FBT

Howdy do blogophiles,

I spent this past week in Huehuetenango for Field Based Training (FBT), a week of visiting different sites and getting to know volunteers in their first and second years in the muni program. Huehuetenango has a pretty good concentration of municipal development volunteers and they are doing a variety of projects, so we went around from Sunday through Saturday muni-hopping and talking to volunteers and their counterparts. I was pretty concerned before the trip started about being in dirty hotels and physically uncomfortable having to use gross bathrooms, so it was pretty ironic when I woke up on Sunday morning with the flu. If that is not a cosmic sign that I need to stop worrying so much, I do not know what is. On Sunday we headed out in micros around 11am, took a lunch break in Los Encuentros, and then chugged on to Huehuetenango, arriving around 5pm. According to the guidebooks, there is absolutely nothing to do in the city of Huehue and one should not bother to visit unless going to Todos Santos, and I reconfirm this suggestion having spent four nights there. The city is not especially nice, it has decent food but nothing of any touristy interest whatsoever, and it is kind of dreary and ugly. We stayed in a dorm-like hotel, with shared rooms and bathrooms, and the first night everyone went out to dinner and then had a mini dance party on the roof with ipod selections. It was really liberating to dance without being stared at and I also liked breaking some preconceived notions of my fellow volunteers who did not realize that I enjoy gangster rap and dancing like a fool.

On Monday bright and early we headed fifteen minutes out of Huehue to a small municipality where a first year muni volunteer is working in the OMP (Oficina Municipal de Planificación). David is the second volunteer in his site and during the site visit we got to see the first of many cool secondary projects that volunteers are doing.
David’s predecessor worked with local school children and his site mate to do a world map in the town's cultural center. I am really interested in doing a similar project, and later in the week we saw other examples of world maps, maps of Guatemala, and maps of Huehuetenango that volunteers have made at their sites. David’s big secondary project is a radio show (he was inspired by another volunteer who’s radio show is broadcast online as well as locally for the many expats). David does a weekly radio show to talk about local issues and then also has a music program one night a week. Both the secondary projects in his town really appeal to me and I hope I will be able to undertake them when I am finally placed in my site.

On Tuesday we headed to a much larger municipality fifteen minutes outside of Huehue in another direction. This town is famous for it’s silver-plated virgin in the Catholic Church and pilgrims go there every year for the saint day. I thought that the angelitos morenos painted on the wall looked cooler than the virgin itself.

Cynthia, the volunteer in this town, is finishing up her second year and will be replaced in the OMM (Oficina Municipal de la Mujer). Her office sounds really developed, they have created a council of women’s groups and have done a lot of development with the women’s groups to increase their voice in the community, and they also provide help for victims of domestic violence. Cynthia was the first of a few female volunteers I met this past week who are strong and opinionated, and it made me feel better knowing that they have had successful runs as volunteers even though they are more direct than people here in Guatemala (a concern of mine). Cynthia’s secondary projects included establishing a summer camp for children and giving HIV/AIDS charlas in the community.

On Wednesday we packed up and headed out for our longest day, driving through Todos Santos (the municipality is well known for the traje típico that the men wear) and on to the most remote of all volunteer sites. The road to Todos Santos is absolutely stunning, you have to go up through the mountains and then down into the valley where Todos Santos is located. There was a mist in the air and all the men and women in their traje típico made me feel like I was in an edition of National Geographic. I did not take any photos in Todos Santos since they do not like having their pictures taken, but I did get a few nice shots on the road up over the mountains to Todos Santos.

Driving above the cloud line

The top of the mountain before heading down into the valley to Todos Santos. These plants served as fences to demarcate territory.

Kelly, the volunteer who is finishing up her two years in Todos Santos working in the OMM, will be replaced by someone in our group, and despite my initial desire to not be far away, I had really wanted to be placed there just so I could live in National Geographic. It actually reminded me a lot of Chiapas, Mexico, with really vibrant and impressive weavings and stunning mountains all around. From Todos Santos we headed on to a new municipality that is only four years old. The road to this muni is what one would expect as the Peace Corps experience, it is all dirt and rugged. In this town, my group gave a presentation to a women’s group about Communication in Groups. After the mini-disaster of our presentation in our local middle school, this talk went over way better, with smooth transitions and the women actively participated.

Leading my part of the charla with a participant from the women’s group

The mayor of the young municipality really wants two volunteers (one for the OMP and one for the OMM) but I do not think any of the girls were really inspired by the location. The town is perfectly nice, but it is really retirado (far away) from everything and it does not even get tambos of water (5 gallon jugs of clean water). On the other hand, it is guaranteed that whoever goes will have tons of work for the next two years and will most likely see the results of his/her efforts. The volunteer in this muni has done a lot of work with the forestry office to replant pine trees and has also helped start up a municipal library, another project that a lot of volunteers take on since even municipalities that do have libraries often do not have books.

