Noche Buena en Pachalúm

My Christmas and New Year's Blog Posts will be mostly just photos since I have not had time to compose any interesting insights. Basically - I ate a lot, a convivioed a lot, and I got sick again (gluttony is a deadly sin for my stomach).In Guatemala Christmas is celebrated on December 24th - Noche Buena. Families celebrate by making tamales with raisins, paches (the potato-tamales), drinking ponche (hot fruit punch) and eating apples and grapes. For lunch I was invited to Rosy's house and made my popular baked apples dessert again.

Emilio double-fisting food - an apple in one hand and guisquil in the other

Lunch at Rosy's December 24th (I am in the back on the left-hand side)

In the afternoon, I participated in the first annual Christmas Parade. We went all through town dancing and throwing candy to the children. The bands from the three high schools played some of the best versions of Christmas classics that I have heard in a long time.

The first annual Pachalúm Christmas Parade

After the parade there was a concert/closing of vacation classes/clown presentation in front of the municipality. I handed out certificates for the participants from the art class and received a certificate for the communications class (even though I only went to two or three of the classes).

Can you tell which one is not a local beauty queen?

In the evening I was invited to five dinners and I was proud of myself for being careful - I ate one tamale with Doña Tona (the lady I live with), then I ate one more tamale at the second dinner and after that I was done. The third house I went to I refused tamales but was offered Ensalada de Nochebuena (beet salad with nuts, apples, and grapes). I then went to the mayor's house and just drank some ponche, followed by Rosy's house for midnight (though I did not eat anything there). At midnight the tradition is to light tons of fireworks, a really neat and very unsafe experience, and to give hugs to everyone you see on the street.

With sparklers at midnight December 24th/25th

I woke up Christmas Day with another serious case of food poisoning, which lasted the rest of Christmas weekend. During a lull on Saturday I went down to Rosy's house for Saturday lunch - but I brought my own lunch to prevent any more contamination. Nevertheless Saturday afternoon I fell ill again and was just barely on my feet again for New Year's.

Emilio has really taken to being photographed

Conviviendo

This past week has been a flurry of holiday festivities – or convivios as the parties are known here – which I guess would literally translate as living together, or celebrating together in this context. My policy of accepting any and all social invites has resulted in my being out almost every single night the past week and a half, and also has led to some personal insights to ponder in the upcoming year. 1. I am more patient now than I was when I arrived in Guatemala. Invitations for activities always start at least an hour after the established start time and the events drag on way longer than I am interested in staying. 2. I am a lot quieter than I used to be. In most social settings I tend to sit back quietly and observe unless I am spoken to directly. While I have enjoyed the copious amounts of food coming my way, I am also a little convivio-ed out at this point, so I look forward to eating my weight in tamales for Christmas and then detoxing on my own for a while.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Work before parties. Last week started out with women’s groups. On Monday I was very excited to go to Ciprés because I had made a really good charla about nutrition. Basically, we started out with a dinámica (dynamic or ice breaker) called fruit-vegetable-grain where we would toss a ball to a random person and shout one of those terms and the woman who caught the ball had to name a fruit-vegetable-or grain. Then she would throw the ball and the process would repeat. The point of the game is to not repeat anything that has already been mentioned and it was meant to get them started thinking about different classifications of foods. Then we had a discussion about the five different types of nutrients (carbs, fats, proteins, vitamins, and minerals) followed by my introducing the food pyramid and then handing out cards with different foods for the women to read the backs of (each card described a different vitamin or mineral that could be found in that food) and then post up on the board in the food pyramid that we made out of string. Of all the charlas that I have done since arriving in site, I think this one was the most balanced and best prepared, so it is a good model for next years work.

Luz with our food pyramid

On Tuesday we had our clausura, or closing ceremony, in Las Vegas where Luz has been going for the past six months and taught cooking classes and handicrafts. We went early because for the last class the women wanted to make paches – which are tamales made out of potatoes –imagine mashed potatoes with meat filling, and they take a LOT of work. I also requested that we make arroz con chocolate since no party is complete without some form of fattening beverage. It was a long afternoon and it was a bit sad to say goodbye to all the girls (even though they never really talked or seemed all too enthusiastic about participating, they were bummed about classes being over). Three of the girls in class wanted to take photos with me for the memories, which I found very flattering:P Two of the girls are twins and they each wanted two photos individually with me and one together. I guess I now know how Hollywood stars feel a little more now hahaha.

With the twins

Tuesday night was also my first convivio of the week at the nicest local restaurant – Tamarindo. The dinner/gift exchange was with people from the Center for Special Education and from the radio station. Since I had spent the better part of the afternoon burning my mouth on arroz con leche and paches before they were cool enough to drink/eat, I was not too hungry, but the food was good, and the gift interchange was pleasant. I preferred the gift that I had to the gift that I received, but thankfully this was just the first of many gift exchanges.

On Wednesday evening, I participated in the first of what will hopefully be a long running radio show – Mesa Redonda Juvenil (Youth Round Table – I came up with the moniker!!). Our first show was about how to get youth to volunteer more in town, why it is important, and how we can promote volunteerism. The show was about 1.5 hours long and apparently got good reception. For my part, I am excited to be involved in another radio show that will hopefully help me speak more fluidly and naturally on the radio and also get to know other people.

With the rest of the panel on the radio show

Thursday we were supposed to go back to La Joya to work with the women on their candle-making operation, but we got a call on Wednesday afternoon informing us that our services would no longer be needed since the women had already dissolved their group. Apparently this happens a lot with groups of women, so it is not a total shock, but it is still disappointing since I was really looking forward to going over my finance spreadsheets with them (nothing that Professor Kane would recognize, just basic sheets for calculating expenses and income). Hopefully one or two of the women will take the skills she used and translate that into a successful income-generating source.

