Musings on Culture…and a few other updates

Ideas brought to the New World

At Reconnect we discussed differences in culture between Latin America and the United States in order to make some sense of the common frustrations we’d been experiencing in our work and living in our communities. Before I delve into cultural generalizations, I give the disclaimer that these are of course generalizations, I’m not trying to stereotype, and of course there are exceptions. While generalizations may not be true of every individual in the group, they serve as a framework for understanding. It is helpful while living in this total cultural immersion at times bewildered as to WHY people act in ways that make no sense to me to be able to analyze these differences.

We discussed the ideas from the book Views of Latin America based on the differences between values brought the New World by Spain/Portugal and England. In Latin America, the Spanish and Portuguese had the goal of recreating or transplanting their systems from Europe to the New World. On the other had the British were trying to break away from the old order in Europe had the goal of creating a whole new system. This resulted in stark differences between Latin American and North American cultures and below is a summary of SOME of the differences.

Latin America

Economy: feudal, land-based, mercantilist, monopolistic, state-influenced

Society: rigid two class immobile society

Education: rote memorization, deductive, unscientific reasoning

Religion: pattern of absolutism and orthodoxy

Politics: authoritarian regimes, conservative reactionary right with revolutionary left

North America

Economy: capitalistic, individualistic

Society: mobile middle class

Education: non-conforming, questioning, inductive, scientific reasoning

Religion: freedom and pluralism

Politics: supportive of representative democracy; free speech, press, assembly

Factors to keep in mind that influence Guatemala today:

-The high percentage of indigenous people and being a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual nation

-Machismo – apparent in discrimination in the workplace and public sphere, whistling/cat calls/inappropriate remarks on the street, domestic violence, women having to ask permission from their husbands to leave the house

-The history and repercussions of the 30 year civil conflict

-Corruption in politics, police, and an ineffective justice system

-Violence, delinquency, organized crime, narcotrafficking

-High levels of poverty being second highest in level of unequal distribution of wealth in the Western hemisphere, behind Haiti, according to UNDP

-The relationship to the United States economically, socially, geographically, historically

-Immigration: social effects of such a huge portion of the population living abroad and economic effects of remittances

-Influence of (or dependence on) NGOs/international development aid

Culture Matters

I might have mentioned some of the following ideas during training, I can’t remember, but after being in country for seven months now, they resonate stronger. Below are some of the difference between North American and other cultures. These ideas are taken from the book published by Peace Corps Culture Matters.

Individualism vs. collectivism. Self-explanatory.

Universalism vs. particularism. The idea that rules should apply to everyone equally or whether rules apply differently to different people, depending on how much money or influence you have.

Monochronistic vs. polichronistic. Concept that time is objective and punctuality and completion of tasks is valued vs. subjective concept of time that is more fluid and where punctuality and timely completion of tasks are not as important.

Low power distance vs. high power distance. Society is less hierarchical and it is acceptable for those in positions of power to associate with those who have less vs. rigid social hierarchies with stricter rules about interacting with superiors.

Achieved vs. ascribed status. Staus is achieved through hard work and education vs. who you know or who your family is.

Interal vs. external control. Life is what I make it vs. life is what happens to me.

How culture is reflected by language (or how culture is shaped by language?)

Obviously language is culture. The longer I live here and the better my Spanish gets, the more I see how intertwined they are. It is interesting to compare how

Gender. Latin American culture is machista. Every noun has a gender and every adjective has to agree in gender. Linguistic rules regarding gender are rigid; societal rules regarding gender roles are rigid. The word for wife, esposa, is the same word for handcuffs. Hmm…what is that saying?

Relationship to nature. In English we say We’ve had a lot of rain. In Spanish you say Ha habido mucha lluvia (There has had a lot of rain). To whom does the rain belong? English speakers want to own and control everything, including rain, whereas Spanish speakers don’t treat nature as belonging to anyone.

Responsibility/blame/fatalism. In English the passive voice is rarely used and taught to be avoided. In Spanish it is a common and acceptable construction. In English we say I broke the window and claim responsibility for the action. In Spanish they say Se me quebró la ventana (the window was broken to me), which in the passive voice avoids blame for the action as if it were out of control of the speaker.

Okay back to what else has been going on…

April has been a crazy month of birthdays for the family that I live with. Birthdays here go something like this. Around 5 am they light off firecrackers to wake the whole neighborhood. Sometimes there is loud music in accompaniment. They don´t go to school or work that day, because it´s their birthday (or their parents don´t go to work in order to prepare the celebration). The whole morning is spent preparing a lunch and baking a cake that will be shared with the family members and perhaps some close neighbors and friends. With all the hours it takes to prepare the lunch, it is scarffed up in no time. For kids there is a piñata in the afternoon where all their little cousins are invited. Every kid has a chance to swat at the piñata and there is a mad rush for all the candy that erupts out. Then there is singing of Happy Birthday (in English oddly enough), cutting of cake, serving of snacks – usually sandwiches with chicken salad on white bread. The whole affair is festive and fun. This week it was Luisito who turned seven. He is seriously the cutest kid ever and his chubbly little cheeks were glowing with delight the whole day. I gave a him a snappy red toy car that he was quite excited about.

One of the NGOs active in El Chol is starting a project for a Youth Council project. It will involve 4^th through 8^th graders in a process of learning about citizen participation through elections, creating an agenda of needs, and executing projects that they come up with. So the NGO took a group of people from El Chol and Rabinal that included teachers, city council members, and other involved people to the town of Los Amates in the department of Izabal in the eastern part of the country. There we met with some youth who had been active in the Council in their towns and their adult mentors and they shared their experiences. It was a great meeting and we learned a lot that we will hopefully be able to implement here in El Chol. We were near the East Coast, so it was ridiculously hot. We bought ice cream and couldn´t eat it fast enough to keep it from melting all over the place. We took advantage of being in that region of the country to visit the Mayan ruins of Quiriguá in the afternoon. After driving for awhile through endless banana plantations, there are huge monoliths with carvings. There is also part of the city which is still being excavated where you can see the stadium and perfectly carved steps. It was a fun day all around, despite getting up at 2:30 am to leave by 3 and getting home at 9:30 at night. It was cool to hang out with the teachers and city council members.

I've been trying to take advantage of the knowledge of the people who work for the NGO´s and to tag along when they make visits out to the communities around here since the muni itself does not have any transportation. I went again with a Licenciado (term for someone with a Bachelor’s degree) who works for an NGO that gives workshops on citizen participation and the development councils system to the aldea of Los Jobos. It’s great to observe his presentations and it´s a wonderful opportunity to meet people from the communities and introduce myself. I chatted with the COCODE president there and he asked me to give a short presentation to the middle schoolers there who were going to help him fill out the agua and sanitation questionnaire that I designed for our Municipal Database. So I flew by the seat of my pants and entered a crowded classroom full of about 50 curious middle schoolers and explained to them the questionnaire. Talk about intimidating. The workshop with the Licenciado ended up started an hour and a half late because another NGO had planned a personal hygiene presentation for the same time, so we had to wait til he was finished. I was once again surprised by the number of people who didn´t even know how to write their own names and had to use a fingerprint as their signature on the sign in sheet. In all about 40 people attended the workshop and participated well. These workshops almost always include a snack and a meal provided by the NGO, which stretches the budget. On the way back into town we stopped at a friend of the Licenciado´s family’s house in another community. They were very kind and gave us pure sugarcane juice, a strong, sweet, brown beverage and dinner of tortillas, beans, and eggs.

The next morning I observed another workshop that the Licenciado put on, a training for trainers. This is a program where community leaders are elected to be trained to train other community members in a program about the System of Development Councils using prerecorded CDs and workbooks. Once again it was good to get to know more community members and learn more about the programs.

Last weekend I went with my site mate to the small rural community of Chilascó, about three hours north of El Chol. We visited the ecotourism volunteer who lives there and works with the community association that manages the park with the tallest waterfall in Central America. The town itself is quite small and has limited services, but after asking around with found a woman put together some plates of beans with hot dogs and tortillas to take with us to eat to complement the other tienda snacks we found. It´s a beautiful place that with cool fresh air and totally green. We camped out in the cloud forest, aptly named because you are literally walking through clouds. It´s like a tropical jungle, but not hot. The hike in is a bit strenuous, but totally worth it to be in the thick of such a peaceful forest. Our attempt to make a fire had limited success so while we did get some small sticks to catch on fire, we were never able to get any big flames that stayed. We slept on the ground with a mosquito net in a covered area with a thatched roof. It was nice falling asleep with the sound of crashing water. In the morning we hiked the rest of the way in to get right up next to the waterfall, although it was so foggy we couldn´t see a thing and all the pictures are of grayness. It was an awesome trip though and I felt like my soul was revived after spending some good quality time with nature.

