I’m not all that convinced that there will be anyone who reads this due to the long hiatus between entries, but for those of you who do stumble upon this entry, I’d like to muse a little on the topic of Beauty Pageants and Parades here in Guatemala. I think I originally promised this entry about a year ago, but as September comes around every twelve months it occurred to me to try again this year.
September 15th is Guatemala’s (and Mexico’s, and most of Central America’s down to Costa Rica if I’m not mistaken) Independence day. If you add in a town “feria” or fair in Quetzaltenango (the department I live in and also the Department’s capital city) on the same day, as well as one in my training community on the 29th, and then spice it up with celebrating Children’s Day on October 1st, you have some serious partying going on.
Any celebration that has a civic connotation to it in Guatemala brings with it certain expectations. First, there must be multiple days of celebration leading up to the actual day which you are celebrating. Second, someone must be crowned something. Third, large quantities of people will spend large amounts of time standing around and watching things (including coronations, parades, lip sinking, people dancing poorly and/or drunkenly, bands playing… the list goes on). Fourth, many people will talk at great lengths about the same thing, usually with matching introductory and closing statements where every single sentient being that has ever heard of this kind of activity will be welcomed and thanked for their existence, from Almighty God to Pedro’s Great Aunt Miriam who died 15 years ago (but remember how good her sweet bread was?).
On each of the days leading up to the actual celebration different events are planned, usually getting grander with time. At my school, this means first electing a girl to represent the school for the next year as the Queen of the Student Body. To do this there must be several candidates that must participate in a beauty pageant. As an example of how intense these competitions can get, this year for our municipal fair, my neighbor’s daughter won the “Reina Infantil” or Infant Queen pageant. She is 4 years old. To practice her talents and make all her costumes, the entire school pitched in. Classes were let out at half days for the week prior to the competition so all 16 teachers could help practice the routines and speeches that my 4 year old neighbor had to reproduce. Our village has now won this competition for 5 years running, so we have something of a reputation to uphold. The whole country is enthralled by these types of events, and anything worth celebrating has a beauty pageant associated with it.
Another day preceding the celebration will usually involve one or more parades- the more important the festivity, the more parades. If you ever happen to be in Quetzaltenango around the 15th of September, do NOT plan on doing anything fast. Traffic stops for about a week while parades of students from every academic institution march around. The good ones are reminiscent of a high school marching band, the less sophisticated (like my school) walk in front of a pickup truck wired for sound. I posted a video of this on my facebook account. Click here to check it out.
Guatemalans also love competitions of other kinds, not just those involving passing judgment on beauty. Some places have horse racing, others sponsor sports tournaments. My school had a bike race one day, a scavenger hunt another, and even (my personal favorite) a scholastic bowl! When I went to my training community to visit the family I lived with while I was learning to live in Guatemala, they convinced me to run in the 5th Annual Footrace. Apparently the route the race was to follow was the one I had taken for my runs while I was staying with them. I was a little weary having not really run much in the past year, but feeling like I was in pretty good shape, I took the challenge and signed up. Upon arriving at the starting line I surveyed my competition, and I was happy to see a few middle aged men who although appearing to be in good shape, were by no means intimidating. I was feeling up for some good exercise if nothing else until about 20 minutes before the race.
While I was stretching out, four complete runners’ clubs from the capital city arrived in the small village of 2400 people. I was not pleased. The hat dropped to signal the start of the race and I fell instantly behind. Twelve kilometers (around 7 miles) later, I was the last man in the open men’s category (boy was I pissed to find out there were categories) to finish out of about 30, and the 4th to last to finish over all (edging out two 15 year old girls and a 70 year old man). My host brother made sure to follow me on his motorcycle almost the whole way encouraging me to take deeper breaths and longer strides. Had I been in slightly better shape, he probably would not have survived the run.
This might have been a bit too much sharing, but in any case, that’s where life has been for me lately. I’ll try to get in an entry by the end of the month about the work I’ve managed to accomplish despite all this merriment, complete with pictures. In the mean time, chime in; let me know what’s happening back in the Land of the Free and what’s going on in your lives. I miss you all. Peace.
My mother has always said that she can tell how busy I am by how messy my living space is. When I have nothing going on, my room/apartment/house is usually kept clean and well organized. The busier life has gotten the messier I have gotten. If I maintain a good level of activity, my living space can stay messy and disgusting for months at a time. Oddly enough, it usually isn’t the level of mess that has gotten me to finally clean house, rather getting so busy and weighed down by work that I freak out and use cleaning as an excuse to avoid the more important chores that I have awaiting me in the outside world.
Our subsequent skirmishes have mostly taken place during these wee hours of the morning, with memorable events belonging mostly to the opposition, including a narrow escape in which he scaled the back of my refrigerator, tightrope walked across the dangling electrical wire that feeds it and jumped through the hole between the block and the lamina, and a miraculous matrix-style jump where he dodged my flying rock hammer (which left quite a dent in my wall and included a slight puff of concrete dust as it hit). I have left poison and some self made traps, and have not had any exchanges in the last week, but I fear he has simply retreated to the countryside to recruit troops. In leaving my post for the All Volunteer Conference and 4th of July Festivities, I fear I am opening a very wide window for the evil forces of the FIR (Frente Invasionista de Ratones) to establish a foothold. More to come in the next issue...
My host agency office is located an hour walk away from my home, and if I want to avoid this trek I have to catch a truck at 5:30 in the morning. I make the journey three times a week, and usually carry my desayuno tipico with me to prepare at the office. As the trip is a rough one where I am stuffed into the back of a semi-trailer with between 50 and 100 finca workers, I am always worried about breaking my eggs during the journey. The solution I have employed to safeguard against this possible morning tragedy is to carry the eggs in my pocket (I figure if my pants are a good enough place to guarder one set of huevos, why not two?). I was proud to report that until the events of this tale transpired, I had a perfect safety record that spanned almost 8 months. Three eggs a day, three times a week, for 24 weeks means that over 200 eggs had been successfully transported in this manner and arrived safely in my belly.
