Here comes the sun

Well the weather had been crummy with rain and cool temperatures for quite some time. This definitely did not help my cold which seemed to have grabbed hold of my body which is still fighting the new things in the environment, the weekly malaria pills, and the barrage of vaccines. Even my things could not really get dry (there is no dryer) in this weather. But hope was around the corner as I would find out.

Saturday, (Oct 20) was the longest night I have been out, as well as that of any other volunteer in my town, without my host-family and with friends. Can you guess what time that was? ---- 7:00. It sure does not seem like much, but it was nice to have a smidge of independence. Will we stay out that late again? Probably not, since we caught the last bus leaving Antigua and they graciously charged everyone the same price, which happened to be 2.5 times the fare than what we normally paid. It was a pure lesson of supply and demand. Either way though, I had fun and got to play darts, foosball, and scrabble in español not to mention spend time with lots of trainees outside of training. Oh while there, I got to have some peanut butter for the first time since I came here. It was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with bananas. Wow did that taste good. It is surprising sometimes the little things that you miss too.

The week before Saturday beginning on Monday the 15^th, we got to begin our independent Spanish study. I would miss the teacher, but definitely looked forward to the new opportunities I’d have, such as focusing on topics that I would want to study and going to place that I or the group would like to go to learn about our program or the culture among other things. Oh, I forgot to mention another good part, that this would all be covered with the Peace Corps’s purse.

One of the places I am thinking about spending a some time at is the seminary here in San Bartolomé to hear some good stories. When I was looking for it and having a hard time finding it, I stopped and asked someone for directions – he ended up being an Oblate at the seminary. I still have not gone yet, but the priest I met was in the mass the next Sunday. For the first time ever, it was not the same priest (consequently half the town was late as the mass started on time). It made me feel so good when he remembered my name when he came to me to give me Peace during mass. (It seems like so many little things are meaning more to me now).

That same Sunday, the San Bartolomé group ate a Puerto Rican meal which Abi and his host-mother cooked. It was deeeelicious. The fried plantains reminded me of Ecuador

Monday the 22^nd the ambassador came to talk with us. He was definitely a diplomat but not a political ambassador (meaning he was not appointed by the President for doing things like political favors). Knowing that he earned his job, I was able to feel respect for him and what he said. Some interesting facts he told us included that:

• 1 million Guatemalans currently reside in the US (this is about 10% of the total Guatemalan population)
• $4 billion in remittances (money sent by family or friends from the US to Guatemala) are sent per year.
• In recent months, 2000 Guatemalans are deported monthly from the US
• Guatemala is the 2^nd largest source for adoptions averaging 4000 per year

Most interesting though was that he announced that he will swear all the trainees in on November 16 at his residence (instead of having it at a hotel done by an assistant or something) and that he’ll also organize something for us for Thanksgiving with the embassy families.

Friday and Saturday we went on a mini trip to do some work out in the field with some current volunteers. I worked with some others with a group of indigenous families who lived literally in the middle of a corn field. With them, we made some vegetable gardens so to hopefully provide food during the dry season. I say hopefully because there needs to be 2 added things. The indigenous need to water the plants well and moreover, there needs to be water available, which sometime there is not in the dry season.

I worked with 2 women, one who could barely understand Spanish since her primary language was one of the 23 indigenous languages that are here in Guatemala. When we all finished, the invited us into one of their homes, a one-room house with a dirt floor which was dark and a bit dingy. There, they gave us a glass of pop and bread to show their thanks. The buying of the pop was a huge deal since it is so expensive for them. It is probably something they barely ever do for themselves.

While there, we also actually go to visit the most beautiful lake in Guatemala, which is surrounded by volcanoes and mountains (my host-family say the most beautiful in the world, but I say that they have yet to see the lakes in Michigan). We got to swim in it for awhile, but I stay ashore as I was still recuperating from the same cold I mentioned earlier.

Getting to this place and getting back, though, was not that fun. We took the Central America Highway, which, well, runs through all of Central America and is THE highway in Guatemala. You would think just maybe that it would resemble something close to a highway in the US, but it definitely did not. Getting there we spent an hour stopped because of construction. We were not just going slowly like in other parts, but we were just sitting there. On the way back, we spent an hour and a half stopped. As I mentioned, there were many parts that rough which were either like dirt roads or road in appearance to Scribner Road in Grand Rapids.

