CODEDE, trainees visit, rain

This month it was El Chol´s turn to host the CODEDE meeting, the Departmental Development Council. So all the mayors from the eight municipalities came to our town, along with representatives from all the ministries of government, NGOs, senators, and representatives from indigenous groups, women, workers, small businesses, etc. It was a super long meeting but also good to be informed as to everything that is going on. The meeting was held in a primary school just outside of town since the muni here doesn´t have a meeting place. So of course, classes were cancelled for the day since it is perfectly acceptable here to cancel class for really any reason. I got there at 6:30 in the morning to help set up and the meeting lasted until 2:30. It was long and draining. They discussed all the infrastructure projects that the Council approved and all the mayors and representatives had chances to talk and discuss, at length. After the meeting, the mayor provided a rather elaborate lunch for all in attendance with options of carne asada, seafood soup, or whole fried fish. I had the opportunity to talk with representatives from the ministries that work directly with women´s groups.

This week the newest group of Peace Corps trainees in the Youth Development Program was in El Chol for the week for their field-based training. It was fun to get to meet the newbies, spend time with them, show them my house, and give them a few tips now that I'm a ripe volunteer with six months in site under my belt. I watched some of the presentations they gave in the middle school and was impressed with their execution. It was really cool because the high school invited the whole group a dinner and dance they were having to celebrate their school´s anniversary. So we all went and ate dinner with them and attended a Guatemalan high school dance. The dancing and intermingling were fun. Good times! The next night we collaborated to put together an intercultural talent show. They did some singing, folk dances, and lip syncing. We had some people sing “Yellow Submarine” (with my guitar), do a hilarious skit, and we did our own traditional folk dance of the “Electric Slide” and then taught it to them. They all whooped and hollered as we demonstrated the dance and had a little bit of a tough time learning but there was lots of laughing throughout the whole experience. It was quite amusing and good times were had by all.

So there were a bunch of tropical storms that passed over Central America. We didn´t get hit by them, but it rained a ton and the temperature finally dropped a little. In town the streets turn to rivers and the roads leading into town become pure mud. There just isn´t the infrastructure and drainage to handle the amount of water. I washed a bunch of clothes on Saturday and they didn´t really dry til Thursday cause the air is so humid.