This town and the next two towns we visited are all really close to the Mexican border and we could see the Mexican influence. The towns were a lot more ladino, with men wearing big belt buckles, matching boots and hats, and the women dressing is more skimpy outfits (this was also due to the heat) and less traje típico.

Almost all the girls from the group on top of the municipality

We spent Wednesday and Thursday nights in a town that is currently hosting its third and last muni volunteer. The town is very nice, with a lovely plaza and really good Mexican food and ginormous bugs of all kinds (including cockroaches!!). The previous volunteer in the town did a really good job with ArcGIS to map the town and all of its aldeas, and the municipality has excellent statistics on socio-economic data thanks to the work of that volunteer. We also met a volunteer finishing up in anearby town who also did a lot of mapping on her own and who learned how to use mapping software while in service.

On Friday we drove up to 10 km from the border to see a town that will not be replacing its volunteer due to lack of cooperation from the mayor. Despite the mayor’s politics, the volunteer there has done a really great job working in the OMM and capacitating her counterparts to give charlas with women’s groups. We went along with herand two of her counterparts to an aldea where they gave a charla about nutrition with a relatively newly formed women’s group. After the charla, we had lunch at a local pool and then drove back to Huehue for our last night. That day was a perfect example of the contrasts that we are seeing here in Guatemala. We started out the day in a less-developed aldea where the women spoke Mam Maya, then spent lunch in a pretty nice resort-like setting next to a pool, had dinner in a pupuseria with cockroaches, and then went out to a gringo bar to celebrate a birthday. I know that in the U.S. we have many contrasts in quality of life, but rarely do we go out of our bubbles and really see how others live.

Aldea of La Democracia

On Saturday we did the long haul back home, leaving Huehue at 8am and making it back around 3pm with one bathroom break and a lunch stop on the way. Huehue is definitely far away from the center of the country and I understand why so many of the people that we met during the trip were self-described site rats (not getting out much) because it is a heck of a long trip in a mini-van, so on a bus it must be even more tiring. Returning home was really exciting; I missed my guacal (bucket) baths and enjoyed using a non-public restroom for the first time in a week. Mamatina was happy to have me back home and made me tamales and hot chocolate for dinner (the same dinner she made for me the previous Saturday for the despedida). Getting to know everyone better this week and seeing how volunteers are doing different projects in their sites and adjusting to different environments was really cool, but at the end of the day the best feeling after a week of travel is coming home.

A Medias

Muy buenas tardes a todos,

I hope that everyone had a most wonderful week. When I went onto facebook recently I discovered that in the midst of Independence Day celebrations, I totally forgot about Rosh Hashana, so that plus going to Evangelical church last week pretty much officially makes me a not so great Jew. In the great Jewish tradition, however, my Independence Day experience was did include some suffering, so all hope is not lost. The town I am living in has been preparing for Independence Day pretty much since we arrived, with games and food stands sprouting up in the plaza and students missing copious amounts of school to practice marching and performing. This week was the pinnacle of celebrations, with roller coaster rides popping up in the middle of town and a huge stage set-up. On Sunday night we had the first evening of spectacles, with the princess candidates (what celebration is complete without some beauty pageant competition?) strutting their stuff on a stage. There were 7 teenage girls vying for the crown of Ms. Town and Sunday night was the evening of competition, with the girls competing in a ‘Traje de Fantasía’ competition (imagine carnaval in Río, that is the type of clothing they were wearing. Not much skin covered and a lot of feathers), then a traditional clothing competition, and finally speeches in both Spanish and Kachiquel. I went to the center of town around 630pm and left around 930pm and the competition was not near being over because the girls took forever walking up and down the stage. In Guatemalan Mayan society, where women are generally timid and people both dress and behave conservatively, it was really shocking to see 14-15 year old girls on stage in little more than bikinis adorned with feathers (ostensibly every costume had some sort of Mayan symbolism, they were different spirits, but it was a world away from the Mayan ceremony we had experienced the week before). Since I was tired and with Mamatina, I left before the speeches, which I heard were really good (topics included preserving Mayan heritage), but the parts that I saw were like any other beauty pageant with shorter and better fed models.

On Monday night, the town showed up again to celebrate the crowning of Ms. Town and her three runner-ups, Ms. Patron, Ms. Sports, and Ms. Niceness (Srta Patronal, Srta. Deportes, Srta. Simpatía). There was an awesome band playing music called Band Vega, and besides the singers on stage, I was the only one who got my groove on before the princesses took the stage for another 2 hours of strutting up and down the runway.

