This morning was our last in Quetzaltenango. We said goodbye to our sweet host families and loaded the buses. We drove about an hour and a half to Santa Lucia Utatlan, where we were able to experience and participate in a Mayan ceremony. The ceremony was to honor our ancestors and establish a sense of balance with renewed energy for the week ahead working with the OTs. The ceremony was led by a man and a woman who welcomed us into their home. The man helped us honor our ancestors by placing a candle in the fire while saying each of our last names. We each gave thanks for our own natural resources that we appreciated such as lakes, rivers, canyons, or mountains. Then, we each placed a piece of special wood in the fire. Finally, we were able to receive energy from the warm fire by holding our hands out to it.
The ceremony was very interesting for us to experience that part of Mayan culture. One interesting point that we took away from it was the mention of the Mayan calendar and the significance of the year 2012. We had been told that the world was going to end, remember? Actually, we were told that one cycle was simply ending while another began. The cycle that was ending was the one of fear, he said, and the one beginning was the one of life. We were very glad to learn that; not only is it a better way to think of things, but it is actually accurate and taken from a proper source rather than hearing a rumor.
Then, we drove another hour to the Widow's Cooperative in the indigenous community of Chontalá. We ate lunch there and listened to the history of the Methodist Project. Pastor Diego Chicoj Ramos shared his story of how his village was controlled by the army and Civil Defense Patrol. Social gatherings were illegal in the community, so Diego went to receive permission for people to gather and worship. Without a church to worship in (their church had been bombed in the war), people collected pieces of tin to form a shelter that eventually became a new church. People of the community were still struggling and many mothers were widowed. To provide these mothers with a way to provide for their families, they were given thread to weave and sell their work in the market, hence forming the weaving cooperative that still exists today. We greatly enjoyed hearing about the cooperative and had the chance to buy items that the women we met wove themselves.
Now, we are in our hotel in Chichicastenango for the night and we will head to Antigua tomorrow. On Monday we begin our work there with the therapists!
Hasta mañana,
Abby and Gina
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