You may also notice over the next few weeks some changes with the blog – it is a work in progress!

Enjoy and leave a comment!

Enjoy! I hope they leave as much of a smile on your face as they did mine!

Below is just one image. Taken in the Siq leading to the old city of Petra, Jordan.

I have been keeping a marvelous part of Guatemala from all of you. Colours. Everywhere there are the most brilliant and shocking colours – whether it be in the women’s huipils, the cuisine, or the landscape. Although black and white is just so wonderful for displaying textures which are so common and intricate throughout Guatemala the colours are breathtaking. So, expect to see a few smattering of colour images within this post.

I would now like to introduce you to one of my favourite elderly couples.  In the aldea of Tuixoqel, Doña Maria Dominga Gomez Perez lives with her husband and six children.  Twenty years ago they started a pharmacy in their home to aid their community and the surrounding towns. With loans through CAUSE Canada‘s microcredit program, Doña Maria has been able to purchase a wider variety of drugs in the city of San Marcos. Before leaving, they asked for a portrait of the two of them. I can’t recall precisely what was said, but what I said in English was translated first to Spanish by the interns and then to Mam, their native language, by one of the local CAUSE representatives. These are the images that followed. I can not help by smile every time I see them.

Don’t you just wish you could just grab a cup of coffee and sit down and discuss life with these two?

Doña Maria with her pharmaceuticals.

From Comitancillo we stopped in Veinte Reales where Don Cornelio, one of the CAUSE teachers, and his family live. It required a thirty minute hike across fields, up and down hills and across several streams but it was more than worth it to see these smiling faces.

I’m going to say it. Perfection is over rated. After taking the above images I showed the two kids the images on the back of my camera and this was the reaction – blurry as anything but I love it.

Before leaving, Don Cornelio’s wife and kids insisted on giving us a giant bag of ripe plums. I can not even explain to you how delicious they were. Absolutely delectable!

Doña Reina leads a leadership class at her home in Tuilelan – the primary topic this day was community leadership and savings.

Doña Isabella, one of the ladies in the leadership class, invited us to her home at the end of class.

Below is another of my favourite elderly couples. Don Desiderio and Doña Tecla reside in Todos Santos, Huehuetenango where they are a well respected family.  Prior to the escalation of violence during the Civil War Don Desiderio was the mayor of Todos Santos for two years.  In 1991 the founder of CAUSE Canada, Paul, approached Don Desiderio at the prospect of starting a nursery to help combat the growing problem of uncontrolled deforestation.  For seventeen years Don Desiderio spearheaded the project before being made director of Institucion Mam de Desarrollo Integral (IMDI) – providing potable water, pilas (device used for laundry and washing dishes present in most Guatemalan households), agriculture knowledge and health initiatives.

Don Desiderio and Doña Tecla are now retired and dedicated to working at home growing milpa, apples, and peaches.

One night while returning to my hotel I turned around to see Bobby, the local dog, stopped under a streetlight after following me that far from the interns’ place.

That’s it! A small sampling of the experiences and sights I had the pleasure of having in Guatemala.  I could not have enjoyed myself more and hope someday (soon) to return. Thank you for taking the time to read these posts.

To end – one of my favourite images.

Being 5’8″ I am not particularly tall here in Canada. In Guatemala however, I noticed a distinct height difference between myself and the local people. The average man likely stood 5’2″ and the women closer to 4’8″. You would have thought I would have learnt my lesson after smoking my head on several door frames and clothes-lining myself on ropes holding tarps up in the market but quite apparently I didn’t. To add insult to injury one of the hostel’s definition of a bunk bed was stacking two single beds on top of each other, secured by a single nail in each leg. Although resourceful, I could not admire this handiwork with the recollection of the first morning waking up to my head greeting the upper bunk.

A third year class of women met in Vista Hermosa – at this point of their education they were able to read aloud from newspapers. Spanish is their second language as Mam, a Mayan dialect, is their first. I will see if my next post if I can post a sound clip as it is quite an interesting language to listen to.

I was followed around this classroom by several young boys who were quite enthralled with my camera – this young fellow however was more content listening to the women read.

Class would typically start with a game or exercise. In Don Adelfo’s class ‘head, shoulders, knees and toes’ was the game of choice.

Thanks for looking! Feel free to check out CAUSE‘s site for more information on their programs.

