Back With Garth

So I'm back with Garth Bowden in France, having a lovely time.

Yesterday, with Garth's girlfriend and his brother, and his girlfriend and another friend, I hiked up a mountain not far from here. It was a beautiful hike intermittently shrouded in cloud.  At the top, we ate a delicious feast of fresh bread and cheese and saucisson and tomatoes, and then took a nap on the mountain.  After the hike, we took a skinny dip in the lake below.  Afterwards, I made dinner (curry) and had a nice dinner before relaxing and bed.

Today, I got back to work on Garth's house.  We're working on making his workshop into a bedroom, so we cleared it out and then i began taking out the old render from between the stones.    

Bike Adventures in Italy

Summer of Solutions--June in Chicago

I spent the last few weeks in Rogers Park, Chicago, a neighborhood that has been called the most diverse in the world.  I was volunteering with Summer of Solutions, http://grandaspirations.org/chicago, a green economy youth leadership training, working on building a green economy from a grassroots, community based approach. 

Here are some things I accomplished, some things I've been thinking about, and some memories I don't want to leave behind.

Although the program is focused this summer on building a model of urban sustainability, and finding ways of doing social entrepreneurship, my short time frame didn't allow me to invest in the long term projects.  Instead, I worked on a lot of small projects, to get the community house I was living in and the program was based out of (the Kionia House) livable, more useable, and more sustainability. I also built raised beds, planted a large portion of a garden, cooked two meals a day for between four and fifteen people, and dumpster dove to my heart's content.  Of course, I also found time to explore Chicago, hear some music, and hang out with a lot of great people. 

Some highlights of the month:

Molly and Peter, the two program leaders, and I went into the city one evening to go to an art opening Molly's colleague had work in.  We biked for about forty minutes to the gallery, a new, upscale gallery filled with exactly the people one would expect to be at an art opening.  We drank a little wine and ate a little cheese, and looked at the truly incredible work Molly's friend did.  He does paintings of environmental and social issues, capitalizing on negative space and stylized human figures.  We got talking to the cousin of the gallery owner, a poster child suburban mom.  We talked to her about how to make bagel chips yourself, and then about the program.  For a long time we coached her on best practices for limiting her footprint, and got her thinking about some new things. 
On our way home, after getting kicked out of a hotdog factory parking lot (there was a spigot coming out of the building labeled corn syrup! Gross.) we stopped at the dumpster for an organic bakery.  We began pulling out delicious cupcakes, which quickly devolved into an icing fight.  Just as we were finishing the fight, my ear sealed shut with icing, two cop cars pulled up.  After realizing that we were white, and not tagging any buildings, two of the four cops left.  The other two assured us that what we were doing wasn't illegal, just "really fuckin gross."  THey stuck around, and we talked to them for a long time about environmental issues in Chicago.  Although the main cop was a good listener and really did give us the time of day, he was so amazingly racist it was sickening.  After our thirty minute conversation, we biked off, amused at the initial encounter, and saddened by the latter half.  When we arrived back at the house, we sat on the stairs of the Church we work in partnership with, and talked with Max, another participant in the program, and Calvin, a local drug pusher.  He told us intimate details about the Chicago crime scene and the police force, as well as the entire legal system.  He explained that the criminal justice system exists mostly to keep the judges and lawyers employed; citing precise figures of the actual costs of holding an inmate versus the cost charged to tax payers.  After this sad, but very insightful conversation, we went to bed. 

Molly, Peter, and my lovely girlfriend Maggie biked into Evanston to see David Wax Museum, a great, fun band.  We talked to the band after, and began convincing them to come to Oberlin some time this year. We'll see how this works out. 

With a few of the other participants, I went downtown a few times.  We went to a free day at the Art Institute, a wonderful museum that I could spend weeks in, and then went to the Taste of Chicago, a huge food festival in Grant Park. After eating, playing frisbee with a  lot of different people, including a few adorable children, we watched the fireworks from a private dock we were invited onto.

I saw Maggie's step sister perform in the circus. 

One night when Max, Maggie and I were biking back with a cart of dumpstered veggies, a guy looked in the cart, and said, "mmm fresh fruits and veggies!" and proceeded to grab a tomato from the cart.  As we was walking away, Max told him to wash it before eating, but it was too late: he'd already taken a huge bite out of the tomato.  After we told him it came from a dumpster, he said, "which dumpster?" and then took a few bananas and other veggies, without any invitation or anything.  Not that it was a problem: we'd gotten it all for free, it was just surprising and amusing. 

I built a nice little drying rack in the basement, and Maggie and I built a big treasure chest that holds tools and serves as a bench as well. 