Finally, as I alluded, the season and my cold would change. Like a switch, the season was now dry… the days were sunny and windy with clear, cooler nights. The temperatures at night still stayed above freezing, but I was definitely thankful for having moved from my old room to my new room in the sewing room which is connected to the larger part of the house and most importantly the kitchen, which provides some heat. My cold would finally go and take with it all that green and brown gunk that had been filling my sinuses for some time.

Tomorrow is the day I find out my site!

Lesson #1

Lesson #1 – Why are there more educated men here than there are educated women?

Well there is no easy answer to this, but one reason is that some girls here only go through school up to the equivalent of 3^rd grade and after that their parents pull them out to do house chores or to help in the field (this happens outside the bigger cities). Boys, are at least generally allowed to stay in school until the equivalent of 6^th grade. After that, continuing education can be costly and be denied to both genders. Without the education, it is definitely a lot harder to break the cycle of poverty.

Looking for Dog Poop, FBT Part II

After Church in San Carlos Alzatate, we went to Cobán, a city in the middle north of Guatemala. There it was much warmer that I had been used to in San Bartolomé. Also, it was the first time in a long time that I slept without my hooded-sweatshirt and socks. (I would later pay for this warm weather because as the night I returned to San Bartolomé, I would feel extremely cold during the night and even might normal bundle of clothing and pile of blankets would not suffice--- I am going to have to start wearing my winter jacket now).

We stayed in a hostel there and unlike my host family, there was hot water to bathe in (and yes, I took cold showers all 5 days I was staying with the host family). That first night the water felt so good and the bed felt like a plume of clouds. I even walked around barefoot for awhile since the weather was so nice at night.

While in Cobán, I made my first school presentation with Mateo, another volunteer. I knew this would be a tough challenge for my Spanish since I would only be able to prepare so much and the rest would be thinking on my feet. We worked quite hard, Matt on his Spanish (because he needed more help in that area) and me on all the odds and ends. One odd was getting all the plants that repelled insects through their strong smell. Unfortunately, I neither had the money nor the time to get all the plants alive from the market so I found myself in a hotel with beautiful landscaping as well as in a florist shop asking for pedacitos de las plantas (small parts of the plants). These people were quite generous to give them to me since the typical thing seems to be to charge a gringo more for something. Another end was, well, getting dog poop. Yes, dog poop. We, well I, had to get dog poop because part of our presentation also included using 2 bottles, one thing with something nice to smell and one thing with something gross to smell. (Using the 2 bottles and having the kids smell each one, we would make the connection that like humans, there are smells the insects do not like as well. Our whole presentation was on natural defenses that can be used for vegetable in the garden, one being the plants and another being a natural pesticide composed of hot peppers, garlic, and soap.) Thus, I picked dog poop to be the gross thing since I figured it would be ample in the streets as it was in San Bartolomé. I was surely proven wrong. After 1.5 hours of roaming the streets, the market, and the city park where I knew dogs were, I found myself in the dark poopless. I nearly gave up and walked back to the street of the hostel when I went to drastic measures; I decided to start asking people for poop they might have from their dog in their home. I approached the first 2 people near a house I knew had a dog. I asked them if they had a dog and then carefully phrased my request for dog poop – I said it was for an experiment. They had no dog, but pointed me to a store which had a dog, but whose owner was unfortunately not in to unlock the house. I went back to the same 2 women sitting on the side of the street and they pointed me to another house farther down which was 2-stories tall. I first started and the neighboring house since they were people outside. The mother came to the door and once again I explained my situation. She cheerfully said no, but that the neighbors did. She went outside to the other house to the call monitor and asked for her cousin to come out (the neighbors were family). A cousin came out, tied up the dog and then we both look for poop. After a while more children came out from both houses to help and then even the dad who turned on the car lights to illuminate the yard. There ended up being nothing in the huge area in which we were looking, but luckily just as the dad was offering a time in the morning that would be good to come over to get some really fresh specimens, someone found our treasure. I was thankful that it was over since I was so hungry, but I think most of all, I was really surprised. What would a person do in the US to a stranger who looked really different and began talking by asking if there were any dogs in the house and if the stranger could get some dog poop. But I was met with smiles, some laughs, and enthusiastic help. When I was done, I passed by the 2 women to say thank you and proudly say, “ya yo tengo el popo”.

With the bottles and the 3 skits ( 1 skit was where I ate a defenseless plant and the other 2 included me running away disgusted from a vegetable plant which was protected from either the natural pesticide or plant which had a strong smell), the presentation was a success. There are still things to improve, but I enjoyed what I did and that day.

