There is no bigger weekend than this for Santa Ana.  It’s absolute preparation chaos for the starting point of this week-end’s procession.  I’m glad to be here to witness it.  As you can see the village is in full muster.

The procession today starts in Jocotanengo which is a ways out from Antigua.  It also means that the procession won’t reach the main part of Antigua until later in the evening.  Too late for me to be walking home, and I didn’t know whether it was realistic for me to hope to catch a ride.  But these photos are mostly procession related.

These people are walking along a street outside the Church of San Francisco called Calle de los Pasos.  Literally translated it means street of steps.  The Catholic translation is Stations of the Cross.  The first station is on the grounds of San Francisco and most of the stations are all along the Calle de los Pasos. The last two are on the grounds of El Calvario, a church about mile away.  These two photos show the outside and inside of one of the stations.

Here is an area where much of figures and floats used in the processions are stored.  The processions build in size so a lot of these are not used until the last ones.  Here’s favorite of mine; the supper table in the Upper Room with the Apostles arguing amongst themselves.

Remember a photo from a few posts ago of a vendor meeting outside the Church of La Merced?  Here’s what it looks like in the little park in front of the church on a precession Sunday.

And always the carpet work before the processions.

Evening back home up on the roof.  I am well and hope you all are too.

The Church here in Santa Ana has a small school.  On Saturday the kids from the school had their own La Procesion.  Here are a few photos of a big day for them.  Next week is a very important weekend for Santa Ana.  It will be the inicio, the starting point, for the procession to and through Antigua.  I’m thinking it’s going to be hard to get anywhere in Santa Ana, even on foot.

The float they are carrying is a smaller replica of a larger one that features Jesus carrying his cross and his Mother Mary.  The sign on the front says, happy are they who believe without seeing.

I think I alluded to this coming event in a previous post.  On Friday I visited the family of my sponsor kid, Edgar.  It was a birthday lunch for his younger brother Ericson.  I’ve become very attached to both of these boys and their family.  They are very active in their Evangelical Church and they are all just nice, nice people.  I love witnessing the relationship the boys have with their mother.  I have met, but rarely see, their dad because it is necessary for him to always be at work.

We had papillon for lunch.  Papillon I can best describe as a chicken stew.  It is made with whole pieces of chicken, potatoes, and carrots, and is traditionally served with rice in a bowl.  It is often very spicy.  This version had some great zing to it, but my hostess teased me and admitted she went easy on the peppers in deference to her gringo friend. 🙂  Before we ate Ericson stood and said a prayer.  I later learned by asking that it was not a recited prayer but spoken in his own words.  I suspected as much because during the prayer I heard my name spoken twice.

And of course there was the cake.  That was my contribution to the festivities.  Here Ericson is literally licking his lips staring at his cake.  Ericson has a sponsor who lives somewhere in California, but she has not been able to travel to Guatemala, so he has never actually met her.  He showed Renato and I a birthday card he had received from her.  He’s quite a sensitive, emotional kid and was very touched that his brother’s sponsor would bring him a cake and celebrate his birthday.  It was my pleasure I can assure you.

Here’s Ericson and his mom enjoying the candle moment.  That’s Renato who almost made it into the picture.  Also in attendance were Alma, the social worker in San Miguel Milpas Altas, and of course Edgar.  The lunch was great, the cake was great, and the laughter plentiful.

I was sitting on a small balcony inside a coffee shop when these kids sat down on the curb outside to eat their lunch.  I was enjoying a mango smoothie and my latest book but became fascinated by these kids.  I just sat and watched them for a long time, but they were never aware of me.  The pictures are a little fuzzy ’cause I was on full zoom and holding my phone as steady as I could.

Here is my mostly speculated narrative.  The two younger kids were the younger siblings of the girl on the left and it was her day to watch them.  Maybe that’s everyday.  They had the look of siblings and as the younger kids would get antsy and start to wonder off, it was her that called them back.  Sometimes with a kind of pretend authoritative sternness that was adorable.  The two older girls may be related but not sisters.  They did not look at all alike.

