Independence Day Festivities

A few weeks ago, on September 11^th in fact, I went to Antigua for a day trip with one of the teenagers that I got to know through my women’s groups. M. is a nineteen year old from a community that is around 20 to 30 minutes away from Pachalum’s urban center (depending on the car and road conditions). She is the oldest of five siblings and has just recently started middle school after her grandparents gave her permission. In almost all the communities outside of Pachalum, there are elementary schools for K-6^th grade. After 6^th grade, a lot of students stop attending school because their families cannot afford to send the children to school in Pachalum, or because they do not see the value of continued education. This was the case for M. – after finishing sixth grade she stayed at home to help out her grandparents and even though she wanted to continue studying, her family did not have the money to send her and did not see the value in sending girls on for higher education. Right before I came to Pachalum, the volunteer I replaced went to speak with M.’s family and convinced them to let her study, so this past year M. has been coming to Pachalum once every week (Saturday school is a popular option for middle and high schoolers here) to study Primero Básico (7^th grade). M. pays for her education through money earned selling catalog products in her community and teaching literacy classes. With the volunteer I replaced she went to Antigua for the first time in her life a year ago, and ever since I have gotten to know her, she has wanted to know when we can go again. Despite the pretty bad road conditions, we decided to go on September 11^th and we were lucky since it did not rain until we were almost back in Pachalum. Last year when M. went to Antigua for the first time, two of her cousins came along, but in the course of the year both have gotten married and one just had a baby and the other is pregnant, meaning traveling is no longer an option. Of all the girls I invited to go visit Antigua (in all my communities I have teenagers who I invited), M. was the only one who got permission. I hope that in the dry season I can organize a larger trip to go back to Antigua or to some other cultural location and take girls from the communities along with me since very few of them get out of Pachalum.

M. and I did the regular tourist circuit – we went to the church of San Francisco where the body of Santo Hermano Pedro is buried, visited the Cathedral ruins, went to the market and central plaza and for lunch – McDonald’s!

Cathedral in Antigua

With M. at McDonald’s

On Sunday, September 12^th, I went with a group of friends to Mixco Viejo, the ruins 13 km outside of Pachalum. This was my third visit and the first time that I saw Mixco in full bloom since my previous two visits were during the dry season. It was very sceinic and beautiful, but if you look closely at the photo you will notice in the background the mountain has a long reddish line on it. See it?

Mixco Viejo

It is in the middle of the photo in the background under the clouds. That mountain, a dormant volcano actually, is known as Tun Kaj, is in the department of Baja Verapaz and is the source of Pachalum’s water. The red line that is hard to see is a huge mudslide caused by the excessive rains and illegal logging on the mountain. The mud slide went down the mountain on the weekend of September 18^th and destroyed two of the six sources of water, and damaged the four others, leaving Pachalum with very limited water supplies for around five days (luckily, there is a tank at my house, so until I heard from other people I did not realize we were in a shortage). It is ironic to be stuck without water when it is literally pouring every night, but thankfully the weather cleared up enough for fifty volunteers to climb up to fix the tubing. We are still in a compromised position, so water conservation is being encouraged in all households and neighbors must all pay a token donation to help fix the tubing.

On September 15^th, Guatemala celebrated its 189^th Independence Day. In order to celebrate there were some antorchas, some altars to Guatemalan cultures made at schools, and BEAUTY PAGEANTS! As I mentioned previously, I am officially on the judging circuit now, and I particiapted as a judge in two more elections. On Monday September 13^th, I was invited to judge the beauty pageant for the pre-school/K election of Reina Infantil. There were four candidates and four places, so everyone won something.

Candidates for Reina Infantil in Traje Típico

On September 15^th there was a parade of all the schools, with the beauty queens from every school in the lead for their schools.

Reinas Infantiles at Independence Day Parade

After the parade, there was a civic ceremony in front of the municipality, and all the beauty queens almost didn’t fit on the stage!

With friends by the stage

So many beauty queens, so little space

The rest of the day I went to check on my radishes, which are happily growing! I am worried that all the rains and overcast weather will stunt their growth, but so far they seem to be progressing well.

My radishes

On Thursday, September 16^th, I was invited to another Independence Day celebration for a community that just recently opened a school (Independence Day activities were coordinated in all the communities by the school, and they began on Monday and went through Sunday, depending on the school’s scheduling). The community I went to is very small and I had been invited by a mother to take photos of her daughter giving her title of Srta. Independencia to another girl. Since the community is small, I was considered a guest of honor and sat in front to watch the investiduras (handing over of crowns) and then the actos (song and dance routines by children of the school). My favorite acto was a group of four girls who danced son, a typical dance of Guatemala. The smallest girl on the right was the most pilas – she was the bounciest and most energetic of all the bunch.

