Learning the Language

 Below, you will find Antigua, very near Guatemala City 

in the south central state of Sacatepequez (say that five times real fast).

What do you call someone who knows two languages?

Bilingual. 

Three languages? 

Trilingual. 

One language? 

A gringo. Or gringa, as the case may be. 

My first impulse was to answer,  "An American," but being in Central America introduced a paradigm shift. Guatemalans have been Americans forever, we are the new kids on the block.

In and around Antigua the people I met spoke Spanish (and maybe English, German, etc, depending on their country of origin). 

The estimated 35,000 indigenous people of the Guatemalan highlands mostly converse in any one of 22 other Mayan languages. Sue and I spent four days in the small village of El Hato, 7 KM above Antigua, where the Spanish-speaking Mayan children attending a summer school daycamp were learning Kaqchikel, a local heritage language.  

So my second week (after Van left and before Sue Gnagy joined me) I took two-hour daily language lessons at a school in Antigua named after and near a landmark old church, San Jose el Viejo. '

Almost everything in Antigua is viejo (old) because it is the earliest European city on the continent. And Antigua is a great place to learn Spanish because Guatemalans reportedly speak more slowly than Mexicans, so there are many schools to pick from. 

Isobel and I met in a carrel in the courtyard and talked, (mostly) in Spanish,

 every afternoon.

We talked a blue streak as she helped me with the presentation (in Spanish) I was working on for a Lions Club (more about that later) and told me about her life and her hopes for her country, asking me many questions as well.

We covered culure, politics, education, our families, economics, favorite pastimes, history ... I can't begin to tell you how much I learned in addition to excercising my rusty high school language skills. 

Isobel is evidently Mayan, more educated than average, younger than me, with a hard working husband and two young adult children (one prepared to teach but with no job, the other hoping to pursue post secondary education and looking for a job as a cook), living in part of her grandparents' home on the far side of Antigua with other extended family. She was worried about her grandfather, in his 80s, whose taxi was now beyond repair, because there is no such thing as retirement in her country.

Some of her questions: were my glasses acquired new or used (we talked about vision due to Lions presentation) and were they bifocals? She was surprised during a conversation about Reach Out and Read (again from the slide presentation) to learn that there are U.S. Americans who don't know how to read. 

But mostly she was discouraged about the corruption in her country that prevents tax money (and foreign aid) from reaching the schools and people. She estimated 80 percent goes into the pockets of the President and government officials. 

This sentiment and statistic was echoed by a later encounter with a wealthy Ladino (a person of Spanish descent, not Mayan).  Everything I had read about the class divide between the two groups came into sharper focus on my journey, but they both said the corruption at the highest (and lowest) levels of government was criminal.  

And during our lesson I managed to drop my i-pad on the tile floor, crazing the screen into a maze of splinters. It still worked, and my slide show presentation about Vinton and our Lions Club was intact.

I was humbled by knowing I could afford to get it fixed, when a simple paper BINGO game at the Bodegona was beyond the reach of even educated working people's budgets, and an education and a paying job are beyond the reach of so many. 

We in the U.S. are muy (mimados?) privilegiado/privileged/spoiled, but I guess that goes without saying. 

Tomorrow: Sue and Julie's big adventures in Antigua, El Hato and Chimaltenango.