Local craftsmen (and women)

One of my favorite things in life is “making”, the process of creating something out of nothing. Creation is mankind’s highest calling. I’ve done it all my life, and I’m attracted to people of the same cloth: blacksmiths, knitters, homebuilders, woodworkers, painters, writers, cooks. Making is not something that is much valued in most of Mayan culture, so when I find people engaged in creative endeavors, it brings me special joy.

One of the examples I’ve mentioned before is Chalio. He’s a pretty creative kid, always drawing and making toys. Last December, he found a discarded set of Christmas lights and took it apart (another thing I like: people who take things apart). “This airplane needs an anticollision light,” he must have thought to himself, so he scrounged up an old battery, and wired up a lighting system for the toy plane he’d built out of cornstalks. Pretty awesome.

Although airplanes and helicopters are his favorite, he makes other things as well. He built me a little house out of the cardboard from a care package my mom sent, and he made this awesome boat out of, you guessd it, cornstalks. Mayans love corn.

A different time, I’d left my toolbox out as I was working down below the house. After asking if he could use my tools, he found some scrap wood and got his little brother and some other kids together and they had a toy car building session. I got a lot of it on tape, and my friend Brian patched it together into a fun video, that you can see on YouTube or right here (if I got the video to embed correctly)

Brian’s daughter is in presechool, and being an active parent, he wanted to host some kind of virtual exchange between my village kids and her class. He showed this video to the kids, and he even brought a toy car he’d built the way Chalio does.

“What’s interesting about this car?” he asked the kids, holding it up.

“It doesn’t have wheels!” they said. I guess they really liked the video, and thought it was cool that kids build toy cars, even if they don’t have wheels*. But the funniest part is that Brian tells me the teachers had shocked looks on their faces during most of the video; he figures they were expecting to see a bunch of Mayans dressed in traditional garb walking around in an idealistic rural village. Heh.

This car thing seems to be pretty universal, too. Besides all the other toy cars and busses and trucks I’ve seen kids make around here, I saw more examples when I went to one of Charlotte’s Mam-speaking villages. Everyone likes cars!

It seems like most of the creative stuff in this culture comes from kids. It makes me wonder if the realities of subsistance living eliminate the time or energy required to create, or if there is some cultural prejudice against it that only allows the eccentric to participate. Regardless, some adults around here are creative as well. One of the most visible examples is morral making. Many women do it, though some are more creative than others. Like most things Mayan, there are a few designs that are really popular, and the majority of the women do the same ones over and over, almost like a nervous habit. Some ladies, though, show up with new and innovative ideas, and are really excited when Emily challenges them to make something they’ve never made before. A few months back, we tried wine cozies as an alternative new product idea for the ladies in the co-op. Sales have been lukewarm, except for a big order we got from Pete, a long time family friend and one of my father-figures from thirty years ago. I can imagine his friends and family getting pretty awesome Christmas persents this year, and I am sure that he will send them with a nice botte of wine as well. The ladies have finished the order, and they all came out great. Look at that variety!

Speaking of which, we’re still waiting to see what will become of the crafts co-op when we leave in July. Since the beginning, we’ve wanted to get it to a place where it could be self-sufficient. But the reality of it is that things move so slowly here, no one is ready to take the reigns, do the books, check the Etsy site, go to the post office, or any of the other millions of little jobs that we do to make it work. We’re now pinning our hopes on the replacement volunteer, that she will be interested in supporting the project and continuing to develop leaders amongst the women.

We also have a BIG pile of inventory, and Emily and I will probably buy a few when we leave. If any friends and family want one, let us know and we’ll bring it back with us, saving you the shipping charge. There’s still a lot of stuff in the Etsy store (as well as some new items), and we have a mountain of stuff that isn’t shown well. Email us if you’re interested.

And me? I’m still making my first morral. It’s slow work, but it’s going to be awesome… a mix of Mayan technique and pop gringo culture. It’s still secret, but I’ll post pictures when it’s done.

*Historical fun fact: Mayan culture never invented the wheel. Man, were they shocked when the Conquistadores showed up on motorcycles listening to their CD players! And to this day, their ancestors feel the wheel to be inconcequential to toy car building.