Guatemala

photography

Taken from the road to Sebep. I did the trip on a dirtbike with a backpack full of school supplies a few weeks ago. No badge or golden star for it; and that’s alright by me.

photography

You can screw over a native people so that a few ruins are the only reminder of all that they once were, but you can’t keep the masons from doing their thing. They continue to build damn crazy stairways. This is for you, Mayan stone workers. Keep it up.

other

Never in my wildest dreams would I imagine that I would want a 16 year old girl I don’t even know, especially a rags-poor student with a scholarship, to test positive for pregnancy.

So what was the result?

Negative.

Which means that we don’t really know why she nearly died this week.

(I wrote this without editing because I only came to the office to grab my computer and head back to the house before the rain comes)

Edit:
Just to be clear, a girl in the sponsorship program got really sick, and after a lot of tests we were still inconclusive, then the doctor recommended a pregnancy test as a last ditch effort, and it came out negative. Right now he says it’s Anemia that nearly developed to Hepatitis A…not sure I buy it.

photography

Here’s the wrap up May Festival (La Féria de Barillas) pictures. So many great photo opportunities, and way more importantly I’m starting to learn how to not bring along my camera sometimes. In the Féria the town showed all it’s colors, the ones I like and the ones I don’t like. So many parts of Mayan heritage and equally so much trying-to-be-western, so many fat men who’ve never ridden a horse wearing cowboy clothes and so many malnourished children in expensive parades. So many smiles, too.

I’m somewhere between right and judgmental gringo and wrong.

 

photography

It’s the May Festival of Barillas, here are some pictures. Today the rural schools, tomorrow the urban schools (literally, not figuratively), so more pictures to come soon. As neat as it all is, the sharp difference between the bands and students of the rich kid schools and the poor kid schools is a hard hitting thing; I wish I was better at saying things with my camera.