The Stilt Dance: My surprisingly large role in restoring an ancient Mayan tradition to the heart of Toledo.

As a Peace Corps volunteer I often leave the house without much of a plan other than to come back when it’s dark or I’m hungry. On one fateful day my work partner approached me with the idea of taking a group of 9 youth to a campsite in the middle of the woods to learn how to walk on stilts. “That sounds amazing!” I said without any idea of the deep historical meaning of the Chitick Dance. It wasn’t until days later that I even learned it was an ancient Mayan tradition.

Believe it or not, walking on stilts is an ancient Maya tradition! Lost to Belize for generations, this beautiful art form has been resurrected thanks to the determination of a humble Peace Corps volunteer, a team of instructors from Belize/Guatemala, and a troupe of courageous kids.

The Stilt Dance, known locally as the Chitick Dance, originated in the Mayan creation book called the Popol Vuh. The Popol Vuh is the oldest Maya myth to have been preserved in its entirety. The Stilt Dance was performed by the hero twins of the Popol Vuh called Hunahpu and Xbalanque in a plot to defeat the Lords of the Underworld or Xibalba (the x is pronounced “sh”) The Lords of  Xibalba planned to destroy the twins by tricking them into an oven to burn to their deaths. The twins discovered the plot and surprisingly allowed themselves to be killed. Their bones were ground into dust and thrown into a river where they miraculously regenerated into back into a pair of young boys again.

Unrecognizable by the people of the Underworld; the twins performed a number of miracles and performances, including the stilt dance. When the Lords of Xibalba heard of these miracles they demanded to see such marvels in person.  The hero twins took the offer as a part of their plot to ruin the Underworld. They pretended to be orphans and the Lords were none the wiser. In a climactic performance, Xbalanque cut Hunahpu apart and offered him as a sacrifice, only to have the older brother rise once again from the dead. The Lords demanded that the miracle be performed on them. The twins obliged by killing and offering the Lords as a sacrifice, but predictably did not bring them back from the dead. All of Xibalba was then defeated.

To reenact such a dramatic piece of cultural heritage is a great honor. At Tumul K’in students take pride and ownership of a culture, language, and spirituality that is at risk of being lost to an increasingly globalized world. To bring the Chitick Dance back to Toledo is symbolic of the cultural restoration and preservation that is central to Tumul K’in’s mission.

The students and I raised money to take a bus to Succotz for a 4 day stilt walking and cultural exchange gathering with the Caracol Youth Group from Arenal village. Fascinatingly, Arenal is a small village located exactly half in Belize and half in Guatemala. In four quick days we learned everything from stilt construction to costume design and makeup. What surprised me most was the courage of the youth as they stood on the stilts for the first time. Girls, who are traditionally shy and reluctant, were standing as tall and as proud as the boys.

Arriving back at Tumul K’in, we only had a few short weeks to construct 6 pairs of stilts, design and sew 6 costumes, and choreograph a full dance to present at Maya Day. Miraculously we pulled it all together in time to present a show stopping finale at Maya Day in Blue Creek Village, home of the Stilt Walkers. As I watched the kids perform the story of the Popul Vuh, in full body makeup and costume, on stilts, to a crowd of over a thousand people, my heart beamed with joy. Since that first performance the Tumul K’in Stilt Walkers have gone on to win a first place trophy at The Festival of Arts and are now headed to Belize City for the final round of the competition.

As we walked back to the staging area after a show I asked one of the female performers how she felt. With a radiating smile she declared “PROUD!” with more confidence and poise than I ever thought was possible. To these kids, stilt walking is more than just a fun thing to do once in a while. It’s about reclaiming a piece of their cultural heritage, men and women walking on the same level, confidence, grace, and responsibility. It’s about teamwork and confronting fears.

I’m so honored to be a part of this extraordinary time in history. Organizing fundraisers, staying up late to sew ornate headdresses, and corralling a bunch of hyper teenagers into a choreographed representation of the Popol Vuh are all things I’ve come to accept as a part of my ordinary life in the village. However, I know that I am a part of a piece of Mayan history and it is something I will remember for the rest of my life.

