My week at the mountain school

I've arrived in Utila now after 2 long days of bus travel with a day at the Copan ruins in the middle. I had a very interesting (and good) experience at the border entering Honduras which I'll talk about later, but I should talk about the mountain school first while it's fresh in my mind.

La escuela de la Montana (sorry no spanish keyboards here, I'm in gringoland now) is about an hour west of Xela, in the heart of coffee plantation country and as a result one of the poorest areas of Guatemala. The school is located next to the community of Fatima, created by the 18 families living there who fired and evicted from the coffee finca (plantation) where they lived and worked after they formed a union. I have a written story of their lucha (struggle) which I'll translate for the blog later - it's an interesting case study in coffee labour struggles, especially for me after having eaten with one of the families for a week and meeting others who were a part of it.

Probably the only drawback of the school is that I lived dorm-style with the other students, and didn't get to speak as much Spanish or get to know locals as well as when living with a family. I had classes every afternoon under an idyllic little thatched canopy, covering one desk for myself and my teacher Rony. Since there was no tutoring, no internet, and not much in the way of other distractions I studied hard, another 4-6 hours a day in addition to the 4 hours of classes.

One other student and I ate with Georgina and Ariel, both in their mid-20's, their 2 children Dora and Wuilver, about 2 and 6 years old, and their grandmother Rosalia. They have a very small rectangular brick house with 2 rooms for Georgina, Ariel and Dora, with Rosalia living across the street. It was another change in diet - soup for all but about 4 meals during the week. For my first time I had fresh corn tortillas with *every* meal which was a real treat, except that they usually tasted slightly of mold. I really enjoyed that at this house, like at my last one in Xela, we all ate the same food - other vegans reading this will be able to relate.

Argh, internet cafe closing, will finish this post tomorrow.

Signing off, levi