Travels with Daddy

This past week I had the extreme pleasure of having my first visitor here in Guatemala – MY DAD!! It was a very exciting week, and I took tons of photos, so once again I will do a photo montage of the past week and a half or so with commentary.

My dad arrived on Friday February 19^th and taking advantage of my cuello (literally collar, figuratively high standing) in the municipality, I was able to get a ride to pick him up at the airport and take him back to Pachalum.

On Saturday after visiting the market, we decided impulsively to go to Antigua for a night, so we hopped on the 1030am bus out of Pachalum and started our first adventure. I am not a very spontaneous person, which made the suddenness of our trip really liberating. We arrived in Antigua around 1pm and my dad wanted a typical lunch, so I bought some avocadoes and salsa from street vendors, got some tortillas from a corner store, and took him to the ruins of the convent on the side of the Iglesia de San Francisco (where Hermano Pedro is buried and where Mamatina took me to eat on my last weekend with her for being an obedient daughter, and I do quote – obedient). Lunch was tasty, and then we went into the ruins and had our photo taken by some religious pilgrims.

With Dad in Iglesia de San Francisco

After lunch dad and I went around the center of town, got sucked into some artisan markets where I showcased my impressive bargaining skills (note: to be a good haggler pay no more than half the price initially offered and be willing to walk away).

Textiles in Antigua

On Sunday morning dad and I returned from Antigua to visit Mixco Viejo with my friend Geidi from the office and her family. On the first bus, from Antigua to San Lucas, people kept piling on until the ayudante could not even move around to collect fares. My dad found the experience exhilirating, like a clown in a clown car, and he wanted me to take a photo (which a great way to get robbed). On a later bus I finally gave in and took a photo of my dad riding the chicken bus, gives a limited sense of how cozy it gets in there.

13km before reaching Pachalum, my dad and I got off on the side of the highway and walked up a hill to reach the ruins of Mixco Viejo. Since we did not go aroudn with a guide, I have absolutely no idea about the history of the place, but it is huge and the ruins are very similar to others I visited in Mexico (Mayan style).

With dad in Mixco Viejo

Photo Shoot at Mixco

It was truly amazing how well preserved the ruins were, and the views from the top of the hills was breathtaking, though we were informed that Mixco is even more impressive in the winter when all the trees are in bloom and everything is green.

On Monday it was back to work for me, so I left my dad at home and went out with Ada to visit my Women’s Group in Cipres por el Campo. This women’s group had indicated that they were interested in having family garden plots, so I took Ada to talk to them about how to get started. On Monday morning we went around to 10 houses or so checking over the plots that the women had prepared and planting cilantro, lettuce, broccoli, and cabbage. I really enjoyed hoeing and planting, I hope to cultivate a green thumb while I am here, since the results are tangible.

Later in the week I took my dad along to visit two women’s groups with me and we also had a few meals with friends from the community. On Thursday, we had lunch with my host family, my first time eating a meal with all of them, and then we went back to Cipres por el Campo for the official weekly meeting.

Lunch with the family

My Women’s Group in Cipres por el Campo is very enthusiastic, almost all the women are related to each other andthey bring their kids along for meetings, and they really want to learn. The previous volunteer worked with them for almost her entire time in Pachalum and I have been trying to figure out what new things I can do with them to give them value added. In order for them to get more projects I proposed that they become a formalized women’s group (that is, that they elect a steering committee and register officially with the municipality) in order to get more projects for their community. For the meeting about forming a group we had more women show up than ever before – 17 plus children!

I was really excited about having elections, but then this past week when it came time for the elections, only 8 women showed up and we left the elections pending – it seems that the concept of democracy is not fully clear. Women did not come because they were afraid that they would be forced into a position of leadership and have to spend money going to meetings in Pachalum…so I am feeling a little bit discouraged about how quickly we can get the women organized, but hope springs eternal and the técnico from the Municipal Planning Office who went with me told me that this happens a lot and that we will give it another try.

