Well it’s official: it's an excessively wet year. If it's not drought and famine like it was this time last year (the growing i.e. wet season), it's so much rain from so many hurricanes and tropical storms that landslides are everywhere, people lose crops as well as houses (and in some cases their lives) to flooded rivers and sliding mud (and the occasional infernal abyss opening in the middle of the capital city, check the news online someplace for photos!), the Interamerican highway gets completely blocked by landslides or totally washed/caved out at several locations... First it was Agatha, then it was Alex, and then I stopped keeping track of what they’re called. It's ridiculous, and it’s just in time for Totonicapán’s Feria! Haha.
Feria should be good this year, seeing as they finally finished construction “remodeling” the Central Park with a covered stage, etc. etc. for all the bands that are scheduled for, well, every day 2-10 pm since last week till the 30th of September. And now I live in town, so I get to participate in all the fun quite a bit more than I did last year! (I also get the consequences, like constantly hearing said bands from said park till late in the evening, dealing with increased traffic, and increased numbers of drunks walking the streets… but it’s a trade-off that doesn’t bother me much.) So the city center will soon be incapacitated to traffic by hundreds of covered vendors’ shops, half of whom all will be selling roscas (look like circular pretzals but are sweetish and crunchy) and the other half, bricks of coconut candy dyed various colors. I’m not kidding you, this is the kind of marketing genius you find here… if it works for one person, it’s got to work for two hundred more, right?
The new place is good for me. I live with a middle-aged indigenous Señora, and while there are a surprising number of disadvantages I didn't realize I had so good up in the "provincial" village (like hot water, a shower, a sink in the kitchen and in the bathroom, a flushing toilet), frankly I stress out less over most everything else: food, internet, what time I get done with work in town, skyping my folks, etc. Because it matters less now. If I need something now, I just walk 3 blocks to the market and buy it, or if it's nighttime I find a close-by tienda. Same with internet. None of this having to finish everything and be waiting on the right street corner by 6 pm for a pickup driver to pass who happens to be going past the village. What a spoiled Peace Corps Volunteer I’ve turned out to be! This all comes from the reality I faced when I came here, of working in a park way up in a little village, but needing access to the town where the association's office is, where food and internet and all other personal and work-related amenities are... I had to choose to live in one, and commute to and from the other. I tried it Collegeville-style for my first year and a half, living in the boonies and just trying to take advantage of time in town to do everything that needed to be done. But in the end, the complications of that approach got the better of me. So now I do the opposite: I live in town and commute to the park! Six months prior to my Close of Service date, it seems like an odd move and at an odd time.
But I realize I’m much happier now. I suppose one has to realize when a situation has potential to get better, and when it just won’t – which turns out to have been the case living up in the village. And I like this new little old lady (who, confusingly enough is also named Emiliana, but to differentiate I always refer to her as Doña Emiliana). She's all about sharing - time, food, knowledge, family, conversations - but is good about giving and wanting personal time too. She's particular in a good way, in that she pays attention to details in a respectful manner and will never borrow things without being really good about giving it back in good condition. She likes to give high-fives, which I found amusing when I first came. She has a daughter slightly older than me who comes to stay once a week with the new baby grandson, and we all get along swimmingly; this also means she's used to my age group and we can talk, which I haven't often found with older indigenous women here (the cultural divide and age and language barriers seem to get in the way). She likes to travel, and we've already done some of that together, always planning more. The heart of the matter is that I'm learning so much from her, and hope to continue to, and she gets all excited about learning and trying new things from me. This is so great – this is why I did Peace Corps, I guess.
And my relationship with my old host family is wonderful now. Since I'm not living there anymore, all tension and awkwardness is gone. I've visited to stay overnight a couple times and we've had so much fun! I really, really like that family and think moving was a good way to save a strong friendship.
In August I finally went to visit Jennifer my good friend from college in her Peace Corps site in Honduras, quick before her Close of Service this month of September, and together we did a lot of reflecting on time passing and our experiences or chapters of life coming to a close. What will characterize our memories of being a Peace Corps Volunteer? How will our lives have changed course? A window on her life as a PCV, my visit showed just how entirely different her experience has been from mine, and I found myself wondering if that means I’m doing it wrong, or if there is a better or best way of serving as a PCV. I think probably there isn’t, but the point is to keep analyzing that, and to keep implementing the changes that might be needed to make things better. I’m glad I implemented the change of the move, scary and potentially disastrous as it seemed to my work relationships, personal relationships, and credibility in the village. But nobody’s mad at me for leaving the village! I’m still there almost every day, albeit in the park. I was worried about nothing at all, I guess. Jennifer’s good at making me see that.
So looking back at these changes and circumstances, as Feria approaches along with the worst of the rainy season, it’s a mixed bag. There’s lots to be happy about, lots to be worried about, and lots to be excited about. The people pray for blessings this season of celebration and harvest, while in the same breath pray to be kept safe from the damage and danger of the extreme weather. I pray for the same, as well as for inspiration with my work in El Aprisco seeing as I only have 6 months left to get anything done; for the grace to continue strengthening relationships with friends and “loved ones” here; and for guidance in what I will do and where I will be when those 6 months come to a close. (Anyone got any suggestions?? I have an uncle who says Medical school… hm, sounds like a very new direction and a little intimidating… ) Keep well! and hope you’re keeping warmer and dryer than we are here.
21 September, 2010
Get to know your public servants month (Note: this is from April-May 2010)
Once in a while some unlikely situation presents itself, leading to a string of unlikely and heretofore unimagined opportunities. It’s sometimes called serendipity, and this day in late April was not the first day its whimsical influence.
Having traveled to the Guatemala City area for my Peace Corps Mid-Service Conference (another one of those volunteer reunions of my cohort group, particularly significant for its marking of my halfway point), I was suddenly bombarded that fateful Friday by my Peace Corps superiors asking if I planned to be back in Totonicapán the next day, Saturday. I wasn’t; I was staying near the capital for the weekend because I had scheduled a routine but obligatory medical appointment for Monday in the city, there having been no other openings. But I said, “I can be…?” My PC project director and boss Flavio explained that the U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala was traveling to Totonicapán the next day for a big meeting with the Alcaldía Indígena de 48 Cantones, the Indigenous Mayors’ Association with which I sometimes work on forestry, trash management and environmental education projects. I am the only North American who works with them, and if there were anyone who could help orient the Ambassador to the nuanced realities of this powerful form of local grass-roots government it would probably be me… So I jumped at the news! Of course I can be there! Hmm… even if it means forgoing plans to go to the beach with friends on Saturday, haha.
And since it doesn’t hurt to enquire, I asked if the Ambassador was leaving from his home in the capital tomorrow morning, to possibly catch a ride with the convoy/entourage since otherwise I’d just be sharing the highway with them from a chicken bus! Of course, I didn’t know if that sort of thing was allowed, regular folks traveling with the Ambassador… But there I was, responding to my strict orders to arrive at 7:30 am at the “Residence” for a quick breakfast and we were on our way.
