Agros Blog

(Continuing with the next trip report… we’re now in Guatemala, having arrived yesterday from Managua, Nicaragua. Arriving in Guatemala City we managed to avoid most of the protests and traffic jams vis-a-vis the Prez Bush visit, and had a surreal and glorious night drive to Panajachel, a lovely city on the shores of Lake Atitlan. We’re taking a day off here in Panajachel before heading up to the Ixil tomorrow morn. The following was written two nights ago in Managua. Photos, by Ira Lippke, are inserted in no particular order).

Sitting in Hotel Ritzo tonight, sunset directly in my eyes, dripping shower water, Ana Lucia is napping and Ira and I are chillin’ w/ our Macbooks and café negro’s… we’re just back from El Edén for the last night in Nicaragua before flying out to Guatemala tomorrow.

It’s hard to explain how draining this kind of work can be – to constantly be ‘on’ emotionally, thematically, technically, most every minute of the day, striving to capture the literal light and symphony of these painfully beautiful people. Nights - we sleep in a kind of stupor… but Days – each one has been a gift. We’ve choked on garbage; smelled the stupor of disease; hugged single mothers; ridden white horses; chased cows; nearly been stampeded by herds of goats trying to get back at us because one of their number had been slaughtered to feed us; swam in El Edén’s waterfall; slept in hammocks beneath the stars that shine on the village of Futuro del Mañana (”Future of Tomorrow”); eaten meals prepared with more humility and generosity than I can name; repeated “no mira a camera” at least 25,000 times; laughed with the Agros staff until we couldn’t breathe; taken close to 3,000 photos and 8 hours of video… and we’re just now half way through the trip.

I showed the people of El Edén the photos that Trevor took last month – of their children, homes, faces and fields. 30+ men, women, children, Agros staff, etc… all gathered in the village community center. Being the macho hombre that I am, I rather manfully kept my tears as discreet as possible as I listened to their laughter and sighs as I scrolled through each photo – you could cut the joy and emotion in the room with a machete.

I remain struck by how many layers there are that make up life in an Agros village… language and cultural barriers notwithstanding, there are simply more project technicalities, relationships, histories and stories than can be given the time they deserve. Staying in the villages is an enormous help and privilege, it allows us to enter into their rhythms and pace; their time and spaces - but we are still scratching at surfaces.

In the trip to Nicaragua last month I was struck by the range of technical detail that goes into an Agros village development project. On this trip I am discovering something that is so basic and essential that it may be easy to miss: these families are fundamentally connected to the earth and her elements and rhythms in ways that we are not.

While it is a difficult life (I can’t say I’d want to live it day in and day out – it’s crucial to not over-romanticize village life) it is nevertheless a beautiful life. Being with families who live at the bounty and mercy of the elements, I can only begin to see how the people of El Eden and Futuro experience life in more direct and primary way than I do. And it’s far more than just comparing our alarm clocks to their darkish blue dawns filled with the anthems of gallos.

So there are of course many layers of difference at play – but difference and contrast is really never quite as interesting as equivalence and resemblance. As all of you know, there are just so many places where you can break through and experience a bond with someone that surprises and leaves you both mutually grateful.

Yesterday we interviewed Arcadio, the village president of El Eden. He told us that after the families first began living together and working the land they soon realized that many of them were on opposite sides during the war (Sandinistas v Contras). Arcadio went on to say that now… now they are fighting a different enemy – poverty – and they are fighting together this time. He said “we have now become brothers because of the land”.

In my translated conversations with Arcadio, our walks across creeks, clambering into wells, hiking up hills of coffee trees, as he continued to describe the village I thought back to all of the different people laboring within Agros across so many countries and ways of life and vocational roles… it must simply be said that we too are brothers and sisters because of the land. And the land is an icon of not merely what we tangibly feel beneath our feet and between our hands. There is the land that we can see, and the ‘Land’ that we cannot see and yet hope for and struggle towards together.

I asked Arcadio to describe in one word what Agros means to him. He didn’t even pause to think – he looked straight at us and said: “To me, Agros is a mirror. Agros has helped us to see our face, and because of that we are now able to stand and see each other - face to face.

And so with an enormous sense of privilege and gratitude, tomorrow morning Ira and Ana Lucia and I will be heading to the villages of La Esperanza and El Paraiso in the Ixil. Just a few more shots…