On Thursday night I went back to Rosy’s house for the third night of cookie baking. All initial growing pains are fully behind us and we made some killer thumbprint cookies and brownies from a brownie mix I had bought in Guatemala City the week before. It was really funny because I kept getting complements on how good the brownies were when all I did was add the water, oil, and egg the recipe called for, but I guess the unnamed ingredient – love – did play a role in the cookies tasting so good, so I took credit.

My cookies!

On Friday afternoon we had another convivio – this time at the Centro Educativo Fé y Esperanza, the center where we have been giving art classes. A lot of the children with special needs came to the center and enjoyed some free gifts from Santa, music, tamales and ponche (hot fruit punch – the typical Christmas drink).

After the convivio at the Center I accepted an invitation from the mayor to go with him and his family to a nearby community in Baja Verapaz to see how artisan sugar cane juice is made. When I was in Bolivia last year I saw a lot of sugar cane and smelled the results of its processing in a factory, but I had never seen the processing up close. The cane is fed into a grinder that grinds as two oxen walk around with a yoke in a circle. The liquid that comes out is funneled into a huge barrel in the ground and then buckets are used to translate the juice into a big cauldron where it is boiled and then the resulting liquid is put into molds to dry into panela, a sweetener that preceded the use of sugar. I drank some juice as it came into the barrel, it was nice and green, sucked on sugar cane, and ate panela and other sugar derivatives. It was all very tasty and I was very thankful that the mayor invited me along to check out a dying craft.

Making sugar cane juice the old school way

On Saturday I went back to Boanerges’ house for my weekly lunch invitation. At lunch I got my first Christmas invitation for lunch the following Thursday (for some reason they celebrate Christmas here on the 24th). After lunch, I went back to Rosy’s house where her father took out some artifacts that he had found on his property some ten years back. He is not sure what their value is nor what time period they were made in, so he was showing them to the optometrist who has some friends with studies in archeology. I took advantage of the opportunity to take tons of photos. There were 13 statues, one of which Rosy’s uncle took with him to California and lost, so 12 remained and they all seemed to be paired (with two statues holding corn, two holding birds, etc) with a male and female deity in each pair.

Artifacts

Sunday was my most social (and cold!) day to date – eating every single one of my meals with someone else. In the morning I went downstairs to have breakfast with Doña Tona, the woman who’s house I am living in. I am hardly ever home so I do not have much of a relationship with her family, which I started feeling bad about. A week ago Sunday I went downstairs and invited her to have some tea with me, and in exchange she offered me some bread and we had breakfast together and chatted. During the week I attempted to invite her to tea again, but she heads out to one of the communities to take care of her mother every day so she never has time. So I bided my time and when Sunday rolled around again we had tea and bread again. Doña Tona invited me to have Christmas dinner with her family, an invitation I eagerly accepted and filling up my dance card for Christmas Eve Day (lunch and dinner, check!)

At 9am I headed down to Rosy’s house to help her mother make tortillas. We did not start making tortillas until 11am (hora chapina – Guatemalan time), and I was able to make some pretty good ones for an hour or so, at which point they began to tear and fall out of my tired hands.

Some of my prettier tortillas with Doña Berta's (mine are smaller)

I stayed at Rosy’s until 230pm eating, cooking, doing dishes, and hanging out until 230pm. One of the things I love about hanging out with Rosy’s family is that they think I do not eat enough and get annoyed when I do not eat everything I am offered. I also liked that when I left at 230pm, five hours after I arrived, they all asked me if I would not be returning, which makes me feel like part of the family. By 230pm it was raining pretty hard, finally getting some winter weather (though we are in the dry season in Guatemala so the rain was really unexpected) and I ran home to put on some warmer clothing before going down to the municipality to meet with Luz Maria and some other folks for my fourth convivio of the week at Luz’s house. Given that Luz came to drive us to her house in a pick-up, the rain was a complicating factor, and we did not end up leaving until 430pm. Luz’s convivio was pleasant – we ate paches, drank ponche, and had a chocolate interchange. We stayed at Luz’s house until 830pm and the rain showed no sign of giving up, so I put on my nylon and rain coat and got in the back of the pickup for the half-hour ride back to town.

Still smiling because we have not yet embarked on the ride back

It was while I was sitting in the back of the pickup with little feeling in my hands and none in my butt that I realized accepting all social invitations was really not worth my time. Sure I like eating, but I also like being dry – Athalia’s hierarchy of needs. I hope everyone has a wonderful Holiday Season and Prosperous New Year’s! Feel free to make comments on the blog posts and also let me know if anyone is interested in skyping and I will look into the local internet café’s skype options.

In Sickness and in Health

The past two weeks have been full of activity – both in my stomach and at work. On December 1st in commemoration of World HIV/AIDS Day my Youth Development Volunteer site mate and I coordinated an HIV/AIDS workshop with our counterparts and with a youth group. Together we practiced the four-hour workshop provided by Peace Corps and the nine of us gave the workshop to almost 30 participants (mostly youth but also some teachers). Given the short period of time we had to prepare the event, it went off rather well, though for next year I hope we can do more preparation and have even more events around World AIDS Day with increased participation by community members.

The steps in correctly using a condom

The mayor of my town, who had been in Israel for my first month in site for a workshop on security and youth development, arrived back in town the day before the workshop, and he came to give the closing speech before certificates were handed out. The mayor of my town is a very good public speaker and in his speech he talked about how he had been inspired by his trip to my home-country (since I tell people that I was born in Israel, I am often asked about Israel and they consider me as Israeli as American. This is interesting because one of the three goals of Peace Corps is to share American culture with host country nationals – and while I do that I am also spending a lot of time talking about Jewish culture and Israel – so people here get a good deal, two cultures for the price of one PCV). During the workshop in Israel, the mayor was inspired by all the extracurricular activities that are available for youth and he decided that starting next year he wants to start an after school non-formal education school with classes for youth, children, and their parents. It was a great speech and I am really excited that this upcoming year I will have more work to do.