On the morning in question, I arose at my customary hour, grabbed my back pack, put my huevos in order, and set off for work. As I was locking up my front gate, still groggy with sleep, I noticed a rather large spider crawling on my leg. I moved quickly to exterminate the stowaway, which proved to be the beginning of my undoing. I slapped my pant leg, killed the spider, and also crushed one of the eggs in my pocket. I had to reenter my house, change pants and deal with the mess on my leg. By the time I had completed the clean up and made it to the place where I normally catch the truck into the finca where my office is located, I found I had not arrived in time and needed to employ alternate transportation, my feet. This set back compounded my tardiness, and by the time I arrived at the finca offices, I was already an hour and a half late for work.
Being the Christmas season, I was looking to purchase some gifts, and as my office is located inside a coffee finca, fresh coffee seemed to me to be a natural choice for regalitos. I entered the office of the finca administrator and requested the goods. He was able to see that I was pressed for time, and hastened to fill my order. I reached into my pocket to pull out some billetes, and out fell another egg, right onto his office floor. Two down. After apologizing profusely, and being rather begrudgingly forgiven, I began the final assent to my office. Upon entering the building, I passed the kitchen and left my final hope at breakfast, my last egg, sitting on the counter. I went to my desk and set about catching up on the work that I was now two hours late at beginning.
So the idea that I was going to try and get better at communicating through this blog was apparently just a bunch of steam. We’re almost through the 7th month of this year and this is only my second entry. Pathetic. Let’s see if I can at least partially redeem myself with a rundown of what has happened between the end of March and now.
Visitors
I continue to be blessed with visits from people back home. In April, My Uncle Scott, Aunt Angelica, cousins Marcos and Nicky and friend of the family Penny Barr came down to spend holy week in Guatemala. Holy week is by far the most festive time down here, as every town has their own special traditions for celebrating the week before Easter. I think they had a pretty good time, and I am hoping to be able to post some of their thoughts on their time here soon.
In May, Matthew Burris and Ashley Poust, two of my very close friends swung by for a visit. We spent most of the time hanging out in my village and I think they got a pretty good idea of what my daily life is like. They showed up at the very beginning of the rainy season, so they even got one or two days taste of what happens here in town when the rain is drowning everything: a lot of sitting around in the dark.
I’d like to brag a little that I am getting very good at showing people around now, so if you are reading this and think you want to come down and see what’s going on for yourself, let me know soon. It doesn’t seem like it some days, but I really don’t have much more time that I’ll be down here. If you want to visit me, you have 8 months left…
Birthday
I celebrated my 25th birthday with a trip to the water park. I convinced a group of fellow Peace Corps Volunteers and a few of my local friends to accompany me to the large water park about 10 miles from my house. One of the store owners I know was able to get all of us in for free (otherwise it costs about $10). It was really great, and incredible that such a ritzy place exists so close to where I live.
4th of July
So every year the Peace Corps Volunteers of Guatemala get together for a professional conference spanning two days and then a picnic on the 4th of July to commemorate our country’s independence. This year, I was on the committee to plan the conference and the picnic. The 8 of us on the committee brought in about 20 speakers from other organizations all across Guatemala and put on a conference about how to coordinate with these organizations to get work done in communities that we as volunteers are calling home for 2 years, and then threw a picnic with sporting events for the 200+ volunteers and staff that make up Peace Corps in Guatemala. It was a lot of work, and incredibly difficult to coordinate especially with the 8 of us spread all throughout Guatemala, but we got it done and I think people learned a lot and had a great time. My crowning achievement was having the US Ambassador to Guatemala show up with his 2 sons and participate in our soccer tournament.
Work
So over the past few months work has not slowed down at all. On top of all that fun stuff I just reported on, I’ve been busy in the school writing grant proposals with the Director to try and get money to use all of the bottles that we have collected to complete a circulating wall around the school. Last week I got notice that USAID had approved our Small Project Assistance (SPA) Fund grant, and so we will begin construction of the wall in September.
I’ve therefore been spending most of my time at school passing around to the classrooms and trying to make sure all the kids are cooperating with the teachers and bringing in their share of bottles, and plugging into various other activities including an Earth Day celebration, Mother’s Day celebration, and a lot to do with our town “feria” (the celebration of our municipality’s patron saint).
Up at the volcano observatory, we’re still trying to figure out ways to improve our capabilities, but I have been training the observers on how to use our gas monitoring equipment so that they will be able to keep up observations no matter who is working with them.
Trip to the States
I’ll be back in the US from the 3rd to the 23rd of August, but I won’t have a phone number to speak of, so try sending me an email and I’ll try to get in contact with you. I’ll be posting photos soon as well. I miss you all and hope that things are well. Peace.
"Everybody else just calm down. This financial meltdown will affect you ONLY if you own a house or are paid in currency." ~ Steven Colbert
Thank goodness. I rent and am paid in birds (Quetzales is the national currency, and they are also the national bird).
I meant to post this very soon after I heard it back in October, but one thing kept coming up after another. Before I knew it, I had let almost an entire quarter of a year slip by. This in no way means that nothing has been happening down here; on the contrary things have been busier than ever. The ironic thing was that I had put off updating this blog until I got internet access towards the end of October, but since I’ve been back online it seems like I actually have less time to post pictures, update the blog, and write emails than before. I used to have to budget my internet time very specifically, whereas now I can chat with friends, check news, and even use skype to make video calls back to the states from my bedroom. I’ve actually become much worse at responding to correspondence!
So I think I last left off with tales of Jared and Jimmy’s visit. October was a tough month. My best volunteer friend here went back to the U.S., so it was a little rough figuring out a new support system for days when I just needed to vent, but everyone has got to move on. It was kind of a wake up for me that even though it seems like I’ll be here for an extremely long time, 27 months is not forever, especially looking at it from the end of month 11.