Band Vega and the lethargic massesPrincesses from 2008-2009 getting ready to give up the throne...but not without a lot of strutting on the walkway

Once again showing my cultural insensitivity, I was unable to understand how people could sit still while awesome music was being played live and then later how they could stand to just sit around for two hours while seven girls walked back and forth on the stage without asking for a little more action or a quicker pace. In the middle of the crowning of the new queens, one of the many firecrackers that were being set-off fell into the crowd and exploded next to a little boy, causing blood to come out of his ear. This caused a slight delay in the festivities, but it did not end the firecrackers and after that event I decided to excuse myself from the crowd and stood further back from the stage. Around 10pm, Band Vega got back on stage and started to play again and I was very excited that finally there would be some dancing. Once again, however, I was disappointed since the crowd continued to stay relatively immobile. After a short break, the princesses came back down and started dancing on stage with members of the Consejo Municipal and Felipe was invited up to dance with them as well. I pretty much had my fill and went home at 11-something, once again missing the most interesting part of the evening. It seems like after I got walked home by Felicia, her mom, and Devon, they returned to the plaza and were invited up to the Mayor’s office where the Consejo Municipal, the princesses, and Felipe were hanging out drinking and dancing.

On Tuesday, Independence Day itself, I watched the local parade and saw tons of cute kids dressed in traditional clothing from all over Guatemala, and then headed over with Mamatina and her family to watch the parade in Ciudad Vieja, the first Spanish capital of Guatemala that is a few kilometers away.

Kids in the local town

Mamatina and Family in Ciudad Vieja

Mamatina’s granddaughter goes to high school in Ciudad Vieja, so together with her parents and two siblings, we headed out in Mamatina’s truck to watch the parade. The most notable thing about Ciudad Vieja is that people there do not dress in traje típico (traditional dress). The girls in the parade almost all wore suits and the princesses from the different schools all wore prom dresses instead of huipil and cortes. When I commented on this to Mamatina she said that it was because in Ciudad Vieja they are ladino, and that she is also ladino because she is from there (she moved to her current town as a child). Mamatina told me that she wears traje típico because for many years she sold artesanía, but she does not identify as indigenous and she does not speak Kachiquel like the women from town do. This was really interesting to hear since as an outsider the only difference between people from Ciudad Vieja and San Antonio is how they dress, and yet culturally they identify very differently.

With Betsy in the back of the truck in Ciudad Vieja

In the afternoon, I decided to participate in the 15 km race along with Devon and Felipe in our town. I had heard about this race the week before and decided that since there was a free t-shirt involved that I would like to participate (it is also a good chance to exercise). We were told that the race would start at two and then ended up not starting until 330pm. Of all the entrants, we were the only people who looked like non-professionals, and I was the only one not wearing running shorts. As I stood there with the handful of other runners (30 or so) in front of the sizable crowd I asked myself why on earth I thought this was a good idea. I do not especially like running, I am terminally slow, and the t-shirt is not that nice. The race was set up to go through town, up the huge hill that serves as the entrance to the town, loop around the next town out to the highway, go back to the center of San Antonio and then do it again. I decided that I would be satisfied with one loop of 7.5 km, since that is already more than I have run since I have been here. From the very start of the race I was dead last in the group and it took very little time on the way up the big hill to lose sight of everyone in the group in front of me. Watching people lining the race path making fun of my slow gait, I was again at a loss for why I had thought this would be a good idea. Unlike in the U.S. where people decide to do races for fun and exercise, the only people who choose to run here are actually fast (then again, this is a relative term, I have been out-walked before so I might not be the best judge). It took me about 55 minutes to do one lap, and I was totally comfortable with my decision to leave it at that. The race served several purposes: I got my t-shirt, ate a celebratory coffee ice cream, and all desire to enter future races has been thoroughly extinguished.

The rest of my week was relatively unremarkable. On Friday we had a presentation in the local middle school that was observed by two Peace Corps personnel, and our feedback was less than stunning (in my quest to stay positive I tried to tell myself that this means I have room to grow and that the next presentation by default must be better). Tomorrow we are heading out to a week of Field Based Training up in Huehuetenango, where we will be visiting various volunteers at their sites and giving a charla (talk) to a group of women. I am a bit nervous about the whole experience, but I have heard that it is usually a fun experience and it really helps clarify what exactly our work will be when we finally go out into the field and the variety of conditions that people work in (thus far we have only seen one volunteer at site). I plan to take plenty of photos, pray that there are no bed bugs or fleas in the hotels we stay in, and hope that the next charla we give is better received (14-year-old boys’ obnoxiousness knows no international boundaries).

