Brittany: “So we’ve got enough stuffing now, and we think this slab of turkey will do fine in the toaster oven, right? …we got cranberries, you brought the pie…”
Molly: “What did we decide about the potatoes?”
Brittany: “Crap, Molly, why didn’t we get that, we were just at the store…?”
Molly: “Well I mentioned it a couple times but, I dunno, I thought you had some other plan in mind, you seemed unconcerned…”
Erin: “It’s cuz you were both lost in all the luxury American foods in that ex-pat grocery store.”
Brittany: “The potatoes you brought aren’t enough?”
Molly: “Britt, I brought 3 smallish potatoes. No that is not enough to make mashed potatoes for five people. And onion, didn’t we say we were going to put onion in the stuffing with the celery for extra flavor?”
Brittany: “Aw man! Why didn’t we remember this stuff before getting in the tuk-tuk?” (= motorized rick-shaw-like taxi taking us from the city-center of Panajachel out to our friend Luis’s house)
Molly: “Maybe Luis will have onion, by some small miracle…”
Erin: “Why didn’t you guys fill me in on the plan, I had no idea we still needed all that.”
Brittany: “Maybe we can get Luis to pick up some onion and potatoes when he comes later…”
Molly: “Sorry, guys…”
Brittany: “It’s not your fault…”
Twenty minutes later, upon arrival at Luis’s house to start cooking:
Molly: “Yeah, so, it is as I feared: Luis has one pot. How the heck we gonna make stuffing, mashed potatoes, and gravy if we only got one pot??”
Brittany: “Oh no!... Maybe we’ll go ask the neighbor ladies if we can borrow, like we did the last time? Or we ask Beverly to bring a few pots when she comes? In any case all we have to do right now since it’s early is start boiling water for the potatoes…”
Erin: “This is really funny, normally the two of you are not this absent minded. I’m kinda impressed, actually, at how much has managed to slip your minds!”
Molly and Brittany: “Thanks a lot, Erin!!”
And so began the Thanksgiving odyssey of Brittany, Erin, and Molly. Though not the same as the Thanksgivings I treasure in my mind, being away from family and Grandma’s cooking, I am happy to say it all turned out fine and delicious, all crises were solved, and we three Americans were quite satisfied (both emotionally and gastronomically) by the evening’s results. Our two Guatemalan friends, Luis and Beverly, were a bit bewildered by all the stressing out that everything had to be just right; for instance the specific need to eat mush of seasoned old bread cubes, exotic canned berries that aren’t really that much to write home about, and pay so much for a slab of turkey when chicken comes at about one-tenth the price. Then when the meal was about to begin we of course bowed our heads and Brittany lead us in the tradition of everyone saying what they were thankful for, and I suspect Luis and Beverly were even more amused by our strict adherence to a ceremony they probably considered over the top. Britt began in English, unusual for someone so fluent in Spanish, but said pretty much exactly what I was thinking of saying. So when she finished and it was my turn, I gave my thanks in Spanish hoping my lack of something great to say would be masked and made up for with the it’s-not-my-native-tongue excuse. Haha.
For the record, the pie I’d made and brought in its pan two hours on the chicken bus from Toto was by faaaaarrr the best part. Not that I'm bragging...
Thanksgiving topped off, and was a lovely close to, a very, very busy month of November. And October sure flew by without me knowing it, and now that we’ve begun the month of December I realize I am frighteningly close to finishing my first year in Guatemala! Not sure how it happened, but all the same I find myself looking back, giving thanks at this most-appropriate time of year, and pondering which of the lessons Guatemala has taught me over the past eleven months are most important.
The recent month-long visit of a cousin from Canada and her fiancé provided a few of those most-valuable insights and memorable experiences, as the occasion provoked a coming-together of the extended family here like nothing I’d seen. The pair arrived one Sunday culminating the extended family’s two-day efforts here preparing the house and the paches (which are sticky rice tamales with chicken and a red sauce, wrapped in a banana leaf and steam-cooked in a huge pot big enough to bathe a few kids in! QUITE the process!). The aunts who work as teachers had, like the kids, just finished the school year, so in addition to many day-trips with the overseas visitors to the close-by attractions in this country an extended trip was planned to hit the east coast and Tikal, the famous Mayan pyramids in Petén (the jungle-filled northernmost province), among a few others. Despite the fact that it’s a pretty big extended family, they reserved a spot in the minibus for me too! So we all went, 16 of us on this week-long trip to the main wonders of Guatemala, none of which I had seen before – me and 15 Guatemalans! It was so fun! Few are the opportunities to feel as integrated a member of a family as I felt on that trip. Yes, I stood out a bit in appearance, but otherwise I felt like just another cousin on the trip with my aunts, my young cousins, my little brothers and sister – and we saw so much together! Seeing the pyramids and other remnants of an ancient Mayan civilization prompted reflections from the adults on how this was their cultural heritage but that they understood only some of the symbology they saw. Visiting famous caves in Lanquín stirred up conversations later that evening about how many of their uncles or grandfathers or neighbors had according to rumor used caves like those to hide from the forced recruitments or village attacks committed by the military in the years of the guerrilla conflict. In other words, while most foreigners visit these places, marvel at them, and move on to the next scheduled item, my visit to these famous places was undoubtedly enriched by having visited with native Guatemalans. These are people to whom these ancient places matter, have history and meaning and bearing on their current lives, in a certain sense. I doubt I’ll be lucky enough to experience something like that again!
And then I was bit by a dog. Wonderful, eh?
Normally this goliath of a mutt barks and intimidates, hounding my progress on the path that passes his backyard which I pass twice every day, but he's all talk. Or so I thought. Last sunday morning I passed his house jogging, which is nothing new, but I guess his attitude was. I tried my best firm, not scared but not overly aggressive voice, which usually is sufficient, but he lunged for a piece of my quad muscle, sinking his teeth just above my left knee. Wonderful. I stopped to assess damage in front of the next house, once he and his sidekick had turned back home, and the neighbor lady came out and saw the blood running as I rolled up my pant leg. "Ay Diooooooos!" she exclaims. No shit.
The good news is this mutt has his rabies shots! So after treating this big ol' hole in my leg (for which I probably should've had stiches, in hindsight) and trying to avoid too much walking so that it doesn't open up again, I should be good to go. But I guess he got his wish: training for the three half-marathons I've run since July certainly had me going out running quite a bit, but I won't be bothering him running past his house for quite some time now - I won't be running at all till the hole in my leg heals up! So I guess another one of those most important insights that'd make the list would be to start walking with a big stick, or several fist-sized rocks, or a slingshot, or tamales to throw and distract this guy with, all of which are tactics my neighbors have advised me of since the incident. Or maybe the best tactic is e) all of the above.
Hope you are well, Happy belated Turkey Day, and a most blessed, merry holiday season. And remember to keep them neighborhood mutts at bay!
02 December, 2009
05 October, 2009
September news - and there's lots!
Things are just getting fun now. I think the adaptation phase is ending, and I’m finally an integrated member of the community and citizen of Guatemala, making decisions differently than before and feeling like a competent almost-Guatemalan. Stressors are rolling off like water more easily, and I seem more capable of handling curveballs.
Last night was my first night back in my own room since my trip to Minnesota! I might have mentioned that my host parents decided it was the right time to invest in fixing up my half of the house, looking at it as an investment for when their kids will live there, so the walls, ceiling, and floor were completely redone in my room over the past two months. When I left for Minnesota, all of my room’s things got crammed into my little kitchen and my bed on its side in the hallway, while I slept in an extra bed in the main part of the house. It was stressful for a while living in the TV room that leads off to all the other rooms in the house. Meaning that I wake up when they get going in the morning at 5, and was often trying to fall asleep at night with someone working late at the table in the next room, who would then have to pass through my room to go to bed themselves. Also meaning that my bed was the couch for watching TV. I think to some people that sounds terrible, and some people are thinking, that doesn’t sound like a big deal at all… and you’re both right. In a certain sense, it was fun to live in the central hub, because I always knew what was going on and because the family didn’t shy away like they tend to when I hole myself up in my own room to get work done. I think we bonded more since everyone felt as though Molly was really another family member now. And I learned to a great extent how to deal without much privacy. But it was tricky not having private work space (which might speak to the lack of a blog update till now), and with family members constantly around there was no lack of distractions. I feel as though I’ve gotten very little done at home lately, apart from laundry. (Haha, yes the flea saga continues, but I shan’t dwell on that here. :) Some photos of the process: when the construction had just begun...
The finished product when it was still bare...
And now I've moved in! Isn't it just lovely??