October was the last month of classes for the year, which meant that it was pretty much impossible to get anything done other than help the kids and teachers prepare for final examinations. From 4th grade on, the kids need to pass these exams to move onto the next grade, so there was a lot of stress. That didn’t stop us from celebrating Día de Niño (Children’s Day) on the first of the month, and then we had a lot of parties celebrating the year during the last week of the month after Finals were graded and we were waiting for the graduation ceremony. They have a Graduation for the 1st graders and the 6th graders, and somehow, I ended up helping about 18 guys tie their ties. Most of them had never worn one before.
Through an amazing donation from the Sunday school classes at First Presbyterian Church in Elgin, I was able to go with the director of my school up to Quetzaltenango to buy a TV and DVD player for the school to use next year. The teachers were absolutely thrilled, as this means that they will actually be able to play movies and show clips to the students next year. I’d say about half of the students actually have Televisions in their homes, but the children’s programming on Guatemalan Broadcast TV is pretty poor and basically limited to Dragon Ball Z and Yugi-Oh, so the possibility to watch something educational will be something completely new. We had some money left over, so we decided to use it to buy some DVDs and a few more books to add to the collection that was also sent by First Pres earlier in the year. These added resources are really going to make a difference in the quality of education that the kids here in Las Marias will be getting, and I would like to pass on the many thank yous from the faculty and students here back to everyone at First Pres in Elgin. I will be taking pictures of the students and school again when classes resume in January, so be watching for the TV you all bought!
The end of classes meant that I had a bit more free time, so I took a little vacation the weekend of Halloween and went to visit a friend of mine from Michigan Tech who is serving right across the border in Peace Corps Honduras. He lives about a 15 minute walk from some really great Mayan Ruins, so we explored those, and then went to a Halloween party. It was neat getting to meet a different crowd of Peace Corps Volunteers, talk about similar challenges, and get some new ideas.
I spent a good chunk of time in November in and around Mexico City as part of a conference on volcanic gases. Michigan Tech was able to put up the money to send Jemile Erdem who is working at Fuego and me, and we both learned a lot. It was neat being able to go back to a city that I knew. We got a chance to put some of what we learned into practice with a two day field trip to Popocatépetl, a big volcano about 40 km south of Mexico City.
I spent a week in Antigua at an In-Service Training session for Peace Corps, and it was really nice to see my host family and some other far away volunteers again. However, returning from that trip meant celebrating my first Thanksgiving away from my family, but with the help of some other volunteers, we made the best of it by cooking an entire dinner here at my house. It was actually perfect. We didn’t have a football, but we did have a Frisbee, so we played a little Ultimate. The next day we went swimming out at my river, which is heated by the lava flow coming off the volcano.
December has already been super busy. I’ve been doing a lot of preparation work getting ready for a pretty large field campaign that will start the 28th of this month, the same day as my friends Annie and Ryan’s wedding back in Illinois. I’ve spent some time hiking and scouting out some locations, and I also went up to visit a fellow volunteer Kurt Bradler at his site that is only about 6 km away from me, but due to terrain difficulties and bad roads it takes about 2 hours to get there in a car. I’m debating on finding out how long it would take to walk one of these days…
So that is basically what I have been up to. Please check out the new pictures I posted, and I will do my best to write soon after Christmas, but just in case, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Peace.
As I sit here scouring the internet for the best deal on the Patagonia Half Mass Bag, I reflect on my recent trip to Guatemala to visit Kyle, noting how materialism and consumerism has slow crept back into my life after a year here back in the United States. My trip with Jimmy to Guatemala was refreshing and pushed me out of my comfort zone, as I kept wondering if our chicken bus, our late night treks through the towns/cities, our hikes and our taxi and boat rides would contribute to the scary and violent statistics of crime in Guatemala. The mission in Guatemala was three-fold: 1) visit one of my good friends Kyle, making memories, 2) expand my knowledge on Latin America by visiting one of the Central American countries to experience an eyewitness account of Guatemala and 3)return to Brooke safely and free of any communicable diseases and/or parasites. With these three objectives, I commenced my journey expecting the worse but hoping for the best, and on the sixth and final day of our trip through Guatemala, I know longer had to expect the worst and by all accounts, Jimmy’s and my trip to a country the size of Kentucky was interesting, reflective and enjoyable. In this reflection I will elaborate on these three objectives and discuss how my time helped me to better understand myself. With this exegesis, I want to share with you all my experiences with Kyle.
As I discovered I had a week free some scholastic duties, I quickly turned to one of my favorite websites, www.sidestep.com to search for airfares. Lamenting previous years when I was currently enrolled in classes at Augustana and receiving e-mails regarding airfare sales in September, I was quick to look for a cheap flight outside of the US. I encountered cheap airfares to Guatemala and Costa Rica (~$400 to Guatemala and ~$285 to Costa Rica). Knowing full well I would be taking my chances with hurricane season, I booked my flight to Guatemala after consulting Kyle. It was settled, I would be going to Guatemala to visit Kyle, to see what exactly he is doing. Much to my pleasant surprise, my good friend Jimmy called four days before the trip to let me know he would be accompanying me to Guatemala. Recently returning from Argentina, I did not expect Jimmy to accept my invitation, but I am quite glad he did and must state that he is a perfect traveling companion.