On Friday, dad and I escaped for our final weekend together to visit Chichicastenango and Panajachel. Chichicastenango is a municipality in Quiche that is famous for its markets on Thursdays and Sundays. It is a municipality that is overwhelmingly indigenous and along with the traditional municipal authorities, it also has indigenous authorities. There is a strong tradition of mixed religious beliefs, with a church that has no pews but rather pine-strewn floors with offerings of incense. Dad and I walked around and saw some really beautiful textiles, but other than that, there was not all too much to see, so we headed out after around two hours to Panajachel.

Huipiles en Chichicastenango

When we arrived in Panajachel, visibility was really poor, it was overcast and cloudy, so we walked around and I showcased my bargaining skills once again. Saturday morning was beautiful and clear (and once again on Sunday it was very clear in the morning and then throughout the course of the day it got increasingly overcast).

Atitlán

After visiting the shore, where we could see the three volcanoes around the lake, we headed out of the center of town to visit a nearby nature reserve. The nature reserve used to be a coffee plantation close to the lakeside and along with trails and a butterfly sanctuary, it also has monkeys! Dad and I walked up the side of a hill, sat and watched the monkeys, went around a waterfall, and then down to the lakeside. It was really beautiful and had some enormous flowers.

Reserva Natural

In the afternoon, some PCVs came and met up with my dad and I and we ate papusas and walked back down to the shore, where already the cloud cover had obscured the vistas of the volcanoes.

On the lake

With Tiara and Shani

On Sunday, dad’s last full day in Guatemala, we went on a boat tour of three different towns around the lake. The towns we visited were nice enough, but if not for their location they would have not been too exciting. One thing that was really neat to find out was that even though all these villages were really close to each other, they speak different languages. In Panajachel and some of the other towns, the indigenous language is Kachiquel, while in Santiago Atitlan, they speak Tzotzil. All of the languages are completely unintelligable to me, so I had to take my guide’s word for it. My favorite part of the day was sitting on the boat and watching the water and volcanoes.

Reconnecting

Since I last wrote I have kept busy both in the Pachalum and around Guatemala (getting out!) Following are some photos of the past two weeks with summaries of some of my recent endeavors. Hope you enjoy.

A woman with four of her ten children in El Jute after interviewing her for the Chicken Project

This month I continued to go out to the communities to do interviews for the Chicken Project, and it got harder as the weather has really ramped up. To get to this woman's house, we had to climb a hill and all I could hear was my own breath as I huffed and puffed my way up under the hot sun...at 10 in the morning! The woman in the photo has ten children and lives in a stick house, definitely one of the more worthy candidates for receiving chickens.

Girls from Las Minas learning about Sex Ed

My girl's group in Las Minas with at-risk girls is going well, with about 8 participants and a few little kids who come along to listen. The first week I talked about self-esteem and the talk was ok, but not stellar. The next two weeks we invited along our local Cuban doctor to talk about reproductive health and sex ed and it was really interesting - the girls even asked questions and I learned a thing or two.

Company on one of my trips to visit houses in the campo for the chicken project

Some of the best company I have had on my chicken visits. These girls ran me down and up a mountain, in shower sandals no less, to visit two houses. Yomira and Nayeli are cousins and come to my women's group in Cipres por el Campo, a community where all the women are sisters or in-laws and have a really neat way of talking (cantadito - kind of sing songy). At one house Nayeli forgot her juice box and realized it when we were twenty minutes up the mountain. Rather than cut her losses, like I would have done, she ran back down the mountain to go and get it, only to find out that her cousins had already consumed it! Yomira and Nayeli kept me well fed on our hike, finding food along the route, and asking me how long I was blind since I could not see the fruits that they were pointing out in the trees (in my defense, green on green is hard to distinguish when someone does not know what she is looking for).

