Día de Acción de Gracias y las primeras 2 semanas

So my first week in site was filled with all kinds of small stuff. I went to the capital of the department of Jalapa, also called Jalapa, to find out how much things cost and to get some offers on a bed and dresser and table. I also just spent a lot of time trying to find things like the grocery store or the ministry of agriculture or the hospital and orient myself as I will probably need to go here at least every 1 to 2 weeks. I also spent my time trying to clean my room which was really dirty and disinfect everything that I had touched within recent times. I was doing this because after telling a nurse over the phone my symptoms, I was told I had scabies. Scabies, is a lovely parasite similar to lice except these guys spend there time burrowing and living in moist areas in your skin. The result is not pretty --- tons of bumps and rashes and a terrible itch. Thus I used a special soap for bathing and used a special cream on my body. The most difficult part is trying to make sure there is not anything in your clothes or bedding. Normally a dryer would kill these guys, but since that is not an option I either have to put everything in boiling water or in a sealed bag for 2 weeks. Both things are not really options. Luckily the next week, after seeing that the cream or the soap were not working, I would ask the doctors from Spain (see below for information on these doctors) to help me out since I was with them in person. They told me I had a fungus. Thus, I have to wash everything over again and go back to Jalapa to get different medicine, but I would say having a fungus that itches is a lot better than scabies.

Thanksgiving broke up the first week as I travelled to the capital to have a dinner there. While the vast majority of the new volunteers went to the ambassador’s house, I along with my friend Abi went to the house of the director of Peace Corps in Guatemala. The director and his family prepared a delicious meal typical of the US (cranberries, turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, pumpkin pie, etc.) After eating beans and tortillas and other Guatemalan foods for so long, it tasted as though I were eating at a 5-star restaurant. Even the Doritos were mouth-watering. I guess I did not realize how much I even missed the little things I was used to. I can only imagine what my Mom’s or Dad’s or family member´s cooking would taste like – hopefully it will only be til May when I find that out.

The second week I was extremely lucky to be able to accompany and help 2 doctors and 2 nurses from Spain who were living in the parish rectory in San Carlos Alzatate and were working in the surrounding aldeas, including mine. I knew I had wanted to do this after meeting them the week before when I had dinner with them at the rectory after helping another Peace Corps volunteer translate during our free time for 2 people who came from the US (These people were visiting the parish since their parish back in the states was supporting this one in San Carlos) (I thought I would note that that meal I had has been the most delicious meal I have had here. It was a dish with tilapia and was made by the assistant of Padre Victor, the priest who is in charge of San Carlos. Her mother also knows how to cook well since with the other 2 American the other volunteer and I also got to eat lunch at her house.)

I was having a bit of trouble getting in contact with them and low and behold when I was searching for a ride to Jalapa while walking on the way to Jalapa (transportation is not that good where I am). I ran into them twice. Not only did I get the ride, but I was able to plan with them how I could accompany them. What luck – or better yet, what a Godincidence as someone I know likes to say.

So Monday and Tuesday I was with the nurses and doctors who were screening patients. I helped with the blood pressure, and the height and weight of the patients. The hardest part was surely writing the names of the patients.

After working and talking with the staff from Spain, I was able to realize that the level of malnutrition in some people is severe. They showed my pictures of people and I saw for myself some that look like they could be ones you would see on TV for a special documentary of Agency asking for money. Padre Victor told me there are 2 kids in my aldea that need to go to the hospital because of severe malnutrition but their parents wont permit it since one of them can’t leave work to accompany them at the hospital (which would be paid for by the parish).

The people from Spain were extremely friendly and really enjoyed seeing medical workers serving others in this type of environment. I couldn’t understand everything they say though, partly because I still can’t understand everything spoken in Spanish but also because they speak with a heavy Spanish accent. They ended their 1-month stay here yesterday. I really look forward to seeing them again in the future as the plan to give up more of the time in the following year to work in the same area.
Here is a picture of the staff from Spain that I had the privelege to accompany along with the other volunteer who came along as well.

Here were are playing some basketball. I have to say that the team I was on, which was at times out numbered 5 to 3, won all three times. The other person to in the picture all the way to the left is Clara, the assistant to Padre Victor.

Here is a picture of Padre Victor.

By the way, I wanted to note that I posted a video of the kite festival that occurred on All Saint´s Day. To see it, you need to go to the previous posts in November.