Kyle in Guatemala
Upon landing in Guatemala, Kyle was there to greet us with chicken sandwiches from the Guatemalan fast food chain, Pollo Campero (Country Chicken). Amidst our excitement to see each other, we piled into a cab with negotiating a price. Upon arriving to our destination, Kyle asked what the cost of the 10-minute trip would be, and the taxi driver replied 70 Quetzales (~$10)—an exorbitant amount when obtaining travel in Guatemala. Kyle argued with the driver and after a heated exchanged that included Guatemalans from the street there in the middle of Zone 8 in Guatemala City, Kyle ceded his fight to obtain a lower price after the fellow Guatemalans started telling the cab driver that the price of the ride should be even higher. The cab driver won fair and square; we had forgotten to negotiate a price. Sadly, being an American, we would find price increases towards us Gringos to be common practice on our trips. This is not an isolated experience in my travels in Latin America, and furthermore, Lonely Planet does a terrific job emphasizing the importance of negotiating a price. This exchange between Kyle and cab driver helped elucidate Kyle’s comfort level and acclimation to Guatemala. Being comfortable enough to argue in Spanish with a cab driver in one of the most dangerous cities in the world demonstrated this to us. After a five-hour bus journey on a Pullman, a chicken bus and a microbus, we arrived to Kyle’s site, Las Marias—a small pueblo of two thousand people, equipped with electricity and running water. Jimmy and I were soon to note a trait that had developed in Kyle, his ability to talk aloud to himself in English. After seeing Kyle’s dwelling, we came to understand why Kyle would occasionally talk to himself. His two room concrete walled home with kitchen and porch was sufficient and in Guatemalan standards, an arguably nice place to live. Next to his porch, stood the outhouse, which included such amenities as a half functioning toilet, a cold water shower and a window giving view to the front gate. It is important to note that this window is not covered by anything nor has any glass. After the rains, dirt finds its way to the floor the shower, which made it quite difficult to feel zest fully clean. Later, Jimmy and I found out that even Kyle wears sandals in his shower, something Jimmy and I didn’t do . . . bring on the athlete’s foot and/or warts. Finally, concluding a description of Kyle’s place, one must mention that the roof is covered with tin laminate, that his sink is outside, that his property covered with fruit trees and that it is home to some wicked little bugs that give some itchy little bites. Kyle does have a stove that serves several purposes. If you want to know what those purposes are, ask him. He is quite ingenious.
Kyle’s community seems to adore him, especially the children. Working in the school, he spends a great deal of time with them, and the kids cannot seem to get enough of Kyle, sitting at his gate calling out, “Arturo, venga!” (Kyle goes by his middle name--or his alter-ego-- in Guatemala. Kyle is too difficult to pronounce in Spanish and is not a common name.) Everyone greets him as is common practice in Guatemala, and the children even play Hopscotch outside of this property. While he is not in school, Kyle has the awesome responsibility of monitoring the local volcano Santiaguito. Taking us on a three hour trek, we accompanied Kyle up to his observatory located in the Finca El Faro (The Lighthouse Plantation). This plantation is home to shade grown coffee, macadamia trees and banana trees. The plantation has its own coffee processing plant and eventually the coffee beans end up in the hands of Starbucks. The next time you are drinking Starbucks, as Kyle says, we may have urinated on the coffee beans you are drinking. So, if it tastes a little funky, you can blame us. At the observatory, which is staffed 24-hours a day, Kyle showed us the instruments they use to monitor the volcano’s activity. The volcano is active, and before the cloud cover set in, we were able to see it emit a cloud of ash and whatever the scientific vocabulary Kyle uses to describe the cloud’s composition. The volcano also discharges a volcanic ‘mud’ as Kyle explained, which often comes down the river and enters the finca. You are able to see how the banks of the river have been eroded by this hot mud and how dangerously close the finca workers live to the cliff’s edge down to the river. The finca’s owner has decided not to relocate the workers’ living quarters and prohibits Kyle from educating the workers on the dangers of the erosion. Hopefully some day the owner will set aside his ambitions toward profits and relocate the workers to safer ground where they will not slide into a river 100-feet below. When not observing the volcano Kyle is educating the village and the children about their active neighbor and developing evacuation plans for when the volcano becomes upset. Finally, is worth noting that the finca is incredibly well maintained, clean and even has its own attempt at recycling. A person caught throwing trash on the ground is fined when inside the finca. This is in sharp contrast with the rest of Guatemala as trash is found everyone. In Kyle’s village there is no garbage collection, and as we did one day, Kyle has to carry out his trash to the nearest big city to dispose of it there. Needless to say Kyle seems to be one of the only ambitious members of the community who try to dispose of their trash correctly. Kyle expressed to us his goal of implementing an effective way for the village to collect and rid themselves of their non-biodegradable trash. However, the infrastructure in his village is that of the rest of Guatemala: inefficient, insufficient, in disrepair and often absence.
Kyle has seemed to bond well with the other volunteers; though, it is not hard to like Kyle and enjoy his company. It was good to hear his laugh. While I know other volunteers may read this, I must acknowledge that the group Kyle associates with is a very diverse group of individuals who Kyle may or may not have been close friends with if he were in the United States. However, in Guatemala, they all seem close and function as support system for each other, discussing their frustrations and joys in Guatemala. Jimmy and I had the pleasure to spend three days with Joey, one of Kyle’s close friends in Guatemala, and he is definitely a ‘keeper.’ He is incredibly friendly and has a great sense of humor, providing the source for Kyle’s laughter.
Kyle’s attitude seems to be quite positive given the adversity that comes to living alone in a foreign country. He has established a good relationship with the community and has found ways to cope with his solitude by reading books, playing video games and going to bed early. He looks forward to the weekends he enjoys with his fellow Peace Corp friends, and the volcano seems to be a constant source of energy and excitement in his life. It is also very important to mention that Kyle has found positive ways to help cope with these stresses; he has avoided alcohol and other detrimental coping mechanisms. This is truly admirable and demonstrates the character Kyle has. He is a great representative and model citizen of the United States.
I must acknowledge Kyle’s spending habits because as a Peace Corp volunteer he is paid a livable Guatemalan wage, no more and no less. This has led Kyle to watch his finances closes, as evidenced by his argument with the cab driver in Guatemala City. However, other elements of his frugality surfaced in the course of our trip. When deciding on transportation, Kyle always opted for the chicken busses—the cheapest means of travel. Sitting three adults to a seat in these old former American school busses often still with stop sign, we bumped our way along the Guatemalan roads and highways. Even on my offers of covering their transportation costs on the more luxurious private microbusses, Kyle would retort, “Why would you waste our money on those when the chicken busses will take us there in about the same amount of time?” However, Kyle did splurge (and when I say splurge, he was willing to spend more that 5 quetzales ($.75)), he would use his money on food—a wise investment if I do say so myself. However, Kyle still could not escape his American consumer past as he bargain hunted for a leather messenger bag to hold his belongings and notebooks. For him, money and finances seemed tight, and he was constantly aware of his budget and meeting it. His monthly MS Excel spreadsheet acted as evidence as his frugality. His budgeting will serve him well as he returns back to the US and encounters the temptations of a consumer and materialistic society—something that I try to fight every day.