Emilio in Montufar

My favorite baby is growing up into a cowboy

Graveyard in Las Vegas with some photo effects

I went out to visit some land to take GPS points with the forestry technician and took advantage of extra time to walk around in the oldest cemetary in all of Pachalum. Some of the graves date back to the 1800s. This graveyard is also the site of the Corrida de Cintas that takes place for Todos Santos.

CODEDE Meeting in Quiche - last Friday the mayor invited me to go along with him to the Departmental Development Commission. This was a really special opportunity to see democracy in action, and I was thrilled to be there with the mayor because he told me all about the different people in the meeting (mayors from all the municipalities, representatives from national institutions, civil society, etc). The meeting basically dealt with the huge budget cuts that have occurred and the resulting new annual budgets for the municipalities (budgets were cut by as much as half). There was good representation from women´s groups who spoke about the importance of continuing to invest in women´s projects and when mayors stood up to say how they took care of women in their municipalities the whole auditorium erupted in laughter (middle school level humor applies at all levels of government). The meeting ended with a few mayors repeatedly asking for the floor and complaining about different problems, but very little was resolved...I did get the schedule for future meetings, however, and I hope to go to more meetings over the next two years.

Celebrating African American History Month in San Martin

For Valentine´s Day weekend, I went out to visit a friend in a nearby town to celebrate African American History month. It was by far the most entertaining weekend I have spent in country so far. There was soul food, a lot of dancing, comedy dvds, and excellent company. It was great meeting old and new PCVs and we are planning on trying to meet up every couple months now in different peoples´sites to celebrate African American culture.

With Yesenia on the hammock, Valentine's Day Peace Corps love

On Monday February 15th I headed back to San Antonio to visit Mamatina and Doña Estela. It was really nice to catch up, see the kids, and eat wonderful food (Mamatina´s tamales cannot be beat).

With Estela and Daniel during my visit to San Antonio/Santa Catarina

Saying goodbye to Roberto at Reconnect all but one of the muni volunteers (there are now 15 of us)

On Tuesday we had Reconnect at PC HQ, a training 3 months into service. In the morning we got administration updates, but then the afternoon was Municipal Development specific where we all shared experiences, challenges and accomplishments. I was not especially excited about meeting, but it was actually really motivating to hear about other peoples´struggles and know that I am not the only one who has had difficulty in adjusting to life in the muni. We also had a goodbye lunch for our APCD, Roberto, who just retired after 27 years of service. Our new APCD is a really nice guy named Carlos who has extensive experience working with NGOs and who seems like a solid replacement.

Muni Council and Rachel (Jerami, me, Cara, Charlotte, and Rachel) in Antigua before Muni Council Meeting

This upcoming week I have my first international guest - my dad! I hope the next blog post will be better written and more entertaining. In the meantime, I would like to sign off by thanking my World Wise Schools program match school in Colorado for sending me a letter, Zoe for sending me soap and a scarf, and Sherri for sending me GIRL SCOUT COOKIES!!! It is like Christmukkah all over again:) Happy end of February!

Technologically Speaking

Dear faithful blog readers, I apologize for my deriliction of duty these past few weeks, but there have been some technical malfunctions along with a busy work schedule that have conspired against me. I would like to begin my blog with a heartfelt thank you to Apple Services for essentially providing me with a new computer when my hard drive died and battery malfunctioned. While I lost absolutely all information on my computer, I did not have to pay for any of the repairwork and my keyboard which was looking a bit shabby was also replaced at not cost. I was a bit depressed about losing all the thousands of photos I have taken in the past six months (the 12^th of this month marks half-a-year in Guatemala!) I have shaken myself out of my glum mood and have resumed taking an obnoxious amount of photos at all opportunities.

Besides sitting besides my computer at its sick-bed, I have also been engaging in a good amount of social and work activities. In January, Emilio turned one year old, and it was celebrated in style with a huge party replete with a prayer service (all the one year old birthday parties I have attended include some prayer, from now on I will start going late), piñata, and lots of cake.