If you look closely you can see that the girl on the left has a green blanket tied across a shoulder.  There was an infant in that cocoon.  No way of knowing if it was hers or another younger sibling.  There are babies having babies all over the world.  As I watched, I was thinking about the contrast between the millions we spend in the US on the safety testing of baby carriers and seats, and the literally millions of toddlers and infants throughout the world who survive and thrive having ridden around in a sling fashioned from just a simple blanket.

You can also see, next to the small girl, tablets of lottery tickets.  This is what brings these two older girls to the street to try to make a little money.  I don’t really know anything about the lottery other than it exists.

As I was leaving I stopped and asked them how much they had paid for their lunch.  Three small styrofoam plates, with a small piece of chicken and some rice, and two orange drinks shared amongst the four kids.  19 quetzals, $2.55 US.  The orange drinks were more expensive than the food.  I gave them a 20Q note and did my best to explain that I wanted to buy their lunch for them.  The quizzical smiles on their faces were worth ten times that. 🙂

I am well and hope you all are too.

Here’s a little miscellaneous ditty about one of my favorite subjects, sweatpants.  My dress sweatpants, you know the black ones, have gotten pretty spotted up with patching mud, tile grout, and paint from work days.  It’s so bad they’re going to have to be relegated to strictly casual wear.  😉  How was that for a groaner?  Sorry, it felt like I was getting out of practice with tongue in cheek.

I wanted to catch up sharing a bunch of photos that I haven’t used in recent posts.  Most are street scenes from around Antigua and Santa Ana.  But first another one from home.

Meet Gonzo, my grandpuppy.  Carrie and Adam got him just after Christmas and here he is being busy at one of a bulldog’s favorite things, napping.  He and I share that love.  Not as noticeable is how busy he is growing into his skin.

I’ve seen this scene a number of times.  People like to have their vehicles blessed.  Here are some men sharing a moment of prayer with the good Padre who’s wearing the hat and is in his everyday monk’s robe.

Cyclists gathering for a club ride outside La Merced.  The grocery store, a funeral procession, and the garden outside the burial place of Hermano Pedro.  Below, some of the street musicians.     

You’ve never seen a Macdonald’s dining area that looks like this in the US.  Below, a street vendor meeting in the little park in front of La Merced.  Note the numbered sections on the sidewalk border.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

Above, looking down next door from my rooftop.  A couple of scenes in the Central Park.  Some young pageant contestants gathering for a photo shoot, and some young guys break dancing.

Lastly, a couple of shots from a recent road trip to coast with the fam.  This is the west coast of Guatemala, so that’s the Pacific for you geography hounds.  And ya gotta love a beach bar that uses pallets to make the deck.  Jimmy Buffet would be so proud.

As you can see, particularly from the last two shots, I am well, and hope you all are too.

One of the rich aspects of Latin American Culture are the processions that take place during Lent.  I can’t speak for what occurs in other countries, but in Antigua, Guatemala there is a procession every Sunday leading up to Easter.  I’m still learning a lot of the things there are to know about the processions.  So the things I write about them in the coming weeks are the things I’m learning along the way.

The processions grow in size, culminating with the largest ones that occur on Palm Sunday, and Thursday and Friday of Semana Santa. (Holy Week)  They originate in the Parish Communities in and around the Antigua area.  Santa Catalina Bobadilla is one of the small towns south of Antigua that ring the base of Agua.  If you click on this route flyer and enlarge it, you can see in the lower left corner that the procession lasts twelve hours.  I know someone out there is thinking, how long is that route?  Four to five miles is my guess, allowing for my deft conversion from kilometers to miles. 🙂

It’s a great honor to be a bearer of one of these floats.  By the time I took this picture they had already been processing about three hours.  They don’t move continually forward but rather it’s a two steps forward, one back movement.