Thanks Jared!
Jared List is currently a Masters Student studying Spanish Literature at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. We went to Augustana College together.
When I say cheap, I mean you can spend as little as $135 per week plus the cost of airfare. What’s the catch? Well, what I’m offering isn’t so much a vacation as an experience. You will be sacrificing a whole lot of creature comforts, especially if you are above 5 feet 2 inches tall. Of course I am not limiting visitors to those who wish to rough it for a week; I would be more than happy to show anyone around the country I currently call home. However, going on my first experience with visitors this last month, I have come up with a set of “suggestions” that will make any visit run more smoothly.
Although Guatemala is roughly the size of Tennessee, the mountainous terrain and the generally poor road conditions make travel the largest obstacle in the country. For example, although my home is located only about 100 miles away from the capital, the journey takes me usually between 4 and 5 hours. Other trips that look close on a map can often be much longer due to unexpected construction or road blocks (both natural due to landslides and manmade because of minor protests).
There are only two ways to get around Guatemala: the cheap way, and the expensive way. The cheap way is the way I do it, on a camionetta a.k.a. chicken bus (think decked out school bus with luggage racks inside and out and ladders on the front and back for the helper to climb up and down while the bus is moving). These are slow and uncomfortable, but by far the most reliable means of transportation in the country. They leave sometimes in accordance with a schedule, but more often than not when they are full. By full I do not mean 57 person capacity, I mean three to every seat and two people standing back to back in the isle. It gets tight. If you chose this way to get around Guatemala, make sure you bring only one carryon bag, preferably nothing bigger than a 40 L hiking bag. If you cannot survive on what you can fit in one of these for the time you are here, you MUST choose the more expensive way. I just wouldn’t be able to handle the stress of more luggage than that on these busses.
The second way to get around is to rent a car or hire a driver. If you want to see half of the cool stuff in the country, you will absolutely need a 4 wheel drive vehicle with good clearance. The more beefy the shocks the more comfortable your ride will be. I hear going rates for a pick-up from Avis is around $60 a day, but I’m sure you can look online and find something cheaper. I am not sure how expensive it is or what the details are for hiring a driver, but I would be able to find out if you wanted to look at that route. I would be able to drive for you as well.
I should mention that there are also shuttles that one can hire to transport you around some of the country’s tourist hot spots for those of you who think you are all cool because you can read a guide book. Take heed of their warnings about these shuttles: they are often unreliable and many times the drivers will try and cheat you. I dislike these shuttles other than to and from the airport out of Antigua.
As far as food and lodging goes, the options are similar to those in the transportation category, but I trust the mid range a lot more. You can stay in hostels for as little as $3.50 a night. These will be clean and safe, but you will be sharing a bathroom and sometimes not have hot water. There are lots of hotels in the $35-$50 a night per person range, and I consider these to be absolutely luxurious – to most people they will probably be on par with a Holiday Inn Express in the states. Of course there are also more expensive places, and I can recommend some to you if you need me too, but I have no personal experience with them whatsoever.
A meal can be between $1.50 and $4.00, but with an American appetite you will probably not be full afterwards, it took me a while to adjust to the smaller portions, but I have also lost 15 lbs since I arrived and I haven’t been sick for more than a day, so maybe for a week it would be worth it. These meals are mostly sanitary, but may make you sick if you have bad luck. Gambling with food sanitation has become second nature to me, and I like to think that my belly is a little stronger than most. More expensive but %100 safe food will range between $4.00 and $8.00 (McDonalds and Wendy’s fall in this category), and of course there are nice restaurants with fancy food for more money (I occasionally treat myself to a $14 meal at Chile’s in the capital, and I hear there’s even better food that that in some restaurants!).
A quick note on drinks: the beer sucks and it is expensive, about what you would pay in the states. This is due to the fact that there is only one company that makes beer in the whole country, and they actually became a monopoly by buying the only bottle manufacturing outfit in the country and then refusing to sell bottles to anyone else. The mixed drinks are a bit better and may be a price break for those of you living life in the big cities of the U.S. of A., but for those of you used to frequenting small town family establishments, you are better off waiting to imbibe until you return home.
Admission to most of the places I would take you will be ridiculously cheap as compared to what you are most likely used to, and I am available to help anyone on any budget to plan your ideal trip to the Land of Eternal Spring. I unfortunately do have some restrictions I need to work around if you would like me to accompany you on part of or the entirety of your journey. These restrictions all basically branch out of the singular and inescapable fact that I am a Peace Corps volunteer. First off, if you want me to help show you around, give me all the notice you can. I need to manage vacation days, not to mention I actually have a job that I am doing down here, so the more notice the greater the chance that I can spend more time with you. Second, I am a “volunteer” and as such am given roughly $275 by the government of the United States of America to survive on every month. Remember when I said I occasionally eat at Chile’s? That $14 is 5% of my monthly wages. Out of this sum I pay rent, utilities, food costs, transportation costs, and any other incidental expenses that may come up, which is why I am thoroughly unversed in the high rolling side of Guatemala. That being said of course, I have also seen and done some amazing things so far on this budget, so it is by no means inadequate. It does mean though that I cannot afford to spend a whole week or two eating Wendy’s and paying for private bathrooms.
So there you have it, my personal travel warnings for Guatemala. One more thing I should mention, but this goes for almost any trip you might be planning: don’t bring anything you aren’t prepared to replace. I’ve had a string of bad luck recently with theft, and I would consider it irresponsible on my part not to say something. If you bring a camera or something, make sure you can carry it on your person at all times, and some kind of money belt or a special pocket for holding valuables (credit cards and passports) is advisable.