But I have to admit that not getting work done may have to do with how busy life has been in the last month. September 15th is Guatemalan Independence Day, and here in Toto there were parades and bands and torch-bearing runs. It’s also the only day my good friend Patty from San Antonio, my training town, has off work. And you know what she decided to do with her only day off? Get on a speeding, overcrowded, noisy bus and come the 4 twisting, uncomfortable mountainous hours to visit me in Totonicapán. (For a few hours, then get in a bus again and make the same trek home the same day!) What a friend! First we watched out for Ixchel and José Arnulfo in the parade with their respective schools, and lots of other cute kids and interesting costumes and floats:
José Arnulfo, my 16-year-old host brother lookin' sharp with his classmates :)
A cool Mayan-Heritage-focused float... there weren't all that many of these actually, I think parades here are so influenced by the North American concept of parades that I see more kids dancing in converse sneaker uniforms and hear marching bands playing American pep band tunes. So this was cool to see.
I liked the flag they're carrying here, because it bears the four colors that represent Mayan cosmovision: they are the "People of Corn", and there is red corn, black corn, yellow corn, and white corn that grows here. These colors represent the blood, black hair, tan skin, and white bones from which Ajaw (the Great Spirit) composed the body of the first human being. Cool, huh?
Toto's Feria was almost cancelled this year due to Swine Flu. So I think somewhere in the negotiations with the Bureau of Health to let the show go on, it was decided that every school would carry Public Health Education statements and tips on avoiding H1N1 contagion. This banner reads "The H1N1 Flu is an illness of the Respiratory Passages" and the lesson went on from there. Haha.
And after all that, Patty and I caught a microbus up the mountain and did the trek to my house - the above picture is Patty on said trek up through the cornfield plots my family has on the mountainside.
We arrived in time to help Arnulfo make the last preparations for lunch, who also had the day off (Emiliana, however, who is a teacher, had school-related responsibilities like the kids). Patty and I started making the tortillas... and I was doing better than Patty! She finally gave up after struggling with the same ball of corn tortilla dough for about 15 minutes, and I told her not to worry about it: when I first came to Toto I couldn't turn out tortillas either because the dough has a different thicker consistency and sticks to one's hands more, making it harder! She laughed and I'm not sure if that comment coming from someone who just learned to make tortillas nine months ago was much consolation to someone who´s been making them three times a day all her life. Haha.
Eventually everybody arrived back home from their various Independence Day festivities just as lunch was ready (Chicken in Orange Marinade, a la Molly et Arnulfo!), so we took a photo of the happy occasion:
Not long after Independence Day starts the lead-up to Toto’s Feria. This is like County Fairs in the States, but instead of separate fairgrounds, the central city blocks just fill up for two weeks lined with covered vendors’ stalls and mobile restaurants who come in from all over the country. There were, however, two designated areas for all the mechanized rides that moved in for the occasion: the bus terminals and taxi stand. (You can see why traffic might have been a doubly complicated issue for those 2-3 weeks, with transit not possible downtown and public transit seriously inconvenienced even at the margins.)
Hugo, my 8-year-old host brother, enjoying one of the miniature, hand-operated ferris wheels...
The most distinctive feature of Feria is the food. The streets were absolutely bursting at the seams with rosca vendors – a rosca is a type of sweet bread that looks like a pretzel but is round, and very crunchy. (You have to douse them in coffee or hot chocolate before eating, says I.)
And peanut sellers flood the city from all corners of Guatemala, it seems… I’d estimate there were easily 30 tons of peanuts in my city in huge 200-pound sacks, being sold from every street corner downtown. And the last very distinct Feria feature are the dulces típicos that also line the streets: sugar whirls and bricks of shredded coconut available all colors, candied figs and yams, peanut and pumpkinseed brittle, various cookies and biscuits, and bricks of nougat, marzipan and apple, all glinting from their shiny wrappings. (That was a surprisingly hard sentence to write – I’ve never tried thinking of how to describe or name all of those things in English before!) I decided to start buying and sampling early on, because there were so many I had to try but NO WAY could I do it all in one sitting!
All of this was leading up to the actual day of celebration, of course. The music concerts in the central plaza had started way back on the 19th but the actual Feast of San Miguel Arcangel of Totonicapán was the 29th of September. In the buildup to the feria there were all kinds of other events and parades, including a half-marathon right here in Toto! (which was on the same day as another ½ marathon in the capital and therefore not many people showed up for the Toto half, and therefore I placed 7th in the women's bracket! Woohoo!) I did roll my ankle three days before the race, but Emiliana's brother is a naturopath of some sort, and through some very painful massage of my ankle, it was pretty much fine the next day, without using any ice! And afterwards my friend Don Nico (park guard and my running buddy), his family, and I went and walked around Toto to enjoy the Feria.
And on the very day of the Feria, we went to visit Arnulfo’s house.
My host dad comes from a more modest background, his mother not having gone to school and his sisters probably having received little. So when we go to visit his family in his parents’ house there’s usually not much of the conversation I understand since they speak k’iche’ and never learned much Spanish. The last time we went to visit was Semana Santa, Holy Week, and I felt like the elephant in the room because I was so different and didn’t know what was going on most of the time. Part of the problem, I later guessed, was that they were all in traje, the corte and huipil that the women wear. So this time… this time, I decided to wear traje, to bring a game to play like cards so we wouldn’t all just sit around bored with them just looking at me the whole time, and to try out the little k’iche’ I know with them. Maybe they’d get a kick out of the gringa’s efforts…? It sort of worked. But mostly only my host mom and siblings played cards with me; I also think it was far stranger for them to see a gringa in corte! Haha. Poco a poco, little by little we’ll get used to each other.
(A side-story to the Arnulfo's family visit: the knife we found there didn't have enough of a blade to slice the chicken we were going to make for lunch, so the grandma cleaned off the machete, and Emiliana and I went to work dressing the 15 lbs or so of chicken with the machete... classic!)
... and this is also an excuse to show more pictures of me in traje! I bought my own last week too. When I wear it, I'll put up more photos!
And in the midst of all this Feria hubbub, I’ve been trying to get a little work done in my park! And at the end of every workday, I’m getting more and more able to identify the progress I made that day and the goals for the projects I have. There have deveinite bumps in the road as far as work is concerned, but overall I love my job. We’re installing a library of ecological books and resources, we got some educational materials printed finally, I’m working on generating a birdwatching tour working to further the training of area youth as guides, and we’re designing interpretive signs for all the stations on our trail. Outside of work in the park, the natural resources board of the Communal Mayors’ Association, called the 48 Cantones de Totonicapán, and I have designed a program working with community leaders toward developing a regional trash management system. I’m well into my k’iche’ classes (although still not near conversational), and take them along with my 14-year-old host sister Ixchel – it’s fun! And while I don’t get to be in the classroom teaching (environmental education in the village school was something I had been pushing for this 2nd semester June-October, but it never happened), I’ve been “working” in the classroom in Minnesota! :) (helps to have a Spanish teacher for a sister, right?) Even though I don’t actually get to be there with her students, Michaela and I have been coordinating on how to integrate lessons on Guatemalan culture into her classes, through letters and activities I write. It’s fun for me, although the time it takes for a letter to arrive from here in an obstacle.
Other than that, I have lately been rediscovering that life here can be fun... I've been visiting other Peace Corps Volunteers and Guatemalan friends in the area with the free time I am garnering out of my schedule. One rainy day I went to have breakfast with a friend from training who lives so close to me, but I had never even been to her town. We sat three of us PCVs just chatting for the better part of the day as the rain came down sipping chai tea (a luxury imported good) and it seemed awfully healthy to do that now and then. Here's to finding rhythm in life. Hope you're enjoying yours.
Last night was my first night back in my own room since my trip to Minnesota! I might have mentioned that my host parents decided it was the right time to invest in fixing up my half of the house, looking at it as an investment for when their kids will live there, so the walls, ceiling, and floor were completely redone in my room over the past two months. When I left for Minnesota, all of my room’s things got crammed into my little kitchen and my bed on its side in the hallway, while I slept in an extra bed in the main part of the house. It was stressful for a while living in the TV room that leads off to all the other rooms in the house. Meaning that I wake up when they get going in the morning at 5, and was often trying to fall asleep at night with someone working late at the table in the next room, who would then have to pass through my room to go to bed themselves. Also meaning that my bed was the couch for watching TV. I think to some people that sounds terrible, and some people are thinking, that doesn’t sound like a big deal at all… and you’re both right. In a certain sense, it was fun to live in the central hub, because I always knew what was going on and because the family didn’t shy away like they tend to when I hole myself up in my own room to get work done. I think we bonded more since everyone felt as though Molly was really another family member now. And I learned to a great extent how to deal without much privacy. But it was tricky not having private work space (which might speak to the lack of a blog update till now), and with family members constantly around there was no lack of distractions. I feel as though I’ve gotten very little done at home lately, apart from laundry. (Haha, yes the flea saga continues, but I shan’t dwell on that here. :) Some photos of the process: when the construction had just begun...
