Guatemala

Let's use this blog to keep up with each other! Excited to be in Guatemala, but also missing everyone! Post whatever!

Monday, June 25, 2007

Tierra Blanca



Profe Leonel is in the far left picture. I went to his house on Wednesday to meet his lovely family. Aren´t the two senic shots beautiful? I like to take my camera to Tierra Blanca because the views are great. The rest are pics of some of the students. Notice the "suck it." Definitely way too much WWF influence!


Dia de Convivio pics





From Left to Right:
1. Sandra and Maynor. Sandra is part of the family with whom I´m bonding with in my site, and Maynor is her cousin and a teacher at Parracaná.
2. Here there are 4 teachers from Xecaxjoj. Alicia, Manuel, Estela, Irma, and Irmá´s daughter.
3. Here are Irma´s children. Notice how her son looks like Nat King Cole.
4. The two women on the left are Eleodora and Leticia who teach at Parracaná. Sandra and Maynor are on the right along with Maynor´s older sister whose name I´ve fogotten.

Integration has been keeping me busy!

So I had a pretty fun week filled with a good amount of integration. Sunday I went to two church services with this new family that I´ve been hanging with. One was an hour prayer session with just the family at their house and the other was a two hour culto as they call it (no it doesn´t mean cult) at another guys house who the church is trying to convert. This family is Evangelical, and I´m discovering that the majority of people in Guatemala are either Catholic or Evangelical and that no one really knows much or have even heard of anything about other sects of Christianity let alone other religions. In some locations they have this parade during Semana Santa where someone puts on some costume pretending to be a Jew, whatever that is, and then runs through the town while the rest of the parade chases him. How wrong is that? Yes it´s anti-semetic but I don’t even think people know what Judaism is, or even realize that Jesus was a Jew, or that the Romans killed Jesus. So I went to this two hour service where an hour and 15 minutes of it was spent singing, and where the scripture readings seemed kind of shallow. By this I mean that those chosen stated how God loves us, which is important, but there was no deep analysis of the text or any application of the text to the lives of those at the culto. The message didn´t make me think, but maybe that´s the point. Despite the lacking service, I was able to meet some new people and the pastor invited me to give a health chat to the congregation.
On Monday all the schools in my district had what they call a Dia de Convivo where all the teachers meet in Xela (the second largest city in Guatemala) and eat lunch and give out some awards. The director of Xecaxjoj Irma invited me and offered to pay. I was able to bond with my teachers outside of the school setting, and meet some new people. So I was sitting focusing on my hunger pains instead of the presentations, when I heard the word norteamericana. My body tensed as I could feel all these eyes turn to me. Juan, my counterpart´s secretary, had pointed me out. So I stood up, smiled, kind of half waved, and sat down, but noooo this wasn´t enough. He asked me f I wanted to say anything, and I said no, but then everyone started clapping and chanting this word that I didn´t understand, but it wasn´t hard to figure out that they wanted me to get up and say something… and yes there was a microphone. As brief as I could be I stated my names, why I was in Guatemala, which schools I worked with, and where and with whom I lived. It wasn´t that bad, and I guess it´s a good think that they acknowledged my presence and wanted to know more about me, but sometimes it´s just too much. I was also able to meet Irma´s children. She told me in the past that they had the same skin complexion as me, but all Guatemalan´s think that the darkest person they know has my complexion, so I didn´t believe her. But to my surprise, her two oldest children are the darkest I´ve seen in Guatemala as of yet, and her son looks like Nat King Cole. Turns out that her husband is very dark, I actually think this is one of the reasons she likes me.
Tuesday I went to a K´iche class given to the teachers in my district twice a month. K´iche is the indigenous language spoken in my department of which I want to eventually learn. I learned personal and possessive pronouns, and how to conjugate verbs in the past present and future. Everyone tells me that K´iche will be easier for me to learn because the sounds are similar to English… I beg to differ.
in – I uj - we
at – you ix - they
aré – he, she, it earé – they
Some new verbs (all infinitives end in ik):
B´jnik – to walk
B´xonik – to sing (x is pronounced like sh in English)
Atinik – to bathe
Etz´anik – to play
Xik´anik – to run