A few hours later (and considerably later than the hour at which we were supposed to arrive at the Assembly of the Indigenous Mayors in Toto), the two-SUV convoy stopped in the crowded streets around Toto’s Central Park, it being market day and the place totally crammed with people, and I climbed down from one of those SUVs with the U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala. Fancy that. The big cars and the four or five bodyguards sure attracted attention, and as we walked escorted by the President of 48 Cantones and other board members who had arrived to greet us I was soon hearing “Seño! Seño!” from kids I know who recognized me (that’s a shortened “señorita” and is how all young women and female teachers are referred to in this country). I sure felt important, and like I didn’t really deserve it!
That feeling didn’t change when we climbed the stairs and were ushered into the Assembly. I was whisked to the front with the rest of the Ambassador’s party, and reflected that this wouldn’t have happened had I not by coincidence been in Guatemala City and asked for a ride; I would’ve been just another member of support staff present that afternoon when the embassy entourage showed up. Hence, serendipity.
The Ambassadorial visit was for the dignitary to get to know this organization, and also to sound out whether any potential for Embassy financial support existed. The Board of Directors did much speech-making on the history, structure, and function of 48 Cantones, after which the Ambassador gave his address in k’iche’ (wild enthusiasm from the assembly, of course), after which the President of 48 Cantones presented and briefly detailed his grant proposal. Of course, all this to ask for money!
In the car on the way back to Guatemala City (ah yes, when he found out I had to be back in Guate the Ambassador offered me a ride back too! What a good guy) it was just the Ambassador and I, and he reflected quite a bit on the practicality of the proposal with which he had been presented that day. An exorbitant amount of money to build a building! And for what? “I’d never get this through; I’d be laughed out first!” If only there were a way we could help them out with the tree nursery and reforestation efforts they talked about… If only we could encourage the community environmental education stuff they said they do… And I agreed.
In all, it was a car ride of stimulating conversation and some good ideas and reflections; the Ambassador left me his card with emails and everything, and as the SUV convoy drove me up to the front door of where I was staying and dropped me off I remember thinking… What just happened? Did all that really just happen?
And while that day was soon over the issue of the funding grant was not, and my part to play in this was just beginning really. I soon found out from my friends on the Natural Resources Board of 48 Cantones that another grant proposal did in fact exist, one that included aid on tree nursery upkeep and reforestation, as well as on community education campaigns. Just the thing the Ambassador had expressed wanting to see more of! So I emailed him a copy of the alternate proposal that, because of politics between boards and board members of 48 Cantones, wasn’t presented to him that Saturday but had all the elements he expressed wanting to see. Of course he was interested, and these days we are in negotiations on how to make a grant fit this proposal. I sure hope I see something come of this before I go. If anyone deserves USAID money, it’s the Natural Resource Board of the 48 Cantones whose members dedicate themselves every year to preserving the 21,000-hectare coniferous forest surrounding the pueblo; the natural and cultural legacy that has been “passed down” for generations but which nowadays is being slowly degraded, thinned, and shrunken for lack of environmental ethic and awareness. I sense I am already invested in this potential project because my park, El Aprisco, has played a big part in instilling that lost environmental ethic in the newest generation. But just one effort isn’t enough. We’ll see what USAID says on the matter!
Having traveled to the Guatemala City area for my Peace Corps Mid-Service Conference (another one of those volunteer reunions of my cohort group, particularly significant for its marking of my halfway point), I was suddenly bombarded that fateful Friday by my Peace Corps superiors asking if I planned to be back in Totonicapán the next day, Saturday. I wasn’t; I was staying near the capital for the weekend because I had scheduled a routine but obligatory medical appointment for Monday in the city, there having been no other openings. But I said, “I can be…?” My PC project director and boss Flavio explained that the U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala was traveling to Totonicapán the next day for a big meeting with the Alcaldía Indígena de 48 Cantones, the Indigenous Mayors’ Association with which I sometimes work on forestry, trash management and environmental education projects. I am the only North American who works with them, and if there were anyone who could help orient the Ambassador to the nuanced realities of this powerful form of local grass-roots government it would probably be me… So I jumped at the news! Of course I can be there! Hmm… even if it means forgoing plans to go to the beach with friends on Saturday, haha.
And since it doesn’t hurt to enquire, I asked if the Ambassador was leaving from his home in the capital tomorrow morning, to possibly catch a ride with the convoy/entourage since otherwise I’d just be sharing the highway with them from a chicken bus! Of course, I didn’t know if that sort of thing was allowed, regular folks traveling with the Ambassador… But there I was, responding to my strict orders to arrive at 7:30 am at the “Residence” for a quick breakfast and we were on our way.
A few hours later (and considerably later than the hour at which we were supposed to arrive at the Assembly of the Indigenous Mayors in Toto), the two-SUV convoy stopped in the crowded streets around Toto’s Central Park, it being market day and the place totally crammed with people, and I climbed down from one of those SUVs with the U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala. Fancy that. The big cars and the four or five bodyguards sure attracted attention, and as we walked escorted by the President of 48 Cantones and other board members who had arrived to greet us I was soon hearing “Seño! Seño!” from kids I know who recognized me (that’s a shortened “señorita” and is how all young women and female teachers are referred to in this country). I sure felt important, and like I didn’t really deserve it!
That feeling didn’t change when we climbed the stairs and were ushered into the Assembly. I was whisked to the front with the rest of the Ambassador’s party, and reflected that this wouldn’t have happened had I not by coincidence been in Guatemala City and asked for a ride; I would’ve been just another member of support staff present that afternoon when the embassy entourage showed up. Hence, serendipity.
The Ambassadorial visit was for the dignitary to get to know this organization, and also to sound out whether any potential for Embassy financial support existed. The Board of Directors did much speech-making on the history, structure, and function of 48 Cantones, after which the Ambassador gave his address in k’iche’ (wild enthusiasm from the assembly, of course), after which the President of 48 Cantones presented and briefly detailed his grant proposal. Of course, all this to ask for money!
In the car on the way back to Guatemala City (ah yes, when he found out I had to be back in Guate the Ambassador offered me a ride back too! What a good guy) it was just the Ambassador and I, and he reflected quite a bit on the practicality of the proposal with which he had been presented that day. An exorbitant amount of money to build a building! And for what? “I’d never get this through; I’d be laughed out first!” If only there were a way we could help them out with the tree nursery and reforestation efforts they talked about… If only we could encourage the community environmental education stuff they said they do… And I agreed.
In all, it was a car ride of stimulating conversation and some good ideas and reflections; the Ambassador left me his card with emails and everything, and as the SUV convoy drove me up to the front door of where I was staying and dropped me off I remember thinking… What just happened? Did all that really just happen?
