So one of the NGOs that’s active in El Chol has started a project to form a Municipal Council of Youth (Consejo Municipl de la Niñez y la Adolescencia or COMUNA). The idea is to teach kids about citizen participation and civic responsibility by having them go through an election process of electing a Municipal Council made up of kids that mirrors the process that adults take part in. The kids made three political parties with candidates for Mayor and Government Plans and then they have to register to vote, have an election day, and then the elected council will participate in the adult-run COMUDE and make proposals to the City Council. As one of the goals of my project of Municipal Development is increasing citizen participation, I've been getting involved with this process. It’s a huge logistical undertaking for the NGO to coordinate 18 schools that are participating, all the teachers, and over 600 kids. They have brought them all together for general assemblies, in which transportation, snacks, and lunches have to be provided. I facilitated one groups of kids when they were creating their Government Plan to run on. We looked at each of the sectors of health, education, environment, recreation, etc. and discussed the problems and realistic solutions in these areas. This whole project is awesome in theory, but in practice it has been rather difficult as it presents a logistical and organizational challenges. Last Sunday all the kids and teachers got together for a forum to present their Government Plans and respond to questions and next week the voting will take place. After the committee is elected, hopefully the kids will participate in the COMUDE meetings and that their opinions will be taken seriously.
So back in February we created nine committees as part of the COMUDE, which are technically required by law and correspond to the committees that the City Council has. However, none of them really function, or rather, we have a list of names on paper that pertain to each committee, but they never meet and never do anything. Well, I’m part of the committee for the Family, Women, and Children (Comisión IX) and we’ve been getting support from an NGO to create a polÌtica p·blica…kind of like a document of needs and short and long-term goals in the sector of youth. We have monthly meetings where we learn about the legal basis that protects kids and promotes their rights, we broke up into sub-committees to do research on various sectors relating to health, education, recreation, etc. with youth, and hopefully soon we will be using this needs assessment to decide on priorities, wrap it up in a pretty little package of a document, and then get the prioritized projects into the budget, and hopefully coordinate with the kids who are elected to the COMUNA so that they have their say and we come with double force to the City Council. We’ll see…
In July we printed our fourth Municipal Newsletter and in September we printed our fifth. They have been going really well and gotten very positive responses. I created an anonymous questionnaire to get some feedback on them, and handed it out during the COMUDE meeting when we distributed the newsletters. Everybody wrote good things and gave me some suggestions for future topics. Recent topics that I have written about include: Get to know the Municipal Code, What are Municipal Incomes, the Formation of the COMUNA, and the printing of the costs for every project executed by the muni in 2008.
At the end of August my good friend Juan Pablo, the civil engineering intern from the University of San Carlos in Guate in our office who was doing his internship here for six months, finished his time here with us. With took the afternoon off and had a nice traditional going away party for him with chicharrones (fried pig skins complete with bristly hairs on some pieces), tortillas, guacamole, salt, rum and cokes, and durenguense music. He will be missed. But we got another civil engineering intern from the USAC, this time a girl! So I’m not the only girl in the office anymore, which is a relief. She’s a lot of fun and buena onda so it’s been a nice change.
A while ago I was taking a shower in a hotel at Lake Atitlan. I was enjoying the experience as the water was incredibly hot and the bathroom was getting very filled with steam. Then I realized that the steam smelled funny and that I could no longer see through it, as which point it occurred to me that it was smoke, not steam. Well I was all soapy at this point and figured I¥d just try to rinse off real quick, but then all of a sudden flames started shooting out of the calentador, the water-heating device connected directly on top of the spout. I immediately turned off the water and started screaming and ran out of the bathroom all soapy in my tiny travel towel to which my friends found hilarious. Only in Guatemala would a shower actually catch on fire.
The other weekend I rode my bike ride to Granados, the next town over about 10 km away down the mountainous dirt road to visit another volunteer who lives there. We had a nice time catching up and sharing the joys and many frustrations of this strange life we live here and chatting about grad schools, careers, and what might come next. We made two boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese that she had gotten from the states and ate them both. Delicious. The next day I left to ride back to El Chol and about half way back the sky opened up and I got caught in the heaviest rain that I've seen since I've been here. I arrived home soaking wet like I’d just gotten out of the shower, except covered with mud too and my family got quite the kick out of it. They just think I’m crazy for the things I do sometimes….as it would never occur to them to ride a bike to Granados, especially if it were raining.
Yesterday I went on a walk with my site mate up the mountain here in El Chol. It had been stormy all day, but wasn´t at the moment. As we were walking back down, a bolt of lightning struck right in front of us! I seriously saw it hit the ground right in front of us. We both screamed and grabbed hands and hurried home. It freaked me out so much. I´ve never been afraid of being struck by lightning, but now that I almost died, I am.
So…INDEPENDENCE DAY! in Guatemala was September 15th, celebrating their liberation from Spain in 1821. It was quite the festivity, as most celebrations in Guatemala generally are. They don¥t just celebrate the actual day, but for days leading up to the lead as well. Different communities have different traditions, but in El Chol there were a series of Civic Moments in which the pre-school, primary school, middle school, high school, and teachers put on performances of traditional dances with traditional costumes in the park and then sold all different kinds of typical foods. Each group had their own day on the days leading up to the 15th. These performances were complete with the burning of devil, being someone dressed up in red with a mask with fireworks strapped to them that shot off in all directions. The food for sale was delicious with dobladas (corn dough stuffed, folded, and fried), chuchitos (corn dough cooked in corn husks), tamales (corn dough cooked in a big green leaf with tomato sauce and a piece of pork), bushboles (corn dough cooked in greens), chepes (corn dough with whole black beans), elotes (corn on the cob), atol (hot sweet beverages, sometimes made out of corn), tostados (toppings on a large round tortilla chip), panza (cow stomach), torejas (sweet bread cooked in eggs and honey), ejotes (green beans), pinol (tortilla soup-esque), frutas en conserva (preserved fruits in syrup), caldo de gallina (chicken soup).
In addition to the civic moments, there is the tradition of the schools going on field trips to run and bring the Torch of Peace, kind of like the bringing of the Olympic Torch. It’s a cool tradition because the kids get to travel around their country and for many kids, it’s the only opportunity they have to experience different places outside their community or department. For example, the middle school kids went to Livingston, the GarÌfuna community on the Caribbean coast and one of the elementary schools went to the Biotopo Quetzal a rainforest nature preserve. I had the honor of going on two trips: one with an elementary school to a water park and another with the high school to Panajachel.
I went on one with the elementary school Trapiche Viejo where the mayors wife is the director of the school so she went and the mayor went, in addition to some of the teachers that I know. We met at 2:00 am to get all the kids on the two full school buses that went in addition to a microbus with the rest of us to go to the awesome water park of Xocomil (Sho-co-mill) in the Pacific coastal department of Retalhuleu (Rey-tal-lu-lay-oo). We got there at 10:30 am and played all day on the water slides and wave pool. This place was seriously better than Wild Waves at home. The kids loved every minute of it, even though most of them were too scared to go on the water slides, it was so much fun to enjoy myself in the water (this is the Peace Corps?) and to watch the kids having such a good time. The park being a tourist attraction, there were people from all over Guatemala there and the unwanted attention from guys and adolescent boys for being foreigners walking around in bikinis was a real annoyance. That night we stayed in a dormitory in a multi-sport complex that felt a bit like a homeless shelter with a long room filled with blue metal bunk beds, gross mattresses, dirty bathrooms with no toilet seats (typical because evidently there is a shortage of toilet seats in Guatemala), and tons of women and children laying out towels and sheets to sleep on in the stuffy heat. But it was all part of the experience and we made the best of it. Fell asleep absolutely exhausted at 9:00 pm to get up again at 4:00 am to go to see the ocean. Went to Puerto de Champerico by 6:30 am when it was already super hot. Got coffee and breakfast (eggs and beans, what else?) at a beach hut restaurant in the sand and lazed in a hammock while the kids played in the super dangerous ocean waves. Only one kid had to be rescued from the undertow by some surfer dudes. I was surprised to see how they did no head counts, never set meeting times or places, but somehow everything worked out. They started running with the torch from there, and a number of kids and teachers ran a few kilometers in the mid-day sweltering heat, carrying the Guatemalan flag and sign from their school and blowing whistles the whole time. Everywhere there are walking vendors selling flags of all sizes and these plastic whistles to make sure that every kids in Guatemala is capable making the most noise possible. Now that is patriotism. They got back on the buses, which are also decked out with Flags, and we made our way back to El Chol. We started running again in Granados at about 10:00 at night and both my site mate and I were given the opportunity to carry the torch for a bit. It¥s a funny site with a mob of kids running with matching t-shirts, headbands, all kinds of Guatemala adornments all blowing whistles like crazy and the buses following behind with horns blaring the whole way and crowds cheering everyone on. The kids take turns running and carrying the torch like a relay. We showed up in El Chol with motorcycle and tuk tuk escorts around 11:30 that night to a welcoming crowd and tons of firecrackers and more blaring horns (this is a loud country). We ended at the school where they had speeches, sang the national anthem (I think officially the longest in the world), gave everyone snacks, and then had a marimba dance. I went home to prepare for the next field trip, went to bed around 1:45 am, slept about 45 minutes, and got up to leave for the next trip.
