11.20.13
It's good to be doing something again. I'm volunteering, for now, so I wouldn't dare set an alarm, but I usually wake up at or before daybreak, around six, and work doesn't start til seven.
My first impressions of Tzununa after half a week of work were good. It's a simple, poor village much like the others, but the people in each village have a distinct look in their faces and skin and a unique, traditional style of dress that the women still wear every day. Here in Tzununa, the base is black. I like it a lot. There are often diamonds or lines stitched in a string in a low contrast color, like a grey. With brighter, more colorful threads, they stitch in lines of other shapes or flowers or birds. The bright colors used here on the skirts and shirt collars are mostly a mix of blues, greens and aquas. I've only been here for a few days, but I'm enjoying the look. The women seem to have attitudes to match their snazz uniforms. Serious and stern: the black. But lighthearted, friendly and kind: the blues and greens.
It's nice to be working again. Work is the construction of a three-story bamboo hotel here in Tzununa. The ground level has already been built up with stones. Stones are free except for the paying the men who gather them from the river and haul them to the site on their backs. They use a bag and rope system with a strap that goes around and over the forehead. A group will help each other get loaded up, except I suppose the last guy does it on his own. They carry incredible weights, especially for the size of the men, great distances. You have the guys who hike up the mountain, chop up firewood and load it on their backs with a similar head-rope system. They hike steep, rocky trails several thousand feet down. Wellies are common, busted up shoes are common and some old dudes do it barefoot. Rarely does a guy do it in the type of shoes I would wear walking the same trails with a small backpack. Those guys haul downhill.
Construction guys haul shit uphill. It's convenient and comforting to know with certainty that the smallest guy in any crew is well stronger than me. When I'm cringing through a task and give the load over to the small guy, I'm assured that if I was able to do it at all, he'll do it without cringing. After hauling a full load a good distance, maybe 20 minutes uphill, the workers release the load slowly and gradually and sit to rest for at least five minutes. One sight at the site made a big load easily quantifiable. A guy carried up two 50-kg bags of cement at a time. 220 lbs. Maybe it doesn't sound like that much, but imagine giving a 220-lb woman a 15-minute piggyback ride up a mountain. Imagine doing it in flop-flops.
Day 1 involved moving the bamboo up from the road to the site. Handling the six-inch thick, 20-ft length or bamboo was more a challenge of balance and maneuvering than a test of bearing a great weight. I got the hang of it and it was actually harder on Day 2 when those muscles behind the collar bones were so sore that reloading them with more stick was painful.
So it's nice to be working again. I've had two weeks off since my last vacation ended trekking in the Western Highlands. I spent the morning hours of most of that time working on the writing of an instructional, and partly anecdotal, book about travel photography for people who want to stop taking such horrible pictures and showing them to me. I spent the afternoons doing a variety of things that together constitute general fucking off. My enthusiasm for the writing waned after my own camera briefly went swimming in the rio above San Marcos at the little pool where the trail goes over the huge rock. This was the day after I wrote the part about keeping your gear dry and protected. A little probably won't hurt, but try to keep it dry. You can't take pictures if your camera breaks. My camera is fucked. A guy in Panajachel is going to look at it. The last guy I let look at something fixed it. It was this $11 Casio alarm clock. All the liquid crystal displays stopped displaying and the little light wouldn't turn off. I was going to be American about it and toss the thing in the garbage. Just for shits, I brought it to the Casio Authorized Dealer Specialist that happened to be next to the hotel in Huehuetenango. This was probably the third highlight from Huehue after a really good torta at the square and finding an XL J. Crew button-neck hoody at a used clothing store.
The owner took the job seriously. He kept it simple stupid; batteries were his first suggestion for the cure. I pointed out the illumination yet hiding in the daylight so he went to work cracking it open, spraying some stuff on the circuit board and viola. What was wrong? It's a “bad machine”. The camera is seemingly fucked, but I'm gonna let this other guy look. His shop is down a hall through a tienda past a couple bedrooms and you never know. I wish I could still take pictures. But I have a lot of other stuff on my mind and it certainly feels nice walking around with no valuable stuff. I'll be excited to finish the book a bit down the road and maybe with some fresh photos.