With Tiara at Emilio’s Birthday

The birthday boy

I had a great time at the party helping serve food and drinks. Something I really enjoy that trips people out here is serving food or cleaning up in parties – they are surprised by my presence and even more so that I am cleaning or serving them. Doña Berta sells tamales from her house on Tuesday and Friday nights and the few times I have gone on those nights to help her out, people are almost uncomfortable giving me their orders. I figure with time they’ll get used to it, and if the economy stays bad, I also have good practice for being a waitress in the States.

On Sunday after Emilio’s birthday, I went down to visit one of the rivers that surrounds Pachalúm along with Geidi, an accountant at the muni, and her family. It was a great day to go down to the river since the weather has gotten substantially hotter since I first arrived. The river where we went down is pretty calm and the water was warm.

Really excited to be in the water

Returning from our visit to the bat caves

We took a picnic along with us, walked to some caves where I saw enough bats for this lifetime, and an area where tons of parrots live. We had a great time at the river and I plan on visiting again and then moving on to visit the two pools that we have at Pachalúm since the weather has not let up.

At work, I have continued to visit communities interviewing families for the Chicken Project that we are going to carry out this year. I really enjoy going out to the communities and meeting people, but it has been challenging in this weather. Luckily since mid-January the Women’s Office has benefited from the extra help of four girls who are doing their internship in our office to finish off their studies at a Home Economics high school in Guatemala City. These interns (or practicantes) have been going out to the communities every day and help us get through the interviews faster. So far we have visited 21 of the 33 communities in Pachalúm, though I have gone to maybe half. I have seen a big variety of quality of living conditions going out to the communities. Some houses look like hotels, with nice cars parked in front, while others are literally made out of sticks tied together with dirt floors. I doubt that such a huge variety of living conditions in close proximity would be seen in many other municipalities since the high level of immigration to the U.S.A. explains the beautiful big houses.

Trail between houses in one of communities

Some other aspect of my work lately has been organizing my girl’s group in one of the communities, planning for the school of non-formal education, and helping out with the handout of backpacks. Pachalúm is one of the few municipalities in all of Guatemala that teamed up with local businesses to provide all students with a backpack with school supplies. To celebrate the handover of backpacks, there was a convocation of all the students in the central elementary school and we gave out over 3,000 backpacks.

Entrega de Mochilas

The program for non-formal education, was also launched at the convocation, where the mayor told the population at large that starting next week (February 8^th) there will be a huge variety of classes offered at no charge to all residents of Pachalúm. Among other offerings will be karate, basketball, art, cooking, volleyball, hip-hop, chess, homework club, English, chorus, and flamenco taught by yours truly. I will be teaching one day a week for two hours – one class for younger girls, and one class for older girls – and the goal is to teach the four sevillanas so that when Pachalúm celebrates its Feria in July we can perform. I was feeling pretty cool about teaching classes until a few days ago when I started reviewing the Sevillanas and realized that after two years of not dancing them I most certainly did not remember all the moves. I have some breathing room to figure out what I used to know or to improvise before the girls get advanced enough to dance all four sevillanas.

This past weekend, we had three visitors come to Pachalúm – two volunteers from Baja Verapaz and one from Sololá. Two of the volunteers are from Tiara’s training group, and then Devon from my training group came as well. We went on a walk to a lookout, ate out at a restaurant, and went to a nearby aldea that was celebrating its feria.

Vista from the hike outside of Pachalúm

Volunteer Reunion

The disco at the feria was pretty tame, they only had cumbia, but there was a good group of us representing and made a good night of it. I ended up going back to the same town on Tuesday night for a concert by a famous group – Los Sementales – to close off the feria. I am definitely getting a reputation as an enthusiastic dancer. The other day when I walked by the market, the woman I buy my fruit from every Thursday and Saturday, whistled at me and told me that she saw me dancing and wanted to join me! I told her that next time she should go ahead and join in since the more the merrier. There will not be any more ferias until June, which is a bummer since durangense and grupera music has really grown on me. I will take all my frustrated desires to dance and channel them into flamenco classes until then.