As the procession moves through parish neighborhoods, others join in.  These photos are outside La Iglesia de Belen.  The panels leaning up against the church behind the statues are the Stations of the Cross.

One of the amazing aspects of a procession are these carpets that are created in the street all along the route.  My sense is that they are done by different groups, or in some cases, as a family project.  All kinds of different materials make up these carpets.  This one is a sand painting.  The one below is made up of fruit, flowers, and pine needles.  People work for hours and hours on these carpets and then the procession walks right over them.

Here’s a couple of other scenes from this day.  It’s a somewhat odd mix of somber and festive.  As promised, more procession stuff in the coming weeks.

I’m not prone to carrying my laptop around with me, but occasionally I pack it up and come here to catch up on emails and work on posts.  This one being the current example.

This is where I sit.  It’s a bench that is always in the shade and it’s right outside the door to a long gallery room with photos and paintings by Guatemalan artists.  The wifi signal from the little cafe across the courtyard is good, and there are Americanos and smoothies to enjoy.  I should add here that I usually feel like I have the place to myself.  I know they have events here, but take out the security and housekeeping folks and there are seldom many people about.

 Here’s some history.  The Training Center of the Spanish Cooperation in La Antigua Guatemala is located in the old Colegio de la Compañía de Jesus, (Jesuit College) founded in 1582.  Because it was originally a college, the design and structure lends itself beautifully to what it is used for today.  It’s part training center, part conference center, and part museum and art center.

The original entrance to the college and church front. (oops, finger shot).  In 1767, the year in which all the Jesuits were expelled from the lands of Spain, the College was disabled and over time several earthquakes destroyed its structure. For years, what little remained was used as a textile factory, school, and market.

In May 1992, Spain and Guatemala signed an agreement to prepare a restoration project through the Ibero-American Cultural Heritage Preservation Program of the Spanish Agency for Development Cooperation (AECID), with the approval of the National Council for the Protection of La Antigua Guatemala (CNPAG).  That’s a mouthful.  

In 1994, the AECID signed an agreement with the Municipality of La Antigua, owner of the building, thanks to which the Municipality ceded the use of the building to the AECID for the creation of an International Training Center for Development of Ibero-American character and culture.

The rapid restoration process allowed spaces that were previously abandoned to be brought back to life in August 1996, boosting the social and cultural activity of the city and expanding its scope of action to the entire Latin American region.

Its official inauguration took place in October 1997 by Her Majesty Queen Sofía of Spain.

Here is a floor “painting” in one of the gallery rooms.  This one is done with wood, dyed beans and corn, and sand.  As we move through Lent towards Semana Santa, (Holy Week), I’ll be showing you some much more elaborate examples of this art that are done right on the streets.

I am well and hope you all are too.  Speaking of which, I was just thinking that two years ago at this time I was on my first wanderin’  trip and came down with shingles.  Ah, the good ole days. 🙂

The preamble to this post is that I had already written a post about Lent and discarded it.  I also have flushed two different titles.  Have you ever heard that thing about sticking an angry letter or memo, (today it would likely be an email), in a drawer, and if you still feel the same later, or the next day, go ahead and send it?  It wasn’t an angry post, but the tone just didn’t feel right.  I’m trying to write something that I feel strongly about, but I fear sounding preachy.

Many years ago, one of my favorite priests gave a pre-Lent homily that has always stuck with me.  In it he seemed to also struggle with not wanting to sound critical of people who want to use abstinence during  Lent as a time to sacrifice something they enjoy.  Ok, hold that thought and let me back up to what is now almost a week ago.  It occurred to me as I was walking about in Antigua that I could be in no better place for alms giving during Lent.  It sounds weird to say it that way.

Now, back to Fr. Michael’s homily.  I know, I know, just stick with me a minute.  Here’s the part that stayed with me all the way to today and beyond.

Nowhere that I know of in the Bible does it suggest or encourage us to spend Lent giving up wine, chocolate, music in the car, vegetables, or anything else one could think of to abstain from.  It does tell us to pray, fast, and give alms.  Enh, enh, enh, preachy alert.

