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An Adventure, In Any Language

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By EDDIE ROBINETTE Special to the Tribune

The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 16, 2008

Updated: 03/14/2008 05:34 pm

Guidebooks say that if you want to learn Spanish in Guatemala, you should go to Antigua. It's a beautiful colonial city where language schools rival history as the main tourist attraction.

But I wanted something different, something more intimate in a more remote setting. I found it in the Alta Verapaz area in the central highlands.

The Eco Cabana Spanish School in Guatemala is actually a small farm in a valley surrounded by green mountains, cloud forests and rivers. It has only five teachers, but the Web site I used to research Guatemalan language schools gave it high marks. And it was all it was advertised to be.

Between the teachers and the other workers at the school, I learned more than a new language. I learned about life from a Mayan descendent named Mam, who cut the grass with a machete and brought us fresh cow's milk every morning, and from Dona Lilla, who interrupted her cooking to gather lemon grass if she thought we needed tea during our study breaks, and from Libby and Sal Brizuela, who own the farm and school operation but who make every visitor part of their family.

Sal was born in El Salvador but left for the United States when he was 9. Libby left Guatemala as a young woman, and they met in New Jersey, where Sal worked for an aerospace company. They moved to Guatemala 12 years ago.

"I still feel like an outsider here sometimes," said Sal, who prefers English to Spanish.

He works in the coffee-exporting business, and most of his transactions are in English.

Libby grew up in Guatemala, so she was coming home - to her more than 20 brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews in Alta Verapaz. She and Sal opened the first Internet cafe in Coban, a city of about 22,000. But over time, at least a half-dozen Internet businesses sprang up around the city's central square, so they both sought new opportunities.

When Sal began working in the coffee-export business. Libby opened the language school using her home in the nearby town of San Pedro Carcha and the farm the couple bought about 9 miles (two microbus rides) from Coban.

The farmhouse - a comfortable, two-story dwelling that looks a little like a Swiss chalet - easily sleeps four. When I was there in May and June, I was one of three. The two other students were from Germany and New Zealand. A South African couple also was taking classes there, but they stayed in a hotel in Coban.

My days began at about 6 in the morning with a cup of coffee brewed from beans Sal brought from his office. After that, before the fog had lifted, I would hike up the nearby big hill (or small mountain, depending on one's perspective). On several mornings, blueberry pancakes followed.

The teachers arrived about 7:45. We would hear them talking and laughing as they walked up the path to the farm. They had taken at least one microbus. Some have to make a connection and take two microbuses to get to the farm from their homes in the small towns near Coban.

After the teachers had their coffee, instruction began. One teacher to one student was the rule, although they would make exceptions if the client requested it.

Student-teacher pairs would retreat to various sunlit corners of the house for lessons. My teacher, Alex Chavez, and I would go to an open wood structure behind the house, taking a couple of chairs and a blackboard. In this setting, everything was part of the lesson. When a bird flew by, Alex would say "pajaro," Spanish for "bird."

They were patient and tried to make the lessons interesting. But they also were proud teachers, and their lessons were serious, usually lasting four hours with homework for later in the day.

But at midmorning, there was always a break for coffee or lemon grass tea in the kitchen, where Dona Lilla cooked lunch: vegetables from the garden, perhaps a chicken she brought from the market and, of course, tortillas. The smells made it difficult to concentrate.

The teachers use a short test to determine the level of teaching and to tailor the course to meet the students' needs. The student from Germany, for instance, was there for only three weeks, planning to travel through Guatemala after that. Her teacher focused on basic vocabulary and phrases she needed to get around on her own.

But it was also important for each of us to know what we needed and to tell our teachers so we could get the most from our time with them.

Mayan Influences

Spanish wasn't the only language we learned. The farm has no radio or Internet access so, at night, Mam often would build a fire and, if asked, would teach a few words in K'iche, the language spoken by the descendents of the Mayans who are in the majority of the population around the farm.

These people are extremely poor. In the mornings, I saw children as young as 7 or 8 trudging up the hillsides, carrying machetes or hoes to work in the cornfields. Sometimes I visited the public school on top of the mountain, where 45 to 60 children attended five grades in two classrooms, each with one teacher.