Education and God in Guatemala

Damas y caballeros,

This Sunday marked one month in country, only 26 more to go! The week was pretty unremarkable; we did more technical work in the Municipality and took another trip to Guatemala in order to visit INFOM (Instituto Nacional de Fomento Municipal). On Wednesday morning, Felicia and I went to visit our local elementary school to give the first in a three-part series about protecting the environment. The idea was to go last Friday, but due to all sorts of events leading up to Independence Day, the teacher could not accommodate us and we were bumped to Wednesday. At 7:30am we showed up at school and found the children cleaning the classroom (sweeping and mopping the floor, cleaning out the trash baskets, and organizing the teacher’s desk). The teacher came by a few minutes late and we explained to her that our activity should not take more than half an hour, forty minutes at most. She was totally fine with it, told us she had a meeting and left us alone with the students. The kids were cool, they listened to our play about littering, answered questions that we prepared, and then participated in our activity (drawing anti-pollution posters) even though we saw evidence all over the walls that they had actually done this activity before. We stayed with the kids in the classroom for an hour until we really had to leave, and yet the teacher was nowhere to be found. Feeling guilty for leaving the kids alone, we slinked out of school and looking into the other classrooms noticed that none of the classrooms had teachers – they were all at the meeting with the director, having their staff meeting.

At IR/PS last year I took the two-part series on Latin America, one class on Economic Policies of Latin America and another on Political Institutions of Latin America. In both these classes we essentially discussed the education system in Latin America as the root of a lot of the problems it faces, the reason Latin America has fallen behind Asian countries since the 1960s and the reason that it has not improved economically. At the time, I thought the classes were pretty boring and repetitive, it seemed like beating a dead horse with a stick, but it did nothing to prepare me for the Guatemalan public education system. Students in elementary school go to class from 7:30am to 12:30 pm with a supposedly half-an-hour break (which from my observations actually lasted an hour). Students are expected to clean the classroom in the morning, and then again before leaving for the day, so that plus the hour break leaves maybe three hours for class…and that is if the teacher shows up. Last week a PCV who is finishing up her service and who has been working with Proyecto Ciudadano (a program to teach students about democracy and build self-esteem) told us how teachers often do not even show up for classes. I assumed that she was talking about the aldeas (small towns in the municipalities far from the big town), but clearly the problem exists in the towns as well. Teachers plan their meetings during class time; leave their students with a few math problems on the board (our teacher had written ten fraction addition problems on the board…to occupy over an hour of time) and peace out.

Felicia and I were absolutely appalled, and as we left school to get Felipe (who lives in the bakery right next door) we saw that one of his little brothers, Samuel, was at home instead of at school. We asked him what he was doing at home and he told us that he had pereza (laziness) and that is why he decided not to go. The fact that his parents were not forcing him to go to school was another shock, though when I thought about it, he was not missing out on much (sit at home and do nothing or go to school and do nothing with others). In any case, it was a mixed morning, it was great to get to know some local kids and they were all well behaved, but it is so disappointing to see the quite frankly shitty education that they are getting (of course they are later at a disadvantage in the world market for labor, how can they compete with children who are in school all day with teachers?) This week Felicia and I are going to do our second talk with the kids and we are also going to be going by the middle school to do a talk about citizen participation, so we will continue to fight the powers that be and try to get the kids thinking and motivated.

On Thursday afternoon we got to visit La Azotea, a coffee plantation with museums in Jocotenango (right next to Antigua). Apparently Guatemala is the seventh largest producer of coffee in the world (Brazil being number one), and it is number three in quality (after Ethiopia and Kenya). The reason that Guatemala has such wonderful quality coffee is that it produces coffee Arabica (shade-grown) that is only picked by hand when ripened (no mechanization in the picking process). The coffee from Antigua is the best because the climate is the most temperate and the altitude is ideal…or at least that is what we were told by the Antinguan coffee growers (possible bias?). The coffee tour was nice, we got to taste some of the beans and at the end of the tour we were given espresso shots, which were quite tasty.