There was a 5 on 5 soccer tournament planned in which the employees in my office organized a team. Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to play since there was to be a men’s league and supposedly a women’s league. Except that they couldn’t get enough women together to play, so I couldn’t play.

One of the very frustrating things about work here is that meetings get cancelled often, with short notice, or no notice. Several times it’s been planned to meet with the city council to get our Women’s Office project approved, but the meetings have been canceled. We also had a meeting planned this week with our office, an NGO, and the mayor to discuss the situation of the COCODEs, but it was canceled. Then the monthly COMUDE meeting was canceled also this week because the mayor had to go out of town. I had several orders of business to attend to during this meeting, but it was unfortunately postponed for the following week when I have a mandatory Peace Corps security meeting out of town. So I’ll have to wait til the May meeting. The difficult thing is also that so many people are involved in the monthly municipal development council meetings that it’s hard to inform everyone. So several people who’d had to travel significant distances came into our office that hadn’t gotten the message that it had been canceled. Sad when the Planning Office can’t plan.

It´s mango season! There are delicious, delicious mangos abounding everywhere. You can buy them on the street conveniently cut up in bite-sized pieces. Or buy them large, whole, and juicy for a good price. I've made mango curry a couple times too after I bought too many mangos too eat and they got super ripe so I had to mash them up and put them to another use. It turned out to very a very yummy alternative use of mangos. I love that all the special fruits that are expensive in the states abound here….fresh pineapple, avocados, papaya, mangos, etc.

Reconnect

The first week in April we had “Reconnect” with Peace Corps – an opportunity to get back together with everyone in our training group at the Peace Corps office after being in our sites for four months. It was a nice opportunity to check in and hear how things are going in everybody’s site, share accomplishments, commiserate with common frustrations, receive technical training, and have Spanish classes. We had some interesting sessions on cultural adjustment too where we talked about our frustrations and strategies to combat them.

We stayed in Antigua all week so despite the fact that we were in classes or trainings all day long, it was like a mini-vacation. We stayed most of us together at a hostel that despite the dirty shared bathrooms, had a great terrace for hanging out on in the evenings. We ate really yummy Antigua food and went out salsa dancing. I got a chance to stock up on needed items like peanut butter and shampoo and internet time. It was really interesting to hear the projects that other people are working on from trash collection to opening libraries. Some people have very challenging sites and their biggest accomplishment was “I’m still here” which is a big accomplishment because we still have all 33 in our group that we started with back in Washington DC in August. Most groups lose at least a couple people by this point. Way to go guys!

It was hard to say goodbye to my fellow volunteer friends not knowing when the next time I’ll see them will be but it was nice to come back to El Chol after being gone for a week. Everyone greeted me warmly and told me they had missed me, which was nice to hear. I didn’t miss much around the office while I was gone. Everything was normal when I came back…the mayor is never in the office because he’s studying criminology in the capital, the secretary is smoking in his office and listening to marimba music, (like a xylophone) while he handwrites documents into big dusty books, and my coworkers are all glued to their computers, some working intently and others playing solitaire. They have been busy putting together project profiles and preliminary engineering studies for all the infrastructure projects planned for next year, which doesn’t have a lot to do with me. Right now they are still finishing up projects from 2006 and 2007, haven’t started the 2008 projects yet and are already planning for 2009. That’s how it goes.

I went to La Cienega this week, walking an hour each way, with the intention of making corn bread, but when I got there it turned out there was meeting planned at the same time to form the school committee. You never really know what’s going to happen when you show up to a community. The women felt really bad but I told them that it was much more important that they go to that meeting than make bread so I went along to the meeting with them. Basically, in order to receive any kind of additional funding, there has to be an official organized group of parents and teachers with a president, secretary, treasurer, etc. in order to receive funds. So they formed the group and are hoping to get funding to fix the broken windows, paint the school, and participate in the Glass of Milk program to get milk donated to the kids. It’s a very formal process with an official book of “actas” which are like meeting notes, but written in a very formal way. Everyone present has to sign and those who can’t write their name put their fingerprint. It was good to meet the teachers and more people from the community and I played soccer with the kids (all of 15 of them that attend the school) for awhile.

My English class is going well. We didn’t have class for two weeks this month, first for Semana Santa and then for Reconnect so we’ve had to do a lot of review. This week I wrote out the lyrics to Green Day’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams and we used it as a listening comprehension exercise. By the end they were all singing along and it was really cute.

The heat this week has been almost unbearable. We used to have the luxury of air conditioning at the office but it broke and now we all just sit there sweating without moving. In the middle of the day my house turns into an over as the tin roof heats everything up. Supposedly it will only last like this for a few more weeks and then the rains will start. It’s been raining occasionally at night so loud on the tin roof that you can’t hear yourself think. Yesterday it rained really hard in the afternoon for the first time and there was a double rainbow perfectly framing the church in the central park. The heat is the main topic of conversation with anyone. When you go buy something at the store, you talk about the heat. When you greet anyone in the street, you talk about the street. When you talk to anyone, at work or at home, you start off by talking about the heat. Every conversation goes something like this:

“Good morning!”
“Good morning! A pleasure to greet you.”
“What heat!”
“Yes, what heat!”
“Too much…”
“Yes, too much.”
“It looked like it wanted to rain”
“Yes, it looked like it wanted to rain.”
“Only God knows when the heat will subside.”
“Yes, that’s how it is.”

Semana Santa

I know I’m not changing the world here or even going to make any huge drastic changes to El Chol, but hopefully I will help a few people make their lives a little better or a little easier. My baking adventures continue. The press has been writing about how the prices of basic goods, including bread, have drastically increased in recent months while salaries remain stagnant and low. The women have been practicing the recipes that I taught them at home for their families, which makes me happy. The other day we made cake out of a box, which they didn’t know existed and they thought was the coolest thing ever. We made chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla cakes and corresponding flavors of frosting. Like usual, we baked them in sardine cans and they turned out beautifully. I showed the women the most recent pictures of my beautiful baby niece and they oohed and ahhed over her again. Here this is an interesting custom of gifting things, including pictures. So the women asked to have a picture of her, which struck my as slightly odd, but I obliged and gave them some of the extra pictures that I had and wrote her name and birthday on the back. They were absolutely thrilled and put the picture up on the wall right along with all the other family snapshots. It was cute. I had walked there by myself and it was a very tranquil walk in the early morning with fog still covering the corn fields. The walk home in the heat of the mid-day was a bit tiring, but I broke my rule and brought my ipod out of my house for the first time since I’ve been here and enjoyed listening to Michael Franti/Spearhead and Manu Chau as I sauntered back to the pueblo.

The prayer sessions returned to the house to honor the senora’s father who died. There are nine days of prayer sessions with food after a person dies, and another nine days 40 days after the death, and another nine after one year. So once again there were lots of people, but not quite as many as before, in the house each evening praying, socializing, and enjoying food provided by the family. One night I help dish out steaming hot cups of hot chocolate with rice and distribute them to everyone in attendance. It was nicely complimented with tostadas with tomato sauce and crumbled campo cheese. I took advantage of the opportunity of everyone gathered to again show off pictures of my rolly-polly adorable niece and everyone went nuts over her and couldn’t stop talking about how “preciosa” and delightfully plump she is.

While my Monday and Wednesday evening are occupied by English classes, Tuesdays and Thursdays are now filled with soccer games after work with co-workers. We play on the basketball court in the central park, so it’s a small, quick-paced game, with lots of spectators. The middle school is right behind it, which is in session from 2:00 pm to 7:00 (but for some reason they never seem to be in classes), so all the middle school students are out there watching us and cheering. The adolescent boys yell at me “canche! canche! [another word for a light-haired person] come here!” When I go up to talk to them, they get all embarrassed and don’t say anything and just giggle. It’s cute, but annoying. I’m the only girl playing with all these guys, plus I’m canche, so it makes it all the more a spectacle. The games are good and competitive and I keep up pretty well with everyone.

