By Roda Obang
We started off our morning with breakfast. This was our last meal at IMAP. During breakfast all of us were discussing how great it was at IMAP! After breakfast, we gathered together and Javier gave a lesson on Maya cosmovision dates. He began by reviewing the sacred day we were on, connecting it to the Nawal “9 Aj”, which symbolizes support, steady growth, and the importance of family, using corn and its kernels as a metaphor for personal and collective development.
From there, he introduced the “Maya Long Count,” explaining how days accumulate in cycles (kin, winal, tun, katun, baktun), and showed how December 12, 2012, was not the “end of the world” but simply the completion of a great cycle and the beginning of the 13th baktun. Javier emphasized that this count has been running for over 5,000 years, is deeply mathematical and spiritual, and is recorded on stone stelae at sites like Palenque and other Maya cities as a way to mark specific historical moments in time.
After the lesson, we drove back to Guatemala City. The three-hour journey was filled with conversations about how great IMAP was, and talks among ourselves as our time there had genuinely brought us closer. Along the way, we got to see different parts of Guatemala and stopped for lunch. Once we arrived back in the city, we took some time to reflect on the week and all the communities we visited and the knowledge we picked up. Most of us found ourselves landing in a similar place with our reflections, which felt meaningful. We then headed to a pizza shop called 502 Pizza, where we crossed paths with another delegation from BC Casa. We had a lot in common and made some good connections.
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