All of the participants with the mayor and their certificates

The trainers

I also continued doing artwork this week, finally finishing up my first recycled paper basket and making decorations for Rosy’s corner store. Thank goodness the art classes with children are coming to an end because they have turned out to be a big headache. Most of the kids are pretty calm and follow directions and help clean up, but as an excellent Eric Clapton CD was entitled, there is one in every crowd (or a few more in this case). The source of my morning headaches and Homer Simpson level internal rage are a few 8-10 year old boys who do not listen to instructions, create a huge mess, do not want to clean up, and yet refuse to leave to let me clean in peace. It is disappointing to find myself getting so riled up by little boys since I used to be so patient with kids…but I guess I have turned into a crotchety old lady prematurely.

Mi canasto

Antojitos Xoyita with my decor

On Thursday December 3rd I attended my second CONALFA Clausura (Guatemala’s National Adult Education program). Like the previous event I went to, the event was long involving a lot of speeches by various officials from Guatemala City and throughout the department, followed by the handing out of certificates to graduates of the program. Pachalúm has a really low illiteracy rate compared to other municipalities in the department or even in the country. The mayor’s goal is to make Pachalúm the first completely literate municipality, followed by making it the first municipality where everyone has completed high school. While all of this is encouraging, I have also seen the spelling of some teachers around town, and thus am not completely convinced that this goal will be realized any time soon.

With Ada at the CONALFA Clausura

In the evening of the 3rd I started a weekly baking date with Rosy at her house. Rosy used to bake a lot and I do not have an oven, so we figured it could be fun to bake different recipes once a week. For our first date, we made chocolate chip cookies.Hard at work

Unfortunately, we had some technical malfunctions with the oven heating up properly, so instead of baking the cookies for ten minutes, we left them in the oven for forty minutes and then had to use the spatula like a sledgehammer to get them off the sheet. Despite the less than ideal texture, the cookies were really tasty.

Emilio enjoyed sucking on the cookies

Last Saturday marked my first time out of site since arriving to Pachalúm with a day trip to the municipality in Baja Verapaz where my co trainee Devon is working in the OMM. The municipality was celebrating its feria, so Rosy’s family was going to see the cow fair (every day of the feria – which lasts about a week – are different featured events, including a day of selling pigs, a day of selling cows, dances at night, etc). I hitched a ride with them for the 1.5-hour ride and got to see my first cow fair (lots of angry cattle getting bought and sold and kicking). Devon met up with me mid-morning and we went around the fairgrounds where there were sweets, all sorts of kitchen supplies, artisan goods, blankets, clothing, games, etc.

With Rosy's family and my big purchase (the purse!!) in Devon's town

Last Saturday marked my first time out of site since arriving to Pachalúm with a day trip to the municipality in Baja Verapaz where my co trainee Devon is working in the OMM. The municipality was celebrating its feria, so Rosy’s family was going to see the cow fair (every day of the feria – which lasts about a week – are different featured events, including a day of selling pigs, a day of selling cows, dances at night, etc). I hitched a ride with them for the 1.5-hour ride and got to see my first cow fair (lots of angry cattle getting bought and sold and kicking). Devon met up with me mid-morning and we went around the fairgrounds where there were sweets, all sorts of kitchen supplies, artisan goods, blankets, clothing, games, etc.

Devon’s town was really nice, with a beautiful church in the plaza and tropical plants all over, and it is noticeably smaller than Pachalúm (I would guess maybe 2,000 people compared to 3,000). Unfortunately for me, the party was stopped short by some serious stomach pains that began around midday and which developed into full-out food poisoning by the time I got back to Pachalúm mid-afternoon. My second bout of food poisoning in Guatemala was the reason for no blog posting last week since it wiped me out through Monday evening. As miserable as it was being sick again, Rosy’s family kept calling to check up on me, which made me feel special.

This past week was chock full of work and extra-curricular activities, but since the post is running long, I will limit my reporting to the highlights. On Tuesday I had a meeting with the mayor about my work in the municipality and it was really productive. He is open to me collaborating with as many people in the municipality as possible, including him, and he invited me to go along with him to Guatemala City next week when he gives a presentation to the Secretary of the President. The mayor asked me to give him ideas for what I want to do and also proposed ideas that were inspired by his trip to Israel (more concrete information about the informal education school he wants to establish). After the meeting I went and wrote a proposal for possible projects for me to undertake – including working on a Youth News Roundtable, starting a volunteering program with teens, working with the Forestry technician to give talks about risk management and protecting the environment, and working with the librarian to get more books for the library. On Friday my APCD (Assoc. Peace Corps Director) arrived for my first site visit and while I was a little nervous, it ended up being a really pleasant experience. Roberto arrived midday and took me out to lunch, where we talked about how I have been adjusting and how work is going. Before we went back to the municipality, Roberto took out his notebook and asked me what I wanted him to emphasize when meeting with my counterpart and the mayor – basically how he should use his clout to make my job easier. I told him how I thought my work could be more productive and then in meetings with both Luz and the mayor he went to bat for me – asking for more money for the OMM, bringing up the idea of having us do a SWOT analysis and emphasizing the importance of scheduling regular meetings.

I took advantage of Roberto’s visit coinciding with the first night of Hannukah, to get a ride to Guatemala City to visit the Jewish community there (www.casahillel.com). Casa Hillel is a group of Guatemalans who converted to Reform Judaism around seven years ago. The community is small – about five to ten families – but it is slowly growing, and they were generous and kind hosts.

Some members of Casa Hillel

On Friday night we shared a Shabbat meal and I spent the night along with another family at the house, and then on Saturday I shared breakfast before Luz and Ada called me to give me a ride back to Pachalúm. I met up with Luz and Ada in one of the new malls in Guatemala City and it was like being back in the United States – with tons of stores, clean public restrooms (with toilet paper!), and non-stop Christmas music. While normally I hate shopping at this time of year back at home, it was a nice change of scenery and I got into the spirit at the Hiper-Paiz (WalMart) buying all the groceries that cannot be found in Pachalúm.

