A few days ago I went to the home of Reyes Espantzan in Tecpan to take her picture with her weaving. While I was there, her landlord Isabel (I thought it was her mother at the time) begged me to take her picture too. She's not a Friendship Bridge client or anything, but oh well. Digital photos are free! She said "maybe somebody will see me with my sticks and send me a walker". Well, I just wrote down her name and thought nothing more of it.

Today was full of sights, events and people. We traveled by bus several hours to visit two villages outside of Chimaltenango, El Cojobal and Comalapa . It was a day full of extremes: happiness and complete sadness. I saw the poverty these hard working industrious people have to fight every moment of their lives.

It took us two hours to get to the meeting in the morning. We took a bus, walked 45 minutes up along a mountain ridge and then tromped through a maze of cornfields, farm land and dirt paths. Even though we were 45 minutes late, the women were delighted to see us. No gringos had ever come to visit them in their homes and asked questions about their daily lives. They were all very welcoming and excited to talk with us and have their photos taken. They were also glad to see us because the head of the Chimaltenango office of Friendship Bridge brought the checks for their next 6-month loan. The women were quite happy with this day. The atmosphere was charged with good vibes.

The Catholic churches in Mexico just wore us out. Every little town had an incredibly glorious cathedral that just amazed. The Spanish did a mighty fine job converting the folks in most of Mexico. However, as we got into southern Oaxaca and Chiapas, we started noticing that the Catholic churches were smaller and less ornate (and less tended) and we started seeing more little Evangelical churches.

During the 1980's peak of the Guatemalan civil war, the area where we are was devastated by the army's attempt to root out the guerrillas, whom they could never seem to find. So seemingly they just destroyed all the villages and killed anybody who lived near a piece of communist graffiti. Entire regions of the highlands were deserted due to destruction and the flight of the people. Many fled to Mexico and the US, where some remain.

We see the people here carrying amazing loads in amazing ways. The women carry incredible loads balanced on their heads, but that just seems ordinary when you see men, women, and children of all ages carrying their firewood down from the hills. Sometimes they have what appears to be hundreds of pounds tied up on their backs, and they use a little forehead strap so they can use their head and neck for support. They look like burros carrying these loads, and some of the loads look as big as the load of a burro.

This boy said he had only a 1-hour walk with his load, but we know many carry their loads farther. Some are gathering wood for their own use, but many people are also gathering the wood for sale and carrying it many miles, since it's the only way they have to earn a little cash.

After spending my whole life avoiding sandals, they're now the only shoes I own. I left my old running shoes behind in Juchitan, Mexico, and bought some simple sandals. The idea is simple: I don't have to wash out my socks every night. But there are loads of other benefits: I don't have to worry about riding in the rain, because nothing gets wet that matters. With shoes, you always have to think about what the shoes are going to be like the next day. And my feet, which are always prone to stinkiness, are now properly aerated!

By the way, both of us abandoned fancy clipless pedals and shoes some time ago (like in Victoria, British Columbia). For me, it's just that I want only one pair of shoes, and a clip isn't a very friendly thing on your one pair of shoes. For Nancy, it's that she never does get all that confident about the clipped-in thing. Anyway, we're just normal people with normal shoes these days. Or sandals, that is.

We left Chimaltenango around 9:00 and rode the side road to Antiqua Guatemala, the original capital of the country. In Parramos we were going to go to breakfast at a famous fancy restaurant but we got sidetracked in the center of town and ended up eating at the corner eatery and talking to the owner Manuel for an hour or two. All the while his wife worked the dozen customers that came and went while we just talked away. Occasional he would get up and tell her there was another customer. But he was explaining to us about the differences in the 23 languages spoken here in Guatemala.

One of the more disturbing things about a couple of the places we've been recently is seeing drunks just laying unconscious on the sidewalk, or even sprawling out into the street. There seems to be no custom of getting them off the street, or having the police come and bundle them off to a detox center. They just collapse and sleep it off right there in front of everybody. One place where we used the internet we regularly had to step over a drunk to walk in the front door. Of course this is ugly. We know that this level drunkenness happens everywhere, but it seems like our custom at home is that it's hidden inside somewhere, or if not the police make sure that it's removed quickly from public view. Sometimes it's so extreme here that we wonder whether it's some kind of an art form. Just how drunk can you get before you have to collapse and start drinking?  read more here... lee mas aquí... »