“God Bless Joplin! Down, but Not Out!” (Joplin, Missouri Tornado photos)

Joplin, Missouri Slideshow

Or download Mp4 here (5mgs)

These are some pictures made yesterday in Joplin, Missouri (pop. 50,000), about 18 hours after a Force-4 tornado killed 132 people there during nearly five minutes of hellish devastation that destroyed the center of the city.  To help the many injured people and homeless families there, please google “Joplin tornado” and pass this slideshow to friends.  There are still over 200 people missing.   Thank you!

Our Trek Home from Guatemala

Hola Friends and Family,

We finally made it by car to Arkansas on Sunday night, driving all night to arrive
in Bentonville early Monday morning to witness the rush hour over to
Wallmart headquarters. It was about 30 degrees in the shade of a
hickory tree with three inches of ice on the ground, though the main
roads were crowded and clear. I replaced a failing battery in the
car so we could stop at the new house, sliding down a lane just outside
town to a tree-filled stream bed.
“There it is!”
We recognized the house from the internet pictures though the
scene was painted white by snow. The twins dashed through it tossing
white balls. The cold penetrated our jackets in seconds.
Inside the house we found many surprises but nothing devastating. It
will take hard work but the house is nearly habitable as is…once we
get the wood burning stove stoked.

What was amazing to me was the astouding level of development in the
area. The region including Bentonville and Fayetteville is well
above California’s Inland Empire in terms of industry and infrastructure. You
don’t hear thick southern accents or see guys with white hoods at
all…hardly a pair of overalls in sight. There’s a Starbucks two
minutes from the house and Brendan’s high school looks like a
university. New cars everywhere. Office buildings and road
widening underway. The Wallmart effect is truly palpable. Public library
awesome. Museums fine. Galleries. Historical architecture. And the
Ozarks are gorgeous.

This is not to say that Jeanie and I are not experiencing a state of
shock after being in the Third World tropics. Being able to drop
paper in the toilet and shower in hot water has meant an adjustment.
And today we woke up to find the car under a foot of fresh snow.
Luckily, our family members, Jesse and Ricky, have a big new house and we are all huddled
inside waiting out the blizzard, hopefully the last of the year to
affect here.

Tomorrow I hope to drag out some of the old carpet and saw up some
wood for the stove. The upstairs is pretty liveable and the kids
will have their own media room. Brendan is busy trying to buy a
flatscreen locally here, though I’m trying to convince him that
getting a used drum set would be a better investment. In Guatemala
he had become a promising drummer.

The weekend is forecasted to be sun-filled so our flight to LAX should
arrive on time. More to
tell you all when we get to California…

Love from us all,

The Engholms

Discovering Mayan Gardening (from “The Maya Garden” blog)

In Solola, Guatemala today we visited with Carlos B. His brother is the alcalde of one of the most important cofradias in town, the Cofradia Santa Cruz.  And his family runs a  beautiful Maya-style farm north of the town center on the shoulder of a ridge that plunges 1,000 feet into a river gorge below.

 

Here a special ceremonial corn is grown, maize rojo.  Carlos thinks his is the only such crop in the department.  He gladly arranges to provide us seeds for this beautiful specie to start a crop in the States.  During the war, the family was ‘divided’ and sent to different areas of the country, forcibly removed from their farm since they were indigenous Kachquichel suspected of being guerrillas.  Now, his extended family works the crops and plants forest trees in four separate wooded areas, each representing an element and a direction on the Mayan “cross” of four directions, or “puntos cardinales.”

What an incredible sight when Carlos ripped away the thick husk.  This red corn is used to make a special ‘atol,’ a thick sweetened corn drink used in the cofradias on fiesta days.  The rest of the farm’s production is sold in the huge outdoor market in central Solola.

Enormous natural rocks have been left in place.  Beds for onions are cleared and raised, with deep irrigation channels from which water can be ‘bailed’ and splashed manually onto the seedlings.  This farm also uses simple moveable sprinklers and water that comes to the surface from a natural underground spring year round.

This abode house in the middle of the farm is 150 years old and features a temescal sauna inside.  The walls and roof are original except for some lamina added to allow light to enter.  The family claims abode is more comfortable than block for homes because it better regulates temperature.  However, due to earthquakes and mudslides, a cement block house is considered much safer.

All of the traditional Mayan farms in the area include a farm altar.  There are three important calendar days each 260-day year when elaborate ceremonies take place to make offerings for a crop to be planted and offer thanks for a harvest.  Carlos’ altar overlooks the attractive gardens and natural forests like a lighthouse.