And while that day was soon over the issue of the funding grant was not, and my part to play in this was just beginning really. I soon found out from my friends on the Natural Resources Board of 48 Cantones that another grant proposal did in fact exist, one that included aid on tree nursery upkeep and reforestation, as well as on community education campaigns. Just the thing the Ambassador had expressed wanting to see more of! So I emailed him a copy of the alternate proposal that, because of politics between boards and board members of 48 Cantones, wasn’t presented to him that Saturday but had all the elements he expressed wanting to see. Of course he was interested, and these days we are in negotiations on how to make a grant fit this proposal. I sure hope I see something come of this before I go. If anyone deserves USAID money, it’s the Natural Resource Board of the 48 Cantones whose members dedicate themselves every year to preserving the 21,000-hectare coniferous forest surrounding the pueblo; the natural and cultural legacy that has been “passed down” for generations but which nowadays is being slowly degraded, thinned, and shrunken for lack of environmental ethic and awareness. I sense I am already invested in this potential project because my park, El Aprisco, has played a big part in instilling that lost environmental ethic in the newest generation. But just one effort isn’t enough. We’ll see what USAID says on the matter!
05 August, 2010
More changes are on the way as the rainy season takes full force here in the altiplano of Guatemala. After a wonderful visit home to Minnesota I returned to the the land of mountains and brilliant weavings a little more homesick than before and with a big decision to make... where to move. As in, I had decided that for various reasons (most work or transport-related, some space and tact-related) it would be better to find a place to live down in the actual town of Totonicapán instead of in my little aldea up the mountain. Seems abrupt, I know... but as of March I had made up my mind and had also received the suggestion from my Peace Corps higher-ups, that I look for a place to live in the pueblo.
Let me pull out a favorite Minnesotan expression here: Uffda! Looking for a place in Toto is NOT easy, and everything is way more expensive than it really should be... land, house, and rent values are higher in Toto than they are in the much bigger and more cosmopolitan Xela, some attributing this fact to Toto's riduculous population density and land demand, and others to the high percentage of Toto youth being in or having been in the states for years making bank and therefore being able to pay those exorbitant prices.
Point is, I searched and I searched, and it took me until just before my trip home to find something I liked, with someone I liked, at a price I liked. Confusingly enough the proprietor's name is Doña Emiliana (just like my previous host-mom). She is a sweet little old lady who now lives by herself most of the time when her married daughter isn't visiting, occupies herself with beautiful embroidery and seamstress work on huipiles and cortes, has a few missing teeth which show with how much she smiles, and jumped at the chance to rent me the room for half the price everyone else was offering me.
Informing my neighbors in the village wasn't easy... mostly I just didn't do it. I told the people who would notice and be a little miffed not having been told, but as I don't live on the main drag in the aldea most people just see me coming to or going from work in the park, which won't change at all. The conversation was had with Arnulfo and Emiliana, my previous host-parents, long ago when I was in the searching phase. But telling my host-siblings was something I put off and put off, not wanting to have them feeling sad or guilty about it. Tonight for my last evening there we will FINALLY make lasagna together, something we've been talking about since I arrived a year and four months ago. Hard to believe that so much time has passed with this family! Their company, guidance, companionship, humor, and acceptance will always be the framework of my memories of Guatemala.
But sometimes change is good. I'm excited to jump in a little more to some aspects of my work without the logistical inhibitions of transport, lack of internet, lack of presence at the office, etc. There's a new compañero at work too, who it turns out will almost be my neighbor, as his house is closeby where I move in tomorrow - he drives, and has been driving the El Aprisco vehicle with my boss Vicky these last few weeks, so someone to share rides with!! No more pickups in the rain! Sometimes I wonder if the inconveniences were really that big a deal. After all this is Peace Corps. But being so close to a big down with connections and resources that could make me a more effective Peace Corps Volunteer, and just preferring to make excuses out of the reluctance to move and start over someplace new, seemed like a poor excuse. Life requires a little courage sometimes, you know?
Let me pull out a favorite Minnesotan expression here: Uffda! Looking for a place in Toto is NOT easy, and everything is way more expensive than it really should be... land, house, and rent values are higher in Toto than they are in the much bigger and more cosmopolitan Xela, some attributing this fact to Toto's riduculous population density and land demand, and others to the high percentage of Toto youth being in or having been in the states for years making bank and therefore being able to pay those exorbitant prices.
Point is, I searched and I searched, and it took me until just before my trip home to find something I liked, with someone I liked, at a price I liked. Confusingly enough the proprietor's name is Doña Emiliana (just like my previous host-mom). She is a sweet little old lady who now lives by herself most of the time when her married daughter isn't visiting, occupies herself with beautiful embroidery and seamstress work on huipiles and cortes, has a few missing teeth which show with how much she smiles, and jumped at the chance to rent me the room for half the price everyone else was offering me.
Informing my neighbors in the village wasn't easy... mostly I just didn't do it. I told the people who would notice and be a little miffed not having been told, but as I don't live on the main drag in the aldea most people just see me coming to or going from work in the park, which won't change at all. The conversation was had with Arnulfo and Emiliana, my previous host-parents, long ago when I was in the searching phase. But telling my host-siblings was something I put off and put off, not wanting to have them feeling sad or guilty about it. Tonight for my last evening there we will FINALLY make lasagna together, something we've been talking about since I arrived a year and four months ago. Hard to believe that so much time has passed with this family! Their company, guidance, companionship, humor, and acceptance will always be the framework of my memories of Guatemala.
But sometimes change is good. I'm excited to jump in a little more to some aspects of my work without the logistical inhibitions of transport, lack of internet, lack of presence at the office, etc. There's a new compañero at work too, who it turns out will almost be my neighbor, as his house is closeby where I move in tomorrow - he drives, and has been driving the El Aprisco vehicle with my boss Vicky these last few weeks, so someone to share rides with!! No more pickups in the rain! Sometimes I wonder if the inconveniences were really that big a deal. After all this is Peace Corps. But being so close to a big down with connections and resources that could make me a more effective Peace Corps Volunteer, and just preferring to make excuses out of the reluctance to move and start over someplace new, seemed like a poor excuse. Life requires a little courage sometimes, you know?
07 April, 2010
Speaking of Easter
It all started with an invite to the beach. Having never been to Guatemala's coast yet, except sticking one toe in on the eastern coast in Puerto Barrios, which is a port and not beach, I was keen to accept this year's Semana Santa (Holy Week) invitation. Guatemala is famous for beaches! What was I waiting for, right? Only one year left here to see all that I haven't seen yet...
So I asked my boss Vicky's permission to go with Luis and his family to spend five days at Monterrico - beaches of black sand and hot, muggy weather - provided I'd be back in El Aprisco for the busiest, craziest days of Semana Santa when the park has the highest number of visitors of the entire year: Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday. Those are hard days to handle in the park for the ridiculous number of Guatemalans who arrive wanting to picnic or barbeque with their families, play soccer, whatever - and when all the El Aprisco staff also wants to be on holiday! My presence there was going to help out the solitary park guard quite a lot.