With the high school kids we met at 3:00 am to all leave on one school bus to go to Panajachel on Lake Atitl·n. Even though it was super early in the morning, all of them were so excited to be going they had lots of energy. There was loud pumping music and giddy screaming the whole way, although in my state of exhaustion I slept through most of it. We arrived at the lake later that morning and Hannah and I had a serious need for good coffee, so we went to our favorite cafÈ owned by our South African and New York couple friends. In the mean time, the group left on a ferry to go visit the traditional town of Santiago across the lake, so we had to find a lancha to get us over there to meet back up with them. That evening the kids wanted to go out on the town to go dancing, so we went out and played a semi-chaperone role, even though some of the students are our age. We had a lot of fun dancing with our students and seeing them enjoying themselves outside of small El Chol. The next day (the 14th) we took off around noon and made our way down the inter-American highway towards El Chol. The whole way were other school groups carrying the torch so traffic was completely snarled and every vehicle had Guatemalan flags plastered all over it and it. The kids were actually running on the highway with trucks passing them and everything. Everyone was madly honking in both encouragement and frustration, not a day to be traveling for any reason other than to be carrying a torch. It was the craziest in Chimaltenango, a major town on the highway that you have to pass through no matter where you are going. There were tons of crowds lining the highway and we were crawling along at the pace of the runners. As is the tradition, everyone throws water at the runners and at the buses, we’re talking bags of waters, buckets, and hoses. It was chaos with the mucic, the whistles, the screaming, and the water coming from every person in every direction. The doors and the windows of the bus were open, so we weren’t spared the soaking. The ayudante of the bus kept filling up a bucket and chucking it around inside the bus so everything was soaked, including all of our backpacks. The kids inside the bus were also spraying Coca Cola and orange soda to top it off. Nuts. It was literally like we’d been swimming with our clothes and our shoes on. We made it to San Juan Sacatequez around 5:00 from where they started running. It took seven hours to run the 47 kilometers (28 miles) back to El Chol, going super slow and freezing cold from being wet so long. It was a strange mix of horrible suffering from being tired, wet, cold, bored, and going deaf but also just sheer amazement of the kids energy, patriotism, and excitement and just how cool it was to be witnessing such a unique cultural experience. There were kids running the whole way with the torch. I took my turn and ran for a good 5 km. It was a cool experience running with that energy down the dirt mountain road in pitch darkness with only the light of the moon. Every so often you’d get surprise water thrown at you from the darkness by someone on a hill above or a house behind the trees. As we got closer to El Chol, there were people from there waiting on motorcycles to accompany us back and when we finally arrived in town after midnight, all of us running at the end, the whole town was there to greet us with cheering and more firecrackers. There was a stage set up in the central park and again, speeches (the mentioned the participation of the Peace Corps volunteers) and hoopla. The torch was presented to the mayor and there was a live band, tamales for the whole town, and several drunks stumbling about. People stayed and carried on til 3:00 am, which I could hear all of it from my house nearby.
The next day was Independence Day, the parade of all the schools started at 9:00 am with each group of kids in uniforms or costumes, some behind pickups with large speakers blaring music, others in school bands complete with drums and chimes. After the parade, my coworkers and I handed out 400 copies of the latest municipal newsletter to everyone in the park. After that, we handed out snacks of cookies and juice to the hundreds of kids who had participated in the parade, as it was mid-day and super hot by that point. In the afternoon there was a soccer tournament for men, and one game for women in which I played and we won 3-0 and I scored a goal!
Overall the Independence Day events were lots of fun. It’s so interesting to see how other countries express their pride and patriotism. Kind of like everything in Guatemala, it was long and drawn out, but super interesting and made me feel good to be able to be a part of it all with the community.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
ONE YEAR IN GUATEMALA!!!
So yes, at the end of August I completed one year in this beautiful country. For a multitude of reasons that day was a bad day full of frustration and disappointment, but besides that day everything has been going very well. I still am very happy with my decision to be here and have never taken a serious thought to wanting to come home early. I feel very comfortable and integrated into the community, I've gotten into a routine at work, and enjoy myself with a variety of other activities. I don’t feel like I’m changing the world or making any major institutional changes in the municipality, but there are little things that I have done that I think have helped in their own little way and relationships that I have built with people that I think speak the most.
To celebrate our one year anniversary, my training group all got together at Fuente Georginas, a natural hot springs outside the city of Xela in the western highlands. It was great to see everyone and catch up and spend some time together. The hot springs were awesome…the perfect temperature for the chilly weather at that altitude. It was sprinkling down rain so it made a cool atmosphere with the steam rising out of the pool made with natural rocks, surrounded by lush green forests. We stayed overnight there in cabins complete with the necessary fireplaces, so after it closed to the public in the evening, we had the place to ourselves. We all brought food to BBQ and grilled veggies and sausages and had quite the feast. The whole experience was enchanting!
It’s been awhile since I've had an update, I apologize, but it’s a good thing that I've been busy. Here’s a hodgepodge of what’s been going on in the past couple months…
El Chol was the host of a gathering of preschool teachers in the department of Baja Verapaz. They all got together for workshops and curriculum work and of course, an election of the queen of the events. There was a big community gathering in the market to watch the festivities. They put together a big stage with a giant strawberry as a backdrop and cartoon character hanging down. There was lots of pomp and circumstance with the bringing in of the flag, singing of the national anthem, various speakers giving the welcome, etc. There was a candidate from each of the eight municipalities in Baja Verapaz who paraded themselves about in “fantasy outfits”. There was also a dance done by some of the preschool kids dressed up in traditional garb with these wooden masks that are used for the ceremonial dances. The highlight of the evening was the “burning of the devil” where someone dressed up as the devil dances about with firecrackers strapped to his back shooting off in all directions into the crowd. That’s another one of those things that’s really cool, but would never be allowed in the states. Imagine all the fire codes broken and lawsuits waiting to happen. That’s why I love Guatemala.
The other day I was invited to a friend of mine’s birthday party. As is common here, it was a sort of prayer session, but this was special since there was an invited group that played live marimba music and put on a religious service. It was quite the interesting experience…I sat there in a chair outside for three hours before I had to excuse myself and go home. It was a Catholic service, but seemed Evangelical as there was lots of singing with hands raised in the air, crying about Jesus, and people being cured right there on the spot. Seriously, three hours sitting there feeling out of place, under a tent while it was pouring down rain…I didn’t even stay long enough for coffee and tamales. It’s always nice to be invited to things but sometimes it turns out not quite as expected.
The other day for my English class I brought the movie Juno to watch with them, as an exercise in listening comprehension, of course. I brought bags of popcorn, someone brought soda, and we had a merry time. They thought it was cool that I had the “original” DVD since here originals are almost unheard of since there is such a strong pirating industry. Some of the pirated versions are straight copies of the originals and they are actually pretty good, while other are literally filmed in the movie theaters and are off centered and have babies crying and heads walking across the screen.
In the month of August I had the wonderful visit of Jesse and Nate! We had such a good time it was awesome to show them around this lovely country and share my life here with them. I picked them up at the airport and we spent a few days in Antigua where we climbed the Pacaya Volcano (the one I climbed during training where you can walk out on the lava fields and roast marshmallows), visited a coffee farm and museum, went and saw the Mayan/Catholic saint of Maximon where the bus ride there was so crowded we were literally hanging out of the bus door, enjoyed various typical Guatemalan cuisine, went out dancing, and shopped around in the market. Then we traveled out to my site, enjoying all the forms of transportation that Guatemala has to offer. In El Chol they visited my office, we took a tuk tuk (three wheeled mototaxi) ride to bask at the river, watched the plucking of a turkey and two chickens that were living at my houses (thank goodness I don’t have to wake up to turkey squabbles anymore), watched Jesse suffer as she received chicken heads in TWO meals in one day, went to the school in Los Jobos where the women I live with work and read them some stories and played soccer with them at recess, attended a prayer session at my house for the senor’s birthday, Jesse attended soccer practice with me, they came to my English class with me, watched a community event of traditional dances in the elementary school, and made lunch of peanut sauce stir-fry at my house with coworkers. Then we traveled to Panajachel on Lake Atitilan and went to an awesome cross dressing party at a hostel. On the way back Jesse had her passport stolen on the bus out of her purse, so then we spent our last day at the American Embassy in Guatemala City getting it replaced. That was a strange experience to be at the embassy with all the Guatemalans lined up there trying to gets visas to go to the US and all the American couples getting passports for the Guatemalan children they were adopting. It gave me a funny feeling. But overall the trip was incredible! It was so much fun to get to hang out with them and share everything with them!
