22 April, 2010
Soy Pilas Sports Camp, November 2009
18 November, 2009
Pictures
21 October, 2009
Coke from the bottle...
08 October, 2009
Photos
06 October, 2009
Beauty Pageants and Parades
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.
03 September, 2009
Of Mice and Men, Pt. 1
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...
Karma
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.