Upon arriving in Guatemala I was greeted by the CAUSE Canada interns and representative at the airport and so began a seven hour cross-country adventure from Guatemala City to Huehuetenango (pronounced Way-way-ten-ango and more fondly referred to simply as Huehue). Being an enthusiastic road tripper the prospect of such a long car ride wasn’t too bad. So began my first experience of transportation Guatemala style.

To give you the best description of Guatemalan roads let me start by giving you some basic math. The driving distance between Guatemala City and Huehue is about 260km. As mentioned, the time to cover said distance is seven hours. So take 260km and divide it by seven hours and this will give you an average velocity of 37.14km/h. Yes. 37.14 (I hold on dearly to this point one four) clicks. We crawled from the capital to Huehue. The bumpy-caked-in-with-fog-while-passing-chicken-buses-on-blind-corners-while-going-through-police-checkstops ride was a good taster of what was to come. While traveling to the more remote towns to attend leadership and literacy classes I became quite accustom to my head ricocheting of the Mitsubishi’s windows. Anywhere else it might hurt right?

Here is a small clip just to give you the slightest idea of how the trip went. Unfortunately this portion of the ride was missing the barrage of merengue and mariachi on the radio – my deepest apologies that you miss this integral part of Guatemalan transportation. (You may not want to watch this if you have a tendency to become motion sick)

The second mode of transportation is the infamous chicken bus, locally known as a ‘camioneta’. In every town there is guaranteed to be a lineup of brilliantly painted old American school and transit buses with lights flashing and the most ridiculous horns you have ever heard blaring.  For approximately $1.25 for an hour of travel you can go practically anywhere. Now, you are not simply paying for the trip but also the experience – which makes it so worthwhile. At the bus stations vendors will flood onto the bus offering all types of delicacies or health products, and individuals may come on to beg for money. One particular man scrambled onto the bus just as it left the terminal and started to give a rather lengthy speech. With my rudimentary Spanish I understood little of what he was saying and eventually just started to watch Xela go by outside my window. Several minutes later I turned my attention towards the front of the bus just as he lifted his shirt followed by a rather large piece of gauze and lo-and-behold – intestine! I now wish I had paid more attention to what was being said.  Only on a chicken bus!

Now for the true reason of what took me down to the country of Guatemala. CAUSE Canada has been working in the western highland regions of Guatemala for over 20 years empowering and improving the lives of the indigenous people through water and health, forestry and more recently microcredit and women empowerment programs. Primarily operating within the departments of San Marcos and Huehuetenango, Mam women are given the tools to establish small businesses and become leaders within their communities and to their children.

In the first literacy class we attended in Chemal there were three older children who were quite enamoured with the idea of having their photo taken. Upon asking their names it was learnt the girl was Reina, her twin brother, Samuel (aged 8), and the younger boy’s name was Aldolfo. When further inquired about the youngest girl’s name, Reina just looked at us and shurgged saying in the most exasperated tone, “who knows!”. So here are Reina, Samuel, Aldolfo and Who Knows.

I let Aldolfo (above) try his hand with my camera – I would say he has quite the eye!

Meanwhile, their mothers were inside with younger siblings learning their numbers. The teacher would come around the classroom and have each of them read the numbers, spell them, and write them down.

A second class in the region offered loans of Q500 (about $70) to the local women to grow their businesses.

One of the primary businesses that the women had started in the department of Huehuetenango was potato farms. The money was primarily used to buy fertilizer and seeds and the potatoes were then taken into the larger towns such as Quetzaltenango to be sold.

Several of the women also helped to grow their huipil weaving businesses. The huipil, or blouse, worn by indigenous Mayan women in Guatemala vary by region. Even between aldeas thirty minutes apart there may be a different style, colour or pattern. One huipil may take up to two months to make with skilled hands working three hours a day.

More images to come in a later blog post. I even promise to include a self portrait and a story about a particularly low doorframe – sometimes not being the height of the average person around you can be a bit of an inconvenience.

Not only do I have a tendency to switch tenses three times in a sentence (which really shouldn’t be that much of a surprise seeing as I was dubbed ‘Queen of Run-On Sentences’ in Junior High Grammar class and can easily write an entire paragraph void of any useful punctuation), but I also love sharing useless little details. So in short, bear with me.

