Since in the Women’s Office we don’t really have our own funds to do projects, we try to get on board and complement the work that other institutions that do have funding are doing. (The muni just paid its employees their salaries only the month of March in the second half of June, still owes April, May, and June). SHARE is an NGO that just came to El Chol this year that is doing programs in the schools. Their first project was “scholarships” for every kid in the municipality in 4th, 5th, or 6th grade where they give them food staples to help the family out to encourage families in poverty to keep their kids in school rather than send them off to work. So every month every family with kids in those grades receives sacks of beans, rice, flour, oil, etc. This is an interesting method because the help is going to the families of every kid in those grades, whether they need it or not. In other municipalities there have been problems with people selling the product. Anyway, since they are receiving quite a bit, people get bored of eating the same thing over and over and the women don’t know very many recipes to vary it up. The beans that they are being given are large red kidney beans, while people here are more accustomed to eating small black beans. I was over at the house of a friend drinking lemonade after a meeting in her community and she gave me some of the dried beans to try and I made Mom’s famous chili with them, with corn and cinnamon and cloves, and it turned out yummy. I brought some for the friend and some for Irma to try, and they both loved it.
So Irma and I are starting to do some food preparation/nutritional workshops to help people take advantage of the “scholarships”. We went and made the chili from the SHARE beans and a soy meat substitute product called Protemás in La Ciénega. The women loved it! They were super excited to try something new, using all ingredients that they are familiar with and can get, and brought home lunch already made for their families.
On our way walking there, on the path in front of a gate we had to go through, there was a whole family of cows with the complete with the mom, two calves, a bull, and the “uncle”, a horse. We are both a little nervous around unknown animals, and didn’t know what to do. We had to go through the gate, but all the animals were blocking it and every time we got closer, they all turned their heads to stare at us in a very threatening way. It was really rather silly, but the last thing we wanted was to get chased by an angry bull or an aggressive cow protecting her young. So we had to climb an embankment and go trudging through the thick underbrush. We came across a barbed wire fence which Irma squeezed through no problem. Irma is also not quite five feet tall and barely 100 pounds. So then she was like, “go on Katty, cross the fence.” But for my size, that was a bit more challenging than it was for her. I got one leg through and was bent in half when my shirt got caught in the wire. So then Irma was telling me to duck more, which I couldn’t. So then we both started laughing hysterically that I was stuck and then my pants got caught. I was hooked on the wire from above, hooked on the wire above and could not stop laughing and she couldn’t do anything to help cause the wire couldn’t be stretched any more. I finally wiggled my way out with only a small tear in my pants but with my stomach muscles hurting from laughing so hard. I made a jumped off a fairly steep part of the embankment to get back to the road, but Irma is so much smaller than me she was afraid to jump so had to keep trekking along to find a more sloping way down. She fell on her bum in the process which sent us into more peals of laughter. All to avoid some cows.
Sometimes we get lucky on the way back from a community and can hitch a ride in a pick up or a tuk tuk that is heading into town. One day we were bumping down the hillsides in the back of a truck with like 6 other women. One of them made a comment about my strange ear piercing and all the rest leaned over to ogle at it. Then an older woman clicked her tongue, shook her head, and announced “that’s just not right…” It made me chuckle. What can you say to that?
The governmental institution for the Protection of Indigenous Women invited us as the Women’s Office with several community leaders to participate in a health forum in Salama, the departmental capital. Even though El Chol is mainly mestizo, it’s nice that the institution takes us into account for their activities. We went to the event and it was really interesting feeling out of place with everyone else in the indigenous clothing, speaking the indigenous language Achi. To commence the event, they did a traditional Mayan religious ceremony with candles, flowers arranged in the four cardinal points, and prayers. It’s really interesting to see the blend of the traditional Mayan and the traditional Catholic practices because their religion is a definite hybrid. They cross themselves and say in the midst of the prayers in Achi, “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit…” We were the only of only two group of non indigenous women there and afterwards the women from my town commented that they have lived all their lives in Guatemala and had never seen a Mayan ceremony like that. The majority of the workshop was in Achi, but they translated summaries into Spanish. The focus was on the practice of traditional healing use of medicinal plants and several mid-wives were invited to speak. They express themselves better in their mother tongue and the majority of the participants understood better in Achi. I was totally lost since I don’t even know they names of all the local medicinal plants in Spanish, but it was a cool experience to observe anyway. One of the women from El Chol that went with us is a midwife as well and she loved all the information. Despite feeling a bit out of place, the women from El Chol liked the event and were busy scribbling down the information on the plants about which one makes women lactate after giving birth (to be mixed with chocolate and cinnamon and drank), and how to make a bath of avocado leaves to soak before giving birth to make to make the baby come out easier. The Ministry of Health representative was there too, and people took the opportunity to make public their complaints about discriminatory treatment in the public healthcare system that caused tears in various accounts of very inappropriate treatment. The institution provided a delicious lunch of a great piece of chicken in sautéed onion sauce (nice pieces of breast meat are rare here) which we had to take to go and eat on the fly to not miss our microbus back to El Chol.
The muni has reinitiated a soccer tournament for boys, girls, and women which is cool since the men’s tournament is the biggest excitement that happens in town. Naturally my girls are playing, but they are divided into two teams since there’s a bunch of them. I’m also playing on a women’s team. So now my Sundays are spent all day at the soccer field helping out with the girls in the morning and playing myself in the afternoon. In the first game my team played in, I scored two goals to win the game 3-1, one on a free kick on the other I knocked in from a lovely arcing cross from my teammate.
Last weekend was the finals of the men’s tournament and my site mate and her friend and our fellow volunteers from nearby came to watch the game, which the whole town comes out to see. They have to bring in professional referees from elsewhere so that they are unbiased and not too many fights break out. The police were there, more out of a lack of anything else to do than from any risk. But there were like 6 of them there with their giant guns, as is customary, watching over everything. We celebrated birthdays with a BBQ with carne asada and a Funfetti cake that I made for the occasion from the mix and frosting I scored in Antigua.
I continue my work with the HIV/AIDS prevention committee with Peace Corps and the other weekend we had a meeting in Antigua. It was refreshing to have a “gringo” meeting where everyone is there on time, a tight agenda is adhered to, topics are presented with discussion and resolution following, and in two hours sharp the meeting finishes up with lots accomplished and action points to follow. Imagine a Guatemalan meeting the polar opposite of that. As part of my work in the muni, my life here sometimes feels like a Guatemalan meeting. Some of my fellow volunteer friends were also in Antigua for various reason and we took advantage to celebrate some June birthdays with a night out splurged on Sushi dinner!
The infamous influenza A H1N1 has made its way to this tiny corner of the world. Everyone is talking about it and there’s lots of “May God protect us…” There are also lots of puns and jokes made regarding the “pork flu” such as you know you have it when chicharrones (fried pork skins) come out when you sneeze. I think we are going to suspend some of our meetings with women in the communities for a bit til this dies down since the most recent one we went to, not a single woman showed up and we suspect it was because that was the day they announced there was a case in that very community. Lots of NGOs have cancelled activities that gather lots of people and the Ministry of Health has been putting up posters in lots of places with prevention and symptoms of the infection.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
Reaching “that” point, Todos Santos – Nebaj hike, Women’s Office diagnostic, friends visit
At the beginning of May with a great group of volunteers we did one of the coolest hikes in the country from Todos Santos, Huehuetenango to Nebaj, Quiche. I don’t know the correct distance, but I think we did in the vicinity of 15 miles the first day and 10 miles the second day up and across the high Cuchamatans mountain range. The adventures started at 4:00 am when I left my site and arrived at my friend’s site in Todos Santos (the land of the red pants with the crazy horse race for All Saints Day) at 4:30 pm, picking up other friends along the way. We bought supplies and cooked a delicious dinner and headed out at 5:00 am in the dark and the cold the next morning. We took a bus to where we started hiking, with a quick stop along the way for a visit to some latrines with freezing cold cement seats and to buy hot tortillas with melted fresh cheese.
We had a fabulous guide, a Swiss man who came to Guatemala with Doctors without Borders and married an indigenous woman and stayed in Todos Santos 15 years ago. We hiked from 6:30 am to 4:30 pm almost constantly through a few sparsely populated areas of all indigenous Mam’ people that shyly peer out from their huts. It was lots of up and down, looking across a steep valley knowing that first you had to go down, and then all the way back up. We stopped for a respite at the bottom of the valley where a freezing pristine river ran through it and soaked our tired feet and watched two adolescent girls beating piles of clothes against rocks to get them clean. We breakfasted, lunched, and snacked on the food we had brought with us mostly consisting of tortillas, refried black beans out of a bag, hardboiled eggs, avocados, and mangos. The types of terrains we moved through were quite varied from the hot loose sandy inclines, cool pine forests, and the cold mountain ridge that had lots of rocks and very little vegetation and looked like some sort of disaster fallout (kind of reminded me of Mt. St. Helens).
The rain held off all day long until about the last ten minutes when we could already see our shelter for the night and it started to pour down rain so hard that we got as soaked as if it had been steadily raining all day long. We stayed the night in a small cold village settlement on the ridge in a wood house structure that had beds and wools blankets that some NGO had set up to promote ecotourism in the area. Our guide asked around for a family that would give us dinner and hungry and cold as we were, speculating about what they would give us, looking forward to the usual Guatemalan dinner fare of eggs, beans, and tortillas. As this is area lives in extreme poverty, we were given cabbage in water, corn dough wrapped in leaves, and hot sugar water to drink. It was a very humbling experience sitting in the “kitchen” of the house, a dark room with a dirt floor with an open fire built in the middle on the ground and thick smoke filling the air. The girl who served us, maybe about 17 years old, couldn’t speak a word of Spanish and only spoke Quiche and most likely had never been to a day of school in her life. We knew no more than two words in Quiche, matiox (thank you) and utz (good), which can barely get a smile but not much communication, so our group of eight just ate in silence as she reached her hand into the fire to pull out more corn dough wraps. That night we pushed the wood bed frames together and us five girls slept all scrunched together for warmth. Every single person had terrible gas and we all poisoned the air with our rank, all snuggled up together.
The second day we arose and started hiking early, having gone to sleep exhausted around 7:30pm. We arrived at our destination of the aldea of Acul, Nebaj, Quiche where we had to jump a fence where I ripped beyond repair my favorite hiking pants that I had had since freshman year of high school (1999?) In Acul there is a cheese making hacienda that we lunched on hot tortillas with this artisan cheese and cantaloupe juice and bought whole wheels of cheese, as it is only sold by the wheel, to divide amongst us. We caught a microbus into the actual town of Nebaj, where we transferred buses to make our way to Cunen where the married couple in group lives and had graciously agreed to house and feed us for the night. We had to wait at the crossroads for a microbus into their town when a giant thunderstorm moved in but we finally made it to their house where they spoiled us with homemade Mexican style chicken enchiladas and cold showers since the electricity was out the whole time we were there. It was very merry and jovial all of glad to have survived and to be hanging out together. Very cool hike, all in all one of the coolest experiences I’ve had in Guatemala. After being here for so long, I thought I had seen pretty much everything, but this was definitely new and pretty mind blowing.
I had the realization the other day that I am now doing what I had imagined I would be doing in the Peace Corps after coming out of training. As I have said several times, there is a really good reason that Peace Corps is for two years. I’ve hit “that” point…where Spanish comes without thinking and often easier than English; where I feel genuine community acceptance; I feel needed and valued at work, People seek me out for various types of consultations; I crave tamales, beans and tortillas; a 12 hour chicken bus ride or a giant cockroach in my bed doesn’t even faze me; I’m doing what I’d envisioned doing; and I’m starting to panic about leaving.
My relationship with my counterpart, Irma, the Women’s Office coordinator, is what I feel like the counterpart/volunteer relationship strives to be. We balance each other’s strengths and weaknesses very well and have both a professional and friendly relationship. She is great with the women out in the rural communities and runs all the activities that I helped her plan. I help her a lot with planning, organization, motivation, institutional strengthening and computer skills and I follow her examples of culturally appropriate ways to do all our work.
