La Tribuna Day 6

Thursday, August 10, 2017
Joyabaj, Quiché Department, Guatemala
As always, we woke up at 4am thanks to the pole flyers starting their procession. We still have yet to see them on the pole... we enjoyed watching the parade move by, everyone and their mother were in the parade, I'm surprised as to how there were enough people left to be spectators. After that we walked down to La Cupula (another hotel) to reserve rooms since our normal hotel had sold out due to the festival. We came back and pretty much packed up to go meet with the mayor. This was a bit earlier than anticipated, and I wish we had a bit more time to prepare, but that's ok. José walked us over to a nearby restaurant where we met up with Steve and Waleska (high up in EWB-Guatemala). It was so so so kind of them to make the trip to Joyabaj for this meeting. We talked for an hour, maybe an hour and a half about our project, what we want to say to the mayor, and life in general before the mayor actually arrived. We knew he'd be late but not an hour and a half late. He's got a lot going on with the festival and all, so it was also nice of him to agree to meet with us. The way that his schedule was going, we ended up joining the kickoff  lunch for the festival, and all the city officials were there, along with the recently-elected princessa and séniorita (Joyabaj's hottest beauty pageant). The mayor talked with us for about an hour, when he had to leave to talk to the princessa who was walking out because she felt ignored by the mayor. Oops sorry princessa. 
Everything was in Spanish and I wasn't near the translator, but the main points of the conversation were that this was a typical way to get water, and that the mayor is not interested in a master plan because of the cultural differences and conflicts of the people even within the city. That was good to know, but taking the cultural lens off, it's just sad that people can be so different that they can't share a common necessity like water. Why can't the world get along???
Sorry that was a super gringo perspective. 
We talked wit Steve more and it sounds like we can see if we can talk to more families who want to be part of the system, charge them the same as the others had to pay for the spring, and add them to the system, since right now it sounds like there will be excess water. That doesn't account for people selling water to their neighbors. Ugh. 
We came back to the hotel and debriefed, but eventually got to a point where we were too overwhelmed and exhausted, and called it a night. 
Cat, Kassie, and I walked over to La Cupula for the night where we got a lovely dinner of ham sandwiches and french fries and beer. I needed fries. We were basically beat so we went straight to bed. 
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