I have many friends, good friends, who abstain from something during Lent.  And like Fr. Michael, I have no criticism or sense of condescension toward that practice.  I have been in conversations with people about this subject, who have very thoughtfully chosen something to abstain from during Lent.  Often it’s because they think it may have become to important to them.  And at least part of them is wanting it to be a springboard of sorts toward some real change.  How great is that?

And we can’t forget the whole Fat Tuesday thing, and the Mardi Gras tradition of having a big blow out before the sacrifices of Lent.  Here’s some kids and teachers having a little Fat Tuesday parade.        

At the risk of sounding like I think it’s noble, for many years now I have taken the prayer, fasting, and alms giving approach to Lent.  And it has in fact instilled a new life habit with me in how I view and respond to the people who ask for help on the street. I feel the need to quickly add, that doesn’t mean I give money to every person I pass.  I don’t always have cash.  I’m hurried.  Or how about this one, the light is green and traffic is flowing.  All interruptions to kindness.  Jesus never pretended these people weren’t there.

This is Matila. (pronounced, ma tee la).  He sits in the same spot everyday.  He walks, and even stands with great difficulty, and he’s older than he looks in this picture.  He dresses proudly but has no great sartorial supply.  Let’s just say I’m very familiar with this red shirt.  He’s of the generation of Guatemalans who were in their teens or twenties during the civil war.  His cardboard sign, as with the woman in the first photo, is the little plastic dish that he holds in his lap.

There are hundreds and thousands of people on the streets in Guatemala.  And everywhere.  That’s every where.  I had this  thought along the way.  I wonder how many gringos, who travel in what people like to call the third world, easily drop coins into plastic dishes, but somehow view the people on the corners in America, the ones with the cardboard signs, differently.  That thought is driven by the seemingly hundreds of conversations I’ve been in about the “cardboard sign guys”.  I know what people think or fear.  That if they give them money it will go towards drink or drugs.  I know that people actually think that they are out there because they are lazy, and working is somehow inherently harder.  I listened to one guy tell a group of people I was in, that he wasn’t going to give money to a guy standing on the corner asking for money in a $200 pair of Nikes.  Really?  I’ve been trying to find that one guy in a half a million that fits that narrative.  I don’t think he exists.  And I don’t personally believe that they’re out there because they are lazy.  I don’t think that they woke up one morning, back there somewhere in their life, and said, chuck all this stuff, I’m just going to make me a sign and go stand on the corner.  While maybe sometimes true, let’s be honest, those things are really more about us than they are about them.

Recently a friend told me that she gave a 5er to a guy standing at Dale St. and I94 because he looked like me.  Serious or not, those words rattled around in my head until they became, there but for the Grace of God, go I.  I think we would be surprised how narrow the life circumstances are sometimes between us and them.  Us and them.  I hate putting it that way, but it’s really irony to the point.

My Dad, God rest him, volunteered at the VA in the post Viet Nam era.  He was around vets with wounds both visible and not.  He used to tell me that many days he would think, there but for the Grace of God goes my son.  Near misses, narrow circumstances.

Eric, enough already, can you wrap this up with a point?

If you like to give up something during Lent, think about some of the preconceived notions we could give up.  This Lent, consider giving alms that don’t involve a check or a collection plate.  Those aren’t bad things.  Please keep doing them.

But consider giving alms on the street.  Without condition.  Please.

A week ago or so, Fuego had one it’s angrier days.  Seidi took this picture at school.  It was spewing smoke and ash thousands of feet in the air.  The kids were all hoping for what would be the Guatemalan version of a snow day, but alas, it didn’t happen.

I’ve mentioned Kimberly in previous posts.  In January, her and some of her friends hiked up the mountain next to Fuego for a camping trip.  She shared these photos with me and I’m sharing them with you.

They are some spectacular photos.  I wish I had taken them.