The work we are doing together is now fitting into that image that I had coming out from training. I had imagined trekking through picturesque countryside stepping over pigs and chickens to get to women’s groups to do lots of participatory activities. It’s pretty much coming true. As part of our annual operating plan Irma and I are walking an hour each way up and down the mountains surrounding El Chol to complete a community diagnostic in each of the 28 communities that have community development councils (COCODEs) organized. We always meet in the afternoon in the community school. We set the meeting for 2:00 pm, as the women might have a moment of free time in the packed days of domestic responsibilities, but as the concept of time is loose here, we don’t start til well after 3:00 sometimes. We always start by introducing ourselves and explaining the existence of the women’s office. We ask them to go around and say their names, which are pulled out of them after much giggling, feet shuffling, hand wringing, and face hiding.
The diagnostic activity consists of the women completing an individual questionnaire that we read out loud to them as a group with questions both factual and opinionated related to demography, economic activities, health, education, domestic violence, and migration. We will be using the information from the diagnostic to have a better idea of the situation that women are living in the rural areas to assess their needs and then to prioritize the communities and projects we will work with. For example, if lots of women have an interest in learning about reproductive health issues, we can plan an informative discussion about the topic or coordinate with the health center in town to do an activity. The sheet that they have to fill out just has the question number and the letter options that they can choose, so they only need to be able to distinguish their letters a – e. But since most of the women can’t read and write, or can do so at such a basic level, it is a very trying task. When you had the women the sheet of paper they panic and tell you they can’t read and write, even if they can a little bit. I tell them not to worry, that we will help them or to sit next to someone who knows. They are even so afraid to hold a pen or pencil, since they have done it so few times in their lives or feels like they aren’t capable of managing the foreign object. The first few questions always take forever as you explain the concept of drawing a circle around a letter to make a selection. With some women the problem is they don’t understand the concept, others can’t see the letters well, some weren’t listening to the options mentioned, others can’t hold a pen properly, others are too timid to make the bold move of marking a piece of paper. After the first few questions, things start to go smoother as they get the hang of it and start smiling, confidently encircling letters, and responding with their opinions in regard to the questions. Sometimes they just wrinkle their noses at a question, and it generates good discussion. Such as when we ask what topics in health they would like to learn about and HIV/AIDS is one of the options and they say to you, “whatever that is…” and then we mention that there are several confirmed cases of this fatal yet preventative disease and then they perk up and listen. Or a question about participation when we ask them what prevents women from participating in community activities or meetings and one of the answer options is that their husbands don’t give them permission to participate and they all nod their heads vigorously in agreement and chime in with their anecdotes from the experiences in their lives to corroborate the evidence that it is hard to get their husbands to let them leave the house, especially when there are always a bunch of kids to take care of and housework that needs to get done. A woman in her early 20’s who is not married yet because her boyfriend went to the states (and even though he now has a new Honduran girlfriend there) she is waiting for him to get back, was telling me how she is super active in all kinds of groups, involved heavily in her church, is a community health promoter, and always attends any workshop or community meeting…but once her boyfriend supposedly comes back to marry her she will have to stop being involved in all these activities because he will tell her she needs to be in the house. It’s sad because she’s obviously a smart girl, had the luck of finished 9th grade, has lots of potential to be a great community leader and help her small community develop, but once she gets married it’s like that’s just it.
After the questionnaire activity we do a community mapping exercise where we give the women the chance to draw on big paper their community. In color blue the things that are already present and services that they have, and in color red the way they want to see their community and themselves within ten years. After a few giggles about how they will all be “viejitas” (little old ladies) in ten years they get into the activity. It’s cool cause they have so few opportunities to get out of their usual routine of doing work in the house and relax for a bit, see their neighbors, and do something novel like drawing. At first it seems weird to them to be talking about so far in the future, since they live subsistence day-to-day lives. But as I try to explain to them, drawing what they want doesn’t mean that we have a magic wand to make it so, but that we have to be futuristic thinking if we ever want to develop and improve the quality of our lives. If we only think of today, today, and maybe tomorrow, then things will always stay the same. It sounds cheesy, but you have to dream it first to make it reality, so we try to get them to think in that mode.
Visiting all the communities in the municipality has been really interesting because they vary a lot from each other. Some are highly indigenously, some are more timid than others, some propose things, others take it all in silently and hardly participate. It’s given me a good chance to really get to know all the rural roads and pathways since the muni doesn’t have any money right now to give us transportation, and even if they did it is extremely difficult and complicated to make that happen; so we walk. We sweat. A lot. But it also gives you a new appreciation for your surroundings noticing with greater detail this year’s corn sprouts which are just coming up, the gecko scurrying across your path, and the pungent smell of fermenting mangos which have fallen from the huge mango trees which shade the road at some parts. It gives you the opportunity to properly greet people that you pass with the appropriate literal “Good afternoon. May that you go well.” It gives Irma and I lots of time to discuss what went well in the meeting, what we could change, life, and the differences and similarities in the realities in our lives.
Rainy season is back in full force. It started early this year and it’s looking like it will be a rough one. Walking back from the rural communities in the afternoons, we get soaked and muddy. But it’s still suffocating hot and muggy at mid-day when we have to walk up the mountains to get there, and then it pours in the afternoons as we slide our way down on the slippery “roads”.
At my urging from awhile back to some of the NGO’s, there has been organized a coordination among the women’s offices in the department of Baja Verapaz. We’ve had a couple opportunities to all get together and have a sharing of experiences, since most of the offices are quite new. Irma and I were invited to give the feature presentation at one of these workshops, where we focused on writing of a vision and mission statement, creating an annual operating plan, and shared our experience of organizing the Municipal Forum of Women Leaders. It went really well and felt good to be an example to the other offices in the department because we all face many of the same challenges in the work that we do. We had gotten a ride from the mayor that morning and our activity finished at 1:00 and we called him to which he said he would be ready to go at 2:00. He came and picked us up, and then we waited in the car and in the street for the next six hours for him to finish a meeting with one of the departmental representatives to Congress. Got home late, really annoying, but totally normal for here. This is why I now have more patience than I know what to do with.
There are continuing perpetual financial problems in the muni, employees haven’t been paid in three months, still no money to buy us a computer or to give us reliable transportation to meetings, workshops, and community activities. On a positive note, Guatemala passed a national law guaranteeing access to public information that requires any institution receiving public funds to make public all their documents and records by means of an information office, and gives jail time and stiff financial penalties for noncompliance. They are working hard to increase transparency and reduce corruption in this country. They have a long way to go still.
I have lots of coworkers in the muni and no one really tells other people when it’s their birthday, til it comes up later since they don’t really make a very big deal of birthdays for adults here. Since Irma’s birthday passed and she didn’t tell me til a month later and she is the person that I spend the most hours of my day with, I decided to make a nice cake for her and all my other coworkers and celebrate everyone all at once. (Plus it’s expensive to be baking a cake for someone every couple weeks). So I make a yummy chocolate cake out of a box with rich chocolate butter cream frosting from scratch to celebrate. My mom had sent me some seasonal cake decorating supplies so I put those to good use and make it really pretty. I brought it to the muni and surprised everyone and made them all sing to each other. It was a festive occasion and we took pictures to remember it by.
Working in a country with such ties to the US through all the immigration that takes place adds a strange facet to the Peace Corps experience. I get constant inquiries from people if I can help them get a visa or people asking me I know so-and-so who lives in New Jersey. I hear lots of stories about the dangerous crossing from people who have come back. I feel sick to my stomach when I hear of people that I know getting ready to the attempt. This week a woman I am close with from a very poor family from one of the rural communities informed me that her son who just turned 19 is leaving in a few days. As is customary for people who don’t have the money to pay the huge coyote fees, the family had to turn over the titles to their land and house as a guarantee that the debt gets paid back. But who knows if he will actually make it? If he makes it, it will be a huge help to the family to help his siblings go to school and to pay for other important things. And if not, that leaves his parents and all his little brothers and sisters homeless without land to even plant the corn that sustains them. It’s a big gamble. I imagine this kid, who speaks not a word of English and has lived a very limited experience thus far in his life consisting of working the little patch of land that his family has, first making the dangerous desert crossing lasting days without food, water, or sleep, being beat up by the gangs that control the territory, and then walking the wide paved streets with traffic lights in the States. And the anxiety of his mother going weeks without hearing word from him. There’s really nothing you can even say to her other than “May that he go well with God.”
Another visit with good friends from college! We had a fabulous time hanging out, catching up, and getting to show off this beautiful country that I have the opportunity to live in. Seeing their reactions to everything makes me realize how accustomed to things I have become and how it all seems so normal to me now. They kept saying to me, “Caitlin, you’ve been here too long. You’ve got your Guatemala goggles on.” We went to Antigua first and explored around churches and ruins and walked up to the hill with a giant cross that overlooks the whole town with a direct view of Volcan de Agua (Water Volcano). We climbed the Pacaya Volcano (for my third time) but every time it’s different and this might have been the best lava flows I had seen. We went out dancing and I felt like a “real person” as we say in the Peace Corps when we do things that are familiar from home. Then we made the crazy trek up to El Chol and I think they barely made it on the long, hot, bumpy bus ride and they asked me “How do you live like this?” I guess you just get used to it. The time in my site was super fun and relaxed. They came with me to my English classes and my soccer practice and loved the group of little girls that I have. We went to the river in a tuk tuk (motorized three wheeled rickshaw) but evidently we were a lot of weight for the smaller motor and I had to get out on the inclines otherwise it wouldn’t make it up the hills. We got the priest in town to take us into the underpart of the church where bats live and supposedly people were buried before El Chol had a cemetery. My friends were super helpful in my office too because they helped me set up the Excel spreadsheet and formulas to tabulate the results from the Community Diagnostic for the Women’s Office. Since they got here right at the start of rainy season, supposedly the chequenes (big flying edible ants) were supposed to come out. My coworker called me at 4:00 am to go out and hunt for them, so we all got up and waited patiently in the soccer field for awhile, but alas, sadly they never showed up so they never got to try them fried up with lime and salt. I don’t know if they actually would have tried them though, since the whole time they freaked out about my bug-infested house, which really isn’t that bad, it’s just that when you live in the countryside in an unsealed house, you are a part of the living environment and living things get in. Either way, there was lots of concern over spiders which I guess I’ve just learned to live with. After my site we took another chicken bus adventure to Lake Atitlan and stayed at the beautiful Casa del Mundo hotel that is built into the hillside and it feels like you’re floating over the volcano surrounded lake. Cool. We relaxed in the hotel and they got all their souvenir shopping done in Panajachel. Since my friends knew I had been to the lake a bunch of time, they told me to pick something for us to do that I had never done. So, we went and did these awesome zip lines in the lake town of Santa Clara which were sweet! There were two actually, the first one was short and you held on to a pulley as you swept across the lush green valley. Then you walk up for a bit and then do a longer one when we got strapped on from our backs so you soar like an eagle across the valley. On that we were up higher and the clouds had rolled in so we flew through a cloud without being able to see the other side which was disorienting and exhilarating. One of the coolest things ever. I want to go back and do it again on a clear day since supposedly there are great views of the lake as you soar across, but I kind of liked the cloud effect. I have been missing my friends from home the whole time I’ve been here, but seeing them again made me really realize how much I missed them and it got me getting excited to come home.
We had a fabulous guide, a Swiss man who came to Guatemala with Doctors without Borders and married an indigenous woman and stayed in Todos Santos 15 years ago. We hiked from 6:30 am to 4:30 pm almost constantly through a few sparsely populated areas of all indigenous Mam’ people that shyly peer out from their huts. It was lots of up and down, looking across a steep valley knowing that first you had to go down, and then all the way back up. We stopped for a respite at the bottom of the valley where a freezing pristine river ran through it and soaked our tired feet and watched two adolescent girls beating piles of clothes against rocks to get them clean. We breakfasted, lunched, and snacked on the food we had brought with us mostly consisting of tortillas, refried black beans out of a bag, hardboiled eggs, avocados, and mangos. The types of terrains we moved through were quite varied from the hot loose sandy inclines, cool pine forests, and the cold mountain ridge that had lots of rocks and very little vegetation and looked like some sort of disaster fallout (kind of reminded me of Mt. St. Helens).