Wednesday I went to Tierra Blanca and gave a lesson on Germs (Microbios). The director Leonel planned a trip down to the river for recess so I went and brought my camera. Let me just say that this was the steepest mountainside that I´ve ever traversed (even worse than the volcano) and climbing back up wasn´t fun, but I was able to get some cool shots of the kids playing around. The river water was really muddy, not something I would have jumped into, and it was clear that the kids didn’t connect my Microbio talk to the muddy river water, but I have two years to change habits. When school was out I went to Leonel´s house to meet his family. His kids were so adorable, and the family welcomed me right away. I had an amazing lunch called Caldo de Res (beef soup with vegetables), and really connected with his wife Suli who was very open minded and knowledgeable, unfortunately not a characteristic of many of the women I´ve interacted with. This visit was crucial for me because represented my interaction with another family who really opened up to me and welcomed me into their house. In contrast to the host family I´m staying with now who keep a clear line drawn between myself and the rest of the family. Wednesday was a great hump day.
Thursday I went to Xecaxjoj and gave the same lesson on Microbios to 5 out of the 8 classrooms. When I go to Xecaxjoj I come back exhausted because the school is so big and lets face it teaching is exhausting. Friday I went with the teachers of the school located in my site, where my host father teaches but not where I work, to an amusement park called Xetulul. I went on an actual rollercoaster and had some good laughs. Many times I miss out completely on jokes because of the language and cultural thing, but I actually understood a couple and didn´t have to fake laugh. I also met a Guatemalan pro soccer player Juan Carlos Plata, and all the teachers in my group made me take a picture of them with him. After the amusement park we went to a pool, and instead of bringing my bikini, I brought shorts and a tank top. It´s been hammered into my head that the culture here is very traditional, so I thought that all the women would be in t-shirts and shorts so that´s what I brought. Instead I was the odd one out, and a woman even offered her one piece to me… I politely refused. My host dad an I really don´t exchange more words to each other than Buenos dias, tardes, noches. Which isn´t what I prefer, but I don´t think he´s much of a social person. So turns out that he also went to the amusement park, but neither of us knew that the other was going until that morning when we showed up at the same place. Isn´t that bopth weird and awkward? We live with each other and don’t speak. His coworker invited me, and I´ve only spoken to her three times in my two months in site, and I see him every day and apparently am no thought of. That´s bizarre. But it´s not just me, he was the only teacher that didn’t bring one of his kids (he has 4). Oh well, I don´t think I´ll ever understand him.
So all in all a good week. I think people are starting to know me and more importantly feel comfortable with me. Poco a poco!

Maybe a little venting

My community integration has been going pretty well as of late. I found another more welcoming family to hang with. It´s not that my family isnt´nice, but that they have no real desire to talk to me, engage me, or show me around. They also have rubbed me the wrong way in the past, the following story as an example. When I first arrived to site I asked them how much they would be charging me to live there for the next three months. The mother without much care, almost as if the amount didn´t matter, said Q400. I said okay and left it at that, and she certainly had nothing more to say until pay day. So the 1st of May I pay them Q300 for my three weeks in April and Q400 for the upcoming month of May, a total of Q700. Mind you during my three weeks in April I had eaten quite a few meals with the family, but far from every meal and I had washed my clothes I think once. So the next day after paying them, the mother asks me for Q300 more to cover the food that I had eaten in April. It was in this conversation that she decided to tell me that each meal would cost Q3 and to wash my clothes would cost Q8 if I also used their soap (they have a washing machine), all this in addition to the Q400 I pay a month. I tried to argue a little bit, but I had to pay them the Q300 because I needed a place to stay, and I couldn’t really argue like I wanted to because in such a small community word could spread that I´m mean and don´t like to pay people and then no one would want to talk to me for the next two years. It wasn´t that the prices were high, but it was the principle of not having established these prices ahead of time whether in our first conversation over rent or during any one of the many meals I ate with them. What made it worse was that I added up the price of me eating three meals a day for the whole three weeks (knowing I didn´t eat nearly this many meals with them), and the price only came to just over Q200, which means that they basically got an extra Q150 out of me. That means that they made up the Q300 price, really having no idea how much food I ate, and then didn´t even do the math to realize that based on their made up prices they over charged me! It´s situations like these that make me want to pull out the “I´m giving two years of my life to help your country! If anything, you should be paying me for indirectly helping you” card. These are some of the cultural things I´m dealing with. In the U.S. prices are established up front and it is clear exactly what the prices include to avoid situations like the one above. But comparing the two cultures is a dangerous game that can lead to never accepting Guatemala because it´s not like the U.S, which is a dumb reason. Another money example. So I already described to you the bus system down here, it´s not a public system, but a private one run by several bus companies. While there are set prices, the ayudantes who collect the money can technically overcharge you and it be okay. Well of course I don´t look like I´m from the area, so many times when I don´t have correct change the ayudates will try to stiff me on my change, assuming that I don’t know how much the ride really costs. You don´t know how many times I´ve argued with the ayudantes, “Yo vivo aqui, siempre tomo ese camino, y el precio no es asi! Dime mi cambio,” or “No es justo!” I heard that another volunteer said “Dios sabe,” translated to God knows. I may use this next time to really hit at their conscious – this is a very God-fearing country. Lately I´ve simply be saying kind of with a pitiful face that I don´t have anymore money, and this works because they would never actually kick you off the bus. Here´s another example. Before I started painting my house there were some dark spots on the white walls that I wanted to cover with white paint so that the spot wouldn´t show through the wall color. The store sold me oil-based paint instead of water-based paint and not realizing this I got the paint all over my hands. I went down and asked them to help me get it off, which required only a little bit of paint thinner. They measured out exactly two eights of thinner and charged me Q6. Okay I understand that it´s a business and you gotta make your money, but two eights of thinner? Did that really cost you Q6? Did it cost you anything? Cultural nuances that Í didn´t pick up on until about the 4 or 5 month in. Yea, I´m adjusting.

