Contamination

So remember how I described all of the women wearing purple in the market in Santiago? Well as it turns out, the use of these colors were born out of something much less festive. I am beginning to wonder: is there any part of the culture here that really belongs to the people and is not tainted by blood, sweat and tears? According to my teacher´s account today, the colors originated when the Mayan first became slaves of the finca (farm) owners. They were set to work in separate villages, but as you can imagine, some tried to escape to other nearby villages. Then there were disputes about which finca owner that person belonged to, so the owners started to color-code their workers, so to speak. The people of Santiago wore purple, the people here wore white, other villagers, red, yellow, green, and so on.

Like so many of the aspects of society that were forced on these people (take Catholicism, for example) they adapted the rule to make it their own. They added adornments, like embroidered flowers, birds, and other colors that signified something to each other. Now they cling to this traditional clothing despite its colonial origin. Most of the women up here in the highlands wear the traditional skirt and blouse with a belt but the men generally wear jeans, slacks, t-shirts and jackets. Supposedly, this is because the men tend to work outside the house and travel around more, and they do not want to face the ridicule and discrimination that the traditional clothing draws. Furthermore, traditional materials are very expensive because they are hand woven and sewn locally, so they reserve these items for festivals, church, etc. Another mystery unraveled... at least the first layer.

The work with the children in the school was a bit disastrous Monday. It was better not to write then. But the past two days have been excellent, with the students enthusiastically participating and learning a bit of English along the way. Yesterday we had them draw a tradition that they participate in her in San Pedro and then explain it with some basic English words. Today they had to draw the village of their dreams, complete with their chosen types of transportation and buildings, and sources of water and food. Then they explained what they had drawn in English. To finish, we discussed the lack of trash in their pictures and why we will go to pick up trash tomorrow. For some incentive, we will finish up at the lake tomorrow with swim lessons and soccer! I just hope we don´t all get sick from picking up the trash... I´m confident that latex gloves do not exist here. Wish us luck!

Now I have to go conjugate about a thousand verbs until I finally get it right! Yipee!