The cemetery in San Lucas, after the day of the dead

The month of November started out at a different tempo. November first is the day of the dead here in Guatemala as well as many other Latin American countries. This is a day to celebrate the lives of family members and friends that have passed away. It is a long weekend, that involves many festivities, on October 31st I spend the day helping the mother of the house make chuchitos.

One of the large kites up close

We probably made 150 chuchitos, which is the typical food for the cemetery celebrations. A chuchito starts with the dough that is used to make corn tortillas, it is essentially dried corn that is turned into a corn flour, mixed with water, oil and salt.

Cemetery, San Lucas Toliman

You grab a ball of dough and form a tortilla with the palms of your hands put a piece of meat and some tomato sauce in the middle of the tortilla and close it up. Then you wrap the ball of dough with meat in the middle in corn husks until it is sealed, then you cook it until they are cooked through. Everyone brings them to the cemetery where everyone shares with everyone else. People also decorate cemetery with flowers, wreaths and ribbons and re-paint tombs.

















Many of the families around the area where I live grew up working on plantations. Helping their parents from the age of 4 until they turned 8 or 10 and started working like an adult. Because they didn't have their own land and lived, worked and died on the finca many people are buried on plantations in small unmarked cemeteries. The family I live with buried their 4 year old daughter amongst other family members on the finca. The plantation owners prohibit access to the cemetery and therefore denying them their traditional customs and ancestral rights.




On Nov. 1st Amanda and I decided to go to a kite festival near Chimaltanango. It is an international festival of giant kites, all with the theme of mother nature. There are some kites that were about 50 feet tall that were just on exhibition and others that were 12 feet that were flown.









They host the kite festival on the day of the dead because it is believed that spirits descend from the heavens and are floating around the sky, and by flying a kite one is able to connect with them. All the children, and adults are flying their own normal sized kite in nearby fields and also at the cemeteries where they visit.Two of the other interns are place near Chimaltenango so we ended up spending the night there. Since it took us 5 hours to get there, because we didn´t know where we were going. I woke up at 5am, hopped on a bus and got home in less than two hours because I knew where I was going.

Teaching the kids about healthy versus non-healthy foods

Work wise I have been helping out with a feeding program three nights a week. The organization works primarily on the rights of indigenous peasants. They help with access to land, and fight for land rights in Guatemala. As over 90 percent of the land is owned by a few wealthy landowners.

Food security is a huge issue, chronic malnutrition is widespread, and three children died in my community between June and August this year. 

Some of the children eating, beans, rice and tortillas.

The organization I work for had left-over staple foods from the election campaign, that they decided to put to good use. Local women in the community donated their time to prepare meals for underweight children three nights a week over the course of two months. Many children only get one meal a day. Men eat the most and women and children, especially little girls go without food because society does not value the work they do as much as the men that go to work in the fields. This is the mentality, despite that women collect firewood, hand wash all the clothing while carrying children on their backs all day. This aspect of machismo or sexism is so acute that even pregnant women do not eat regular meals.

Sunset in Panajachel while looking for a bank machine

It was time to get away for the weekend, sometimes work can be a downer. So Amanda and I, despite having very little money went to Panajachel for the weekend, with the intention of visiting a town on the lake called San Antonio, that is impossible to get to by land, as it is surrounded by mountains.

End of the night photo

We obviously ran out of money, as we both like to eat out and drink wine. Budgets for the weekend were spend within about 2 hours of being there. Once we blew our budgets we said what the hell, you only live once and carried out by going out, drinking too many sangria and ending up at some club.

On our rented boat

Slightly hungover and regretting spending all our money we weren't sure if we should still go to San Antonio because the reason we wanted to go was to buy pottery at a local women's fair-trade cooperative there.



After almost two hours of indecision. We said, what the hell we might as well just go. So we did, then we got screwed over by the boat system and ended up renting a private boat to take us to Santa Catarina, San Antonio and drop us off in San Lucas.

San Antonio

View from Santa Catarina

San Anton

We thought we would have as much time as we wanted in each town, but we were tricked, and only had a half hour in each town. In fear of being stranded in one of these towns if we did not arrive on time, we hurried along. Santa Catarina was beautiful, but no more beautiful than the other towns on the lake.




We spent most of our time in San Antonio shopping for pottery. But it was truly breathtaking, as you walk through the small streets up the mountain, the view of the lake is amazing.





San Antonio is supposedly the first settlement around the lake after the volcano exploded. Because of the steep hills surrounding the village they have built terraces to cultivate food on. Some of the terraces are 500 years old and because of local knowledge and techniques the soil has not yet been exhausted.