Day 1: Coffee and Chipi-Chipi: Jan 12, 2020

It’s a good morning to be in Chichi.  Se parece muy tranquilo en el pueblo for a Sunday Market Day morning, perhaps because the town in still in decompression mode following the pyrotechnically orgiastic feria titular – the annual town fair – between about the 14th the 22^nd of December, and the tamales-saturated Christmas season, and the following brief recrudescence of fireworks and intense cordite smoke and noise of New Year’s Eve.  But in addition to that, it’s cool and foggy, and the air is infused with that clinging mist that is famously known throughout the country for its K’eqchi’ Maya name, “chipi-chipi,” but which in the K’iche’ Maya language spoken here in Chichicastenango is actually named “musmul” – although more local folks call it neblina – the Spanish word for fog – than either chipi-chipi or musmul.  In any event, it’s the kind of weather some might call kind of gloomy … but which I perceive as a positive influence in promotion of a laid-back morning and day here in Nettle Town (Chichicastenango is a Nahuatl-derived word that means “place [tenango] of the nettles [chichicasta].”

And I feel good.  Great, in fact.  I don’t know that I needed recuperating from a very hard day of travel yesterday – a day which would have been easy and completely enjoyable if Don Pedro’s microbus hadn’t overheated and conked out on the west end of the Chimaltenango Periferico on the way to Chichi, meaning that Pedro, Marco, and I had to be rescued by a pickup to carry me and the luggage, and a platform tow truck to carry Pedro and Marco and Pedro’s Mercedes microbus to get to Chichi, almost two hours distant from where we broke down.  In the end, though, what could have been a long, hard day turned out to be more of an adventure and a blessing for me than a challenge, because I rode in the pickup with my new friend, Victor, who is a teacher in the relatively distant canton, or village, of Chumanzana and a member of the COCODE in Chujupen, just down the hill from the pueblo of Chichicastenango.

That was a very fortunate coincidence, since one of the big reasons I’m here is to research the role and functions and resources of COCODES – an acronym for Comite Comunitaria de Desarollo; or in English, Community Development Committee.   I learned a lot from Victor, and got myself invited to a meeting of the COCODE in Chujupen – an easily tuktuk-able distance from our apartment – tomorrow (Monday) afternoon.  So yesterday turned out pretty good for me, although not, I think, for Don Pedro, who was understandably very stressed out and is clearly out a bundle of money for the tow-job and what will likely be an expensive repair.

Life goes on, and I’m sitting in the big dining room in the little-used (except when I and/or one of my groups are here) dining room in the “community area” of Don Pedro’s house adjacent to our apartment. I’m enjoying what seems like a decadently self-indulgent very large cup of espresso, thinking to myself that bringing the 6-cup espresso maker down to Guatemala to leave here in the apartment was one of the best ideas I’ve had in a long time.  And the coffee itself!  Really a 10.  Best coffee in Guatemala, I think.  Mary and I discovered the supplier – the little bohemian “Café del Centro” in Guatemala City.  Lovely little hole in the wall very artsy place near the Central Market, with an impressive library of literary and social science books and an outstanding collection of historic and wonderful Guatemalan art exhibit posters.  Mary and I enjoyed the cup of coffee we had there, but it wasn’t really until we got back to New York and started drinking the pound of beans we brought home that I realized how good it was.  Pronounced nutty flavor, no bitterness even served black and unsweetened, high caffeine.  Hats off to whomever roasts the coffee for the ultra-hip couple who own and operate the little coffee house.   At $6.50 per pound, I’ll be bringing home a suitcase when I come back the end of January.     

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A meeting with la jefa of Acebar coming up shortly …. Coffee has been ingested and I’m supercharged.  Time for a bite to eat, have my conversation with Manuela, and wander out into the market to see who’s there and get my barber of 22 years, Louis, to cut my hair. It’s good to be back in Chichi ….