I’ve been getting involved with HIV/AIDS education projects. Peace Corps received a grant from USAID to conduct a series of education workshops for teachers so that they can be trained to give it to their students, as HIV/AIDS education is now mandatory in the schools by law, but not very often enforced. I’ve given a few of these workshops now at other volunteers’ sites. The biggest one was in Pachalum, Quiche where almost 120 teachers and youth participated in the event. They are four hour long workshops that are full of participatory and interactive activities complete with a condom practice with plantains. Each community and each group is different, but overall the participants have been very receptive. They ask good questions that sometimes make me chuckle to myself such as when an older woman asked what the purpose of flavored condoms was. Recently I co-taught a workshop with my site mate in the high school in El Chol that went very well. We asked the doctor from the Health Center in town to speak during the workshop, which turned out interestingly. He basically started reinforcing all bad gender stereotypes by essentially celebrating and joking with the guys about how promiscuous they are. When he left this led to a productive conversation about gender roles and stereotypes. The high school kids are a really good and a wonderful group to work with.
I’ve continued going into the high school to give workshops on citizen participation. Most recently we did the cycle of a project and how to do a community diagnostic and project prioritization. I had them break into groups according to the diagnostic we did for El Chol and the projects they prioritized to write a project profile for the hypothetical projects. Hopefully we will have them replicate the process out in the communities.
Now that we’ve been here for one year, the new group of Municipal Development volunteers has arrived. It’s strange that my group now finds itself in the role of the experienced ones who help out with training. The group came to visit me in my site two weeks after arriving in country to get an orientation of the work and life of a volunteer. They had the opportunity to see my office and meet my mayor, counterpart, and coworkers. I shared with them about my work and they visited my house and I showed them some pictures of my experiences here.
I am the new Municipal Development program representative for the Peace Corps Gender and Development Committee. So I helped give a workshop with the trainees at the Peace Corps training center on gender awareness and how it fits into our project. It went well and started lots of good conversations, such as when we did the activity where we brainstorm “As a man/woman in Guatemala/US I can/cannot do….” Machismo and conservative gender roles present such a huge barrier in the work that we do in our communities, it is essentially to be aware and well versed in these issues, as well as prepared with strategies to confront these challenges.
Okay, that’s all for now even though there’s a lot more to update on. Stay posted for the telling of the experience of Independence Day!
To celebrate our one year anniversary, my training group all got together at Fuente Georginas, a natural hot springs outside the city of Xela in the western highlands. It was great to see everyone and catch up and spend some time together. The hot springs were awesome…the perfect temperature for the chilly weather at that altitude. It was sprinkling down rain so it made a cool atmosphere with the steam rising out of the pool made with natural rocks, surrounded by lush green forests. We stayed overnight there in cabins complete with the necessary fireplaces, so after it closed to the public in the evening, we had the place to ourselves. We all brought food to BBQ and grilled veggies and sausages and had quite the feast. The whole experience was enchanting!
It’s been awhile since I've had an update, I apologize, but it’s a good thing that I've been busy. Here’s a hodgepodge of what’s been going on in the past couple months…
El Chol was the host of a gathering of preschool teachers in the department of Baja Verapaz. They all got together for workshops and curriculum work and of course, an election of the queen of the events. There was a big community gathering in the market to watch the festivities. They put together a big stage with a giant strawberry as a backdrop and cartoon character hanging down. There was lots of pomp and circumstance with the bringing in of the flag, singing of the national anthem, various speakers giving the welcome, etc. There was a candidate from each of the eight municipalities in Baja Verapaz who paraded themselves about in “fantasy outfits”. There was also a dance done by some of the preschool kids dressed up in traditional garb with these wooden masks that are used for the ceremonial dances. The highlight of the evening was the “burning of the devil” where someone dressed up as the devil dances about with firecrackers strapped to his back shooting off in all directions into the crowd. That’s another one of those things that’s really cool, but would never be allowed in the states. Imagine all the fire codes broken and lawsuits waiting to happen. That’s why I love Guatemala.
The other day I was invited to a friend of mine’s birthday party. As is common here, it was a sort of prayer session, but this was special since there was an invited group that played live marimba music and put on a religious service. It was quite the interesting experience…I sat there in a chair outside for three hours before I had to excuse myself and go home. It was a Catholic service, but seemed Evangelical as there was lots of singing with hands raised in the air, crying about Jesus, and people being cured right there on the spot. Seriously, three hours sitting there feeling out of place, under a tent while it was pouring down rain…I didn’t even stay long enough for coffee and tamales. It’s always nice to be invited to things but sometimes it turns out not quite as expected.
The other day for my English class I brought the movie Juno to watch with them, as an exercise in listening comprehension, of course. I brought bags of popcorn, someone brought soda, and we had a merry time. They thought it was cool that I had the “original” DVD since here originals are almost unheard of since there is such a strong pirating industry. Some of the pirated versions are straight copies of the originals and they are actually pretty good, while other are literally filmed in the movie theaters and are off centered and have babies crying and heads walking across the screen.
In the month of August I had the wonderful visit of Jesse and Nate! We had such a good time it was awesome to show them around this lovely country and share my life here with them. I picked them up at the airport and we spent a few days in Antigua where we climbed the Pacaya Volcano (the one I climbed during training where you can walk out on the lava fields and roast marshmallows), visited a coffee farm and museum, went and saw the Mayan/Catholic saint of Maximon where the bus ride there was so crowded we were literally hanging out of the bus door, enjoyed various typical Guatemalan cuisine, went out dancing, and shopped around in the market. Then we traveled out to my site, enjoying all the forms of transportation that Guatemala has to offer. In El Chol they visited my office, we took a tuk tuk (three wheeled mototaxi) ride to bask at the river, watched the plucking of a turkey and two chickens that were living at my houses (thank goodness I don’t have to wake up to turkey squabbles anymore), watched Jesse suffer as she received chicken heads in TWO meals in one day, went to the school in Los Jobos where the women I live with work and read them some stories and played soccer with them at recess, attended a prayer session at my house for the senor’s birthday, Jesse attended soccer practice with me, they came to my English class with me, watched a community event of traditional dances in the elementary school, and made lunch of peanut sauce stir-fry at my house with coworkers. Then we traveled to Panajachel on Lake Atitilan and went to an awesome cross dressing party at a hostel. On the way back Jesse had her passport stolen on the bus out of her purse, so then we spent our last day at the American Embassy in Guatemala City getting it replaced. That was a strange experience to be at the embassy with all the Guatemalans lined up there trying to gets visas to go to the US and all the American couples getting passports for the Guatemalan children they were adopting. It gave me a funny feeling. But overall the trip was incredible! It was so much fun to get to hang out with them and share everything with them!
I’ve been getting involved with HIV/AIDS education projects. Peace Corps received a grant from USAID to conduct a series of education workshops for teachers so that they can be trained to give it to their students, as HIV/AIDS education is now mandatory in the schools by law, but not very often enforced. I’ve given a few of these workshops now at other volunteers’ sites. The biggest one was in Pachalum, Quiche where almost 120 teachers and youth participated in the event. They are four hour long workshops that are full of participatory and interactive activities complete with a condom practice with plantains. Each community and each group is different, but overall the participants have been very receptive. They ask good questions that sometimes make me chuckle to myself such as when an older woman asked what the purpose of flavored condoms was. Recently I co-taught a workshop with my site mate in the high school in El Chol that went very well. We asked the doctor from the Health Center in town to speak during the workshop, which turned out interestingly. He basically started reinforcing all bad gender stereotypes by essentially celebrating and joking with the guys about how promiscuous they are. When he left this led to a productive conversation about gender roles and stereotypes. The high school kids are a really good and a wonderful group to work with.
I’ve continued going into the high school to give workshops on citizen participation. Most recently we did the cycle of a project and how to do a community diagnostic and project prioritization. I had them break into groups according to the diagnostic we did for El Chol and the projects they prioritized to write a project profile for the hypothetical projects. Hopefully we will have them replicate the process out in the communities.
Now that we’ve been here for one year, the new group of Municipal Development volunteers has arrived. It’s strange that my group now finds itself in the role of the experienced ones who help out with training. The group came to visit me in my site two weeks after arriving in country to get an orientation of the work and life of a volunteer. They had the opportunity to see my office and meet my mayor, counterpart, and coworkers. I shared with them about my work and they visited my house and I showed them some pictures of my experiences here.
I am the new Municipal Development program representative for the Peace Corps Gender and Development Committee. So I helped give a workshop with the trainees at the Peace Corps training center on gender awareness and how it fits into our project. It went well and started lots of good conversations, such as when we did the activity where we brainstorm “As a man/woman in Guatemala/US I can/cannot do….” Machismo and conservative gender roles present such a huge barrier in the work that we do in our communities, it is essentially to be aware and well versed in these issues, as well as prepared with strategies to confront these challenges.
Okay, that’s all for now even though there’s a lot more to update on. Stay posted for the telling of the experience of Independence Day!
