Dear Colleagues & Friends from Around the World,
Putting together my photo album of our three-week sojourn through Guatemala with two granddaughters allowed me to reflect on the pluses and downsides of such a trip. I’ve revised my website based on this experience and the best-selling book. I have some new What Others Are Saying quotes and some new What We’re Reading (and viewing) and Why, topped off with an updated Calendar.
And, as a special BONUS, click on the Million Mile Walker poster above for the latest Arizona Authors Association Dispatch. It includes an exceptional segment on the making of The Guatemala Reader (page 20), along with innumerable essays and resources from some of AAA’s top authors.
Over the last fifty years of marriage, my Guatemalan wife, Ligia, and I have traveled to some of the most unlikely and exotic places. We returned to Guatemala in 2013 with two of our three children to reacquaint them with their birth land, but today, we have eight grandchildren, so it was time to write another chapter in my Yin & Yang of Travel—Traveling with Two Granddaughters in Guatemala.
First, there’s a lot more planning needed than when I headed out through Latin America alone with a backpack for five months. We’d need to discuss the itinerary with their parents and meet the different needs and expectations of eight-year-old and twenty-two-year-old granddaughters.
My son traveled with us for a week, including a 4:00 a.m. flight with one carry-on to Flores in the Peten before hopping in a van to visit the iconic Maya Temples of Tikal. The temperature was over 90 degrees, and the humidity was high, but the girls hung in there and trapped around with us throughout the ruins.
As was the case during our visit in 2013, we organized a family gathering so that our granddaughters would meet their parents’ cousins and family members. Over 50 came from Guatemala City, San Jeronimo, Baja Verapaz and Huehuetenango. Some of my wife’s cousins, who were mere kids when we were married, now introduced our granddaughters to their children, and the sounds and music were deafening. But everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, and our oldest granddaughter could defend herself in Spanish. The younger found several kids who spoke some English, so they got by just fine.
We stopped by San Juan Comalapa as we traveled up to Lake Atitlan because it’s the center of a Mayan artist community. Our oldest granddaughter met the granddaughter of one of the Indigenous artists. As they exchanged Whatsapp information, we could appreciate how some personal connections could bring up an entirely new world.
Of course, no visit to Guatemala is complete without a few days on the deepest lake in Central America, Atitlan. We’d take a launch to several of the 12 Indigenous villages around the lake.
Our granddaughters did complain about constantly being taken to different places each day or two, so we’ll need to modify our plan and begin thinking about which grandkids to take with us next year.
The biggest surprise of the visit was when the photographer who took the photo of the young Indigenous girl for the cover of my new book took a copy of it to her ten years later! You can find out about the story of the girl on the cover on my new website: https://millionmilewalker.com/the-story/
Then go to “About” to see the other photos from the trip. https://millionmilewalker.com/about/
What We’re Reading (and Viewing) and Why
I read this compelling memoir from a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer stationed close to where I met Ligia in Baja Verapaz, so we had a lot in common. But what I didn’t know was that during the violent period, his community of Rabinal was close to where land was being taken from the Indigenous community to build an electric generating dam, Chixoy. https://millionmilewalker.com/2024/08/walking-with-evaristo-a-memoir-of-celebration-and-tragedy-in-the-land-of-the-achi-maya-by-christian-nill-reviewed-by-mark-d-walker/
The film is an adaptation of Humberto Garcia’s self-published book, Mustang Miracle. It tells the true story of the San Felipe Mustangs, a group of Mexican-American youths in Del Rio, Texas. In the 1950s, the group set out to play golf at a white country club in town. Despite prejudice, the Mustangs overcame these obstacles to become the 1957 Texas state champions.
Here’s my “twofer”—a great movie based on an outstanding book. This movie focuses on a Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s journey to find underlying causes and connections to bigotry and racism in India, Germany, and the U.S. I recommend her book, Caste-Origins of Our Discontent, which I’ve reviewed.
https://millionmilewalker.com/…/caste-the-origins-of…/
Calendar
- August 6, an interview with Ed Cohen of the Global Talk TV Show
- October 10-12: Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference,
at ASU.
You can find my 80 book reviews and 28 articles, plus several videos and photos, on my website, including a reduced price for my new book if you read it and pass it along to your local library: http://millionmilewalker.com. “Follow” me on Twitter—at https://twitter.com/millionmile and Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/millionmilewalker/ for the latest international affairs and literature.
And, as always, if you’ve read “Different Latitudes: My Life in the Peace Corps and Beyond, My Saddest Pleasures: 50 Years on the Road, the Best Travel Book according to the Peace Corps Writers, and of course, my most recent book, The Guatemala Reader, please review and rate them on Amazon and Goodreads.
Shalom!
Mark D. Walker