Finally, I found out a little bit about where the future sites will be for us volunteers. Some are hotter, some are colder, some are in tiny aldeas and some are in the mountains. There is going to be quite the diversity, but the common factors are that they are safe, that each site has an agency with which we will be able to work, and that the people in that site are asking for the help for which we are training. October 31 is the day I´ll learn which site in Guatemala I´ll be going. November 15 is the day I swear in as a volunteer and leave for the site. I feel I can hardly wait.

Before one of the lunches we had in San Carlos Alzataté, I helped make some of the many tortillas along with the family and Lauren, another volunteer. My tortillas were edible, but they sure were not round like the others. Look below to try to find one of the tortillas that I made. It´s a bit dark to see, but I´ll give you the hint that I was being patriotic to the state of MI.
Here are some tea plants that are just starting off. We visited this Tea cooperative in Cobán and got to tour the fields of tea plants, the building were the tea is dried and packaged, and here where new plants are being grown by sticking a leaf of a current plant in a small package of dirt.

Here I am with our guide. If you notice, he has a University of Maryland hat. Having US things is quite common hear since there are business that actually go to goodwills and other places like that and buy all kinds of clothes to sell down here. Who knew, hah? One sure I even found was an election shirt. On it was the current MI Secretary of State and Attorney General.

To the West I went, FBT Part I

All the sustainable agriculture volunteers went on the field-based training starting Tuesday morning. First we went to San Carlos Alzatate, which was kind of like a Western town. The people wore cowboy boots and hats, big belt buckles, and jeans. Plus the men were a bit more machista than normal for here. While there, we learned all about all kinds of fruits and vegetables here and many different agricultural techniques such as making terraces in steep terrain (very hard work) with a homemade level, rocks, and tree branches cut with machetes. We took tours through café plants, planted some vegetables, and even learned how to make grafts for rosas (roses), aguacate júas (avocado variety), and café. I hope I´ll be able to remember all the stuff, but if I don’t, I´ll know in the least where to find the information.

While in San Carlos, we stayed with host families. In just a few days, I was able to form connection with them. There were just a very friendly family. I know that when I told them about money they would receive for having me, they did not want to take it. Only after much pleading and explaining did they accept it. To compensate though, they made very delicious suppers, probably some of the best I have had while here, and they did this all while not having a lot. (It would have been very easy just to keep the money for a truly special occasion). Even when I surprised them by not liking café and preferring pan (bread) to tortillas, they quickly offered for the next meal pan and atole (a warm, starchy, drink that can be made from grains like corn or oats). It was hard to believe that after 5 days, they were sad to see me go. We had only spent the evenings together, but I spent it talking and teaching them a card game which we played almost every night. I was a little sad, but I think right now I can feel sad. First of all, my thoughts and prayers are with my family and friends. I know there is only so much of myself I can give to others. I think too that right now I am staying a bit closed. I don’t want to become attached to anything I can have for a long time. I know I need to open up to others, and probably God for that matter too, but with everything being different here, it is hard to open up the last thing left that vulnerability has not touched and that I seemingly control.

On Sunday, before leaving for Cobán, the next city, I went to Sunday mass with Abi and a volunteer that was living there. To my surprise, the priest welcomed us saying “Bienvenidos a los Norteamericanos y Puerto Píquenos que están aquí para participar en la misa con nosotros. Que ellos tengan éxito en todo su trabajo.” He wished us all success in our work. The volunteer had apparently talked with the priest a week before about all of us coming. (And the priest warned all the churchgoers the week earlier that there would be a lot more gringos in the town in the coming week and that they should be extra warm and inviting for us.) The priest probably said a bit more, but that was all I could here during the beginning of mass. Then, as the priest was processing out, he picked me out to say welcome to the parish again (I guess it was not that difficult to find one of the only guys on the “women´s” side of the church (for some reason, men and women were basically divided to a side of their own) and not to mention I was the only grandote and canche (giant and blond) in the entire church.



Here I am looking up the steep hill side to where some of the other volunteers are working on their terraces. We were making level sections of ground so that the land could be used for planting and so that little erosion would occur. This was probably the hardest day out in the field.
Here I am working at the base of the hill creating a terrace with another volunteer. I´ll just say we moved a lot of dirt that day. We planted in the beds after we made the terraces, but unfortunately for me, my soil was really, really full of clay and consequently sticky and muddy.