TBC
It's good to be doing something again. I'm volunteering, for now, so I wouldn't dare set an alarm, but I usually wake up at or before daybreak, around six, and work doesn't start til seven.
My first impressions of Tzununa after half a week of work were good. It's a simple, poor village much like the others, but the people in each village have a distinct look in their faces and skin and a unique, traditional style of dress that the women still wear every day. Here in Tzununa, the base is black. I like it a lot. There are often diamonds or lines stitched in a string in a low contrast color, like a grey. With brighter, more colorful threads, they stitch in lines of other shapes or flowers or birds. The bright colors used here on the skirts and shirt collars are mostly a mix of blues, greens and aquas. I've only been here for a few days, but I'm enjoying the look. The women seem to have attitudes to match their snazz uniforms. Serious and stern: the black. But lighthearted, friendly and kind: the blues and greens.
It's nice to be working again. Work is the construction of a three-story bamboo hotel here in Tzununa. The ground level has already been built up with stones. Stones are free except for the paying the men who gather them from the river and haul them to the site on their backs. They use a bag and rope system with a strap that goes around and over the forehead. A group will help each other get loaded up, except I suppose the last guy does it on his own. They carry incredible weights, especially for the size of the men, great distances. You have the guys who hike up the mountain, chop up firewood and load it on their backs with a similar head-rope system. They hike steep, rocky trails several thousand feet down. Wellies are common, busted up shoes are common and some old dudes do it barefoot. Rarely does a guy do it in the type of shoes I would wear walking the same trails with a small backpack. Those guys haul downhill.
Construction guys haul shit uphill. It's convenient and comforting to know with certainty that the smallest guy in any crew is well stronger than me. When I'm cringing through a task and give the load over to the small guy, I'm assured that if I was able to do it at all, he'll do it without cringing. After hauling a full load a good distance, maybe 20 minutes uphill, the workers release the load slowly and gradually and sit to rest for at least five minutes. One sight at the site made a big load easily quantifiable. A guy carried up two 50-kg bags of cement at a time. 220 lbs. Maybe it doesn't sound like that much, but imagine giving a 220-lb woman a 15-minute piggyback ride up a mountain. Imagine doing it in flop-flops.
Day 1 involved moving the bamboo up from the road to the site. Handling the six-inch thick, 20-ft length or bamboo was more a challenge of balance and maneuvering than a test of bearing a great weight. I got the hang of it and it was actually harder on Day 2 when those muscles behind the collar bones were so sore that reloading them with more stick was painful.
So it's nice to be working again. I've had two weeks off since my last vacation ended trekking in the Western Highlands. I spent the morning hours of most of that time working on the writing of an instructional, and partly anecdotal, book about travel photography for people who want to stop taking such horrible pictures and showing them to me. I spent the afternoons doing a variety of things that together constitute general fucking off. My enthusiasm for the writing waned after my own camera briefly went swimming in the rio above San Marcos at the little pool where the trail goes over the huge rock. This was the day after I wrote the part about keeping your gear dry and protected. A little probably won't hurt, but try to keep it dry. You can't take pictures if your camera breaks. My camera is fucked. A guy in Panajachel is going to look at it. The last guy I let look at something fixed it. It was this $11 Casio alarm clock. All the liquid crystal displays stopped displaying and the little light wouldn't turn off. I was going to be American about it and toss the thing in the garbage. Just for shits, I brought it to the Casio Authorized Dealer Specialist that happened to be next to the hotel in Huehuetenango. This was probably the third highlight from Huehue after a really good torta at the square and finding an XL J. Crew button-neck hoody at a used clothing store.
The owner took the job seriously. He kept it simple stupid; batteries were his first suggestion for the cure. I pointed out the illumination yet hiding in the daylight so he went to work cracking it open, spraying some stuff on the circuit board and viola. What was wrong? It's a “bad machine”. The camera is seemingly fucked, but I'm gonna let this other guy look. His shop is down a hall through a tienda past a couple bedrooms and you never know. I wish I could still take pictures. But I have a lot of other stuff on my mind and it certainly feels nice walking around with no valuable stuff. I'll be excited to finish the book a bit down the road and maybe with some fresh photos.
TBC
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