As I returned to the village last night from a long run, I saw an amazing sight. I stood astride the ridge, looking up at the sacred Mount Sijá. To the left, dark thunderheads channeled up through the valleys to the summits, bright lightning flashing between them. The bolts danced in the sky. To the right, storm clouds gave way to a blood-red setting sun, dropping behind the cone of Volcano Tajumulco. The tallest mountain in Central America was drenched in a fiery light. I sat down in the middle of the fields, the corn six inches tall all around me, and watched two wonders seldom seen in the same frame.

The rains have yet to come, and the dust is thick and choking. Many local farmers are worried their nascent corn crop will soon die. In my schools, however, we have decided to begin planting in the gardens. The teachers are eager and they promise to water the plants until the rains set in. We managed to get some seeds from the Ministry of Agriculture and are starting with broccoli and radish. The boys in Nuevo Xoljá spread chicken manure:

Professor Maximiliano helps a student plant radish seeds in Pacutamá I:

A girl waters lettuce in Chuicutamá:

As the plants begin to sprout the kids are getting increasingly excited about the gardens and the prospect of eating vegetables they grew themselves. I recently gained new and saddening insight into how basic the diet is in the communities where I work. I asked the children to collect all of their household organic trash for a week to add to our compost piles, and when they brought it to school there were almost no fruit and vegetable peels—just corn leaves and bean hulls. The teachers and I are endeavoring to involve the parents in the garden so that they will learn more about vegetable production, and we are hoping that some family plots might spin out of our school project.

Mother’s Day is a huge deal in Guatemala, and I got a special invite to participate in the activities at one of my schools. They pulled out all the stops, including bringing in a generator and sound system from God-knows-where. Here the second graders perform a traditional dance before their mothers:

Some of the older boys clown it up:

I won one of the dance contests but Ana María, the school principal, told me the prizes were only for the moms. What a bunch of bullcrap.
I’m headed to the other side of the country this weekend to run in a half marathon. I was hoping to exploit the cardiovascular advantage of having trained at 10,000 feet, but then I read in the papers that the top finishers last year were running five minute miles. Yikes. I can’t run one mile in five minutes, much less thirteen strung together. Maybe I should smuggle in my bike…