With Ada and the Christmas tree in the mall

That is a quick summary of my past two weeks. Chag Sameach and Happy Hanukah to all!

Dando Gracias

Before starting this week’s post with more stories about how great my life is here in Guatemala, I would like to take a moment to highlight the state of calamity that is gripping parts of Guatemala, specifically the ‘dry corridor’ in the East. Along with the many other blessings that I have received, I have been fortunate enough to be placed in a site with a surplus of food, but people in other parts of the country are not so lucky. The following are two articles from the Miami Herald with a few quotes I took out for those of you interested in learning about the crisis that is currently affecting the country.

10/16/2009 Malnutrition rises in drought-stricken Guatemala
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/1285246.html: “Already a perennial concern in Guatemala, malnutrition has been especially visible in the country's southeastern region on the Pacific Coast -- also known as the dry corridor. With El Niño warming the Pacific waters, Guatemala has seen the worst drought in 30 years, which destroyed staple crops, exacerbated hunger, and claimed the lives of more than a dozen children in July alone…UNICEF reports that almost half of Guatemala's children under five suffer from chronic malnutrition, among the highest rate in the world.”

11/27/2009 U.S. tries to ease `state of calamity' by Ezra Fieser
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/1353472.html: “Data from UNICEF, the United Nations agency on children, shows that Guatemala's situation is unique in the world: It's the only middle-income country with half of its children chronically malnourished. In countries with comparable incomes -- such as Paraguay -- around 14 percent of children are chronically malnourished. Countries with malnutrition rates similar to Guatemala, such as Ethiopia, are far poorer.”

If anyone is interested in donating food to Guatemala, there are many organizations that are spearheading donation drives. Below is a list of some websites of organizations that are providing services in Guatemala (though I must warn you that I did no background check on these organizations, so due diligence is still required).
http://www.foodforthepoor.org/
http://www.actionagainsthunger.org/
http://www.americares.org/

This week I continued to get used to my routine, which I am not sure if I have explained well or not, so pardon the repetitiveness if I have already spoken at length about it already. A typical weekday looks like this:
5:45am: Wake-up

6am-7am: Gym

8am-845am: Check emails (except for Wednesday when we have the radio show from 8-830am)

9am-11am: Art Class (Monday thru Wednesday) or research for the radio show and preparation of charlas for women’s groups

Art Class

11am-1230pm: Preparation of charlas for women’s groups, radio programming, organization of office materials

1230pm-2pm: Lunch at the office (Fridays I bring food for all)

2pm-430pm: Women’s Groups (four afternoons a week, Wednesdays are my day off and I either attend the communications workshop or plan activities)

Monday community from the road

Tuesday community with the angels we made this week

430pm-530pm: Wind down work in the office

View from the office on a Friday afternoon as the market gets set-up in the plaza

530pm-7pm: Go home or go to the corner store to hang out

7pm-8pm: Monday nights teach art class, otherwise, hang out at home

9-930pm: Bedtime

As you can see, it is a pretty tame life I lead, but I really find it agreeable. At first I was a little anxious in the office since I felt like I was not doing anything, but in a surprisingly short amount of time I have adjusted to the slower pace. It has been a month since I got to site on October 30th and not only have I not left once; I also feel no need to do so, I am perfectly happy with my routine.

This week did see a few changes in routine. On Wednesday night I subbed for my site mate teaching her Wednesday night English class when she went off for Thanksgiving break. It was less painful than I feared it would be, but I can confidently say that I will not be giving her any competition in the teaching English department, I will stick with art classes. After teaching her English class, I headed back up to the radio station and sat with two girls who showed me what the different buttons and computer program did, so as of next Wednesday I will attempt to run the machinery along with talking into the mike. Then of course there was the most obvious change in routine since Thursday was my first Thanksgiving spent away from family. Thanksgiving is one of two American holidays that Peace Corps allows us to take, so I took advantage of the vacation to make a big meal to share with my coworkers and did not go to work in the morning. For lunch I made: lentil soup, stir fried yams and potatoes with onion, and my mom’s recipe for beet salad.

For dessert I made baked apples, with Trader Joe’s fruit and nut mix filling (thanks mom!), which turned out really delicious and were far easier to put together than a pie in my toaster oven.


Despite an initial complaint that I had not bought tortillas (a meal is not considered complete without eating at least three), my lunch was a huge success with everyone eating at least two (or three!) servings, leaving me with few leftovers. Despite not being familiar with Thanksgiving, my guests grasped its essence– eating until you cannot eat anymore!

My guests

I made five baked apples, so I had ten pieces in total and I took the five extra I had after lunch to Rosy for her to share with her family. They really liked my baked apples, so I decided to make more for Saturday’s lunch at Don Boanerges’ house. On Saturday morning, I headed to the market and bought almost four pounds of apples to make baked apples and was able to bake them in two batches in the toaster oven. I made 20 pieces since I had counted 18 people at lunch the week before. This week, however, there were more people than usual at lunch since Don Boanerges’ niece was coming for a visit after not having returned to Guatemala in 21 years! Along with all the invitees from the week before, some of Boanerges’ siblings, nieces and nephews, and mother were at lunch, and later another family arrived as well!

