Kamusta Hive friends. 🖐️ Hope you are all doing well and living a happy life.
Speaking of happiness, I felt really relieved from the stress having this week long spring break and couldn’t wait to share it to this wonderful community.
The road trip
It’s no surprise to everyone how amazing Arizona’s landscape is as what I always featured in my previous vlog. But do allow me to share some of these mind relaxing view that we truly enjoyed as we had our 4 hour travel going to my friend’s place to Keams Canyon, the land of the Hopi Tribe, one of the country’s Native American groups.
The host
For context, my friend Anjie was my former co-teacher in a private school where I used to teach and just like me, she is a J1 exchange teacher and her family are currently residing in the northern part of Arizona. However, unlike me, she is working in one of the most remote places in the state, the reservation areas. As soon as we arrived to their very accommodating abode, we had an early dinner with the most sought after dried fish or locally called as buwad pinikas. We had shared laughs and fun experiences in the journey that we are currently in.
This is us having the best dinner ever together with my friend Anjie and her hubby Eric. They were very kind to prepare this Filipino food for us.
The quick tour
Right after catching up with the millions of stories we never shared, she decided to give us a quick tour to their very unique and amazing place - the Keams Canyon.
I was just expecting to just see the view of the delicate Keams Canyon. I was truly amazed as how this canyon possess such distinctive features from the other canyons that I’ve seen. However, to my surprise, it has become a more meaningful excursion to the place of the Native Americans.
These are the wonderful photos we snapped as we went to the scenic spot of the Keams Canyon.
The coffee shop
Anjie knows I’m a big coffee person. To my surprise, she intentionally brought us to this very amazing coffee shop currently managed by a Native American - he belongs to the Hopi tribe. I was quite impressed how he got the modern coffee machines and able to offer us a very delicious hot coffee perfect for the cold weather. This man was generous enough to give us permission to take photos and I even dared to ask the history behind this wall full of photos. Then , he gladly shared how he managed the tourism event in the place and have the tourist bring home the very nice Hopi shirt with a print that says “Don’t Worry be Hopi”. The tourists showed great commitment on taking a picture of the shirt from their home country and to see how far their shirts reached. I wanted to purchase one sadly they only have caps available during that time.
The villages
Bringing our coffee with us, Anjie was able to ask his workmate Mr. Robert who is a native to the place and gave us a quick tour on the villages as they called it Mesa 1, 2 and 3. There were places where we are not allowed to take photos on so we respected it. Yet, this does not stopped us to appreciate the place and the culture that they’ve long protected and preserved.
From the highway, you can see huge mound or plateau where Hopi tribe settled their communities in a form of clans (family)
These are pictures of how they built their houses uses bricks and mud. However, only very few were kept that way as most of the houses were already furnished in a modern way. We were privileged enough to tour around the village. They value their privacy so much that we can only take photos as we were in the car.
The learning
After a quick excursion with Mr. Robert, he shared this very meaningful knowledge about their Hopi Tribe.
- Keeping their culture and rituals to themselves allow them to protect it from any outsider’s exploitation.
- As society offers easier life makes our life even harder. He explained how people nowadays chose buying food from stores than planting and harvesting their on crops. Thus, making life even more difficult to keep up with the prices and took more of the time earning money to provide for the basic needs instead of spending quality time with the family.
- People forgot that our environment offered everything we need yet we tend to be more greedy and discontented.
Hope this blog of mine brings delight to your day.
‘Till next time..Thanks for dropping by 😊