The finished product when it was still bare...
And now I've moved in! Isn't it just lovely??But I have to admit that not getting work done may have to do with how busy life has been in the last month. September 15th is Guatemalan Independence Day, and here in Toto there were parades and bands and torch-bearing runs. It’s also the only day my good friend Patty from San Antonio, my training town, has off work. And you know what she decided to do with her only day off? Get on a speeding, overcrowded, noisy bus and come the 4 twisting, uncomfortable mountainous hours to visit me in Totonicapán. (For a few hours, then get in a bus again and make the same trek home the same day!) What a friend! First we watched out for Ixchel and José Arnulfo in the parade with their respective schools, and lots of other cute kids and interesting costumes and floats:
José Arnulfo, my 16-year-old host brother lookin' sharp with his classmates :)
A cool Mayan-Heritage-focused float... there weren't all that many of these actually, I think parades here are so influenced by the North American concept of parades that I see more kids dancing in converse sneaker uniforms and hear marching bands playing American pep band tunes. So this was cool to see.
I liked the flag they're carrying here, because it bears the four colors that represent Mayan cosmovision: they are the "People of Corn", and there is red corn, black corn, yellow corn, and white corn that grows here. These colors represent the blood, black hair, tan skin, and white bones from which Ajaw (the Great Spirit) composed the body of the first human being. Cool, huh? 
Toto's Feria was almost cancelled this year due to Swine Flu. So I think somewhere in the negotiations with the Bureau of Health to let the show go on, it was decided that every school would carry Public Health Education statements and tips on avoiding H1N1 contagion. This banner reads "The H1N1 Flu is an illness of the Respiratory Passages" and the lesson went on from there. Haha.And after all that, Patty and I caught a microbus up the mountain and did the trek to my house - the above picture is Patty on said trek up through the cornfield plots my family has on the mountainside.
We arrived in time to help Arnulfo make the last preparations for lunch, who also had the day off (Emiliana, however, who is a teacher, had school-related responsibilities like the kids). Patty and I started making the tortillas... and I was doing better than Patty! She finally gave up after struggling with the same ball of corn tortilla dough for about 15 minutes, and I told her not to worry about it: when I first came to Toto I couldn't turn out tortillas either because the dough has a different thicker consistency and sticks to one's hands more, making it harder! She laughed and I'm not sure if that comment coming from someone who just learned to make tortillas nine months ago was much consolation to someone who´s been making them three times a day all her life. Haha.
Eventually everybody arrived back home from their various Independence Day festivities just as lunch was ready (Chicken in Orange Marinade, a la Molly et Arnulfo!), so we took a photo of the happy occasion:
Not long after Independence Day starts the lead-up to Toto’s Feria. This is like County Fairs in the States, but instead of separate fairgrounds, the central city blocks just fill up for two weeks lined with covered vendors’ stalls and mobile restaurants who come in from all over the country. There were, however, two designated areas for all the mechanized rides that moved in for the occasion: the bus terminals and taxi stand. (You can see why traffic might have been a doubly complicated issue for those 2-3 weeks, with transit not possible downtown and public transit seriously inconvenienced even at the margins.)
Hugo, my 8-year-old host brother, enjoying one of the miniature, hand-operated ferris wheels...The most distinctive feature of Feria is the food. The streets were absolutely bursting at the seams with rosca vendors – a rosca is a type of sweet bread that looks like a pretzel but is round, and very crunchy. (You have to douse them in coffee or hot chocolate before eating, says I.)
And peanut sellers flood the city from all corners of Guatemala, it seems… I’d estimate there were easily 30 tons of peanuts in my city in huge 200-pound sacks, being sold from every street corner downtown. And the last very distinct Feria feature are the dulces típicos that also line the streets: sugar whirls and bricks of shredded coconut available all colors, candied figs and yams, peanut and pumpkinseed brittle, various cookies and biscuits, and bricks of nougat, marzipan and apple, all glinting from their shiny wrappings. (That was a surprisingly hard sentence to write – I’ve never tried thinking of how to describe or name all of those things in English before!) I decided to start buying and sampling early on, because there were so many I had to try but NO WAY could I do it all in one sitting!
All of this was leading up to the actual day of celebration, of course. The music concerts in the central plaza had started way back on the 19th but the actual Feast of San Miguel Arcangel of Totonicapán was the 29th of September. In the buildup to the feria there were all kinds of other events and parades, including a half-marathon right here in Toto! (which was on the same day as another ½ marathon in the capital and therefore not many people showed up for the Toto half, and therefore I placed 7th in the women's bracket! Woohoo!) I did roll my ankle three days before the race, but Emiliana's brother is a naturopath of some sort, and through some very painful massage of my ankle, it was pretty much fine the next day, without using any ice! And afterwards my friend Don Nico (park guard and my running buddy), his family, and I went and walked around Toto to enjoy the Feria.
And on the very day of the Feria, we went to visit Arnulfo’s house.
My host dad comes from a more modest background, his mother not having gone to school and his sisters probably having received little. So when we go to visit his family in his parents’ house there’s usually not much of the conversation I understand since they speak k’iche’ and never learned much Spanish. The last time we went to visit was Semana Santa, Holy Week, and I felt like the elephant in the room because I was so different and didn’t know what was going on most of the time. Part of the problem, I later guessed, was that they were all in traje, the corte and huipil that the women wear. So this time… this time, I decided to wear traje, to bring a game to play like cards so we wouldn’t all just sit around bored with them just looking at me the whole time, and to try out the little k’iche’ I know with them. Maybe they’d get a kick out of the gringa’s efforts…? It sort of worked. But mostly only my host mom and siblings played cards with me; I also think it was far stranger for them to see a gringa in corte! Haha. Poco a poco, little by little we’ll get used to each other.
(A side-story to the Arnulfo's family visit: the knife we found there didn't have enough of a blade to slice the chicken we were going to make for lunch, so the grandma cleaned off the machete, and Emiliana and I went to work dressing the 15 lbs or so of chicken with the machete... classic!)
... and this is also an excuse to show more pictures of me in traje! I bought my own last week too. When I wear it, I'll put up more photos!
And in the midst of all this Feria hubbub, I’ve been trying to get a little work done in my park! And at the end of every workday, I’m getting more and more able to identify the progress I made that day and the goals for the projects I have. There have deveinite bumps in the road as far as work is concerned, but overall I love my job. We’re installing a library of ecological books and resources, we got some educational materials printed finally, I’m working on generating a birdwatching tour working to further the training of area youth as guides, and we’re designing interpretive signs for all the stations on our trail. Outside of work in the park, the natural resources board of the Communal Mayors’ Association, called the 48 Cantones de Totonicapán, and I have designed a program working with community leaders toward developing a regional trash management system. I’m well into my k’iche’ classes (although still not near conversational), and take them along with my 14-year-old host sister Ixchel – it’s fun! And while I don’t get to be in the classroom teaching (environmental education in the village school was something I had been pushing for this 2nd semester June-October, but it never happened), I’ve been “working” in the classroom in Minnesota! :) (helps to have a Spanish teacher for a sister, right?) Even though I don’t actually get to be there with her students, Michaela and I have been coordinating on how to integrate lessons on Guatemalan culture into her classes, through letters and activities I write. It’s fun for me, although the time it takes for a letter to arrive from here in an obstacle.
Other than that, I have lately been rediscovering that life here can be fun... I've been visiting other Peace Corps Volunteers and Guatemalan friends in the area with the free time I am garnering out of my schedule. One rainy day I went to have breakfast with a friend from training who lives so close to me, but I had never even been to her town. We sat three of us PCVs just chatting for the better part of the day as the rain came down sipping chai tea (a luxury imported good) and it seemed awfully healthy to do that now and then. Here's to finding rhythm in life. Hope you're enjoying yours.
19 August, 2009
Missing...
Although seven months hardly feels like it merits the reward of a trip back home to Minnesota (when compared to the twenty months that remain), return home I did – the pretense was a close friend’s wedding. I arrived on a Wednesday afternoon to a sister dancing to see me in the airport, dinner at Kay’s Kitchen, ending by visiting with grandparents next door late into the evening. And that right there is a small sampling of the kinds of things I did for those ten days I was home, the kinds of things a true-blue Minnesotan does to… well, enjoy limited time in Minnesota! And it seemed odd, this oasis of all things familiar and comfortable spliced into my otherwise foreign current life. Such a brief and fleeting reality! But a wonderful one. Going home really felt like I just slipped back into myself. I’ve heard it said that culture is like the water fish swim in: we don’t realize we’re in it, until we’re not. Grampa, this one’s for you: I felt like Big Mouth Billy Bass, and someone finally took me to the river and plopped me back in the water!
