Guatemala

Guatemala

Is a small proud woman

Wearing all the colors

Of her ancient country.

She has long black hair

That swirls like water at night

She looks out at the world with dark eyes.

Guatemala is a volcano called Fire

Puffing smoke like an old man with his pipe.

Also volcanoes of Water

And mud  

Centuries of eruption, corruption

And change, no rest or respite.

Guatemala is repression

In many forms.

By religion, by the government, by America, by the rich.

The violence of centuries.

Brutalized, colonized, 

Dehumanized. 

Guatemala is a sacred Maya lake called Atitlan,

“The place where the rainbow gets its colors”

Created by a caldera. 

The wise and ancient Tz'utujil culture

Flourished here, with reverence for the female and male

In all things.

Guatemala is a small boy on a lancha

traveling over the contaminated lake with his grandfather, 

half asleep standing up.

His older sister dressed in an old purple tutu,

A favorite of little girls all over our world,

gazing out at the uncertain lake before her, her future.

 

Guatemala is a comadrona recognized in a wall mural

In San Pedro, a woman with green eyes

And a don, a calling.

Devoted midwife of six generations of babies,

hiking up and down mountains to her clients,

Supporting women in the life-changing process of birth.

Guatemala is fields on steep hillsides

Filled with growing greens,

Corn, sugarcane, vegetables, coffee, beans

Subsistence farming with everyone working

Even the littlest children carrying heavy loads,

Trying to stave off malnutrition, a constant struggle to survive.

But,

Guatemala is a place where every green thing grows,

There are trees everywhere, old and young,

and so many birds singing

Hummingbirds flit in their inimitable buzzing flight

Magical delicate quick visitors, pollinating all the colours

of the flowers our eyes feast on.

And,

Guatemala is beauty, creativity, 

It is wide smiles that strangers don’t really deserve,

There are honours in abundance.

It is delicious food, coffee every morning

At a beautiful garden oasis, run by the two shy cousins,

We are given a touching gift on our last day.

Also,

Guatemala is a little old lady 

Trudging slowly home in the late afternoon light

Of Antigua, her shopping bag on her arm,

On her tired shoulder rides a beautiful Hummingbird moth,

at the end of the street, it takes wing and flies off

waving a wing, blessed by the old goddess.

Montezuma and a new year

Montezuma

I have been very slow to recover from Montezuma's Revenge, here in Mexico City. Although why Montezuma would want revenge on an older South-African woman with genetic roots from all over the European continent, (and even a tiny bit of North African Bedouin blood) is beyond me.

But here I am, alone in our AirBnB, having missed out on a balloon ride with Tim and Nick and Gina, our friend, over the pyramids of Teotihuacan, a very successful ancient Aztec civilization that flourished for about 700 years and then mysteriously ended, although it is now believed by historians that the cause could have been the terrible volcanic eruptions, perhaps in Central America, perhaps Krakatoa, which caused a minor Ice Age from 536 to 560CE. 

I went to the Museo de Antropologia with Matt a few days before Christmas, and learned so much about Teotihuacan so that I would have a good knowledge of the place even before we went, but it was not to be.  

Strange little clay figurines from Teotihuacan which
apparently represent the duality of human nature, 
our darkness and our light.

 

Playing a game on Nick's phone caused
much laughter during the wait for the balloon
ride that never happened.

But I am fine with being left behind, because they didn't really want to leave me and they have missed me. I wanted them to have the lovely experience that we had planned. Our first booking, a special treat for all four of us being together in Mexico, was cancelled, after waiting hours and hours at the site, because the fog would not lift. I was still hale and hearty that time. 

 

Elephant ear lungs, from a painting
of mine

Having lived with chronic asthma since I was four years old, I have learned to deal with missing out on things due to illness. It is a horrible affliction to have, make no mistake, but it has also taught me so much. As a small child I often consciously appreciated when I was breathing normally, which is a strange thing to think about as a kid who usually just runs around from here to there, doing and making and playing and learning. I would sometimes just stop and think, "Wow, I can breathe! The breathing out is the same as the breathing in, amazing!" 

 Often I would spend hours wheezing "like the squeaky swing that needed oiling" according to my best friend's dad, who frequently had to wake up in the middle of the night, during a sleepover at their house, to take me home because I was wheezing so badly! (The word asthma comes from the greek word aazein, meaning to breathe noisily.)

 Also, having asthma, which was treated with antiquated drugs at that time, like ephedrine, meant that I lived on just a couple of hours' sleep a night for years as a child, which also meant that I read a whole book every night. So while my lungs were struggling to allow my body to survive and thrive, my soul grew up very rapidly, as I constantly read books way beyond my years. 

My dad and I

 My dad taught me to read when I was three which was the greatest gift he gave me, and I have devoured all the stories of the world for all the years since then. 

And that was long ago, that terrible suffering, as a child. In my memories that adversity and distress seem like a mountain, up close huge and difficult to climb, but seen from far away, fading into the mist.  Because in 1990 someone brilliant invented the inhaled steroid, which changed my life, and that of my daughter Jess, who unluckily inherited the asthma gene in our family.  Neither of us have been admitted to hospital for asthma since that date! ("Touch wood," as we say in South Africa, although it's quite rude to say that in America, where they say, "Knock on wood!")

View from our azotea, showing examples
of other rooftops.

 So part of the morning was spent sitting on our azotea or rooftop, my eyrie, reading and at times surveying my queendom (the view of Mexico City). 

 

It is a phenomenon of Mexico City, that many people living in apartment blocks have access to the rooftop, and often a private piece of it. Edifices are built up to five storeys high, and then the rooftops are flat and walled in, divided into separate havens where people can have gardens of potted plants, where they can hang their washing, where they can sit and take in their Vitamin D fix for the day. 

 

Sparklers to ring in the New Year

Lighting sparklers to ring in 2023, on our rooftop.

My old kitchen table with plants.

If I lived in Mexico City, my azotea would be exquisite. There would be plants everywhere, green and inviting, shady and colorful, full of flowers and light, and there would be a bird feeder, and a hummingbird feeder, for all the beautiful birds of Mexico, and a big wooden table with comfy chairs, to sit and read and write and watch from under a large orange umbrella, just like my beautiful deck in our old house which is no longer my home. In Afrikaans, one of the languages of South Africa, there is a word for longing, "verlang" which perfectly encompasses all those feelings of longing, of nostalgia, of wishing to be back somewhere, even just for a moment. 

Most of our family on our deck in 2019, the last
time we were all together there.

 

Rufous Sabrewing Hummingbird

But outside our apartment, there is a tall Mexican Ash, (more than 5 storeys high) which looked quite ill when we arrived, but was, I think, just recovering from having lost leaves due to the season, and in the time we have been here, it has gone from that ghost of a tree to a green and fragrant-flowered haven for numerous creatures, butterflies, yellow-bellied woodpeckers, inca doves, the ubiquitous sparrows, and even a few beautiful hummingbirds.  So during my own recuperation and "re-growing of my leaves" I glimpsed one of these magical creatures in my beautiful Ash one day with a feeling of utter joy.  My mother taught me to delight in these sorts of things, beauty, small things, the way to equilibrium.