We left for Monterrico on a Friday morning. And we proceeded to spend the next five days enjoying the sun and the water, and for me it was wonderful to take a break from both El Aprisco and Peace Corps responsibilities. And I managed to not sunburn myself! (mostly)
On Wednesday morning of Holy Week Luis and family piled into two SUVs for the drive out to Xela to visit his dad's side of the family for the holiday. Midday there was a cutthroat soccer game planned to settle the annual rivalry between the Guatemala City cousins and the Xela cousins, and Uncle Alejandro who was driving out with us kept insisting that I should be put in as goalie. See, we had scrimmaged a few times in the backyard with him and the rest of the male contingent of the family, and he seemed impressed, or feigned compliments anyway, about my goaltending skills. So while I had planned for the convoy of SUVs that Wednesday to just drop me off where the road to Totonicapán leads off the interamerican highway so I would get back to Toto that Wednesday, I ended up being hauled to Xela and playing in said heated soccer game (we lost - 20 to 16, but I maintain I was a waaaay better goalie than the other team's - it's that their forwards and midfielders played much better than my team's because they play together on a weekly basis, and a much higher rate of shots on goal means they're bound to get more past me!). But that wasn't all: afterward the whole family convoy, therefore including me, headed to grandma and grandpa's house in a small town on the opposite end of the state of Toto called San Vicente Buenabaj, where his dad and eight siblings grew up.
I was improvising all of this; I had not planned on this part of Semana Santa activities, but was excited to visit Luis's extended family at their home, with aunts, uncles and cousins I had maybe met at family events once or twice. Luis convinced me it wouldn't be that big a deal to hop a bus back out of town early the next morning if I really felt I needed to get back to El Aprisco that urgently!
And it would have been a good idea, hanging out with Luis's family for a bit and heading out of San Vicente as early as I wanted Thursday morning... had the buses been running. Haha!
But lemons turned themselves into lemonade, and had the buses been running I wouldn't have partaken in the family hike and picnic, soccer games and tug-of-war tournament, the town women's league soccer game they loaned me a jersey for:
and the making of "alfombras" the morning of Good Friday:
(a word for rug, this is the Guatemalan tradition with colored sawdust much like Tibetan sand art. Every Lent and especially Holy Week there are periodic processions, and beautiful designs are made in colored sawdust in the streets beforehand, the point being that the processioners walk over the alfombras and usually they are destroyed). Here everyone out helping:
A cool mayan calendar symbol Luis's cousin made, and later when the procession's coming a photo of all the cousins sitting on the stoop waiting for its arrival:
And Friday morning Luis and family brought me back and delivered me all the way to El Aprisco - it was actually Luis's first time seeing the park! - before they headed back home to the capital. And while I arrived a little later than I had hoped, Don Bonifacio seemed to be doing fine holding the fort on his own, and I arrived before the worst of the craziness that Friday. Saturday, well that was a different story... we got a little stressed out by the over 400 visitors that day (in a 13-hectare park most of which is forest! where do they all go??) :) But I guess not everyone chooses to go check out the black-sand beaches on the coast - everybody has their preferences, and now I know mine: I prefer my little forested, mountainous, endemic-bird-ridden corner of the world, and the good news is that other people prefer it too. And keep coming. I hope that much, at least, continues to hold true.
So I asked my boss Vicky's permission to go with Luis and his family to spend five days at Monterrico - beaches of black sand and hot, muggy weather - provided I'd be back in El Aprisco for the busiest, craziest days of Semana Santa when the park has the highest number of visitors of the entire year: Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday. Those are hard days to handle in the park for the ridiculous number of Guatemalans who arrive wanting to picnic or barbeque with their families, play soccer, whatever - and when all the El Aprisco staff also wants to be on holiday! My presence there was going to help out the solitary park guard quite a lot.
We left for Monterrico on a Friday morning. And we proceeded to spend the next five days enjoying the sun and the water, and for me it was wonderful to take a break from both El Aprisco and Peace Corps responsibilities. And I managed to not sunburn myself! (mostly)
On Wednesday morning of Holy Week Luis and family piled into two SUVs for the drive out to Xela to visit his dad's side of the family for the holiday. Midday there was a cutthroat soccer game planned to settle the annual rivalry between the Guatemala City cousins and the Xela cousins, and Uncle Alejandro who was driving out with us kept insisting that I should be put in as goalie. See, we had scrimmaged a few times in the backyard with him and the rest of the male contingent of the family, and he seemed impressed, or feigned compliments anyway, about my goaltending skills. So while I had planned for the convoy of SUVs that Wednesday to just drop me off where the road to Totonicapán leads off the interamerican highway so I would get back to Toto that Wednesday, I ended up being hauled to Xela and playing in said heated soccer game (we lost - 20 to 16, but I maintain I was a waaaay better goalie than the other team's - it's that their forwards and midfielders played much better than my team's because they play together on a weekly basis, and a much higher rate of shots on goal means they're bound to get more past me!). But that wasn't all: afterward the whole family convoy, therefore including me, headed to grandma and grandpa's house in a small town on the opposite end of the state of Toto called San Vicente Buenabaj, where his dad and eight siblings grew up.
I was improvising all of this; I had not planned on this part of Semana Santa activities, but was excited to visit Luis's extended family at their home, with aunts, uncles and cousins I had maybe met at family events once or twice. Luis convinced me it wouldn't be that big a deal to hop a bus back out of town early the next morning if I really felt I needed to get back to El Aprisco that urgently!
And it would have been a good idea, hanging out with Luis's family for a bit and heading out of San Vicente as early as I wanted Thursday morning... had the buses been running. Haha!
But lemons turned themselves into lemonade, and had the buses been running I wouldn't have partaken in the family hike and picnic, soccer games and tug-of-war tournament, the town women's league soccer game they loaned me a jersey for:
and the making of "alfombras" the morning of Good Friday:
(a word for rug, this is the Guatemalan tradition with colored sawdust much like Tibetan sand art. Every Lent and especially Holy Week there are periodic processions, and beautiful designs are made in colored sawdust in the streets beforehand, the point being that the processioners walk over the alfombras and usually they are destroyed). Here everyone out helping:
A cool mayan calendar symbol Luis's cousin made, and later when the procession's coming a photo of all the cousins sitting on the stoop waiting for its arrival:
And Friday morning Luis and family brought me back and delivered me all the way to El Aprisco - it was actually Luis's first time seeing the park! - before they headed back home to the capital. And while I arrived a little later than I had hoped, Don Bonifacio seemed to be doing fine holding the fort on his own, and I arrived before the worst of the craziness that Friday. Saturday, well that was a different story... we got a little stressed out by the over 400 visitors that day (in a 13-hectare park most of which is forest! where do they all go??) :) But I guess not everyone chooses to go check out the black-sand beaches on the coast - everybody has their preferences, and now I know mine: I prefer my little forested, mountainous, endemic-bird-ridden corner of the world, and the good news is that other people prefer it too. And keep coming. I hope that much, at least, continues to hold true.
