Resfrio and Final Countdown

Last week I once again had the pleasure of experiencing resfrío here in Guatemala - a head cold. A few weeks back I got my feet wet and I imagine that had something to do with me getting sick less than a month after my last flu. So much for the flu shot being effective. My head cold was made more unpleasant by the surprisingly strong winds that suddenly came up after I returned from site visit. In late October the winds start to blow and the rain stops (though that is not totally accurate, we did get some rainfall this week) and it got perceptibly colder (though any East Coast person would tell me to suck it up, we are talking probably mid-50s). It was not ideal timing to get sick and cold at the same time since I left everything in my new site, including my medical kit and all but one long sleeved shirt, but hindsight is 20-20, so from now on I know to always keep Sudafed close at hand and to bring at least one change of clothes since you get funny looks when you layer short-sleeved t-shirts to maintain body heat.

Besides feeling cold and congested, this week consisted of tying up a lot of loose ends at Peace Corps. We went to the Peace Corps office every day from Tuesday through Friday last week and once again on Monday and Tuesday of this week to finish up trainings and share our experiences from site visits.

Last Tuesday we all met up in a group and discussed our experiences on site visits and I was once again reminded how lucky I am to be going to my site. Some other folks had housing issues (the two guys gave us updates about their latrines), traveling to and from site was an involved process (the guy going to one site near the Mexcian border left at 2am to get back to Antigua around 3pm), and others have more severe weather conditions (extreme heat in the East and extreme cold in the West). On Tuesday night all of us San Antonio kids were invited to Felicia’s host mother’s house for a despedida – goodbye- dinner of tamales. We had our two weeks of Spanish class in the beginning of training at her house, so her mother wanted to say goodbye to all of us officially. It was a wonderful meal; the tamales here in Guatemala are significantly larger than Mexican tamales and along with having a filling in the corn masa, they also mix in tomato sauce throughout the whole tamale, so it is really really tasty.

Last Wednesday we went back to Peace Corps for more technical training and to start our two days of indigenous language training. Some people are obligated to learn an indigenous language because of their sites, and Peace Corps will pay for them to take 80-hours of language training in their sites. In order to get them started on the process and to also expose those of us who do not need to take a language to the culture, we were given two days of Mayan language. I went to the K’iche’ class (there were also Kachiquel, Mam, and K’ekchi’ classes offered) along with three other agriculture volunteers who will all actually have to learn K’iche’ in order to do their jobs. The class was really interesting, for example, we learned that one reason that people in Guatemala often say things like ‘I want to buy one my tortilla’ is because in K’iche’ the word tortilla gets a personal possessive in the sentence, so instead of saying ‘I want one tortilla’ it literally translates to ‘one my tortilla.’ We learned the basic words for greeting people and introducing ourselves, and it was really neat, but I am so thankful that I will not need to learn K’iche’ for my site because I essentially forgot everything the minute I learned it. Here is my best recollection after four hours of class:

Xsaquarik, nub’i’ Athalia.Utzwachlaa? (Good morning, my name is Athalia. How are you (formal)?

Utz, matiosh.Utzaawach? (Good, thanks. How are you (informal)?

Utz, tiosh. (Good, thanks)

We learned more, or maybe it is better to say we were shown more, but I was not too quick on catching on. The verbs, for example, rather than conjugating like Spanish words (most time the root stays the same and only the last part of the word changes depending on who is being spoken to) have changes both at the beginning, the middle, and the end. The verbs we learned all had four letters, but then in the conjugation process for eight different tenses, the first letter changed according to the tense (a present-tense verb starts with k- and past tense begins with x-), then the last two letters of the verb are dropped and letters are either added before or after the stem depending on the tense. It is not at all intuitive, and the multiple “ ’ ” indicate a glottal stop (I think that is the term) so there is a lot of throat action.

On Friday multiple volunteers from the Municipal Development program who are one year into service or finishing up right now visited us to discuss their experiences. There were seven panels about various topics related to being a volunteer (how to deal with machismo, secondary projects, living arrangements, etc). The panel was kind of a last chance clear up doubts or questions that we had before going to site and at the end of the talks we held a vote for the Municipal Development council. Our program has a council with two reps from each year that give feedback to our APCD (Associate Peace Corps Director) about how to improve the program/training/etc and plans out follow-up trainings throughout service. In a field of three candidates I won one of two spots on the board for my group, and I am really excited that I will get to help mold the program for future improvements and that every three months or so I will meet up with the other three council members (who all enjoy baking!) to plan for muni-specific events.