I think on any adventure there are times when we wish like hell we were home. Kids at summer camp feel like that, no matter how much fun they’re having; Voyageurs trips feel this way; I’d guess most folks serving overseas in the military probably know what I mean. We start wondering what we’d be doing if we were home, making mental lists of the things we miss, maybe pondering the first thing we’ll do when we get there. Yes, I feel like that sometimes here in Guatemala, too. And think, Oh! How wonderful it will be to be home, sweet home! And, well… it was! It was absolutely perfect – or pretty dang close.
But this was the first time in my life that I’ve had that wish granted of going home in the middle of one of those adventures only to hit the trail again, so to speak, and pick up where I left off. And maybe it’s good that we are rarely granted that wish, to abort the mission and return, however briefly, to whatever place or person or state of mind that is “home”- you might find yourself wishing you were still adventuring or, conversely, you may find your resolve to return to the task at hand considerably weakened. I think both happened to me. The time spent with family and friends was so meaningful and filled me up overflowing with gratitude for the blessings I’ve received in my life, particularly the people in it, that I started to wonder what’s the point in abandoning all of this to try and make a life in Guatemala. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? Wouldn’t it be great to just stay here, and continue to have great conversations with siblings, grandparents, neighbors, old friends, to continue making these great memories instead of only remembering ones from long ago and far away?
I’m no authority on the typical emotional processing of ex-pats or PCVs in specific, visiting home… but I would say that’s probably THE question that they ask themselves when the vacation home comes to a close.
But I’m nowhere near ready to be done with Guatemala! Strange as it sounds, I missed my host family the whole time I was in Minnesota. I woke up the first several mornings around 6, late for me in my Guatemala life, and found myself longing for the bustle of activity and flurry of humorous conversations normally filling up that time of day. I was almost waiting to hear Arnulfo say “Good morning!”and make me laugh, and I missed having somebody (i.e. him) to run with. I missed the way Guatemalans say “Buen Provecho!”after every meal to give closure and thank everyone for the good food and good company. I missed the humor and irony of certain commonly-used Guatemalan phrases and ended up teaching them to my family because they kept slipping out! (and then I’d just get funny looks from people when Spanish accidentally came out… actually, when in an American restroom once, someone rapped on my stall and asked if it was occupied and I responded with an emphatic Sí!) I missed the cooperativeness of making food together and learning from each other, maybe especially because everyone in my host family takes a lot of interest in good food and how to prepare it. I missed hugs from my host siblings (and I got REALLY good ones from Ixchel and José Arnulfo when I arrived home on Sunday!) I missed mountains and crazy erratic topography – I actually caught myself staring at the Minnesota horizon and thinking, Now wouldn’t this be better if there were some mountains over there? just more interesting, just one little mountain range over there in the distance? I missed the slanting afternoon light in the mountains and how cool it looks when it sometimes filters through the clouds clinging to the hills down below my house, and the way clouds sometimes crest the mountain and come cascading down on our house like a waterfall. And though I complain about the cold, I missed the cozy thickness of my 3-4 blankets and snuggling in for the night.
Speaking of nights, Minnesota nights are so still and quiet! I was astounded to awake in the morning and think – I didn’t hear a single thing all night! Boy, I tell you what, I did NOT miss those dogs barking up a war outside my windows or the roosters announcing a dawn that’s still 3 hours away, nor the cats pouncing on mice and making a racket in my ceiling. And I didn’t miss the fleas!! (They’re breaking records now: I think it took them a day and a half to find me anew, bug repellent lotion and spray apparently irrelevant.)
And while I will surely sit and ponder homesickness and absence and the heart growing fonder these next few months – weighing these against fleas, barking dogs, and numb toes, mind you – it has become apparent just how much Guatemala is becoming part of me. or how much I am becoming part of Guatemala. I surely have innumerable days at the Roske Cabin at the lake, countless visits to Kay’s Kitchen or the SJU Refectory if I want them, many a chat with grandparents and neighbors and friends awaiting me in my future. But how many times do I get to play in a rock-paper-scissors double-elimination tournament with Hugo, Ixchel, and José Arnulfo? How many opportunities will I have to listen to Emiliana’s stories of all the protesting and campaigning she did back in the day to win women’s rights or get funding for public education? How many more chances will I have to go running with Arnulfo in the mornings? How many deluxe-chocolate birthday cakes will be baked before it’s time for me to return to my American reality for good? Not all that many, in the grand scheme of things. In the end it’s all about counting one’s blessings… and I’m blessed enough to have plenty to count both in Guatemala and in Minnesota. It’s nice to be reminded of them now and again, and thinking of it that way helps me not miss home too much. Besides, spend all my time missing things that are somewhere else, and I’m sure to find I’ve missed out on life here.
I think on any adventure there are times when we wish like hell we were home. Kids at summer camp feel like that, no matter how much fun they’re having; Voyageurs trips feel this way; I’d guess most folks serving overseas in the military probably know what I mean. We start wondering what we’d be doing if we were home, making mental lists of the things we miss, maybe pondering the first thing we’ll do when we get there. Yes, I feel like that sometimes here in Guatemala, too. And think, Oh! How wonderful it will be to be home, sweet home! And, well… it was! It was absolutely perfect – or pretty dang close.
But this was the first time in my life that I’ve had that wish granted of going home in the middle of one of those adventures only to hit the trail again, so to speak, and pick up where I left off. And maybe it’s good that we are rarely granted that wish, to abort the mission and return, however briefly, to whatever place or person or state of mind that is “home”- you might find yourself wishing you were still adventuring or, conversely, you may find your resolve to return to the task at hand considerably weakened. I think both happened to me. The time spent with family and friends was so meaningful and filled me up overflowing with gratitude for the blessings I’ve received in my life, particularly the people in it, that I started to wonder what’s the point in abandoning all of this to try and make a life in Guatemala. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? Wouldn’t it be great to just stay here, and continue to have great conversations with siblings, grandparents, neighbors, old friends, to continue making these great memories instead of only remembering ones from long ago and far away?
I’m no authority on the typical emotional processing of ex-pats or PCVs in specific, visiting home… but I would say that’s probably THE question that they ask themselves when the vacation home comes to a close.
But I’m nowhere near ready to be done with Guatemala! Strange as it sounds, I missed my host family the whole time I was in Minnesota. I woke up the first several mornings around 6, late for me in my Guatemala life, and found myself longing for the bustle of activity and flurry of humorous conversations normally filling up that time of day. I was almost waiting to hear Arnulfo say “Good morning!”and make me laugh, and I missed having somebody (i.e. him) to run with. I missed the way Guatemalans say “Buen Provecho!”after every meal to give closure and thank everyone for the good food and good company. I missed the humor and irony of certain commonly-used Guatemalan phrases and ended up teaching them to my family because they kept slipping out! (and then I’d just get funny looks from people when Spanish accidentally came out… actually, when in an American restroom once, someone rapped on my stall and asked if it was occupied and I responded with an emphatic Sí!) I missed the cooperativeness of making food together and learning from each other, maybe especially because everyone in my host family takes a lot of interest in good food and how to prepare it. I missed hugs from my host siblings (and I got REALLY good ones from Ixchel and José Arnulfo when I arrived home on Sunday!) I missed mountains and crazy erratic topography – I actually caught myself staring at the Minnesota horizon and thinking, Now wouldn’t this be better if there were some mountains over there? just more interesting, just one little mountain range over there in the distance? I missed the slanting afternoon light in the mountains and how cool it looks when it sometimes filters through the clouds clinging to the hills down below my house, and the way clouds sometimes crest the mountain and come cascading down on our house like a waterfall. And though I complain about the cold, I missed the cozy thickness of my 3-4 blankets and snuggling in for the night.
Speaking of nights, Minnesota nights are so still and quiet! I was astounded to awake in the morning and think – I didn’t hear a single thing all night! Boy, I tell you what, I did NOT miss those dogs barking up a war outside my windows or the roosters announcing a dawn that’s still 3 hours away, nor the cats pouncing on mice and making a racket in my ceiling. And I didn’t miss the fleas!! (They’re breaking records now: I think it took them a day and a half to find me anew, bug repellent lotion and spray apparently irrelevant.)
