Guatemala Field Station Blog

This morning we convened at 6:30 a.m. and drove to Tecp á n, where we listened to a brief presentation on some of the work that Wuqu’ Kawoq does in the region. From there we boarded a bus that took us up into the mountains to view Wuqu’ Kawoq in action. The bus snaked up narrow, unpaved roads that had us leaning away from the cliffs in an effort to keep the bus on the road. There was a collective gasp when we rounded a curve and caught our first glimpse of blue mountains rolling out into the distance. The clouds above them were active and playful, changing shape by the second, revealing and hiding every new formation of earth.             My ears popped as we ascended. The scenery was simultaneously dazzling and puzzling, with greens and blues softening the tops of the ridges, a seemingly impossible sight at such high altitude. Most mountains I’ve been on have had a tree line somewhere before 6000 feet, and here we were a...

First day of learning, REAL learning. Classes started at 8:30 since the entire Tecpán wakes up early. It’s nothing like my usual routine, especially if you add making tortillas at 7am. But we’re still running on adrenaline. (wait ‘til posts from later this month) We started off by getting our Mayan names. One of the traditional ways of assigning them is to combine a Mayan name for a day of birth and the year according to the Mayan calendar. So my Kaqchikel name is Waqxaqi’ Ey. It’s fun and a tricky way to prepare us for learning Kaqchikel numerals. And some of the more advanced learners managed to find a hidden meaning behind their names. Chris is a bunny apparently, or a seed. We also learned about Wuqu’ Kawoq from its director Anna Kraemer. She told us the story of how Wuqu’ Kawoq started from recognizing the urgent need to fill in the gap in the areas of health care where neither government nor NGOs were present. And interesting enough, it was started by an doctor...