Exploring Chajul

The town of Chajul is one of the three towns that make up the Ixil triangle of Guatemala.  Nebaj and
Cotzal are the others.  I have become very familiar with the towns of Cotzal and Nebaj but had not yet spent any time in Chajul.  This past Monday, I kidnapped Mark the Canadian, and we explored Chajul.  Mark arrived on a short term team shortly after I arrived.  He is staying on for 2 months to help Domingo and Kara with agricultural work as he recently completed his Masters in Environmental Science.

On the microbus we met an architect on the bus who also ran a ferreteria (a tiny hardware store) in Chajul.  We visited his store and then we went to a Christian School called Metodista Filadelfia.  I will write more about this school in a later blog entry, but I came away from that visit very encouraged.  We then went up into the mountains surrounding Chajul.  Everywhere around this area are thousands of paths.  Most of the people in these surrounding villages walk everywhere they go and there are thousands of pathways through the wilderness here.  We went up one path and we met a man on our quick sojourn who could not understand why anybody would just pass through for seemingly no reason at all.  The tiny path we took off the dirt road was a trail where people could access their agricultural land.

After that, we went and visited Paul Townsend's office where he spends countless hours translating the bible into Ixil.  It is pretty easy to find because it seems everybody in this region knows of "hermano Pablo."  After eating lunch in the square, we went to the chapel service for the older students at Metodista Filadelphia.  After students led in worship in prayer, Paul delivered a message.

Mark and I then rode back into Nebaj with Paul.  We went to Cafe Mingo where the sowing class for the woman were finishing up (also for a later blog entry).  We played soccer with some of the children that were playing there and then we went with Domingo and Kara for dinner at their home.  We played Rummy until 10:30 at night and I walked back to Cafe Mingo for some much needed rest before starting my third week of classes teaching English at Horeb!

So that was my Monday..  My Saturday, Sunday, and Monday of each week tend to be my more unpredictable days as I do not teach English in Cotzal on those days.