Precariously Perched

This morning I caught a ride about twenty minutes along the curvy mountain ridge road that is the highway here into Pantelho, the 'cabacera', or municipality head, after which the Pantelho municipality is named. It is the next municipality to where I am located, in the town of Acteal in the municipality of Chenalho. Pantelho was the most action I've seen since I got up here. Although it is really not much of a city, the city square was bustling, and a several block radius around it was full of venders on the side of the road each selling their fruit, shirts, ripped dvds, cds, vegetables, etc.
I stocked up for the next while: avocados, tomatoes, carrots, oranges, squash, cucumber, pasta, a brush to clean my clothes with, candles for the night time relaxation, one of those big bottles of purified water, oats, juice, hot sauce, a big carton of eggs. The choice of fruits and vegetables here, all grown locally, that you can get for soooo cheap never ceases to amaze me. One example: about 15 mangos for 10 pesos (~ dollar). After stopping in at a little 'comedor' (eatery - comer is to eat), where absolutely everyone stopped and stared at me (not uncommon for the day or my life as a whole right now), I caught the next truck going back to Acteal.
Loading my stuff and myself into the bed of the truck and grabbing onto one of the metal rails that formed a frame around the bed, I began the journey back to Acteal, passing little ten-hut villages scattered along the edges of the mountains. The scenery is beautiful, although human presence is easily detected. Despite the apparent will of vegetation to overtake the land, the mountainsides are scarred by the clearing of steep inclines where the communities have attempted to grow the maize that sustains their life here, and has for thousands of years.
It is easy to see why bad weather and landslides can devastate the communities here - entire communities and their patches of land easily fold and are devoured by intense rains that can simply wash away the human presence. One would think they would have developed the concept of a terrace, but perhaps the fact that they were not always constrained to the mountainsides has something to do with the lack of development in this technique. I can now see how essential a training is like the one I participated in yesterday with six 'tecnicos', or technicians, from various regions where Maya Vinic has a presence. In the small community of Canolal, again perched precariously on a mountainside, the six technicians, myself, and a free-lance contractor, Poncho, from San Cristobal, whom Maya Vinic has hired for some time, spent about five hours training in the art of leveling land and making terraces. Although the majority of the time was spent showing the technicians how to make a level out of cut branches, a string, and a bottle of water (geniusly named 'Aparato A' (Apparatus A)) and how to measure the incline of the land, I wonder how much of that the technicians will really take home to teach in their respective communities. The majority of their interest seemed to be in finding the best spot to sit in the shade, and in the discussion afterward, it was discussed how most of the 'cafetaleros' (coffee farmers) simply do this by eye anyway... Perhaps I am just a bad judge of interest and absorption of knowledge at this point however, and don't give them enough credit. We shall see...
Today and tomorrow are days of rest for the people here, as is in most of the U.S., and so I will spend the days cleaning the kitchen and my room (dust covers everything), and wandering around the town of Acteal. I still have yet to go back and check out the monument to the 45 women and children killed by the paramilitary in 1997. Into this creepy pillar to the sky is carved the ghostly bodies of those massacred, like a burning candle, wax falling down the sides, and is a reminder of the political and social context into which I have been placed.
I look forward to the late afternoon, when the clouds gather overhead and a rain cools the peaks and valleys of these mountains. I will most likely sit on the cement patio outside my door, gazing through the banana trees, the ferns, the tabbaco plants and all other plants I don't know yet, smelling the smoke rising from the wood-burning stoves somewhere down below. Somewhere in the distance a radio will be playing polka -like sounds of a Mexican 'romantico,' and as I gaze off into the distance, my view stretching out over the patchy peaks of these mountains, my mind will inevitably wander to thoughts of how simple life can be.