Fin del Entrenamiento y Juramento

Here is a picture of the posadas that took place in San Bartolomé. Look at a previous entry to remember everything if you have questions. In the picture, we(as in the public) are in a house and the statues of Joseph and Mary , which are in the back left of the picture, have already been carried in by procession.

So I’ll try to start where I left off, which was right after Dia de Todos Los Santos. That following week, I got to visit where I am right now, my current community in which I’ll be working for my 2 years of service. I’ll describe it a little bit, but with time and future entries, a lot more information will come out. The community is a small one, in the department of Jalapa. There are only about 500 families living in it and there’s a school, a Catholic Church without regular masses, and a building for people to come to when the nurse is in the town. For now, I’ll be living with a family with my own room without a door and at the moment without a dresser and a bed in which I fit. There’s no toilet, but only a raised cement structure to sit on with a hole. There also is really a good place to bathe. I just take a bath next to 2 walls of black plastic along side the outside sink, which is the only source of water that the house has. The land here reminds me of Colorado because there are mountains and pines and it is rocky and dry, which proves to be a challenge in growing gardens. The climate here is pretty comfortable and warmer than where I was living before. I would say it gets up to the 70´s just about every day and stays in the 50´s at night. December, January, and February are supposed to be the coolest days, so it looks like the weather only gets better from here. Also, there are lots of tropical fruit plants, including bananas and all the related fruit to bananas, papayas, oranges, lemons, limes, and whole bunch more of different fruits I have never even seen or eaten in the US. There is electricity in the house and there is water coming from pipes, although it still needs to be boiled before using it. They tell me that water does not dry up here, so that also is a good news as this is something that happens in some parts during the dry season.

The meals are very healthy and nutritious, so there is not too much worry about my health. I am going to have to get adjusted though to type of food I am eating. The community basically eats only what they raise. Some of the few things that they buy include salt, sugar, some other seasonings, and maybe some oatmeal. I eat whatever is put in front of me, with the exception of coffee. Meals generally include beans and tortillas with vegetable and the fruit that is in season. Dinner also might include an egg. I have also been served a vegetable soup and a spaghetti type meal too. Since I have been there, I was only served chicken a small portion of chicken twice, once for the first night that I arrived. I have yet to see them buy chicken or beef or another meat. I would imagine, though, that when a special occasion comes, they slaughter their animal that they have or buy the meat. I never leave the table hungry, but I am sure you can imagine why I don’t turn down food.

From what I have been told, the first 3 months at your new community after swearing-in are the hardest. Through this time, I am going to try to hang tough and try to get accustomed as best I can to my new environment.

Before I permanently moved to this community, I had to return back to San Bartolomé to finish up training. We took our Spanish exams (I don’t know my results but I know I passed without a problem), finished up homework, and made our visit to the Peace Corps HQ in the capital where we go to hear from the different government agencies working in Guatemala through the Embassy.

Friday, November 16 was swear-in day. We went to the ambassador’s house in the capital. The house was beautiful and the backyard was huge. The house looked like a huge US house and the yard actually had grass and landscaped grounds. There was even a heated pool, sauna, and tennis court way in back. The best part thought was that I did not even feel like I was in the middle of the city. I couldn’t here the constant roar of diesel buses or the honking nor was I overcome by the horrible pollution that often takes your breathe away, literally.

The ceremony itself was fast and included the ambassador and others giving some speeches, us volunteers taking an oath virtually the same as someone working for the government, and us volunteers receiving our certificates with a professional picture with the ambassador.

To me, it was hard to believe I had just completed training, my first 12-weeks in Guatemala. From now the days count down from 2 years, I start receiving my real living allowance, and start accruing my vacation days and 2 days a month. (I actually get all Guatemalan holidays along with Thanksgiving and 4^th of July for US holidays too but can only use them while in Guatemala).

After the ceremony, the San Bartolomé group treated the host families out to lunch, we all packed, and headed for Antigua for a evening of celebration and a joint dinner.

Here is a picture of all the people I was living with while in San Bartoloé plus Abi and Lauren.