I write this with the snow falling outside (yes, it is May and snowing in Calgary), my dog curled up on my lap with his head bobbing along with my sporadic typing, a cup of decent coffee in front of me, a tiny bit of chocolate to help me forget about the snow, and Dala playing in the background.  A little escape for the editing and emails I have been working through.

On May 1 I boarded a plane with a one backpack and camera bag.  Now, I have come to realize there are different packing strategies for international travel and believe I should elaborate on why I chose the one I did. They are as follows:

1.’In Case’ Method.

This method is highly employed by my family in the form of hard shell suitcases. You can easily pack enough clothes to wear a different set everyday for a month without once having to do laundry, just in case wherever you are traveling runs out of water; you can leave enough room to bring an entire artisan’s stand of textiles home, just in case you forget about a distant relative with a mean ability to hold a grudge when buying souvenirs; you can bring the hospital equivalent of a medicine cabinet, just in case someone may contract a severe case of car sickness – or dengue fever; and the kitchen sink – just in case of course. This method however does not work when traveling on chicken buses (stories to follow in additional posts).

2. ‘Bottomless Pit Optimization’ Method

I really don’t know what it is about duffle bags, but when using them I can only envision the scene from Mary Poppins as she first arrives at the Banks’ household and begins pulling out all sorts of oddities. Organization is overrated. You always know whatever you may try to stuff into it will fit. This method is similar to the ‘In Case’ method but is geared towards men (just an observation).

Exhibit A: Representation of packing methods 1 and 2 used in New Zealand by a North American family. Please don’t judge the shorts and socks (or the hair as that is a sensitive topic).

And last but not least….

3.’Backpacker’ Method

I used this method for this recent trip. It includes going to the local outdoor store and purchasing a backpack that fits the following thought criteria a) “it is big enough, I won’t be bringing that much stuff” b) “it looks inconspicuous enough that I shouldn’t be held at knifepoint for my two pairs of dirty socks” and most importantly c) “it is on sale.” Upon trying to pack said backpack however you come to realize that what was termed a ‘necessity’ 30 seconds previously is now an expendable luxury. Packing becomes a giant budget game in which hygiene, comfort, and traveling fully clothed do battle for that 30L of space.

After cinching the top and buckling the straps I couldn’t help but, with three years of Biomedical eduction behind me, look at the final product and say “Behold, a perfect anaerobic environment.” (For all you non-science nerds this means ‘without air’). Below is a photo taken with my phone using my miniature schnauzer as reference. Coming from an ‘In Case’ method family this is one of my greatest accomplishments and shall be going on my resume.

So began my trip to Guatemala.

I had the absolute pleasure of traveling with CAUSE Canada interns photographing their current project of women empowerment through literacy and leadership classes. Here is a small sampling of the images. More to come accompanied by some interesting tales!

Enjoy!

It’s a hard job being beautiful! I just love real moments such as these.

When asked what his favourite book of all time was Jayden pulled out “Where the Wild Things Are” – good choice I must say! I haven’t had the chance to see the movie but fell in love with the book the first time I picked it up in my Grade 1 library.

Thanks you guys!

A family of four.

It wasn’t until last year that I took a darkroom course over the summer at the University. Needless to say I instantly fell in love. This past week I finally broke and bought myself the chemicals and equipment needed to do it in my own basement.  There is nothing that can quite compare with preparing the chemicals, loading the film in a pitch black room, and that moment of pulling the film out just hoping that you see those dark squares.

This past week I walked around the University of Calgary campus for 2 hours between classes with my Kodak Duaflex IV, which I picked up in an antique shop in the quaint Ontario town of Harrow. Here are the results of the 12 roll film.

Now, I don’t want to get all mushy here, but I just need to do a shout out. Take pictures people! I mean it! Get out there with your point and shoots and just document life.  Today I was trying to find an image my father took when he was in grade 11 to accompany this post.  Being the nerd that he was he set up in his basement a system in which a hammer would fall on a lightbulb, smashing it, which would trigger a flash and the camera. Follow? It turned out quite brilliantly I must say. Shame I can’t find it. But, I did find this small treasure and thought I might as well share. Just think about what people will say about the images you take today in 30 years.

Here is my father after packing the 1960-something Chevy truck to head off to the University of Western Ontario in 1975. He’s the short fella. I secretly wish we still had that truck.