Wow, so much to tell

I am sure, after this year is over I will wake up in Europe somewhere from a long long dream that would really be too complicated to explain to anyone. When asked what happened and where I had been I will talk lots of gibberish about children, diarreah and beautiful places. Photos will fill in the rest of the picture with colorful lies. But nobody will ever know the real story about the daily struggles with the children, which are threatening to break you.

The memory of the massive frustrations with the slow pace of things, the lack of true understanding across the cultural divide and the blatant refusals to help or cooperate will all be too hard to convey. The passionate debates, the gossip, the ravings going on every day, every minute among the volunteers trying to grasp the latest policy changes affecting the kids at the orphanage...all that would seem strangely irrelevant outside of N.P.H. The orphanage is such a small world, a village really, all focused onto itself. My experience with my selective memory tells me that I will forget all about the harshness, the frustration and all will seem to have been glorious and gold.

So let me tell you, dearest friends, the time here is not all beans and fiesta. In fact it´s pretty much split up between struggling and escaping from the struggles. The most popular struggle-activities offered at NPH include: Struggling to be understood and taken seriously in Spanish, struggling to get the kids motivated to learn something even though they always tell you they don´t want to, struggling to keep your digestive track from blowing up, struggling to understand the goings-on of a very confusing organisation and of course the struggle to stay sane and healthy despite it all.

But hey, that´s what we came for so this isn´t me complaining, just setting things right and being honest. Currently I am reading Madeleine Albright´s Memoirs and I get annoyed with her lack of opennes about her doubts and fears that must have marked her way to becoming Madam Secretary. I guess the public sphere is no place for such intimacies, but hell, how are we ever going to learn from the experiences of famous people if all we know is that they came, saw and won in some way or another. I do not believe a bit of it because nobody really knows where their lives are heading and thus insecurity and doubt are necessarily features of the human experience. Saying how to deal with those would be a truly valuable transfer of experience.

Enough ravings though so here is the sugar:





Semana Santa in Guatemala is a unique feast for the senses. It´s a celebration of Jesus´way to the cross and his sacrifice for humankind. Who would have thought that suffering and atonement for one´s sins could make for such a beautiful public spectacle. A general feature of Semana Santa from Spain to Chile are the processions with heavy floats being carried around. A special Guatemalan thing however are the huge alfombras, carpets, made of colored sawdust and all kinds of offerings like fruits, vegetables, toys. The processions then trample over the alfombras. I cannot help but thinking that this is very reminiscent of the sacrifical offerings to pre-Christian Gods. The sacrifice isn´t burned anymore but destroyed in the holy act of the procession, sent upstairs as a prayer along with Jesus´ascension.






Antigua has the biggest Semana Santa celebrations in all of Guatemala. It´s a fantastic and all-enveloping spectacle but for fear of ¨loosing¨kids among the masses the orphanage just celebrated its own Semana Santa. So each class got to make their own alfombra and then stomp it with gusto. Jolly good fun.





When looking for pre-Christian elements in Guatemalan Catholicism it is good to see the original sites of Maya sacrifices for yourself. So off we went with Bertine´s parents to see the ruins of Tikal, one of the if not the biggest city of the pre-colombian Maya world.

Bertine and her parents enjoying some cool coconut at 40 degrees of jungle heat in Flores, Peten, close to Tikal.

A little indigena lending her charm to our hotel at the Lago de Atitlan where we spend the first days of our vacation.

Some boys in a traditional (and pretty crapy) kayak on Lago Atitlan.

Just some clowny guy trying to impress this little Maya lady who made the mistake of paying attention to him.

A ceremonial and sacrificial pyramid in Tikal with the sacrifice-altars and stelae in front of it. This was part of a double-pyramid construction built by the Maya to have the Gods let the world continue going round.
This was part of the central palaces at Tikal, once a city of ca. 100,000.

This is Flores, the capital of Peten, which is Guatemala's state with the most Maya ruins. Built on a Maya cemetery or administrative city it's very pretty itself.

These are Bertine and her father trying to do something about the enormous heat in Tikal National Park.
The pyramid of the Great Jaguar, on the main plaza of Tikal. Below are more pyramids and a view of the pyramids peaking out above the jungle canopy at sunset.


A carved sacrifical altar stone - don't worry the carved ones were not used to take out the hearts of people. That was done one the more butcher style blank stones...
Another view of the pyramids above the jungle's ceiling. All around Tikal is Tikal National Park. It's big, it's beautiful, it's green.