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Chequenes, Soccer, chicken anatomy, Chiquimula, Los Jobos Feria
I forgot to write about something crazy: Chequenes. Towards the beginning of the rainy season at the beginning of June, there is this phenomenon that these flying bugs, kind of like large juicy ants with wings, fall from the sky in the wee morning hours. There is all kinds of excitement because people collect them and cook ’em up and eat ’em. So back in the beginning of June, I got a phone call from one of my co-workers around 4:45 in the morning. I grumpily answered thinking he was just messing with me or something, and he told me to come down to the soccer field quickly where the chequenes were falling. Really not wanting to get out of bed, but figuring this may be a once in a lifetime opportunity, I made my way down there. There were various people out in the streets positioned under the streetlights for when the bugs fell they put them in plastic sacks. I met up with my coworkers and helped with the collection. They swirl around the street lights in swarms, and then one by one they just sort of fall and land on the ground where you can pick them up by their wings. We collected enough to fill about one third of a grocery sack (that’s a lot). We got a lady who works at the muni to prepare them for us, removing the wings and legs, cleaning them, and the toasting them with lime and salt. Then we got a bunch of tortillas to pile them onto and snacked on them right there in the office (this was when my cousin was visiting and she got in on it too). They actually taste pretty good once you get over the idea of what you are eating. They have a soft crunch and full salty flavor. I wouldn’t want to eat a ton of them, but the experience was intriguing.
So out of the blue all of a sudden there was an organized women’s soccer tournament in El Chol. There are four teams: two from the middle school, one from the high school, and one of teachers. I asked permission to play with the teachers and last Saturday I played with them for the first time. We won our game 1-0 against one of the middle school teams, and I made the winning goal! It’s not the highest level of competition I've ever played with, but we have a good time and it’s so nice to be playing full field real soccer games where I feel like I fit in. There were lots of people there cheering us on, and cheering me on specifically telling me to score (I was playing right forward the first half, and center forward the second half when I scored). It was cool to see the little girls that I coach there watching the game and getting into it.
It’s cute…the girls at my house ask me everyday if we’re going to have practice that day (we practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays). I think that half the girls show up with at least one article of pink clothing. It takes a ton of energy for me to run these practices. There are like 30 girls now and I have to yell loudly to get their attention on the field. Twice now during our practices, a bull has run onto the field, sending all the girls screaming and running. Two men quickly appear, one on a motorcycle and one on foot with a lasso to try to get control of it. Only in Guatemala…that was something I never had to deal with in when I was coaching with Skyhawks. There is such a huge difference between the boys and the girls…when I watch the boys their age play, I am blown away by how good they are and what a good touch on the ball they have. With the girls right now I’m working on not having them stop the ball with their hands. Obviously there has been a huge difference in the ways the boys and girls are brought up and encouraged.
The summer of visitors continues. Two friends from the states that are volunteering in El Salvador came to El Chol to visit me for a weekend. We had a good time hanging out and catching up. The señora brought us tamales, as she does often, for us to eat. We went on some walks around town, they came to my soccer game, and we ate churrascos (tasty grilled meat) from a cart on the street run by a kind older gentleman.
At work the other day we had a great walk down memory lane together watching YouTube videos of cartoons from the 1980´s that we shared in common in our childhood like Transformers, Captain Planet, and Power Rangers. I love it when you find the little things in common.
So the other day I came home for lunch and the señora at the house was standing at the pila cleaning chicken parts. She often is dealing with chickens, casually carrying them around by the neck, about to be killed or recently killed, like it ain’t no thang. I greeted her and asked her with curiosity about what she was working on. She then proceeded to give me a fascinating lesson on the anatomy of a chicken. Back in high school biology we had dissected cats and the organs of other various animals so I had sort of seen this stuff before, but never so casually. She instructed me on the liver, the kidneys, the heart, the lungs, among other parts. She showed me fully formed egg that hadn’t been laid yet and put it aside to eat. I don’t know why, but it seemed weird to me to eat an egg that hadn’t been laid yet and she joked that it was as fresh as they come, which I suppose is true. There was the canal where the eggs pass down with 6! yolks increasing in size from one about the size of a marble to the fully formed egg. It’s crazy to see how they are formed and to look at such an everyday common object in a different way. The stomach was also really cool, she rinsed out everything that had been inside, full grains of corn and a bunch of pebbles. She scraped the toughness well with a knife, which made a loud rasping sound and told me how they were going to eat it. I guess my fascination with the whole process shows that I didn’t grow up on a farm.
I’m happy with the progress of my English class. Right now I have 12 students which is perfect cause you can still do group activities, but I can give them much more individualized attention. Their pronunciation is getting a lot better and their vocabularies have improved quite a bit. We’re almost half way through the materials that I have.
The other weekend a few of us went to visit a fellow volunteer working out in the eastern part of the country in the department of Chiquimula. It’s a bit of a different world out there. The buses first of all are actually really nice with comfy seats, TVs, and air conditioning! The craziest thing was that the ayudante came around to collect trash, which is rather revolutionary since most people just throw their trash out the window without a second thought. In general the people out east are much less conservative and everyone speaks with rather vulgar words. There are hardly any indigenous people and cowboy boots are common. And it’s really hot. We had a fun time all hanging out together on my friend’s patio all day long doing nothing but eating yummy Indian food that she cooked for us, chatting, and reading People and Newsweek magazines. At night we piled into a pickup and went to some hot springs with some of her friends from town (it’s too hot to go during the day). On the way back home on the usual rickety Chol bus, there was a lady who had a basket full of baby chickens that was covered with a cloth. As we were going along, one of the chicks somehow fell out of the basket and hit a little kid on the head, which I found quite hilarious. I also had the bad luck of sitting in the one seat where the window wouldn’t go up while it was pouring down rain. The water came in in droves and got me quite soaked.
It was the feria in one of the rural communities of El Chol, in the aldea Los Jobos. That is the community where the three teachers that I live with teach in, so there were quite involved with the planning of the event. All week long there were activities such as the crowning of the queen of the feria, soccer games, cattle sales, rifle competitions, etc. On Saturday I went with my site mate for the dance where they brought in a live band. We caught a ride in a pickup truck after waiting forever. The road going the 12 km out there is terrible and there were like 20 of us all crammed in standing up in the back of this truck trying to hold on as we bumped along the horribly potholed dirt road under the starry night sky. The truck kept losing power on the uphills with so much weight in it and everyone would have to get out and walk up the inclines. We made it out there in time to grab some food, walk around and soak in the atmosphere. The dance was lots of fun and typical of community dances here. All the mothers attend with their little kids to keep an eye on their adolescent daughters. So it’s super hot and suffocatingly stuffy, and all the moms and sitting in chairs along the sides. There’s always way more guys than girls and the majority of them are drunk. It makes for quite the interesting ambiance. You wait for a guy to ask you to dance (not that you have to wait long with the favorable ratios), so we danced with a few people that we knew. But we didn’t want to keep telling no to the random drunks, so my site mate and I ended up just dancing together the two of us like we would in the states, but is really weird here. So we usually get started at a lot just for looking different, but dancing together drew way more attention. It was rather amusing.
So my training group has been in country almost a year now and just recently we had our first person go home. He´s a good friend of mine and was just done being here and ready to go back and start grad school. I made a quick trip to get together in Antigua with a group of us to say goodbye. Our training group is really close, so it’s hard and sad to see somebody go home. We’re gonna miss you big guy.
The soccer tournament is going well and really fun, even though we lost our second game 0-1. Everyone kept cheering and asking where my goal was…sadly I couldn’t please them. We played against the high school team and they scored in the last minute.
Last Sunday was 14th David’s birthday, one of the kids related to the family. We had a little party compete with tamales, coffee, and cake. I got him a pirated DVD Ironman, which he was quite happy about.
Mmm…the other day was a typical good day…a beautiful bike ride in the morning sunshine, a tranquil day at work, soccer practice with the girls in the afternoon, chatting and joking with the family when I got home, and a nice quiet evening alone at home making a pineapple curry stir fry with fresh local veggies, baking an apple pie, and drinking warm milk as I finished the second season of Scrubs on DVD. I went to bed quite satisfied and so happy to be where I am.
So out of the blue all of a sudden there was an organized women’s soccer tournament in El Chol. There are four teams: two from the middle school, one from the high school, and one of teachers. I asked permission to play with the teachers and last Saturday I played with them for the first time. We won our game 1-0 against one of the middle school teams, and I made the winning goal! It’s not the highest level of competition I've ever played with, but we have a good time and it’s so nice to be playing full field real soccer games where I feel like I fit in. There were lots of people there cheering us on, and cheering me on specifically telling me to score (I was playing right forward the first half, and center forward the second half when I scored). It was cool to see the little girls that I coach there watching the game and getting into it.
It’s cute…the girls at my house ask me everyday if we’re going to have practice that day (we practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays). I think that half the girls show up with at least one article of pink clothing. It takes a ton of energy for me to run these practices. There are like 30 girls now and I have to yell loudly to get their attention on the field. Twice now during our practices, a bull has run onto the field, sending all the girls screaming and running. Two men quickly appear, one on a motorcycle and one on foot with a lasso to try to get control of it. Only in Guatemala…that was something I never had to deal with in when I was coaching with Skyhawks. There is such a huge difference between the boys and the girls…when I watch the boys their age play, I am blown away by how good they are and what a good touch on the ball they have. With the girls right now I’m working on not having them stop the ball with their hands. Obviously there has been a huge difference in the ways the boys and girls are brought up and encouraged.
