala where the language Ixil is spoken. This area suffered unspeakably brutal massacres during the civil war, punishment for being the theater of operations of one of the guerrilla groups; I had planned to visit Nebaj during a trip in the early 90s but read in the newspaper that there was fighting nearby, so quickly changed my plans. In recent years it has undergone many improvements, due in part to the arrival of NGOs, in part to the remesas sent by those who have migrated from here to the US. Thus there is a Spanish school and a company providing trekking guides, the chicken buses have largely been replaced by vans known as microbuses, there are tuk tuks everywhere, and the plaza, now quite pretty, recently underwent a renovation.

Nebaj is especially intense because the traje típico, which virtually all the women in town are wearing, is the prettiest I've ever seen. The ankle-length skirts are burgundy with a vertical design in white, the huipiles are various colors woven in distinctive angular designs that you discover depict birds or horses. Then there is the headpiece, a strip of elaborately woven cloth with pom poms at the end that is somehow wound around the head and the hair. A rebozo, also elaborately woven, is also frequently used.

I arrive Monday at 10 by microbus from Santa Cruz del Quiché, two hours away, the drive one curve after another through breathtaking scenery of one level of mountains giving away in the distance to another, beautiful pine forests, also a fair amount of deforestation, and of course near-vertical corn fields. Shortly after I get to my hotel I call Brian, a contact I have made through the Thorn Tree and for whom I have brought several baseball caps for the children he works with. Brian is a one-man NGO who spends eight or nine months of the year here, working with children and working on a stove project. (Traditionally cooking is done on a fire surrounded by three stones to put the comal and other cooking implements on, which wastes a lot of the heat and fills the room with smoke; the stove, built of concrete, uses half the amount of firewood and funnels the smoke through a chimney.) Brian says he and a Guatemalan woman are about to visit a school in the country nearby, so I express an interest in accompanying them and he offers to pick me up at my hotel.

It turns out that Brian is preparing for a visit the following day of a team from a small American NGO that is building schools in Guatemala (something the Ministry of Education apparently doesn't much do) and which he hopes to persuade to build a school in Nebaj and to use him as their contact person. Therefore we are visiting two schools to prepare them for a visit to show the visitors how needy they are--in fact, they aren't exactly schools, they're single classrooms in log-cabin shacks with tin roofs, dirt floors, and minimal equipment. In each the (male) teacher is teaching four or five grades because there are only a few students in each grade. We also visit a nearby vacant lot that the teachers hope to persuade the mayor to buy for a school to be built on.

We return to Nebaj on the back of a pickup truck, standing and holding on to a scaffolding, and Brian and I continue on to the house of a family (indígena of course) where we are going to have almuerzo, the middle meal here. It turns out that Brian, who lives in a cheap hotel, arranges with families to eat in their home for a minimal payment. This family has electricity, meaning bare light bulbs but no refrigerator, running water in the pila (what we call a lavadero in Mexico except that it has three sinks, one for dishes, one for clothes, the middle one a deposit of water), and a sort of outhouse near the house. There is firewood stacked up and a good supply of chickens in an enclosure. There are dirt floors in the two rooms, a kitchen and a large bedroom (the pila is outside). Brian and I sit down with a small table between us but not facing the table, we are furnished a basin of water to wash our hands and then given bowls containing beans mixed with greens and a small omelet. A high stack of tortillas is put on the table; I ask Brian if we eat with the tortillas, he says that is what the family does but we'll be given spoons. To drink we are given something like orangeade but hot.

As we return to el centro, Brian and I arrange to meet in the plaza at 6:45 to go to another house for cena, which he has arranged by cell phone as we walked to where we had almuerzo; apparently there are a lot of cell phones in Nebaj. In the meantime, I unpack, rest a little, and go to one of the several cybercafés here.

By the end of the evening I decide that Brian is either a saint or fulfilling a personal need. After our cena, in a house without electricity, just two candles in the kitchen, getting to which has involved walking on several narrow paths, indispensible the flashlight I have brought, the meal the same as almuerzo except we have atole (a hot drink made from wheat) to drink, afterwards Brian rounds up a large number of children because we are going to go to another house and the children are going to sing. Except that some of the children rebel and have to be rounded up again, and somehow this performance gets delayed more than I am comfortable with, while I chat with some of the adults who have been brought to this house (which has electricity) to hear the children. Finally the children are ready to be put through their paces, Brian always singing with them, and it turns out that all but one or two of the songs are in English or in one case Swedish (Brian is Swedish), songs like "Old McDonald Had a Farm" (with the name of the animal in Spanish), "Jingle Bells," and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." They do a bilingual version of "This Land Is Your Land," for which Brian has done a Spanish translation with appropriate geographical references. The quality of the singing is what you would expect of random kids with no training. Later I ask Brian if the children know the meaning of the non-Spanish words, and he says for the most part no.

During our cena Brian, who talks incessantly, gets very defensive about his upcoming encounter with the head representative of the NGO, whom he wants to choose him as the contact person for the school he wants them to build, but he doesn't feel he should have to prove himself, as if it were a job interview, that's what he came to Guatemala to get away from. Which makes me wonder about his work with kids perhaps providing him with a level of fulfillment that he's been unable to get otherwise.

In any event, on Tuesday Brian is occupied with his visitors, the town of Chajul, another point in the Ixil Triangle, has its market day, so I take a microbus there in the morning. My guidebook says there is a store of a weaving cooperative between the church and the market, which interests me, but it takes asking a huge number of people for directions to find it. In these parts it's safer to ask directions of a man than a woman because the proportion of men who speak Spanish is greater than the proportion of women. In any event, the store is open but deserted and what's in it is in a state of chaos, so I return to the church and the market (the churchyard is above and gives me good views of the market for shooting photos) and am happily taking pictures (of people who I think aren't aware I'm taking their picture--one woman who became aware threw a small potato at me) when I'm approached by a señora who starts talking to me about buying a huipil from her. I have been thinking of buying one of the strips used around the head, so I follow her to her house, which involves walking through a school to get to. She shows me a number of things and I choose a strip that afterwards I wonder if it's used on the hair because it's much wider than most, but in any event it's gorgeous and the colors will go very well on the (turquoise) wall of my bedroom.

I stay in Nebaj through today, Thursday, because Thursday is market day here and my itinerary is based on market days. My last two days are less intense than the first two--I explore the market and the new Mercado de Artesanía, puestos housed in an attractive new building (I buy cloth bookmarks and an elaborately woven strip such as a priest might wear hanging over his neck), wander around shooting photos, and deal with the problem of finding vegetarian restaurant meals (pizza turns out to be my best option).

I should fill in the narrative between Panajachel, where I last reported, and Nebaj. From Pana on Saturday I take a tourist van for an hour to Chichicastenango, spend the night in an overpriced hotel, and go out to explore the tourist market at 7:45 Sunday morning. At 10 I am on a microbus for the half-hour trip to Santa Cruz del Quiché, an indígena town (where the frilly huipiles look like they were made on a sewing machine rather than a backstrap loom) that also has its market on Sunday, spend the night there, and Monday come to Nebaj.

My transition tomorrow to Antigua, my final destination in Guatemala, where I will spend a week, is more complicated than I would like. I take an early microbus to Santa Cruz del Quiché, there get on a chicken bus (recycled US school bus, garishly painted and with a rack on the roof) that's going to Guatemala City, get off 40 minutes before there at the side of the road in Chimaltenango, and catch a passing bus going to Antigua. Ordinarily it's a five-hour trip, but the construction work on the Panamerican Highway will undoubtedly make it longer.