The beach is four blocks from the house, and we had some great times swimming, playing frisbee, and collecting some of the abundant sea glass. 

We thought a lot about what a clean economy would look like.  Besides lots of local, green energy jobs, a clean economy would (and will!) be much more community oriented, much more resilient, diverse, and happy.  People will be able to work doing the things they love, not just work to make ends meet.  We'll move towards making our systems circular instead of linear, mimicking the natural ways of the earth. 

Maggie and I did a lot of planning for the event we're helping to organize at school in September, the Lorain Bike Fest: Moving Lorain, Moving Planet.  It will be a great festival of bikes where we'll bring together lots of local communities to collect, fix up, and give out free bikes, and celebrate the mobility and fun that bikes afford to all people, no matter what backgrounds we all come from.  Check out the event page and facebook event here: 

The program is a partner of the United Church of Rogers Park, an amazing Methodist church that feels and acts more like a community center than a church.  There are programs seven days a week, from language classes to a women's art collective, to a free after school and summer program.  I had the blessing of working with Wes Dorr, the Deacon at the church, who works tirelessly bringing people together, and working with lots of groups to make Rogers Park a better community.

Along with the abundance of free food came the license to be experimental with food.  We cooked some delicious things, including thai peanut veggies and tofu, raw peach pie, and pizza.  It was always fun to plan meals around what the dumpster provided, instead of trying to take too much control.

The Last Few Days

I have not been diligent about updating the blog, but in the last five days, here are a few of the things I have done:

I have gone to a Xela-Guatemala City soccer game (we won), gone to discos, legal and otherwise, walked the city of Xela for an entire day, seen the oldest church in latin america.  I have seen a market lit by candlelight, walked through an old growth pine forest, hitch-hiked down a mountain, and canoed across a lake in the crater of a volcano, completely shrouded in cloud.

Tomorrow I leave Xela, and on friday fly back to the states.  pictures will be coming up by tuesday, and more stories as well.

It has been quite an adventure.

Friday

I ignored my alarm this morning, and slept until 7:30, when I’m usually finishing breakfast. I rushed through the morning routine, Daniel picked me up, and we got to class on time. I learned three verb forms today, all before the break. Since Fridays are community lunches at El Nahual, and I didn’t have anything to prepare, I went with my teacher, Stephen the coordinator, and Maggie to the market during break and into class time. We took a bus to Democracia, the massive market, and spent some time there buying everything we needed. The markets here are amazing, tons of people sitting on the street selling huge amounts of anything you could want to buy. Maggie and Daniel were making a fruit salad, and she bought ten starfruits for about sixty cents. In the states, one starfruit goes for at least a buck fifty, probably much more. We got back, I took a little exam to see what I had retained, and began preparing lunch. All of the volunteers, the coordinators, and my teacher were in the kitchen together preparing lunch. The theme for lunch was Chinese food, but I elected to make Chinese guacamole, as it just doesn’t make sense to make Guatemalan food when in Guatemala. When we were finished preparing, we all ate at a long table. There was more than enough food to go around, and we all stuffed ourselves full.

After lunch, Daniel and I planned our lesson, and went into town to get some number worksheets printed out. We had the kids write the numbers from one to ten, which was very difficult for most of the kids. Some of them could count fine and could recognize the numbers, but others could not tell a four from a two. I worked with one girl for a while so that she could at least recognize the numbers from one to five. When the kids lost interest in writing numbers, we went to the street, wrote the numbers on the road, and had them run to the number we called. This proved exceedingly difficult, as the kids who were interested in playing really did not know their numbers. After playing this for a few minutes, it was break time. For thirty minutes after break, we played games on the floor, until it was time for the surprise. We brought the kids back out to lawn, and had two piñatas for the kids, to celebrate my birthday, a few days late. We let the little ones do the first piñata, and the bigger kids do the second. It was a blast. The piñatas were reinforced with wire, and kept their integrity through many blows. Just as the second piñata was going to break, I took the bat and did it in. Watching all the kids dive at the candy was priceless.

After school, Daniel and I went to Maggie’s. I didn’t stay long, and went to the internet café. I got distracted from what I needed to do there, which was buy plane tickets, and I went home. I had every intention of going back after dinner, but during dinner I let it be known that I can make many strange noises, and spent the rest of the evening juggling and making noises with my family.