Before all the guests arrived at Don Boanerges’

Lunch was the same as last week: beef soup with tons of vegetables, blood sausages and beef, tortillas, rice, lots of beverages, and great company. Since I have been in town for about a month I have started to recognize more and more people and seeing them at the table with me I found out that everyone was related (all the younger family members were cousins at least through marriage if not through blood on one or both sides). I was shocked at the sheer magnitude of these families, sitting at the table with me was Boanerges’ mother who had ten children, three of her offspring, and a few of her grandchildren, with many more not present. Given that I come from a quintessentially nuclear family, I could not fathom how many cousins everyone must have. Don Boanerges was quick to include me as a member of the family, what’s one more right?, and he said that we were among family and he now considered me a Velasquez (the family’s last name) and that we have a contract for me to come every Saturday these next two years. We sat around for a good two hours until a quarter of the guests left before my dessert was brought out for consumption. They were all really excited about it so I am now both congratulating and kicking myself for having set the bar high (I should have started just buying them sodas as a contribution and waited maybe 18 months or so before bringing homemade desserts).

On Sunday afternoon Rosy invited me to her house to eat some more ayote (I was also sent home with ayote after lunch on Saturday – if you are what you eat I will soon start resembling a squash) and malanga (a tuber similar to taro). When I arrived at her house Rosy was bathing, so I started chatting with her mom and was once again impressed with the insane amount of work that women in Guatemala do on a daily basis. Rosy’s mother has raised 7 children and currently cares for her grandson while Rosy works two jobs and studies on weekends. She makes tortillas by hand (6 pounds every three days) for the five children still living at home and her husband; on Mondays she makes chuchitos (like small tamales, see one of my earlier posts in San Antonio to see my pitiful efforts) and Tuesdays and Fridays she makes tamales to sell. The whole time we sat together she was working – first washing dishes at the pila while I sat with food in front of me, and then with a big pot of homemade cheese. She wakes up at 5am every day (except for when she feels lazy and does not get up until 6am) and basically works nonstop until 10pm. When Rosy came out we talked some more and we went to the kitchen where I was showed the oven that they never use (it currently holds dishes). I was invited to come over whenever to help make tortillas or bake, so I am excited about keeping up my tortilla-making skills and I am planning to make cookies on Thursday night as a test run for Saturday. Since Hannukah is also coming up, I told Rosy about it and she is interested in helping me make a typical meal at her house, so it looks like December will be a month of baking.

This upcoming week is going to be exciting for a few reasons: Tuesday is World AIDS Day and to commemorate we are holding a half-day HIV/AIDS workshop for the town youth, and next weekend I am thrilled to go visit a community two hours from here where one of my co-trainees has been working. This town is celebrating its feria next week and Rosy and her family are planning on going, so I am hitching my trailer to their wagon and getting out of site for a day!

Art and Food

This past week I started doing a lot more work and my social life picked up once again with two invites over the weekend! Last Monday Luz and I began giving art classes for kids as part of the muni-sponsored winter break camp (soccer, English, and electrician classes are also offered among others). The camp ran from last week through to mid-December, and Luz and I are teaching Monday through Wednesday mornings from 9 to 11am. On Monday we had about thirty kids show up to make collage cards, then on Tuesday and Wednesday we had upwards of forty children moving on towards fifty. Managing the children was somewhat of a challenge, especially when it came to clean-up time, but doing art and making examples before going to class was a lot of fun. I also got the children to start calling me Seño Athalia instead of just Seño (Miss) with a dog whistle type noise (kind of like psst psst, the typical way that people get attention).

Tuesday's art class

When I went back to the municipality on Monday afternoon, I was asked by some of the teenage girls who work in the information department if I could teach art classes to them as well in the evenings since they are working in the mornings. I agreed to teach on Monday nights, so I am now doing way more art than I have in years and I really enjoy figuring out new things to collage (my favorite medium) and learning handicrafts to teach.

Some of my artwork

Along with art classes in the mornings, Luz and I have picked up our work with women’s groups. We are now working with three different communities, doing totally different things in each one. On Monday afternoons we go up to one of the two indigenous communities in Pachalúm, and there we are teaching the women how to make bowls out of recycled paper (they roll the paper into tubes and then use those tubes to construct the bowl by spiraling them and gluing them together) and also talking about basic hygiene. Tuesday afternoons are cooking classes in another community where only younger girls come (I would say the average age is 15 or so). The women in both of these communities are really quiet, but they seem friendly enough and I hope that as I get more relaxed about speaking Spanish and they get used to seeing me that we’ll have more active participation.

The final women’s group we work with is my favorite – it is a group of older women who want to start a business making candles. This past week Luz and I went twice to give them a workshop on how to start a small business with basic business terms and concepts, and they were very enthusiastic and participatory. Before the workshop one day I sat and talked with some of the women and found out that a few of the older ones had children in the double digits (13 and 15) and already had great grandchildren. While I am not an advocate of young childbearing, the fact that it can result in four generations living in the same house does seem pretty cool (at least conceptually, it might be a real pain with both adult and baby diapers to change).

Luz with some women during the Fundamentos Empresariales Training

As I come up on Thanksgiving, I have been girding myself for cooking my first Thanksgiving meal, sans turkey and pretty much all the other typical foods. Since I have been doing lunch at the muni every day and cook one day a week, I got my co-worker Ada to agree to switch with me so I can cook lunch on Thursday. I am planning to make lentil-tomato soup, beet salad, potato and yam stir fry, and baked apples. While not a traditional Thanksgiving meal, it is all food that I like to eat and that I can probably pull off without getting stressed out.

One of the three Peace Corps goals is to share American culture with foreign nationals. Since Thanksgiving is one of the two quintessentially American holidays (along with the 4th of July) and because it holds special meaning to my family (this year marks 22 years of living in the USA) I have started talking about it with my coworkers and preparing a little speech to give at the end of my radio show this week. The funny thing is, when I started talking about Thanksgiving, I thought I would need to explain the story, but all males over 30 already know what I am talking about and ask about the turkey! There is an unexpected consequence of immigration to the USA – now everyone knows that the food I am making for Thanksgiving is not typical and missing an essential ingredient (the pavo – turkey).