And while I will surely sit and ponder homesickness and absence and the heart growing fonder these next few months – weighing these against fleas, barking dogs, and numb toes, mind you – it has become apparent just how much Guatemala is becoming part of me. or how much I am becoming part of Guatemala. I surely have innumerable days at the Roske Cabin at the lake, countless visits to Kay’s Kitchen or the SJU Refectory if I want them, many a chat with grandparents and neighbors and friends awaiting me in my future. But how many times do I get to play in a rock-paper-scissors double-elimination tournament with Hugo, Ixchel, and José Arnulfo? How many opportunities will I have to listen to Emiliana’s stories of all the protesting and campaigning she did back in the day to win women’s rights or get funding for public education? How many more chances will I have to go running with Arnulfo in the mornings? How many deluxe-chocolate birthday cakes will be baked before it’s time for me to return to my American reality for good? Not all that many, in the grand scheme of things. In the end it’s all about counting one’s blessings… and I’m blessed enough to have plenty to count both in Guatemala and in Minnesota. It’s nice to be reminded of them now and again, and thinking of it that way helps me not miss home too much. Besides, spend all my time missing things that are somewhere else, and I’m sure to find I’ve missed out on life here.
29 July, 2009
a few photos real quick
To get my quetzales (money's) worth out of my internet time today, I decided to aprovechar (take advantage) and post a few pictures even though I have no content to post with them. Hope you enjoy anyway!
I made José Arulfo a chocolate cake for his 16th birthday just like the one I made for Kate´s going away party (see photos below) - because he kept joking that I was in debt to the family, specifically him, for having baked that other cake and then taken it away. But this one didn't want to come out of it´s pan... so we frosted it and lit it up as-is. I think it tasted just as good. :)
Maybe you all think taking pictures of my own clothes drying on the line is weird, but I just liked the look of the scenery and the little bit of town (Toto) that's visible through the washline.
And also that pinabete (avies guatemalensis, the pine tree to the right that's an endagered and beautiful fir species) that my host mom is AWFUL proud to have growing in the yard.
A beautiful sunset over Totonicapán, no?
Rainbows are a rarity here, because when it´s raining it´s usually completely cloudy and no sun makes it through at all.
I made José Arulfo a chocolate cake for his 16th birthday just like the one I made for Kate´s going away party (see photos below) - because he kept joking that I was in debt to the family, specifically him, for having baked that other cake and then taken it away. But this one didn't want to come out of it´s pan... so we frosted it and lit it up as-is. I think it tasted just as good. :)
Maybe you all think taking pictures of my own clothes drying on the line is weird, but I just liked the look of the scenery and the little bit of town (Toto) that's visible through the washline.And also that pinabete (avies guatemalensis, the pine tree to the right that's an endagered and beautiful fir species) that my host mom is AWFUL proud to have growing in the yard.
A beautiful sunset over Totonicapán, no?
Rainbows are a rarity here, because when it´s raining it´s usually completely cloudy and no sun makes it through at all.
20 July, 2009
July Landmarks
A few landmarks have recently passed in my world here: I have officially been in my new site for three months now (a Peace Corps "magic number"), and my Reconnect Conference for my training group is coming up. It was also recently my birthday. Combined, these two events call for a lot of reflection on my life here in Guatemala and self-evaluation on how I'm doing. Now that I've lived in my community for over three months, do I feel as integrated and connected here as I had hoped to be by the time Reconnect rolled around? Do I feel I've built relationships and trust, do I feel I belong and that the community accepts me?
Well, frankly, not as much as I had hoped. Maybe my standards for myself were a bit high when I envisioned myself at 3 months, maybe I had "delusions of grandeur" of how great a PCV I was gonna be. Or, on the other hand, maybe I just got lazy at some point and called a quits on really trying to branch out past my host family and my work in the park, to get involved in my community. I suspect there are truths to both those scenarios...
It kinda goes without saying, but I would like to emphasize that trying to integrate into a new community is HARD! At first, I expended an awful lot of energy on being friendly, chatting with everyone I ran into, trying to remember faces and names - just generally putting myself out there, a little vulnerable-feeling, open to new experiences and people. But I guess I didn't go much beyond that, and it's starting to feel like my current reality hasn't grown or been shaped by anything new in a while now. As human beings, we naturally settle into a rhythm and when we're satisfied we leave it as-is. But life as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I'm realizing, means constant analysis, constant brainstorming, constant creativity about what ELSE I could be doing, or who else should I meet or talk to - and therefore also requires constant courage to try out those ideas. It's quite a dilemma: still seems I don't know that many people in my town, which is not satisfactory to me, yet it's intimidating thinking about trying to go and meet them all. It's also intimidating to commit right now to new project ideas when they aren't related to my assignment - these are what Peace Corps calls "secondary projects." For me things like teaching English, working on community building projects, or working with the local women's group would be examples of secondary projects. But as I'm still holding my breath for things to pick up with projects in my park, I seem phobic of these other project ideas that have been coming my way, not wanting to get overcommitted. It's like I'm holding off waiting for the moment to be right, when it's not going to be any more "right" than right now!
But giving myself credit and recognizing successes, albeit small ones, is also an important skill for me to start developing. Last week a group of women biology students from the main university in the country came to study bees in our park, and Don Nico (one of the park guards) and I also took them to a certain sunny spot in the communal forest. And in explaining to them all kinds of things about the environment here in the highlands of Totonicapan, and then all the details about my community and who's who, I realized I actually do know a great deal... and that it would be awful hard to do the kind of work I do (or the kind of work these biologists came to do) if I didn't have a brain stuffed full of all that stuff. Furthermore, when we walked around my town, people recognized me, even if I didn't know them! And so for once, at least in comparison to these biologists from the capital, I wasn't the strangest-looking stranger in town! A good sign.
And last but not least, my birthday... turned out to be a lot more eventful than expected! It started with inviting my good friend Brittany to come to my house for the day to help me celebrate. I've stayed at her house several times now and gotten to know her family pretty well (we get along splendidly). But I've always lamented the lack of a good premise for Britt to come visit me and get to know MY host family, because they're such good people and I knew she'd love them. So the birthday was our chance... but that's not all. Apparently the evening before, Brittany's host mom Doña Horalia mentioned the need to go make purchases for her small clothing store in one of the bigger city's markets, but was undecided where to go (Guatemala City? Too far, a bit dangerous; Quetzaltenango? Always goes there, never anything new; Totonicapán? hm...) Britt mentioned she was heading to Toto the next day for my birthday and encouraged them to consider coming too - and that settled it! They called us to propose the idea, and we decided to have a big lunch at my house for our new guests (and I suppose for the birthday girl...☺) Now this was a major and rather gracious undertaking by my host family. Not only did we find out we'd be making a big lunch for six guests at 9 pm the night before, but they also had plans to be at church that entire Saturday morning, and my host mom wasn't going to be around due to her enrollment in a Saturday university class. So it fell to my host dad Arnulfo, sister Ixchel, Brittany (who came early) and I to make lunch... and it was actually kinda fun! But the real joy of this day was that Doña Horalia, Don Miguel Angel, and their 3 teenage boys ALL came the whole way up the mountain from Toto in their little car, traipsed through the milpa (corn fields) with me to get to my house, sucked in their breath in amazement at the view and commented continuously on how beautiful it all was... They kept telling me how good it was to see where I lived and to meet the good people I live with, kept saying how special a day it was because it was my birthday. And I felt so loved that my family would go to such great lengths and greatly inconvenience themselves to accomodate my unexpected guests and make it a special day, and that another family had come a long way to the house of complete strangers to help me celebrate - it means a lot to me and helps me feel like I have a place here in the hearts of a few Guatemalans. And they too definitely have a place in mine. It's interesting that in this small event I see the manifestation of a much bigger purpose: Doña Horalia said that because of Brittany and I being such friends and opening our hearts and friendships with both these families, "Through you, we have the opportunity to get to know another family of our own countrymen that we never would have met otherwise. How good it is that you bring us this opportunity!" And so sometimes, just by opening our hearts to new friendships and new people, we create lasting relationships between other people in our lives too. It felt like we built a bridge there. It reminds me that sometimes things other than my work, my actual assignment, might matter more and have a more lasting impact. And that relationship-building and "secondary projects" don't have to be intimidating at all - sometimes they're just inevitable and delightful, and that's the whole point.
So frankly this is a good point of reference, a good time to take the lessons I've learned from all kinds of little events like the ones I've written about here, and re-focus myself toward being a better Volunteer. It helps me be more intentional at how I'm living my PCV life, instead of just letting myself sail on through it and allowing it to just pass me by. After all, the unexamined life is not worth living. So I keep on examining... and encourage you to do likewise.
Well, frankly, not as much as I had hoped. Maybe my standards for myself were a bit high when I envisioned myself at 3 months, maybe I had "delusions of grandeur" of how great a PCV I was gonna be. Or, on the other hand, maybe I just got lazy at some point and called a quits on really trying to branch out past my host family and my work in the park, to get involved in my community. I suspect there are truths to both those scenarios...