The rain held off all day long until about the last ten minutes when we could already see our shelter for the night and it started to pour down rain so hard that we got as soaked as if it had been steadily raining all day long. We stayed the night in a small cold village settlement on the ridge in a wood house structure that had beds and wools blankets that some NGO had set up to promote ecotourism in the area. Our guide asked around for a family that would give us dinner and hungry and cold as we were, speculating about what they would give us, looking forward to the usual Guatemalan dinner fare of eggs, beans, and tortillas. As this is area lives in extreme poverty, we were given cabbage in water, corn dough wrapped in leaves, and hot sugar water to drink. It was a very humbling experience sitting in the “kitchen” of the house, a dark room with a dirt floor with an open fire built in the middle on the ground and thick smoke filling the air. The girl who served us, maybe about 17 years old, couldn’t speak a word of Spanish and only spoke Quiche and most likely had never been to a day of school in her life. We knew no more than two words in Quiche, matiox (thank you) and utz (good), which can barely get a smile but not much communication, so our group of eight just ate in silence as she reached her hand into the fire to pull out more corn dough wraps. That night we pushed the wood bed frames together and us five girls slept all scrunched together for warmth. Every single person had terrible gas and we all poisoned the air with our rank, all snuggled up together.
The second day we arose and started hiking early, having gone to sleep exhausted around 7:30pm. We arrived at our destination of the aldea of Acul, Nebaj, Quiche where we had to jump a fence where I ripped beyond repair my favorite hiking pants that I had had since freshman year of high school (1999?) In Acul there is a cheese making hacienda that we lunched on hot tortillas with this artisan cheese and cantaloupe juice and bought whole wheels of cheese, as it is only sold by the wheel, to divide amongst us. We caught a microbus into the actual town of Nebaj, where we transferred buses to make our way to Cunen where the married couple in group lives and had graciously agreed to house and feed us for the night. We had to wait at the crossroads for a microbus into their town when a giant thunderstorm moved in but we finally made it to their house where they spoiled us with homemade Mexican style chicken enchiladas and cold showers since the electricity was out the whole time we were there. It was very merry and jovial all of glad to have survived and to be hanging out together. Very cool hike, all in all one of the coolest experiences I’ve had in Guatemala. After being here for so long, I thought I had seen pretty much everything, but this was definitely new and pretty mind blowing.
I had the realization the other day that I am now doing what I had imagined I would be doing in the Peace Corps after coming out of training. As I have said several times, there is a really good reason that Peace Corps is for two years. I’ve hit “that” point…where Spanish comes without thinking and often easier than English; where I feel genuine community acceptance; I feel needed and valued at work, People seek me out for various types of consultations; I crave tamales, beans and tortillas; a 12 hour chicken bus ride or a giant cockroach in my bed doesn’t even faze me; I’m doing what I’d envisioned doing; and I’m starting to panic about leaving.
My relationship with my counterpart, Irma, the Women’s Office coordinator, is what I feel like the counterpart/volunteer relationship strives to be. We balance each other’s strengths and weaknesses very well and have both a professional and friendly relationship. She is great with the women out in the rural communities and runs all the activities that I helped her plan. I help her a lot with planning, organization, motivation, institutional strengthening and computer skills and I follow her examples of culturally appropriate ways to do all our work.
The work we are doing together is now fitting into that image that I had coming out from training. I had imagined trekking through picturesque countryside stepping over pigs and chickens to get to women’s groups to do lots of participatory activities. It’s pretty much coming true. As part of our annual operating plan Irma and I are walking an hour each way up and down the mountains surrounding El Chol to complete a community diagnostic in each of the 28 communities that have community development councils (COCODEs) organized. We always meet in the afternoon in the community school. We set the meeting for 2:00 pm, as the women might have a moment of free time in the packed days of domestic responsibilities, but as the concept of time is loose here, we don’t start til well after 3:00 sometimes. We always start by introducing ourselves and explaining the existence of the women’s office. We ask them to go around and say their names, which are pulled out of them after much giggling, feet shuffling, hand wringing, and face hiding.
The diagnostic activity consists of the women completing an individual questionnaire that we read out loud to them as a group with questions both factual and opinionated related to demography, economic activities, health, education, domestic violence, and migration. We will be using the information from the diagnostic to have a better idea of the situation that women are living in the rural areas to assess their needs and then to prioritize the communities and projects we will work with. For example, if lots of women have an interest in learning about reproductive health issues, we can plan an informative discussion about the topic or coordinate with the health center in town to do an activity. The sheet that they have to fill out just has the question number and the letter options that they can choose, so they only need to be able to distinguish their letters a – e. But since most of the women can’t read and write, or can do so at such a basic level, it is a very trying task. When you had the women the sheet of paper they panic and tell you they can’t read and write, even if they can a little bit. I tell them not to worry, that we will help them or to sit next to someone who knows. They are even so afraid to hold a pen or pencil, since they have done it so few times in their lives or feels like they aren’t capable of managing the foreign object. The first few questions always take forever as you explain the concept of drawing a circle around a letter to make a selection. With some women the problem is they don’t understand the concept, others can’t see the letters well, some weren’t listening to the options mentioned, others can’t hold a pen properly, others are too timid to make the bold move of marking a piece of paper. After the first few questions, things start to go smoother as they get the hang of it and start smiling, confidently encircling letters, and responding with their opinions in regard to the questions. Sometimes they just wrinkle their noses at a question, and it generates good discussion. Such as when we ask what topics in health they would like to learn about and HIV/AIDS is one of the options and they say to you, “whatever that is…” and then we mention that there are several confirmed cases of this fatal yet preventative disease and then they perk up and listen. Or a question about participation when we ask them what prevents women from participating in community activities or meetings and one of the answer options is that their husbands don’t give them permission to participate and they all nod their heads vigorously in agreement and chime in with their anecdotes from the experiences in their lives to corroborate the evidence that it is hard to get their husbands to let them leave the house, especially when there are always a bunch of kids to take care of and housework that needs to get done. A woman in her early 20’s who is not married yet because her boyfriend went to the states (and even though he now has a new Honduran girlfriend there) she is waiting for him to get back, was telling me how she is super active in all kinds of groups, involved heavily in her church, is a community health promoter, and always attends any workshop or community meeting…but once her boyfriend supposedly comes back to marry her she will have to stop being involved in all these activities because he will tell her she needs to be in the house. It’s sad because she’s obviously a smart girl, had the luck of finished 9th grade, has lots of potential to be a great community leader and help her small community develop, but once she gets married it’s like that’s just it.
After the questionnaire activity we do a community mapping exercise where we give the women the chance to draw on big paper their community. In color blue the things that are already present and services that they have, and in color red the way they want to see their community and themselves within ten years. After a few giggles about how they will all be “viejitas” (little old ladies) in ten years they get into the activity. It’s cool cause they have so few opportunities to get out of their usual routine of doing work in the house and relax for a bit, see their neighbors, and do something novel like drawing. At first it seems weird to them to be talking about so far in the future, since they live subsistence day-to-day lives. But as I try to explain to them, drawing what they want doesn’t mean that we have a magic wand to make it so, but that we have to be futuristic thinking if we ever want to develop and improve the quality of our lives. If we only think of today, today, and maybe tomorrow, then things will always stay the same. It sounds cheesy, but you have to dream it first to make it reality, so we try to get them to think in that mode.
Visiting all the communities in the municipality has been really interesting because they vary a lot from each other. Some are highly indigenously, some are more timid than others, some propose things, others take it all in silently and hardly participate. It’s given me a good chance to really get to know all the rural roads and pathways since the muni doesn’t have any money right now to give us transportation, and even if they did it is extremely difficult and complicated to make that happen; so we walk. We sweat. A lot. But it also gives you a new appreciation for your surroundings noticing with greater detail this year’s corn sprouts which are just coming up, the gecko scurrying across your path, and the pungent smell of fermenting mangos which have fallen from the huge mango trees which shade the road at some parts. It gives you the opportunity to properly greet people that you pass with the appropriate literal “Good afternoon. May that you go well.” It gives Irma and I lots of time to discuss what went well in the meeting, what we could change, life, and the differences and similarities in the realities in our lives.
Rainy season is back in full force. It started early this year and it’s looking like it will be a rough one. Walking back from the rural communities in the afternoons, we get soaked and muddy. But it’s still suffocating hot and muggy at mid-day when we have to walk up the mountains to get there, and then it pours in the afternoons as we slide our way down on the slippery “roads”.
At my urging from awhile back to some of the NGO’s, there has been organized a coordination among the women’s offices in the department of Baja Verapaz. We’ve had a couple opportunities to all get together and have a sharing of experiences, since most of the offices are quite new. Irma and I were invited to give the feature presentation at one of these workshops, where we focused on writing of a vision and mission statement, creating an annual operating plan, and shared our experience of organizing the Municipal Forum of Women Leaders. It went really well and felt good to be an example to the other offices in the department because we all face many of the same challenges in the work that we do. We had gotten a ride from the mayor that morning and our activity finished at 1:00 and we called him to which he said he would be ready to go at 2:00. He came and picked us up, and then we waited in the car and in the street for the next six hours for him to finish a meeting with one of the departmental representatives to Congress. Got home late, really annoying, but totally normal for here. This is why I now have more patience than I know what to do with.
There are continuing perpetual financial problems in the muni, employees haven’t been paid in three months, still no money to buy us a computer or to give us reliable transportation to meetings, workshops, and community activities. On a positive note, Guatemala passed a national law guaranteeing access to public information that requires any institution receiving public funds to make public all their documents and records by means of an information office, and gives jail time and stiff financial penalties for noncompliance. They are working hard to increase transparency and reduce corruption in this country. They have a long way to go still.
I have lots of coworkers in the muni and no one really tells other people when it’s their birthday, til it comes up later since they don’t really make a very big deal of birthdays for adults here. Since Irma’s birthday passed and she didn’t tell me til a month later and she is the person that I spend the most hours of my day with, I decided to make a nice cake for her and all my other coworkers and celebrate everyone all at once. (Plus it’s expensive to be baking a cake for someone every couple weeks). So I make a yummy chocolate cake out of a box with rich chocolate butter cream frosting from scratch to celebrate. My mom had sent me some seasonal cake decorating supplies so I put those to good use and make it really pretty. I brought it to the muni and surprised everyone and made them all sing to each other. It was a festive occasion and we took pictures to remember it by.
Working in a country with such ties to the US through all the immigration that takes place adds a strange facet to the Peace Corps experience. I get constant inquiries from people if I can help them get a visa or people asking me I know so-and-so who lives in New Jersey. I hear lots of stories about the dangerous crossing from people who have come back. I feel sick to my stomach when I hear of people that I know getting ready to the attempt. This week a woman I am close with from a very poor family from one of the rural communities informed me that her son who just turned 19 is leaving in a few days. As is customary for people who don’t have the money to pay the huge coyote fees, the family had to turn over the titles to their land and house as a guarantee that the debt gets paid back. But who knows if he will actually make it? If he makes it, it will be a huge help to the family to help his siblings go to school and to pay for other important things. And if not, that leaves his parents and all his little brothers and sisters homeless without land to even plant the corn that sustains them. It’s a big gamble. I imagine this kid, who speaks not a word of English and has lived a very limited experience thus far in his life consisting of working the little patch of land that his family has, first making the dangerous desert crossing lasting days without food, water, or sleep, being beat up by the gangs that control the territory, and then walking the wide paved streets with traffic lights in the States. And the anxiety of his mother going weeks without hearing word from him. There’s really nothing you can even say to her other than “May that he go well with God.”