Girls dancing son in Tres Palos

After the actos, marimba – the national instrument of Guatemala – was played and some of the children danced.

Children dancing in Tres Palos

On Saturday, September 18^th, I served as a judge again, this time for the election of Señorita Flor de Ciprés I. In Pachalum there are two communities that are rather large and predominantly indigenous and they hold beauty pageants for representatives of the two communities who are then crowned during the Feria Patronal of Pachalum at the end of October. The election was preceded by the elementary schools’ celebration and it looked like all the communities within an hour’s distance came out. The crowd was humongous, and among the many women present were women from Ciprés por el Campo.

With one of my ladies and daughters/nieces from Ciprés por el Campo

Big Audience

This beauty pageant was very different from the other ones I have attended – the candidates came on stage in traje típico and all carrying a traditional item – a candle, a basket, or a tapete. They sat and then spoke to the audience, did a traditional dance with their item, and then had to answer questions. It was a nice ceremony, there were no wardrobe changes and their clothing was beautiful, but sadly the audience did not appreciate our final choice (the reason that I keep being asked to be a judge? Others do not want to do it since people get angry at decisions made.) Despite the audiences’ discontent, I had a great time at the event and after the ceremony I stuck around to dance marimba.

Candidates

Now that Independence Day is over, life is back to normal, and I am back to my main job – working with women’s groups. Right now I am teaching business basics in three communities. In one of the communities I work in, the house where we meet has an adobe oven, so we took advantage this past week to make pizza and it turned out AMAZINGLY! Until the next time, bon apetit and happy end of September!

Pizza Masterpiece

Work work work

Some of the cute kids I live with and cousins in a pool

The past week and a half were work-filled – both in the muni and outside. After serious campaigning to be taken into account as a judge on the beauty pageant circuit, I was finally invited to be a judge for the Teacher’s Departmental Games (teachers from all over Quiché came for a few days to Pachalum to participate in sports championships, the teachers who win are then sent to Regional Championships). No activity would be complete without some beauty pageantry, and so my fellow PCV site-mate, Tiara, and I, along with the wife of a local politician, were invited to serve as jurors. We were told to arrive promptly at 7pm, the start time of the event. When we arrived, the stadium was empty and the crew was doing sound check, so Tiara and I decided to walk the catwalk and then waited around until 845 when the event finally started!

Working the catwalk

Observing the candidates

I have continued going to my four women’s groups a week, and just recently taught my mom’s chicken recipe – Pollo a la Kati – which was well received by all who tried it:)

Pollo a la Kati in Las Minas del Cipres - note the stove - it is a stone slab where they set-up a fire and put a grill on top. Nobody can stand to be in the kitchen for an extended period of time because the smoke is really toxic. Estufas Mejoradas projects (improved stove projects) help build stoves with stovepipes to avoid this type of pollution.

My attempts at home gardening have been really enocouraging thus far as well, my little rabanitos (radishes) are growing strong despite the deluge of rain on an almost daily basis. I have yet to see the radish part, but the leaves are growing tall and I have been telling them to grow in Hebrew, Spanish, and English, so my radish salad will soon be organically homemade!

Grow little ones, grow!!

The first weekend in September, I helped set-up for the quinceañera of the granddaughter of my host-family. Quinceañeras are a Latin American celebration much like the Sweet Sixteen in the United States. For Catholics, the celebration includes a special mass at church where the birthday girl is attended to by 14 maids (like bridesmaids), who represent the fourteen years of the girl’s life. The ceremony is really like a wedding, and my host family, which is Evangelical, did a similar celebration – with fourteen girls as maids and a special culto (the religious service for Evangelicals) to conmemorate Arilyn’s conversion into a woman.