I love having visitors and I promise I will do everything I can to help make your trip amazing, but I don’t want to give anyone any false impressions. Tickets down here can occasionally be cheaper than domestic flights, so pick your favorite fare tracker and get down here! If nothing else gets you down here, I live next to an ACTIVE VOLCANO and I pass the coffee that you will be drinking at Starbucks next year on my morning walk to work! Peace.
September has been a very busy month. I have actually been doing a bit of traveling thanks to a lull in school activity and a visit from some friends from the U.S. of A.
I got a chance to visit the ocean for the first time since I have been in Guatemala, which seems strange since I can see it on clear days on my walk to work. I joined up with a group of friends traveling to the coast, and we met up in Antigua early one Saturday morning to head down to the beach town of Monterrico. After lounging around for the afternoon, we set out on a hike to find some Leatherback turtles that supposedly were leaving their ocean homes to lay their eggs on the beach. We had gotten sold on the hike by a local guide who promised detailed information and who seemed to be very knowledgeable about these marine turtles. However, when the time came to head out hunting, he ended up leaving us with two teenage kids who didn’t know a turtle from a log and ended up just asking other people on the beach who were collecting the eggs themselves. This was a bit shady, because although they all assured us that they were collecting the eggs to sell to a hatchery in town that was set up to combat egg poaching, no one was writing down any information or even seemed to be taking good care of the eggs (they carried them in plastic shopping bags). After a good 45 minute hike up the beach and passing two nests, we finally found one female who had just started laying. The guy who had found the turtle first had “dibs” on the eggs, but he let us watch and even catch the eggs as the female deposited them in the nest! This was an extremely weird feeling, and especially being uncertain of the fate of the little guys, I’m still not sure that I recommend the hike, but if the babies end up in the hatchery and not in some Capitaleño’s soup, it probably is a good thing that these people are doing.
The second week of September was my school’s week long celebration of Independence Day. We spent four days doing talent shows, a scholastic bowl, a beauty pageant, and a field day. I was privileged to take part in all the festivities, and it actually was pretty fun. On Friday we had a running of the Antorcha, which commemorates the arrival from Mexico of news that Guatemala had won her independence from Spain. To celebrate this, I got up at 3:30 in the morning to supposedly leave town at 4 AM. Well, what I had forgotten is that although the teachers at my school are usually very punctual, we were dealing with other Guatemalans. So the bus that we had chartered for 4 AM showed up at 5 AM. I boarded the bus with my teachers and a whole bunch of students and their families, and we set off for Panahachel, at town on Lake Atitlán. We arrived at about 9 and had until 2 to enjoy the lake and the tourist town. I ended up hanging out with my director and the other male teacher while all the female teachers bought tourist trinkets. We left of course an hour late at 3 PM and didn’t get back to our town until 9 PM. When we arrived, about a kilometer out of town I got off the bus with all the students and some of the parents. Several of the students had makeshift torches that were constructed of coffee or soup cans screwed onto branches or broom handles. Inside they placed cotton whetted with gasoline, which were then set ablaze and handed to the 8-12 year olds. The kids then set out running and blowing whistles or screaming at the top of their lungs. We ran through the whole town, about a 3 km run, as people stood by the side of the road cheering. This apparently served as a summons to the school, where the winners of the talent shows reenacted their performances and all other winners were recognized individually. Following that, we had a dance party in the school yard, and I finally went home and fell asleep with my clothes on at 11.
The next day I left site again, this time not until 5:30, and headed into the Capital to pick up my friends Jared and Jimmy (fellow Augustana Alumni). We headed back to my site for a few days, took a brief tour of Xela, and then we even took a day trip to Lake Atitlán and back to the town of Panahachel again. They came bearing gifts: a replacement camera!!! It was purchased by First Presbyterian in Elgin, and I really don’t know how to thank them enough. It’s amazing that the congregation could be so generous, and I am humbled by the interest that my home congregation has shown in my work down here. I’m incredibly blessed to be supported by so many people. To those of you from church that are keeping up with me via this blog, I really can’t thank you enough for such an incredible gift.
I think that Jimmy and Jared enjoyed their trip despite a lot of uncomfortable traveling, and I sure learned a lot about hosting people. I’ll be including a little list of things to consider if you want to visit Guatemala in a separate entry based mostly on our experiences. For my part, it was great to have people from home come visit and experience a bit of my life. I think the main thing that their visit did for me was verify exactly how crazy I have become in the last 9 months. I must be pretty well adjusted to life here, because things like jumping on a 5 hour bus ride where my knees are literally under my chin or walking for an hour and a half to get somewhere seem second nature to me. My sense of time has completely changed, as was evident by my absolute inability to give accurate times that a journey would take; most of my traveling involves leaving someplace at dawn and going until I get there, so trying to incorporate multiple destinations in a single day really taxed my logistic skills. I also realized that I have been getting very upset over very small amounts of money, like when a bus tried to change one Quetzal more per person on our ride up to Quetzaltenango. One Q is like 15 cents. I should probably let that stuff go, but when you live your life on $275 a month, and 2Q is one percent of your monthly income, 15 cents seems like a lot larger quantity of money.
After an early morning trip to drop off Jared and Jimmy in Antigua, I headed back north on the Panamerican Highway to Santa Clara La Laguna which is the site of a fellow Environmental Ed volunteer to celebrate Joey’s birthday. We had a cake and even a little spontaneous dance party in the kitchen. It was really nice, and I think Joey had a good time. The next day we headed up to Chicamán for a welcome party for some of the new volunteers in the department of El Quiché, and with hopes of a river tubing trip, but due to recent heavy rains that wasn’t in the cards. It was a nice weekend though, despite the heavy traveling, with the only down part being the robbery of my external hard drive which I had been carrying to send some data to the volunteer I replaced. It was in my backpack which I allowed to be put on the roof of a microbus because there wasn’t room inside. It would have been fine, but the driver kept stopping to allow people to climb on the top of the bus, and one of those passengers happened to have a razor blade they used to slash open my backpack and steal the hard drive and my USB pen drive as well. At least every time I get robbed I have less to lose; if someone wants to rob me next time they are going to have to bring a truck, because the only things I have left worth stealing are my bed and refrigerator!