Another visit with good friends from college! We had a fabulous time hanging out, catching up, and getting to show off this beautiful country that I have the opportunity to live in. Seeing their reactions to everything makes me realize how accustomed to things I have become and how it all seems so normal to me now. They kept saying to me, “Caitlin, you’ve been here too long. You’ve got your Guatemala goggles on.” We went to Antigua first and explored around churches and ruins and walked up to the hill with a giant cross that overlooks the whole town with a direct view of Volcan de Agua (Water Volcano). We climbed the Pacaya Volcano (for my third time) but every time it’s different and this might have been the best lava flows I had seen. We went out dancing and I felt like a “real person” as we say in the Peace Corps when we do things that are familiar from home. Then we made the crazy trek up to El Chol and I think they barely made it on the long, hot, bumpy bus ride and they asked me “How do you live like this?” I guess you just get used to it. The time in my site was super fun and relaxed. They came with me to my English classes and my soccer practice and loved the group of little girls that I have. We went to the river in a tuk tuk (motorized three wheeled rickshaw) but evidently we were a lot of weight for the smaller motor and I had to get out on the inclines otherwise it wouldn’t make it up the hills. We got the priest in town to take us into the underpart of the church where bats live and supposedly people were buried before El Chol had a cemetery. My friends were super helpful in my office too because they helped me set up the Excel spreadsheet and formulas to tabulate the results from the Community Diagnostic for the Women’s Office. Since they got here right at the start of rainy season, supposedly the chequenes (big flying edible ants) were supposed to come out. My coworker called me at 4:00 am to go out and hunt for them, so we all got up and waited patiently in the soccer field for awhile, but alas, sadly they never showed up so they never got to try them fried up with lime and salt. I don’t know if they actually would have tried them though, since the whole time they freaked out about my bug-infested house, which really isn’t that bad, it’s just that when you live in the countryside in an unsealed house, you are a part of the living environment and living things get in. Either way, there was lots of concern over spiders which I guess I’ve just learned to live with. After my site we took another chicken bus adventure to Lake Atitlan and stayed at the beautiful Casa del Mundo hotel that is built into the hillside and it feels like you’re floating over the volcano surrounded lake. Cool. We relaxed in the hotel and they got all their souvenir shopping done in Panajachel. Since my friends knew I had been to the lake a bunch of time, they told me to pick something for us to do that I had never done. So, we went and did these awesome zip lines in the lake town of Santa Clara which were sweet! There were two actually, the first one was short and you held on to a pulley as you swept across the lush green valley. Then you walk up for a bit and then do a longer one when we got strapped on from our backs so you soar like an eagle across the valley. On that we were up higher and the clouds had rolled in so we flew through a cloud without being able to see the other side which was disorienting and exhilarating. One of the coolest things ever. I want to go back and do it again on a clear day since supposedly there are great views of the lake as you soar across, but I kind of liked the cloud effect. I have been missing my friends from home the whole time I’ve been here, but seeing them again made me really realize how much I missed them and it got me getting excited to come home.
Monday, April 20, 2009
El Mirador trip for Semana Santa
Semana Santa, Holy Week before Easter, is a big deal in Guatemala. Bigger than Christmas I would say. Most of the week is given as vacation and everyone takes advantage to visit family and go to the lakes, rivers, oceans, and water parks since it is also the hottest time of year being right before the rainy season starts. The public buses are crazy-crowded and thefts increase dramatically. So this year a group of us Peace Corps volunteers decided to go do a five day hike in the jungle to Mayan ruins of El Mirador in the northernmost part of Guatemala in the department of Petén. Getting up to Flores from El Chol presented some challenges as it’s about a 12 hour trip on five buses from El Chol to Rabinal, to Salamá, to El Rancho (essentially a filthy truck stop where we waited for over an hour for a bus in blazing mid-day heat eating ripe mangos and inhaling only pure black exhaust from all the traffic and observing the prostitutes coming out of the bars as full buses passed and wouldn’t let us on), to Rio Hondo, where we scored seats on a bus coming from El Salvador up to Flores. We stayed at a cute Hostel and left early the next morning for our jungle trek.
So we got a local guide from the community of Carmelita which is an aldea of the municipality of San Andrés, Petén to take us on the hike. We hiked two days in to the ruins, spent a day checking them out, and hiked two days out. We had mules with us that carried our food, water, packs, and supplies. The walk itself was tough but manageable since it is almost entirely flat and shaded most of the way. We walked between 5 and 7 hours a day at a good pace for a total of an estimated 70 miles or 110 km over the five days. (No one was really sure of the mileage, the guide didn’t really know, and the guys we ran into with GPS only took start and end points rather than the path taken).
We slept in tents on the ground with a sheet as bedding and our arms as pillows. We ate a lot of white bread and canned tuna en route but at camp ate lots of eggs and beans and other delicious camping foods such as spaghetti and vegetable stew. Breakfast was a delicious one cup meal of instant coffee, sugar, powdered milk, Nesquick, and cornflakes all mixed together. Snacks were all the fresh fruits in season such as mangos, watermelon, cantaloupe, and pineapple. Fortunately we avoided the scorpions, pumas, and the deadly poisonous snakes whose bites have no cure. The ticks were another story and I picked off a total of six from my body that were in the process of burrowing in – supposedly there is no Lyme disease here though. We saw lots of monkeys (and heard more of the howler monkeys), cool spiders, geckos, and birds like toucans.
The ruins themselves were cool, but after having been to Tikal which is highly excavated, El Mirador was perhaps cooler in concept than in actual viewing. El Mirador is a whole ancient Mayan city from around the time of Christ which consists of a bunch of “complexes” and different temples and towers but are barely excavated and mostly look like piles of rocks still covered with vegetation. The cool part is that they were “discovered” less than 30 years ago and it is a hotbed of archeological excavation and research. It’s cool to think that you are climbing all over ancient uncovered temples. There were places where we got the guards to lift tarps to uncover newly found original wall carvings. There is scaffolding on various structures and all the stuff of the archeologists. It’s special that we got to go because we imagine that within a couple decades there will be significant excavation and the site will be accessible by vehicle and commercialized like Tikal.
Of the four nights we were out there, I was on top of a tower of a ruin for every single sunset (and one sunrise). It is quite breathtaking sitting atop an ancient temple above the canopy of the jungle taking in the views of the intense greenery and seeing other ruins poking out of the trees in the distance and on the horizon as the light changes and the sun plays with the clouds. You can see all the way to Tikal and other structures scattered about the region. We were there at the ruins on the exact night of the full moon so that was quite impressive so see as well. There was also a buzz about it being a very special night in the Mayan calendar when some stars aligned with the temples like every 12 years or something but never quite got the full story on that, but we were all waiting for something crazy to happen as we watched the moon rise and fill the sky.
So obviously backpacking there is nowhere to bathe yourself, but at the spots where we camped there was a swamp where you can get a bucket of brown water to make an attempt at it. After a long day walking in the jungle heat, I felt it quite necessary to make that attempt to at least remove a a layer of the dirt and salt that had built up on my skin. So I went with a friend and he kept watch in the other direction on the path while I stripped down and was there buck naked in the clearing in the forest splashing water on myself. All of a sudden a single file line of like seven Guatemalan guys appeared from the opposite direction of the forest from a path we hadn’t noticed. It was an awkward moment as I quickly grabbed my towel and stood there with it around me while they passed. Amazingly they said nothing and didn’t bother me in the least bit. We had a good laugh about it.
We talked with our guide and the assistant about the effect of this ecotourism project on their community. They have been receiving trainings from the government about how to interact with tourists, first aid, etc. to improve the project. There is controversy as to whether the park and protected area will stay in the hands of the government, or if it will be privatized. Would the protection of the forest be better and more efficiently enforced with a private entity? Would it take the jobs of the local guides away? The community is also divided between those that work a logging/rubber extraction/tourism cooperative and those that independently have organized themselves into groups that work together to guide the treks. It is interesting that since the ruins are a two day walk from the nearest community, the majority of the people that live there have never been to see the ruins. Driving to get to the community you pass vast deforested areas logged for the timber industry and burned expanses making room for agriculture. Effects on global warming, anyone?
There were 11 of us Peace Corps volunteers in our group along with a couple upper class kids from the capital, a guy from the Basque Country in Spain, and a Canadian guy. It was cool having the time to talk to everyone as I learned all about the autonomy and independence movement in the Basque Country, what it’s like to have body guards and live the rich life in Guatemala. It was also nice to have the chance to talk to fellow volunteers in depth about grad school, research interests, international development critiques, and future career and job possibilities since we are all leaving this year and starting to think about next steps.
Upon getting back to Flores from the trip we bought 50 giant ripe yummy mangos for 45 Quetzales (around 5 bucks) among the 15 of us to celebrate getting back. Eating whole mangos in a bus is a tricky business. You have to take of the peel with your teeth, eat the flesh while juice runs down your chin and arms and then suck the rest of the stringy fruit off the pit which then leaves your front teeth with mangos strings attractively hanging out and requiring flossing. It’s messy but oh-so-worth it. Flores is actually an island town in the middle of a lake, so when we got into town we all jumped into the lake for the most refreshing dip I’ve had in my whole life, since that swamp water rinse didn’t really do the trick.
Traveling back home on Saturday before Easter was a bit tricky since everyone is on vacation, including many bus drivers. We left Flores super early and were trying to get back to El Chol that same day, but it turned out to be impossible and so had to stay a night in Antigua. I was super frustrated, but it actually turned out to be really cool since Antigua is the most famous place in Central America for Semana Santa because of the elaborate processions including thousands of people that take place with impressive “carpets” made on the streets with colored sand, sawdust, and pine branches. Even though we had to pay quadruple to stay at the hostel we always stay at, we were super lucky to find a place to sleep. We got to see a night procession pass through the central park in front of the cathedral that was all lit up. Every person in the massive crowd was holding a candle and the air was thick and hazy with all the incense that was being burned. We watched the statues of Mary and Jesus pass by on giant wooden platforms that sway side to side being carried by gloved people wearing identical hooded purple robes. It is a very impressive display of religious devotion. At the hostel we enjoyed hot showers, ordering Domino’s pizza and applying exfoliating face masks. I spent Easter Sunday en route back to El Chol. The bus driver that I had called to ensure that he was working, evidently changed his mind and didn’t leave so we were facing the prospect of waiting in San Juan for five hours hoping that another bus would leave in the afternoon when luck struck us and a guy that my friend knows from her site drove by and gave us a ride back the 2 ½ hours to my site. Back to work on Monday with tons of stuff to do in the Women’s Office…
So we got a local guide from the community of Carmelita which is an aldea of the municipality of San Andrés, Petén to take us on the hike. We hiked two days in to the ruins, spent a day checking them out, and hiked two days out. We had mules with us that carried our food, water, packs, and supplies. The walk itself was tough but manageable since it is almost entirely flat and shaded most of the way. We walked between 5 and 7 hours a day at a good pace for a total of an estimated 70 miles or 110 km over the five days. (No one was really sure of the mileage, the guide didn’t really know, and the guys we ran into with GPS only took start and end points rather than the path taken).
We slept in tents on the ground with a sheet as bedding and our arms as pillows. We ate a lot of white bread and canned tuna en route but at camp ate lots of eggs and beans and other delicious camping foods such as spaghetti and vegetable stew. Breakfast was a delicious one cup meal of instant coffee, sugar, powdered milk, Nesquick, and cornflakes all mixed together. Snacks were all the fresh fruits in season such as mangos, watermelon, cantaloupe, and pineapple. Fortunately we avoided the scorpions, pumas, and the deadly poisonous snakes whose bites have no cure. The ticks were another story and I picked off a total of six from my body that were in the process of burrowing in – supposedly there is no Lyme disease here though. We saw lots of monkeys (and heard more of the howler monkeys), cool spiders, geckos, and birds like toucans.
The ruins themselves were cool, but after having been to Tikal which is highly excavated, El Mirador was perhaps cooler in concept than in actual viewing. El Mirador is a whole ancient Mayan city from around the time of Christ which consists of a bunch of “complexes” and different temples and towers but are barely excavated and mostly look like piles of rocks still covered with vegetation. The cool part is that they were “discovered” less than 30 years ago and it is a hotbed of archeological excavation and research. It’s cool to think that you are climbing all over ancient uncovered temples. There were places where we got the guards to lift tarps to uncover newly found original wall carvings. There is scaffolding on various structures and all the stuff of the archeologists. It’s special that we got to go because we imagine that within a couple decades there will be significant excavation and the site will be accessible by vehicle and commercialized like Tikal.
Of the four nights we were out there, I was on top of a tower of a ruin for every single sunset (and one sunrise). It is quite breathtaking sitting atop an ancient temple above the canopy of the jungle taking in the views of the intense greenery and seeing other ruins poking out of the trees in the distance and on the horizon as the light changes and the sun plays with the clouds. You can see all the way to Tikal and other structures scattered about the region. We were there at the ruins on the exact night of the full moon so that was quite impressive so see as well. There was also a buzz about it being a very special night in the Mayan calendar when some stars aligned with the temples like every 12 years or something but never quite got the full story on that, but we were all waiting for something crazy to happen as we watched the moon rise and fill the sky.