Pila


Just wanted to formally introduce you all to a Pila. A Pila is essentially a sink with three compartments: one for washing clothes, one to store water, and one to wash dishes. Just about every household in Guatemala has one and I´m looking forward to mine. They are made out of cement and plastic, but mostly everyone uses a cement one. My landlord is actually trying to buy me a plastic one, which I heard isn´t as functional, because he doesn´t want to carry a cement Pila. I told him I´d help and he looked at me like I was crazy. Look, if I´m going to live in Guatemala I want to live like everyone else, and if everyone else has a cement pila and says that the cement pila is better, well then that´s what I want.

Coban



On May 18th, to celebrate our 4th month in country and to reunite with my training site mates Jill and Alexis, Alexis and I took a trip to Coban in the department of Alta Verapaz. As exciting as a trip can be on its own, I was even more excited to experience warm tropical weather, which Alta Verapaz is known for. My site isn´t exactly warm, whenever I mention my location to someone the first thing they say is, “Oh hay mucho frio alla!” Needless to say I was surprised and almost angry when the first couple of nights in site I couldn´t feel my feet! I mean the cold actually woke me up. Since then my self-warming technique has been a warm shower just before sunset, followed by a speedy dressing routine, and I´m lucky to have a warm shower – without it who even knows! The night before I reported to D.C. in January I´m glad that I had enough sense through my emotional and frantic state to pack long johns and underarmour – who knew they would come in handy in Guatemala? So I intentionally packed light for this trip. Guatemala is growing on me, but there are some things that are still just backwards – for example, why did it take us 12 hours by bus to travel only two departments north of our departure point? Keep in mind that Guatemala is comparable in size to the state of Tennessee – it doesn´t take 12 hours to drive anywhere in Tennessee!! The main reason why this trip takes ridiculously long is that the Guatemalan government has yet to construct a more efficient road, instead the highway that exists makes it so that we had to go south 4.5 hours to Guatemala City and then north another 6 hours, right makes no sense. Plus the fact that the government is doing construction on the existing highway, which is a good thing, BUT it´s only a two-lane highway… this can take hours out of a trip, not to mention that the construction is taking way too long for a highway that really isn´t that big! Alexis and I left at 7:00am and didn’t arrive to Coban until around 7:00pm. But once we got to Coban I was immediately brought back to my original excitement in being reunited with Jill, and in being swept up in the towns hype over the popular Coban Half Marathon to be held that Sunday. Coban is such a cute city! The people are much more laid back, and even though it is the department’s capital, the city is far from overwhelming. Most satisfying to me that night was the salad I had for dinner. Salads just don’t happen in Guatemala, well that´s a lie. Salads as I know them don’t happen in Gatemala. Instead they serve cucumber (pepino), onions (cebolla), and tomatoes with lime and salt as a dressing. This false salad is good, but it´s missing the obvious ingredient… LETTUCE! Salads are available but only in restaurants, which would involve me spending money that I technically don’t have. Yes they sell lettuce in the market but it looks really dirty, and even Guatemalans will say that the lettuce has bugs. Yes I could chlorinate the food, but I really don’t want to mess with bugs in lettuce. So, I thoroughly enjoyed my salad in Coban! The weekend felt like a vacation, good food, good times, relaxation, and a great chance to get to know some of the volunteers in the area. I have to take a minute to talk about the hostal we stayed at called Casa Luna. This place is so well run!! There are only 6 rooms, and the layout resembles more of a home than a hostal. It´s run by 4 or 5 men who also live there and basically keep house. This is what really got me, Guatemalan men keeping house, absolutely unheard off! Not only were they good house keepers but they were hilarious and so accommodating! We were able to get rooms there for all nights of our weekend except Saturday because of the Half Marathon the following day. Not to mention that all hotels in the area are forced to more than double their price just for the one night. So we had no where to stay, and didn´t want to pay that money. They let three of us sleep in hammocks that had just arrived that day from Costa Rica, and they let me have a bed in a room with people I didn’t know. Grateful for the bed, but not too keen on sharing a room with strangers, but as it turned out they went to bed earlier so I didn’t have to talk to them. The Half-Marathon was pretty cool, I was able to get a picture of the winner!