21 March, 2010
The New Year's news on El Sendero Ecológico El Aprisco!
It's been a few months, and recounting events and reflections thereof may prove daunting, both for me to write and for you to read! But it's been a good winter; the long cold is over, and it's almost back to the (slightly) warmer rainy season.
This winter (which is called summer here, simply because it doesn't rain. Guatemala is still in the northern hemisphere, so technically winter and summer occur at the same time as ours do. People here just use different criteria to label their seasons, haha) has been busy. It has also brought big changes in the park! Last December we received the news that neither the park director nor my counterpart (the education coordinator) would be continuing with us in 2010. My initial reaction was a mixture of relief (they were both rather ineffective at their jobs and seemed to be holding the park back) and alarm (their departure was to leave me with the other trail guide and the two park guards - me, running El Aprisco with no budget and almost no staff??? The last time the park lost a director it took over 3 months to find a replacement!). But I didn't have long to fear. Our parent association took swift action and hired an incredibly competent person who was until this promotion already among the association's administrative team, and who a few years ago had done undergrad thesis work in the park getting a degree in pedagogy. And did I mention she's a woman???
I met Vicky when Kate, the former volunteer, was still here and introduced us. Since then, it always felt comfortable dropping in on Vicky in her office to talk about El Aprisco, our projects there, ideas, failures, frustrations, dreams... she was a source of both inspiration and counsel. Now, she is my new boss.
Having a year under my belt in El Aprisco, Vicky looks to me for judgment calls, new ideas, and technical information on potential projects. She has earned my profound admiration for taking on the challenge of a park left in severe budget deficit thanks to the former director's incompetence and lack of consideration for the park's future once he decided he was quitting. She has taken that reality and transformed it, having already earned us two major grants and going for a third, all in this year's first trimester. This is big news for a little nature preserve dedicated to environmental education - not exactly a lucrative sector of the economy, you might say.
But our environmental education component is not the only one we're trying to grow this year. Our other major attraction can be seen flittering among the pine trees all hours of the day, and makes us a major destination for international visitors with a certain agenda in mind: birders. One of (if not THE) only natural preserve areas open to the public in the highland coniferous forest of Totonicapán, El Aprisco is home to a surprising biodiversity of highland bird species - around 95-100 different species, and about 30 of them endemic, meaning worldwide they are only found in these highland parts of Guatemala. On a birding experience while visiting Uncle Den in Mexico for New Year's I realized what a lucrative operation the excursion seemed to be catering to birders out to see the coastal bird species, and that there should also be interest in and demand for the birds you only find in the mountains! El Aprisco is perfect for birders who want the other side of the coin to the low-altitude tropical-forest species, and it seems that somehow other foreigners have suddenly come to the same conclusion: our birding program has experienced surprising growth in these last 3 months, having received about six groups of international visitors coming solely to see the birds in our forests. Better yet, we've created some community involvement and income generation from this new development, through the hiring of local youth guides from a neighboring family-owned parcel of forest to take our visitors deep into their (considerably larger and more habitat-diverse) forest in order to see a wider variety of highland bird species. It's rewarding watching these young people renewing their interest in their grandparents' knowledge of and intimacy with the forest and its avian inhabitants. This project has become one of generating income, developing youth leadership, and relearning cultural value of the environment. Such exciting stuff!!
To those who have not one iota of interest in birds, this probably all sounds like some mania that makes no sense. And I must admit I didn't used to get excited about birds. But these days on my walks through the forest to arrive at the El Aprisco front gate in the morning, I no longer just hear nature background noise. I hear instead the individual and distinct voices of the birds like they were my familiar neighbors, little personalities I can identify calling to me from up ahead eleven-o'clock according to the face of the clock, from two-o'clock understory level, from seven-o'clock but really distant... like characters in a story. Walks through the El Aprisco forest with school groups are enriched when I can stop in my tracks, tell the kids to listen hard, and act like it's a REALLY big deal what we're listening for... and then watch them get excited about birds when they learn even a little bit about them.
In the end, though, my Peace Corps service is not really about getting kids to learn bird species. Teaching them this stuff is about the excitement they start feeling for being in the woods and knowing something about it. It's about the realizations they come to about the way changes in their society and culture are using up and harming something so beautiful, and that it doesn't have to be that way. It's about showing the youth group members that young people CAN earn more of an income from protecting and sustainably using the environment - being a wilderness guide - than from overexploiting it extracting unbelievable amounts of illegally harvested wood, which is the career path many young people feel is the only one available to them in Toto. Wish me luck. And much luck and blessings to you too as we enter the Easter season. Happy Easter, till next time!
This winter (which is called summer here, simply because it doesn't rain. Guatemala is still in the northern hemisphere, so technically winter and summer occur at the same time as ours do. People here just use different criteria to label their seasons, haha) has been busy. It has also brought big changes in the park! Last December we received the news that neither the park director nor my counterpart (the education coordinator) would be continuing with us in 2010. My initial reaction was a mixture of relief (they were both rather ineffective at their jobs and seemed to be holding the park back) and alarm (their departure was to leave me with the other trail guide and the two park guards - me, running El Aprisco with no budget and almost no staff??? The last time the park lost a director it took over 3 months to find a replacement!). But I didn't have long to fear. Our parent association took swift action and hired an incredibly competent person who was until this promotion already among the association's administrative team, and who a few years ago had done undergrad thesis work in the park getting a degree in pedagogy. And did I mention she's a woman???
I met Vicky when Kate, the former volunteer, was still here and introduced us. Since then, it always felt comfortable dropping in on Vicky in her office to talk about El Aprisco, our projects there, ideas, failures, frustrations, dreams... she was a source of both inspiration and counsel. Now, she is my new boss.
Having a year under my belt in El Aprisco, Vicky looks to me for judgment calls, new ideas, and technical information on potential projects. She has earned my profound admiration for taking on the challenge of a park left in severe budget deficit thanks to the former director's incompetence and lack of consideration for the park's future once he decided he was quitting. She has taken that reality and transformed it, having already earned us two major grants and going for a third, all in this year's first trimester. This is big news for a little nature preserve dedicated to environmental education - not exactly a lucrative sector of the economy, you might say.
But our environmental education component is not the only one we're trying to grow this year. Our other major attraction can be seen flittering among the pine trees all hours of the day, and makes us a major destination for international visitors with a certain agenda in mind: birders. One of (if not THE) only natural preserve areas open to the public in the highland coniferous forest of Totonicapán, El Aprisco is home to a surprising biodiversity of highland bird species - around 95-100 different species, and about 30 of them endemic, meaning worldwide they are only found in these highland parts of Guatemala. On a birding experience while visiting Uncle Den in Mexico for New Year's I realized what a lucrative operation the excursion seemed to be catering to birders out to see the coastal bird species, and that there should also be interest in and demand for the birds you only find in the mountains! El Aprisco is perfect for birders who want the other side of the coin to the low-altitude tropical-forest species, and it seems that somehow other foreigners have suddenly come to the same conclusion: our birding program has experienced surprising growth in these last 3 months, having received about six groups of international visitors coming solely to see the birds in our forests. Better yet, we've created some community involvement and income generation from this new development, through the hiring of local youth guides from a neighboring family-owned parcel of forest to take our visitors deep into their (considerably larger and more habitat-diverse) forest in order to see a wider variety of highland bird species. It's rewarding watching these young people renewing their interest in their grandparents' knowledge of and intimacy with the forest and its avian inhabitants. This project has become one of generating income, developing youth leadership, and relearning cultural value of the environment. Such exciting stuff!!