Wednesday and Thursday

When I walked in the kitchen this morning, my host mom wished me a happy birthday, and my host father gave me a big hug, and after checking to see if I believe in God, asked God to grant me many more happy birthdays. My Spanish class moved a bit slow today, probably because we were working on preterit and imperfect, which is quite tedious. After class, Daniel and I went to the supermarket to buy supplies for the hike tonight. We made the mistake of going before eating lunch, so everything looked delicious and very necessary for a volcano hike. Knowing I had a long day ahead of me, I took a short nap after lunch, until Daniel picked me up to go to school. Today’s big activity was painting the rocks that line a little garden in front of the school. We had about a dozen cans and buckets and bottles of paint, and as many brushes as we could ever want. We opened all of the paint, and let the kids have at it. What ensued was hilarious: four-year-olds fishing rocks out of cans of paint, mixing all the colors, adding water to cans of paint, and cans of paint to water. They had a great time painting, and we had a great time watching them. Of course, right when it was time to start cleaning up, the school’s water stopped working. We managed to clean up with what water was left, and headed home.


I meant to sleep between school and dinner, but ended up finishing my book instead. Just as I finished, Maggie rang the doorbell. We chatted for a while; she had a great meeting this afternoon and was super excited to tell all about it. After not long, Daniel came over. We chatted for a bit, and then were called to dinner. My family had prepared a wonderful birthday dinner, each plate set out with an array of tacos, and toppings all around the table. They brought out a birthday cake too. For the next two hours, we ate, talked about the volcano that Daniel and I were about to hike, and laughed and laughed and laughed. My host father is a genuinely funny man, and is filled with hilarious stories. After stuffing ourselves full, and then eating cake, I got my things together for the hike, and Daniel and I walked Maggie home. We went to Daniel’s to get his stuff, and at 10:30, went down the street to Quetzaltrekkers, the trekking organization that was leading the tour.

When we walked in, all of the talk was about who had done more 100 K’s, and who qualified for the Boston Marathon but not the New York. Quite intimidated, Daniel and I waited for the volunteers at Quetzaltrekkers, an all-volunteer organization that donate all its profits from the hikes to a school and an orphanage in town, to outfit us with the equipment we needed. We quickly realized that our little daypacks would not fit the four liters of water, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, and as many warm layers we could find, so we borrowed big packs from them too. As we packed up, we realized that most of the marathon talk was coming from one woman, who clearly had to talk about herself and how amazing she was at every moment, and some of our feelings of intimidation faded. A couple next to me was speaking Hebrew, so I chatted with them a bit. Just as I finished packing my stuff, the couple asked anyone if they were interested in playing Set. It was clear we’d be friends. We played for a bit, and the husband (they are on their honeymoon) was quite good. As we finished our first game, they told the slower two-thirds of the group of twenty two hikers to get our packs on and head out the trucks outside. The 16 of us piled into the backs of two pickup trucks, and rode for about twenty-five minutes to the base of the volcano.

At midnight, after being introduced to the four guides who were with us and hearing a bit about the protocols, we began the hike. Though it was the middle of the night, we needed no flashlights; you could have read by the light of the full moon. It was an easy start, and we hiked for about a half an hour, and then took a break, waiting for the second group to join us. Every time we stopped we had to put on more layers, it was already in the forties. After waiting about fifteen minutes, the other group showed up, and we got on our way. We took another break, with snacks and everything, before the real ascent started.

Then the hike got hard. We continued by moonlight for the next four hours, talking with different people for a while, then moving ahead of them, or lagging behind them. At some point, I needed to keep my fleece on in addition to my gloves; frost was beginning to form on the rocks, and glistening in the moonlight. The city of Queztaltenango unfolded in front of us, the lights flickering, lighting up the whole valley below. We had to scramble up parts, and had to keep our breaks short to keep from freezing.


Just as we began to feel that we couldn’t go much further; the altitude hitting us pretty hard in combination with the exhaustion, we began to see the guide’s flashlights at the top. One of the guides led us up the last ten minutes, and we finally reached the top, freezing, exhausted, and triumphant. We scrambled to the very top, had a look around at the mountains illuminated by the moon. We then found a flat spot near all the other hikers who had already reached the top, laid out our sleeping pads and bags, put on all of our layers, and squirmed into our mummy bags, leaving nothing exposed to the air.

About an hour and fifteen minutes later, I woke up. The sky was a gradient of oranges, reds, and magentas, leaving the silhouettes of the volcanoes in front of us. I tapped Daniel, who bolted up, opened his eyes, and let his mouth drop at the sight of it. We watched the colors change from our sleeping bags for a while, until I got up to look around. We had a 360 degree view of Guatemala, with at least six other volcanoes in sight. The moon continued to shine brightly, making the sunrise even more emotional than it already was. Eventually most of the other hikers also got up, and were taking pictures, walking around to see more, and reveling in the sight. Two of the volcanoes, one silhouetted by the coming sun, and one right next to us, were active, and occasionally spewed a plume of smoke into the sky.