Finding out What Some of the Job is About

As I mentioned, on Thursday, Aug 20, we got our 80 pollitos. As of today, 8 have died, probably all due to the cold in some way (one night the light burnt out.)

On Sunday the 23rd began my site visit. This entailed going out with another trainee to visit a current volunteer to learn about what being a volunteer meant, in one way or another. I ended up visiting a volunteer all the way in the departamento of San Marcos, which is about 7 hours away and is next to Mexico. The 7 hours in the camioneta was not what I would call ideal since part of the time I did not even have a seat, and the rest of the time I did have a seat I still did not have the capability of fitting in the seats of the former US school buses.
On a very good note though, seeing the work of the volunteer there made me excited for what I could do and made me more confident in what I could do. First of all, I simply enjoyed the work I saw and the fact that there was a wide variety of it. In 2 days, we worked with a campesino (more or less a rural farmer) with planting some new seeds and giving some vaccinations to his ponedores (egg-laying hens), gave a lesson to some school kids over how rabbits and their school garden, and checked in with 3 different communities in which 1 community had medicinal gardens being used to create cough expectorant, 1 community had a fish farm, and the last one was where vegetables other than corn were trying to be introduced. I came here wondering and doubting how technical the skills I would need to have in order to help the people down here. I mean an honest question could be why can’t the people down here grow their own vegetable gardens? Why do they need help? Seeing the things that were being presented, though really helped me understand that and some of the situation down here. Take for instance planting a vegetable garden. This is something I have done since I was young and grew up knowing how to start a vegetable plant from seed whether in the ground or in a greenhouse. For one community I was in where vegetable gardens were being done besides not having the means to access the seed (sometimes these people never leave the community and their community has no seed--- some of these communities can be far from a city (over an hour or more by car and even a but is not always available) or maybe their even off the road quite a bit not accessible by car) these people just had never planted anything other than corn and did not know how to plant other seeds or prepare the soil and so on. It was surprising and sad to find out that even knowledge could be so limited to others.
Over this past weekend, I did a little visiting to some neighboring towns and finally bought my winter hat I had been needing during the cold nights. I know I’ll appreciate it as my hooded sweatshirt needed a washing. I also accidentally went to a Confirmation mass and thus got to get Communion from the Bishop. I did not get to meet him afterward, but it was interesting to see the mass here. On Sunday after mass, Abi and I finally met up with some people from our town who were also preparing for their Confirmations. We prayed the rosary together, which was a bit different that I was used to. Hopefully I’ll be able to join them again before I leave for my site. Though I definitely cannot understand a lot of things, I think it will still help to fill a little of the hole that St. John’s at MSU filled.

To give an update on where I am in the language, I am not going to lie; it has been hard and at times frustrating. There are times when I just cannot communicate completely how I feeling or what I am thinking and it seems so easy for my voice to be lost to native speakers since I definitely do not have a command of the language and there is so much I do not know. As a matter of fact, just being in this strange setting is challenging, especially on the mind. I mean so many little things that I knew or took for granted just do not hold true here. I know though that I’ll keep working through things, especially with Spanish. I am just thankful there have not been really any problems that have added to this mental drain.

Finally, I’ll be going on a field-based training for 8 days starting tomorrow. Besides learning new skills, I look forward to seeing some different parts of the country.

Oh, to answer some of the questions I have been getting, the food is just fine down here. They definitely use onions in a majority of their foods, but for the most part they are cooked so it does not really bother me. The top foods I have eaten here are bread, tortillas, frijoles in any form (liquefied, in a paste, whole, in a soup, with a fox, in a box, etc) pollo (chicken), and eggs. I think my egg consumption has increased by about 500% each week since huge chucks of vegetables such as green beans or broccoli are baked in with eggs in kind of like an omelet, since even things like tortillas can be cooked like French toast, and since just eating scrambled eggs is common. My frijol consumption probably increased by 10000% since I rarely have ever eaten beans. I actually like them though and there does not appear too much a difference in the gas outtake.
A typical meal might look like frijoles liquefied and heated like a soup, a piece of chicken, rice, a vegetable that does not exist in the US, and some apple tea which the host mom makes. The meals are not that spicy, unlike Mexican food. I did have some tamales with some hot peppers… it brought some good flavor to it but I sure did not eat the hot pepper. I know I am missing the good cooking I am grown up with at home. You never realize how good your mom or grandma or aunt or uncle or whomever can cook until your with another family for some time.