Last Saturday I got fed some more tamales as part of the weeklong despedida. This time, my host mom’s daughter-in-law, her nuera, made them for me, and I got to participate in the process. My first weekend in town my host mom’s nuera made tamales and I had mentioned that to close the cycle of my time here that we should eat them again. She took my suggestion to heart and spent Friday night through Saturday night working on tamales. I helped out by stirring the masa as it was cooking (the corn to make masa is cooked three times: first as corn before it is taken to the molino to make it into powder, then again with water and oil added to get the right texture, and finally as part of the tamale) and by tying every single tamale shut.

On Sunday in order to reward me for being a good host daughter, my host mom invited me to go with her to Antigua to visit some ruins. Despite being near Antigua for almost three months now, I had yet to enter any ruins since I saw that non-national visitors had to pay Q30 and I figured that when visitors came to see me they would help defray those costs. The opportunity to go with my host mom seemed like too good an opportunity to miss out on, so together with her nuera and granddaughter I went with my host mom to visit Los Cachupines. Los Cachupines is the ruin of a convent where nuns who got pregnant by priests were sent to live in cells. The museum was closed since it was a Sunday, so all that I learned about the place came from my host mom, but even without too much explanation, the ruins were amazing.

Courtyard in Los Cachupines

Under the cells

My host family in front of some of the nuns cells

After spending the morning exploring Los Cachupines, we headed over to the church San Francisco El Grande, where there are more ruins and the tomb of Santo Hermano Pedro. Santo Hermano Pedro was a Franciscan priest who came to Guatemala in the 1600s and was known for his work with the poor and sick. Apparently he used to go around at night wearing a cloak and carrying a lamp calling out to people something about saving souls. He died young (only 60 years old or so), but soon after his death the process began to have him canonized as a Saint. People claim to seem him sometimes at night (on more than one occasion I have been told about people who were homeless or on hard times being approached by a cloaked man at night who gave them lots of money and then disappeared). The church holds Hermano Pedro’s remains, though they have been exhumed five times they have stayed in the church for 300+ years, and in 2002 Hermano Pedro was finally made a saint. At San Francisco, we sat next to the ruins of the convent that used to be there and ate lunch, avocado and tortillas, and then entered the church to see the tomb where Santo Hermano Pedro’s remains reside. My host mom used to sell artesanía outside the church for thirty-some years, as do many women from my town, so she was really knowledgeable about the church and Hermano Pedro. Along a wall next to the third tomb where Santo Hermano Pedro was buried there were tons of placards giving thanks for miracles.

It was a really awesome day and I cannot wait for some visitors to come at some point so I can have more excuses to visit other ruins since they are literally all over the city of Antigua.

Monday and Tuesday were spent at Peace Corps going over training (both taking tests to ensure that we have learned what they wanted us to learn and also giving feedback on the training process). Wednesday was our last day in site and Felipe and I went to the municipality’s OMP (Oficina Municipal de Planificación) to give our formal presentation of the SWOT analysis we did of the office. It was really nice to hang out in the office one last time, and the feedback we gave to the personnel was really well received. After lunch, I went by my local tortilla shop to say goodbye to the lovely ladies who helped teach me how to make tortillas. They let me take some photos of them working and told me that any time I want to come back that they’ll be waiting for me, so when we have to return for training in Peace Corps I will also be able to brush up on my tortilla-making skills.

In the afternoon I went with Felipe’s host mom and brothers to Antigua to visit the ruins of San Francisco (when I went on Sunday I did not enter the museum and ruins). On the way there I saw a beautiful street:

Next to the church of San Francisco where Santo Hermano Pedro’s remains are interred are the ruins of the old Franciscan convent that used to be there and a museum dedicated to Santo Hermano Pedro. The ruins are pretty extensive, covering a city block essentially, and they were surprisingly well preserved in some areas, with painted murals still intact.

Ruins of San Francisco

Paintings from the 1700s or earlier still on the wall

Doña Estela in San Francisco ruins

It was really neat to see more ruins and share the experience for the first time with Felipe’s host family, who despite being so close had never come to the ruins before.