Rain and Volcanoes Can't Stop Progress

Clothes that will never dry...

The rain is coming down like nothing I have ever seen before. A torrential shower has been hanging over these mountains for the past 48 hours due to a tropical depression. In a way it's nice because there is nothing to do but sit over a hot cup of tea and chat with Rosa. Yesterday there was great excitement about the great volcano Pacaya which began erupting on Thursday evening. It spewed ash over parts of Guatemala city and the rivers of lava spread further than have in almost 20 years! Many people were evacuated from there homes and one new reporter was unfortunately killed by a rock that struck him in the head. The danger is not great for us in San Bartolomé as we are a good distance away. The Minister of Education canceled all classes for the department (like a State in the US) of Sacatepéquez and so we were unable to give our first Charla (lesson). This is a big set back since next week there are no classes due to exams, and the following week we will all be out of site for Field Based Training. This means we won't be able to work with the Institute here until three weeks from now! But this is often the way of it here (whether there is a volcano erupting or not)... and working here requires a great deal of patience and flexibility...

Everyday I walk down my street and at the corner I pass a plot of land. A small corner of dirt which a family has chosen to build their home. In just a few weeks I have seen such immense progress on this corner... At first I barely noticed what was happening. I would see some people shoveling, or raking and I thought maybe they were just cleaning up the dirty corner lot. Then I noticed one day that the ground was level, and men were there everyday morning 'til night just digging. I would leave home in the morning and say, "Buenas días" and they would greet me politely and continue working. By the time I had returned in the late afternoon to say, "Buenas tardes," I noticed the trench they had been digging had made a great deal of progress. Now I seem to notice the progress everyday and I look forward to my passing of the corner lot to see what more they have accomplished. They work so steadily and with so few tools. They do it all by hand, with buckets and shovels. In just the past week they finished the deep perimeter of the foundation and have begun putting in metal frames which are all bound together by hand with thick metal wire. Right now the foundation appears skeletal... Just spindly metal jutting out of the ground. It is hard to imagine the house that will soon stand proud on that corner lot. But make no mistake that this foundation that may appear to be nothing significant, will soon be a shelter and a home. This once dirty lot will be a place for a family to live and make memories and for children to grow and play.
This is the same with any project, big or small I think. It may be difficult at first to note the progress that is being made... But little by little, with persistent hard work, an empty space can be brought to life, and opportunity can arise from seemingly nothing.
I think we all experience this but may often times overlook it. We are always taught to value the grand outcomes of our toils rather than appreciate the accomplishment of the small tasks along the way. This is something I hope to amend in my own life and maybe living in this culture has helped me. I notice that I feel pride for the family and their daily triumphs in building their home. Perhaps pride in accomplishment is better noted objectively. Or perhaps this family rests each night counting each shovel lifted as a great success, a bucket full of hope and expectation for their future home.
Anyway, I think in the early stages of construction, our spindly ideals, hopes, and aspirations can be vulnerable to defeat, but day by day our accomplishments build up until we have achieved something great. And it all starts with a good foundation.

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.

School Visit

Things are getting busier and we have finally introduced ourselves to the school that we will be working at for the next 2 months... The first day was a bit strange. I guess I had no idea what to expect but of course having been educated in the US I had some assumptions of how a school "should" look. We first had to introduce ourselves (in Spanish) to 8 different classes of kids age 12-15. This is made up of 3 grades called "básico" and there really is no age limit, and since many kids drop out, rejoin, help their parents in the field, etc, some kids are nearly 20 or more. After our introductions we were all split up and put into a classroom by ourselves to observe the classes. I was first put in music class which looked nothing like music class to me. The teacher looked to be about 17 years old and sat at the front desk with his laptop flirting with the girls in the class and joking around with the boys. He then explained to me that the students were studying commercial music, and jingles used in advertisement which I thought sounded pretty interesting... He then invited one of the students up to give her presentation (all the while the class is paying no attention and everyone is more or less doing their own thing). This girl stands up, the teacher plays a little jingle on his laptop and she reads an advert from her paper. And this was music class...
I remained in the room to wait for the next class to start and the teacher was about 10 minutes late. The classes are only ten minutes long to begin with so the students pretty much knew at that point that they would be doing no work. The teacher walked in and said he needed some of the boys to come help him move the basketball hoop back to its place in the yard and told the other students just to hang out. He invited me to go along and I still have no idea what that class was actually supposed to be... I watched as a small group of boys swung at the ground with machetes and then moved the huge iron basketball hoop into place. Then it was time for recess.
During recess we walked around a bit and mingled with some of the kids and watched the fútbol game. I noticed that some of the really young teachers were hanging around with the older students as friends and I found this so strange. While some of the other volunteers reported having observed good and relatively well-structured classes, I found my experience to be quite eye-opening. I foresee a great need for patience on my part and I will need to remind myself that I am here to learn as well as to teach. I am really looking forward to getting started as I see a lot of potential here and while the system may be like night and day compared to schools in the US I think we will find ways to be successful here.

