Ixil Trip (7): Sumalito and surroundings

Community. Cooperating, organizing, exchanging, sharing. Our capacity to form communities is a great bulk of what makes us human beings.

Communities take various forms across time and space. Yet everywhere and any time, the people we live together remain a central part of our lifes.

>>Community and collective action:
For the Ixil people, the community is the embodiment and most fundamental element of the social contract. Authority is delegated to an elected council of principals, who coordinate and execute public choice at the village level, mediate conflicts and represent the community to the outside.

Traditionally, principals are older and well respected men of the village. Social organization is evidently patriarchich in Ixil culture, as in other Mayan traditions. Yet women are slowly taking more spaces and leadership in the community. Some villages even have a Comittee for Women's Promotion within their council.

Whenever we arrived to a village, we were always received by the council of authorities. They spoke for the community and officially delivered to us the letters signed by all council members, where they communicated requests of support for different issues.

Today, we visited two villages belonging to the Municipality of Nebaj, Ixtupil and Trapichitos. These are villages that have had a relationship with APEI but also, and more closely, with the German Foundation "La Sonrisa de los Niños" (aka "La Sonrisa") . In both villages, we attended meetings of the council of authorities, where Martin delivered special greetings from and represented Peter Wochinger, the president of "La Sonrisa".

In both villages, we attended a meeting with the council of authorities. There, I saw for the first time that the village mayor carries a wooden baton with silver endings, which represents his authority. In Trapichito, three different villages were represented at the meeting, making it a very special constellation. It was a large meeting and every village representative had the turn to speak.

>>Community and growth:
After our visits in Ixtupil and Trapichito, we head to the village of Sumal Chiquito (aka "Sumalito"). In 2010, "La Sonrisa de Los Niños" built there a boarding school for 7th, 8th and 9th grades.

In rural villages, many children drop out of school after finishing primary school (6th grade). One of the reasons is costs. Often, the next middle school is located a few kilometers away, which under the road and transportation infrastructure of these areas can take a lot of time. Thus, driving every day to school is not an option and attending middle school comes with additional costs for accommodation and alimentation. This is a great disincentive.

The boarding school in Sumalito aims at closing this gap by providing talented learners from remote villages with the opportunity to continue with middle school without having to worry about their living and studying expenses. A few years ago, APEI overtook the management of the boarding school and has since then cooperated with "La Sonrisa" on this matter with great success.

Beyond studying and sharing the same roof, students here have a community in which they can grow and develop themselves. We could all feel the energy, enthusiasm and sense of community in these students from the moment we arrived.

A special feature of this community, and a strong contrast to the village councils is their gender composition. The large majority of students in the boarding school are female. This partly reflects the fact that girls tend to perform better than boys in school, yet it also has the positive effect of being an example for their home communities.

After dinner, we had a round of exchange with them. Everyone in the round -students, teachers and us, visitors- had the chance to present him and herself. And so, we developed a big conversation in which we got to know each other better.

Later, we sung "Las Mañanitas" (a famous mariachi birthday song) for Petrona, a 7th grade learner who was having a bit of home sick. For most of these students, the boarding school is their first time out of home. Yet while we were singing, all her mates at the boarding school came to hug her and wish her a happy birthday.

After all the birthday singing, the atmosphere was playful and we ended up dancing marimba songs all together. Students and teachers and all the visiting crew were warming up the dining hall with our dancing steps. It was a wonderful ending for an evening that made clear, how much creativity, curiosity and cleverness these teenagers have. And the boarding school is giving them a great platform take advantage of these talents.

***Note: The opinions expressed in this blog are based on my personal experience during this trip and are only mine. They do not represent the opinion of Asociación Amigos Para las Escuelas Ixiles (APEI) or that of any of my fellow travelers.Leia mais