The summer of visitors continues. Two friends from the states that are volunteering in El Salvador came to El Chol to visit me for a weekend. We had a good time hanging out and catching up. The señora brought us tamales, as she does often, for us to eat. We went on some walks around town, they came to my soccer game, and we ate churrascos (tasty grilled meat) from a cart on the street run by a kind older gentleman.
At work the other day we had a great walk down memory lane together watching YouTube videos of cartoons from the 1980´s that we shared in common in our childhood like Transformers, Captain Planet, and Power Rangers. I love it when you find the little things in common.
So the other day I came home for lunch and the señora at the house was standing at the pila cleaning chicken parts. She often is dealing with chickens, casually carrying them around by the neck, about to be killed or recently killed, like it ain’t no thang. I greeted her and asked her with curiosity about what she was working on. She then proceeded to give me a fascinating lesson on the anatomy of a chicken. Back in high school biology we had dissected cats and the organs of other various animals so I had sort of seen this stuff before, but never so casually. She instructed me on the liver, the kidneys, the heart, the lungs, among other parts. She showed me fully formed egg that hadn’t been laid yet and put it aside to eat. I don’t know why, but it seemed weird to me to eat an egg that hadn’t been laid yet and she joked that it was as fresh as they come, which I suppose is true. There was the canal where the eggs pass down with 6! yolks increasing in size from one about the size of a marble to the fully formed egg. It’s crazy to see how they are formed and to look at such an everyday common object in a different way. The stomach was also really cool, she rinsed out everything that had been inside, full grains of corn and a bunch of pebbles. She scraped the toughness well with a knife, which made a loud rasping sound and told me how they were going to eat it. I guess my fascination with the whole process shows that I didn’t grow up on a farm.
I’m happy with the progress of my English class. Right now I have 12 students which is perfect cause you can still do group activities, but I can give them much more individualized attention. Their pronunciation is getting a lot better and their vocabularies have improved quite a bit. We’re almost half way through the materials that I have.
The other weekend a few of us went to visit a fellow volunteer working out in the eastern part of the country in the department of Chiquimula. It’s a bit of a different world out there. The buses first of all are actually really nice with comfy seats, TVs, and air conditioning! The craziest thing was that the ayudante came around to collect trash, which is rather revolutionary since most people just throw their trash out the window without a second thought. In general the people out east are much less conservative and everyone speaks with rather vulgar words. There are hardly any indigenous people and cowboy boots are common. And it’s really hot. We had a fun time all hanging out together on my friend’s patio all day long doing nothing but eating yummy Indian food that she cooked for us, chatting, and reading People and Newsweek magazines. At night we piled into a pickup and went to some hot springs with some of her friends from town (it’s too hot to go during the day). On the way back home on the usual rickety Chol bus, there was a lady who had a basket full of baby chickens that was covered with a cloth. As we were going along, one of the chicks somehow fell out of the basket and hit a little kid on the head, which I found quite hilarious. I also had the bad luck of sitting in the one seat where the window wouldn’t go up while it was pouring down rain. The water came in in droves and got me quite soaked.
It was the feria in one of the rural communities of El Chol, in the aldea Los Jobos. That is the community where the three teachers that I live with teach in, so there were quite involved with the planning of the event. All week long there were activities such as the crowning of the queen of the feria, soccer games, cattle sales, rifle competitions, etc. On Saturday I went with my site mate for the dance where they brought in a live band. We caught a ride in a pickup truck after waiting forever. The road going the 12 km out there is terrible and there were like 20 of us all crammed in standing up in the back of this truck trying to hold on as we bumped along the horribly potholed dirt road under the starry night sky. The truck kept losing power on the uphills with so much weight in it and everyone would have to get out and walk up the inclines. We made it out there in time to grab some food, walk around and soak in the atmosphere. The dance was lots of fun and typical of community dances here. All the mothers attend with their little kids to keep an eye on their adolescent daughters. So it’s super hot and suffocatingly stuffy, and all the moms and sitting in chairs along the sides. There’s always way more guys than girls and the majority of them are drunk. It makes for quite the interesting ambiance. You wait for a guy to ask you to dance (not that you have to wait long with the favorable ratios), so we danced with a few people that we knew. But we didn’t want to keep telling no to the random drunks, so my site mate and I ended up just dancing together the two of us like we would in the states, but is really weird here. So we usually get started at a lot just for looking different, but dancing together drew way more attention. It was rather amusing.
So my training group has been in country almost a year now and just recently we had our first person go home. He´s a good friend of mine and was just done being here and ready to go back and start grad school. I made a quick trip to get together in Antigua with a group of us to say goodbye. Our training group is really close, so it’s hard and sad to see somebody go home. We’re gonna miss you big guy.
The soccer tournament is going well and really fun, even though we lost our second game 0-1. Everyone kept cheering and asking where my goal was…sadly I couldn’t please them. We played against the high school team and they scored in the last minute.
Last Sunday was 14th David’s birthday, one of the kids related to the family. We had a little party compete with tamales, coffee, and cake. I got him a pirated DVD Ironman, which he was quite happy about.
Mmm…the other day was a typical good day…a beautiful bike ride in the morning sunshine, a tranquil day at work, soccer practice with the girls in the afternoon, chatting and joking with the family when I got home, and a nice quiet evening alone at home making a pineapple curry stir fry with fresh local veggies, baking an apple pie, and drinking warm milk as I finished the second season of Scrubs on DVD. I went to bed quite satisfied and so happy to be where I am.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Parents visit and Fourth of July
In the last weeks of June I had the grand honor of hosting my parents in Guatemala. I had a great time showing them my life and my work here, and also getting to see some other parts of Guatemala. After meeting them at the airport, we spent a couple days in Antigua soaking in the colonial atmosphere and easing them into Guatemala. We checked out the ruins, churches, and fabulous restaurants. I hired a guy from my town (the señora at my houses brother-in-law) to pick us up in Antigua and take us to my town. En route we stopped for lunch at Pollo Campero, the Guatemalan fried chicken chain that’s gone international. It’s an institution and sooo Guatemalan. It´s a popular spot for families to go for a treat and oftentimes if people have the money they will bring it back to their families in the rural areas after traveling through a large town. Even though there are a few franchises in the US, they say that it doesn’t taste as good cause there are nutrition standards so they can’t use as much grease. Thus, they also say that flights from Guatemala to the US always smell like fried chicken because everyone brings it to their relatives.
The time in my site with them was wonderful…they got to meet my friends, family, and coworkers, soak in the atmosphere of El Chol, and get a taste of the life I’m living. We all stayed in my cozy little house, them taking my bed and me on the couch. They came to my office bringing smoked salmon and Beecher´s Flagship cheese to share with my coworkers. The cheese was a big hit and I almost cried with happiness upon tasting the lusciousness again. It was cool cause my inquisitive Dad had a long conversation with my counterpart, who speaks pretty good English (I didn’t realize how good), asking him all about the work at the muni in regards to water systems, generation of electricity, and all kinds of other questions. The highlight of the time at my site was a lunch that my parents gave to 60 people from town including muni employees, my English students, women and children from La Ciénega (who had to walk three hours there and back), and members of the family that I live with. The mayor’s wife owns a comedor and hosts lots of lunches and various events so we had it there. It was so neat to see everybody come together and meet my parents. Lots of people dressed up for the event and the kids that came down from the rural community that I usually see barefoot and dirty were all fixed up with gelled hair and decent clothes and shoes. Various people brought gifts for my parents, such as typical handbags with El Chol stitched onto them and a pink knitted shirt for my mom that took the woman months to make. Lots of people wanted to take pictures with them too, which was slightly odd, but cool. We spent an entire evening chatting with the family that I live with after giving the kids coloring books and crayons, which they were fascinated with, and the women little footie socks that I wear that they had always said that they wanted. My mom’s Spanish did quite well, but it was still stressful having to do lots of translating. All in all though, it was just so cool to see my two worlds come together and for people to meet my family and for them to see my life here.
After my site we went to Panajachel on Lake Atitlan and stayed in an awesome colonial hotel. The lake is gorgeous – surrounded by three volcanoes and traditional indigenous towns. It was nice to relax and take in the natural beauty.
Next it was off to Tikal, the largest site of Mayan ruins up in the northern jungle region of Petén. We stayed a night inside the park, sleeping under mosquito nets and listening to the sounds of the jungle outside our cabin, including howler monkeys and countless species of birds. We got up while it was still dark to take the “sunrise tour” to the ruins. Trekking through the jungle heat and humidity in the wee morning hours, we climbed Temple IV, the highest one, to watch the sunrise and the series of ruins appear above the trees slowly through the mist. Impressive. Then we spent the next few hours being guided through the various ruins of temples and pyramids and hearing about the history and the myths. That afternoon we headed to Flores, a very small island town in the middle of a lake, despite being the departmental seat. You could walk the perimeter of the tranquil town in about 30 minutes, but the setting was quite lovely. We spent our last night in Guatemala City and they flew out early in the morning. All in all we had a wonderful time, despite the slight stresses on me of organizing everything and translating, it was well worth it for the memorable experience.