Fantastic view from the school. Our volunteer group and four other volunteers visiting for the day.

Photos

Here are some photos from Melissa's camera of our cooking Chilles Rillenos at my house. They were absolutely delicious!
Mouth full of carrots...
The San Bartolomé group in the kitchen
Otra vez...
Doña Rosa was our teacher for the day
Here is a photo of the Turkey we killed for Mother's Day... At first I told Doña Rosa I would be there when she did it so she could show me how it's done. But before the slaughter we had some time to bond and I just couldn't watch...
If he only knew what was to come...

Doña Rosa is seen here force-feeding the tukey some whiskey. This I was told woul make it so he "doesn't feel a thing"

More to come...

Fiestas etc...

On Saturday I went to a birthday party for the "little brother" of one of the volunteers living in my community. There were 4 of us volunteers in attendance and for me, it was my first Guatemalan birthday party. The birthday boy is called Mario and he was turning 3 that day and he was very cute but also sort of a little devil. Everyone brought gifts and gave them directly to him (bad idea) and when his parents tried to take them and put them on the table to open later he kept snatching them away and screaming... Mario was especially unkind to his parents and was clearly used to getting his way.

We sat down to a delicious lunch which was followed by the notorious piñata. The piñata was of Mario from Super Mario Brothers which I found a bit odd since the little boy was also Mario. So guests were required to beat the crap out of this Mario with a stick which I had to wonder if the parents had chosen this piñata subliminally...

Anyway, the children at the party were very young and most were babies and so the piñata took a very long time to bust open. Once everyone got tired of watching the tiny kids poke the Mario with the stick, they let the older kids get up and take a few swings. I learned that piñatas here are quite different than in the states in that these piñatas fight back... They attach a rope to each side of the piñata and one person stands off to each side with an end of the rope which they use to pull the piñata in various directions. In this way, the piñata can avoid the stick and also throw some punches itself which can be observed in the attached video.

Once the Piñata is busted open and the candy falls to the floor EVERYONE dives to the ground to get as much candy as possible. This includes children, parents, grandparents, and maybe stray dogs... I thought I was pretty quick but I reached down and only got about 2 pieces of candy because everyone else was in hyena attack mode.

After that they brought out 2 large cakes and we sang happy birthday (in English) followed by another song in Spanish saying "we want cake, we want cake, let's hurry this along because we want cake." This was pretty funny to me because it's pretty much what everyone is thinking at a birthday party but would never say. After the little boy blew out the candles, he leaned over the cake and took a big bite out the side and got frosting all over his face. Everyone thought it was funny and adorable and so did I, but I also secretly hoped I would not be served that piece of cake that his face had just smooshed into.