Like I’ve mentioned, there is a fair amount of support from international NGOs in El Chol. One of them is working with COCODEs and workshops on citizen responsibility. I asked to tag along to one of these workshops to observe in one of the rural communities. It was a great experience, just seeing how different the aldeas are from the town in interesting. I got stung by a giant bee “from the mountain” right in the middle of my cheek as soon as we arrived. It didn’t swell too much, gracias a dios. Everyone at first stares at me with that “what in the world is she doing here” look, which I am well familiar with. Throughout the meeting people unabashedly stare at me the whole time. But when I left they were all super nice and very gracious and thanked me immensely for coming, even though I didn’t do anything. When making a list of the people in attendance, the facilitator would ask them if they knew how to write in order to sign next to their name. If they didn’t (about half the women), they would put their fingerprint down instead. The meeting dealt with discussing what services the community had, how they got those services, what services were needed, and discussing making commissions to address what was lacking. The citizen responsibility part plays a huge role because of the emphasis on decentralization of the central government, the government isn’t going to come in and do projects. Instead, the responsibility lies in the community to organize itself to solicit funding to get the materials for the services they need, and then put in the manual labor to make them happen.

It’s interesting looking at this system coming from a country when I never questioned that where I lived had running water, electricity, sanitation, schools, stoves, and roads. Here, if a community lacks these services, it is their responsibility to organize themselves, petition the municipality or an NGO, wait, pester, wait, pester some more, and then put in the manual labor to execute the project. Taking into consideration that all this work they have to do in the free time outside their normal working hours in mostly subsistence agriculture. Thus, it’s impressive when projects get completed, and understandable when they don’t get organized or fall through. I wrote a little while back about that word “colaborar”, to collaborate, which I continue to hear all kinds of contexts, but especially with respect to the responsibility for the community to collaborate to get projects done. I suppose the same process happens in the states, like for example if a certain community decides they really need a stoplight at a certain dangerous intersection and the city hasn’t put one there yet, they may organize themselves and go petition the city for that stoplight. But it’s hard to imagine telling a community in the US that it is their responsibility to organize themselves, petition, and put in the labor to get running water. There, it is seen as a right and responsibility of the government to provide these “basic” services, whereas here it is seen as development and the responsibility of the citizens to make the government or an NGO provide. Such is development here. The role of international institutions is huge. There is immense reliance on these NGOs to pick up the slack where the government leaves off.

I was invited to have a birthday lunch with the family of one of my friends the other day. It was nice to relax for the afternoon among friends, several of which are in my English class. It’s cute because the tradition is to sing the Happy Birthday song in English here. The cake was a yummy but strange concoction made by dipping white bread in pineapple flavored gelatin mix before it solidifies and putting a cooked pineapple spread between the layers. It is eaten chilled with cream on top. Very tasty, but an interesting method.

Easter is a much bigger deal here than it is in the states and the whole week, Semana Santa (Holy Week), is vacation. The whole thing is bigger than Christmas and there are lots of family and social events. I took advantage of the days off to go travel along the Rio Dulce to the Caribbean coastal town of Livingston. The Rio Dulce is what flows from Lago Izabal, the largest lake in Guatemala. I made my way on six different vehicles of three different types. (Pickup truck, microbus, microbus, microbus, pullman (nicer big bus), microbus). I enjoyed the views along the way as I watched the landscape of the country completely change. Baja Verapaz is a mix of green and brown but as you travel east, the brown disappears and turns itself over to pure greenery. It gets hotter and muggier. You start to see lots of banana tree plantations and Del Monte, Dole, and Chiquita banana semi trucks making their way to the eastern port with their goods for the world market. You can catch glimpses of people outside their houses lounging in hammocks, shirtless men drinking beers in the morning, and kids playing in the dirt. The pace of life is relaxed in all of Guatemala, but it seems to slow down even more as the temperature rises in eastern part of the country.

After seven hours of travel from El Chol, I arrived in the town of Rio Dulce where we stayed for a couple nights. It is a hectic excuse for a human settlement, basically just a crossroads for Peten (the whole northern part of Guatemala), Guatemala City, and the Caribbean coast. It is super hot and muggy, there is tons of fresh tropical fruit for sale, and most people just get there and hop on another bus and leave. But it makes a good jumping off point to enjoy the lake and has lots of good seafood restaurants and inexpensive simple lakeside hotels. We found a cheap cabana and they had a boat to come pick us up to take us across the 50 yards of water to the place. (It’s so close they just yell to get a boat). So we got there and settled into the basic cabana on stilts in the water that creaked when you walked on them. We sampled the swimability of the water and found it quite pleasant and warm like bathwater. Getting hungry and venturing out for dinner, we realized that we were actually on an island only accessible by boat. Hmm….they hadn’t mentioned that to us. There’s just one guy to runs the little dingy back and forth and he was nowhere to be seen. So we ended up talking to this guy in the restaurant there and told us that he was headed in his private yacht to another hotel/restaurant owned by some Swiss guys only accessible by boat for a fabulous all-you-can-eat BBQ feast. That seemed like a wonderful idea and he invited us along. He was a crazy cool wealthy old dude with some interesting political views (loved Pinochet and thinks that dictators are the only way to achieve long-term economic success). We got along great and had engaging conversation. The meal turned out to be well worth it (the equivalent of like 7 dollars) with grilled chicken, beef, pork, shishkabobs, roasted veggies and corn on the cob and endless other amounts of yumminess. I’ve pretty much been eating vegetarian here since I don’t like to buy meat to cook at home, so I had been lacking good meatiness and thoroughly relished being a carnivore once again. After the scrumptious meal we zipped across the lake in his yacht to a disco. We passed the night dancing with all the foreign backpackers and hip kids from Guatemala City on vacation and watching our married friend flirt with the owner of the hotel we were staying at.

The next day took a hot and bumpy camioneta ride through the green steamy countryside to check out Finca El Paraiso, a crazy phenomena of naturally hot water cascading over rocks into cool river water that mixes together to make a delightful temperature for bathing. You can stand right underneath where the water falls over the rocks and its just like a hot shower, with a sulfur odor. It’s a good place to be wowed (again) by the ingenuity of nature and meditate on life for a bit. The day of swimming around was just what we needed to beat the jungle heat and relax after a long day of travel. It was cool because we went on a Sunday, which is the day when all the Guatemalan families go and spend the day swimming and picnicking. We munched on the best mangos I’ve ever tasted in my life and some moist banana bread off the street.

The other main attraction to see at Rio Dulce is Castillo San Felipe, this old castle built a few centuries ago by the Spanish to prevent pirate attacks and control access to the sea. It was restored back in the 50’s and makes an interesting little jaunt. Thinking we were cool, we decided to walk the three kilometers to the place in the blazing heat of the day and arrived sweating buckets. It was nifty to see the canons and small stone walkways and doors and take a little bite of history. We opted to find a microbus back into town.

The next day we hopped on a boat to cruise down the river to Livingston on the coast. The boat ride was gorgeous through a lush canyon with sheer cliffs covered in greenery. Saw lots of birds, collections of lillypads with pretty flowers, some other hot springs and caves with bats along the way. Luckily we had to no trouble en route, considering that two days before four Belgian tourists had been kidnapped by some community members there angry over some guy being thrown in jail. But the tourists had been released that morning after negotiations and our passing was tranquil, gracias a dios.

We reached Livingston, the smallish town on the Caribbean coast near the Belize border, reachable only by boat, where the Guatemalan Garifuna culture is concentrated. The Garifunas are a mixture of descendents from black slaves influenced by Guatemalan, African, Caribbean, and American cultures. They have unique music, dancing, and language that is a mix of English, Spanish, and something else I can’t remember. Livingston is a unique mix of Guatemalan, Garifuna, and foreign tourist cultures are mushing together. Both Spanish and English is spoken and it hard because you never know which language to use with people. The town itself consists of two main streets with hotels, restaurants, and tourist shops. There is fresh fruit, coconut bread, knick-knacks, and jewelry for sale on all sides. It is situated on a peninsula so you can walk from the beach across town a few blocks and get to the beach on the other side. You might be greeted on the street with “what’s up man?” or “buenos dias senor”. You might hear Reggaeton, American hip hop, Ranchera, or Punta (Garifuna) music. And then there are the tourists – domestic ones vacationing from Guatemala City with their stylish clothes and swanky walk; foreign older couples walking around wide-eyed with sweat-stained shirts, wide-brimmed hats, Teva sandals, and big digital cameras taking it all in (I think they came off the cruise ships maybe); foreign younger hippie backpacker-types trying to play it cool; and the occasional Peace Corps volunteer taking vacation feeling smug about themselves that they speak Spanish while listening to the other tourists struggling, and enjoying drinking a cold beer out of their site. It’s strange because it you were dropped into this town, it would be very difficult to figure out where in the world you were. It feels like a mix of the southern United States, the Caribbean, Latin America, and I don’t know what else.