Manteniendolo Real (Keeping it Real)

Right next to the coffee museum, La Azotea has a museum of traditional Mayan musical instruments and culture. Another group of Muni volunteers that had taken the coffee museum tour before us went along with us for the musical instrument tour. The guide was very nice and informative, but she spoke to us as if we were slow, pronouncing words like ‘Centroamérica’ streteched out with each syllable getting its own second (which might make sense with other words, but Central America sounds just about the same in English and Spanish). With the Parramos group in La Azotea

At the end of the museum tour, we watched a 17-minute video of traditional dances and music of Guatemala. The costumes were neat, but pretty much all of the dancing was lackluster, the people did not seem into it at all. This is probably the biggest surprise I have had since I’ve been in Guatemala: people here do not really like to dance. Along with all the Evangelicals, who do not dance for religious purposes, my group-mates and I have noticed that people do not really get into music, they’ll go through the motions, but they are hesitant. My unprofessional opinion (I did take one cultural anthropology class, but that does not an anthropologist make) is that the culture of deference and submissiveness on the part of women affects dancing. Guatemalan culture is collectivist and people do not feel comfortable being the center of attention, and women are especially timid (most, not all). Felicia observed this in person when she went to a wedding last week and at the wedding reception only seven couples were dancing, none of them very enthusiastically, while everyone else just sat and watched.

This weekend has been one of new religious experiences for me. On Saturday all PCT (PCT=Peace Corps Trainees) went to Iximché, the old Mayan capital of Guatemala, which is located in Tecpán, Chimaltenango in order to observe and participate in a traditional Mayan ceremony. We went to the back of the archeological site, which has been reconstructed, to an area with a raised circle and an altar. While the priestess prepared the fire where we were going to perform the ceremony, each of us lit a candle to put on the altar and then formed a circle around the area where she was preparing a fire. The fire was started with candles arrayed in a circle on top of chocolate, some wood, flowers, sugar, and other offerings that I did not really make out.

The set-up

The candles in the middle of the set up were yellow and red, in accordance with the nahuatl of the day (the Mayan calendar has twenty nahuatls, or Gods. According to the day one is born on, one has a different nahuatl, mine is Ix, which is apparently the jaguar/tiger). We are also in the year where the air element dominates, so the whole set-up of the ceremony was done in accordance with the nahuatl day and the elements. She started out by praying in both Spanish and Kachiquel to start the ceremony, and lit the candles in the middle of the circle. We each had four candles and a ‘moneda’ (some sort of wood chip) offering to go and put in the middle of the circle. We each went into the larger circle, laid down our candles and the monedas and said good morning, my name is ___, and thank you in order to greet the spirits. La Sacerdota

After we all went around the circle, the fire was in full flame and the priestess said that for the most part it was happy, most of our offerings were well received. For the next hour and a half, we observed as she made offerings and prayed to the twenty different nahuatls. She explained to us what the nahuatls represent and prayed to all of them to offer us protection during our two years in Guatemala. She spoke in both Kachiquel and Spanish, and kept repeating “Matiosh,” which means thank you in Kachiquel and spoke in Kachiquel praying for ‘Cuerpo de Paz’. It was a pretty windy day, so the fire was rather large, and she said this was a sign that the nahuatls liked our offerings. For different nahuatls she threw different seeds, monedas, incense, 100-proof liquor and offerings onto the fire. Every time the spirits were happy, she threw sugar into the fire as a thank you and by the end of the ceremony she had used up three bags of sugar. After two hours, the ceremony ended and she told us that in summary most of the spirits were very happy with us and our offerings, though some of them were offended at the lack of respect that they felt (during the ceremony tons of people passed by and stood around to watch and some of them were disrespectful). While I do not understand most of what was said, it was a really interesting ceremony and when we were given the chance to place some monedas in the fire and pray for something, or later to move in to inhale some of the incense to stave off depression, we all participated.The end of the ceremony

After the ceremony, we had some time to walk around and see the ruins, which was great for photo ops. At Iximche with Shani, Amanda, and Amy

We had traditional lunch outside Iximché and then headed back to Antigua. Last week a huge group of PCTs went to the bar Mono Loco (which I think I might have mentioned in a previous post, it is gringolandia in a big way) in order to watch college football. I felt bad for missing out on the group bonding last week and decided to go check it out, which was a mistake on my part since I do not especially like bars in the U.S. I stuck around for about forty-five minutes to consume some nachos (which were excellent) and then headed back to my town feeling arrepentida (repentful) for having wasted time in Antigua when I could have been with my Guatemalan family. In the evening, I headed over to Felipe’s house to help celebrate one of his host brothers’ birthday. Even though Felipe’s family here is also Evangelical, they are less strict than mine, and so we listened to reggaeton and I did a little dancing for the first time since I got here, which was great. In my last blog I think I mentioned how I have started hanging out with Felipe’s host mom, Doña Estela, this past week I helped her sell bread for a few hours. In the bakery Q1 will buy three pieces of bread. People come in and request multiple Q’s of bread with different varieties as I try to figure out how many pieces of each they want and what the names of the different sweet breads are. It is surprisingly difficult for me since counting in Spanish is not intuitive (for example, someone wants Q7, which means 21 pieces of bread, and they want four pieces of French bread, Q3 of galletas (9 pieces) and the rest mixed sweet bread but not one type…it gets confusing). People are pretty patient even though I am really slow and getting change takes me two times as long as it should (again, counting in Spanish and then trying to switch to English makes me feel like an oaf). Doña Estela for her part thinks everything that I do is pretty hilarious and I like making her laugh, so I guess as long as customers keep coming, she’ll let me stick around.