So obviously backpacking there is nowhere to bathe yourself, but at the spots where we camped there was a swamp where you can get a bucket of brown water to make an attempt at it. After a long day walking in the jungle heat, I felt it quite necessary to make that attempt to at least remove a a layer of the dirt and salt that had built up on my skin. So I went with a friend and he kept watch in the other direction on the path while I stripped down and was there buck naked in the clearing in the forest splashing water on myself. All of a sudden a single file line of like seven Guatemalan guys appeared from the opposite direction of the forest from a path we hadn’t noticed. It was an awkward moment as I quickly grabbed my towel and stood there with it around me while they passed. Amazingly they said nothing and didn’t bother me in the least bit. We had a good laugh about it.
We talked with our guide and the assistant about the effect of this ecotourism project on their community. They have been receiving trainings from the government about how to interact with tourists, first aid, etc. to improve the project. There is controversy as to whether the park and protected area will stay in the hands of the government, or if it will be privatized. Would the protection of the forest be better and more efficiently enforced with a private entity? Would it take the jobs of the local guides away? The community is also divided between those that work a logging/rubber extraction/tourism cooperative and those that independently have organized themselves into groups that work together to guide the treks. It is interesting that since the ruins are a two day walk from the nearest community, the majority of the people that live there have never been to see the ruins. Driving to get to the community you pass vast deforested areas logged for the timber industry and burned expanses making room for agriculture. Effects on global warming, anyone?
There were 11 of us Peace Corps volunteers in our group along with a couple upper class kids from the capital, a guy from the Basque Country in Spain, and a Canadian guy. It was cool having the time to talk to everyone as I learned all about the autonomy and independence movement in the Basque Country, what it’s like to have body guards and live the rich life in Guatemala. It was also nice to have the chance to talk to fellow volunteers in depth about grad school, research interests, international development critiques, and future career and job possibilities since we are all leaving this year and starting to think about next steps.
Upon getting back to Flores from the trip we bought 50 giant ripe yummy mangos for 45 Quetzales (around 5 bucks) among the 15 of us to celebrate getting back. Eating whole mangos in a bus is a tricky business. You have to take of the peel with your teeth, eat the flesh while juice runs down your chin and arms and then suck the rest of the stringy fruit off the pit which then leaves your front teeth with mangos strings attractively hanging out and requiring flossing. It’s messy but oh-so-worth it. Flores is actually an island town in the middle of a lake, so when we got into town we all jumped into the lake for the most refreshing dip I’ve had in my whole life, since that swamp water rinse didn’t really do the trick.
Traveling back home on Saturday before Easter was a bit tricky since everyone is on vacation, including many bus drivers. We left Flores super early and were trying to get back to El Chol that same day, but it turned out to be impossible and so had to stay a night in Antigua. I was super frustrated, but it actually turned out to be really cool since Antigua is the most famous place in Central America for Semana Santa because of the elaborate processions including thousands of people that take place with impressive “carpets” made on the streets with colored sand, sawdust, and pine branches. Even though we had to pay quadruple to stay at the hostel we always stay at, we were super lucky to find a place to sleep. We got to see a night procession pass through the central park in front of the cathedral that was all lit up. Every person in the massive crowd was holding a candle and the air was thick and hazy with all the incense that was being burned. We watched the statues of Mary and Jesus pass by on giant wooden platforms that sway side to side being carried by gloved people wearing identical hooded purple robes. It is a very impressive display of religious devotion. At the hostel we enjoyed hot showers, ordering Domino’s pizza and applying exfoliating face masks. I spent Easter Sunday en route back to El Chol. The bus driver that I had called to ensure that he was working, evidently changed his mind and didn’t leave so we were facing the prospect of waiting in San Juan for five hours hoping that another bus would leave in the afternoon when luck struck us and a guy that my friend knows from her site drove by and gave us a ride back the 2 ½ hours to my site. Back to work on Monday with tons of stuff to do in the Women’s Office…
Soccer trip and other adventures
Going back a bit, I took 15 girls aged 8 to 12 to the National Games in Soccer for Elementary schools in Chimaltenango, about 5 hours from El Chol. The trip was a huge success! I had two official adult chaperones go with me and a few other parents go as well. It was a wonderful opportunity for the girls since the Ministry of Education paid for the trip and covered transportation, lodging, and food. We slept on the floor of a school there and ate all our meals cafeteria style with the hundreds of kids who were participating. It was actually the first time in all my time in this country that I have seen any food service worker use gloves. It was a trying since most of the time there was no water…so the toilets couldn’t flush and there was no where to wash your hands. There were pilas, but the girls washed their hair there and then the water got nasty. I didn’t bathe myself for the four days of the trip.
Like I said, it was trying. I was responsible for coordinating all the logistics with the driver of the bus, all the paperwork, getting meal tickets, figuring out where we needed to be and when, and everything else. Also for keeping track of the girls, making sure everyone had drinking water, that they brushed their teeth, that they ate (and didn´t eat too many sweets), that they had all the pieces of their uniform, taking them to the bathroom in the middle of the night (and listening to one poor little girl’s bowels explode). This trip was the first time that some of the girls had left the town. We left on a Saturday and along the way we stopped at the Dispensa, which is a chain of low cost grocery stores. They never have the opportunity to go to a grocery store and were all wide-eyed and eager to purchase candies and snacks. On Sunday morning there was a parade in which all the participants put on matching t-shirts and walked through the city and traffic was stopped on the Inter-American highway so that all the kids could cross. The parade started in the central park and ended in the Municipal Stadium where the event was inaugurated with the speeches and the National Anthem.
The girls played three games in total: the first against Sololá which we lost 1-5, the next day against Jutiapa (the national champions from the previous year) which we lost 0-11, and the third and most exciting against Chiquimula which we tied 1-1 and then won in penalty kicks. The moment that they won the last game, all the moms were crying and the girls were jumping up and down and screaming in excitement. I imagine they will almost remember that. I think they forgot that they had lost the other games and felt like they were the national champions. When we got back to El Chol, there were firecrackers set off and juices and cookies given by the mayor.
All in all the event was a great chance for the girls to see other parts of their country and meet other kids from all over, to play and feel special and important. I’d say it was part of my primary project by boosting girls´ self esteem to be confident women citizens and participate in their local government, eh? We still practice one afternoon a week and they keep asking me when we are going to take another trip.
13 of the 15 girls were from El Chol and the other two were from nearby Rabinal. Although Rabinal is only 24 km down the road, it is seen as being totally separate “on the other side of the mountains”. It is very different, ethnically (mostly indigenous), culturally (most women wear “corte” the traditional skirts), and linguistically (many people speak the Mayan language Achi). The people from El Chol often do not speak well of the people from Rabinal and there is much prejudice and discrimination. So when the girls from El Chol found out that two girls from Rabinal were going to play with them, oh how they complained and said they didn´t want to play with them and even worse if they wore corte (which it turned out they did). At first they didn´t mingle at all and the girls from Rabinal were very shy and didn´t talk much but by the end of the trip, they were talking and laughing and at least some of the barriers had been broken down, aided by the fact that they played soccer very well and one of them scored the goal in the first game. Guatemala is a complex country and I had never witnesses such overt racism as I have observed here because in the States it is politically incorrect and covert.
I continue to work with the Peace Corps committee on HIV/AIDS education and prevention. At the beginning of March we had our second National HIV/AIDS prevention workshop with the volunteers and their counterparts in which around 75 people participated in the two-day workshop. We gave them training on participatory education, community penetration such as analyzing attitudes, knowledge, and practices of the community related to the subject, the full four hour HIV/AIDS prevention workshop, and action plans of how to implement the training. According to their evaluations, it was another big success.
I keep in touch with my host family from Alotenango and paid them a visit in March and met the new trainee that they have living with them right now. They are such a wonderful family and wonderful friends of mine and it’s nice to always feel so welcome in their home. I gave them the business card of the restaurant where their nephew is working in Bellevue, WA that he gave me when I was home for Christmas. I also gave them a historical book of Alontenango with an old-time photo of a man and a women who died years ago that they had known that I salvaged from the garbage when we were cleaning out the office space for the Women´s Office in El Chol.
This year we saw many changes in the personnel of the Planning Office. We have a new coordinator, who is a woman (my age) who is finishing up her university studies in civil engineering. It is a positive influence on the office, but has been a bit challenging to get the rest of the guys in the office on board. We have a female secretary now too as the guy who was the secretary is now in a different department. We’re bringing the female power to the muni!
Although the main focus of my work this year has been with the Women´s Office, I continue to do projects with and support the Municipal Planning Office. In February we did a self-diagnostic of the COMUDE, the Municipal Development Council, which in its ideal state would be the space for discussion and solution of municipal topics and problems. We split all the participants from the various communities and institutions into focus groups in which they brainstormed and responded to questions and analyzed the functioning of the Council. Afterwards we put all the responses and suggestions into a document and presented the results. Right now we are awaiting a meeting with the city council to address the needs. One of the most pressing issues is that the COMUDE should be divided into work commissions such as health, education, environment, etc. but as of right now they only exist on paper and there is no actual functioning. We hope to improve this problem this year.
It is delightful, delicious mango season! The last time I went to the community La Ciénega to bake bread we made mango bread. The women were thrilled! You make it exactly like banana bread, except instead of mashed ripe bananas, you use a pulp of ripe mangos. It is absolutely delicious! I decided to do this type of bread with them because in that community there are tons of mango trees and they can´t ever eat all the mangos that they give and many fall to the ground and rot, so better to be taking advantage of local resources and putting them into bread.
In March I had to delight of friends from the States coming to visit, my dear dear friend Allie and her boyfriend Matt. We had a lovely time. I picked them up from the airport and we got directly on a chicken bus and headed to El Chol where we spent a few days. They came with me to my English class and also to my soccer practice where they dove right in and played with the girls. They came with me to the feria in the aldea Los Amates where we watched the coronation of the queen of the feria and went to the community dance afterwards where we all danced exuberantly. We then went to Lake Atitlán and stayed in a beautiful hotel overlooking the lake with gorgeous views. It was super fun to have them visit and like always, such a joy for me to show off El Chol and play tour guide in this beautiful country.
The weather has been super hot in El Chol and so we take advantage on the weekends to go play at the river either with my site mate when we BBQ´d hamburgers or with my family that I live with.
Doña Hilda is so sweet and always giving me food. They other day she gave me a dish of cooked beets and some piece of suspicious meat sticking out with a thick tendon attached. When I thanked her for the food, she asked me if I had enjoyed the pig´s foot and I sheepishly told her that I had not. Then the other day I stuck my head in the kitchen to say “good afternoon” and she waved at me with a pair of bloody pig´s feet and motioned to another pair on the table. Shudders went through me and she laughed.
Like I said, it was trying. I was responsible for coordinating all the logistics with the driver of the bus, all the paperwork, getting meal tickets, figuring out where we needed to be and when, and everything else. Also for keeping track of the girls, making sure everyone had drinking water, that they brushed their teeth, that they ate (and didn´t eat too many sweets), that they had all the pieces of their uniform, taking them to the bathroom in the middle of the night (and listening to one poor little girl’s bowels explode). This trip was the first time that some of the girls had left the town. We left on a Saturday and along the way we stopped at the Dispensa, which is a chain of low cost grocery stores. They never have the opportunity to go to a grocery store and were all wide-eyed and eager to purchase candies and snacks. On Sunday morning there was a parade in which all the participants put on matching t-shirts and walked through the city and traffic was stopped on the Inter-American highway so that all the kids could cross. The parade started in the central park and ended in the Municipal Stadium where the event was inaugurated with the speeches and the National Anthem.
The girls played three games in total: the first against Sololá which we lost 1-5, the next day against Jutiapa (the national champions from the previous year) which we lost 0-11, and the third and most exciting against Chiquimula which we tied 1-1 and then won in penalty kicks. The moment that they won the last game, all the moms were crying and the girls were jumping up and down and screaming in excitement. I imagine they will almost remember that. I think they forgot that they had lost the other games and felt like they were the national champions. When we got back to El Chol, there were firecrackers set off and juices and cookies given by the mayor.
All in all the event was a great chance for the girls to see other parts of their country and meet other kids from all over, to play and feel special and important. I’d say it was part of my primary project by boosting girls´ self esteem to be confident women citizens and participate in their local government, eh? We still practice one afternoon a week and they keep asking me when we are going to take another trip.