I then went to Antigua for the Peace Corps All Volunteer Conference, the one time the whole year when all 170ish volunteers in Guatemala get together. It was awesome to touch base with all my friends and to meet lots of other volunteers. We had some great speakers give information and opinions on topics such as Municipal Empowerment and Immigration. The next day we had a fabulous Fourth of July party in San Lucas put on by our Volunteer Advocacy Council. There was an American style BBQ complete with American flag toothpicks, a volunteer talent show, a singing of the national anthem, soccer and Frisbee, plenty of American music, and a dance party. There were no fireworks, but we tracked down some sparklers and had a patriotic moment in Antigua. It was a great way to spend the Fourth of July if you have to be out of the country, but for the first time I realized how much I really miss the USA the country, not just the people and places in it.
On the way back to my site, I was on a microbus on the dirt road heading to my town, when the camioneta (big school bus) from my town decided to broadside us on purpose. The two vehicles stopped and the drivers yelled at each other for awhile about not respecting the schedule of when each one left. The driver of the big bus was mad at the driver of the little bus for leaving at the same time and supposedly stealing his passengers and subsequently the money they would have paid him. (Which the driver of the little bus had no control over, since he was just doing what his boss ordered him to do). The driver of the big bus got back in, pulled it in front of our microbus, and then proceeded to back up into us on purpose and smash the front of our bus and then speed away. There was a fair bit of damage to the microbus, everyone was rather shaken up, and the driver of our bus was pissed. He called his boss and the police met us in Granados, another town up the way, where they handled everything. Meanwhile we all piled into another microbus to head back to El Chol and didn’t wait around. Only in Guatemala…
When I got home that Saturday afternoon, there was a prayer session being prepared for one of the women’s birthdays. I sat through the usual incense burning, singing, and recitations with the family and enjoyed delicious tamales and hot pineapple punch afterwards.
I have decided that I don’t like the rainy season. While yes, I am used to lots of rain being from Seattle, the difference here is that it is hot while it rains, the inside of your house is always damp, there are no clothes dryers to dry your clothes, the unpaved streets create massive amounts of mud, the rain falling on the tin roof is so loud you can’t talk on the phone or listen to music, you have to wash the mud off your jeans by hand, lots of roads become impassable, and the umbrella I bought is the cheapest and sorriest excuse for a rain stopping device I've ever seen. Some of my clothes and towels have molded in their inability to dry. Oh yeah, and hurricane risks. The other thing that sucks is that it gets dark at 7:00 pm, while I’m hearing about how great the weather is back home and how late it stays light. I guess the upside is that it stays light til 6:00 here the other half of the year. But in general, I have to say that the rainy season here – May through November – sucks.
chequenes
My Sunday was nice and relaxing…I went for a great bike ride in the pouring rain with a 13 year old kid who is part of my family, watched some of the soccer games, washed clothes, hung out with the fam, and almost finished the seconds season of Scrubs on DVD. I’m also almost finished reading Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope, which makes a good conversation starter on a bus since lots of people are curious about the current politics in the US.
It was back to work on Monday. I updated the work calendar on the white board in our office that everybody references, but nobody upkeeps but me. People don´t really communicate their whereabouts very well, nor communicate when there are meeting, trainings, or workshops. So that´s why I put up the work calendar…at least it helps me out. Things were just as I had left them at the office…there was the familiar smell of cigarette smoke floating from the secretary’s office and the soft rhythmic beat of banda music emanating from my coworkers computers. The ambiance of an all-male office remains the same with their dirty jokes and constant harassing each other about being gay and how ugly one’s shirt is, talk of the latest soccer happenings in Spain, punching each other on the shoulders every two minutes, and seeing who can be the first one to beat this computer game similar to Bejeweled where a frog spits out colored balls and you have to put them in groups of three or more with the same color. Oh and some working too writing project profiles, compiling project studies, and attending to the needs of the public.
I’m finishing up the fourth municipal newsletter to go out next week, updating the database with information I've collected from the different communities relating to water and sanitation, attending various meetings and coordinating with NGOs. There is a big NGO focus on children’s issues so there a fair amount of support for projects relating to youth. One of them is the creation of a Youth Municipal Council in which they will learn about citizen participation by running a political campaign and electing their representatives, just as adults do. Within the COMUDE (Municipal Development Council) there are nine commissions that in theory work on different topics such as health, education, and finances. We are working to strengthen the COMUDE commission on women’s, children’s, and family issues by elaborating a public policy in favor of youth.
Another cool thing that has come together is that I am now coaching a girls soccer team, or at least training a group of girls aged 9-13. I had been observing a group of boys training in the afternoons in the soccer field and thought the participation of girls was lacking. So I talked to the guy who was running it and told him I wanted to train girls. So he told all his boys to tell all their sisters, cousins, and classmates to show up at the field the next day. About 14 girls showed up the first day and we had a good time. We did some dribbling drills, relay races, and scrimmaged. It all went really well and I think we’ll continue training Tuesdays and Thursdays and hopefully play games on Saturdays.
The time in my site with them was wonderful…they got to meet my friends, family, and coworkers, soak in the atmosphere of El Chol, and get a taste of the life I’m living. We all stayed in my cozy little house, them taking my bed and me on the couch. They came to my office bringing smoked salmon and Beecher´s Flagship cheese to share with my coworkers. The cheese was a big hit and I almost cried with happiness upon tasting the lusciousness again. It was cool cause my inquisitive Dad had a long conversation with my counterpart, who speaks pretty good English (I didn’t realize how good), asking him all about the work at the muni in regards to water systems, generation of electricity, and all kinds of other questions. The highlight of the time at my site was a lunch that my parents gave to 60 people from town including muni employees, my English students, women and children from La Ciénega (who had to walk three hours there and back), and members of the family that I live with. The mayor’s wife owns a comedor and hosts lots of lunches and various events so we had it there. It was so neat to see everybody come together and meet my parents. Lots of people dressed up for the event and the kids that came down from the rural community that I usually see barefoot and dirty were all fixed up with gelled hair and decent clothes and shoes. Various people brought gifts for my parents, such as typical handbags with El Chol stitched onto them and a pink knitted shirt for my mom that took the woman months to make. Lots of people wanted to take pictures with them too, which was slightly odd, but cool. We spent an entire evening chatting with the family that I live with after giving the kids coloring books and crayons, which they were fascinated with, and the women little footie socks that I wear that they had always said that they wanted. My mom’s Spanish did quite well, but it was still stressful having to do lots of translating. All in all though, it was just so cool to see my two worlds come together and for people to meet my family and for them to see my life here.
After my site we went to Panajachel on Lake Atitlan and stayed in an awesome colonial hotel. The lake is gorgeous – surrounded by three volcanoes and traditional indigenous towns. It was nice to relax and take in the natural beauty.
Next it was off to Tikal, the largest site of Mayan ruins up in the northern jungle region of Petén. We stayed a night inside the park, sleeping under mosquito nets and listening to the sounds of the jungle outside our cabin, including howler monkeys and countless species of birds. We got up while it was still dark to take the “sunrise tour” to the ruins. Trekking through the jungle heat and humidity in the wee morning hours, we climbed Temple IV, the highest one, to watch the sunrise and the series of ruins appear above the trees slowly through the mist. Impressive. Then we spent the next few hours being guided through the various ruins of temples and pyramids and hearing about the history and the myths. That afternoon we headed to Flores, a very small island town in the middle of a lake, despite being the departmental seat. You could walk the perimeter of the tranquil town in about 30 minutes, but the setting was quite lovely. We spent our last night in Guatemala City and they flew out early in the morning. All in all we had a wonderful time, despite the slight stresses on me of organizing everything and translating, it was well worth it for the memorable experience.
I then went to Antigua for the Peace Corps All Volunteer Conference, the one time the whole year when all 170ish volunteers in Guatemala get together. It was awesome to touch base with all my friends and to meet lots of other volunteers. We had some great speakers give information and opinions on topics such as Municipal Empowerment and Immigration. The next day we had a fabulous Fourth of July party in San Lucas put on by our Volunteer Advocacy Council. There was an American style BBQ complete with American flag toothpicks, a volunteer talent show, a singing of the national anthem, soccer and Frisbee, plenty of American music, and a dance party. There were no fireworks, but we tracked down some sparklers and had a patriotic moment in Antigua. It was a great way to spend the Fourth of July if you have to be out of the country, but for the first time I realized how much I really miss the USA the country, not just the people and places in it.
On the way back to my site, I was on a microbus on the dirt road heading to my town, when the camioneta (big school bus) from my town decided to broadside us on purpose. The two vehicles stopped and the drivers yelled at each other for awhile about not respecting the schedule of when each one left. The driver of the big bus was mad at the driver of the little bus for leaving at the same time and supposedly stealing his passengers and subsequently the money they would have paid him. (Which the driver of the little bus had no control over, since he was just doing what his boss ordered him to do). The driver of the big bus got back in, pulled it in front of our microbus, and then proceeded to back up into us on purpose and smash the front of our bus and then speed away. There was a fair bit of damage to the microbus, everyone was rather shaken up, and the driver of our bus was pissed. He called his boss and the police met us in Granados, another town up the way, where they handled everything. Meanwhile we all piled into another microbus to head back to El Chol and didn’t wait around. Only in Guatemala…
When I got home that Saturday afternoon, there was a prayer session being prepared for one of the women’s birthdays. I sat through the usual incense burning, singing, and recitations with the family and enjoyed delicious tamales and hot pineapple punch afterwards.