The beaches around town aren’t very pretty so we took a day trip outside the city to a place called siete altares (the seven altars) where the river flows through seven different pools of smoothed rocks. You can swim in the deeper ones and jump off the ledges that don’t look very high from above, but are scary once you’re peering over the edge. After that we went to playa blanca (white beach) fittingly named for the white sand. Now that place was the postcard image of Caribbean beaches that is fixed in our minds. Swaying palms trees with hammocks strung between them, gentle warm waves washing over fine white sand, and a warm breeze bringing fresh salty sea air. The water is heavenly except that you can walk out super far and it still only comes up to your waist. Very different than the brutal crashing waves on the Pacific side. We laid around reading and dozing in the shade of the palm trees, trying to avoid skin cancer, but putting ourselves in danger in instant coconut-falling-on-your-head death.

In town we enjoyed the typical food of the town, tapado, a creamy coconut soup with every kind of seafood in it. It was deliciously sweet, rich, and savory and required a fair bit of work to eat as we pulled out a whole crab, a whole fish (with head), various octopus tentacles, shrimp with all their legs and eyes and various other unidentifiable sea creatures in their shells.

Thursday morning of Holy Week we got up early to get the first boat to Puerto Barrios, the main eastern port of the country. From there we caught several buses and microbuses back to Rabinal in Baja Verapaz, the town just an hour north of me. When we got to the terminal, we were informed that there were no microbuses running to El Chol that day so we had to go look for a pickup truck ride. When a truck stopped it asked where we were going and I said “El Chol” and he told me that’s where they were going too so we hopped in. Only a little way down the road he stopped at a place called “Los Chorros” and told us this was as far as he was going. Confused, we figured out that he had misheard me and thought that we wanted to go to Los Chorros instead of El Chol. So, we had to wait there. Coincidentally there was a family of eight waiting there too for a ride to El Chol…they had been waiting five hours already for a ride. So we waited for awhile debating what to do, munching on some knock-off Fruit Loops cereal to take care of our hunger. Randomly this middle-aged white guy come down the road huffing and puffing on a bike. We said good afternoon and started at each other and I asked him what he was doing there. He said he could ask us the same thing and we chuckled since we were out in the middle of no where on this dirt road. He was from Belgium and had ridden his bike from Cancun, Mexico to there and was headed for Peten in Northern Guatemala. He had been told that the road was paved and hadn’t been told that it was over some mountains. We chatted for a bit and he told us how he has done this sort of thing all over the world. Crazy awesome guy. By this point it was late afternoon so I called my family back in El Chol and the senor came to pick us and the whole other family up in his truck. It was like a two hour round trip for him so we paid him for gas but wouldn’t take any extra money. Very kind and definitely saved us.

I was so happy to be back in El Chol to see the Holy Week activities. It’s cool to see other places, but really cool to get to participate in stuff with people that you know. Thursday night there was a reenactment of the Last Supper in the central park, complete with costumes, lights, and sets. It was very serious and very well done. Holy Week here is famous for the “alfombras” or carpets that the people make in the streets to prepare for the elaborate processions with Jesus and the Virgin Mary. In El Chol various families and the schools each get a section of the street to do so we got up super early Friday morning to help the family with their section. First you spread fine sawdust all over, and then with cardboard stencils you decorate with dyed sawdust to create these elaborate patterns in the streets that really look like carpets. We spent several hours on these works of art and everyone down to the kids pitches in (colaborar :-) to help. Then when they are all finished preparing the route around town leading to the church, the processions make their way along the carpets and instantly ruin them. Jesus and the Virgin Mary are paraded through the streets while men hold them up like pallbearers. The procession stops at various houses and the priest gives a sermon at each stop with his portable microphone. I followed along for awhile, but it went on for awhile and the sun got really strong. Following the procession the family invited us to eat the typical Holy Week lunch with them consisting of re-hydrated dried fish and various breaded and fried starches and vegetables all smothered in a red sauce and the obligatory tortillas on the side. It was accompanied by fresh squeezed tamarind juice. Good to try, but I missed glazed ham, cheesy potatoes and green beans.

It is also Holy Week tradition for families and friends to go picnicking by the river. So Friday afternoon I went camping at the Rio Montagua, the longest river in Guatemala, with a bunch of the same people that I had gone camping with on the mountain last December. We got our provisions and all piled into a pickup truck for the hour’s super bumpy journey to the riverside. We collected a bunch of firewood and made a fire and everybody contributes food so there’s all kinds of tortillas and chicken and beans being cooked up and shared. I brought my ipod and my ipod speakers that I scored down here for like 6 dollars. They had fun going through my music and it’s always surprising what people pick out and know. They really like Blink 182, Coldplay, Metallica, Nirvana, Aerosmith, and Guns n’ Roses. Its funny. The night was made rather merry with cusha, homebrewed alcohol that we mixed with Super Cola. The following day we hung out by the river, went swimming (in the two feet of water – it’s the dry season), and grilled meat. It was a great relaxing day hanging out with a bunch of cool Guatemalans.

Saturday night there was a big community dance in the central park with a live Meringue band. It was lots of fun and there was lots of couples dancing, but as usual there were more people watching – parents keeping an eye on their daughters, adolescent boys too shy to ask a girl to dance, girls waiting to be asked, and the curious onlookers observing it all.

Ironically Easter Sunday was the most tranquil day of the week with few activities going on except for mass. While buying food in the market, I ran into one of the women from my women’s group in La Cienega. She is one of the coolest ladies ever…super smart, very motivated and a great leader. I met her husband for the first time, which just made me so sad, since he was drunk and blabbering and asking me for a visa to the states. She was obviously embarrassed and I just hate seeing such great women with such crappy husbands.
Monday it was back to work and the usual. Tuesday we had a good monthly meeting with all the institutions that work in El Chol. We scheduled a meeting with the mayor to reorganize and evaluate how the COCODEs are working and planned out how we are going to support reorganizing the working commissions of the COMUDE. Hopefully things will keep moving forward.

P.S. Here's an article about the war in relation to the community where I was waiting on the side of the road between Rabinal and El Chol for a ride back home.

http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/blog-entry/2008/03/24/american-genocide.html#

Cobán, Los Amates Feria, comunicación pública, community meetings, heat, schooling, etc.

I have been officially welcomed as a volunteer to the region of the Verapaces. Every time a new group of volunteers comes in, there is a celebration gathering of the volunteers in the region to welcome the newcomers. Last weekend there was a big party with all the volunteers from the departments of Alta and Baja Verapaz and from other areas of the country. I traveled with some fellow Baja Verapaz-ers on Friday to spend the night in the city of Coban. We had quite an interesting journey. At one point the microbus that we were on stopped behind a long line of cars and told us that it wasn’t going any further because there was a roadblock. Frustrating since we were only half way there and had already paid full fair. Obviously the driver knew about it beforehand, but of course failed to mention it to us. We were told that no transportation was getting through, but that you could walk across. So we got out and walked to the front of the line of cars and climbed under some branches that were (symbolically) blocking the road. It was funny since there were people selling cold drinks and frozen chocolate bananas and there was a relaxed atmosphere. This was the first of two blockages so we went on foot for a ways walking with our backpacks in the sun with a bunch of other people and a nice family that we met who was also going to Coban. Eventually a pickup came along offering us a ride and we hopped in the back and it took us to the second blockage. This one was a bit more intense and the people had set the branches on fire and were adding tires to the blaze. There were lots more people on this side and I ran into some people from my town and got the scoop of the situation. They told me that the town was mad because the police had lynched some people but that everyone was calm and it was safe to cross. So we stepped around the burning tires and made our way across and found another microbus on the other side that took us to our final destination. If I had been in that situation my first week in Guatemala I would have been nervous about the whole thing, but now that I’ve been here for over six months, it just seemed like a normal day and was no big deal. We talked to locals and scoped it out and it wasn’t a problem. Roadblocks are quite common here and more of a nuisance than anything else.

I had a funny conversation with the microbus driver on the way. I sat in the front seat crowded in and squished against him. He told me all about the processing plant that he worked in in New Jersey and the story of how he got deported and all that. It was crazy listening to his experiences, especially since there is practically a daily article in the papers with pictures of the planes landing in Guatemala bringing back all the deported.

