Mumbles and Jumbles

Its funny how your perceptions, expectations, and the things that you get excited about change. For example, this morning I put my 5 gallon empty water container out to get a refill from the water truck that comes through once a week. In past weeks it has been replaced in the morning, but by the time I left for work today it hadn’t come yet so I assumed that it wouldn’t be coming today and made a mental note to boil some drinking water this evening. But when I came home for lunch, the filled container was sitting outside my door and I got really excited! The thought of being in the states and getting a moment of joy about how I had water to drink for the week gave me a chuckle.

Similarly, as I was browsing through the Sunday market last weekend, I was overjoyed to have my attention drawn by shouts of “Queso! Queso!” to the glittering squares of a type of fresh, crumbly, salty homemade cheese for sale. I told the senora selling it, as she wrapped me up a piece in a large green leaf, how happy I was and asked how she knew what I was lacking. Usually you have to wait for a different woman who goes around selling this cheese from a basket door to door, but if you’re not home you miss out. Now it’s no Beecher’s Flagship that’s for sure, but I needless to say I was happy nonetheless. It’s pretty good to eat with black beans on tortillas with a bit of chile sauce.

Ah yes, black beans. The equal staple of the diet here along with tortillas. I can’t remember if I recounted my first attempt to cook black beans here. Well, basically I made an attempt but didn’t add enough water and left my house, knowing it takes several hours to cook them, only to come back to a scorched pot and a kitchen full of smoke. The townsfolk got quite the kick out of it. Anyway, this week I made another effort and successfully cooked a pot full of yummy black beans that I’ve been eating off all week. I was quite pleased with myself. It’s the simple things that give you joy.

I experimented with making rice krispie treats. I used the odd margarine, multicolored marshmallows, and choco-krispies since that’s all that was available. The pink, blue, and yellow marshmallows melted into an interesting and not-so-appealing brown mush, but once you mix it with brown krispies it doesn’t matter so much. They turned out pretty good and were a big hit when I shared them with the family and everyone asked for the recipe.

I’ve started teaching English classes to adults two evenings a week after work. The turnout has been excellent with a total of 39 people who attended at least one class and a solid group of about 25 who attend consistantly. Its challenging since it is a large group and I’ve never really taught before, besides soccer camps to kids with is a really not comparable at all. But everyone has a really good attitude and is excited to learn and appreciative of my efforts. It is a bit strange to “discipline” adults and try to get them to be quiet and listen. Also getting Guatemalans to show up at an appointed time is very challenging. If you tell them 5:00, they think it’s still cool to saunter in at 5:30. Here when someone enters a room they still give a loud greeting and everyone acknowledges them, whereas in the states if someone is late they try to sneak in the back and not be noticed. So I’ve told that since the class is free, they need to pay me with punctuality. We’ll see if it gets better. I made a list of useful greetings and phrases and we went over the list with pronunciations and situations to use them. Then I had everyone get into pairs and create conversations from the phrases on the list and then share them with the group. I want the emphasis of the class to be on conversation and how people actually speak since I felt like that was lacking so much when I learned Spanish. Its still slightly nerve-wracking for me to be speaking Spanish in front of a group of almost 30 people, but as I told them it serves as an example that you just have to lose all your inhibitions of speaking, knowing that you will make mistakes, and just TALK since a lot of people (especially the women) are really timid to speak up. So far I really enjoy it.

Last weekend I taught the one of the women in the family how to make cinnamon rolls at the urging of her 6 year old son who had tried them in Pollo Campero. It was her first time to cook with yeast and no one in the familiy had baked with it before so it was fun explaining how it works. Of course it was quite the spectacle again with eveyone interested in the process and checking on the progress while they were rising. They turned out great and everybody really liked them. She tried to make them again on her own later that afternoon, but had used boiling water to activate the yeast which I think killed it, since they didn’t rise. I told her my theory and so she tried again the next day and they turned out beautifully. Her son also wants me to teach his mom how to make pizza so we might do that this weekend if she has time to go to the capital to buy mozzarella cheese.

I’ve gotten out and played some pick up sports this week too which has been really nice. I played basketball in the central park with a group of people, even though I’m terrible we were all about the same level so it was still fun. I also went to kick around a soccer ball with two other girls around my age at the community field. We had to share space with all the boys who were playing and when they organized a game, it was hard to watch and not be included. It’s strange how much separation there is between genders here. It was nice just to get out there and get a touch on the ball since I hadn’t played since I’ve been here. We kicked the ball around and watched the sunset over the hills until it was too dark to see.