To those who have not one iota of interest in birds, this probably all sounds like some mania that makes no sense. And I must admit I didn't used to get excited about birds. But these days on my walks through the forest to arrive at the El Aprisco front gate in the morning, I no longer just hear nature background noise. I hear instead the individual and distinct voices of the birds like they were my familiar neighbors, little personalities I can identify calling to me from up ahead eleven-o'clock according to the face of the clock, from two-o'clock understory level, from seven-o'clock but really distant... like characters in a story. Walks through the El Aprisco forest with school groups are enriched when I can stop in my tracks, tell the kids to listen hard, and act like it's a REALLY big deal what we're listening for... and then watch them get excited about birds when they learn even a little bit about them.
In the end, though, my Peace Corps service is not really about getting kids to learn bird species. Teaching them this stuff is about the excitement they start feeling for being in the woods and knowing something about it. It's about the realizations they come to about the way changes in their society and culture are using up and harming something so beautiful, and that it doesn't have to be that way. It's about showing the youth group members that young people CAN earn more of an income from protecting and sustainably using the environment - being a wilderness guide - than from overexploiting it extracting unbelievable amounts of illegally harvested wood, which is the career path many young people feel is the only one available to them in Toto. Wish me luck. And much luck and blessings to you too as we enter the Easter season. Happy Easter, till next time!
20 January, 2010
Es La Temporada
Somehow the translation of “Tis the Season” just doesn’t have the same ring to it in Spanish. No wonder it’s never caught on big here. That catchphrase notwithstanding, there’s actually plenty of common ground in the ways North Americans and Guatemalans celebrate the holiday season. But naturally, I spent this Christmas and New Year’s learning more about the differences: missing traditions from home, learning new Guatemalan traditions, and sharing those things that matter to me most from home with my “family” and friends here. Christmas is supposed to be more about the giving than the getting…but in this year’s cultural exchange of time-honored, close-held traditions, I think both sides felt their lives enriched. And maybe I ended up getting more after all.
My motivation to go to great lengths re-enacting many of those Roske Family traditions here in the Guatemalan context of course stemmed from my feeling their absence. With Thanksgiving long passed, I suffered from severe and unintentional Scrooge-ism: I was not at all in the “Christmas spirit”! Maybe that comes with age, that every year that spirit is ever more sluggish to arrive, but all of my normal triggers were missing this year. I missed the tree, I missed the cookies, I missed the SNOW! I missed the carols, I missed the movies that for whatever reason have been an integral part of every Christmas since childhood (you know the ones – The Grinch, Rudolph, Santa Bear, Sesame Street Christmas and the Muppets Christmas, etc.) So I hummed the carols to myself, plucked them out on my out-of-tune guitar, strung up Christmas lights in my room, poured my heart into making Christmas cards, and made cookies. Lord, did I make cookies! I suspect many Roske family friends reading this have been past recipients of these cookies, these ginger-molasses delicacies from an age-old recipe handed down from the Landwehr/Lodermeier side of the family, and well – you can judge for yourself whether you consider them anything that amazing. But I discovered this year that I am positively a seasonal addict. It is NOT Christmas, I tell you, till there are molasses cookies!
So I went over to another volunteer’s house in a nearby town and three of us (but mostly me) spent an entire afternoon/evening baking cookies in her toaster oven. (Which did not include the long and patience-trying process of frosting them all later, which I chose to do the night the power was destined to go out. Frosting cookies by candlelight isn’t actually that tricky when there are only 2 colors to work with since I only found one food dye! ha.) But there was something about those cookies and the whole love-filled process of their making that I absolutely needed to feel, that took me back all but physically to our kitchen in Minnesota at Christmastime. Rolling out the dough time after time that afternoon with the few Christmas carols we had on our MP3-players filling the air, I was almost home in Collegeville. The cookie-cutters I carefully (and painfully – bandaids!) made by cutting a big tin can into strips and bending them into shapes, were of course in loving memory of the favorite shapes we use every year at home. It all reminded me of watching my father in all his baking-frenzy glory whip out tray after tray, while my mother would inevitably be across the way decorating the gallant 14-foot tree in the living room with over two decades’ worth of commemorative ornaments, every single one with a story behind it and the vast majority the grade school glue-gun-special variety. I missed it all so much, for this is how we commemorate Christmas in Collegeville, how we measure the passage of a year – and the passage of the years. I tried to explain it; and I think Emiliana and Arnulfo understood. Even though they don’t put up a tree in the house at Christmas, they graciously accepted the woodcarved ornaments made by my grandfather that he and I strategically selected last August for me to bring for all the members of my host family. (I was a little worried at first, Grampa, considering they don’t do the tree thing or really any decorations; but the next morning I saw those ornaments hung up on all the doors in the house. :) And they of course LOVED that heaping pile of cookies I presented them. Admittedly, apart from those ornaments I didn’t stress to make commemorative ornaments or anything for all my other friends here… but I DID bring them cookies! No, the fate of those 150+ cookies we made that day was NOT to end up in my stomach. Rather I fulfilled the Roske family custom of decorating and delivering them like Santa Claus to all my friends and neighbors, always with explanation to this or that Doña of why my family does this every year, and how in a way my family back home in Minnesota was, like me, offering this gift in an act of friendship and gratitude. And in the end, the cookies weren’t really that important: explaining the tradition, and the fact that I had extended it to the people closest to me here, was what really mattered.
Now, one Guatemalan tradition for which I definitely needed some explanation was the Posadas. The word itself means inn or place to stay, but this reenactment of Mary and Joseph’s search for room in the inn was not clear to me at first. Why would we all leave the warmth of our houses at 7 pm every frigid night the entire week (9 days) before Christmas to walk from one designated house to another carrying candles in cellophane boxes mounted on poles? But once I saw how pretty those twinkling lights in their technicolored boxes looked bobbing on up the mountainsides in the dark, like a string of beads as the congregation threaded those well-worn footpaths toward the next house; once I began to learn the lyrics to their carols and share in the smiles on their faces when a familiar one was chosen; once I understood the miniature theatrical production that was done every time we arrived at that night’s assigned house reenacting the plea for hospice and the journey of the holy family, as a symbol of good will and Christmas spirit passing from one human heart to the next… I decided I’m rather fond of the Posadas and will be excited for them again next year.