It kinda goes without saying, but I would like to emphasize that trying to integrate into a new community is HARD! At first, I expended an awful lot of energy on being friendly, chatting with everyone I ran into, trying to remember faces and names - just generally putting myself out there, a little vulnerable-feeling, open to new experiences and people. But I guess I didn't go much beyond that, and it's starting to feel like my current reality hasn't grown or been shaped by anything new in a while now. As human beings, we naturally settle into a rhythm and when we're satisfied we leave it as-is. But life as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I'm realizing, means constant analysis, constant brainstorming, constant creativity about what ELSE I could be doing, or who else should I meet or talk to - and therefore also requires constant courage to try out those ideas. It's quite a dilemma: still seems I don't know that many people in my town, which is not satisfactory to me, yet it's intimidating thinking about trying to go and meet them all. It's also intimidating to commit right now to new project ideas when they aren't related to my assignment - these are what Peace Corps calls "secondary projects." For me things like teaching English, working on community building projects, or working with the local women's group would be examples of secondary projects. But as I'm still holding my breath for things to pick up with projects in my park, I seem phobic of these other project ideas that have been coming my way, not wanting to get overcommitted. It's like I'm holding off waiting for the moment to be right, when it's not going to be any more "right" than right now!
But giving myself credit and recognizing successes, albeit small ones, is also an important skill for me to start developing. Last week a group of women biology students from the main university in the country came to study bees in our park, and Don Nico (one of the park guards) and I also took them to a certain sunny spot in the communal forest. And in explaining to them all kinds of things about the environment here in the highlands of Totonicapan, and then all the details about my community and who's who, I realized I actually do know a great deal... and that it would be awful hard to do the kind of work I do (or the kind of work these biologists came to do) if I didn't have a brain stuffed full of all that stuff. Furthermore, when we walked around my town, people recognized me, even if I didn't know them! And so for once, at least in comparison to these biologists from the capital, I wasn't the strangest-looking stranger in town! A good sign.
And last but not least, my birthday... turned out to be a lot more eventful than expected! It started with inviting my good friend Brittany to come to my house for the day to help me celebrate. I've stayed at her house several times now and gotten to know her family pretty well (we get along splendidly). But I've always lamented the lack of a good premise for Britt to come visit me and get to know MY host family, because they're such good people and I knew she'd love them. So the birthday was our chance... but that's not all. Apparently the evening before, Brittany's host mom Doña Horalia mentioned the need to go make purchases for her small clothing store in one of the bigger city's markets, but was undecided where to go (Guatemala City? Too far, a bit dangerous; Quetzaltenango? Always goes there, never anything new; Totonicapán? hm...) Britt mentioned she was heading to Toto the next day for my birthday and encouraged them to consider coming too - and that settled it! They called us to propose the idea, and we decided to have a big lunch at my house for our new guests (and I suppose for the birthday girl...☺) Now this was a major and rather gracious undertaking by my host family. Not only did we find out we'd be making a big lunch for six guests at 9 pm the night before, but they also had plans to be at church that entire Saturday morning, and my host mom wasn't going to be around due to her enrollment in a Saturday university class. So it fell to my host dad Arnulfo, sister Ixchel, Brittany (who came early) and I to make lunch... and it was actually kinda fun! But the real joy of this day was that Doña Horalia, Don Miguel Angel, and their 3 teenage boys ALL came the whole way up the mountain from Toto in their little car, traipsed through the milpa (corn fields) with me to get to my house, sucked in their breath in amazement at the view and commented continuously on how beautiful it all was... They kept telling me how good it was to see where I lived and to meet the good people I live with, kept saying how special a day it was because it was my birthday. And I felt so loved that my family would go to such great lengths and greatly inconvenience themselves to accomodate my unexpected guests and make it a special day, and that another family had come a long way to the house of complete strangers to help me celebrate - it means a lot to me and helps me feel like I have a place here in the hearts of a few Guatemalans. And they too definitely have a place in mine. It's interesting that in this small event I see the manifestation of a much bigger purpose: Doña Horalia said that because of Brittany and I being such friends and opening our hearts and friendships with both these families, "Through you, we have the opportunity to get to know another family of our own countrymen that we never would have met otherwise. How good it is that you bring us this opportunity!" And so sometimes, just by opening our hearts to new friendships and new people, we create lasting relationships between other people in our lives too. It felt like we built a bridge there. It reminds me that sometimes things other than my work, my actual assignment, might matter more and have a more lasting impact. And that relationship-building and "secondary projects" don't have to be intimidating at all - sometimes they're just inevitable and delightful, and that's the whole point.
So frankly this is a good point of reference, a good time to take the lessons I've learned from all kinds of little events like the ones I've written about here, and re-focus myself toward being a better Volunteer. It helps me be more intentional at how I'm living my PCV life, instead of just letting myself sail on through it and allowing it to just pass me by. After all, the unexamined life is not worth living. So I keep on examining... and encourage you to do likewise.
08 July, 2009
Thoughts originally thought on Monday, June 29th
I woke up this morning not really thinking about how everything had changed, despite all the discombobulated piles of recently-arrived things and new furniture everywhere. I went to the window, as I usually do in the morning, and looked down the valley over the city of Totonicapán, where the clouds were clinging like thick broth at the bottom of a bowl, as they usually do in the morning. I thought about how this might be one of those days when Kate, getting up in her apartment in town, might be fooled into thinking that today would be cloudy and rainy, when actually up here in the mountains it’s clear and bright.
And then I remembered that there’s no Kate living in Toto to ponder the weather anymore. Yesterday my best friend in Toto left to go back home!
More than anything else, what’s been on my mind through this process of Kate wrapping up her life here, is that I am not looking forward to the day when I have to find closure to my life here too. It started with meetings to wrap up her projects and introduce me to key people she worked with; then it was me scrambling to plan a few surprise going-away parties for her; then we were planning when and how to move all the stuff she had in her apartment that she planned to bequeath to me up the mountain to my house, since I decided to continue living with my host family (hence all the new things and furniture in my room referenced earlier). And while my head was still spinning from all that, at the end I had to think of how to tell her how thankful I am for how much she´s helped and guided me.
We moved everything up the mountain on Saturday, and since her apartment was no longer furnished she would be staying with friends up here in the village that night. And so the community organized themselves and invited us to a big prayer service in the church, where the outpouring of goodwill was almost tangible. After rosaries and a Gospel reading, Don Nico called Kate forward to stand in front to receive the line of those waiting to give goodbye-hugs – as is the custom here for birthdays, despedidas, etc. It apparently works for welcome ceremonies too: Don Nico then asked me to come up and stand a few feet away from her to receive the same line of huggers, only they were welcome-hugs instead, I guess. This, and the speech I was asked to give afterwards, certainly took me by surprise! I knew the names of maybe half the people who were hugging me (so of course I thought it a good idea, after graciously thanking him or her for the kind words of bienvenida, to ask “And what’s your name?” and try like hell to remember them all). Everyone in that church had something kind and thankful to say to Kate as they hugged goodbye – talk about having an impact in the community! Several were taking advantage of the moment and asking her how to get copies of the bird guide book and the endemic species láminas, which seemed like the perfect culmination of her Peace Corps service… there they were, wanting to know more and actually use the documents the volunteer generated!
In the end, I felt very much in her shadow. She has accomplished so much and is beloved in the village. Can you imagine a small town in rural Minnesota throwing a going away party for a foreigner who’s been living and working there for two years, and at the same time throwing a welcome party for the next foreigner coming to take their place? Hm, when was the last time immigrants in the US were given that kind of welcome, or that kind of farewell? There were a few men present at that prayer service who I know have spent considerable time and experienced considerable discrimination as illegal immigrants in the United States, and I couldn’t help but think of how incredibly gracious it was of them to come to this prayer service for two gringas in their village when they received nothing of the sort those years they spent on our soil.
Kate left on Sunday morning, and there were no tears but much sorrow. She will be missed, and I will undoubtedly be the main conduit of news between her and the community for the next year and nine months!
There was another traveler in town that weekend, actually: a friend of mine from my former work in Alaska, Jennifer, was touring Guatemala and fit two days in Toto into her itinerary. Now, Jen doesn’t speak much Spanish, so after being rescued from the rain in Central Park by my host mom, Emiliana (as Jen was sitting on a park bench thinking she would have to wait another several hours of this before my workshop in a different community was over and I could come get her), being whisked spur-of-the-moment to lunch at Aunt Margarita’s house, and then going with Emiliana as her guide up the mountain in the crowded back of a pick-up to our house… I think Jen can vouch for how kind most Totonicapánians are! They just took her right under their wings, though a stranger and unable to communicate with them. When I arrived at the house that afternoon, she had just come back from a nice mountaintop walk with Hugo, my 8-yr-old host brother, so it was obvious that she’d get along fine. I learned that it’s surprisingly stressful for me having guests who don’t speak much Spanish, but at the same time I think their capacity to learn and get a lot out of the experience is greater.