Coban is a typical largish Guatemalan city surrounded by deep green almost tropical hills. It’s the hub of the central northern part of the country and is famous for being a coffee growing region and for its artisan wares. We got off the microbus in front of McDonald’s and we couldn’t resist but eat dinner there. My quarter-pounder and Oreo McFlurry sure hit the spot and I think I’ve eaten more McDonald’s in Guatemala that I’d eaten my whole life before. I eat enough tortillas, eggs, and beans and its nice to treat yourself once in awhile. We stayed a relatively cheap but very comfortable and hospitable hotel and had a yummy breakfast and delicious coffee in the morning.

Saturday we walked around town through the central park and the market (Guatemalan markets cease to amaze and intrigue me). We made an excursion to these sweet waterfalls a little ways out of town. I enjoyed the ride through the beautiful landscape and we got off the microbus on the side of the highway where the park is. There was a shirtless guy standing there taking entrance fees – 10 quetzales, like a dollar and some change. He had to convince us that he was legit since it seemed like some scam that someone would do where they would take your money and then you’d get in and have to pay the real person. But no, it was fine and we made our way into the hardly developed park. We took a winding steep path through warm lush green forest and arrived at a large beautiful bright teal pool with a giant waterfall cascading into it. The water looked like the postcards you see of the Caribbean. Bright and clear. Since most of us hadn’t thought to bring swimsuits, we stripped down to our underthings and dove into the deliciously refreshing cool water. We frolicked and swam about and floated on our backs looking up at the greenery on all sides. The current is fairly strong where the falls hits the water, but by clinging to the rocks on the side you can get behind the falls to where there is a cave. We sat in the cave behind the falls on the water-smoothed rocks for awhile taking the impressive beauty of the place. Floating on my back looking up at all the green was another one of those “I’m so happy I’m in Guatemala” moments.

That afternoon we made our way to the cabin where we were having the party a little ways outside of Coban in the town of Tactic. Randomness has it that it sits near a chicken farm with over 60,000 chickens reside. Go figure. We grilled all sorts of meats and veggies and made a giant grocery sack full of pasta salad (lack any other serving dish). I met lots of other volunteers and hung out with lots of good pals from my training group. The evening included a dance party. Good, good times.

This week I went to another training in Salama with the NGO Promudel. This one had to do with public communication and how to increase transparency and citizen participation with different media communication. Thus, I went with the guy who is runs the loudspeaker off his jeep who I found out is the “Public Relations” guy for the muni. That was news to me that the muni even had a “Public Relations” guy. Basically his job is to go around town in his jeep blasting music and announcing municipal, school, cultural, and sporting events. It was a great workshop and we got a lot out of it. We are going to write a plan of public communication for the muni that includes the newsletter, an end-of-the-year magazine, the loudspeaker jeep, bulletin boards, and possibly a radio station.

Last Saturday was the election of the queen of the feria in an aldea of El Chol called Los Amates. The rural community is about 7 km up a terrible dirt road from El Chol that few vehicles can take on. You think El Chol is in the middle of no where, then you go to the aldeas and really feel like you’re lost. I got a ride in the loudspeaker jeep and we bumped and jostled our way up the mountainside. When we got there we were invited to eat dinner with the guests of honor like with my counterpart and his wife, the judges of the contest, and the announcer of the event. This election was a bit more tame than the one in El Chol, less slutty dancing and less revealing clothing by the 15 year old girls in the contest. Like most community events that I attend, they always give a little mention of me being present and I wave to the crowd. After the election of the little girl and the big girl queens there was a community dance in the little school. In a double classroom they put the giant speakers and lights and fog machine and packed everyone in so it was good and hot and sweaty and foggy. Of course they only play one type of music which sounds like one continuous song for the entire time with the same bouncy beat. What is interesting about these community dances is that there are so few women present because either they have to be home taking care of children or they don’t get permission to leave the house from their parents or their husbands. So there is always an excess of men and boys who have to just stand in little groups watching since there aren’t enough girls to dance with. Needless to say, you can’t walk through there being a girl without being swept up. Overall it was a funky small community celebration that was lots of fun. It reminds me how lucky I am to get glimpses in the lives of others while living here. They get a kick out of me being here. I get asked daily how I like El Chol, and how I feel living here, and they respond with how good it is that I am here, and that I like it here, and then they tell me that I probably won’t ever leave. To which I give a polite chuckle and then tell them that no, I will be leaving in two years. To which they respond with at least I will take my Guatemalan husband with me to the states. To which I respond with another chuckle and a shake of my head.

We continue to trudge ahead with database at work. I finally got the data from the Ministry of Education and spent several hours adding up over 100 columns of data for 13 schools, (which is just the beginning). I also created a questionnaire to distribute to the COCODE presidents to hopefully get complete, accurate data on the status of water and sanitation in the communities. It is important to have accurate data for the municipality to be able to inform decision making, but man it’s tedious.

My English class is still going well and I am enjoying it, despite various frustrations. I have about 18 consistent students now which is a perfect number. Monday I gave them their second test and they did alright. Some did very well of course (there are a few very smart cookies who I feel bad about hold back with the rest), and others did terribly (which I feel bad about since no matter how many ways I explain it, they just don’t get it). I’m finding myself having to teach learning habits and study skills as well since they seriously lack them. This test included an oral component when I took each student outside and they had to answer three questions that I asked them, all of which we had practiced in class. Before we started I told them that I wasn’t going to be in the room, so I expected them to act like adults and be respectful and not talk during the test. Well, that didn’t work and they were all talking and sharing answers and it really pissed me off. There is just a lack of respect in general here in classrooms, meetings, anything and it is really frustrating. It’s adults too – talking on their cell phones or to their neighbor during workshops or meetings or whatever. I got really stern with my students and told them I was very disappointed and explained that I was giving this class outside work hours, for no pay, and that they needed to pay me with respect. And I told them that anybody missing two classes without clearing it with me or making it up is going to be out of the class. Oh man, I was so frustrated. Usually I’m super chipper and jolly in class and try to have a good time, but hopefully with the fresh stern words they got the picture.

This week pan dulce (sweet bread) was on the curriculum for my women’s group in La Cienega. I trudged up on foot carting all the pounds of flour and sugar for the lesson. A friend of mine accompanied me this time since my co-workers couldn’t go and my friend didn’t want me to go alone and she wanted to get to know that community. On the way there in the strong sunshine we passed a man puffing his way up the hill with a heavy load of sugarcane on his back. As we passed my friend said “que rico!” and turned around and told us to each take a stalk as a gift. That was very sweet (no pun intended) of him. Gotta love the randomness of walking the middle of nowhere in Guatemala, being given sugarcane out of the blue, and walking along with a tall stalk of it in your hand as a walking stick, like it’s perfectly natural. I had never had fresh sugarcane before so when we got to the community we cut part of it, peeled it, shared it with the women and their kids, and sucked out the juice from the cane. It’s yummy! The bread turned out well, like usual. They fed us lunch, like usual. They asked when I was coming back, like usual.

There is a civil engineering intern from the university in the capital who will be working in the office for the next six months. He is working on a project with some co-workers to measure all the municipal owned in the municipality. Basically these are “community lands” that individuals “rent” for 10 quetzales – like a dollar and some change – for the year. They can either grow crops on them or maintain them as forestlands. Back when this system was set up, the measurements were made very approximately and what is written down may not correspond to what’s on paper. The muni will be going around measuring these lands and updating the registries since many are inaccurate, belong to deceased people, etc. So rumor went around that the muni was going to be kicking people off these lands or taking parts of them or selling them or whatever else. So to clarify this misunderstanding and keep everyone from getting all ruffled we set up meetings in various communities and went around clarifying the information. We spent all day driving around the dirt roads to these rural hard to reach places meeting with community members and explaining the purpose of the measurements and that we weren’t taking any land away from them, just trying to organize and update the registries. There were some tense moments and people got heated with their questions but overall it went well and I think everyone understood in the end. We were in the direct sun all day, usually meeting outside schools where there is nowhere to sit and no shade and I sort of fried myself. I had a good time getting to visit communities I’d never been to and observing the dynamics of it all. Things are so different out in the aldeas than they are in town. The men all dress identical with work jeans, boots, a button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up or a ratty t-shirt with English writing, a white hard material cowboy style hat, a woven man-purse, and a machete in a leather sheath. Oh yeah, and every single one has a mustache.