This week is finally a return to normalcy for me, and a chance to rest my aching spine by staying off of busses for awhile. I returned yesterday to a celebration at the Basico (think Junior High) in my site. They were commemorating their 4th anniversary of being a school, which basically involved a beauty pageant, but with a twist as it also involved two male contestants competing for a separate title. The categories here were sportswear, talent (mostly dancing while lip-singing), evening wear, and speech. The moms in the crowd really went nuts for the two guys. Check out another upcoming entry devoted to the oddities of Guatemalan beauty pageants. Tuesday and Wednesday there were parties all over town, and fireworks going off every so often. Judging by the focus around the Catholic Church, I deduced that it was some kind of holiday, but asking around town no one knew what holiday it was, just that it was the 24th of September. At about 7 PM on Wednesday night I started hearing a lot of big fireworks, so I decided it would probably be a good idea to go for a walk. I got up to the church and saw a procession starting its walk, so I almost impulsively joined in. I’m not really sure where that instinct came from… maybe I’m adjusting even more than I thought I was. On that note, Peace.
On Friday the 20th of June, we had our Teacher’s Day celebration. This consisted of going to a restaurant with all the teachers from our municipality and having a lunch and some presentations of awards. Of course, I am in Guatemala, so we also had to perform for one another. I was actually up in front of everyone twice, once with all of my teachers as we performed a dance to Thriller (check it out… ridiculous!) and the second time I was pulled up without knowing what it was for with my director. As it turns out, we had to prove our masculinity with a “campesino yell.” Think the high pitched crying noise that one might hear in a ranchera song, very stereotypically “Aaaaiyy Haaa,” and you’re just about there, you just have to add a gringo doing it in front of 500 of his “peers.” I won a clock, although I am not sure that it was because I was best, only the most unique.
On June 25th a small group from Michigan Tech arrived to try and get some work done on Fuego and Santiaguito. We spent the day getting supplies and arranging last minute details and on Thursday the 26th we set off for Fuego. After some mighty driving by one John Lyons and about an hour and a half hike we arrived to our camp site in between Acatenango and Fuego. From there we would climb every day up the side of Fuego to our observation point on La Meseta with a great view of the cone… or it would have been if it hadn’t been so blasted foggy. We spent Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday nights camping and each day we set out full of hope that today would be the day that the clouds would part and we would be able to see the volcano and get some work done. Unfortunately it is the rainy season here in Guatemala, and we were under a tropical depression the entire time we were on the mountain. We had about an hour of actual visibility, and the rest of the time we sat in the clouds with all of our equipment waiting for it to clear up. The Care Bears, Rainbow Bright, and any other beloved cartoon characters that I grew up watching are liars; living in the clouds is not fun. It is cold, windy, and boring.
We were originally going to head immediately to Santa Maria to try and get some thermal images of the Caliente dome of Santiaguito, but due to our less than great prospects of actually being able to see the dome from the top of Santa Maria due to the lingering tropical depression, the group decided it would be better to try their luck a little later in the week before they had to head home. This meant that I was able to attend an all volunteer conference at our training center in Santa Lucia on “Working as a Professional in Guatemala” as well as go to the fourth of July party that the Peace Corps had for all of us volunteers. It was a great time and the first chance I have had to see a lot of fellow volunteers in one place. There are kind of a lot of us for such a small country, but everyone seems pretty active at their sites, so I guess we are doing something right. I just need to try and remember a lot of new names…
On Sunday I did end up making the trip with the Michigan group up Santa Maria. We left Xela at 11:00 PM and started our ascent in hopes that we would get some good pre dawn images of the dome without a lot of ambient heating of the ground from sun light. We arrived at the top around 3 AM and set up a tent to protect us from the wind and dampness because, you guessed it, it was cloudy. We sat in the tent until about 8 AM when we finally gave up and got ready to head down again, utterly defeated. Graciously, the clouds decided to give us a break and we got about an hour of observation time in and hopefully some good shots with the thermal camera.
I got back to my site on Monday at around 3 in the afternoon, and my neighbors spent a good amount of time teasing me that they thought I had left for good (I was gone 12 days and I had told everyone what I was leaving for and to please watch my house). After I was home about two hours my neighbor from behind came to my door asking if by any chance I had seen an “animalito” anywhere in my house since I had been back. This intrigued me, so I asked what kind of little animal she thought I might have seen in my house, and she replied, “A duck.”
“Well, no, I don’t think so. I imagine I would have noticed a duck in my house, the house is not very large.”
“All right, well, if you see it, will you catch it and bring it over?”
“Sure Doña Sofia, I’ll bring your duck if I see it.”
Thankfully the mystery was solved about 15 minutes later when the duck turned up at my next door neighbor’s house. It was a close call though, because two of the dogs seemed to be ready to make off with the thing like a chew toy, but they couldn’t get to it because it was hiding behind a piece of discarded fence material. There’s never a dull moment in Las Marias.
