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| From Pictures |
As soon as I returned to the office in the city on Wednesday from dropping the Tejutla team off at the airport and spending two days with Blaire in Antigua I was invited to take a quick two-day jaunt to Jutiapa.
Jose Luis, our corn guy, invited me to give a brief presentation on the medical aspect of Helps. He was going to Jutiapa to a small village called El Progeso–actually it was a tinier collection of homes just a few kilometers more down a dusty, rocky back road in to the heartland of Jutiapa. A group of farmers had called the office asking to become a part of the corn program and Jose Luis was dispatched to give them the information and set things up. He thought it would be a good idea if I came along and did my thing. Also a great way to get out the office for a bit longer.
I never traveled to the oriente before. Actually, most of my traveling in Guatemala consisted of the altiplano, or highlands, visiting places such as Nebaj, San Cristobal, Huehuetenango, Tejutla and Solola. All I knew about the oriente was that it was cowboy territory. Land of guns, women and cattle.
That same Wednesday we drove out of the city by 10 a.m. after calling my boss for authorization to go. Ten minutes down CA-1 and the landscape changes drastically. There are palms, banana trees and a lot of wind. Each bend of the highway tucks into its bosom a micro-climate of different kinds of vegetation and temperature. One bend and there are tall pines, arid mountainsides and shrubs. The next has monkeys, palms, cattle crossings and waterfalls crashing next to the road.
It was 1.5 hours to Jutiapa, a mere skip compared to the four, five and eight hour bus rides I endure for the medical trips. We picked up our guide to the meeting, a young man with spiked hair. He showed us in to El Progreso and after a few turns through town we were headed down a white-dust road leading into arid grassland surrounded by jagged, dry hills.
The difference in people to my eyes is immediate. There are no women in traditional dress. Nor men for that matter. Just men in stained shirts and straw cowboy hats leaning against trees and fence posts. I saw a woman in a pink apron with a basket collecting something next to the road standing next to an old motorcycle.
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| From 2010-03-18 |
The meeting was in a recently built house, I’m guessing, since the blocks and concrete-mix stain were still in the front “yard.” No one initially came to greet us and we took our time getting out of the car. Finally, an older gentleman, without a hat, shook our hands. He was slightly confused as he thought he would be meeting with our boss. I guess he just wasn’t used to seeing a couple of young guys.
We walked in to an empty, tiled room with a new computer and printer shoved into a corner. Through the back we walked into a courtyard where the farmers were waiting. It was weird. No one leapt to shake our hands or say welcome. Weathered, working men speak little.
Jose Luis gave his presentation and really new his stuff. He gained respect and credibility by asking questions about specific growing and seeding practices and other fertilizer shit, so to speak, and I really didn’t know what he was talking about. Hell, even I learned something about corn-growing practices. I didn’t even know there that many varieties of corn. Mostly thought it was just sweet corn, corn for tortillas and feed corn. During the speech I looked into the faces of the men there. They were roughly hewn. Eyes that pierced through to your masculinity and pinned it against the wall. But they listened and they were focused.
When the presentation ended we were invited to eat with don Edmundo, the gentleman who greeted us. The lady of the house served rice, red beans and a stewed steak and sky-high portion of thick, soft and steaming hot tortillas. At first, the steak scared me off. I did not want to offend so I bit into it and man was it tender and salted!
As we began to talk, Edmundo told us how impressed he was by our presentation and with the farmers. He had never, ever seen farmers ask questions about a program to other organizations, but ours, he said, they asked a lot of questions. Jose Luis and I traded glances and were surprised and excited.
Back in Jutiapa, we came up on the hotel where we were staying. Jose Luis said it was a really nice place and that he never made reservations because there was no need. Walked up to the front desk with all of our shit and…they were sold out. Jose Luis was dumbfounded.
“No reservations needed, huh?” I said.
“This has never happened before.”
We asked if they was another hotel around and the cute little front desk girl told us to go down the road a bit. That place was full, too. Now we were really starting to panic. Jose Luis called a contact of his and directed us to another place, Joya Verde. Finally we found it after going to far and turns out it was a really nice place but was still under construction and it was FULL! Now, really up shit creek and after an hour of searching up and down the same dusty highway we limped back to Jutiapa in hopes of finding a decent hotel in town.
Driving through the town of Jutiapa was far different than what I was expecting. It was a place of actual paved roads and no cobblestones. There was a lot people walking up and down the narrow streets dominated by businesses of all sorts packed tightly into winding streets. Power cables hung every where. And the strangest sight of all was school kids in uniform. The schools were right in town and after school they were walking down to the main square which was just packed with kids in uniforms. Some smoking, others making out, some sitting and some heckling. In the highlands, schools were rare, but there. Most, school kids I saw in the highlands were younger, elementary-aged kids. I’m guessing the older ones were working.
We checked into a hotel hidden a block off the main plaza and settled in. It was humid, hot and stifling in the room and I passed out on the bed watching the Discovery channel and the joys of having a television. In the evening we walked around the plaza which was full of kids still and went to small place for a cold beer.
II.
Woke up Thursday morning refreshed and in good spirits. This was the first real bed, for the most part, that I had slept in in a while. We ate a quick breakfast at Pollo Campero, which reminds me of Pollo Tropical in the states, but, not nearly as good.
Then we drove down about 45 minutes toward the Salvadoran border to get to a village called Atescatempa near the town of Asuncion Mita. When I called my mom after this trip she mentioned that she had been in Asuncion Mita to an haciendo owned by a military man when she was about 20.
We drove about 30 minutes down a rugged, rutted dirt road after we neared the border. Fields of gold corn stretched to the feet of the jagged brown hills that formed the valley through which we were traveling. The terrain changed to tropical foliage and deep greens with palm trees and lime trees tucked into a deep corner of the valley where the town of Atescatempa was located.
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We drove up onto a nice and clean paved square in the middle of the town. I asked Jose Luis if we should get out. He looked and me like I was a mad man. And get shot?! They shoot here and ask questions later here, he said. Our contact in the town came down to greet us and we stepped out of the air-conditioned wonderfulness of the truck cabin into the chest-heaving humidity and stillness of the cicada-buzzed sunlight. Turns out he was the mayor, too. And he was packing. A small 9mm clipped to his hip with an extra round of ammo in a leather holder that looked like a cell phone cover. He and Jose Luis discussed their business and I was left to listen and take it all in. Apparently, I was the first outsider to ever arrive to the town, something I find hard to believe, but fun to entertain nonetheless. The man was short, stocky, with a thick dark mustache and a black cap. He told jokes about women, booze and cursed like a drunk sailor. Big difference from the humility of his highland countrymen.
He took us on a tour of the town through the narrowest of passages where the Hilux barely fit and pointing out to us where he’d like to put a park, an electric well and a school. Somehow, even after I introduced myself as part of the medical team, he assumed I could bring them all the social infrastructure a small town could need. So I nodded as he preached to me the need in his town. Necesitamos escuelas, mister.
We left around midday and started back toward the city. We were soon on the four-lane highway and the small towns of back road Jutiapa seemed like another age.