Plus she was a great help on Moving Day! Haha, “hay que aprovechar!” (gotta take advantage!)
But now I’m my own source of ideas, projects, successes and failures! Time to get the lead out. In a sense I’ve been resting on Kate’s laurels these first three months of my service in Totonicapán, since her work was an easy source of something to do and a way to feel like I was contributing. Now I’m looking forward to initiating environmental education lessons in some of the Totonicapán schools, creating a working library of ecological resources in my park, installing interactive ecological exhibits in our park museum, working with the Community Council of my village to improve their communal meeting space infrastructure through a grant application, and working with our Directorate (CDRO) toward developing a community tourism network in my village in coordination with CDRO’s other income-generation projects and initiatives. And yes, I am aware that that’s an awfully big to-do list! It’s good to have high hopes, right?
So that’s the news from Lake Wobegon, folks… or, well, you know what I mean. (I hear Garrison had a recent show from Avon, MN – woot woot! Wish I could’ve been there for that one, the show coming home…) In any case, wishing you well and a happy belated 4th of July!
And then I remembered that there’s no Kate living in Toto to ponder the weather anymore. Yesterday my best friend in Toto left to go back home!
More than anything else, what’s been on my mind through this process of Kate wrapping up her life here, is that I am not looking forward to the day when I have to find closure to my life here too. It started with meetings to wrap up her projects and introduce me to key people she worked with; then it was me scrambling to plan a few surprise going-away parties for her; then we were planning when and how to move all the stuff she had in her apartment that she planned to bequeath to me up the mountain to my house, since I decided to continue living with my host family (hence all the new things and furniture in my room referenced earlier). And while my head was still spinning from all that, at the end I had to think of how to tell her how thankful I am for how much she´s helped and guided me.
We moved everything up the mountain on Saturday, and since her apartment was no longer furnished she would be staying with friends up here in the village that night. And so the community organized themselves and invited us to a big prayer service in the church, where the outpouring of goodwill was almost tangible. After rosaries and a Gospel reading, Don Nico called Kate forward to stand in front to receive the line of those waiting to give goodbye-hugs – as is the custom here for birthdays, despedidas, etc. It apparently works for welcome ceremonies too: Don Nico then asked me to come up and stand a few feet away from her to receive the same line of huggers, only they were welcome-hugs instead, I guess. This, and the speech I was asked to give afterwards, certainly took me by surprise! I knew the names of maybe half the people who were hugging me (so of course I thought it a good idea, after graciously thanking him or her for the kind words of bienvenida, to ask “And what’s your name?” and try like hell to remember them all). Everyone in that church had something kind and thankful to say to Kate as they hugged goodbye – talk about having an impact in the community! Several were taking advantage of the moment and asking her how to get copies of the bird guide book and the endemic species láminas, which seemed like the perfect culmination of her Peace Corps service… there they were, wanting to know more and actually use the documents the volunteer generated!
In the end, I felt very much in her shadow. She has accomplished so much and is beloved in the village. Can you imagine a small town in rural Minnesota throwing a going away party for a foreigner who’s been living and working there for two years, and at the same time throwing a welcome party for the next foreigner coming to take their place? Hm, when was the last time immigrants in the US were given that kind of welcome, or that kind of farewell? There were a few men present at that prayer service who I know have spent considerable time and experienced considerable discrimination as illegal immigrants in the United States, and I couldn’t help but think of how incredibly gracious it was of them to come to this prayer service for two gringas in their village when they received nothing of the sort those years they spent on our soil.
Kate left on Sunday morning, and there were no tears but much sorrow. She will be missed, and I will undoubtedly be the main conduit of news between her and the community for the next year and nine months!
There was another traveler in town that weekend, actually: a friend of mine from my former work in Alaska, Jennifer, was touring Guatemala and fit two days in Toto into her itinerary. Now, Jen doesn’t speak much Spanish, so after being rescued from the rain in Central Park by my host mom, Emiliana (as Jen was sitting on a park bench thinking she would have to wait another several hours of this before my workshop in a different community was over and I could come get her), being whisked spur-of-the-moment to lunch at Aunt Margarita’s house, and then going with Emiliana as her guide up the mountain in the crowded back of a pick-up to our house… I think Jen can vouch for how kind most Totonicapánians are! They just took her right under their wings, though a stranger and unable to communicate with them. When I arrived at the house that afternoon, she had just come back from a nice mountaintop walk with Hugo, my 8-yr-old host brother, so it was obvious that she’d get along fine. I learned that it’s surprisingly stressful for me having guests who don’t speak much Spanish, but at the same time I think their capacity to learn and get a lot out of the experience is greater.
Plus she was a great help on Moving Day! Haha, “hay que aprovechar!” (gotta take advantage!)
But now I’m my own source of ideas, projects, successes and failures! Time to get the lead out. In a sense I’ve been resting on Kate’s laurels these first three months of my service in Totonicapán, since her work was an easy source of something to do and a way to feel like I was contributing. Now I’m looking forward to initiating environmental education lessons in some of the Totonicapán schools, creating a working library of ecological resources in my park, installing interactive ecological exhibits in our park museum, working with the Community Council of my village to improve their communal meeting space infrastructure through a grant application, and working with our Directorate (CDRO) toward developing a community tourism network in my village in coordination with CDRO’s other income-generation projects and initiatives. And yes, I am aware that that’s an awfully big to-do list! It’s good to have high hopes, right?
So that’s the news from Lake Wobegon, folks… or, well, you know what I mean. (I hear Garrison had a recent show from Avon, MN – woot woot! Wish I could’ve been there for that one, the show coming home…) In any case, wishing you well and a happy belated 4th of July!
Photos, finally!
I'm finally getting around to posting some much-needed photos! Starting from a while back, then... March, to be precise.
My training group at our Swearing-In ceremony
My APCD, i.e. my boss, Flavio, with the four of us from my training town.
Brittany and I with our Spanish professor, Jorge... what a good guy, I still miss our Spanish classes...
The two of us again with Martha, our Country Director (the Director of Peace Corps-Guatemala)
Big-group dinner after Swearing-In, at a pizza place in Antigua with ruins in back! Good friends Johanna, Oliver, Brittany, and Maria
After Swearing-In and dinner on the town, Rebecca and I decide it's time for some hard-earned celebration in Antigua.
Last day before the move to my new site, on the roof of my hostel, settling the final details and getting ready
One of my first weekends here my host family got real excited about climbing Campana Abaj, the summit of the mountain we live on. It's mentioned in a post below; here we are on the ascent, Arnulfo and Hugo leading the way and still in good spirits...
...with Emiliana and José Arnulfo and Emiliana not so convinced this is a good idea. Turns out they were right.
Let's just say we got back a little wet. First day of the Rainy Season! What are the odds?
But still, people are in good spirits.
An adventure, we're calling it.
They all made fun of me for getting down and washing dishes with the ladies who prepared the meal - or rather, they were making fun of Yovani and Luis who never do that, and here I was on my knees.
Kate held a training course for youth from the village in Tourism Guiding and Natural Resource Management, to train them to be guides in our park and also to be better-trained in managing the parcel of the Communal Forest they belong to. Here I am facilitating a game of "Birdie on a Perch" (any PRPs reading this will love that...) we called it "Chipe in su Nido" or Warbler in its Nest.
The youth in the course, on Graduation day, with we the park staff
The point of the course was to create alliances between our CDRO Association Directorate and the Board of Directors of the Parcialidad to which all these youth belong. This photo includes all those actors involved in the course, on graduation day.
I love this picture of my counterpart, Yovani, doing what he does best. Here he is at one of the 8 stations on our trail, teaching what habitat is.
Emiliana is on my village's Water Committee, Comité de Agua, which is in charge of capturing water from springs up the mountain that will find its way to all the homes. It's a big (unpaid) job that takes up a lot of weekends, like this Sunday when I went with to do some maintenance on one of the tanks/tubes that had broken. A good group of folks who take the time for the needs of their community receiving little in return.
Kate and I went over to Doña Delphina's house one day when she and Gabi were preparing chuchitos (like what we would consider tamales) for a big group. We helped! I still say I did more, since Kate was off playing with the kids most of the time :)
Me at the piedra! The piedra (really, its name is just "rock") is used to grind pretty much anything - in this case, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, roasted red peppers, roasted tomatoes, and bread crumbs.
We went to the inauguration of the Interpretive Trail at another park not too far from here, where another PCV and some friends of Kate's work. Luis, walking right behind me, was one of the artists who worked on the project in that park.
Ellory and Chris came to visit me for a day at the end of their semester studying in Quetzaltenango (the city otherwise known as Xela). I wanted to show them the park, and little Hugo and cousin César wanted to come too. Here we are hugging one of the bigger trees along the trail in the park.