13 of the 15 girls were from El Chol and the other two were from nearby Rabinal. Although Rabinal is only 24 km down the road, it is seen as being totally separate “on the other side of the mountains”. It is very different, ethnically (mostly indigenous), culturally (most women wear “corte” the traditional skirts), and linguistically (many people speak the Mayan language Achi). The people from El Chol often do not speak well of the people from Rabinal and there is much prejudice and discrimination. So when the girls from El Chol found out that two girls from Rabinal were going to play with them, oh how they complained and said they didn´t want to play with them and even worse if they wore corte (which it turned out they did). At first they didn´t mingle at all and the girls from Rabinal were very shy and didn´t talk much but by the end of the trip, they were talking and laughing and at least some of the barriers had been broken down, aided by the fact that they played soccer very well and one of them scored the goal in the first game. Guatemala is a complex country and I had never witnesses such overt racism as I have observed here because in the States it is politically incorrect and covert.
I continue to work with the Peace Corps committee on HIV/AIDS education and prevention. At the beginning of March we had our second National HIV/AIDS prevention workshop with the volunteers and their counterparts in which around 75 people participated in the two-day workshop. We gave them training on participatory education, community penetration such as analyzing attitudes, knowledge, and practices of the community related to the subject, the full four hour HIV/AIDS prevention workshop, and action plans of how to implement the training. According to their evaluations, it was another big success.
I keep in touch with my host family from Alotenango and paid them a visit in March and met the new trainee that they have living with them right now. They are such a wonderful family and wonderful friends of mine and it’s nice to always feel so welcome in their home. I gave them the business card of the restaurant where their nephew is working in Bellevue, WA that he gave me when I was home for Christmas. I also gave them a historical book of Alontenango with an old-time photo of a man and a women who died years ago that they had known that I salvaged from the garbage when we were cleaning out the office space for the Women´s Office in El Chol.
This year we saw many changes in the personnel of the Planning Office. We have a new coordinator, who is a woman (my age) who is finishing up her university studies in civil engineering. It is a positive influence on the office, but has been a bit challenging to get the rest of the guys in the office on board. We have a female secretary now too as the guy who was the secretary is now in a different department. We’re bringing the female power to the muni!
Although the main focus of my work this year has been with the Women´s Office, I continue to do projects with and support the Municipal Planning Office. In February we did a self-diagnostic of the COMUDE, the Municipal Development Council, which in its ideal state would be the space for discussion and solution of municipal topics and problems. We split all the participants from the various communities and institutions into focus groups in which they brainstormed and responded to questions and analyzed the functioning of the Council. Afterwards we put all the responses and suggestions into a document and presented the results. Right now we are awaiting a meeting with the city council to address the needs. One of the most pressing issues is that the COMUDE should be divided into work commissions such as health, education, environment, etc. but as of right now they only exist on paper and there is no actual functioning. We hope to improve this problem this year.
It is delightful, delicious mango season! The last time I went to the community La Ciénega to bake bread we made mango bread. The women were thrilled! You make it exactly like banana bread, except instead of mashed ripe bananas, you use a pulp of ripe mangos. It is absolutely delicious! I decided to do this type of bread with them because in that community there are tons of mango trees and they can´t ever eat all the mangos that they give and many fall to the ground and rot, so better to be taking advantage of local resources and putting them into bread.
In March I had to delight of friends from the States coming to visit, my dear dear friend Allie and her boyfriend Matt. We had a lovely time. I picked them up from the airport and we got directly on a chicken bus and headed to El Chol where we spent a few days. They came with me to my English class and also to my soccer practice where they dove right in and played with the girls. They came with me to the feria in the aldea Los Amates where we watched the coronation of the queen of the feria and went to the community dance afterwards where we all danced exuberantly. We then went to Lake Atitlán and stayed in a beautiful hotel overlooking the lake with gorgeous views. It was super fun to have them visit and like always, such a joy for me to show off El Chol and play tour guide in this beautiful country.
The weather has been super hot in El Chol and so we take advantage on the weekends to go play at the river either with my site mate when we BBQ´d hamburgers or with my family that I live with.
Doña Hilda is so sweet and always giving me food. They other day she gave me a dish of cooked beets and some piece of suspicious meat sticking out with a thick tendon attached. When I thanked her for the food, she asked me if I had enjoyed the pig´s foot and I sheepishly told her that I had not. Then the other day I stuck my head in the kitchen to say “good afternoon” and she waved at me with a pair of bloody pig´s feet and motioned to another pair on the table. Shudders went through me and she laughed.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Women's Office up and running!
SO! We have the Municipal Women’s and Youth Office!!! As of January 15th, 2009 we started the office, known as the OMMJ for Oficina Municipal de la Mujer y la Juventud. In May of 2008 the project was approved by the city council, in November 2008 we got permission to conduct the interview process (the only formal transparent interview process based on merit that has taken place in this municipality), and in January we hired our coordinator. She is an awesome woman, a Home Economics teacher, very smart, very petite, very punctual. At the same time a recent high school grad (one of my former students from last year) was hired as the Youth and Children’s technician.
We started out with the three of us crowded in the Planning Office, a small space which already had five people working in it with five chairs. Supposedly the Civil Registry was supposed to leave with the new privatized national registry, but that hasn’t happened yet so we were without an office space. After exploring about around the muni, we requested permission to clean out a storage area/garbage pile that was off of the library. This work took us a few days getting dirty removing all the trash that had been there for decades. Water gets in during the rainy season so everything was moist. There were tools, pipes, furniture, papers, a sack of moldy bean seeds, an old scale for weighing crops, rakes to prevent the spread of forest fires, old typewriters and computer equipment, and several unidentifiable objects. There were boxes of old books dating back to the 1930´s piled high that disintegrated when you pulled them down. All the books were wet and moldy and the boxes fell apart. There were registries from the treasury office with payments of 38 cents from the 1950´s. I’m sure historians would have cringed to see all the history being thrown away, but they were really unusable. There were cockroaches, spiders, evidence of rats, and a fossil of a toad that had met an unfortunate fate. Rumor has it that before being a storage/garbage room that is was the municipal jail when there was no presence of the national police force. Finally we got everything cleaned out, got the order for some of the muchachos that work for the muni to paint the space. We had to wait a few more days to get the wiring fixed so we could turn on the light. We salvaged a few rickety chairs from the trash to paint and they looked as good as new (as long as you sit carefully on them). We worked that way for a few weeks and then finally the municipal secretary gave us an old desk from who knows where so we finally had a place to write at least. We put the name of our office and mounted it on construction paper to tape to the door. Each little step we got more and more excited about the space. Even though it has no windows, there are doors on either side so at least there is air that gets in, once the smell of bleach and gasoline cleared out.
Our first task was to get the word out that we existed, to the communities and to the institutions working in the municipality. This included lots of meetings and explaining. In my time here I've accumulated a ton of materials about the laws, rights, citizen participation, etc. and since the two employees had lots to learn, they spent quite a bit of time familiarizing themselves with all that. The coordinator had never used a computer before, so training her on that has also been a big task. She knew how to type on a typewriter, but I've been training her on Windows, Word, and Excel and we’ve set her up with an email account to put her in direct contact with the institutions.
After working since January, in mid-March we finally got her contract finalized after many circles round and round the muni and then at the end of March she got her first pay check! I was so excited that day I was jumping up and down since the municipal employees only get paid once every few months, I had been holding my breath ever since she started working there, afraid somehow that she would never get paid. But she did! Success!
March 26th we had our first big event put on by our office…El Primer Encuentro Municipal de Lideresas (First Municipal Gathering of Women Leaders). We invited all the women who are part of the COCODES (Community Development Councils), as least written down as being part of them on paper at least, to an event in the town. We did workshops on self-esteem, the importance of women in development, and community organization. We facilitated the event and the workshops as the Women’s Office with the help of the Municipal Planning Office and invited facilitators from various NGO’s to participate. The goal of the invent was to promote boost women’s confidence in their participation in the Development Council and empower then to take part in decision making processes, such as prioritizing projects in their communities. The women were so excited to have been invited and that we were taking them into account, since there is so much machismo in this country that women are constantly being overlooked and not invited to things. In fact, we became aware that some of the male community leaders that we had sent the written invitations to didn’t distribute them, and lied to us and told them that they had. There are just so many barriers to including women in these processes it is very frustrating. These are the very women who are supposedly elected by their communities to represent them, and they tell us that they are constantly being excluded from the meeting of the very group that they are a part of. Anyway, so that’s why it was so cool that we did this. It was a great opportunity to debut the Women’s Office and get a start on organizing women’s groups in the rural communities. It was also just so nice for the women to be able to leave their houses for a time and play and laugh and learn and share with other women since they are just stuck in their houses all day long with household chores and taking care of their kids, there are so few opportunities for them to get out and have the spaces to enjoy and learn like that. We decorated the space with balloons and posters of inspirational messages and played lots of games and had all kinds of participatory activities. The municipality covered the costs of providing snacks and lunch for the women (and the inevitable children that are stuck to them). It was a big success and we are already planning the next event. I was so proud of my coordinator for putting so much work and planning into everything and she felt so good for the accomplishment.
So that’s how we’ve started out…little by little. I feel so proud to have accomplished starting this office, since it was one of my major goals in the Peace Corps. There is a good reason why Peace Corps is for two years. It really is in the second year when everything magically comes together and stuff gets done. I have tons of work now and am feeling very fulfilled in what I’m doing in the role of training the coordinator and the technician, guiding the planning process and long term goals, and helping execute special events and trainings. Woo hoo!
We started out with the three of us crowded in the Planning Office, a small space which already had five people working in it with five chairs. Supposedly the Civil Registry was supposed to leave with the new privatized national registry, but that hasn’t happened yet so we were without an office space. After exploring about around the muni, we requested permission to clean out a storage area/garbage pile that was off of the library. This work took us a few days getting dirty removing all the trash that had been there for decades. Water gets in during the rainy season so everything was moist. There were tools, pipes, furniture, papers, a sack of moldy bean seeds, an old scale for weighing crops, rakes to prevent the spread of forest fires, old typewriters and computer equipment, and several unidentifiable objects. There were boxes of old books dating back to the 1930´s piled high that disintegrated when you pulled them down. All the books were wet and moldy and the boxes fell apart. There were registries from the treasury office with payments of 38 cents from the 1950´s. I’m sure historians would have cringed to see all the history being thrown away, but they were really unusable. There were cockroaches, spiders, evidence of rats, and a fossil of a toad that had met an unfortunate fate. Rumor has it that before being a storage/garbage room that is was the municipal jail when there was no presence of the national police force. Finally we got everything cleaned out, got the order for some of the muchachos that work for the muni to paint the space. We had to wait a few more days to get the wiring fixed so we could turn on the light. We salvaged a few rickety chairs from the trash to paint and they looked as good as new (as long as you sit carefully on them). We worked that way for a few weeks and then finally the municipal secretary gave us an old desk from who knows where so we finally had a place to write at least. We put the name of our office and mounted it on construction paper to tape to the door. Each little step we got more and more excited about the space. Even though it has no windows, there are doors on either side so at least there is air that gets in, once the smell of bleach and gasoline cleared out.
Our first task was to get the word out that we existed, to the communities and to the institutions working in the municipality. This included lots of meetings and explaining. In my time here I've accumulated a ton of materials about the laws, rights, citizen participation, etc. and since the two employees had lots to learn, they spent quite a bit of time familiarizing themselves with all that. The coordinator had never used a computer before, so training her on that has also been a big task. She knew how to type on a typewriter, but I've been training her on Windows, Word, and Excel and we’ve set her up with an email account to put her in direct contact with the institutions.
After working since January, in mid-March we finally got her contract finalized after many circles round and round the muni and then at the end of March she got her first pay check! I was so excited that day I was jumping up and down since the municipal employees only get paid once every few months, I had been holding my breath ever since she started working there, afraid somehow that she would never get paid. But she did! Success!
