Chiapas

Hi there,
We just got back from the indigenous community of Tzajalchen this morning, and it was a completely different experience than here in San Cristobol. The people of the community were so generous and despite their poverty they were very humble and eager to share with us what they could.
My favorite part about staying in the community was playing with the kids. All of the members of the Tzajalchen community speak a complicated language called Tzotzil. It is nothing like Spanish, and caused an even larger language barrier than what already existed with the Spanish. The men in the town do, however speak Spanish because they go to the city a lot and deal with many Spanish speakers so it is a necessity for them. The women, however, remain in the community and have no need to know anything but Tzotzil so that is the only language they know. The children learn Spanish in school but do not like to speak it, they generally communicate in their native language but we found that some of them would talk to us in Spanish. Something that is also interesting is that the women and girls dress in traditional clothing and the boys and men do not. The bathrooms there are just a toilet seat and you have to get a bucket of water to flush it because they do not have running water, and we also had to take a flashlight to the bathroom at night because there is no electricity in the bathroom.
Another thing about the children that I noticed when talking to them up close is that their teeth seem to be decaying due to a lack of dental care, Im sure. When we talked to the leaders of the community they todl us that many years ago they asked the government for a small clinis in order to care for their community. Apparently something happened to the papers and they never got to building one, so the community relys on a health house that isnt the best facility because it only has old medicine and not much else to care for sick members of the community.
Well its time for me to go, Im sure other travelers will be in touch soonª