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.