On Sunday Doña Rosa brought me as a guest to a baby shower she was invited to. Another volunteer also came with her Doña and we all sat together. There were mostly all women in attendance and we all sat around in a circle underneath a tin roof outside. There were probably 50 or more people there in all. They started off by telling us that anytime we heard this one women say "Bebé" (baby) we had to stand up and scream and cry like a baby and win a prize. Then they played all kinds of games like musical chairs, pin the bottle on the baby, bingo, and hot potato. Everyone was really into it and it was really great fun. The hot potato game was especially exciting because everyone had to participate and if the "potato" (which was actually a little package layered in newsprint) landed on you, you had to unwrap one layer and read what task you were given. These included anything from dancing like a chicken, singing a song, telling a joke, or reciting a riddle. It was really a great idea and a good way to get everyone at the party involved. Just before they served us dinner the rain started and it was the most torrential rain I had ever seen in all my life. It seemed like the roof was going to come down with all the weight of the rain. The sound was deafening on the tin roof and the ground beneath our feet became like a shallow creek. This pretty much concluded the party and most people began to leave once the rain let up a little.
This is more or less the commencement of the rainy season here in Guatemala. I find it quite nice because the morning and early afternoon are hot and sunny and then the rain comes to cool things down in the late afternoon and it tapers off in the evening. It's really a warm, refreshing rain and keeps everything lush and green here. Sometimes its nice in the late afternoon just to relax and listen to the rain drops on the tin roof and let the mind wander...
Today we took a much anticipated trip to "Guate" (Guatemala City) to see where the American Embassy is as well as the hospital. Our language teacher, Mirsa came with us but we were responsible for making all decisions, riding the bus, calling a taxi etc. This was to be help prepare us for how to do these things when we are on our own. We go off the bus at Tikal Futura which is a mall/hotel in the city and the only place in Guate Peace Corps will allow us to go by bus. Once there, we have to catch a taxi anywhere else we may want to go, for safety reasons. After the embassy and hospital visit we headed back to the mall to have lunch and window shop. This mall was very modern and felt just like a mall in the US. It was a stark contrast to the quite communities we are living in now and I became keenly aware of the vast inequality of people in this country.
After spending some time at the mall, and chatting a bit with some of the other volunteers, we hopped on a bus back to San Bartolomé. I can proudly tell you all that no one from our group was pick pocketed on this trip because we were all exercising caution and practicing the tactics taught to us by Peace Corps. On top of this, the uncle of one of the volunteers here has a gym that we are able to use and he has offered to teach us some Tae Bo, Karate and self defense. Of course this is PEACE corps, and being such, if we are robbed, we are told to relinquish our valuables and not fight back. But... If I do become a black-belt in the next few weeks I may switch from Peace Corps to Marine Corps... We'll see.

trying on some Columbian hats...

Site Visit

On Thursday we went to visit Amanda, a current volunteer in the Youth Development program who is finishing her service in July. This means that one of us will be replacing her in her site which is called Estancia de la Virgin and is part of the Municipality of San Martín in Chimaltenango. It's one of the closest sites to the Peace Corps compound and also one of the warmest. Amanda works in 4 very small schools and lives in a very rural area. They have told us to let them know if we prefer to work in and urban or rural setting and while of course I want to be flexible, after seeing this site I think I would like to work in a rural setting as well... We visited one of the schools Amanda works at and got to do some activities with the kids. The school was very small with only three classrooms; one room for each first, second, and third year kids. This would be about the equivalent to middle school in the US. The kids were very polite, and told us about all the great things they learned from Amanda. It seemed she had a really strong connection with her students and with her community because it was so small and intimate. This is something I really value, and while I know I could work effectively in any site, I would really like to work in a small community like this one. Amanda lives a very simple life. She has her own large room in a house that she shares with a family. She has a great deal of privacy and cooks for herself, but also has a god connection with the family and spends time with them. Just outside her bedroom door is a lovely patio with fresh fruit trees, flowers, and one of the most breath taking views I have yet to see in Guatemala. Her house sits up on a mountain and over looks a vast valley of forest and farmland. It is mountains in every direction you look and she said you can see the rains coming from miles away. There is very little traffic in the pueblo, and nothing but dirt roads. Most community members are farmers and are quite poor, which creates a unique challenge for a volunteer working in this site. Another factor is isolation... Amanda said she has to take a 30 min bus ride to use the internet once a week and that she has a lot of alone time. Of course she goes to community events often but usually is back home by 630pm each night. She says she is grateful to not be so "connected" to the world of cyberspace and that this has allowed her to slow down to the pace of the community.
This sounded really wonderful to me and I had so many questions for her. We all went for lunch afterwards and were able to reflect on the visit and talk more to Amanda about how her service has played out. I think the experience made all of us anxious to know where we will end up and really begin our lives as volunteers

Weekend Update

Día de la madre fiesta at the school.

