Dia de los Santos, elections, kickboxing

So for All Saints Day, we went to go visit one of my good friends in the town of Todos Santos Cuchumatans in the department of Huehuetenango. It is a very indigenous town in the Western Highlands unique in the fact that everyone that lives there still wears the traditional form of dress, including the men and youth. As a result of the 30 year bloody civil war, lots of people, especially men stopped wearing their traditional clothing. But in Todos Santos it is so cool to see everyone still wearing it. The men wear bright red striped pants and everyone where these small hats with a blue and red band. It’s like the whole town is in uniform. It’s fascinating to see how the youth adapt their clothes by wearing the pants super baggy, ripping the shirts, attaching patches, or wearing Metallica shirts with it. They speak the indigenous language Mam, although most people speak at least a little Spanish it is difficult to communicate. It is SUPER cold there too. It’s clear in the morning and then around noon the clouds roll in and it’s super foggy. Since there is no indoor heating of anything here, you see your breath all day long. You layer many sweaters, and they’re not enough and the water is so cold to wash your hands it burns. November 1st is their feria so there are lots of people that go there for their famous horse riding event, which consists of a bunch of very intoxicated men riding back and forth on the dirt road that goes out of town on a stretch about 200 meters. All day long. Not racing. No winner. Just riding. Every so often one of the guys falls off and there is a big “oohhh” from the crowd. This year the first woman ever participated in the event. She was also intoxicated. The whole event was so interesting. I felt like I was in a whole different country…it’s a different world out there on that side of Guatemala. It was quite the trek to get out there from my site and many uncomfortable hours of chicken bus riding. On the way back, some guy was throwing up on the micro. The driver got really mad and stopped and kicked him out, but demanded that he clean it up first. We were in the in middle of nowhere, so the guy went off into the bushes on the mountainside and collected some yellow wildflowers, which he then used to clean up his own vomit. Priceless.

The elections here were big news! For the days leading up to it, people would greet me with, “who’s gonna win?” and the days following with jubilant comments about how they were pleased with the results. It makes you realize that these elections were not just for our country, but the whole world was really hanging on them. I went to a prayer session the day after for the birthday of one of the señora´s sons who is in the States, and the woman leading it gave a long prayer for Obama that God give me wisdom, courage, and strength so that he would lead our country and the rest of the world in an honorable way. It’s funny to step out of context and think that in some small rural town in Guatemala there are elderly women praying for our soon-to-be president.

My site mate and I are deeply involved with our World Map project now. We are painting a map of the world the size of the entire basketball court in the elementary school in the town. So far we have measured everything out, painted the background all white, and draw the grid lines from which will guide how we draw it all in. We got a bunch of the students from the high school to help us and it looks like its going to turn out really cool!

After meeting with the mayor and a couple members of the City Council again, we finally have begun the process of contracting the coordinator of the new Municipal Women’s and Youth Office to start working in the beginning of January! Yay! A year in waiting and it looks like it’s going to happen! So in order to announce the position, we hand wrote in permanent marker a bunch of posters to put up around town, in the fashion that any important information is disseminated in El Chol. I’ve have lots of women come up to ask me about the job, even one woman came and tracked me down at my house at night while I was washing dishes in my pajamas to ask me about it. Next week we’ll sit down and review the applications and call people in for interviews. I hope this all comes together.

Since the women in my family all have high blood pressure and cholesterol, they are trying to get into working out. So the other day I brought down one of my exercise DVDs that I figured out is dubbed in Spanish and we did a kickboxing workout. It was hilarious! Of course all the kids joined in too. Everyone is extremely uncoordinated but had a great time anyway bopping around and kicking and punching the air at will. Oh I wish I had a video of them to show…