After an afternoon with Carlos, we felt we could begin to plan our Maya Garden in the States.  No chemicals.  Companion plants matched with others to fight pests naturally.  Creating forest areas to break the wind and hold the soil during storms. Most incredible of all, everyone working the farm was cheerful and full of life, whether teenagers, adults, or elderly.

“They Just Shot the Mayor” -&- “Security Patrol Meeting in Our Yard”

Coming out of the Ixil Triangle on Saturday — after visiting a school where a massacre of Mayan farmers occurred in the eighties and meeting with a cofradia during the Santos Reyes fiesta in Chajul — we learned on Radio Sonora that the mayor of the important regional town of Cotzal had been murdered — shot dead in broad daylight in the center of town.  The army was moving in to block the roads south, in hopes of capturing the culprit.  We were almost completely alone on the road to Quiche, a twisting mountain lane of incredible beauty that we luckily traversed without incident; here, a stop at an army checkpoint when nerves are tense can go either way, said Ricardo.  The government has attempted to negotiate with a ‘new’ guerrilla group active in northern Guatemala, but little is known about its leadership or objectives.  It’s also an election year, I said, and already a bloody one.  Once in Chichi it was time for a cold Gallo.

UPDATE: The next day it was reported by Sonora Radio that the mayor had, in fact, not been killed. Another male citizen had but the mayor was wanted for extortion and had tried to escape Cotzal by car. Thus, the police and army had moved in to block the roads out of Ixil. The reporting error was gross, but “they only had one man up there covering the events.”

In Pana today the fun continued, when I learned that my offer to help local nighttime patrol groups better interface with the foreign community here was being taken at face value, and I was now in the unlikely position of sponsoring a meeting tomorrow night where the armed and masked groups could present their mission statement to a coterie of foreign residents.  We’ll be serving jaimaica iced tea, just like Starbucks.  But ours is homemade.  I’m sure the group will be impressed with our lawn furniture and sole bathroom.   “Let’s see, who should we seat next to Eduardo with the machete?”

UPDATE: The meeting was a hit with nearly everybody. We had about 15 people in our terrarium-size yard, sitting around our kitchen table and couch on the lawn. Jeanie overdid it as usual, with turkey sandwiches, veggie platter, and iced jaimaica tea. The volley of discussion was tough for Chris to manage in two languages but the night patrol leaders felt meetings of this informal sort were more efficient and downright fun than working with the municipal “security commission” where things take forever and support for their efforts doesn’t materialize. Everyone stayed civil though some of the foreigners have reasonable gripes and serious concerns about unidentified masked men stopping cars at night and harassing partiers. Jeanie and I felt that a couple of large signs placed at the entrance to Jucanya, the residential area in question, blaring the message that “This is a drug and gun-free zone and you will be asked for identification,” would turn back locals and tourists alike who are entering the neighborhood to buy some fly or weed from the well-known dealer houses. The dealers would have to relocate, and would do so likely without a fight. Anyhow, this is the plan Chris and Ricardo will pursue with the patrols, helping to find the needed wood and painter to create the signs and getting them tacitly approved by the authorities. It seems like the best first step for a group of desperate residents wanting their neighborhood made safe again in the absence of police assistance. Wouldn’t families in a crime-infested barrio in the States do the same?

Our New “Maya Garden” in Dixie

For family and friends, here are some shots of our new place in the States.  It’s an old farmhouse on three acres with a river running through it.* There are two facing art studios and a huge cement pad for a workshop or place of business in the future.

We’re new to this bucolic stuff but a friend here has lent us a great book about “perma culture” and we’re learning fast about how to create a sustainable organic farm in the Ozarks.

Today we are meeting with a group of Mayan farmers who are going to tell us how to create an authentic “maya garden” using companion gardening and something they call ‘forest farming.’  No monoculture for us!

 

In case you’re wondering how a gaggle of Californians will fare in the ‘Ol South, the airfare to Vegas is only $65.  Whew!

The red thing that looks like a Roman bath mated with a Spanish fountain is called a ‘pila.’  Great for washing clothes, gardening, dying…everyone has one here.  Tough to find in the States though, and we can’t fit one in the van!