Here is a picture of the swearing-in ceremony. In the picture from the left is the US Ambassador in Guatemala, the director for Peace Corps in Guatemala, and the director of my training for Peace Corps
Here is a picture of all the people in my program (Sustainable Agriculture) while celebrating in the backyard of the ambassador´s house after just having been sworn in as official volunteers. Also in the picture are my 2 bosses, more or less for the program I am doing

Todos Los Santos Video

I thought I would try to post this video of All Saints Day. It is a short clip of the festival of the giant kites. You might want to read the previous post to refresh yourself. To help, the video takes place in the cemetary where there is a mass crowd of people watching the giant kites fly in the sky. People are running in this video with their rope to try to get their kite in the sky. For me, just to see people sitting on gravestones and people selling popsickles in the cemetary was pretty strange and at the same time funny.

Giant Kites and My Site

This past week was certainly a full week. Tuesday, as I mentioned would happen, we learned about out future sites. I was surprised when I got my site because all the talk was that Abi, the volunteer living in San Bartolome, was going to live there. I also knew that the town was asking for a woman volunteer. Furthermore, I thought I was going to the site where I visited a volunteer. Boy were we all mistaken about all the sites. Really though, I am happy with how the site was chosen. I asked for a site where I could improve my Spanish, whether that site be a place where only Spanish was spoken or site where Spanish and an indigenous language were both spoken (sites where 2 languages were spoken were very common unlike a site where only Spanish was spoken). Guatemala also has some sites where only indigenous languages are spoken, which I guess in essence I was asking not to go to. Well, I got exactly what I wanted to the full extent. In the site I´ll be living at for the next 2 years, only Spanish is spoken. I´ll be living in an aldea in the Department of Jalapá, in the SE of Guatemala. This aldea, which basically is another word for a really small town, has 3500 people in it. The climate is temperate ranging between 60F and 72F during the day with an average annual temperature of 63F. I am pretty sure the amenities are few, but I do know that there is water to house through pipe and that they do have cell phone service. I´ll be going to my site this Wednesday til Sunday to basically get to know people and where I´ll be working and the agency with which I´ll be working (volunteers always have a partner group/agency with whom they are working with and specifically one person from this agency/group works specifically with the volunteer) before I actually start working and living there on Nov. 18. After that I´ll fill you all in on what the site is like. Oh, I thought I should also note that my site is very safe. All the sites that Peace Corps picks meet certain security and safety standards, so there is no worry for anyone, but this site was secure enough for women volunteers to go to (some sites women cannot work in because of other dangers toward them such as sexual harassment). I am a bit nervous about changing towns since I have become accustomed to living here in San Bartolome, but I am excited and only hope that the people are warm and welcoming to the first gringo that will ever living in their aldea.

The next day, Wednesday, was the day our group in San Bartolome made our presentations to the people of the town and a group of women there learning about things like cooking, nutrition, and crafts. We had prepared since the previous week, but still spent the whole day starting at 8am going til 6pm preparing food, practicing the presentation, or actually doing the presentation. We did the presentation on nutrition and prepared 4 items to make a balanced meal. It was a lot like a TV show except that the kitchen was open to all the people and that in between explaining the recipes, were also explaining the benefits of the food and the importance of eating healthily. We were worried at first since the women in the group did not show up until 3:00pm (even though they chose the beginning time of 2:00pm – the concept of time down here is a big challenge for me – I´ll have to explain it in a lesson.), but the day ended up being a huge success. We made dulce de pera y manzana (apple and pear sauce), pan integral (whole wheat bread), raguu de verduras (basically a tomato based pasta with tons of local vegetables), and humus con verduras crudas (a hummus dip served with raw vegetables). The hummus the people had never eaten before and eating the raw vegetables was something bizarre to do. They all ate the food though, and actually liked it and asked lots of questions about how to make it and the nutrition of the things.

Thursday, Día de Todos Los Santos (All Saint´s Day), I went with a Catholic family (Abi´s family) to the cemetery to see what the family did on this national holiday to honor their loved ones that had passed away. In the cemetery, people were painting the above ground graves (unlike in the US, it is a lot more common to have cement structures above ground) and cleaning and putting all kinds of flowers and other decorations. There were no fiestas in this cemetery like in other communities, but there were people flying kites so to get close to loved one in the sky.
After the cemetery, we walked to Santiago where there was a kite festival known throughout Guatemala. It was unbelievable. The kites were huge and made with such detail. Furthermore, there were tons of people and all this took place in a cemetery. People were crowed all over sitting and standing on everything. Vendors were selling everything from pastries and popsicles to beer. Plus, there were ropes everywhere with people every now and then running through the crowds trying to get their huge kite made of paper machete in the air. While in the cemetery, you had to always be on the look out for these people along with kites that were falling from the sky. All in all, we had such luck since the sun was out, there was plenty of wind, and we had no problems.
Below I tried to post a small clip of what it looked like in the cemetary for the festival of the giant kites.