With Dona Estela at the birthday party

On Sunday morning I decided to celebrate one month in country by going with Mamatina to church, or culto (that is what they call their services…sounds kind of like cult doesn’t it?). I had been debating whether or not to go since I arrived in town since I am not all too comfortable with Evangelicalism. Here is the back-story: along with not agreeing with Evangelical politics in the U.S., I had an experience when I did study abroad in Oaxaca, Mexico in 2006 that freaked me out a bit. Basically, I went to Oaxaca and met a taxi driver who told me he was Jewish. I was thrilled to meet a Jew in Oaxaca and he told me where his services were held and one Saturday with my friend Nikiko, I headed over. We ended up in a neighborhood in the middle of nowhere outside proper city limits and for the next couple of hours I sat and took notes during a ceremony that confused me. I am not that religious of a person, so I am not fully learned when it comes to traditional liturgy, but the ceremony struck me as odd…mainly because they kept referring to the devil, which I had never heard of before in any Hillel ceremonies. The people were dressed as if they were playing dress up as being Orthodox Jews (girls and women had their hair covered, men were dressed in black pants and had kipas on). At the end of the ceremony some ladies wearing Halloween-type costumes with stars of David on them got up and danced. It was not until the end of the service, which was LONG, when we got a ride home from one of the ladies from the congregation, that I realized that I was most certainly not with Jews. The congregation had been Pentecostal Christian until a few years earlier, when some of the women in the group had a vision that the congregation needed to follow the Old Testament in order to bring about the second coming of Christ. This in sum is why I am somewhat wary of Evangelicals, I figure they all have a bit of crazy in them (which I recognize is a small-minded view and not fair).

My reasoning for finally going to church was that by not going I am missing out both on a big part of cultural life here in Guatemala and opportunities to spend time with Mamatina (and I was also still feeling guilty about going to a bar in Antigua rather than spending time with her the day before). I surprised Mamatina when I told her I would like to go with her since I declined every previous invitation and at 930am we headed out to church. The service was nothing like what I went to in Oaxaca: we were in a building, people sat quietly with their bibles, and for two hours I was pretty bored as men talked about being good Christians and praying with families. The topics discussed were pretty conventional, but the delivery was somewhat lackluster, so I took the opportunity to read through the first part of Genesis, and then I found my namesake in 2 Kings, Chapter 10. I am not sure if I am going to go back to church with Mamatina in the future, she says that usually there is more singing, or I might try to go with her granddaughter Marlene to the Pentecostal church (where they talk in tongues and foretell illnesses) to see how the other Evangelicals celebrate. I also got a book on Evangelicals in Guatemala, the Evangelical movement has been the most successful in Guatemala of all Central American countries, and so I will think of visits to churches as field research. Ironically, while I was in church I experienced stomach cramping and indigestion for the first time since I have been here in Guatemala, is God trying to tell me something?

Just an FYI for the next blog updates: I am going to try and write a new blog about Independence Day festivities so as not to make this one intolerably long, but I am not sure when I'll be able to update since next week is field based training. Hope everyone has a great mid-September!

Roller Coasters

Hallo blogophiles,

I am almost at the one-month point in country and I must admit that this past week has probably been the toughest one for me yet. I guess I have officially embarked on the emotional roller coaster that the Peace Corps staff constantly talks about. This week was the first without a Spanish teacher; Sandra left us because our language level does not require classes. Instead of having class every day from 8-12 and 1-4, we planned activities on our own and went to the municipality in order to do technical work. Spanish classes were basically just shooting the breeze and walking around town and learning about Guatemalan history and culture, and Sandra always was high energy, which helped pass the time. On Monday morning, we prepared three presentations in record time and then just sat around and I realized that when I am at my site, I will really be on my own. Granted, I knew this coming into Peace Corps, but feeling the absence of Spanish class made it more real and I spent the rest of the week coming to terms with the fact that I am going to be flying solo.