Arilyn with fourteen little cousins representing her fourteen years of childhood

I have been to two

There was lots of cake, I wanted to try

On Sunday, after the quinceañera, I went with a friend and family to the corn fields they have down by the river in San Vicente. Corn planting season began right after the first rains, in May, and at this point most people are waiting for the crops to dry out to pick the corn and de-grain it. Corn is grown and saved to make masa, or dough, for tortillas, and extra corn is sold. Usually beans are planted in between the corn rows since the two plants have a mutually beneficial relationship with the bean vines grow around the corn plants. My friends’ family have some beans planted, but in between most of the corn rows, they planted sesame seeds since it is a very valuable crop (they are planting it to sell) so we went down to the corn fields to make sure that weeds and corn husks were not covering the little sesame plants in order for them to get sun to grow. We headed down at 7am and I was fine working from 740am to 915 or so, but at that point the sun got way too hot and I retired to a shady tree and degrained some corn that had fallen off of the stalks (most of the corn will be picked in late October after it is fully dried out, but those that fall off now need to be retreived so that they do not rot).

Around midday the row clearing was done and some beans were picked and I helped clean those up as well. Black beans grow in pods and look just like string beans from the outside. We took the beans out of the pods and threw them in a hat to make chepes (like tamales with beans mixed into the masa) at a later date. The beans were absolutely beautiful, ranging from white to a deep purple since they were still tender (not black yet).

Picking beans

beautiful AND tasty

Finally, last week I had the highly stressful but ultimately satisfying experience of putting on the first women’s leadership conference in Pachalum. Over 70 women from all 33 communities in Pachalum were invited to the event, which I started planning before I went to Israel, to come listen to two speakers from NGOs in Guatemala about women’s rights, leadership, and civic participation. Two weeks ago, I was concerned that few women would show up since an event like this has not been held before. To ensure maximum participation, letters were personally addressed and delivered to all the women invited, and then the day before the event all the women with phone numbers on file were called as a reminder. Unfortunately, weather did not agree with my original plans leading to a last minute monkey wrench. For those of you not keeping up with the news, Guatemala has had a rough rainy season. After last year’s dry winter, this year has been really wet with Tropical Storm Agatha hitting the country hard very early in the season. Usually the worst storms of the year are during September and October, so the fact that Agatha caused so much destruction early on means that Guatemala’s already poor infrastructure is even more compromised. Before recovery efforts were fully complete, more storms came through the country and caused mud slides all over the country, causing damage to roadways and homes and making travel dangerous. When it rains in Guatemala, it pours HARD, and since it happens on an almost daily basis, the land has gotten and stayed saturated. Thanks to deforestation, the land cannot handle all the rainfall and as a result, mudslides and erosion on the roadways led to the declaration of a State of Emergency last week during a particularly hard storm.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/09/06/1810853/death-toll-44-in-guatemala-mudslides.html

The rain has made one of the main roads out of Pachalum to Baja Verapaz unpassable, the mudslide and conditions of the road are such that a new road needs to be built. This meant that one of my two invited speakers from Rabinal, Baja Verapaz would have had to make a huge loop through to Guatemala City in order to give an hour and fifteen minute presentation. She did a cost benefit analysis and decided she could not come, informing me on Tuesday…which gave me a day to make and practice my own presentation while also figuring out logistics. On Wednesday night as I listened to the rain patter on the roof, I started worrying my other invited speaker would not be able to make it either due to more road blockages, but thankfully, the road to Guatemala City remained pasable.

Bright and early on Thursday morning, I woke up and went to the Coliseo Municipal to set-up for the Encuentro and await my participants.

Welcome Sign

The activity started a half-hour late since we waited for enough women to show up. Of the 70 plus we invited, 58 women showed up from 19 communities, a good turn-out with room for improvement. After a greeting from the mayor and my counterpart Luz María, we did some ice breakers and then I gave the first training on leadership.

Discussing leadership qualities

Women from different communities working together at a table

After a snack break, my second invited speaker from CODEFEM, a national feminist organization, gave a talk about citizen participation and women’s rights.

CODEFEM Talk

Women listening

When the activity ended, we had all the women give us evaluations on post-its (each woman got three different colored post-its and on each color they had to write an answer to a different question and then post them in front). We finished off the event with diplomas and lunch.

Writing an evaluation

Diplomas

The activity was posted on Pachalum’s website with more pictures for those of you who cannot get enough. I was really happy with the way the event turned out and feel confident that with the feedback and learning from experience that the next event will be even better. The mayor has given me the go-ahead to hold Women’s Conferences every two months, so in November I will hold the second go-around with the topics of Violence against Women and Organization. I have already started getting materials together, this time I will be better prepared for last-minute cancellations and will have more ice breakers ready to go for delays!

Happy 189^th Independence Day to Guatemala and it’s Central American Neighbors this September 15^th!