Outside the park entrance, all of us! It was a fun visit, but too short... guess you'll both have to come back soon, guys!
The Volunteers in the departments of Totonicapán and of Sololá just south of me, hosted a party to welcome all the new recruits. The Lago de Atitlán is in Sololá, so naturally our party was on the lake, at a place you can only get to by boat. Theo (Ellory is his little sister) met up with us to join in the fun - and also to join in on the mango-yogurt and avocado-cracker snack.
Did I mention the party was a costume party?
The Lago de Atitlán, historically speaking, was an enormous volcano that monumentally exploded and left a huge crater in its wake. But it's still a volcanically active place, so now it´s a highland lake surrounded by active volcanoes. Good swimmin hole, eh?
My host family and I went down to Aunt Rosa's house ("Tía Chochi") for Mother's Day, Día de la Madre. Tía Lita (Aunt Margarita) and her daughter Narda made stuffed turkey, and the meal was scrumptious! Only problem was, we all overstuffed ourselves and the whole extended family had bad gas for the next day. haha...
They decided to dress me up in traje, which I wasn't at all opposed to! I got this pretty purple corte (the skirt) and huipil (the blouse) and took a photo with Ixchel my host sister and Emiliana my host mom. They don't smile much in photos, but I can assure you they are giggly, happy and funny people. I had a good time that day. (p.s. they made me stand down a stair or two so there wouldn't be such a height difference. hehe)
I only let them convince me to dress up in traje if Narda did, too. She doesn't wear the traje, and nor does her mom Tía Lita, but all the other women in the family do. So the aunts all begged her to dress up in traje too. And this photo ensued.
One morning when out birding with Kate, two younger siblings of one of the assistants came with. We found a big tree to take a picture of.
... It's a pretty big tree, folks.
Here are some nice shots of what the highlands of Guatemala are like... beautiful forests, lots of fog, gorgeous sunsets on my walk home, etc.
The rest of these photos were taken in the park on Kate's last day, the day of her "despedida" (going away party). Everyone pitched in to help make the meal (Yes, even the men!). We're all going to miss her.
The kitchen in my park: Yovani, Gabi (Luis's wife), Luis, Kate, Don Nico
Don Boni, with help from Juanito (Luis and Gabi's son)
Lunch: fried fish (mojarra)! and salad and avocado... man I love food in Guatemala! (mmm... better qualify that statement...)
You'll note the only blond in the photo: my friend Jen was visiting for a couple days and joined in on the festivities
Not sure what was so funny... probably Yovani, as usual.
Did I mention I made the cake? This was quite the undertaking the night before, Jen can attest to that as she was staying with me! It turned out wonderfully. It also instigated an interesting conversation that morning with Don Bonifacio on what pride is (k'iche' is his first language, and I don't think anyone had ever explained to him what "orgullo", pride in Spanish, meant) because I said I was proud of the cake.
Kate, with her traditional middle piece for the guest of honor at any party
My training group at our Swearing-In ceremony
My APCD, i.e. my boss, Flavio, with the four of us from my training town.
Brittany and I with our Spanish professor, Jorge... what a good guy, I still miss our Spanish classes...
The two of us again with Martha, our Country Director (the Director of Peace Corps-Guatemala)
Big-group dinner after Swearing-In, at a pizza place in Antigua with ruins in back! Good friends Johanna, Oliver, Brittany, and Maria
After Swearing-In and dinner on the town, Rebecca and I decide it's time for some hard-earned celebration in Antigua. 
Last day before the move to my new site, on the roof of my hostel, settling the final details and getting ready 
One of my first weekends here my host family got real excited about climbing Campana Abaj, the summit of the mountain we live on. It's mentioned in a post below; here we are on the ascent, Arnulfo and Hugo leading the way and still in good spirits...
...with Emiliana and José Arnulfo and Emiliana not so convinced this is a good idea. Turns out they were right.
Let's just say we got back a little wet. First day of the Rainy Season! What are the odds?
But still, people are in good spirits.
An adventure, we're calling it.
They all made fun of me for getting down and washing dishes with the ladies who prepared the meal - or rather, they were making fun of Yovani and Luis who never do that, and here I was on my knees.
Kate held a training course for youth from the village in Tourism Guiding and Natural Resource Management, to train them to be guides in our park and also to be better-trained in managing the parcel of the Communal Forest they belong to. Here I am facilitating a game of "Birdie on a Perch" (any PRPs reading this will love that...) we called it "Chipe in su Nido" or Warbler in its Nest.
The youth in the course, on Graduation day, with we the park staff
The point of the course was to create alliances between our CDRO Association Directorate and the Board of Directors of the Parcialidad to which all these youth belong. This photo includes all those actors involved in the course, on graduation day.
I love this picture of my counterpart, Yovani, doing what he does best. Here he is at one of the 8 stations on our trail, teaching what habitat is.
Emiliana is on my village's Water Committee, Comité de Agua, which is in charge of capturing water from springs up the mountain that will find its way to all the homes. It's a big (unpaid) job that takes up a lot of weekends, like this Sunday when I went with to do some maintenance on one of the tanks/tubes that had broken. A good group of folks who take the time for the needs of their community receiving little in return.
Kate and I went over to Doña Delphina's house one day when she and Gabi were preparing chuchitos (like what we would consider tamales) for a big group. We helped! I still say I did more, since Kate was off playing with the kids most of the time :)
Me at the piedra! The piedra (really, its name is just "rock") is used to grind pretty much anything - in this case, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, roasted red peppers, roasted tomatoes, and bread crumbs.
We went to the inauguration of the Interpretive Trail at another park not too far from here, where another PCV and some friends of Kate's work. Luis, walking right behind me, was one of the artists who worked on the project in that park.
Ellory and Chris came to visit me for a day at the end of their semester studying in Quetzaltenango (the city otherwise known as Xela). I wanted to show them the park, and little Hugo and cousin César wanted to come too. Here we are hugging one of the bigger trees along the trail in the park.
Outside the park entrance, all of us! It was a fun visit, but too short... guess you'll both have to come back soon, guys!
The Volunteers in the departments of Totonicapán and of Sololá just south of me, hosted a party to welcome all the new recruits. The Lago de Atitlán is in Sololá, so naturally our party was on the lake, at a place you can only get to by boat. Theo (Ellory is his little sister) met up with us to join in the fun - and also to join in on the mango-yogurt and avocado-cracker snack.
Did I mention the party was a costume party?
The Lago de Atitlán, historically speaking, was an enormous volcano that monumentally exploded and left a huge crater in its wake. But it's still a volcanically active place, so now it´s a highland lake surrounded by active volcanoes. Good swimmin hole, eh?
My host family and I went down to Aunt Rosa's house ("Tía Chochi") for Mother's Day, Día de la Madre. Tía Lita (Aunt Margarita) and her daughter Narda made stuffed turkey, and the meal was scrumptious! Only problem was, we all overstuffed ourselves and the whole extended family had bad gas for the next day. haha...
They decided to dress me up in traje, which I wasn't at all opposed to! I got this pretty purple corte (the skirt) and huipil (the blouse) and took a photo with Ixchel my host sister and Emiliana my host mom. They don't smile much in photos, but I can assure you they are giggly, happy and funny people. I had a good time that day. (p.s. they made me stand down a stair or two so there wouldn't be such a height difference. hehe)
I only let them convince me to dress up in traje if Narda did, too. She doesn't wear the traje, and nor does her mom Tía Lita, but all the other women in the family do. So the aunts all begged her to dress up in traje too. And this photo ensued.
One morning when out birding with Kate, two younger siblings of one of the assistants came with. We found a big tree to take a picture of.
... It's a pretty big tree, folks.Here are some nice shots of what the highlands of Guatemala are like... beautiful forests, lots of fog, gorgeous sunsets on my walk home, etc.
The rest of these photos were taken in the park on Kate's last day, the day of her "despedida" (going away party). Everyone pitched in to help make the meal (Yes, even the men!). We're all going to miss her.
The kitchen in my park: Yovani, Gabi (Luis's wife), Luis, Kate, Don Nico
Don Boni, with help from Juanito (Luis and Gabi's son)
Lunch: fried fish (mojarra)! and salad and avocado... man I love food in Guatemala! (mmm... better qualify that statement...)
You'll note the only blond in the photo: my friend Jen was visiting for a couple days and joined in on the festivities
Not sure what was so funny... probably Yovani, as usual.
Did I mention I made the cake? This was quite the undertaking the night before, Jen can attest to that as she was staying with me! It turned out wonderfully. It also instigated an interesting conversation that morning with Don Bonifacio on what pride is (k'iche' is his first language, and I don't think anyone had ever explained to him what "orgullo", pride in Spanish, meant) because I said I was proud of the cake.
Kate, with her traditional middle piece for the guest of honor at any party
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