In Latin American culture Christmas Eve, called Nochebuena (The Good Night), is really the big deal. All this buildup of cookies, ornaments, and posadas happened in my community; Nochebuena and Navidad itself I spent with Luis and his extended family in the capital, Guatemala City. It was so good to be around a family, at this family-focused time of year, especially for someone whose family up until this year has always managed to celebrate Christmas all together at home. But I had made up my mind long ago that I have had many and will likely have many more of those Christmases in Collegeville, and I’ve probably only got two years to experience Christmas in Guatemala. However, this was not the rural-host-community Christmas I think every Peace Corps Volunteer envisions for themselves. The urban Guatemala Christmas is rather different from the rural highlands version, or so I gathered. In the capital we had turkey with gravy and potatoes for Christmas Eve dinner, instead of the typical tamales or paches (seasoned ground corn- or rice-paste with chicken, bell pepper, and red sauce folded and steam-cooked in a banana leaf). At midnight, everybody gives hugs; but in the capital some of the guys either give hugs early or give ’em late because at precisely midnight there were fireworks set off from most every block in the city – we’re talking thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands?) of people over many square miles of city setting off a million fireworks. And with Luis’ house slightly up on the mountainsides around the city valley, we had a great view of all the starbursts looking so tiny so many miles away! I give Guatemalans credit now for knowing how to put on a pretty decent fireworks show (even if extremely dangerous and a monumental burn-up of everybody’s holiday cash!) And in Luis’ house they had a tree – a real, live, lights-n-ornaments, bona fide pine Christmas tree, and for some reason it helped me feel that finally there was some way in which I WAS home. Sadly, the only real contact I could have with folks back home this Christmas Eve was a choppy, slow connection when my parents skyped my Guatemalan cell phone. (Mom said it really helped to hear my voice and for everyone to be able to talk to me, all of them there around the tree opening the presents I had sent home. That it felt more like I was among them. Mostly I just got sad for NOT being there and frustrated that we couldn’t understand each other half the time.) So, once everyone else in Luis’ house had finally gone to bed, in the wee hours after the present opening, the Midnight hugs, fireworks, and ensuing cleanup, Luis and I just sat on the sofa together in the quiet dark lit only by the glow of the tree looking at it mostly in silence, just like I love to do Christmas Eves at home. I told him about our Christmas tree, our ornaments, our games of I-Spy and Find the Pickle. And recounting those stories and basking in the glow, I fell asleep.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Less than one week later I would find myself saying goodbye to Luis as he dropped me off at the Xela bus terminal, after we found the next chicken-bus to the border and he had made sure this bus with his girlfriend on it would INDEED be going all the way to the border, and at a timely hour. Once the bus got going, I noticed the trees change from pines to oaks to palms as I myself shed layers and began to sweat from the heat and humidity. I was headed to Mexico, to spend New Year’s and the week after at my uncle Den’s house. My parents were coming New Year’s Day too, meaning Den, Liz, my parents and I had a week of almost uninterrupted beach-town relaxation. Very different scene from the cold highlands of Guatemala.
It’s a long bus ride from Xela to Puerto Escondido, Mexico. Therefore, twenty-three hours after bidding Luis farewell (thanks in part to border crossings and long bus station waits), when Liz picked me up New Year’s Eve morning in the terminal, I had my doubts about my ability this year to really celebrate the holiday – you’re in Mexico! No parents! But keeping in mind that bus ride, let’s just say Molly’s “New Year’s in Mexico” story contained a lot more yawning and a lot less crazy partying that its title would suggest. Or maybe it’s because I’m Minnesotan and don’t know how to party in Mexico. All is know is, when my parents arrived the next day and the Mexico beach time really began, we all three looked like fish out of water!
But it was pretty special to have made it possible to be with real family for the holidays this year, at least a part. We made so many good memories – seven days of just me and my folks and Den and Liz (how often does THAT happen? or will ever happen again?)…and the beach, and sunsets with margaritas on the terrace of their house, and boogie boarding and waterfront shopping and good food and sunshine… Again, that doesn’t sound very Peace-Corps-ish to me either! I guess I can say I’m no stereotypical PCV. And while part of me wonders what it would have been like to spend Christmas and New Year’s in Toto, it’s nice knowing that even though these are family holidays when I suspected no one in Toto would miss me as I belong to no one’s family, I was indeed missed! I received and had to regretfully turn down so many last-minute warm-hearted invites to come join so-and-so for Nochebuena, c’mon the whole family will be there, you’ll love it! or New Year’s, come down to our house, you can stay over, we’ll have plenty of room and plenty of food, the fam will be so happy to see you! I hope to take them up on the rain check for next year, and in the meantime continue building those relationships in this new year we’ve been given. So happy belated holidays, everyone! Any resolutions, you might ask? Do a better job maintaining the blog. Wish me luck :)
My motivation to go to great lengths re-enacting many of those Roske Family traditions here in the Guatemalan context of course stemmed from my feeling their absence. With Thanksgiving long passed, I suffered from severe and unintentional Scrooge-ism: I was not at all in the “Christmas spirit”! Maybe that comes with age, that every year that spirit is ever more sluggish to arrive, but all of my normal triggers were missing this year. I missed the tree, I missed the cookies, I missed the SNOW! I missed the carols, I missed the movies that for whatever reason have been an integral part of every Christmas since childhood (you know the ones – The Grinch, Rudolph, Santa Bear, Sesame Street Christmas and the Muppets Christmas, etc.) So I hummed the carols to myself, plucked them out on my out-of-tune guitar, strung up Christmas lights in my room, poured my heart into making Christmas cards, and made cookies. Lord, did I make cookies! I suspect many Roske family friends reading this have been past recipients of these cookies, these ginger-molasses delicacies from an age-old recipe handed down from the Landwehr/Lodermeier side of the family, and well – you can judge for yourself whether you consider them anything that amazing. But I discovered this year that I am positively a seasonal addict. It is NOT Christmas, I tell you, till there are molasses cookies!
