In college, I remember reading a poem by Erica Jong about eggplant (one of my favorite foods). In the poem, a Middle-Eastern bride gets returned to her father because her dowry was insufficient. The groom was promised his new wife could cook eggplant a 100 ways, but she could only produce 99.
This versatility with one food source reminds me of how corn fits into the Mayan existence. Not only can they cook it infinite ways (including the best tortillas & tamales I've sampled), but corn remains their spiritual staple as well. It's the crux of the Mayan Creation stories and as befitting its stellar place in the culture, numerous words define corn's substance. There are words for its different parts, as well as for various stage in the growing process. People's little corn growing spots are called "milpa." As a former poet, I relish the way the word forms in my mouth, rolls around like a smooth stone and emerges with the soft feminine ending, appropriately as corn comes from Mother Earth.
Below you can see coffee drying on top of a cistern. Since water is the source of life, we will focus on cisterns later, but for now, look at the subtle beauty of the beans colored by late afternoon light. These days, most of the coffee is grown in Mexico where the men in these Guatemalan villages migrate half the year, following work in crops or construction.
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