This week went by so quickly! I have barely had time to sit at my computer or get to the internet cafe... Last weekend was incredibly busy due to the Mother's Day Celebrations. Mother's Day here is a HUGE deal. It is typically about a week long celebration of fireworks, gift giving, eating, and fiestas.
We had about 4 invitations to various Mother's Day parties. Each one had entertainment which was usually some cute kids doing a dance. They also would pull random people out of the audience to sing a song a capella and I noticed that no one here seems to have any embarrassment about singing in front of people even if they don't sing particularly well. They also had contests for the mothers such as cake eating, who could whip up and egg the fastest, and who could put clothes on a doll the fastest. Most of the contests were based on the traditional gender roles of women here but some were just silly... In one contest the mother's had to come up on stage and stuff a marshmallow in their mouths and say "gato gordo" (fat cat) into a microphone. Each round they had to add another marshmallow and try to say "gato gordo" and everyone in the audience laughed. I think the winner fit up to 6 marshmallows in her mouth and was just barely able to get out the muffled words as the other women laughed and therefore ejected the marshmallows from their mouths. It was nice to see these hardworking women letting loose and having such fun.
They also give away a load of prizes and we could barely carry all the candy, coffee mugs, aprons, strainers(?), etc. One party we went to ended with a dance put on by some middle school girls. The song they chose to dance to was not exactly what I would call "family friendly". I quickly realized that they most likely did not really know what the lyrics were saying... Here were these young girls dancing and all the mothers in their traditional (conservative) dress clapping their hands to a song that said,

"Hey sexy lady, I like your flow
Your body's bangin, out of control! (Uh!)
You put it on me (That's right) ceiling to floor
Only you can make me, scream and beg for more!"

I sort of tried to say something to Rosa about the song and she said, "oh it has a nice rhythm doesn't it?" So I decided to leave it alone and let them enjoy the sexy mother of a song.

I find this happening a lot with songs and especially t-shirts printed in english... They sell a lot of second-hand American clothes here and I think people buy it without realizing what the words actually mean. This week I saw a little baby boy wearing a t-shirt that said, "Lock up your daughters". Another volunteer reported seeing a little boy wearing an ESPN t-shirt that said, "Yes I'm a woman, Yes I know what's going on."
On Tuesday we went to the Peace Corps Compound as usual and it was nice to see everyone and here about things in their communities. We had a session with the Security Officer who has repeatedly told us to always be on guard for suspicious people and hazardous situations. This was put to the test later that afternoon when a group of us were waiting at the bus stop to head back to our communities. There are about 14 of us that take the same bus out of Santa Lucia to our sites and since we are still quite new to riding the chicken buses we often wait for each other and go all together in one big Gringo crew. So that day as we were waiting for the bus we suddenly heard screeching tires. We turned around and saw that there was a small compact car completely out of control, fish tailing all over the road, and heading straight for us. The car hit the concrete guardrail on the right-hand shoulder and flew into the air, we ran, the car flipped a few times and crashed right into the bus stop just feet from were people were sitting. The car landed on its side and we watched in disbelief as the driver popped out of the window, climbed out of the car, and brushed his shoulders off. He was completely fine. Even with all the traffic, the little rickshaws, the many people waiting at the bus stop, miraculously no one was injured. It felt sort of like a movie, and this guy was just a stunt man hired to do some crazy trick. People were crowded around and once they realized the guy was fine, they helped him tip the car back over and rolled it off onto the shoulder. We were shocked by the experience and grateful that no one was hurt. At the very least we had been made keenly aware of how quickly things can happen and how important it is to always be paying attention.
This of course is something that could occur in the US as well and I have to say that Peace Corps is training us well to be as safe as possible in country.