One of the things that bugs me about the men who I don’t know who come into the office for one piece of business or another is that they always give a firm handshake to my male co-workers, but to me, they either barely lightly touch my hand in a bad imitation of a handshake, or don’t offer it at all. Or they pull you in for a kiss on the cheek instead. I know it’s a cultural difference, but coming from where a firm handshake for everyone is valued, it gets to me.

It was a bad week for accidents. A bus veered off a mountain in another department and killed 55 people. A couple in their 40’s from an aldea here ran off the road which killed them and left their 11 children orphaned. A 22-year-old woman from here tried to commit suicide by driving her car off a cliff. She’s in an unhappy marriage with a drunken cheating husband and has one kid. She was taken by helicopter to the capital, which was of course the talk of the town because it is so expensive. She is still in intensive care.

The days are getting really hot here. Maybe in the 90’s I would guess. I die when I go home at mid-day and make lunch because the tin roof cooks the insides of the house like an oven. There is always a crackling noise as the metal adjusts in the heat, making it sounds like its raining. The evenings are spectacularly wonderful though. Once the sun goes down there is a refreshing cool breeze but still comfortably warm. I relish being in a t-shirt or tank top at 8:00 in the evening. Sometimes I go down and sit in the central park with people and chat in the dusk hours. There really isn’t anything to do here but sit in the park in the evenings, so you run into lots of people and just sit around. It’s pleasant.

One of the funny things about being a foreigner in a small town is you feel like you live in a fish bowl. People notice all lots of details about me that wouldn’t think. If I put on mascara, grow out my fingernails, wear different shoes, get a sunburn, wear my glasses, whatever it may be, people notice and comment on it. Everyone also seems to know where I was, even if I didn’t see them they’ll be like, oh yeah I saw you over by such-and-such. It’s strange.

My friend who worked for the family I live with left and now her aunt works there in her place washing dishes and clothes, doing household chores, and taking care of the senora’s ancient mother. The woman’s daughter’s name is also Katy, which is funny. The other night she and Katy came up to my house for a visit, actually just assuming I had a TV and wanting to watch it (even though the family has two). She was surprised disappointed when I told her that I didn’t have a TV and that I like to read books instead. She sat down and we chatted for awhile. It was an awkward situation (of which I now have lots of experience with). She is 24 and from one of the aldeas, had her first kid when she was 15, and has a first-grade education and tried to pass second grade, but after three years unable to pass, she dropped out. Her husband left with another woman and she works in the house here. She was looking at my travel guide to Guatemala and didn’t know how to orient the book to look at the words or the map of Guatemala. I pointed out El Chol, Rabinal (the only other town she has ever been to) and the capital on the map. Everything I told her she was surprised about. She started pestering me about why I wasn’t married yet and that I was getting old and needed to start having children right away. The whole exchange was quite interesting.

Two of the kids I live with are in first grade and learning to read. It’s so cute how they get out their notebooks in the evenings and show me what they’ve learned. I sit with them as they read to me and its super adorable. It’s nice how Spanish has consistent pronunciation and rules – it makes it a lot easier on kids to learn how to read and write. There just isn’t a culture of reading for fun here though, which makes me sad. They have their books that they learn how to read with, but I have really never seen any fun kids picture books that make a kid want to practice. The adults don’t really read for fun either and the three teachers that I live with were all surprised that I like to read for pleasure.

One of the interesting things about the education system here is that in primary school they teach the kids some English and some Achi, which is the indigenous language around here. Its funny though cause the teachers don’t speak it or know how to pronounce the words, but they give them lists of vocabulary words to memorize anyway. So they really don’t learn anything worthwhile or of substance, but at least they have some exposure to the languages. However, talking to some of the parents and kids of ladino (non-indigenous) families, they don’t like that they are “wasting” time learning an indigenous language. El Chol is almost 100% ladino and very few people actually speak Achi. It is commonly spoken around Rabinal, which is the next town about an hour north of here. Many parents want their kids to learn English since it is much more useful in the job market and don’t see the importance of learning an indigenous language since although everyone here is mixed, they don’t associate their identity with being indigenous. It is an interesting dilemma.

Racism here is very strong in an overt, but non-malicious way, if that makes any sense. People will be made fun of for having darker skin, speaking an indigenous language, and telling someone they are acting like an “indio” is an insult for doing something stupid. It’s not taboo to say these kinds of things and oftentimes they aren’t really meant to hurt someone’s feelings, but more in a joking around kind of way. Yet it creates an atmosphere of perceived inferiority that permeates all areas of society.

Tamales, pigs, and death, Xela, baking adventures, Valentines Day, and laundry

Things are good and normal in El Chol. The mourning of the senor from the family who died (at the age of 93 I confirmed) continued for nine days with a prayer session and food every evening. Thus, every evening there were maybe about 60 people in the house from about 6:00 to 8:00 praying and singing and being fed some sort of snack and warm beverage. Seriously, imagine feeding that many people in your house for nine days straight. Of course it is a huge group effort by all the women in the family, but still it’s tons of work. There isn’t enough room in the house for everyone so plastic chairs are set up outside and lots of people congregate there. So every night last week for me has consisted of sitting with everyone and hanging out and making small talk. It’s been nice, but also one of those things where you’re obligated to do it because everyone is there. Since I have to walk through the area where everyone is to get to the stairs that lead up to my house, it would be rude to just walk past everyone and go hide away in my house. It really is a lovely tradition and everyone brings sugar (by the 20 pound sack), candles, black beans, coffee, and flowers to help out the family. Lots of people have asked me about what the traditions are in the states and are surprised that we don’t do 24 vigils over the body or the nine days of mourning with that include the community.

The ninth day is the day when the most people come and tamales are served (the reason why the most people come). It was a HUGE production. The night before they killed a pig. Right there in the patio of the house, they killed a pig in order to make the tamales. The hung the carcass up by meat hooks inside one of the houses that make up the compound. The head was peacefully sitting on a table outside. The skins were fried to make chicharrones and everyone excitedly gathering around the giant pot of boiling oil to get a few pieces that they put in tortillas with salt and lime. The women were bustling about bringing random pig parts here and there. The next day for lunch I was treated to a stew with all the pig parts. I’m not quite sure what was what, but it consisted of stomach, intestines, snout, feet, lungs, and liver. I was also treated to blood sausage with tortillas. Nothing really tasted that bad, but it was the texture and the thought of what I was eating that just was a bit odd. They definitely use every part of the animal.

Throughout the whole morning of the ninth day, the women were busy with tamale production. They made over 500! They cooked like 40 pounds of corn to make the dough, which filled three gigantic tubs. There were also several giant buckets of tomato sauce. To make the tamale, you put a handful of the cornmeal dough on a banana leaf, dip a piece of meat in the tomato sauce with an extra spoonful of sauce, wrap it all up in a nice little bundle, tie it off, then boil them. It’s a lot of work and they had several production lines going.

They completely redid the altar in the house with more flowy fabric, candles, flowers, etc. in preparation for the final prayers. There was a final mass in the church on the ninth day and I went and attended out of curiosity. That final night it was a double prayer session with the first one at 7:00, with the tamales and coffee served afterwards. Everyone hung out afterwards until the second session started at 10:30, with more coffee and more tamales served again. We went to bed around midnight.

I went to Xela over the weekend two weeks ago to visit some friends. As much as I dearly love El Chol, it’s so nice to get out to other parts of the country sometimes. The weekend was a nice mix of hanging out with American Peace Corps volunteers, other Americans studying Spanish in Xela, and Guatemalan friends. Xela is a bigger city and the people in the city itself are well educated and have broader experiences. We went and hung out at the house of a volunteer who lives just outside the city with two of her awesome Guatemalan friends. We made food and sat on her terrace for hours discussing life and laughing hysterically. That night we went out salsa dancing and hung out in the central park for awhile where people always congregate in the gazebo there. An impromptu guitar jam session with random people ensued. Meanwhile I had a great conversation with a Guatemalan about how much he loved the city of Xela and how much he loved his country. It was so refreshing and warming since a lot of people I have talked to do not have such strong love and respect for their country and would rather just leave it in search of money in the states. It was one of those really good, simple, memorable days.