Oh, and this is what you can get in Northwest Arkansas for under 50K.  But please don’t tell anyone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(*) The use of the word ‘river’ in this context might be questioned by the sensitive reader. What width must a creek or stream attain in order for it to achieve the status of a river? Well, as we are from Temecula in Riverside County, the term river is highly subjective since there a ‘creek’ might be nothing more than a sump, and a ‘rivulet’ can be created with a garden hose left running in the front yard. Hence, our new home in Arkansas, indeed, has a 30-foot wide “river” running through it. (…it’s also in a flood zone, but we’ll leave that for a future blog entry.)

Lake Atitlan at the Wrong End of the Pipe…Again

On my left is Francisco Lec, an expert on the ecology of Lake Atitlan, who works for the governmental body that oversees ecological efforts to restore it. In the middle is Ricardo Barrios, an educator and culture expert in Panajachel. One of the oddest items learned at our meeting yesterday was that the so-called “waste water treatment plant” severely damaged during Hurricane Stan, which sits half-destroyed in the Pana River, was actually a sham. It was built ten years ago without any intention to treat water of any kind. As of the late 1970s, the hotels and chalets around the lake have been pumping the bulk of their raw sewage into the deep, flat, bottom of the lake. Ricardo once worked at the Hotel del Lago where trucks would take its sewage to fertilize the coffee plantations across the lake in San Lucas Toliman. But around 1978, the hotel decided it would be clever to run a pipe into the lake and dump the sewage there. The other hotels and home owners around the lake (many foreign-owned) quickly followed suit. As we boated back from Santiago today, howling Norte winds nearly capsized our launch. I could only say to my white-knuckled wife, “This lake has a lot to gripe about, and we’re all at risk in its presence.”

Francisco Lec, Ricardo Barrios, Chris Engholm

Happy New Year, and “Is Our House Still There?”

We just saw the CNN footage of Arkansas being ripped up by tornados today. We are moving into a house there in February. Checking the storm path, the destruction hit Benton County where our place is located on three acres. A shaman here in Guatemala told us yesterday, “These are end times, but while the beginning of the end has started, the end will be a new beginning.” Yes, but I dread clean-up and I’m hoping our pad has been spared. Wall-Mart headquarters is located in Bentonville about 5 miles from the place, so we’re probably fine since Nature wouldn’t screw with Wall-Mart, right?

Happy New Year to you all.

Santa’s Arrival In Guatemala (from “The Maya Garden” blog)

The fireworks are crackling in the night sky here in Panajachel. It’s nochebuena and we’ll be up late on this Christmas Eve waiting for the posadas to wind down and the smoke to clear. A fat moon looms on the shoulder of the crater we live in. The kids are lighting the candles of the “tree” our son Brendan assembled last week at school. We just watched “Eat Pray Love” on the Mac and realized we have felt the “physics of quest” firsthand…if you open yourself to the world, either internally or externally, and experience every new encounter as a clue, and every new person you meet as a teacher, the truth will be revealed to you. The kids cook marshmallows over the candles, Brendan refuses to milk the cow at the new place in the States, and the copal incense makes telling plumes in the open door from an insensario placed at the edge of our doorstep covered with pine needles. Santa Claus is coming here later than California but will arrive before dawn, says Gavin. The twins have old socks hanging on the dining room table, expecting the best. They saw hungry boys and girls along the PanAmerican Highway yesterday waving at the cars passing, hoping for quetzal as a gift. Hundreds of them with their mothers huddled in the shade, and some with their gaunt fathers waving too. Our kids got the message, making tonight as big a Christmas as ever, with two candles and a piece of pine for a tree, waiting for Santa, hearing the sky crackle and carols drift from the zocalo to the blue volcanos across the lake. Wishing all of you the best, much love, and good cheer as we wait for Santa to visit you and make it here before first light.

The Coffee Harvest Is In (from “The Maya Garden” blog)

Ever since hearing Izak Dinesen’s character in Out of Africa utter the words, “I had a farm in Africa,” I’ve been intrigued with growing my own. It just so happens that outside our house is a bushy coffee plant stretching to the sun in the calleita that runs to the main road. For the past three months we have walked passed it watching the cherry-size beans turn from green to yellow to bright red.

But how do you harvest and process coffee beans?

We strolled up to Crossroads to ask Mike and find out. Mike knows everything about coffee and has even tacitly agreed to take me along on a coffee buying mission to the North, where there is intrigue and danger at every turn since the Zetas moved in and many growers have replaced there bean plants with poppy plants. “You have to be ready to die to go up there now.” Yea that’s great Mike, but how do I process my beans…? “I have no idea how to help you but it’s a lot of work,” he admonished. ” I buy ‘em when they’re ready to roast. As you get to middle age, you learn to say no.” Mike is like that — always a little barb to let you know whose coffee klatch you’re in.