Going going back back to Pacha Pacha

It has been three weeks now since I have been back in Guatemala and life has been busy…meaning that I have fallen behind with my blogging:/ This morning I held the first (of what will hopefully be many) Encuentro de Liderezas, and it was causing me a good amount of stress…but all went well, so now I can finally blog to my heart’s contentJ I got back to Guatemala on August 14^th and immediately got back on saddle working with my four women’s groups Monday to Thursday afternoons. One surprise when I got back to the office was the hiring of three new employees who are now going to be working in conjunction with the Women’s Office. Save the Children, an International NGO, has just started working in Pachalum, and the three people hired are all youth recently graduated from high school. The office I work in now has 8 people (11 if we count in the three high schoolers who are doing their ‘practicas’ for the month of September), so it is nice and cozy, but hopefully this way we will be able to work with more of the communities in Pachalum and with Save the Children do more activities with youth.

For those of you who have not been listening to the news lately, this has been an especially wet winter for Guatemala (interesting since last year was especially dry and was the cause of food shortages). Tropical Storm Agatha occurred really early in the wet season and caused a lot of damage that was not fully repaired when the new storms started coming through. This past week a State of National Emergency was announced in Guatemala due to the bad road conditions (lots of mudslides due to deforestation along the highways and saturated earth).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-11189918

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11193592

Due to the perilous road conditions, I have been keeping it local, but limited travel has not limited my fun. Along with working hard, I have spent all my weekends in Pachalum, hanging out with friends and their babies.

A small road-trip up a dirt road that no other cars can go up due to bad road conditions. This Range Rover can take the heat, one of the most exciting rides of my life.

One day I went down to Rosy’s house just in time for bathtime!

On August 24^th I celebrated quite possibly the best birthday of all time. In the morning I went on an extra-long run, and then was called into the muni (I was not planning to go in) for a surprise birthday party! It was a wonderful surprise, with two(!) cakes, tostadas, donuts, and arroz con leche. Everyone from the muni showed up and it was fantabu-tastealicious…but since I was not prepared I obviously did not have my camera:/ For lunch, Doña Tona invited me to eat a special meal with the family, the third time since I have lived in Pachalum – the first two times being in honor of my parents’ visits.

Doña Tona at my bday lunch

All play and no work makes Athalia an over-stimulated birthday-girl, so in the afternoon, I headed out to one of my communities where I am working with the women on identifying needs in their community.

In the evening I was already birthdayed out, but my friends decided to throw a party of their own for me at one of the two tourist-centers (ie pools) in Pachalum, so off I went.

With pizza and friends at Jocote

Cake #2 - The best cake by far – chocolate!!

On Thursday August 26^th, half of the new group of PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees) from the Municipal Development Program came to visit Pachalum for their first site visit. They had some technical difficulties on the way – one part of the road is full of mud and since the Peace Corps van is not 4WD they had to get out and push! – but when they finally made it, I took them around the muni, to my house (where I fed them home-made rice crispy treats), and down to the radio station. I remember when I visited Pachalum a little-over a year ago and how I immediately fell in love with the site, so I was really excited to share my town with them and be the first volunteer they got to see in a site.

After I showed them around Pachalum, we had lunch at a local restaurant and I got my THIRD (and last) surprise birthday cake! It is pretty official, for epic birthdays with lots of food, Guatemala cannot be beat.

Cake #3 and my Project Specialist Doris

On Thursday afternoon I headed up to Las Minas de Ciprés, the smallest community I work in, but one of my favorites. In Las Minas I have been talking to the ladies about sexual education (parts of the female and male body, contraceptives, what are STDs and how to use a condom). These women had never seen a condom before, and they had no idea that contraceptives could be acquired in the Centro de Salud! After doing a contraceptive talk, we made paper necklaces and I got them to pose with their new jewlery (which is not appropriate for the current wet season, but is very fashionable nontheless!)

Mujeres con collares de Papel

On the way down from the mountain, I got stuck in some mud, which makes me ever so grateful for my Keens.

Muddy Feet

After prepping my tires to make a tire garden and a compost pile, I finally got some dirt and seeds together and planted radishes, my first of what will hopefully be many crops! In my next post I will show how my little rabanos are growing! I am very excited to make radish salad from homegrown radishes, I will continue to update you all on my progress.

Mis rabanitos

I also have done some more cruising in the Range Rover, going out to more distant communities to enjoy the sites. One weekend we headed out to Los Tablones, one of the most remote communities in Pachalum. On the way we went through a river, and finally turned back when a landslide obstructed the road.

In car going thru river

Los Tablones

Shana Tova U'Metukah to all!