Friday, October 9, 2009

Independence Day, COS, Dueñas feria, 25th birthday, library, bad bananas, home stretch…

Independence day on September 15th was well celebrated. The thing is, as most celebrations in Guatemala, it´s not just the day, but the entire week leading up to it. So every afternoon for the preceding week there were school presentations of traditional dances, complete with the burning of the bull and devil where they set off firecrackers that are strapped to some one while they dance around. Pure craziness. Following the presentations is the sale of all the traditional foods from the region that each kid brings. But there isn´t that much quantity, so everyone pushes to get at the good food stands before everything runs out. I enjoyed delicious pinol, atol, ceviche, tostadas, torejas, manjar, etc.

To celebrate our completion of service, almost our entire group, or what´s left of us (we have lost five for various reasons along the way), went to the beach on the Pacific Coast at Monterrico where we have celebrated occasions in the past. It was a delightful time hanging out all together celebrating our service and discussing what comes next for us. The general drift is go back to the states, live with family, look for a job, and for some apply to grad school. It´s tough times for job hunting, despite this awesome experience we now all have. We all cooked meals together, splashed in the ocean, lounged in the pool, played beach volleyball, and danced into the night, soaking in our last time together as a group.

Our beach extravaganza was followed by our official Peace Corps Close of Service Conference. This three day conference in a nice colonial hotel in Antigua with delicious food was super helpful in terms of processing our service, preparing to leave, and looking at next steps. We covered all the PC paperwork and drama of closing bank accounts and getting flights, medical stuff, review of aspiration statements and letters to ourselves that we wrote before service, accomplishments during service, grad school options, job searches and interviews, evaluation of PC Guatemala and our respective programs. It was all rather emotional too with tears because the good byes started, we showed a slideshow of a selection of our photos with each other, and our muni program supervisor is retiring after 27 years working for Peace Corps and we are his final group. Our final night we got all dressed up fancy for dinner and did an activity where we guessed each others´ five year plans that we had each prepared anonymously.

The women´s soccer tournament continues with games every Sunday. Our team is doing well and it´s lots of fun. The only thing is it is ridiculously hot under the heat of the midday sun playing in the dusty dirt field. And we don´t have uniforms so the colors always get confusing. And everyone always arrives late and both teams start playing without full teams, and slowly the teams fill out. Every week. It´s kind of ridiculous, but really fun.

I had to go to the Peace Corps Office to give a training to the new trainees on Gender and Development as part of my committee work. It was good to spend some more time with the trainees who are going to replace us and the training went well. I stayed with a volunteer friend in San Miguel Dueñas, near Antigua, which was celebrating their town fair. That´s sure a town that knows how to celebrate! It was intense. There were firecrackers and bombs going off all night. There was awesome live music, rides, games, and tons of food. We hit up the taco and churro stands multiple times and rode the giant ferris wheel forever since they don´t let you get off until there are more people to get on. We probably spent over 30 minutes up on that rickety, rusty machine, but had a great view of the awesome fireworks shows. The bands played well past 6 am and in the morning there were drunks passed out all over the streets.

I celebrated my 25th birthday here is El Chol with lots of good celebrations. My third birthday in Guatemala! The week before I celebrated with some girlfriends during the feria in Dueñas and they made me a cake. I did a piñata party with my host family on Sunday Oct. 4th where Doña Hilda made chuchitos and I made a funfetti cake and the kids thoroughly enjoyed whacking at the piñata and getting at all the goodies. A couple of the sisters from the house gave me framed photos of their family that were really cute. Then on my birthday I received many hugs and good wishes and many “may that God bless you and that He give you many more years of life.” After work my coworkers from the muni threw me a little party at one of their houses with a little duck/chicken piñata and food a cake and jacks tournament. After that I had my English students over and I baked a pizza, their favorite, and we drank micheladas. All in all, a great day well celebrated.

A little while ago we organized a library improvement committee here in El Chol since the library here, well, sucks. And we´ve been super lucky and got various institutions, both private and public to donate books. We´ve gotten donations of a few hundred books of various types, the most importante being some children´s books that were seriously lacking. Hopefully these efforts continue since we have visions of creating a children´s corner, story hour with activities, study groups for older kids, etc.

With all the problems with malnutrition and no rain and all that, there have been way more food donations and distribution from institutions and the government here. Of course that causes all sorts of problems of how to distribute the goods. Really, there is no good way to do it. They had each community mayor make a list of all the people in their communities, and then separated out all the corn, beans, oil, sugar, etc. that they are giving away into bags and had all the people come to town. But of course there are always problems with people who didn’t make it onto the list, and communities that weren´t accounted for at all due to political reasons. Drama. Also, there was a huge donation of Chiquita bananas, which were intended for the schools. Well, they didn´t get distributed so when they started to rot, they started just giving them away to the municipal employees and people and the street and just whoever in general. The garbage cans in the muni were full of banana peels. Quite disheartening.

Well, I´m coming down the homestretch here! Less than one month to go being in the Peace Corps. I´m trying to get prepared for my departure since there is so much to do between preparing my replacement, organizing materials and documents, cleaning out my house and giving stuff away, getting Peace Corps paperwork in order, assembling thank you cards and parting gifts, and packing. It´s a very complex process on the one hand being so excited to come home and see everyone, and on the other it being so hard to say good bye to everyone here not knowing if/when I´ll see them again.