Test run cooking and feeding two coworkers last Friday at my house

This weekend was probably the best one I have spent thus far in Pachalúm. On Saturday morning I woke up early to go to the market and buy tons of food for my Thanksgiving meal. When I got home and calculated how much I spent, I realized that for less than $8 I had bought a humongous basket of food. If I start a David Letterman top 10 list of things I love about Guatemala, the cheap high quality variety of fruit and vegetables would be stiff competition for the number one spot.

The competition for the number one spot would be the generosity of the people and their openness, which I also got to experience this weekend. Last week I was hanging out at Rosy’s store one night when a man came in called Boanerges. His son is married to one of Rosy’s sisters and since they are now family, he invites Rosy’s entire family out to his farm every Saturday for lunch. When Rosy introduced me to him, he extended an invitation for me to attend this Saturday’s lunch, an invite I eagerly accepted since quite frankly I do not have enough books to maintain a 4 books a week habit. On Saturday afternoon, Rosy’s family came by in a pickup and I got a ride to Boanerges’ farm for a humongous meal of beef soup, rice, tortillas, boiled vegetables, meat and sausage (which I abstained from), and my new favorite dessert ayote (candied squash). I asked Boanerges about the tradition and he told me that he re initiated it two years ago when he moved back to Pachalúm from Guatemala City because when he was growing up his father used to invite people over on Saturdays for lunch and to kill a cow. I was so happy to share a meal with the extended family and being asked every two minutes if I had enough food and if I was bored, which reminded me of my grandma. Lunchtime conversations varied, with a lot of questions directed my way about how I ended up in Pachalúm and where I was from. One of the men at the table, a good friend of Boanerges, is the town optometrist who got his undergraduate degree in UCLA in 1969. He kept trying to speak with me in English, and when I refused to answer in kind, started telling jokes, about half of which I could follow (I think that humor is the easiest thing to lose in translation). After lunch, which went on for about two hours, I went with Rosy’s brother Daniel to visit some of the farm animals and watched two cows get branded (smelled like BBQ, I felt so bad for those cows). When it was time to go Boanerges told me that the invite was open for every Saturday that I am in Pachalúm, an invitation I plan to take full advantage of.

At Don Boanerges' Ranch (on right) with some of the other invited guests and family

On Sunday I received an invitation to go to Ada’s niece’s first birthday party. The party began with an almost two hour culto (Evangelical service), which caught me off guard since I had arrived without eating (the day before I had snacked a bit before lunch, which was a big mistake). After the interminable culto, there was a humongous piñata for the children, followed by dinner.

Ada and the birthday girl

Ada’s mother had woken up at 430am to make probably close to 200 tamales, and I helped tray them to be handed out to all the guests, and then I helped plate the cake for dessert. The tamales were amazing, probably the second best that I have ever had (the second batch that Elsa made for me when I left were pretty amazing) and the cake was fabulous as well. Being invited to two family events this weekend was wonderful and in the spirit of Thanksgiving I feel very grateful to all the people here in town who have included me in their plans and made me feel like part of a family. Since I have already gotten hokey, I would like to also thank my family for being so supportive and keeping my spirits up, and of course all you readers for reading my musings and giving me feedback. I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend and I’ll be back next week with more updates from the field!

Social Life in Pachalúm

This week marked three months in Guatemala, three months of black beans, tortillas and working on the subjunctive tense. In order to improve my Spanish, integrate with the community, and find out the best eats in town, I have dedicated myself to accepting any and all social invites headed my way. Apparently we are currently in the party-season here in Pachalúm thanks to the recent feria, graduations, and upcoming holiday season and I plan on taking full advantage.

The first invite that I got on my first day at work was to join some of my coworkers who do rather than going home for the 1.5 hour lunch break every day alternate bringing lunch for all four (and now five) of us. These ladies – Maite, Geidi, Luz and Ada – all live pretty far away from the municipality, and after going out to lunch for a while and then bringing their own lunch they calculated that alternating days for lunch was both more cost-effective and fun. I have really enjoyed lunchtimes in the muni, more for the company than the culinary prowess, and it has resulted in me eating a lot more meat than before since pretty much every meal includes chicken. The strict vegetarian in me of years gone by is surprisingly mute, and while I have yet to eat pork or beef, I have picked it out of food and eaten all the stuff around it, which would have not even been a possibility a year ago. This past Friday was my first day bringing in lunch, and I got lucky since only two of us were in the office (Ada and Maite have been going to study at university every Friday – but soon they’ll be done for winter break), and I made a very tasty calabacitas (stir-fried squash with onion and tomatoes) and black beans (I will eat meat if others provide it, but I am in no way inclined to make it myself).

People in the muni have been the source of all social invites that I have received thus far. Last week I went to multiple events related to the graduation of one of the local high schools. One of my co-workers’ sons was graduating, so he invited me to go both to the ceremony and to the special mass for the students beforehand. The mass was on a Friday afternoon at the Catholic Church and along with the regular mass goings-on (at least I am assuming they were regular goings on since everyone else knew how to respond to the priest) there were special blessings for the students who were graduating. Graduating students here get graduating rings (a la Jostens in the United States) and in the mass all the students were invited up with their parents to receive a special blessing over the ring from the priest. It was really touching and I was embarrassed to feel myself tearing up despite not actually knowing any of the graduating seniors.

After the mass, I went to hang out with Rosy, another coworker, who along with working at the muni has a store in the center of town that sells ready-to-eat food and beverages for people getting on and off the bus to Guatemala City. Rosy works from 430am to 730am in the store, works at the muni from 8am-530pm, and then once again works at the store from 6pm-8pm...this along with studying law on Saturdays and raising an unbelievably cute son. Rosy invited me to see her store and I spent a few hours sitting around, decorating her publicity sign, meeting some of the guys who always hang out there, and tasting some of her really yummy food. I really like the store, she had me at hot chocolate, and I think that it will be a good spot for me to hang out in order to gain confianza (trust) with people in the community and get my hot chocolate fix on a regular basis.