I have decided that I don’t like the rainy season. While yes, I am used to lots of rain being from Seattle, the difference here is that it is hot while it rains, the inside of your house is always damp, there are no clothes dryers to dry your clothes, the unpaved streets create massive amounts of mud, the rain falling on the tin roof is so loud you can’t talk on the phone or listen to music, you have to wash the mud off your jeans by hand, lots of roads become impassable, and the umbrella I bought is the cheapest and sorriest excuse for a rain stopping device I've ever seen. Some of my clothes and towels have molded in their inability to dry. Oh yeah, and hurricane risks. The other thing that sucks is that it gets dark at 7:00 pm, while I’m hearing about how great the weather is back home and how late it stays light. I guess the upside is that it stays light til 6:00 here the other half of the year. But in general, I have to say that the rainy season here – May through November – sucks.
chequenes
My Sunday was nice and relaxing…I went for a great bike ride in the pouring rain with a 13 year old kid who is part of my family, watched some of the soccer games, washed clothes, hung out with the fam, and almost finished the seconds season of Scrubs on DVD. I’m also almost finished reading Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope, which makes a good conversation starter on a bus since lots of people are curious about the current politics in the US.
It was back to work on Monday. I updated the work calendar on the white board in our office that everybody references, but nobody upkeeps but me. People don´t really communicate their whereabouts very well, nor communicate when there are meeting, trainings, or workshops. So that´s why I put up the work calendar…at least it helps me out. Things were just as I had left them at the office…there was the familiar smell of cigarette smoke floating from the secretary’s office and the soft rhythmic beat of banda music emanating from my coworkers computers. The ambiance of an all-male office remains the same with their dirty jokes and constant harassing each other about being gay and how ugly one’s shirt is, talk of the latest soccer happenings in Spain, punching each other on the shoulders every two minutes, and seeing who can be the first one to beat this computer game similar to Bejeweled where a frog spits out colored balls and you have to put them in groups of three or more with the same color. Oh and some working too writing project profiles, compiling project studies, and attending to the needs of the public.
I’m finishing up the fourth municipal newsletter to go out next week, updating the database with information I've collected from the different communities relating to water and sanitation, attending various meetings and coordinating with NGOs. There is a big NGO focus on children’s issues so there a fair amount of support for projects relating to youth. One of them is the creation of a Youth Municipal Council in which they will learn about citizen participation by running a political campaign and electing their representatives, just as adults do. Within the COMUDE (Municipal Development Council) there are nine commissions that in theory work on different topics such as health, education, and finances. We are working to strengthen the COMUDE commission on women’s, children’s, and family issues by elaborating a public policy in favor of youth.
Another cool thing that has come together is that I am now coaching a girls soccer team, or at least training a group of girls aged 9-13. I had been observing a group of boys training in the afternoons in the soccer field and thought the participation of girls was lacking. So I talked to the guy who was running it and told him I wanted to train girls. So he told all his boys to tell all their sisters, cousins, and classmates to show up at the field the next day. About 14 girls showed up the first day and we had a good time. We did some dribbling drills, relay races, and scrimmaged. It all went really well and I think we’ll continue training Tuesdays and Thursdays and hopefully play games on Saturdays.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
A week with my cousin!
I had the honor of hosting my first visitor from the States! I had a great time showing my cousin around a selection of places including the good tourist attractions and spots off the beaten path (2 1/2 hours off the beaten path on a dirt road to my site). We started out in Antigua, taking in the colonial architecture, old churches, ruins, yummy food, and a lively nighttime atmosphere. Highlights included a “típico” breakfast of beans, fried plantains, eggs, fresh cheese, cream, tortillas, and coffee and salsa dancing at a hip joint.
We made our way to El Chol, enjoying the greatness of what is the Guatemalan public transportation system. In my town she accompanied me to my English class where she helped me run a game of Jeopardy using vocab words and simple grammatical questions. She reminded me that “quantities” is spelled with a “q” instead of as “cuantities”, as I had written on the board for the category. That is what living in Guatemala for 10 months will do to your English. We made the trek to La Ciénega where we baked an incredibly successful batch of coffee cake that thrilled all in attendance, so much that they all wanted to take more home with them and we were left empty handed. The usual pigs, chickens, turkeys, and dogs were underfoot and the fact that that community hadn’t received water in a month and the electricity project still isn’t finished isn’t keeping them down.
She got a great taste of the local culture during a big town activity that was the election of the queen of the intermediate schools games. The event included the usual parading of young girls in elaborate “fantasy” outfits and their speeches to the public. In addition there were demonstrations of poetry reading, oratory, lip-syncing, singing, and musical groups. It’s a great opportunity to see everyone from town all gathered together in the market in their usual fashion of all the women and children sitting on the ground floor and all the men and adolescent boys leering from above on the second level. Everyone comes dressed to the nines and you can observe all the social interactions and young couples in the making with text messages flying. We had a couple fun sporty afternoons with running, soccer, and basketball with my co-workers and English students and an enjoyable experience of making a pizza from scratch (including the dough and sauce) for a couple of my co-workers that came over for dinner and cards. Everyone loved her and thought how cool it was that she wanted to visit their town and I also received lots of comments on how pretty she is and inquiries on when she would be returning.
After saying good bye to El Chol, we made our way down the construction-infested inter-American highway in a crazy bus that like to pass other buses with oncoming traffic to Lake Atitilán. We had a splendidly tranquila night in the tiny town of Santa Cruz at the awesome lakeside hostel, La Iguana Perdida. We enjoyed running into other Peace Corps volunteers, having an amazing family style dinner with 4! kinds of curry, sleeping in rustic bungalows with no electricity, and doing yoga in the morning on the patio that was open to gorgeous lake views with towering volcanoes. We scored some homemade scones with strawberry jam before catching a boat to the other side of the lake to the hopping tourist town of Panajachel. Another tranquilo day with yummy food, souvenir shopping for awesome jade and coral jewelry, a live local reggae band with good social messages, and a crazy night out dancing to thumping reggaeton music.
We hit up the giant market of Chichicastenango a little ways north of the lake where we did some browsing of the beautiful traditional woven textiles and other artisan goods. Unfortunately I got robbed for the first time after being here for 10 months. I didn’t realize at all when it happened, but when I went to get on the bus as we were leaving, the 250 Quetzales that I had had in the front pocket of my jeans were gone. That’s about 30 bucks, so it’s not that big of a deal, but it is half my rent for the month. The market was super crowded and basically a body pack in some parts, so I guess it would be fairly easy to exact the cash if that’s what you do for a living. I was pretty ticked off though. We made our way back to Antigua for our last night, enjoying a very nice traditional Guatemalan meal with chiles rellenos, pupusas, fried plantains, beans, tortillas, and cheese. All in all we had a great time “paseando” and I loved having the opportunity to share the beauty, quirks, and charm of this country with people back home.
We made our way to El Chol, enjoying the greatness of what is the Guatemalan public transportation system. In my town she accompanied me to my English class where she helped me run a game of Jeopardy using vocab words and simple grammatical questions. She reminded me that “quantities” is spelled with a “q” instead of as “cuantities”, as I had written on the board for the category. That is what living in Guatemala for 10 months will do to your English. We made the trek to La Ciénega where we baked an incredibly successful batch of coffee cake that thrilled all in attendance, so much that they all wanted to take more home with them and we were left empty handed. The usual pigs, chickens, turkeys, and dogs were underfoot and the fact that that community hadn’t received water in a month and the electricity project still isn’t finished isn’t keeping them down.
She got a great taste of the local culture during a big town activity that was the election of the queen of the intermediate schools games. The event included the usual parading of young girls in elaborate “fantasy” outfits and their speeches to the public. In addition there were demonstrations of poetry reading, oratory, lip-syncing, singing, and musical groups. It’s a great opportunity to see everyone from town all gathered together in the market in their usual fashion of all the women and children sitting on the ground floor and all the men and adolescent boys leering from above on the second level. Everyone comes dressed to the nines and you can observe all the social interactions and young couples in the making with text messages flying. We had a couple fun sporty afternoons with running, soccer, and basketball with my co-workers and English students and an enjoyable experience of making a pizza from scratch (including the dough and sauce) for a couple of my co-workers that came over for dinner and cards. Everyone loved her and thought how cool it was that she wanted to visit their town and I also received lots of comments on how pretty she is and inquiries on when she would be returning.
After saying good bye to El Chol, we made our way down the construction-infested inter-American highway in a crazy bus that like to pass other buses with oncoming traffic to Lake Atitilán. We had a splendidly tranquila night in the tiny town of Santa Cruz at the awesome lakeside hostel, La Iguana Perdida. We enjoyed running into other Peace Corps volunteers, having an amazing family style dinner with 4! kinds of curry, sleeping in rustic bungalows with no electricity, and doing yoga in the morning on the patio that was open to gorgeous lake views with towering volcanoes. We scored some homemade scones with strawberry jam before catching a boat to the other side of the lake to the hopping tourist town of Panajachel. Another tranquilo day with yummy food, souvenir shopping for awesome jade and coral jewelry, a live local reggae band with good social messages, and a crazy night out dancing to thumping reggaeton music.
