TheBanyanTree: Salcaja

[apmartin at canada.com]

                    Salcaja


Marvin, Director of Utatlan Spanish School, was only
twenty-four years old but he took his job seriously and
he did it well.  He was outgoing and pleasant with a
ready smile and an easy laugh.  The day after Andrew
and I arrived in Xela, he smoothed our ruffled feathers
(his assistant had forgotten we were coming and had not
arranged a home-stay for us) and spent two days driving
us to various organizations around the city to help us
find a suitable place to volunteer.  

Every Monday, he made up a schedule of extracurricular
activities and posted it on the wall.  Six days a week
there were free events that ranged from movies about
the culture and politics of Central America, dance
lessons, cooking lessons to visiting remote Mayan
villages and climbing volcanoes. When we went on field
trips, he served as our guide.  Every Friday afternoon
he purchased groceries from the market, and using the
school’s tiny kitchen, cooked the students a gourmet
dinner.  His entire life seemed centered around his
work.  

Recently Marvin took four of us on a field trip to
Salcaja, a town seven kilometers from Xela.  Because
there were so few participants, Marvin drove us there
rather than using the chicken bus.  His car was a
small, older model Toyota but he treated it as if it
were a Porsche and always took great care to attach an
anti-theft device to the steering wheel whenever he
parked it.

Like most Guatemalan drivers, Marvin liked to speed. 
On the way to Salcaja, we found ourselves behind an oil
truck blasting foul-smelling diesel exhaust.  Marvin
tailed it and pulled out to pass it numerous times, but
always had to fall back into the same position because
of oncoming traffic or curves in the road.  I was
seated in the front and found myself gritting my teeth
and mentally formulating sentences in Spanish to tell
him in a diplomatic way that his driving scared me.

When we reached our destination fifteen minutes later,
Marvin secured the car and led us down a crowded
street. It was market day and throngs of Mayan women in
ankle-length skirts and brightly colored blouses, many
with babies slung over their shoulders and baskets or
bags balanced on their heads, browsed the menagerie of
stalls lining the road.  We walked single file behind
Marvin as he picked a path between a flood of men,
women and children.  I switched my backpack from my
back to my front because of the pickpockets and ignored
the vendors who beckoned and shouted.  We passed table
after table of pineapples, bananas, mangos, papayas,
avocadoes, green beans and baby potatoes.  Every type
of fruit and vegetable was available for purchase. 
Mountains of shoes sat next to tables of boot-legged
CDs and DVDs, dried fishes and countless stands of the
traditional vivid hand-woven textiles Salcaja is famous
for.

Several blocks later we left the market and crossed a
small bridge.  Here the streets were quieter and the
commercial district changed to residential.  We
approached a flat, grassy field where a cow and calf
were tethered. Near them but out of their reach, two
pegs about three feet high were hammered into the
ground approximately 100 yards apart, and white cotton
thread was tightly wound around and around them.  These
taut strands were the first step toward making the
multi-colored fabric Mayan girls and women used for
skirts. 

Marvin explained that to make the patterns in the
skirts, a series of knots were hand-tied around
individual threads before they were dyed.  When the
knots were removed, the original color remained.  The
threads were then laid out in the preferred pattern on
a loom.  Anywhere from eighteen to twenty-two steps
were involved in completing one piece of fabric,
depending on the complexity of the design and the
number of colors.

Marvin then led us to Iglesia de San Jacinto built in
1524, the first Christian church in Central America. 
Lions and bunches of fruit were carved into its façade.
 There was a circular gazebo in the church yard. 
Inside it, set on a pedestal was a four-foot cross of
folded palm leaves and tropical flowers.  We sat on the
steps while Marvin related some of Guatemala’s history.
 He spoke more rapidly than my Spanish teacher Magda,
yet I understood most of what he said.  

Our next stop was a house a block away.  This house,
although not luxurious, gave the appearance that its
owners had a little more money than most of the
population.   When Marvin knocked on the door, a Mayan
woman answered it and led us inside.  We were joined by
a man who welcomed us and led us up several narrow
flights of stairs to a small room on the third level. 
Two enormous looms filled it.  One was occupied.  A
narrow aisle separated the looms and we were able to
move closer to the friendly, mustachioed man who
continued to work on a lovely piece of fabric in
progress.  He was using wooden paddles to move the
threads into place and two foot pedals to advance the
textile. To me, the loom looked exceedingly complicated
and even when its operation was explained, I couldn’t
comprehend the process.  Marvin told us that
foot-pedaled looms were hard work and usually only men
had the strength to use them. 

Watching the man, who sat on a stool leaning toward his
work, I couldn’t help but think that he must be
uncomfortable because there was nothing to support his
back.  When I asked him in Spanish about it, he told me
that it was his stomach not his back that hurt at the
end of the day.  He worked very quickly and when asked
said he was able to make three lengths of material,
enough for three skirts, in one day.  After he answered
some other questions, we thanked him and descended the
stairs.  

Besides producing textiles, this household also made
and sold ‘Caldo de Frutas’, a fruit-flavored wine
similar to sangria.  It was made by combining slices of
apple, pear, peaches and nances (similar to cherries
but yellow and slightly bitter) and fermenting them for
several years.  The woman had put out some wine on a
small table in the front room for us to sample, as well
as a plate of the fermented fruit.  The wine was good! 
I purchased a small bottle of it for 15 quetzales
(CAD$2.50), and Andrew bought five bags of the
highly-potent fruit which tasted strongly of alcohol
for 3 quetzales (CAD$0.50) per bag. 

Our trip to Salcaja ended with a visit to a nearby,
dimly-lit textile shop filled with bolts of the
handmade material.  One of the other students, a woman
from Australia, who was planning to have a baby, was
eager to buy some.  Following the Mayan women’s
example, she planned to tie her baby onto her back with
it.  The women behind the counter kept bringing out
more and more pieces of material, each one different. 
“Take it outside into the light,” they kept saying. 

I hadn’t planned on buying anything but decided to
purchase two small samples which I intended to use as
table cloths.  There were so many designs and colors it
was difficult to choose.

Then it was back to town.  Both Andrew and I wanted to
use the internet so went to Celas Maya, one of the
larger and more modern internet cafes.  While there,
the usual afternoon storm started.  Thunder cracked and
rain pelted the roof.  The lights went out.  Some
twenty-five computers shut down and everyone sat frozen
waiting for the power to return.  It didn’t.  It was
very black because the lights were out in a large part
of the city.  Finally, like the other patrons, Andrew
and I carefully made their way over to the cashier and
paid using the light from someone’s cell phone in order
to see our cash.  

People were crowded around the wrought-iron front door.
 Only then did it occur to me that we were locked in
because the door was electric.  Had there been a fire,
we would have been ‘toast’, literally.  Things we take
for granted in Canada like emergency lighting and
safety procedures don’t apply in Guatemala.  Some ten
or fifteen minutes later, the electricity returned and
we were happy to leave.  

On the walk home, many areas were still in darkness. 
We heard the scream of sirens numerous times.  When we
arrived at our residence, we were happy to discover
there was electricity and we could start our Spanish
homework.

Every day in Guatemala is full of new experiences and
sights; every day we are so busy we barely have time to
catch our breath. I love it.

.......Pat Martin