Chagrined, I clicked on eHow.com and got the information needed.

The coffee plant is a clean and elegant plant with plastic-like leaves of an extraordinary green hue. In Antigua you see crops of them growing under a taller tree, the name of which I’ve forgotten, to shield the plants from the equatorial sun. Our beans had reached their apex, a glowing cherry red. With the twins I went out with an old yogurt container to pick them. You twist them off the wiry branches and leave the unripe greener specimens for harvesting later.

With the beans collected, about 2 pounds from one plant, we started the process of digging our thumbnails into the sheaths, splitting them and popping out the peanut-size bean. Each slimy bean splits in two, just like a peanut. It was hard work getting the red sheath off, until Jeanie discovered that you can mash the bean with a wooden spoon and the bean will easily squirt out automatically. With your catch now looking more like one pound, you put the shucked beans in a container of water, rinse them until the water clears, and then let them sit submerged for 24 hours. Fermentation begins and a tan sludge starts to form on the surface. At this point, we dumped out the water and spread the beans on pizza cartons in the yard. Hopefully, a good sun today will dry them and we’ll roast them on a flat tray in the oven at 400 degrees until dark brown. (This is assuming our oven ignites and can reach 400. We haven’t used it since it filled with gas and when Jeanie put a match near it, blew an exploding flame threw the cabinetry and into the kitchen.)

The darker you roast ‘em the bolder the cafe. We figure 15 plants harvested per year will cover my intake of two cups a day, with plenty left over for guests.

“The Maya Garden” Is Moving…To Arkansas !!

Thanks to the internet, we have been tracking a fantastic property in Northwest Arkansas since we arrived in Guatemala.

The Fannie Mae-owned country spread includes a 3,200 square foot farmhouse on 3.2 flat acres in the trees, with a stream running through it. Oddly, the schools in the area are excellent because of the “Wallmart effect;” it’s corporate headquarters are 5 minutes away. The ranch will allow us to plant “The Maya Garden” in domestic soil, hopefully creating a greenhouse full of the same vegetables and medicinal plants we have been researching here. We also have family there and Chris plans to be involved with the University of Arkansas about 20 minutes away. The house also has a couple of out-buildings for use as art and photo studios. Most important, there are trees from which to hang a swing.

To celebrate the offer being accepted today, the kids lit up a brick of cohetes (firecrackers) in the backyard, disrupting the soccer game underway in the park next door. Tomorrow we head back across the lake to San Juan and San Pedro where a well-known Mayan diviner will be doing calendario readings for the kids. Jeanie and I had our “day glyph crosses” constructed last month and the accuracy of the reading by Don Clemente was amazing in its accuracy. Our friend, Hilda, founder of Tulan Kan, an art and culture organization in San Pedro, set up the meetings.

Today we spent a wonderful day in Santiago de Atitlan interviewing Dolores, a Tzutuhil maya culture expert, guide, and weaver. Her first husband was the well-known American shaman and author, Martin Prechtel, who lived in Santiago until the early eighties. We learned about cofradia traditions and their syncretic altars, curandismo healing practices, witchcraft, dreams, huipiles and Dolores’s incredible life story.

Oh, I should also mention that our five days in Chiapas Mexico turned out okay. We left here for Mexico last Friday to renew our visas and relicense the van. You might recall that we got hosed for 200 dollars by fake customs officers last time we crossed the border with the car. Well, this time we had better intel (from a local fixer here named T.), and spoke a few more words of Spanish (like ‘Back off asshole..”) and made it over the border only 40Q the poorer (about $5). Holed up in San Cristobal de las Casas for the required 3 days outside Guatemala, we viewed some great photography, ventured out to numerous Tzotzil Mayan towns, and on the way back stayed in a cabana in the Montebello lake region — a journey into a tropical postcard. Lastly, we investigated the Mayan ruins site of Chinkultic where the kids climbed the Acropolis and learned how “beautiful women by the thousands were sacrificed on the pyramid and tossed into the spectacular cenote 400 feet below.”

Our plans to replant The Maya Garden in the United States will mean that our journey here will likely end after the Rabinal Achi festival on January 20. We plan to head back through the Peten, Belize, and the Yucatan to arrive in California at the beginning of February. Hope to see you all again at that time.

Happy holidays to you all,

The Engholms