{"id":916,"date":"2011-11-09T22:34:41","date_gmt":"2011-11-10T04:34:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/?p=916"},"modified":"2011-11-13T13:23:18","modified_gmt":"2011-11-13T19:23:18","slug":"to-molestar-or-not-to-molestar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/to-molestar-or-not-to-molestar\/","title":{"rendered":"To molestar or not to molestar"},"content":{"rendered":"

So Gianluca walks into my room the other day and asks “Tree-cee-ah, is it okay if I molest you?”\u00a0 And I was thinking, “Sure, why the hell not?” but instead laughed and said “You do know what that means in English, right?”\u00a0 Molestar<\/em> is the verb for “bother” in Spanish, no me molesta!,<\/em> and is misused a lot by Spanish speakers, and apparently Italians.\u00a0 “I am sorry to molest you”.\u00a0 This particular mistake always makes me feel a little better about my spanglification of words, usually by adding an “o<\/em>” or “aci\u00f3n<\/em>” to English words and then asking “eso es una palabra<\/em>?”\u00a0 7 times out of 10 they are.\u00a0 I’m helping Gianluca edit an English translation of an Italian novel his cousin wrote, so I let him molest me for a few minutes.<\/p>\n

Wanted to post a few pics of the alfombras<\/em> for the parade of La Virgen del Rosario a few weekends ago.\u00a0 These street carpets are made from colored sawdust and stencils, and usually depict religious scenes or messages.\u00a0 Sandra, I think you might like working with this bumpy material as well.\u00a0 I was up early so went out for coffee and loads of teenagers were prepping the streets around El Parque Central<\/em> to create these colorful, creative, albeit, temporary works of art.\u00a0 They sift the colored sawdust over stencils of words and images and then during the course of the creation, someone, usually a kid, sometimes dressed up as a mini-ghostbuster, sprays water to keep the surface wet and colorful.<\/p>\n

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What I really wanted to write about was the Mayan ceremony I was so graciously invited to participate in last Sunday.\u00a0 Angel, a Mayan spiritualist and leaderder of Luces Escondidas<\/em>, a theater group of Kakchikel and Tz’utijil youth from pueblos around Lago Atitlan (the same group that created El Rap del Condon<\/em><\/a>), led us to a ceremonial spot on the slopes of Volc\u00e1n Santa Maria<\/em> to officiate a sort of induction ceremony for METOCA<\/a>‘s upcoming Encuentro<\/em><\/a> in January.<\/p>\n

We started out at about 6am, to El Mirador<\/em> to enjoy breakfast and gaze at Volc\u00e1n Santaguito<\/em> or Volc\u00e1n Santa Maria<\/em>…one of them, not sure.\u00a0 It was me, Angel, Stef, Lore and Leire, Lore’s roommate who hails from Bilbao, but lives in Barcelona and now in San Marcos.\u00a0 I really understand her Spanish, which is odd since I have been learning Central American Spanish and the accents are quite different.\u00a0 Lore and Flor are from Argentina, Stef is French, Angel is Guatemalan…so many different accents, no wonder I don’t understand what’s going on half the time!<\/p>\n

The hike up was beautiful, the early morning mist and clouds gave an almost textbook ethereal quality to the whole experience.\u00a0 When we arrived at the lookout point, there was Santaguito,<\/em> I think, or Santa Maria<\/em>, sputtering and whooshing, hopefully getting ready to erupt a healthy “Buenos Dias<\/em>” to all of us.\u00a0 Stef said he saw an eruptions on the way up, but I was too busy looking at the incline of the hills in front of me and taking pictures of the path behind me to notice.\u00a0 We ate bread and cheese and fruit and tea and then much to my delight, Angel broke out some kick-ass paches<\/em>!\u00a0 Arroz<\/em>! With prunes!\u00a0 This was the best pache<\/em> yet!<\/p>\n

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Misty morning over Xela<\/p><\/div>\n

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Volcan Santaguito (or Santa Maria)<\/p><\/div>\n

After breakfast, we went a-strolling up again, to the ceremony spot.\u00a0 It in the middle of some tall grass right off a trail that went up to Santa Maria<\/em>.\u00a0 I think the ceremony was dedicated to the success of the 10-day Encuentro that METOCA is organizing in Xela in January.\u00a0 The ceremony was in three parts, and from what I could understand, the first part was personal and involved Angel speaking to the fire in Kiche (a beautiful Mayan language) he created out of sugar, dried seeds that were dried and rolled up in corn husks, wooden slats placed over the sugar that I think was in the shape of Toj, one of the 20 days on the Mayan calendar (those of you with last year’s calendar can see the symbol for last Sunday) candles that had to be counted out in sets of 13 or 20, briquettes, incense and a bunch of other symbolic objects, like chocolate and wrapped up candy, fruit and an unwrapped pache<\/em> above the fire, at the center.<\/p>\n

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Scented resin briquettes and wood for the fire<\/p><\/div>\n

The second part was the platica<\/em>, or chat, where we (and by we, I mean they) talked about the subject of the dedication and got a conversation going.\u00a0 Again, this is mostly surmised by the context and bits of Spanish I understood.\u00a0 And the third and final part was thinking about our ancestors and talking about previous subjects and connecting them to the fire and other forces of nature surrounding us.\u00a0 I think. During this part we also shared food and a big cigar-like thing with the fire.\u00a0 Chocolate, hard candy and oranges.\u00a0 I wish I knew what it all meant.\u00a0 I was hoping to get a bit of that pache<\/em> too.<\/p>\n

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Leire puffing away<\/p><\/div>\n

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The beautiful Angel and Leire, eating some bread, post ceremony<\/p><\/div>\n

The ceremony took about 2-3 hours, I’m not really sure,\u00a0 because it was all so fascinating.\u00a0 I loved when Angel spoke Kiche, the sounds of this language along with the smoke and smell of the fire was simply hypnotic.\u00a0 And the sharing parts.\u00a0 Angel would also sprinkle aftershave or mouthwash on the fire and at the end we all took some in our hands and rubbed our clothes with it.\u00a0 These are the times I wish I was fluent in Spanish (or actually Kiche!) because I miss at least 50% of what’s going on and then have to make something up in my head.\u00a0 I am so grateful and truly feel honored that I was invited to participate.\u00a0 Most definitely the highlight of this trip!<\/p>\n

As we left the site, I wondered how this afternoon would impact the following days.\u00a0 For me, it was the experience itself, witnessing a strange and wonderful religious\/cultural event, sharing it with people I like and respect.\u00a0 But I wasn’t sure if one of the purposes was some sort of spiritual invocation and what that meant for the others.<\/p>\n

I also wondered what would happen to that perfectly good pache<\/em> we left behind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So Gianluca walks into my room the other day and asks “Tree-cee-ah, is it okay if I molest you?”\u00a0 And I was thinking, “Sure, why the hell not?” but instead laughed and said “You do know what that means in English, right?”\u00a0 Molestar is the verb for “bother” in Spanish, no me molesta!, and is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-studying-spanish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=916"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":939,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916\/revisions\/939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triciakarsay.com\/guatemala\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}