Transportation getting back in the morning was a bit trying. Lots of the bus companies in the capital have been striking this week due to increases in violence. Every day several bus drivers or their ayudantes are killed in robberies and related violence in the capital. They are demanding more police presence and government actions to quell the unrest. The new president has been in office for exactly a month now and there haven’t been significant changes to security situation in the capital and people are frustrated. So I got up at 5:00 am and waited in the bitter cold at the bus terminal. All the ayudantes were telling me there were no buses to the capital (I take a bus toward the capital, but get off well before). So I found some other people who were in the same predicament and there was nothing else to do but for all of us to hop on a bus for a junction a little ways away that had buses coming in from four directions of the country and a higher likelihood of something coming along. There are other routes that I could have taken, all of which would have resulted in ridiculously long detours around the countryside and wouldn’t have gotten me back on time to where I needed to get the only Sunday bus back to my site. So we waited and waited in the cold (Xela is high in the mountains) and finally a bus came that everybody rushed in earnestness to get a spot. They packed that thing full to the brim and we made our way without any further problems. It was a long four hours squished in amongst everyone not able to move, with one butt cheek on the seat and slipping off around every mountain curve, but I somehow managed to get some sleep. I made it back to San Juan where I catch the bus back to my site in time to do some shopping at the grocery store there and get wheat bread(!) and some vegetables at the market.

My baking adventures continue. This week I returned by popular demand to the same community where I made banana bread to make cinnamon rolls. I brought all the ingredients including several pounds of flour in my back pack on another motorcycle adventure with my coworker. I went through the process of explaining how yeast works, the tricks for ensuring that bread rises properly, and common mistakes to avoid. They were fascinated by the process and the odor of the yeast. I also like to add more yeast than the recipe calls for, just for extra measure and these were no exception. We made five times as much as the recipe calls for, once again in a giant plastic clothes bucket mixed by hand, and so we had five giant blobs of dough after they rose. I think they got a kick out of playing around in flour and rolling out the dough with a mortar used for grinding corn and then spreading the margarine over the dough with their hands and the “rico” smell of the cinnamon and vanilla. The rolls rose beautifully in the adobe-walled kitchen with the open cooking fire. All around the house are dogs, cats, little pigs with their ribs showing, roosters, and baby chickens running around everywhere that you have to be careful to not step on. The woman who lives there, the COCODE president for her community, has two really cute kids that aren’t in school yet who are always hanging about too that you also have to be careful not to step on. The little girl is about two and is also named Katy (Kah-tee), like me. As Guatemalan protocol requires, coffee was served at 10:30 for all in attendance. After everyone oohed and ahhed at how beautifully they rose we placed them in the overly-heated mud oven and after 5 minutes! we took the rolls rose out, VERY well browned. Everyone insisted they weren’t burned, but 30 more seconds and they would have been. It yielded 83 delicious rolls which we split amongst the six women who attended and everyone went home happy. Of course they insisted on feeding us lunch again, a very tasty chicken stew with rice and tortillas. I’m trying to urge them to sell what they make in town for a little income generation project cause you could make a pretty decent profit off this stuff without a ton of work. Banana bread and cinnamon rolls are something special and well liked with easily obtained ingredients. We’ll see how it goes.

The following week, french bread was on the curriculum. This time we walked to the community since the muni nor my co-worker wanted to pay for the gas for the motorcycle to get there. It’s about an hour walk through lovely countryside, so I didn’t mind, but the intense hills made me show up sweating and panting and made my buns sore the next day. The french bread dough rose ridiculously in the bucket so that it lifted up the towel that was covering it. I squealed in pleased delight when we lifted off the towel to see the progress. We didn’t put as much firewood in the oven this time so it was a more reasonable temperature and cooked slower and more evenly. They are such a fun group of women and I brought the pictures of my niece to show them. They went nuts ohhing and ahhing and saying things like “What a gift from God…God protect her.”

A woman who works for an NGO that was came to meet with me about the women’s office project. She was short on time but full of ideas and gave me some great resources to look through and some great suggestions for how to proceed with presenting the project to the city council and all that. It was crazy because I had never met her or ever talked to her before, she had just heard that I was working on this project through someone else in her organization who had been at the inter-institutional meeting that we’d had a few weeks back. She sought me out on her own accord to give me some information, which was really nice of her.

The next day I went with two of my coworkers on their motorcycles to the departmental capital of Salama for a meeting with the same NGO, but different people and different focus. The ride there was two hours and it was my first time on a motorcycle on a paved highway. Two hours on a motorcycle each way on a mix of dirt and paved roads is a long time! But it’s such a great way to see the Guatemalan countryside – up and down mountains with gorgeous views and changing terrain and vegetation. The meeting was pretty good, dealing with the municipality’s role in local economic development and also with natural disaster risk management. Various people spoke on their experiences of various economic development projects and they gave a presentation on the importance of risk management for disasters. Working with all the communities, we are going to be creating a municipal map of the risk areas to be aware of when planning projects. Things like, don’t build a road in an area that is prone to landslides. It sounds like a no-brainer but you wouldn’t believe the crazy places that things get built here. The meeting was held in a nice hotel in Salama and we got tasty snacks and a yummy lunch too. There were representatives from many of the municipalities from the department of Baja Verapaz so it was nice to meet them and here about the things that they are working on. El Chol was congratuated for being third out of eight munipalities in the department in a ranking for infrastructure development, like water and electricity projects. On the way back from the meeting it started to pour down rain and we got absolutely drenched. Of course I was wearing my helmet which covers the eyes but one of my co-workers wasn’t wearing one so he couldn’t see anything due to the rain. So we stopped and took refuge under a tree and a bus stop for awhile and waited for it to pass. We went on our way again, keeping in the sunshine just ahead of the storm and my soaked jeans eventually dried. We had to stop and drop some paperwork off at some random government offices and we made it back just in time for my English class.

The English classes are going well and I’m really enjoying giving them. I have a group of about 25 students, but attendance is difficult and there are usually about 20 on any given day. Since everyone is doing it as something extra to whatever other work or studies they have, it’s not their priority so they don’t study as much or have as good attendance as I’d like. The learning is slow and tedious, but we have a good time. It’s interesting to see how naturally some people pick up a language and other others struggle so much with it. Some people can hear a word once and repeat it back perfectly, while others I can repeat a word so many times, break down the syllables, write the pronunciation out differently, and they still can’t say it. I just keep telling everybody to have patience and keep working at it and to study their vocab words at home! There is one guy who struggles particularly. He is in his 50s and is one of the COCODE presidents and wants to learn English just because. But he can’t write very well in Spanish so it’s even harder in English and for the life of him he can’t pronounce the words at all. It’s great that he wants to learn, but only comes to about half the classes so I try to help him out as much as I can, but it’s a challenge.

Valentine’s Day was celebrated pretty seriously here. In the morning I got an array of text messages from the women in the family, families in Alotenango, and various other people. Its funny they like to send pre-written texts for these types of occasions from the phone companies that usually are poetic ramblings and then relate to God somehow. They are well intended and very sweet though. All the tiendas (stores) were stocked with the tackiest gifts imaginable that everybody goes nuts for. Kinda like in the states with cards, flowers, candy, stuffed animals and figurines, but less quality, tackier, and cheaper. In the schools they do gift exchanges among everyone with these trinkets and do activities all day long instead of having classes. I went to the high school’s afternoon activities with some friends to watch. They had the whole place decorated and the disco was playing music, as every community event requires. They did all sorts of activities that required students to do embarrassing things in front of the whole school and everyone got lots of laughs out of the whole thing. They did the gift exchange one by one in front of everyone, which of course took forever. It was really cute though cause everyone had dressed up all nice and its was fun to watch the interactions of all the students. That night, after the prayer/snack session at the house, there was a community dance. As any community dance has, the music was ear-spitting loud, there were more men in attendance than women, and a core group of drunk guys. The music was a great energetic mix and I had a good time. I’m honing my meringue dancing skills and getting better at following. They had a voting for the queen and king of the dance, “Chica Amistad” (Friendship Girl) and “Mister Cupido” (no translation necessary). And….much to my surprise I was voted Chica Amistad and awarded a white satin sash with fabric pain proclaiming my title. Ah yes, what an honor. I wore it home proudly and could hear the music from the dance at my house, which is about four blocks away, so I fell asleep to the pounding bass.

So we’ve been working on filling this database for the muni by compiling data from different institutions in a format given to us by an NGO. Today a guy from Finland representing the NGO came to visit the office. He brought a translator to translate from Spanish to English for him, but when I said I spoke English, the translator figured he wasn’t needed took off and I was left to translate among everyone. The meeting went well, he wanted to see our progress on the database but most wanted to see how it was actually being used in practice since he only knew about it in theory. He wanted to know how helpful it was as a tool, the process for completing it, and how it was going to be used. I did most of the talking since I had done most of the work and was the most familiar with the database since my other co-worker had been dragging his feet on the whole process and my counterpart was out of the office for the day. Basically him and I got to chatting in general about the challenges of development in Guatemala and it was a really interesting meeting.