So I went over to another volunteer’s house in a nearby town and three of us (but mostly me) spent an entire afternoon/evening baking cookies in her toaster oven. (Which did not include the long and patience-trying process of frosting them all later, which I chose to do the night the power was destined to go out. Frosting cookies by candlelight isn’t actually that tricky when there are only 2 colors to work with since I only found one food dye! ha.) But there was something about those cookies and the whole love-filled process of their making that I absolutely needed to feel, that took me back all but physically to our kitchen in Minnesota at Christmastime. Rolling out the dough time after time that afternoon with the few Christmas carols we had on our MP3-players filling the air, I was almost home in Collegeville. The cookie-cutters I carefully (and painfully – bandaids!) made by cutting a big tin can into strips and bending them into shapes, were of course in loving memory of the favorite shapes we use every year at home. It all reminded me of watching my father in all his baking-frenzy glory whip out tray after tray, while my mother would inevitably be across the way decorating the gallant 14-foot tree in the living room with over two decades’ worth of commemorative ornaments, every single one with a story behind it and the vast majority the grade school glue-gun-special variety. I missed it all so much, for this is how we commemorate Christmas in Collegeville, how we measure the passage of a year – and the passage of the years. I tried to explain it; and I think Emiliana and Arnulfo understood. Even though they don’t put up a tree in the house at Christmas, they graciously accepted the woodcarved ornaments made by my grandfather that he and I strategically selected last August for me to bring for all the members of my host family. (I was a little worried at first, Grampa, considering they don’t do the tree thing or really any decorations; but the next morning I saw those ornaments hung up on all the doors in the house. :) And they of course LOVED that heaping pile of cookies I presented them. Admittedly, apart from those ornaments I didn’t stress to make commemorative ornaments or anything for all my other friends here… but I DID bring them cookies! No, the fate of those 150+ cookies we made that day was NOT to end up in my stomach. Rather I fulfilled the Roske family custom of decorating and delivering them like Santa Claus to all my friends and neighbors, always with explanation to this or that Doña of why my family does this every year, and how in a way my family back home in Minnesota was, like me, offering this gift in an act of friendship and gratitude. And in the end, the cookies weren’t really that important: explaining the tradition, and the fact that I had extended it to the people closest to me here, was what really mattered.
Now, one Guatemalan tradition for which I definitely needed some explanation was the Posadas. The word itself means inn or place to stay, but this reenactment of Mary and Joseph’s search for room in the inn was not clear to me at first. Why would we all leave the warmth of our houses at 7 pm every frigid night the entire week (9 days) before Christmas to walk from one designated house to another carrying candles in cellophane boxes mounted on poles? But once I saw how pretty those twinkling lights in their technicolored boxes looked bobbing on up the mountainsides in the dark, like a string of beads as the congregation threaded those well-worn footpaths toward the next house; once I began to learn the lyrics to their carols and share in the smiles on their faces when a familiar one was chosen; once I understood the miniature theatrical production that was done every time we arrived at that night’s assigned house reenacting the plea for hospice and the journey of the holy family, as a symbol of good will and Christmas spirit passing from one human heart to the next… I decided I’m rather fond of the Posadas and will be excited for them again next year.
In Latin American culture Christmas Eve, called Nochebuena (The Good Night), is really the big deal. All this buildup of cookies, ornaments, and posadas happened in my community; Nochebuena and Navidad itself I spent with Luis and his extended family in the capital, Guatemala City. It was so good to be around a family, at this family-focused time of year, especially for someone whose family up until this year has always managed to celebrate Christmas all together at home. But I had made up my mind long ago that I have had many and will likely have many more of those Christmases in Collegeville, and I’ve probably only got two years to experience Christmas in Guatemala. However, this was not the rural-host-community Christmas I think every Peace Corps Volunteer envisions for themselves. The urban Guatemala Christmas is rather different from the rural highlands version, or so I gathered. In the capital we had turkey with gravy and potatoes for Christmas Eve dinner, instead of the typical tamales or paches (seasoned ground corn- or rice-paste with chicken, bell pepper, and red sauce folded and steam-cooked in a banana leaf). At midnight, everybody gives hugs; but in the capital some of the guys either give hugs early or give ’em late because at precisely midnight there were fireworks set off from most every block in the city – we’re talking thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands?) of people over many square miles of city setting off a million fireworks. And with Luis’ house slightly up on the mountainsides around the city valley, we had a great view of all the starbursts looking so tiny so many miles away! I give Guatemalans credit now for knowing how to put on a pretty decent fireworks show (even if extremely dangerous and a monumental burn-up of everybody’s holiday cash!) And in Luis’ house they had a tree – a real, live, lights-n-ornaments, bona fide pine Christmas tree, and for some reason it helped me feel that finally there was some way in which I WAS home. Sadly, the only real contact I could have with folks back home this Christmas Eve was a choppy, slow connection when my parents skyped my Guatemalan cell phone. (Mom said it really helped to hear my voice and for everyone to be able to talk to me, all of them there around the tree opening the presents I had sent home. That it felt more like I was among them. Mostly I just got sad for NOT being there and frustrated that we couldn’t understand each other half the time.) So, once everyone else in Luis’ house had finally gone to bed, in the wee hours after the present opening, the Midnight hugs, fireworks, and ensuing cleanup, Luis and I just sat on the sofa together in the quiet dark lit only by the glow of the tree looking at it mostly in silence, just like I love to do Christmas Eves at home. I told him about our Christmas tree, our ornaments, our games of I-Spy and Find the Pickle. And recounting those stories and basking in the glow, I fell asleep.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Less than one week later I would find myself saying goodbye to Luis as he dropped me off at the Xela bus terminal, after we found the next chicken-bus to the border and he had made sure this bus with his girlfriend on it would INDEED be going all the way to the border, and at a timely hour. Once the bus got going, I noticed the trees change from pines to oaks to palms as I myself shed layers and began to sweat from the heat and humidity. I was headed to Mexico, to spend New Year’s and the week after at my uncle Den’s house. My parents were coming New Year’s Day too, meaning Den, Liz, my parents and I had a week of almost uninterrupted beach-town relaxation. Very different scene from the cold highlands of Guatemala.
It’s a long bus ride from Xela to Puerto Escondido, Mexico. Therefore, twenty-three hours after bidding Luis farewell (thanks in part to border crossings and long bus station waits), when Liz picked me up New Year’s Eve morning in the terminal, I had my doubts about my ability this year to really celebrate the holiday – you’re in Mexico! No parents! But keeping in mind that bus ride, let’s just say Molly’s “New Year’s in Mexico” story contained a lot more yawning and a lot less crazy partying that its title would suggest. Or maybe it’s because I’m Minnesotan and don’t know how to party in Mexico. All is know is, when my parents arrived the next day and the Mexico beach time really began, we all three looked like fish out of water!
But it was pretty special to have made it possible to be with real family for the holidays this year, at least a part. We made so many good memories – seven days of just me and my folks and Den and Liz (how often does THAT happen? or will ever happen again?)…and the beach, and sunsets with margaritas on the terrace of their house, and boogie boarding and waterfront shopping and good food and sunshine… Again, that doesn’t sound very Peace-Corps-ish to me either! I guess I can say I’m no stereotypical PCV. And while part of me wonders what it would have been like to spend Christmas and New Year’s in Toto, it’s nice knowing that even though these are family holidays when I suspected no one in Toto would miss me as I belong to no one’s family, I was indeed missed! I received and had to regretfully turn down so many last-minute warm-hearted invites to come join so-and-so for Nochebuena, c’mon the whole family will be there, you’ll love it! or New Year’s, come down to our house, you can stay over, we’ll have plenty of room and plenty of food, the fam will be so happy to see you! I hope to take them up on the rain check for next year, and in the meantime continue building those relationships in this new year we’ve been given. So happy belated holidays, everyone! Any resolutions, you might ask? Do a better job maintaining the blog. Wish me luck :)
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