Chilifest and beyond

It has been a busy week, so I am back from neglecting this blog. We are now in Quetzaltenango, Guatmela's second biggest city and the cultural capital of the country. This is definitely my favorite place we have been--lots of music, cool bars, big festivals for the soccer team, and more interesting travelers than we have met in other cities.

I am volunteering at TRAMA Textiles a woman-owend cooperative in the western highlands. The association was formed after the civil war to try and create a form of income for women, most of whom had their families killed by one side or the other during the war. There is a shop here in Xela, a weaving school, and they export their weavings to stores in the US, Canada and Europe. I work with Ampara and Oralia, the president and VP respectively, at the office here in Xela. Their work is totally beautiful and this week I started my own (far less impressive) weaving project. If anyone is looking for a shoddily made scarf please let me know.

Since the previous volunteer coordinator left on Friday and I speak the best Spanish of the volunteers I have become the default volunteer coordinator for the next few weeks. I am writing a newsletter, organizing the women's trip to the US for a conference next month, and trying to connect with more stores and organizations. It's pretty hard for them to get big orders, maybe because they are competing with a zillion other textile coops throughout the Americas that do fairly similar work. They also don't have Internet in the office, which makes it annoying and complicated to communicate with anyone outside of the country. On Thursday night we had a Chilifest benefit dinner at a really cool new bar to raise some money towards Internet and other infrastructure needs. People really liked it and it was nice to get to cook for a big crowd.

For the next few weeks I will be at TRAMA, Eli will be in Spanish classes, and hopefully we will go on lots of pretty weekend trips. I really like it here and wish I could stay for longer. We shall see...