Saturday night I went to the local arena for the high school graduation and I sat with Geidi, my coworker who’s little brother was graduating, and her family. The ceremony was different from the graduations that I have been in since there were far fewer graduating seniors (four girls –one of whom was pregnant- and around twenty boys) and rather than taking to the stage solo, they all went up to the stage escorted by their parents or other family members who then waited at the end of the stage as the graduate received their diplomas and then walked over to receive their graduating rings and take a family photo. It was really nice to see the emphasis on family in the ceremony, and it was especially poignant since statistics indicate that this will most likely be the last graduation for most of the students.

At graduation with Geidi

The following night, Sunday, I was invited to Geidi’s brother’s graduation party, an invite I was more than happy to accept. Since Geidi lives pretty far from the cabecera of Pachalúm, I needed to figure out a ride in order to get to the party – and that ride was Rosy. I went back to her store for a few hours on Sunday afternoon and hung out with her, a few of her siblings (who also work at the store when she is busy), and her unbelievably cute son before going to Geidi’s brother’s party with her entire family.

Photo shoot with Emilio

Despite not having teeth, Emilio showed an impressive capability to eat just about every type of food

During the week social invites are fewer, so I will now gracelessly transition to my highlights of the week at work. I have had some difficulty adjusting to the pace of work here, despite the many warnings ahead of time. Things just move slower, even more so now that we are heading into the holiday season. In order to keep myself busy and get to know the office a bit better, I went through all the filing cabinets and organized files. Tuesday morning I participated in an office meeting about the municipality’s one-month long summer camp. Luz and I will be offering art classes Monday through Wednesday mornings, and there will also be a soccer league, electrician classes, English classes, and a communications workshop that I am going to take. The communications workshop actually started this week, MWF from 3-530pm. I joined in order to figure out how to use the radio equipment, but so far the class has focused on public speaking and I was surprised to find out that I could actually use that too. Most of the class members are teenaged girls (12-16 years old) and they have a tendency to get really embarrassed even saying their names in front of people. I figured that as a brash Israeli-American I would have no problem whatsoever doing the exercises we have been assigned, but my sweaty palms and racing heart indicate that I can actually stand to gain a lot from public speaking practice. Given commitments to women’s groups, I will not be able to attend every single class, but I am going to try and attend the most I can to improve my confidence speaking Spanish.

On Tuesday afternoon I went out with Luz to one of the communities where she has been working with a women’s group for a while in order to give another cooking class. Apparently this women’s group started out getting charlas, but the women were not interested and so Luz switched to just teaching them how to cook and talking to them about different topics while cooking. This week as per my suggestion we made tayuyos (tortillas stuffed with beans) and then talked to the women about their sexual and reproductive rights (the topic of the workshop APROFAM had given the week before).

Making Tayuyos

My tayuyo making technique was abysmal, apparently all my practice of making tortillas was not enough because they came out thick, the beans did not stay inside, and they tasted pretty gross (you could definitely judge these tayuyos by their cover). The two upsides to having terrible technique is that everyone could tell which ones were mine, so there was no confusion over whether someone else wanted to take mine home, and seeing me doing something terribly made the women laugh and feel more comfortable around me (or pity me, either way).

Can you tell which ones are mine?

On Wednesday, after discussing women’s sexual and reproductive rights on the radio, I saw Rosy with a bunch of documentary filmmakers from a Central American Institute. These filmmakers are working on movie about migration to the United States, and along with Pachalúm are going to other towns in Huehuetenango, Jalapa and another department. Rosy was taking them around for a few days to some of the communities in order to do interviews and with little cajoling I decided to go along for the ride. We went out to Pachalúm’s largest aldea, Llano Grande, and I hung around and watched as the director went looking for his interview subjects. A local who was helping him find the people to interview was working with his son two-year-old getting sand out of the back of a pickup.

I did not stay too long with the filming crew since we had to stay back from the filming and therefore could not really see or hear anything that was being said. I got a final shot of the little boy with a squash he found and headed back to the office.

Thursday afternoon Luz and I went back to a community with a newly formed women’s group that we are going to start working with. These women are highly organized, they want to form a women’s cooperative that makes and sells candles in order to create income for their families. The women are really motivated to get started working and Luz and I agreed that we would start them with a small business workshop next week, to figure out costs and the market, and then move on to actually helping them learn how to make candles in time for the holiday season. On Friday afternoon I had a very different experience going to another community to meet with women who Luz and I are also supposed to start working with. These women are a lot less organized (while in the first community we met with a steering committee of five women who will round up others who are interested, in this second community it seemed like a motley meeting of all women from around town) and they did not really seem to have any ideas or preferences for what they wanted to learn. I mentioned some projects Luz and I had come up with (family gardens, composting, flower plots), and they were pretty noncommittal about all of them. When I mentioned food they were interested, so it looks like we will start with cooking classes and see where it goes from there. This community, the third one I’ll be working with hopefully on a weekly basis, is distinct from the other two because it is one of only two communities in Pachalúm that is indigenous. The women at the meeting almost all spoke K’iché and wore traditional clothing, and I wonder if that had some effect on their reception (more reserved). The community is way up in the hills above Pachalúm, so it is very cold, and looks like a whole different part of Guatemala. I did not feel comfortable taking photos my first time up since I know that people here are not big fans of having their photos taken, but I hope to soon get some stealth shots online.

This past weekend has been a lot more relaxed than the previous two. The parties seem to have ebbed, so I have mostly stayed in my apartment and read (four books this week). I hope everyone has a great week!!

Juramentación and first days in Site

Hello all, sorry for the delay in posting, but a lot of stuff has been going on lately. On October 29th, I finally swore in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer at a ceremony at the Ambassador’s Residence. Thanks to Mamatina, I was the only volunteer in full-on traje típico, with a huipil and a skirt made out of corte cloth (the corte is the long cloth that women wrap around themselves and then hold fast with a faja, an embroidered belt). I was a little embarrassed to be dressed up while nobody else was, but other host families from towns where traje típico is worn all reacted positively. The ceremony was average as far as graduations go: we had speeches from various authorities and got certificates that stated we successfully completed the training program. One aspect that was unique about the ceremony was that before we got our certificates we all gathered around the Ambassador and he led us in an oath of loyalty to the US, which is apparently the same oath that State Department Officials take.