But it has not all been mental anguish, far from it. On Saturday for the despedida (goodbye) to Sandra, we headed out to the one and only organic macadamia nut farm in Guatemala. A few decades back a man from San Francisco traveled to Guatemala to visit, he fell in love with a Guatemalan…and logically decided to start an organic macadamia nut farm on . We got a tour of the farm from one of the workers, who showed us their relatively low-tech methods of separating the macadamias according to size and who told us about the variety of macadamias they have thanks to cross-pollination.

At the Macadamia Farm

After we talked about macadamias for a while, he took us to see ‘the most photographed bathroom in all of Guatemala,’ which was pretty nice. It was essentially a toilet in the middle of a room of plants, a very organic experience. Most photographed bathroom

On Monday afternoon, my co-trainee and I headed over to the muni to the supervisor of the OMP (Oficina Municipal de Planificación), about the work we are going to do over the next few weeks. Next week we have to do a SWOT analysis, but we are also supposed to work with a COCODE (Community Organization for Development) to give them technical training. The supervisor took us around to see some of the projects that the OMP has been working on and told us that while the office used to be involved in social programming it basically only does infrastructure these days. At 4pm we had a meeting with a COCODE from Zone 2. In attendance were us four PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees), two architects doing professional training in the OMP, the supervisor, a representative from the Forestry office, and three men who belong to the COCODE. These men and the other COCODE members are interested in creating an ecological park in town in order to preserve the natural beauty of one of its mountain-sides, teach locals about the value of nature and Mayan traditions in classrooms, start a nursery of medicinal plants, replant trees, and create three eco-trails of 1-hour, 3-hours, and 5-hours. The group created a project proposal a year ago with support from The Nature Conservancy, but they have not found any funding, and while the municipality is willing to let them use the land, it is not offering any financial support. My co-trainee and I were convinced that this project would be a good one to try and help out with, so all my plans for making a survey and training people to implement them are not going to get out of the starting gate. We decided at the meeting that we would head up to see the proposed site of the park on Wednesday morning along with the architects in order to see the dimensions of the park and see where they wanted to put all the park components (nursery, classrooms, trails, etc).

On Wednesday morning bright and early we started our trek up the mountain. The mountain is known as ‘El Astillero’ and is where people from town go to gather firewood. We started up the trail and it was pretty steep, but relatively well maintained. After about an hour or so we reached a clearing where the men want to put classrooms and start the medicinal plant nursery. The view was pretty killer, we could see all of the town laid out below us and the two volcanoes on both sides of our town (Volcán de Agua and Volcán de Fuego).

Halfway up the Astillero

The female architect, was struggling at this point in the hike and the trail was going to get more difficult, so she headed down with one of the guardabosques and I remained the only female on the trip. The trail basically disappeared after she left. Instead of walking up in an orderly manner, we essentially got on all fours and climbed straight up the side of the mountain, climbing under the vegetation. At one point when we paused I told the guys that I did not want to hear the truth about how much more time we would be going straight up because I couldn’t handle it, so they kept telling me we were almost done when I could clearly see the side of the mountain looming in front of me. It was tough going, and when we finally got to the top we saw a tree where all the town mayors have carved their names (which I wonder about, they would have to be in really good shape to get up there). After we reached the top of the mountain we crossed over the top through forests and cornfields that people had planted. Around 1130am we arrived at one man's plot of land and we made elote, or roasted corn for lunch.

Uncooked Elote

The walk down the mountain took an hour and a half, and while it was equally as steep in some sections as the walk up, it was a little easier to handle. At 230pm we got back to the center of town and I could not have been happier to take a cold shower to dislodge all the dirt and leaves that I unwittingly gathered on the trek. My co-trainee and I are going to have to do some serious brainstorming to figure out how to help this group since our experience made us somewhat dubious of the viability of this project. While there were some nice views, the mountain was not remarkable in any other ways (my family here was told me it made no sense ‘why would anyone go up that mountain we gather wood from?’) and the question of economic feasibility needs to be broached…After some discussion with trainers at PC HQ it looks like creating an Operating Plan might be our best course of action.

On Wednesday night we all went to the our local town pools to celebrate a girl in the group's 26th birthday. After my pepián and dressing up, I guess her family felt like it had to one-up us, and since her ‘mom’ is the mayor’s secretary, she had the connections needed to get us in the pools at night. Along with the four of us muni volunteers, the three agricultural marketing PCTs who live in town were also invited and we had a great time listening to music, playing tag with some of the children, and eating a good dinner and cake. At one point the mayor actually showed up, which was a little awkward, but also showed us how much he values having us in his town. Another birthday is coming up and we are all excited to see how his family is going to celebrate (we are hoping for a rooftop dance party).