We hit up the giant market of Chichicastenango a little ways north of the lake where we did some browsing of the beautiful traditional woven textiles and other artisan goods. Unfortunately I got robbed for the first time after being here for 10 months. I didn’t realize at all when it happened, but when I went to get on the bus as we were leaving, the 250 Quetzales that I had had in the front pocket of my jeans were gone. That’s about 30 bucks, so it’s not that big of a deal, but it is half my rent for the month. The market was super crowded and basically a body pack in some parts, so I guess it would be fairly easy to exact the cash if that’s what you do for a living. I was pretty ticked off though. We made our way back to Antigua for our last night, enjoying a very nice traditional Guatemalan meal with chiles rellenos, pupusas, fried plantains, beans, tortillas, and cheese. All in all we had a great time “paseando” and I loved having the opportunity to share the beauty, quirks, and charm of this country with people back home.
Friday, June 6, 2008
CODEDE, trainees visit, rain
This month it was El Chol´s turn to host the CODEDE meeting, the Departmental Development Council. So all the mayors from the eight municipalities came to our town, along with representatives from all the ministries of government, NGOs, senators, and representatives from indigenous groups, women, workers, small businesses, etc. It was a super long meeting but also good to be informed as to everything that is going on. The meeting was held in a primary school just outside of town since the muni here doesn´t have a meeting place. So of course, classes were cancelled for the day since it is perfectly acceptable here to cancel class for really any reason. I got there at 6:30 in the morning to help set up and the meeting lasted until 2:30. It was long and draining. They discussed all the infrastructure projects that the Council approved and all the mayors and representatives had chances to talk and discuss, at length. After the meeting, the mayor provided a rather elaborate lunch for all in attendance with options of carne asada, seafood soup, or whole fried fish. I had the opportunity to talk with representatives from the ministries that work directly with women´s groups.
This week the newest group of Peace Corps trainees in the Youth Development Program was in El Chol for the week for their field-based training. It was fun to get to meet the newbies, spend time with them, show them my house, and give them a few tips now that I'm a ripe volunteer with six months in site under my belt. I watched some of the presentations they gave in the middle school and was impressed with their execution. It was really cool because the high school invited the whole group a dinner and dance they were having to celebrate their school´s anniversary. So we all went and ate dinner with them and attended a Guatemalan high school dance. The dancing and intermingling were fun. Good times! The next night we collaborated to put together an intercultural talent show. They did some singing, folk dances, and lip syncing. We had some people sing “Yellow Submarine” (with my guitar), do a hilarious skit, and we did our own traditional folk dance of the “Electric Slide” and then taught it to them. They all whooped and hollered as we demonstrated the dance and had a little bit of a tough time learning but there was lots of laughing throughout the whole experience. It was quite amusing and good times were had by all.
So there were a bunch of tropical storms that passed over Central America. We didn´t get hit by them, but it rained a ton and the temperature finally dropped a little. In town the streets turn to rivers and the roads leading into town become pure mud. There just isn´t the infrastructure and drainage to handle the amount of water. I washed a bunch of clothes on Saturday and they didn´t really dry til Thursday cause the air is so humid.
This week the newest group of Peace Corps trainees in the Youth Development Program was in El Chol for the week for their field-based training. It was fun to get to meet the newbies, spend time with them, show them my house, and give them a few tips now that I'm a ripe volunteer with six months in site under my belt. I watched some of the presentations they gave in the middle school and was impressed with their execution. It was really cool because the high school invited the whole group a dinner and dance they were having to celebrate their school´s anniversary. So we all went and ate dinner with them and attended a Guatemalan high school dance. The dancing and intermingling were fun. Good times! The next night we collaborated to put together an intercultural talent show. They did some singing, folk dances, and lip syncing. We had some people sing “Yellow Submarine” (with my guitar), do a hilarious skit, and we did our own traditional folk dance of the “Electric Slide” and then taught it to them. They all whooped and hollered as we demonstrated the dance and had a little bit of a tough time learning but there was lots of laughing throughout the whole experience. It was quite amusing and good times were had by all.
So there were a bunch of tropical storms that passed over Central America. We didn´t get hit by them, but it rained a ton and the temperature finally dropped a little. In town the streets turn to rivers and the roads leading into town become pure mud. There just isn´t the infrastructure and drainage to handle the amount of water. I washed a bunch of clothes on Saturday and they didn´t really dry til Thursday cause the air is so humid.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Half Marathon, IST, winter, Contradictions
I ran the half marathon in Cobán! (All 13.1 miles or 21 km – the second time in my life). It was super fun because there were SO MANY spectators! I've never participated in a race with such great support from the crowd. Cobán is a fairly good-sized city and the whole way all the Guatemalans were shouting at us “Ánimo! Ánimo!” and handing out water and juice and hard candies not from the official water stations, but just cause they wanted to. It makes such a huge difference to have such great support from the spectators in a race like that. Km 11-17 were pretty brutal since before the race I hadn´t trained more than 10 km, but then getting toward the end and hearing all the people, it was just one foot in front of the other, knowing that I was going to make it. The whole city was like a big carnival with a parade, food stands, and everything imaginable for sale as vendors take advantage of the influx of people. The night before they put on a pasta dinner for all the race participants and really anyone in the community who wanted to come in and eat. The pushing and shoving to get in the door to the free food was unreal. Once inside there was a gigantic table piled high with Styrofoam plates piled six high with cold pasta. Pretty impressive. There was a marimba band (like in any social celebration in Guatemala) and it made for a generally festive atmosphere. That night there was a great live band in the central park.
The one weird thing about big public events here, is that no matter how many people are gathered, there are never places to go to the bathroom. Even at the pasta dinner, which was held in a convent, there were no restrooms available. I had been drinking lots of water all day, trying to hydrate myself for the race, so I really had to pee. Sometimes stores or other places will rent out their bathroom for one or two quetzales, so I found a “hotel” right off the park that was renting out theirs. I paid the woman, and she directed me down below. When I entered the hallway, it because apparent this was not an overnight type hotel but rather an hourly hotel with row upon row of tiny little numbered red doors. It was a creepy experience and I was relieved in more ways that one to get out of there.
Recently we had our Peace Corps In-Service Training where all of us from the Municipal Development Program got together with our counterparts for three days in the PC office in Santa Lucia. My counterpart had to go to Honduras for another training that week so I brought another coworker from the office with me. It was funny with the dynamic between all the volunteers and their counterparts. We were all together during the day listening to hours of PowerPoint presentations, but didn’t hang out together in Antigua at night. As always it was great to see all my friends and here about what’s going on in their sites in such various parts of the country.
The workshops in the high school have been going well. It’s nice to feel like I’m accomplishing something tangible and directly related to my program goals. The last time we talked about different ways citizens can get involved in their government. I gave them scenarios of hypothetical problems in the community that they had to make skits of to solve using one of the manners of citizen participation. It went really well, but I told them 5 minutes max for their skits and some groups took 20 minutes because Guatemalans have an amazing ability to talk forever.
The municipal newsletter that I put together has been going really well. We get lots of positive responses from it. Last issue covered what is the COMUDE, the interscholastic games, convocatory of teachers positions, an informe about one of the NGOs, a new systems the treasury’s office is using to increase financial transparency, among other notices.
Every month we gather all the institutions and NGOs that work in El Chol for an interinstitutional meeting. This month my counterpart couldn’t be there, so I had to run the meeting. Now that I've been here long enough, I've figured out the protocols of running a meeting in Guatemala. It went really well and we got a lot accomplished.
Well, “winter” here has started…meaning the rainy season. It will rain many afternoons and the streets turn to rivers for lack of good drainage. The dirt roads turn to mud and traveling around become more difficult. The water pours off my tin roof in great quantities. Talking on the phone in my house is impossible due to the noise it makes. A giant frog the size of a kitten lives behind my pila. You have to strategically wash clothes in the morning so they dry before the afternoon. Everyone at the office was fascinated by my red Marmot rain jacket. I broke down and bought an umbrella.
So I love living here, but of course I have my bad days when I just hate everything about this place too. It’s funny because the aspects that I love about Guatemala are also the things I can’t stand about it. It’s really a big contradiction for me. For instance…
· I love how family oriented they are here, but I can’t stand how they can’t be independent and how mothers will do their sons´ cooking and laundry til they get married, no matter how old that is.
· I love how people are so generous with their money and belongings, but I hate how they are so irresponsible with it too.
· I love how people don’t focus on accomplishments and getting things done and they enjoy their time leisurely, but I hate how nothing ever gets done and takes forever.
· I love how in a small town everyone greets you in the street, but I hate how people are always in your business and gossiping.
· I love that they use lots of natural remedies for their health, but I hate all the untrue superstitions like how pregnant women shouldn´t drink too much water.
· I love that everyone watches out for you, but I hate how you feel like you can’t do anything without everyone knowing about it.
· I love all the rich cultural traditions, but I hate how everyone is afraid of change and taking risks.
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