They had no electricity or water. They had no school supplies and few textbooks. But they obviously loved their teachers, walking and chatting with them after school as they walked down the mountain together.

The children were shy around strangers at first, but like children everywhere, their curiosity overcame their shyness, and with giggles and laughter, they exchanged a little Spanish with us, perhaps a couple of K'iche words.

After about a week, I realized that the whole experience was quite seductive. I had fallen into a rich and peaceful rhythm: Study in the morning, explore in the afternoons, and get to bed early to be ready for the 5 a.m. sunrise.

If I was feeling ambitious, I would walk the mile and a half to the caves of Rey Marcos, a spot known in Guatemala for its caves and gushing spring that flows into a series of waterfalls and natural swimming pools. The caves have been mapped in detail and are open to explorers. If you prefer to be aboveground, there's a hiking trail that winds through the forested hillside.

Other afternoons, I walked a half-mile to a tienda, a small country store, to get a beer that was almost cold or a little farther to another tienda for a truly cold one.

Exploring San Juan Chamelco

Some afternoons, I took a microbus - quite an adventure in itself - to the nearest town, San Juan Chamelco. These buses are standard vans with sliding side doors and seats for perhaps 15 people. Here, they hold as many as 32 or 33 people and sometimes a chicken or two.

At the farm, we received occasional visits from an American ex-patriot who lives a short trek away through dense woodlands and across a narrow stream.

Bob Makransky runs Don Jeronimo's, a guesthouse-retreat sort of place with lodging and vegetarian meals. Bob (sometimes called Jerry; sometimes J-Bob; I never quite figured all of this out) also offers instruction in psychic techniques and astrological counseling.

More than half of Guatemala's population is indigenous, speaking 28 languages and dialects. More than half of them live in the highlands.

In Chamelco, as in most areas, the men wear western clothing, but many women wear the brightly colored dresses and hand-woven blouses indicating their indigenous heritage. The women sell vegetables and fruit at the street market while meat hangs in stalls in a nearby building. There are no supermarkets.

If I needed something other than food or secondhand clothing, I took a microbus from Chamelco to Coban, which has the only shopping center in the highlands, including a modern Wal-Mart-type grocery-department store.

Sometimes our teachers met us in Coban for a practical lesson and sightseeing, We visited a coffee plantation, a museum of Mayan artifacts and an orchid nursery called Vivero Verapaz, which has more than 35,000 plants and 650 species, some that can be seen only with a magnifying glass.

But the teachers weren't tour guides. Alex also made sure we visited a facility where disabled children are cared for, and he told us of places where we could volunteer to help the poorest of the poor in the Coban area.

Our teachers were more than teachers. Alex, his wife, Maria, and Loreini Leonardo became our friends.

One of my fellow students, Joe Turton, traveled throughout Central America after he finished his studies in Guatemala. But the Eco Cabana in the highlands, Sal and Libby and the other folks there keep pulling him back.

I, too, expect to return soon.

Eddie Robinette, a retired journalist who lives in Manatee County, can be reached at

PLAN A TRIP

GETTING THERE: Connecting airline service is available from Tampa and Orlando and direct service from Fort Lauderdale via Spirit Airlines. Charter flights are available from Guatemala City to Coban; the buses take five hours and are cheap and dependable (some are air-conditioned). Also, some of the express buses have in-bus movies.

WHERE TO STAY:

•The Eco Cabana owners recommend Patricia's bed-and-breakfast in Guatemala City. For $17, Patricia's will pick you up at the airport, provide lodging and breakfast, and make sure you get on the right bus.

•The language school has two places for students to stay: a room in San Pedro Carcha, a small town; and a more isolated farm, where the classes take place. Room, board and tutoring cost $160 per week for four hours of tutoring five days a week. Meals are provided every day but Sunday.

•Don Jeronimo's is a nearby bed-and-breakfast run by an American. It provides vegetarian meals. Cost is $25 per person.

INFORMATION:

•E-mail the Eco Cabana Spanish School at ecocabana@yahoo.com.

•E-mail Patricia's bed-and-breakfast at Patricia@intelnet.net.at.

•Go to cobanav.net, guatemala365.com and dearbrutus.com/

donjeronimo.

multiedd@Verizon.net.

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