La Vida

Walking in Magdelena Milpas Altas...

This weekend was quite eventful! Friday we took the bus to Santa Lucia to meet up with our language/culture teacher. We then went to the house of a woman who makes and sells her own jams. We spent the morning at her home learning how to make homemade strawberry jam and it turned out to be delicious!

On Saturday we had a community interchange with another group of volunteers living in Alotenango who are in the Healthy Homes program. The four girls first came to our community and we gave them the grand tour and bought them chocobananos (chocolate bananas) and then went with them to their community. Alotenango is quite a bit larger than San Bartolomé but seems to be in greater distress than our community. Very sick stray dog..

One big issue is that the town only has running water for one hour each day. No one knows exactly what time the water will turn on and sometimes it doesn't come on for 3 or 4 days. This causes a great deal of problems with health and sanitation.

Many people have a pila in their homes which is a large, deep, cement sink in the yard that they use to wash their clothes and dishes as well as brush their teeth and wash their hands. Pilas are kept as clean as the family prefers to keep it... but since it is outside, leaves, dirt, and insects often can be found floating in them. Some communities have public Plas which are about the size of a swimming pool and have many small sinks which use the shared water source. These large pools are often quite dirty as they are not cleaned often (if at all) and usually there is trash, cigarette buts, and debris floating in them. In the town of Alotenango, since water is so scarce, many people rely of the public Pila for washing and even drinking... Very contaminated river behind the Health Department in Alotenango.

The public schools there (which have 2,000 children combined) also only have running water 1 hour per day and so children cannot flush toilets, wash their hands, or get a drink outside of this time. When school lets out in the afternoon, children run across the park to the community Pila and drink from it either with a cup they have brought our with their unwashed hands... The volunteer their certainly have their work cut out for them in trying to improve health and sanitation there. The visit was definitely an eye-opening experience.Children playing in Alotenango.

Once they knew I had a camera...

On Saturday afternoon Hannah and Elizabeth came over to my house and Hannah taught us to make homemade bread. At first we had some trouble finding all the right ingredients, and the yeast is a bit different here... but the bread ended up just fine. We made 2 large cinnamon, raisin-swirl bread and it was so yummy! The process took a while, but it was a nice way to spend the afternoon.

Sunday was our first official day of "freedom". It marked the first day that we were allowed to leave our communities by ourselves (as long as we returned before dark). I think most everyone took the day to visit Antigua which is a beautiful city here tucked just beneath a looming volcano. Antigua is the capital of Sacatepéquez which is the department in which all the current Peace Corps trainees live. It's a great place to visit and things are cheap is you have dollars but expensive if your being paid quetzales (which we are). So a couple of the girls from my town were headed to Antigua but I was invited by Rosa to go with her and her friend to visit another village and Antigua as well. I decided it would be nice to spend time with Rosa, as these next 2 months with go by very quickly and I will soon be leaving here. We left early and went to the town of Santa Catarina where we visited this beautiful oasis which housed 3 spring-fed pools, a waterslide, lush fruit trees, and cabanas. It was like a mini-resort... but the cost to enter was quite cheap and you could bring your own food to barbeque there. We didn't swim, but made a plan to come back one day with a picnic lunch to spend the day there.

Afterwards, we went and had some lunch at the evangelical church which was selling an assortment of delicious things out front. I had a heaping plate of rice, chile rellenos, and a cucumber and tomato salad with lime, and Rosa had what appeared to be an entire sunfish (eyes, fins, tale and all).A group of wome sitting outside the church.

We then walked down to the town of San Antonio Aguas Calientes and went to an artisan market where the sell all of the traditional clothes and textiles. There are so many beautiful things I would love to get as gifts for people, but I know I shouldn't get anything until just before I return to the states. One difficulty with window shopping here, is that people REALLY want you to buy something and can be very persistent. This is something I know I will get used to but right now I have a bit of trouble with it. It is a very polite culture and so their persistence is very polite and even complimentary but in a market with tons of vendors, it can be overwhelming and I felt myself just wanting to avoid it after awhile.
We walked around Antigua for a bit, and went to get a coffee at.. McDonald's. As it turns out, McDonald's is really very nice here. Much nice than in the states and they have a separate area called "McCafe" which is more like a Starbucks, where they sell very good coffee. The atmosphere is that of a nice restaurant with elegant wooden chairs, garden seating and a fountain. They even have a wait staff that brings your food out to you. The irony is that they still serve their food in those awful, brightly colored wrappers just like in the states. To me, eating hot food out of a cardboard box or paper wrapper makes it seem like you are eating garbage... hot, greasy garbage, Mmmm. Anyway, McDonald's in the US could learn a thing or two from the McDonald's of Guatemala.
The afternoon in Antigua was really enjoyable. The city was beautiful and the weather was perfect. The central park area was full of people and there was a band playing. Being that Antigua is such a tourist destination, it was the only time (outside of the Peace Corps compound) that I had seen so many gringos walking around. There are a lot of NGO's, businesses, and mission groups working out of Antigua as well and I heard a lot of people speaking English as we walked around. We also ran into a load of Peace Corps trainees who had taken their day of freedom in Antigua as well.
For now, I will rest my head, and read my wonderful book (Three Cups of Tea) before I fall asleep and start a new week in the morning...

A very maternal fountain in Antigua.