March 26th we had our first big event put on by our office…El Primer Encuentro Municipal de Lideresas (First Municipal Gathering of Women Leaders). We invited all the women who are part of the COCODES (Community Development Councils), as least written down as being part of them on paper at least, to an event in the town. We did workshops on self-esteem, the importance of women in development, and community organization. We facilitated the event and the workshops as the Women’s Office with the help of the Municipal Planning Office and invited facilitators from various NGO’s to participate. The goal of the invent was to promote boost women’s confidence in their participation in the Development Council and empower then to take part in decision making processes, such as prioritizing projects in their communities. The women were so excited to have been invited and that we were taking them into account, since there is so much machismo in this country that women are constantly being overlooked and not invited to things. In fact, we became aware that some of the male community leaders that we had sent the written invitations to didn’t distribute them, and lied to us and told them that they had. There are just so many barriers to including women in these processes it is very frustrating. These are the very women who are supposedly elected by their communities to represent them, and they tell us that they are constantly being excluded from the meeting of the very group that they are a part of. Anyway, so that’s why it was so cool that we did this. It was a great opportunity to debut the Women’s Office and get a start on organizing women’s groups in the rural communities. It was also just so nice for the women to be able to leave their houses for a time and play and laugh and learn and share with other women since they are just stuck in their houses all day long with household chores and taking care of their kids, there are so few opportunities for them to get out and have the spaces to enjoy and learn like that. We decorated the space with balloons and posters of inspirational messages and played lots of games and had all kinds of participatory activities. The municipality covered the costs of providing snacks and lunch for the women (and the inevitable children that are stuck to them). It was a big success and we are already planning the next event. I was so proud of my coordinator for putting so much work and planning into everything and she felt so good for the accomplishment.
So that’s how we’ve started out…little by little. I feel so proud to have accomplished starting this office, since it was one of my major goals in the Peace Corps. There is a good reason why Peace Corps is for two years. It really is in the second year when everything magically comes together and stuff gets done. I have tons of work now and am feeling very fulfilled in what I’m doing in the role of training the coordinator and the technician, guiding the planning process and long term goals, and helping execute special events and trainings. Woo hoo!
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Soccer trip, electricity inauguration, economy, Valentines Day...etc.
As the new year started, I continued to have soccer practice with my group of elementary school girls. One day I received a call from the Departmental coordinator of Physical Education inviting our group to represent the department of Baja Verapaz in the National Physical Education Games in Chimaltenango at the end of February. I guess he was talking one day in the departmental capital to one of the city councilmen and that’s how he found out about my group and got my number. Anyway, it’s a big honor and a really cool opportunity for the girls to go play with kids from all over the country and leave this town, some of them for the first time. The Ministry will be covering the costs of transportation, food, and organizing lodging in a school there, so it makes the trip possible for kids that wouldn’t be able to pay. So in the meantime I've been doing all the logistical organizing to make this trip possible. It hasn’t been easy. Of course the girls were all for it, it’s a matter of convincing the parents to let them go. Getting permission here is tricky, whether it’s a child from a parent or a wife from her husband. So I made official notes with the information and an invitation to a parents meeting and delivered them door to door to twenty houses of girls who had come out to practice with the help of one of the girls in my house. Only about seven parents showed up (I needed 15 girls) so that wasn’t quite enough. I was about to scrap the idea right there and think that I was crazy for even trying, but one of the moms said that she would go around with me and muster up more interest. So I made more house calls another day with her and little by little we got more parents on board. After the fourth meeting and several more house calls to confirm with parents who didn’t come to the meeting, but whose daughters said they got permission. During these meetings we picked the other two responsible adults who will be going with us as chaperones. Then came all paperwork, nagging the girls and their parents to give me copies of their birth certificates, going to their school on several occasions to get a letting from the director for permission and proving that they attended that school, figuring out uniforms, taking their pictures and getting them printed for their ID cards. It was REALLY annoying and I had to keep repeating the mantra in my head of how great of an opportunity this is going to be for them. I was having several conversations a week with the coordinator who had invited us about the logistics and requirement. Well the week that I was going to turn the paperwork, he called for a list of the names and birthdates and informed me that the girls who were born in 1996 couldn’t go because they would turn 13 this year, even though during the event they would be 12 during the event. This was a very important detail that he had failed to mention to me earlier, so I had to have a sad conversation with two of the girls telling them that they couldn’t go anymore. Then I had parents upset with me because their daughters were upset. Then a girl who was cousins with one of them then told me that her mom wouldn’t let her go if her cousin wasn’t going, so I had to make another house call and go in and drink coffee and eat stale bread while I explained the situation. So anyway, the trip is for this weekend....wish us luck!!!
So the other weekend I had the privilege of attending a ceremony to inaugurate the project of introducing electricity in the community where I bake bread. The project was one of the projects done with financing from the System of Development Councils approved at the departmental level. When I first came to El Chol, I had met the super smart female community mayor and she told me that “ya mero” (very soon) they would have the project finished. Well, 14 months later it happened. I had intended to walk there (about an hour) but got lucky and caught a ride in the back of the mayor’s pickup as he was heading out of town and made our way to the rural village and on the bumpy dirt road barely hanging on around the curves. We got there and there was the usual loud music blasting from big speakers from the sound system that had been brought by the local disco company which runs all the events in town. Good thing they finally had electricity to hook them up with. Kids were selling bags of peanuts and acidic unripe mango slice with lime and salt. In the school they did a ceremony where the municipal mayor and community mayor gave words and they did various competitions and games with prizes. The event culminated in a lunch that they gave everyone in attendance, which was quite the crowd with everyone from the 18 family community plus the invited people from town. A common pork dish in orange sauce with rice that had been bubbling all morning in huge caldrons over open fires in the patio of the school was served with tortillas. (I thought about making a joke about where were the electric stoves? But then thought that might not be very appropriate). It was a cool event to participate in because it was a huge deal for this community to have executed the project and ever cooler that it was done by a female leader. There are few opportunities for the people of rural communities to get together and celebrate so it was a unique opportunity for them to get dressed up, leave their houses, and share a meal with each other and people from town and have the honorable presence of the municipal mayor too. They were very proud of themselves and it was a merry event and having electricity will obviously make a huge change in the community.
I am continuing with my English class from last year, now my “intermediate” group and I’ve started with another beginning group with about 15 students all between the ages of 18-25. They are a great group and several of them have either been in the states or have studied English before and know a fair bit. This continues to be an activity that I thoroughly enjoy and look forward to. For Valentine’s Day I did an activity with candy hearts from the States where each student drew a few and had to write love letters in English using the inspiration from the candy heart messages. It was pretty cute and there was lots of giggling.
In January my site mate and I finished our world map project and finally painted the names of all the countries in Spanish, touched up a few areas, and added the acknowledgements. We did a teacher training before the kids started classes and gave the teacher a packet of information with explanations of some of the games that you can play with the map and then we played some of the games with them. For example, we did one where you play music and dance over the map and when the music stops, you have to freeze on the country that you are on and then read the name of the country and state the continent that it’s on. Some of these teachers had a hard time naming the continent they were on, which reinforced for us the importance of this project in the familiarization of geography, not only for the kids.
At the beginning of February my family here in El Chol observed the one year anniversary of the death of the señora’s dad. There were several evenings of prayer sessions followed by the compulsory coffee and tamales and lots of family members and community member in attendance. I continue to be impressioned by the rituals surrounding death here.
Ripples of the bad state of the economy are being felt in rural Guatemala and it is the hot topic of conversation. Lots of people from here who had gone there illegally to work and making their way back since they can’t find work. Most of them were working in construction, and since there isn’t a lot of new house building going on right now, they’re coming back. And those that are staying aren’t able to send back remittances as they used to. This situation has significantly affected the household incomes here that were highly dependent upon that cash flow. Money is tight everywhere, for everyone. People talk about how they have high hopes in Obama to improve the situation since there is a lot of blaming the United States for financial problems here.
There were a few weeks where it actually got pretty cold here at night and the early mornings, even though the days were warm and sunny. The thermometer on my alarm clock registered as low as 57 degrees in my house at night. It was strange to be wearing a fleece and socks to sleep in and still be cold and to wear sleeves to work in the morning. It seems that cold snap has passed and is now more like 70 at night and 85 in the day. Things are dry and dusty since the rains won’t come again til May. Keeping the house clean and dust free is an impossible task and traveling out of town covers you in a thick layer and the joke made every time is how everyone arrives “canche” (light-haired).
Valentine’s Day is hugely celebrated in Guatemala…not just boyfriend/girlfriends, but in any social situation. Families and church groups go the river and have picnics, every level of school does a gift exchange event, text messages and emails are sent to everyone in your address book, offices have celebrations. In the muni we did a gift exchange by drawing names of the person you had to get a gift for and sharing a snack Monday afternoon. It was cute since there are few opportunities when all the employees that work in the muni get together, about 15 of us. We all gathered in one of the offices and each person had the opportunity to give words about what Valentine’s Day (“Día de Cariño” or “Day of Caring”) means to them. This is all taken with utmost seriousness and is not considered cheesy or appropriate for giggles, as I was inclined to stifle. There were lots of hugs and everyone applauded and gave whoops of surprise as one by one we gave our gifts for the intended person. We then drank cantaloupe juice and ate guacamole on large tortilla chip rounds. It was special to be a part of.
To celebrate Valentine’s Day on the actual day, I gathered with some of my Peace Corps girlfriends at the Lake at one of their houses. It was a much needed respite and chance to catch up with the girls. We were hanging out at the dock and met the Guatemalan volunteer firefighters that work in that town who were receiving a training from some firefighters, coincidentally from Lynnwood, WA. While they were learning how to do water rescues, we went for a swim and ended up being practiced on as their “victims” by getting us up onto a board and pulling us into the boat. It was pretty hilarious with the Guatemalan firefighter about half my size who himself couldn’t swim without the bulky lifejacket, hefting two of us onto the board as the American firefighters called out instructions in broken Spanish. But he had a smile ear to ear after completing his feat. There was applause from the boat and from the dock and the rest of my friends where keeled over in laughter. It was a great day and worth the total of 16 hours of chicken bus travel time for 12 hours of waking time during the visit.
So the other weekend I had the privilege of attending a ceremony to inaugurate the project of introducing electricity in the community where I bake bread. The project was one of the projects done with financing from the System of Development Councils approved at the departmental level. When I first came to El Chol, I had met the super smart female community mayor and she told me that “ya mero” (very soon) they would have the project finished. Well, 14 months later it happened. I had intended to walk there (about an hour) but got lucky and caught a ride in the back of the mayor’s pickup as he was heading out of town and made our way to the rural village and on the bumpy dirt road barely hanging on around the curves. We got there and there was the usual loud music blasting from big speakers from the sound system that had been brought by the local disco company which runs all the events in town. Good thing they finally had electricity to hook them up with. Kids were selling bags of peanuts and acidic unripe mango slice with lime and salt. In the school they did a ceremony where the municipal mayor and community mayor gave words and they did various competitions and games with prizes. The event culminated in a lunch that they gave everyone in attendance, which was quite the crowd with everyone from the 18 family community plus the invited people from town. A common pork dish in orange sauce with rice that had been bubbling all morning in huge caldrons over open fires in the patio of the school was served with tortillas. (I thought about making a joke about where were the electric stoves? But then thought that might not be very appropriate). It was a cool event to participate in because it was a huge deal for this community to have executed the project and ever cooler that it was done by a female leader. There are few opportunities for the people of rural communities to get together and celebrate so it was a unique opportunity for them to get dressed up, leave their houses, and share a meal with each other and people from town and have the honorable presence of the municipal mayor too. They were very proud of themselves and it was a merry event and having electricity will obviously make a huge change in the community.
I am continuing with my English class from last year, now my “intermediate” group and I’ve started with another beginning group with about 15 students all between the ages of 18-25. They are a great group and several of them have either been in the states or have studied English before and know a fair bit. This continues to be an activity that I thoroughly enjoy and look forward to. For Valentine’s Day I did an activity with candy hearts from the States where each student drew a few and had to write love letters in English using the inspiration from the candy heart messages. It was pretty cute and there was lots of giggling.
In January my site mate and I finished our world map project and finally painted the names of all the countries in Spanish, touched up a few areas, and added the acknowledgements. We did a teacher training before the kids started classes and gave the teacher a packet of information with explanations of some of the games that you can play with the map and then we played some of the games with them. For example, we did one where you play music and dance over the map and when the music stops, you have to freeze on the country that you are on and then read the name of the country and state the continent that it’s on. Some of these teachers had a hard time naming the continent they were on, which reinforced for us the importance of this project in the familiarization of geography, not only for the kids.
