Cornfield Trip
My host Cheyo disappeared every Saturday morning to work at the milpa. I imagined him working with his neighbours to pour corn into chutes, walk a wheel in circles to move the mill, and shovel the cornflour into sacks for everyone to take home. In fact, I must never have looked up the meaning of this false friend. On a whim, I decided to join him on my last day in San Pedro, assuming it would be a short trip to the top of the town, making for an easy walk to wherever I decided to go for the rest of the day. As soon as we were out of the house, Cheyo told me we'd need to get a taxi to reach the milpa, which I still thought was a mill. The taxi took us out of the Atitlan crater and along the adjacent cornfield-covered plateau for about ten kilometres before we got out and walked through the cornfields. Cheyo explained where each corn field started and ended and who owned each one until we arrived at his. The corn stood tall - about his height - but fruitless. Surprisingly, there were large piles of rocks throughout the fields, and Cheyo explained that the corn loved rocks for some reason, always growing stronger where the rocks were. I assume the volcanic rocks contain minerals that wash into the soil, but he couldn't confirm this. There was no work to be done on the corn itself. Instead, he took me to where he'd hidden his tools and we began to walk up the hill, beyond the corn to the tree line. Here, he showed me where he'd planted pine trees, still just bristly twigs,