Appreciating the Changes

“Without the bitter, baby, the sweet ain’t as sweet” ~ Vanilla Sky

Never has the pace of Peace Corps felt more apparent to me than when I returned home from a vacation in the states.  I can’t believe as I look at my calendar and see that I have ten months and change left in my service, and true to what many PCVs and RPCVs have sagely advised me, I feel like I am just now starting to pick up steam.  While I am very proud of the accomplishments my community has achieved with my support (increased financial sustainability, true profitability, a new bridge and a better understanding of project management), I feel like I spent the past 16-ish months learning how to be a Peace Corps Volunteer.  I feel now that I have the capabilities, knowledge and temperament to handle life in my village, which, while beautiful and as accommodating as necessary, is certainly different and more challenging to live in than my wonderful home in Washington. 

It was a great experience to travel home and see family and friends (including my dear friends at Starbucks and The Fishbowl), and to pace around my alma mater with a dear colleague for hours before heading back to stay at my parents’ wonderfully maintained, washing-machine owning house (I did laundry every night I was there, just to watch it work).  It was especially wonderful to see some of the immediate impact that my Peace Corps experience has instilled in me.  Between helping the older Mexican woman I sat next to on the plane order her coffee because the flight attendant didn’t speak Spanish, to waiting patiently in Houston (all three times) to herd us through customs after waiting in line for an hour and a half, I noticed my patience and desire to help people having a difficult time increase manyfold.  I was so appreciative of the things I used to take for granted, from having clean clothes to fresh salad vegetables to not sweatingthat I could not help myself from thinking about how everyone should, at some time in their lives for an appreciable amount of time, live in a country besides the United States.  Not because I think people from the U.S. Are “out of touch” or “don’t have any idea how great you have it” (well, not everyone), but just so that they could experience the same unmitigated glee I had the first time I drove a car in a year, or got to have a phone call that didn’t cut out five times in twelve minutes, or to have the opportunity to eat anything you want anytime of day or night.  It was indescribable.  Oh, and the internet worked like, all the time.  

It was sad, yet somewhat serendipitous, to have lost my grandfather during the two-week period that we went home.  My Grandpa Ted taught me many things, including how to fish and appreciate baseball, but also how to add value to every interaction with life that we get.  It was my grandfather that introduced me to writer Norman McAllen's A River Runs Through It, who taught us that it is possible to “love completely, even without complete understanding.”  We shared a love of technology and philosophy, which meant that he taught me many lessons in morality while he witnessed my first Mortal Kombat match at an electronics store in Olympia when I was eight.  My grandfather led a remarkable life, valued compassion, humanity, and knowledge, and touched many lives in his time on the Earth.  He will be missed.

All in all it was a great trip home, and a much needed break from the “toughest job I’ll ever love.”  We got to see so many special people (although not as many as we wanted), ate far too much good food, and regained our energy and focus to finish out the second half of our service.  Emblematic of this attitude was when we had our flight from Houston to Belize cancelled, take many hours and multiple days of bus riding from the airport to our village, only to find that our well pump is broken (again), someone had consumed all of our drinking water (without asking or replacing it), an entire wardrobe with a fresh coat of mold on it, and that termites had destroyed our ceiling.  After we calmly went about securing more water, filling the well tank, and cleaning the unbelievable amounts of termite excrement from our ceiling, I couldn’t help but laugh as I thought to myself that the termites probably regretted eating as much of my ceiling as I did eating all the junk food I had in the states.  This is not the laugh of the person that came to Belize, but the laugh of the Peace Corps Volunteer that will eventually leave it.

Those laughs come a bit more easily than they once did, as does the appreciation I have for the changes that I know I am experiencing in my life.  That is what life is about these days as I live in this beautiful, swampy little village where I do battle with the termites far more frequently than I get to consult people on business matters, where I spend more time waiting for buses and empty pick-up truck beds to get me where I need to go than waiting for football season (ahem, “American” football) to start, and more time trying to speak an unwritten, undocumented Maya language than trying to see what’s showing at the movies.  This won’t be our life for very much longer, but even as we transition to whatever new adventure we find, I will know that forever and always, no matter where we live our lives, a river runs through it.