Guatemala Post 1

Hey there, it's been a while. I know. I was busy. You know how it is: packing house up, straightening out tax matters from 10 years ago, reactivating an insurance claim from 11 years ago, getting closure for broken relationships, packing bags, making a list, checking it twice, trying to get everything done and not really succeeding.

Woh. Woh. I hear you. Slow down. Yep. I hear you. Where am I going? What am I doing? Why am I chasing my tail faster and faster? Ok. I'll explain. In 2009 I applied for an artistic residency with a bunch called ArtCorps. They are a Non-Government Organisation that places artists with community organisations based in Central America. It took 6 months of a rigorous recruitment process which I thought didn't cover enough and asked all the wrong questions. But enough of that. I answered everything. I ticked all the boxes. I got the supporting letters. They liked. They really really really liked.

So they placed me with an environmental protection organisation working with the indigenous peoples of Guatemala in the Peten jungle, in 2010. Then the organisation got its funding pulled and my residency with them was axed. Yep. Another victim of the GFC. I shrugged, took in on the chin and went about my business.

Then, ArtCorps contacted me again to see if I was free to go to Guatemala in 2011. After protracted negotiations we agreed on a date for my arrival which just barely fit in one quarter of the year with another organisation called Cultural Survival. Better fit, stable funding. It was all good, except that my other half was not so sure about me going for a year, so we negotiated it to six months. Then as the time approached, he bailed for many reasons, one of them quite probably that he couldn't imagine living in Guatemala. I could.

After all, I had grown up next door. No big deal. So it was the second most dangerous country in the world after El Salvador. Whoop De Do. I was from El Salvador. As I said, no big deal. Once you know how to handle yourself in that environment, it all comes back pretty quick.

So here I was, embarking on a pilgrimage to a place that had mythical qualities in my imagination. Back in the annals of time, when I was just a wee girl of 17, I had been on a road trip through Guatemala with my classmates, where we saw Mayan ruins, jungle, rivers with crocs in them, and your run-of-the-mill guerrillas hijacking tourist buses on the way to Tikal, the largest Mayan city left in the world.

I had promised myself I would return to the land of eternal spring, as Guatemala is called. I had fallen head over heels in love with a country right next door to mine. I just never knew it would take 24 years before I saw it again.