Another fun story, there is a nick name that gringos have for the bluebird school buses that traverse the country and serve as our main form of transport in Guatemala: Chicken Buses. Now these buses are referred to as chicken buses because they are used to transport everything, from people to, well, chickens. I have personally experienced many chickens running underfoot on these buses, as well as dogs and pigs tied to the roof racks among other assorted oddities. However, on my way to Xela this weekend I had my first experience of riding on a bus where there were more chickens than people. I noticed a funny smell when I got on the bus at my stop, which isn’t in itself anything out of the ordinary. For this reason it took me a good five minutes to realize that all the boxes in the over head racks and under the seats were filled with about 50 newly hatched chicks each, and that these “animalitos” were responsible for that high pitched squeaky sound I had originally blamed on the bus itself. Ah livestock…
Our training group has our “Re-connect” conference next week. This is basically a chance to bring us all back in and talk about how the first three months of service have gone and make sure that none of us are too crazy yet. And after that, I fly home to celebrate the matrimony of Jared Paul List and Brooke Lindsay Allen. I’ll be stateside for about 7 days, from the 23rd at 9 PM until the 30th around 8 AM, so if you call my old cell phone number, odds are I will answer it during those times. I’m already seeing it as a whirlwind trip, and I will try to see as many people as I can, but if I miss you, please know that it was not on purpose. I’m going to be a little lost adjusting to all the bright lights and fancy machines of the United States… I hear they have these machines that control the climate of entire houses, and these other ones that wash dishes all by themselves. I hear there’s even one that runs around a house and sucks up dirt right out of these things called carpets… crazy. It’s been a little over six months since I’ve been home last, which might not sound like much, but I am a little worried that a week isn’t going to cut it. Wish me luck, and maybe I’ll be seeing some of you soon. In the meantime, here are some new pictures. Take care! Peace.
Life continues here in Las Marias, but things are getting busy. Two weeks ago my APCD (read boss for people who aren’t required to speak in acronyms) visited my site and met with all of my counterpart agencies and me. He told me he was happy with my progress thus far and left me and my counterparts with lots of ideas for directions in which our work can go. In the school, we scheduled a day for a teacher workshop. At the observatory we set up a plan for a possible community outreach program, and at the mayor’s office I was invited to be part of the planning committee for the new municipal disaster plan. All in all it was a very productive visit.
So heading into last week I was very excited to get a good start on work. Then Alma and Arthur decided to pay Guatemala a visit. Up to this point, I have become very accustomed to afternoon rainstorms putting an early halt to the day. However, waking up Monday morning and going to school in a decently heavy rain and finding neither teachers nor students was a bit perplexing to me. School apparently is canceled when it rains because the pounding on the tin roofs of the classrooms make verbal communication and thus teaching and learning nearly impossible. This may seem like a logical solution, but the effect is somewhat more impressive when one considers that there are only two seasons in Guatemala: rainy and dry. It rained all day on Monday and Tuesday, so I couldn’t go up to the observatory to work either. I received notice from Peace Corps that due to bad road conditions I was put on Standfast, meaning that I was not permitted to leave my site. So I wound up sitting on my porch reading books and waiting for the rain to stop. Let’s just say that I hope we have two years of light hurricane seasons.
The rain finally quit about 4 PM on Tuesday, which was good because I was supposed to have a meeting with our Village Council at 6. I arrived on time, everyone else was there by half past the hour, and we started the meeting. I noticed that none of the women members were present, which was slightly out of the ordinary, but with all the rain I wasn’t sure what extra responsibilities the women of the house might have and so I figured I just missed something. By 7:30 we had finished all the business items, and all of the sudden the ladies showed up carrying a huge amount of food. It turns out they had planned a birthday dinner for me, complete with cake, firecrackers, and the traditional “Happy Birthday” song sung in bad English. It was a wonderfully warm gesture and left me feeling very grateful to have been placed in such a great community. I was only sad because I didn’t bring my camera and the only pictures I have were taken on my phone.
Unfortunately, a great day was followed up with some really hard news. One of my best friends in Peace Corps is being Medically Separated from our program because she had an allergic reaction to peanuts. Although she was cleared for service initially, the Washington medical office decided that the reaction was severe enough to bring her home. There is still a slight chance that she might be coming back if she can appeal the decision, but the chances are pretty slim. The decision leaves me not only very sad to be losing a terrific friend and colleague, but also a bit angry and apprehensive about the way Peace Corps Washington handled the situation. If a prior condition acting up is grounds for Medical Separation, despite the commitment of the volunteer or the economic investment of the government, it makes it hard for me as a volunteer to feel secure and supported in my work here. She literally found out Wednesday of the decision and is flying home on Thursday. A complete life change in the span of a week seems to me cruel and unjust, not to mention a pretty sorry way to show appreciation for someone who was willing to train for 3 months to serve her country for 2 years.
I have begun actually presenting lessons in the school this week. I am excited by this because now the teachers and students alike are able to see me doing something productive rather than just hanging out a few days a week. I think the students responded very well, and the teachers told me that they thought I did a good job presenting. I was impressed by the students’ levels of interest and by the teachers’ commitment to working alongside me while we both presented the lesson. Many volunteers aren’t so lucky.
I had a meeting last week with my principle and the president of the village council and we had a meeting with all of my teachers today, and we will be embarking on a community trash collection program/construction project. We will basically be having students collect garbage, asking them to pack the garbage into plastic pop bottles, and using these accumulated bottles to build a storage shed for the school. The director and the president had seen an article in the paper about another group of Peace Corps Volunteers who helped to make an entire two room school out of bottles and decided that this would be something they wanted to get done in our community.
The teachers will be teaching the kids to fill up the bottles correctly on Friday, and each student will be responsible for filling one bottle with trash from the community each week from now until the end of August, at which point we hope to have around 4,000 bottles to build our shed. My job between then and now is to figure out what else we need other than bottles to get the job done. The challenge for me is that there were three volunteers working on the bottle school, whereas there will only be one working on the bottle shed…
So begins June. I’ve officially been in country for 5 whole months, which to me seems at the same time too big and too small a number. I’m sure that sensation will not leave me for the rest of my time here. I am thrilled to know that as of writing this entry the Cubs have the best record in baseball and are also the only team to have not lost three in a row this season. What a great 100 year anniversary, let’s just hope they keep it up. Know that I am jealous of anyone who can spend time watching a baseball game on TV, almost as jealous as I am of people who can eat a nice grilled steak. I’ll be home in July for a week and you can bet that I will be trying to get as much of those two things as I can. In the meantime, I hope everyone is well, and I have really appreciated all the emails, keep ‘em coming! Peace.