At the beginning of February my family here in El Chol observed the one year anniversary of the death of the señora’s dad. There were several evenings of prayer sessions followed by the compulsory coffee and tamales and lots of family members and community member in attendance. I continue to be impressioned by the rituals surrounding death here.
Ripples of the bad state of the economy are being felt in rural Guatemala and it is the hot topic of conversation. Lots of people from here who had gone there illegally to work and making their way back since they can’t find work. Most of them were working in construction, and since there isn’t a lot of new house building going on right now, they’re coming back. And those that are staying aren’t able to send back remittances as they used to. This situation has significantly affected the household incomes here that were highly dependent upon that cash flow. Money is tight everywhere, for everyone. People talk about how they have high hopes in Obama to improve the situation since there is a lot of blaming the United States for financial problems here.
There were a few weeks where it actually got pretty cold here at night and the early mornings, even though the days were warm and sunny. The thermometer on my alarm clock registered as low as 57 degrees in my house at night. It was strange to be wearing a fleece and socks to sleep in and still be cold and to wear sleeves to work in the morning. It seems that cold snap has passed and is now more like 70 at night and 85 in the day. Things are dry and dusty since the rains won’t come again til May. Keeping the house clean and dust free is an impossible task and traveling out of town covers you in a thick layer and the joke made every time is how everyone arrives “canche” (light-haired).
Valentine’s Day is hugely celebrated in Guatemala…not just boyfriend/girlfriends, but in any social situation. Families and church groups go the river and have picnics, every level of school does a gift exchange event, text messages and emails are sent to everyone in your address book, offices have celebrations. In the muni we did a gift exchange by drawing names of the person you had to get a gift for and sharing a snack Monday afternoon. It was cute since there are few opportunities when all the employees that work in the muni get together, about 15 of us. We all gathered in one of the offices and each person had the opportunity to give words about what Valentine’s Day (“Día de Cariño” or “Day of Caring”) means to them. This is all taken with utmost seriousness and is not considered cheesy or appropriate for giggles, as I was inclined to stifle. There were lots of hugs and everyone applauded and gave whoops of surprise as one by one we gave our gifts for the intended person. We then drank cantaloupe juice and ate guacamole on large tortilla chip rounds. It was special to be a part of.
To celebrate Valentine’s Day on the actual day, I gathered with some of my Peace Corps girlfriends at the Lake at one of their houses. It was a much needed respite and chance to catch up with the girls. We were hanging out at the dock and met the Guatemalan volunteer firefighters that work in that town who were receiving a training from some firefighters, coincidentally from Lynnwood, WA. While they were learning how to do water rescues, we went for a swim and ended up being practiced on as their “victims” by getting us up onto a board and pulling us into the boat. It was pretty hilarious with the Guatemalan firefighter about half my size who himself couldn’t swim without the bulky lifejacket, hefting two of us onto the board as the American firefighters called out instructions in broken Spanish. But he had a smile ear to ear after completing his feat. There was applause from the boat and from the dock and the rest of my friends where keeled over in laughter. It was a great day and worth the total of 16 hours of chicken bus travel time for 12 hours of waking time during the visit.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Happy New Year!
The 2008 El Chol feria was a huge success. This is the event that the entire town looks forward to the whole year. The extended week long celebration was intense, super fun, and tired me out. The feria basically exists of various elements: the religious aspect of which is the reason for celebrating which consists of processions with the Virgin Mary, vigils in the church, people hosting “Ave Marias” at their houses, and the arrival of traveling pilgrims; the commercial aspect of people coming from all over the region to sell their wares; the competitive aspect with many opportunities for participation in athletic competitions; the entertainment aspect with the election of the queen, a rodeo, motocross, and cock fighting; and the community aspect of it all getting people out of their houses and into the streets for shopping, the parade, the four nights of community dances. I participated in many of the competitions that took place such as:
Campeonato de futbol feminino. Women’s soccer tournament. Our El Chol selection made up of mostly middle school and high school girls won first place of the invited teams from Rabinal and Granados! Big trophy.
Triatlon. Triathlon. For my second year participating in this event, I came in second place again of a total of three participants, being the only woman. The guy who won was the same guy who beat me last year. But this year the prizes were better and I won 500 quetzales, the equivalent of my rent for a month or just over 60 bucks. In the days before the race everyone kept asking me if I was ready to compete. Just as last year, the race consisted of a 100 meter swim in the river in waist deep cold water coming off the mountain, a 3 km bike ride all uphill on a dusty dirt road, and a 2 km run on that road arriving into town. I was ahead during the whole bike part and the little van with the loudspeakers was giving the play by play announcing that Katty McKee was leading the race. We were accompanied by plenty of motorcycles and friends cheering us on. In addition to the cash, I won a glass trophy with the emblem of the national beer.
Tiro con honda. Slingshot contest. It was the first time in my life shooting a slingshot. Out of my ten chances, I didn’t hit a single bottle.
Motos empujadas. Pushed motorcycles. A challenging event where in pairs you have to push a motorcycle (turned off) around the perimeter of the soccer field. I did this with my site mate and we thought we would dominate the event, but came in last of the three women’s teams. The winners felt bad and gave us their medals donated by the national beer brand.
Other exciting events that I witnessed included gatos asustados, scaredy cats, where people bring their cats and tie a string around its neck with a metal ring which is attached to a string between two poles. They then set off firecrackers and watch the cats go running, and the first to arrive at the other side wins. Cruel. The cock fighting was also rather disturbing but fascinating to see. It was the first time in my life to see such an event and I didn’t stay very long. The razor blades that they attached to their talons slicing into the other bird and the owners giving the avian equivalent of CPR was just a bit disturbing for me. Jaripeo, the rodeo, was pretty awesome. One crazy thing they did to entertain the crowd during the breaks was the “The most applauded table” where they offered free beers to the first four volunteers who came forward. The contest was to see who could finish the beer first, without getting up from their seat at the table that was set up in the middle. They then released the biggest, meanest bull into the pen and it went trampling over the four guys in the middle. Being stupid and drunk, they didn’t even move and all got trampled. Luckily we didn’t see anyone die or and serious visible wounds, but those scenarios were in high probability. Imagine the lawsuits in the States.
The community dances were incredibly fun and for two of the nights they brought in live Ranchera bands which were pretty good and made for a good atmosphere. In all it was a very enjoyable feria, but sad to think it was my last one here. It’s funny cause the first year in your site, every event and activity is new and exciting and then the second year it’s hard thinking that it will be your last time doing or celebrating each thing.
Right after the feria I went home to the states, which was glorious. Despite the unusual snow storm (record since 1955!) I thoroughly enjoyed my time at home with family and friends. I was reminded of all the things that I missed and had grown accustomed to doing without and it made it even more difficult to say goodbye and think of another year away.
It was nice to come back to friends and “family” and in Guatemala. I spent new years at the beach on the Pacific coast in Monterrico. It was nice catching up with Peace Corps friends, making new friends, and transitioning back into Guatemalan life.
Coming back to El Chol was very nice. I was greeted with a swarm of kids from the family as soon as I stepped off the bus and it was good to have that “coming home” feeling on both ends of my journey. The señora had a tamale ready for me which she had saved, knowing the strangeness that we don’t eat tamales for Christmas in the U.S. and wanting to make sure I had mine. I relished distributing gifts and trinkets to everyone from the states and they were quite thrilled with what I had brought them. Everyone I saw on the street was glad to see me and asked where I had been since they had noticed that I hadn’t been around.
We’re getting back into the swing of things at work. My counterpart, the coordinator of the Municipal Planning Office is no longer working here so we are awaiting the appointment of the new coordinator. While I was gone a técnico for children and youth was hired who will be working with us in the almost formed Municipal Women and Youth Office. (He was actually one of my students last year when I was giving citizen participation workshops in the high school). We started the year off well doing a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis of our office that I think was good and honest and then moving on to an annual operating plan for 2009. It was a good way to start things off and I hope that we will stick to what we say we will do. 10 months to go…
Campeonato de futbol feminino. Women’s soccer tournament. Our El Chol selection made up of mostly middle school and high school girls won first place of the invited teams from Rabinal and Granados! Big trophy.
Triatlon. Triathlon. For my second year participating in this event, I came in second place again of a total of three participants, being the only woman. The guy who won was the same guy who beat me last year. But this year the prizes were better and I won 500 quetzales, the equivalent of my rent for a month or just over 60 bucks. In the days before the race everyone kept asking me if I was ready to compete. Just as last year, the race consisted of a 100 meter swim in the river in waist deep cold water coming off the mountain, a 3 km bike ride all uphill on a dusty dirt road, and a 2 km run on that road arriving into town. I was ahead during the whole bike part and the little van with the loudspeakers was giving the play by play announcing that Katty McKee was leading the race. We were accompanied by plenty of motorcycles and friends cheering us on. In addition to the cash, I won a glass trophy with the emblem of the national beer.
Tiro con honda. Slingshot contest. It was the first time in my life shooting a slingshot. Out of my ten chances, I didn’t hit a single bottle.
Motos empujadas. Pushed motorcycles. A challenging event where in pairs you have to push a motorcycle (turned off) around the perimeter of the soccer field. I did this with my site mate and we thought we would dominate the event, but came in last of the three women’s teams. The winners felt bad and gave us their medals donated by the national beer brand.
Other exciting events that I witnessed included gatos asustados, scaredy cats, where people bring their cats and tie a string around its neck with a metal ring which is attached to a string between two poles. They then set off firecrackers and watch the cats go running, and the first to arrive at the other side wins. Cruel. The cock fighting was also rather disturbing but fascinating to see. It was the first time in my life to see such an event and I didn’t stay very long. The razor blades that they attached to their talons slicing into the other bird and the owners giving the avian equivalent of CPR was just a bit disturbing for me. Jaripeo, the rodeo, was pretty awesome. One crazy thing they did to entertain the crowd during the breaks was the “The most applauded table” where they offered free beers to the first four volunteers who came forward. The contest was to see who could finish the beer first, without getting up from their seat at the table that was set up in the middle. They then released the biggest, meanest bull into the pen and it went trampling over the four guys in the middle. Being stupid and drunk, they didn’t even move and all got trampled. Luckily we didn’t see anyone die or and serious visible wounds, but those scenarios were in high probability. Imagine the lawsuits in the States.
The community dances were incredibly fun and for two of the nights they brought in live Ranchera bands which were pretty good and made for a good atmosphere. In all it was a very enjoyable feria, but sad to think it was my last one here. It’s funny cause the first year in your site, every event and activity is new and exciting and then the second year it’s hard thinking that it will be your last time doing or celebrating each thing.
Right after the feria I went home to the states, which was glorious. Despite the unusual snow storm (record since 1955!) I thoroughly enjoyed my time at home with family and friends. I was reminded of all the things that I missed and had grown accustomed to doing without and it made it even more difficult to say goodbye and think of another year away.
It was nice to come back to friends and “family” and in Guatemala. I spent new years at the beach on the Pacific coast in Monterrico. It was nice catching up with Peace Corps friends, making new friends, and transitioning back into Guatemalan life.
Coming back to El Chol was very nice. I was greeted with a swarm of kids from the family as soon as I stepped off the bus and it was good to have that “coming home” feeling on both ends of my journey. The señora had a tamale ready for me which she had saved, knowing the strangeness that we don’t eat tamales for Christmas in the U.S. and wanting to make sure I had mine. I relished distributing gifts and trinkets to everyone from the states and they were quite thrilled with what I had brought them. Everyone I saw on the street was glad to see me and asked where I had been since they had noticed that I hadn’t been around.
We’re getting back into the swing of things at work. My counterpart, the coordinator of the Municipal Planning Office is no longer working here so we are awaiting the appointment of the new coordinator. While I was gone a técnico for children and youth was hired who will be working with us in the almost formed Municipal Women and Youth Office. (He was actually one of my students last year when I was giving citizen participation workshops in the high school). We started the year off well doing a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis of our office that I think was good and honest and then moving on to an annual operating plan for 2009. It was a good way to start things off and I hope that we will stick to what we say we will do. 10 months to go…
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