Just as the sun peeped through, our Israeli friend played Here Comes the Sun on his phone. Tacky though it was, it felt like the perfect way to welcome in the next decade of my life. At every angle a different gorgeous view could be seen; the city of Xela was completely covered in clouds below us, and the sun lit up the clouds beautifully. The most amazing sight, however, was opposite the sunrise. In the mist that covered the mountains to the west, the tops of which were lit by the sun, was the shadow of the volcano we were standing on, and the moon continued to shine brightly from the same direction. I have been many beautiful places, and seen many beautiful things, but this may have been the most cosmically incredible thing I’ve ever seen.



After walking around the peak and gaping at the views, we gathered and drank coffee and ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Our Jewish friend, a tour guide in Israel, addressed the group, and explained that today is Tu bishvat, the Jewish New Year for the trees. It seemed so right that we were on the top of a volcano, breathing fresh air and enjoying the earth on this day. After his schpeil, I went over to where he and his wife were standing, and asked if we could say the shehechianu, a prayer saying thanks for bringing us to this moment in this place, that is generally said when things begin. It was the beginning of so many things—their marriage, the second decade of my life, and the day.


We spent about an hour and a half more exploring the top of the volcano, taking pictures from all angles, hiking down a little to see the little volcano right next to the one we were on, which is still active, and talking with Tom, an Australian geology student we had befriended on the way up, about the geology of the volcano.


At 8:30 we began our descent. It was slower going than I expected because of all of the switchbacks and the loose path, which gave us time to chat with the people we were walking with. I went on a carbon tax rant for a while with the Israelis and Tom, learned from Tom about how amazing it is to be a student in Australia—the government pays you to go to school—and had various other conversations with other hikers. When we got near the bottom, it got really dusty, and we looked like a herd of animals kicking up all of the dust. Exhausted, we reached the bottom, and hiked along the road for a little until we caught a chicken bus. The ride was very slow, along dirt roads and very indirect. Daniel noted that he was so tired he could sleep anywhere—except this bumpy, jerky bus. We finally got into town and walked about five minutes back to Quetzaltrekkers. We unloaded all our stuff, ate chocolate covered frozen bananas, and said goodbye.


When I got home, my host mother laughed at me, I looked like I had just finished a day of chimney sweeping. She insisted that I eat lunch, despite my utter exhaustion. I had been so excited for a shower, and when I finally got in, it was cold. I took a quick, freezing shower, ate some delicious yucca pancakes, and slept from two in the afternoon until eight. I woke up, ate a little dinner, and then Daniel and Maggie and I went to the Blue Angel, the gringo café, to eat guacamole, drink a little beer, and plan our last week here.

Monday and Tuesday

Since most of the volunteers have left, Daniel and I decided to teach the little kids in the afternoon instead of doing construction. Today we had six children between the ages of three and six. After lunch, we spent some time planning the two hours that we were to be in charge of the children. At three, they started pouring in the school. At about 3:10, we began with a name game. We tried have the kids say their name and then an animal that began with the same letter, but realized that was asking a little too much, so we just did favorite animals. We then moved to the table, where we drew for a long time. We had blank paper and some outlines to be colored in, and all the kids wanted to color in the house, so I spent a good bit of time copying the house outline over and over again. The two littlest kids are angels, and two of the bigger boys are little devils. When they tired of drawing, we brought them on the floor and played Indian chief and duck-duck-goose. Indian chief was a little too hard for them—when they were the leader, they wouldn’t change their actions, rendering it impossible to guess who the leader was. Just as we began to lose their attention, it was break time.


For the next twenty minutes, we incessantly played jump rope, while Daniel played soccer with some of the boys. The yard behind the school is covered in short yellow grass, and with the four o’clock sun and the piles of rocks, it looks very post-apocalyptic. When we couldn’t count to seventeen anymore, it was 4:20, and time for class to resume. We took the little ones to the dead-end street that the school is on, and chalked it up for the next thirty minutes. The children traced Daniel and me, each other, and drew and wrote various other things. When the kids lost interest, we took them back inside, sat on the floor, and sang a word-less Nature Camp song, Dum-Dum-Dada, which is active and predictable. The kids took well to the game, and we played for a while. We ended the day with Duck-Duck-Goose, always a favorite.

Tuesday went much the same; I took class in the morning, and Daniel and I taught the little ones again. We were told to do more teaching, so we gave the kids a letter-writing worksheet, which they excitedly filled out, and we had them run from letter to letter written in the street in chalk, which they really enjoyed. We played more games, drew a lot, and played more Dum-dum-dada.

After class, we stayed at El Nahual and watched Todo Sobre Mi Madre, an amazing Spanish film. After dinner, I spent some time at the internet café, and then went home, ate dinner, did my homework, and slept.