Here is a small selection of photos from after the ceremony:

With the Ambassador and my host family

The Municipal Development Program's newest volunteers

With host families and volunteers from my training town

All the new volunteers

After the ceremony and photos, we all headed back to Antigua and said goodbye to our families. I had somehow acquired four large bags of stuff between my site visit and swear-in (I thought that I had left everything in my site). I spent most of the afternoon lugging my bags from one hostel to another (the first hostel we were going to stay had no door locks). My last night in Antigua with all the other volunteers was really fun. I ate a great dinner of arroz con leche and potato tacos from a woman who sets up a stand every night outside of a church (she is only there from 7-9pm so I never got the chance to go before) and then went out dancing.

On Friday October 30th, I headed out with Devon to go to Pachalúm (a trip that requires three buses, two of which Devon took with me before we split up). Since I had gotten rides both to and from Pachalúm on my site visit, I was worried about getting lost, but the whole process was pretty easy, and besides a layover of around 40 minutes waiting for a bus, the trip was pretty quick, probably taking around 3.5 hours. When I arrived in Pachalúm, my counterpart and her husband came by with their car to help me move stuff into my new house. The mayor called to check up on me as well, and the family whose house I am living in offered me help moving stuff up into my room. The apartment I am living in (above the garage of the family’s house) is really nice: tiled floors, my bedroom had a desk and a nightstand, chairs and sofas in the living room, and a balcony. I started unpacking and settling in on Friday afternoon, before heading out at 8pm to a marimba concert in the town stadium. From October 23rd or so until Todos Santos (November 1st) Pachalúm celebrates its town fair. This year was the first with a marimba concert and there was a good crowd sitting in the bleachers watching while the musicians played and two couples danced. The mayor invited me to dance and after some initial hesitation, I accepted and learned that marimba is not so easy to dance. Having the whole town as an audience was a little intimidating and my toes were stepped on more times than I can count, but after some false starts, I was able to catch on to the dance and the mayor talked to me about my work while we danced for half-an-hour or so (hence the toe stepping, I was easily distracted). My town mayor is super pilas (pila literally means battery, people who are very motivated and hardworking are called pilas) and has already come up with work for me to do the first few months in site working with two new women’s groups.

On Saturday, I bought myself a stovetop, a fridge, and some basic dishes for my kitchen. In the evening I went to another town dance at the coliseum, which was a disco. It was somewhat entertaining, though once again not that many people were dancing, most people just sat in the stands and watched as a few couples danced on the dance floor. Sunday, November 1st, was Todos Santos and I went with my host-family to visit two different cemeteries and watched as they cleaned and decorated graves of deceased family members. Other parts of Guatemala, like the town of Todos Santos in Huehuetenango (where there are horse races) or Sumpango in Sacatepéquez (where huge kites are flown), are known for their interesting traditions for the celebration of Todos Santos. Pachalúm’s celebration is a lot less touristy, but I still really enjoyed it. People had gone to the cemeteries the day before to repaint the gravestones, so all of the tombs were vibrantly colored, and entire families were out decorating and eating sweets. The oldest granddaughter of the family I am living with took me around the town’s main cemetery and told me stories about dead people and people who we saw walking around. I saw a good amount of people who work at the municipality who I had seen on my site visit, and it felt good to feel like I knew some people around town.

On Monday, which was a holiday, my counterpart and her husband invited me to go visit another cemetery where there is also a Corrida de Cintas. I was not sure what that meant, but since I like cemeteries, I accepted the offer and went along. This cemetery was around 15 minutes outside of town and has over 100-year-old graves. There were tons of people at the cemetery and lots of food vendors.

Soda bottles on an old grave

Decorated Tomb

After going around and looking at the gravestones, we headed up to the road above the cemetery where a large crowd was gathered to watch the Corrida de Cintas. There was a string strung up between two poles with red ribbons tied to it. The ribbons each had a small loop at the end and men on horses each ran under the string with a pen in their hands attempting to grab one of the ribbons. The ribbon needs to be snagged on the pen, not grabbed by fingers, and the rider cannot drop it in order for it to count. Of the eight ribbons that were tied to the string, three had special markers for the first, second, and third-place prizes (which were a saddle and monetary rewards).

Corrida de Cintas

The riders went one-at-a-time and after everyone gave it a shot, they all headed back. The competition went on for two hours, and by the time we left due to rain, the first prize had still not been snagged.Coming back

On Tuesday, I started my first day of work at the OMM. For my first month and a half, my counterpart and I will be going to the Special Education School every morning to give classes during winter break. Three afternoons a week we will be working with women’s groups, and on Wednesday mornings we’ll be broadcasting La Voz de las Mujeres, the half-hour OMM radio show. On Wednesday we broadcast live at 8am, and for those of you who are awake at that hour (I think that is 6am PST) it streams on the Pachalúm website. My counterpart and I established the schedule of radio shows that we’ll be doing for the next three months, alternating who writes the script every week. This first week was my turn and while it was not amazing, we did get a call from a listener complementing us on our broadcast, which was exciting since it means that we have at least one listener. Starting next week there will be radio classes to learn how to work with the machinery, so when I am not with women’s groups, I plan to take those classes as well.

Overall my transition to Pachalúm has gone really well. While I still have more time on my hands than I know what to do with, I feel really positive about the work that I will be doing. I am a big fan of the ladies who work in the municipality and people overall are really nice and helpful. One of my favorite things about town is definitely the way that people dress, the cowboy hats and cowboy boots make me feel like I am in a western movie.