Village Visits (this is a long one)

We were in PG for one night, and then we headed northwest to Big Falls, which is a good jumping off point for exploring the more remote villages and visiting the main archaeological sites in Toledo. So that’s just what we did – last Thursday we went to Nim Li Punit and Lubaantun, two reconsolidated Late Classic sites. They are very interesting places with on-site museums, but the signage was terrible so it was hard to really get a feel for what was going on there. This is really unfortunate because as archaeologists Shoshi and I know what we were looking at, but without adequate explanations most of the meaning is unclear, even to us; this must be especially true for tourists or local people. Two pieces of information I thought were interesting: Nim Li Punit seems to have been located at a convenient place for controlling trade routes and apparently had contact with Copan (it didn’t say how or why), and Lubaantun was a center for manufacturing ocarinas (whistles) and figurines. The sites have been excavated but not much has been published.

Nim Li Punit:

That night we met Shoshi’s old friends from the Uxbenka project at our guest house in Big Falls. They live at a camp nearby and kindly shared their evening meal with us for a couple days. We were staying right next to a local grocery and bar/pool hall so of course there was lots of beer drinking and pool playing. The next day we drove out to the village of Santa Cruz, which is right next to Uxbenka. Shoshi’s dissertation deals with the relationship between the village, the site, and the archaeological project. She’s spent a lot of time there over the last few years, so we went to visit a few of the families she got to know. This was also a good chance for me to see how people live and to generally meet people with whom I will undoubtedly be working in the future. Visiting was really fun – on the first day we went to Elena’s house, whose extended family Shoshi knows. I should preface this by saying that while nuclear families seem to live in the same house, extended families all live nearby, not necessarily in “compounds”, but in the same vicinity. Consequently, we were at Elena’s house, but her mother, several of her sisters, and tons of children were also there. This also means that I don’t remember everyone’s names! Elena’s mother doesn’t speak English, but the younger people do so that was wonderful. The men were out finishing the planting, and since that is a special day they were making caldo for lunch, which is a traditional Maya stew made with meat (we had chicken) and some vegetables or potatoes, and flavored with chili, achiote, other spices, and of course, lard (this is not an exact recipe, it varies widely, it’s just a description of what we had the other day). You eat it with as many fresh corn tortillas as you can handle. Shoshi and I helped them bake the tortillas, which was very amusing to the women there. Making tortillas into perfectly round, thin circles is really hard! You need a lot of practice. Mine were never perfect, but I’ll be here for awhile so hopefully my baking skills will improve.

The women were wonderful to talk to and very polite, but I couldn’t help but wonder what they were saying about us in Mopan. The cultural differences between us, as American women, and them as Maya women are really extreme. Maya women get married when they are around 15 and the men are about 20. Elena, for example, is nineteen and has three children. She looks like she’s in her mid-twenties though. Her sister who is twenty seven (my age) has six kids, all girls. We must seem like spinsters who will never find husbands because we don’t know how to bake! I’m just kidding, I don’t think they’re judging us or anything, it’s just such a different life. And they understand that it’s different too; we were telling them that it’s different where we come from, that people don’t get married until later and they accept that. I guess I just can’t fathom having six children.

We were having a site tour of Uxbenka later that day, but to kill a couple hours Shoshi drove me out to Rio Blanco, a nature preserve outside of Santa Cruz. It has trails and a swimming hole. We didn’t bring our suits, but we waded in with one of Elena’s sisters, Angelina. She is fourteen and has left school because she should be getting engaged soon. They were teasing her about it all afternoon while we made tortillas, and she says she doesn’t want to be engaged just yet.

Shoshi and Angelina at Rio Bravo:

The tour of Uxbenka was pretty extraordinary. It’s a really impressive site, set up on three different karst hills, overlooking the surrounding hills and valleys. There is an earlier ceremonial stela plaza, which was excavated some last year, and this year they are up at the regal/ritual center, a series of successively smaller ceremonial plazas. The interesting thing about Uxbenka is that it potentially has an Early Classic component, which is absent in other parts of southern Belize. There is also a stela that references someone from Tikal, so the theory is that the Late Classic phase was initiated by this person. I was impressed; it’s a very dramatic and interesting site.

Plaza B, cleared by fire and under excavation:

The next day we had a working breakfast at a beautiful but overpriced lodge at Big Falls. Shoshi and I hadn’t really had a chance to sit down and talk about what directions we wanted to go in with this new phase of the project. I won’t bore you with the details yet, but basically we’re trying to come up with more creative ways to educate people – so games, activities, movies…also when the best time would be to be in the villages, etc. It was productive and fun to talk about possible plans.

Then we went visiting at Angela’s house, back in Santa Cruz. I should mention that these villages are located only about 12 miles from the highway, but down one of the worst maintained roads imaginable. It seems there have been attempts to put down cobbles and other gravels, which is necessary because it rains so much. But the rain inevitably erodes the dirt around the cobble and gravel leaving ruts and large exposed rocks as well as potholes and mud puddles. Apparently the government does fix it eventually, but not until it’s barely passable. So the 12 mile trip takes about 45 minutes. Anyways, we made it back out to Santa Cruz on Saturday to meet Angela and her eight daughters. Only four are married, which leaves a lot of women hanging around the house – again, the names eventually blurred together. It was a similar visit, but with eggs and tea instead of caldo to eat. The eggs were also made with lard, and spiced with roasted chilis from their garden. I know what you’re thinking, but lard tastes amazing. So does deep friend pig skin, no joke.

After meeting Angela, we met Benecio, who is a very active member of the community. He sits on the board of the Julian Cho Society, so he’s involved in land disputes, and he is also the chairman of Santa Cruz at the moment. He’s also on the executive board of the local organization that has been formed to decided how to develop tourism infrastructure and education programs with/at Uxbenka. A professor from USF is working on that project actually. I don't know much about it yet, but I'm sure I'll learn more when she gets here. Anyways, I really liked Benecio a lot. His kids are super smart, his daughter is receiving a scholarship from JCS to attend high school in PG which is a big deal. His son was reading his workbook from school the whole time we were there. He’ll be a good person to know during my time here I think.

When work was over at the site we picked up Andy and Chuck, two of Shoshi’s good friends and drove to Placencia! Placencia is a beach town on the coast. We weren’t there for very long, but I loved it. Our hotel was right on the beach, there was a live reggae band, and I read an entire book in one day; the perfect vacation if you ask me. :) Unfortunately, Shoshi got really sick once we were in Placencia, probably from the lunch in the village. I was completely fine though, which is weird since our food came from exactly the same place. She's better now though.

I’m back in PG and starting to meet with JCS more and talking about how to get things started. Today we developed a brief survey of five questions that we’re going to administer tomorrow in a few villages around Nim Li Punit and Lubaantun to see what people want to know about the old Maya. This will hopefully give us some guidelines as to how to structure future workshops and programs.