Site Assignment and Day of the Dead

So! We received our sites... at last after a long period of excruciating waiting shrouded in secrecy. I will be spending the next two years of my life in a very small pueblo called Santa Cruz El Chol in the department of Baja Verapaz. Looking at a map of Guatemala, El Chol is betwwen Guatemala City and Coban a couple hours from the department capital of Salama. The climate is supposed to be warmish-temperate and it sits at an altitude of 1000 meters above sea level. The whole municipality, including rural areas, has about 9000 people, with about 3000 that live in the town itself. It is a mostly Spanish-speaking ladino (metizo, mixed) community but the nearest other towns are evidently very indiginous and speak the Mayan language of Achi'. It's only about 90 Km from the capital, but half of that is on unpaved dirt roads with not so frequent transportation. There are some pictures of the town that you can see at http://www.inforpressca.com/santacruzelchol/index.php. The website is in Spanish, but theres tons of neat info and just click on the picture to see the gallery. I will be working in the Municipal Planning Office and with a variety of community groups. My mayor was reelected, so the entire administration will hopefully not be changing much come January. I'm very excited to get there and get to work and start intergrating myself all over again. Right now its still a huge unknown. I will be very sad to leave Alotenango, my current host family, and my fellow trainees. Mostly everybody is in the Western part of the country far, far away. There is one volunteer in the Youth Development program in my site and there are some other current volunteers close to me, but Im the only one from my training group in that department. Our counterparts from the host agencies will be coming out to the training center next Tuesday to meet us and then we will go out to our sites for the first time with them on Wednesday and stay there til next Sunday. We are supposed to start searching for a place to live and start to get to know the community. I'm very excited, but really just have no idea about what to think.

This whole process is a little crazy because you think you're joining the Peace Corps and going to be all independent and everything, but then you realize that you feel like you have way less control over your life than you did in the states. You sign up for Peace Corps, they tell you the country you'll be going to and then assign you your site with very little input in the process. I'm not used to feeling such a lack of control over my life....I've always decided where I want to live and work and all of a sudden that decision isn't up to me anymore. Its a bit odd.

Kelly and I have started calling great days here, GGD's: Good Guatemala Days. Yesterday was definitely one of them. It was November 1st, was Day of the Dead/All Saints Day and it was incredible. It is the day where everyone celebrates and honors ancestors and friends and family who have passed away. They decorate the cemetaries and graves with flowers and colorful wreaths and pass the day in the cemetary with their families eating picnics and listening to music. There is a big tradition of flying kites to communicate with everyone in heaven. They are brightly colored and made out of crepe paper and every little kid in the street has one. I started the day by going to cemetary to check things out in the morning. There were tons of peopel paying tribute, cleaning up grave sites and the crosses marking them, and of course, a sky full of kites. In the US, cemetaries are sad, somber places that may give you the creeps and people generally avoid. Here, they are a bit more....festive (?)....and natural. Not that death is a happy thing by any means, but there just seems to be a healthier outlook on it. There is just so much more respect and acknowledgement of it. It might have to do with the fact that Guatemalans are very fatalistc and know that death is unavoidable whereas Americans think that their lives are in their hands and have more control and death is to be feared. Just interesting the different takes on it.

After the cemetary I went home for the long anticipated lunch of fiambre. It a traditional dish made on this day taht is basically a giant salad of every meat you can imagine and picked vegetables. For example: chicken, tongue, three kinds of sausage, hot dogs, ham, salami, olives, corn, peas, colliflower, carrots, peppers, beans etc. Its all mixed up in a vinegar-type juice and has both Kraft and powdered cheese on top and parsely as a garnish. VERY interesting. I ate the whole portion (and again for lunch today), but didn't exactly enjoy it and mostly just took it down to be polite. Its such a huge process to make and very expensive. My mom and the whole family was working on it for days chopping and preparing everything and it was finally all put together in a giant plastic tub that is also used to wash clothes at times. Basically, they made a s*&@ load and then sold some, gave some to neighbors and family members, then we eat the rest. Its quite the event.

After lunch we all piled into my host dad's pickup truck and drove to the town of Sumpango, about an hour away, for their famous gigantic kite festival. Gigantic in the fact that theres tons of people, but also gigantic kites that are about 40-50 feet across. They are increible works of art with very intricate designs telling the story of Mayan histories and referencing the war and humans' relationships with nature. Those ones dont actually fly, but rather are displayed with huge bamboo poles supporting them from the back. The subjects of the kites were impressive and very moving. They had words on them that translated as

Guatemala has not stopped suffering for the cruel violence where we have lost our loved ones day after day.

Guatemala cries and struggles, searching for peace.

We want to live together with nature as our grandparents lived.

Oh mother earth! What have you done to man to make him harm you?

It was so cool to see so many people there all in awe of them. We went in later afternoon when the shadows were getting long and the sky was turning pink and it was so impressive. There was a carnival-like atmosphere with great music being pumped out over loudspeakers. There was a diverse mix of people in traditional and modern clothing. Walking up to the cemetary and to the place where the kites were displayed on top of the hill there were mobs of tightly packed people like any great carnival. And of course, wherever there are people, there are people selling things. Tons of jewelry, clothing, and FOOD. There is a whole array of dulces tipicos, traditional sweets, that they make. Basically any fruit cooked in sugar or anything sweet and fried. My family treated us to atol, a thick warm sweet corn beverage kind of like cream of corn soup with sugar and to some tostadas. It was fun to get out of Alotenango with my family on a little excursion. The whole day Kelly and I just kept looking at each other and smiling and saying how happy we were to be exactly where we were and how lucky we are to have to opportunity to see stuff like this.

That night I went out with my host sisters and cousins to go sing at people's houses and demand more dulces tipicos. I guess its some what of a twist on trick-or-treating. We drove around to various houses in Alotenango and a group of about 20 of us sang songs (none of which I knew) along with the blasting car stereo. You have to really earn the sweets by singing really loud and really long, and then eventually they come to the door and you take a picture with them and they give everyone something to eat. There were tons of drunk men stumbling home from the holiday of drinking in the bars through the dark streets. At one point, the local crazy man came along with a gigantic knife and a crazed look in his eyes. We all freaked out but he passed by us without even glancing over. The words for knife (cuchillo) and for spoon (cuchara) are very similar so I got confused and said, "oh my god that man has a giant spoon!" That broke the moment and everyone laughed and thought it was hilarious. It was great to paddle around with everyone and get to be part of their tradition. It was a long and fabulous day that made me love Guatemala even more and I get all warm and fuzzy inside thinking about it.