As you sow so shall you reap

It's the sembra, or the planting season, so many families are planting their corn for the year.   The Mayan belief here is that the men must go out to sembrar with "panzas llenas," or full bellies, or their crops will be eaten by pests and destroyed before harvest.  So each day of the sembra a different woman from the village hosts a midday feast at her house.  She and her sisters, mothers, and daughters cook all morning long and around 2pm the men come to feast on caldo--a typical oily orange broth with meat and vegetables--with tortillas, tayuyos, tamalitos, and cacao (a hot drink they make by crushing up cocoa beans and adding water, sugar, and cinnamon.)   The men stuff themselves and go out to sow, while the women do the equivalent of eating over the kitchen sink...they nibble at pieces of meat and tortillas while cleaning up.  It's a lot of work for the women, but they seem proud to be the hosts, and consequently, I have been invited to come "sembrar" with women from the pila project for three days in a row now.  Yesterday it was duck and smoked pork soup with tayuyos (I got there early and the women let me help them make the tayuyos...they all know tayuyos are my favorite), and today it was chicken and smoked pork soup with tamalitos.  The portions they serve me are equally as prodigious as the men's so I find myself relying on the Q'eq'chi' "xel," which roughly means to doggie-bag it.  You can't turn down food here, and if you don't finish it, you take what's left, wrap it in a banana leaf, and take your xel home with you to share with your family (or in my case, my neighbors and roommates).

 

My sembra booty. Some meat, tortillas, and tamalitos.

Today as I was sitting in the kitchen, wrapping up a giant chunk of smoked pork in my banana leaf, Estella said something about me that provoked a burst of laughter from all the women in the room.  I told her playfully, "I know you're talking about me, what did you say?" and she replied in Spanish, laughing, "Yesterday when you were in the kitchen with us making tayuyos, one of the men came in, saw you, and said, 'Look at her making tayuyos--she's a Guatemalan now, isn't she. She should be my wife.'"  I laughed and made a joke about how my husband will be the one who makes tayuyos for me.  They thought this was hilarious.  We laughed, finished wrapping up our xels, and went on our way.
I love these women.