Library update

This week the Ministerio de Culturas y Deportes employed a Marimba band to play from 8-12 noon on the new library veranda! It was market day, so the square was full of traders and shoppers; many indigenous people from the outlying communities come to town on Wednesdays, so it is a great day to have music filling the square! There were ten musicians playing three xylophones, a bass and drums. They were really talented! I expressed to Alba how great it would be to have more concerts like this in the future and quick as a flash she started organising to have one in May for mothers` day, to which only women will be invited, complete with activities food, etc. Mothers` day here is serious indeed; the 10th of May is the dedicated date, but the month of May seems to have become women`s month, so during May I am going to do a tour of all the Riecken Foundation libraries in Guatemala doing workshops with women in each, making lovely things for them to take away.

Last week we got the go-ahead from the mayor to create the sculpture garden! I whooped for joy and called everyone in the foundation to impart the good news. Today we had a site meeting to discuss it and better than I had even imagined, they not only agreed with everything I suggested, including the fountain, benches, pathways, railings/gateways (which I hope to design and have custom-made) and of course a riot of colour in the form of trees, plants and flowers, but the size of the garden doubled in an instant, and it will now flank the library on both sides. There is ample space for a lovely little park so I guess I will be busy!

We are in the process of planning the event to mark the library anniversary on the 2nd June. I really hope to bring Fernanda, a Brazilian dancer, over from Wales to coordinate the choreography and performance elements and I have been helping to make her application successful to secure a grant. The project will comprise of two parts: a procession in the morning, consisting of five groups from different educational establishments, all wearing costumes made during workshops with me. I would like to create a carpet (inspired by the tradition of laying amazing carpets made out of brightly coloured sawdust for the processions for Semana Santa) in the square in front of the library, where the procession will end. We hope to enlist local bands to provide music for the parade and in the evening there will be a cultural evening in the town hall, with a choreographed performance by each of the groups.

Yesterday we closed the library at 4.30pm and took the bus into Santa Cruz del Quichè to go hunting for glass offcuts. We came back with 4 boxes full! It is interesting how we manage with limited resources. In order to get the boxes back to Chichè, we managed to squeeze all the boxes plus the three of us into a tuk-tuk to get us to where the microbuses depart for Chichè, then, with no hesitation and no quibbling, the driver and his assistant tied all the boxes on to the luggage rack on the roof, and off we went on the last bus back, bodies clinging to the sides of the bus (I estimate at least 25 people crammed into a 12-seater) as we wound past fields and through woods in the dim twilight. In the UK, I would consider my job impossible without my car, and I would also consider it against health and safety regulations to tie a load of rather weak boxes full of shards of glass on to the roof! But here everything is possible! So I should be able to start doing some tests making stained glass with the technique used in Aaculuux, (amazing hotel – see post entitled “Lago” below) in San Marcos La Laguna, where they use papier maché instead of lead. (I doubt papier maché would survive the frosty British climate, but here it works like a dream, even during the rainy season, which I recently discovered means 6 months of torrential rain! Soon to commence!)