Celebrating a Birthday

On Saturday morning we had a community interchange with another group who is doing food security. The idea of the interchange is to give us the opportunity to learn about another town that a group is living in and to make sure we know the basic facts about our own towns and can convey that information in Spanish. The food security group came to visit us first and we walked them around our town and then had a jeopardy game to see how much of the facts that we had told them they remembered. After about an hour or so we piled into the PC van and drove up to their town. It is the town at the highest altitude and is located on the highway between PC and Guatemala City. Their activity was to have us go around to different sites in town and then they told us about different aspects of the community (like its transportation, public services, etc) and we were given tickets if we answered questions correctly. The food security groups (there are two towns with F.S. volunteers) have plots of land that they are growing food on and their training involves building tire gardens and learning how to sharpen a machete. We got to see one of the two orchards that the volunteers are working on and when we finished our tour we were each given a pear, which is what that town is known for (their pears are sold all over Guatemala). While our town definitely has the nicest vistas of all the towns I have visited, this town had way more produce . Since most people here are also involved in agriculture, the reason we do not have as much produce probably stems from the fact that we are so close to Antigua. Mamatina has told me that she prefers to go to the market in Antigua to buy produce since it is cheaper, so selling here is not as appealing to producers. Meanwhile the food security group's town is not really here nor there, so they have a lot more produce in the streets and they actually have their own food market, which we do not have. One of our stops in their town was in front of the health clinic and David (the technical trainer for Food Security who was driving us around) told us a really neat fact. Here in Guatemala a lot of people have the impression that diabetes comes from a shocking experience, they will say ‘so-and-so got scared and as a result s/he got diabetes’. The reason is the following: here in Guatemala people essentially only eat carbohydrates (the most Atkins Diet unfriendly place I have ever been), they drink tons of soda, and they put lots of sugar in everything. As a result of unhealthy habits, there is a pretty high level of diabetes in the population, but people do not go to the doctor to get tested. When someone experiences a shock, their blood sugar levels spike, or there is a change in pressure or something, that causes them to feel discomfort. They go to the doctor because of this sensation, get diagnosed with diabetes, and as a result think that the shock they experienced caused diabetes.

On Saturday afternoon Mamatina was busy and nobody wanted to go out to walk around town with me, so I headed over to a co-trainee's house to hang out with his mom. She is 24 years old and owns a bakery with her husband. The trainee who lives with her helps her sell food a lot so I headed over to see if I could help out and she let me help her sell some bread, then we went on an adventure around town, ending up at a tortilleria, where I made about five tortillas in the time it takes others to make at least double or triple. The progress-report on my tortilla making is mixed. They are now coming out the proper thickness, but they are still not round, and my one attempt to flip a tortilla resulted in me touching the hot comal and forming a blister. I have spoken to the tortilleras at my local tortilleria and they have agreed to teach me whenever I want to come by, so I need to clear some time in my schedule to do some more immersion because clearly just watching on a daily basis is not helping me reach my tortilla-making goals. During my afternoon with my friend's mom, I also learned what everyone has been calling me instead of my name: colochita (curly-headed). I am not sure I like how colocha sounds, but at least now I know they are only commenting on my hair texture and not on my level of cleanliness or anything.

Sunday I headed over to another Food Security town in order to see how others are living. The town has a church, a few blocks of houses, and is directly on the highway. We had a good time visiting, and I am happy to report that I have now seen all but one of the training towns.

On the roof

Locals at the parade

When I returned to town in the afternoon, we walked in to the end of the day-long festivities in preparation for Independence Day on September 15th. This Sunday was the day of a large band competition in the football stadium, and there was also a parade with the seven contestants for Ms. Town (who will be crowned on the 14th at night). When I returned the bands were coming back from the stadium and the first through third place winners were performing in front of the municipality building. The beauty queens were all sitting on their cars, which were decorated with flowers and cool scenes, waiting for the bands to clear out for their parade to start, and the bands were returning and playing when all of a sudden the crowd parted and we heard new music. It was a funeral procession for a man who had died the night before and who was being carried from the Evangelical church to the cemetery. It was a weird juxtaposition, and as soon as the procession passed by the bands began to play anew. After a few hours, I returned home and learned from Mamatina that the parades and celebrations would continue next weekend and that the competitors for Ms. Town are always Catholic (though it was not clear to me if this is because Evangelicals do not want to participate due to dancing, or whether only Catholics are asked). While I am not big on beauty pageants in general, there a few cool things about the competition here. First of all, the girls are all dressed in traditional dress, there is no bathing suit competition, and along with giving a speech in Spanish, they are expected to give a speech in Kachiquel (the local indigenous language).

Watching the parade