One of the little things that makes me happy here is this woman who goes around with a giant basket balanced on her head selling snacks. Every day she stops by the muni around 10:00 am and sells tostadas, dobladas, fried plantains, little sandwiches, and always some type of atol which is a hot beverage made with milk and sugar and either rice, plantains, oatmeal. It’s a lovely little respite and all the guys get something and we snack.

One day this week was the mayor’s birthday and he invited everyone that works in the muni over to his place for tamales. At first I didn’t think I was gonna go and ate two tamales at the house that the senora had offered me. When I did end up going after all to the mayor’s, I ate two more tamales there (since you can’t be rude) and had to waddle home with a tummy full of four Guatemalan tamales and a coca cola.

Last weekend I stuck around El Chol. It was a long weekend. I spent about four hours on Saturday attending to my laundry…handwashing all my jeans, bedding, and everything else. Now if you’ve never washing bedding by hand before, it’s quite the experience. The sheets aren’t so bad, it’s really the blankets that get ya. After getting my large blanket wet, I realized I was in quite a pickle when I wasn’t able to pick it up because it was so waterlogged and heavy. I consider myself a fairly strong person and with all my strength I couldn’t lift it up out of my pila. Finally I manage to get it around my shoulders like a python, dripping all over me and soaking into my clothes. I made my way to the clothesline and after a few attempts made a final heave of the blanket over the clothesline, which instantly snapped under the weight. Hmm…so there was my wet blanket on the ground with all the dirt and dust sticking to it. Well perhaps that clothesline was just old and weak and the other one (I had two) might be better. So I gather up the blanket again from the ground, now wet and dirty, and make another few heaves to get it over the second clothesline. So that one instantly snaps too as soon as I manage to fling it over, and there my wet even dirtier blanket sits on the ground once again. Then I spy the fence, which is now glaring at me as the most obvious option for drying a heavy wet blanket and somehow get the thing situated on the fence to dry in the sun. The whole process left the blanket dirtier than when I started and out 30 quetzales for having to buy new clotheslines. I was quite amused with myself over the whole process and really just had to laugh about it. I busied myself the rest of the weekend watching the men’s soccer games, baking coffeecake, going for a bike ride, reading, and chatting with the family.

Auntie! Carnivale, Superbowl, database, banana bread, death

I’m a proud new aunt! My beautiful niece, Hannah Sofia, was born on February 2^nd, 2008 at 11:58 pm. After almost 30 hours of labor, my sister had a c-section that resulted in a 9 pound, 8 ounce bundle of chubby joy. I couldn’t be happier for them, but the hardest part of being in Guatemala is not being able to be there right now with them. I got to hear her cry the other night over the phone and I’ve seen a picture over the internet, but it’s soooo hard to be missing out. Even in my absence though, I’m still the proudest auntie on earth!

February started off with the celebrations of Carnivale. Before lent the kids in the schools dress up in elaborate costumes and masks and have processions and contests and the whole community comes out to watch. Essentially, Halloween in February. On Friday the event was in the primary school and one of the little girls from the family was the crowned princess of the event and her little cousins were her escorts. They were adorably dressed up in fancy dressed and a little suit and tie and “presided” over the ceremony. One by one the kids come out in their costumes that often take weeks and weeks for prepare. There is blasting music and a professional announcer (who does all the community events) who introduces each kid. There was Dora the Explorer, a bumblebee, various cartoon characters, a strawberry, and an assortment of clowns and chickens. They parade around for awhile to the applause of the parents and everyone else and then eventually hand out prizes. The “greatest” part about this tradition is the throwing of “pica pica”. Little tiny pieces of colored paper that are packed in hollowed out painted egg shells and then cracked on people heads to cover them with confetti. The stuff litters the floor and I’ve been finding it everywhere for days. Saturday night was the middle schoolers and some of them dressed up as people from the community and acted out events of things that had happened the previous year. Highly entertaining and very creative. Tuesday was for the pre-schoolers and it doesn’t really get any cuter than 4-6 year olds waddling about in giant paper mache masks with little duck/chicken/penguin feet.

After plenty of cultural immersion, I was pretty excited to go bask in Americanness and watch the Superbowl in Antigua with a ton of other volunteers. Even though the commentary was in Spanish and we didn’t get to see the American commercials, it was still a fantastic time and a nice cultural escape. Pretty exciting upset, eh?

Right now at work we are working to put together a database of statistics about the municipality, community by community. There are nine “aldeas” and 53 “casarios”….so a lot of little communities. It includes everything from education, health, demographics, water, sanitation practices, EVERYTHING. It is being urged by one of the NGOs that is active in El Chol and is a great project, but very difficult since our data is missing, incomplete, and transportation is so difficult to get out to the communities to do any sort of proper census. We are doing the best we can with the data from the Health Center, Ministry of Education, etc. but it really makes me look at data in a whole new way. Like when you hear those statistics about “such and such percentage of children in the world lack access to clean drinking water” and the like. The process of collecting data about all those children drinking unsanitary water is SUCH a task and SUCH an estimation. What frustrates me is that one of my co-workers has had the thing for awhile and none of the rest of us really knew anything about it. So when the NGO came to check up on it to see how it was going it was like....uh. And the director of the NGO is coming from Finland supposedly to see it finished sometime this month. Interesting.

So I had an excellent adventure back to one of the rural community where I met with a group of women to make banana bread, as they had requested that I teach them. So two of my male co-workers and I hopped on motorcycles and made the trek out there. They are a really fun group of women and they were really excited to be learning how to bake. We multiplied the recipe by twelve so that everyone could take some home to their families. Now just imagine a giant bucket used for washing clothes filled with banana bread batter with 32 bananas and 7 pounds of flour being mixed by hand. It was delightful! We filled 35 sardine tins full of batter to bake them in. The oven is a giant mud construction that is heated with firewood. Sounds weird, but it baked the best bread ever. Everybody swears how the firewood gives baked goods an extra special flavor and its true. Also, in a conventional oven in takes about an hour to bake. These were done in 15 minutes flat and came out puffy and golden brown. The women were really excited to take them home to their families. The woman whose house we baked at made sure to feed us lunch before the guys and I headed back to town. Tortillas, beans, and eggs, of course - simple but delicious.

So far I have witnessed birthdays, weddings, prayer sessions, baby showers, and this week I experienced witnessing the death rituals. The old man who lived below me who was the father of the matriarch of the house passed away last week. He was in his late 80s and was pretty much deaf. I had been around him a fair bit but it was impossible to have a conversation with him. He used a cane and would walk aimlessly around town and he took a bad spill. He was taken to the capital for an operation on his broken hip (or leg?) and didn’t pull through. I came downstairs in the morning for my run and his daughter (who is in her 60s) started crying and telling me what had happened. It was an incredibly awkward moment, as you can imagine and I just put my arm on around her shoulder and started rattling off everything that came to mind about God in Spanish. Things I would never say in English, but were appropriate for the occasion. Once a death occurs, everyone springs into action for the preparation of the velorio, the 24 vigil over the body. The whole community comes over and lots of people stay the whole night praying and singing and are fed lots of food and coffee. The strange part to me is that while of course it is sad, it doesn{t have a melancholy tone to it. It is a time when people come together who may not have seen each other for awhile (since family members come from all over) and is an opportunity to hang out and catch up and talk about normal things too. There is lots of preparation to be done. Boxes and boxes of bread, veggies, and other food supplies to be purchased. The room for the body to be prepared with an alter and the floor of the entire house and patio spread with pine branches (as is the custom for any event). The muni provides a big tent to set up outside as well. Oh yes, and the flowers and funeral wreaths. I didn{t go to work that afternoon and stayed from noon to midnight helping out and hanging out. It was around 11 that night when they brought the body back from the capital in the casket. It was a very intense moment when it was brought in with a few women wailing and fainting. Everyone stayed throughout the next day and were fed every meal. Then they brought the casket to the church for a mass, and then everyone participated in a procession to the cemetery where he was buried. The whole experience was very intense and fascinating to see how this culture deals with death as a community. In the states death is so much more private and taboo and depressing. Here, while absolutely no less sad and troubling, it is treated with more of a healthy outlook with the support of the entire community.