While I’m thousands of miles outside the states, I try to keep up as best I can with current issues. I’ve been following the presidential campaign through Newsweek (which Peace Corps imparts to us), the New York Times online, and the Prensa Libre (the national newspaper). It is very interesting to see how one of the hottest election issues, immigration, plays out down here. Probably about 30% of this town is or has been in the states, most illegally. That’s just the fact. And so many people that you talk to want to go. It’s crazy to see so many families split up and to see the direct results of the remittances that get sent back. So much of the economy here is made up of remittances evident in nice motorcycles, houses, computers, etc. that you see about. Every single person you talk to has some family member in the states. When I ask people how many children they have, I then ask how many are in the states. It’s really hard to discuss immigration. People ask me questions, like “why do people in the United States discriminate against Latinos?” when they see the articles in the paper every week about all the deported Guatemalans being flown back; and “All I want to do is go visit my brother. Why is it so hard to get a visa?” It’s hard because people see it as their right to be able to go to the US and don’t understand why it’s made to be so difficult.

Last weekend I went and visited two other volunteers who live in the next department over. One made an awesome spaghetti dinner and it was great to get out and see their site and visit. The next day we went to the capital to go to Hiper-Paiz (the super-mega-uber store half owned by the evil Wal-Mart). I stocked up on goodies that I can’t get in my site like hangers, brown sugar, ground turkey, mozzarella cheese, and face wash to name a few. I also picked up pencil pouches and lunch boxes for the two little girls.

January 14th the new President, Alvaro Colom took office and it all went smoothly. January 15th was the taking of office for all the municipalities. My mayor was re-elected for the fourth time so he didn’t change but there was some changes in the city council and what not so there was a big ceremony in the market. I got there early in the morning to help my co-workers decorate for the event. While gigantic speakers blasted music I blew up tons of balloons for like an hour and a half. We strung them from wall to wall and set up the stage covered in pine branches. It turned out looking quite festive. Lots of people came out to witness the event with speeches, a review of the projects from the previous year and lots of formality of everything. A cool thing is that there are three councilors to the mayor and two of them are women. This is very rare and very cool. That should help get the Women’s Office approved and to receive funding I’m hoping. After the ceremony everyone rushed to congratulate the mayor and give hugs all around and take pictures. A marimba band played and the mayor provided a delicious lunch with beef to EVERYONE who attended. Pretty impressive.

That afternoon I went with my site mate to visit another volunteer who lives about half an hour away to hang out at her feria and attend the dance that night. We had a great time but it wasn’t nearly as impressive as the El Chol feria. The dance was in the outdoor basketball court in the center of town with a live ranchero band.

One of the women in the family has a brand new computer with Windows Vista on it and I’ve been showing her and her daughters how to use it. The 8 year old has some experience and catches on really quick and especially liked the videos of various animals on Encarta. Her mom has basically no computer experience and wanted me to show her how to print off big letters of the alphabet to post in her classroom. I was showing her word art in Word and it was quite the task since I had to show her the very basics of how to type a capital letter on the keyboard, delete letters, and how to click and drag a mouse.

My program director of Municipal Development for Peace Corps came for my site visit. My counterpart’s wife made a super yummy lunch for all of us with carne asada and rice with cheese! (Kraft-knock-off). He checked up on my living situation and we visited the office and met about how things have been going and plans for the upcoming months. We talked about my current projects with the Women’s Office, the municipal newsletter, ArcView GIS, coordinating with other NGOs and GOs, and English classes. He also brought me a mountain bike from the Peace Corps! So now I can peddle about on all the dirt mountain roads surrounding here. The family was all excited when I brought it home and everyone, including the adults, all tried it out and took it for a spin around the block. This morning I went for a nice ride before work.
Just today we set up a meeting with a bunch of NGOs and GOs that work in El Chol to meet in a couple weeks to coordinate the efforts that everyone is doing since up to this point there hasn’t been very good communication among the different organizations. I’m excited for that to be able to get a better grasp of everything that goes on and where I might be able to fit in.

I’ve been reading The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman here. If you’re not familiar with it, it is an interesting piece of nonfiction about globalization and the factors that have “flattened” the world such as the internet, PCs, offshoring, and outsourcing. It discusses how these innovations have made the world flat by increasing the existence and importance of horizontal relationships in the economy instead of vertical ones. I find it quite ironic to be reading about how advanced technology is getting and connecting the world together and how everyone is rushing around to find their new niche in this changing world economy while I’m bumping along a dirt road on a mountainside in Guatemala. On the one hand it so true and you see the evidence of the shrinking and flattening world with all the connections to the states. Buts its also hard to see the implementation of all that work flow software has to offer when all the official documents and registries for the muni are still handwritten. It makes me ponder…