Later in the day on Thursday along with making traditional foods, Catholics go to the Church in the evening in memory of loved ones that passed away. In the Church, the pews were taken from the center and in their place were 6 long rows of 15ft planks of wood with sawdust beneath the planks of wood. Families came to this area and lit about 20 candles in one area on the board. The families would then pass their times sitting next to the candles or in pews (but always leaving someone with the candles). They would wait until the candles completely burned away, which took a long time to do. At this point when there was barely any candle left, a child would take the flower of the flor de muerto (marigold, which is the flower used quite often on this day) and put out the flame. Only when all the candles were out did the family leave.

Finally to note something else interesting that day, the Church bells were manually rung all day and night. I can attest to the night part as I got up to go to the bathroom and at 4:30, the bells were still ringing.

Friday, I finally bought a cell phone. I resisted as I enjoyed being a bit “free” but I know it will be important to have not that I am moving to my site. If anyone wants the number, send me an email. I also bought some things to prepare spaghetti with garlic bread and chicken marinated in Italian dressing for the host-family. They gobbled it all up and kept asking for the recipe and how I did such a good job. I just told them I cooked it without a recipe by imagining how my Mom would cook it from watching her cook it so much. (I know spaghetti is easy, but I did make it a bit complicated by using different herbs and all kinds of vegetables).

Sunday, after mass, I got to experience what the process was like when a person passed away.
When a person dies, the next day the house/family opens up to the public for 8 days, night and day (this is what I was told). People come in to visit the family and pay their respects. The body may be in a casket which is in a room in the house (I am pretty sure there is a law in Guatemala that the body can only be allowed to stay in he house for up to 48 hours. After this, it has to be buried or brought to a funeral home, which is not really done because of cost. People at the house pray, play cards, and eat among other things. The food and drinks are important, especially at night so to help people stay awake through the night. I am not exactly clear right now why something has to be done throughout the night. It is also typical for those visiting to give money to help pay for the huge costs that are incurred.
When I went to the room in the house where the casket was, I noticed the body was in a suit like in the US, but that the mouth and nose were stuffed with cotton. Also, something different was that when I first got there, the body was still in the room where the person died. The casket was brought in the house and the body was then place inside it. Basically, the house is the funeral home.

Finally later in that evening to cap off this week jam packed with Guatemalan culture, I attended with Lauren’s family something that is called the Posada, which recounts the journey that Joseph and Mary had to take when they fled from their home before Jesus was born in Bethlehem. To reenact this, the people of the town use 2 large statues of Joseph and Mary and these statues visit a different house each night up until Christmas (Usually something like this is only done for 14 days, but since there were so many people that wanted to do this, they extended the days. Now the town starts doing this in October and sometimes as early as the 7th and still end on Christmas Eve.). To go from one house to another, the process goes like this. First people go to the existing house where a rosary and other prayers are said with people from the town. Then people from the town take the statues leading a procession to the next house. All the while in the procession there is prayers said and sound sung which recount the journey Mary and Joseph took. Then after other formalities, the statues and people are let in the house where more prayers, the day’s readings, and blessings are said and then finally food is served to everyone. (I can only imagine the work in serving 50 people.) The statues stay in the house til the next day when in the afternoon the process repeats itself. I just wanted to note that there is no day of rest for this. Every day of the week this occurs. I am definitely hoping I can experience this again before I leave. I thought it was so good to see the whole family participating in this, from child to adult.

This picture was from the week earlier when we went to the most beautiful lake in Guatemala in the Departamento de Sololá. As you can kind of see, the lake is surrounded by mountains and volcanoes. In the picture are the volunteers living in San Bartolomé.

Here is a picture of us during our presentation we gave on Halloween to the people of San Bartolome. You can see in the left-hand bottom corner the left overs from the hummus with platter of vegetables. You should have seen their faces when we told them that they were going to eat the vegetables raw! (They just dont do that here.) While we were giving the presentation, a group of people were preparing their giant kite for the next day, Día de Todos los Santos. They said they had worked on this for 2 months. I believed them as the detail is amazing. If you look close, you can see things like parrots.

Here is picture during Día de Todos Los Santos in the cemetary with a host-family in the morning. There are putting up flowers next to the gravestone of a loved one that passed away.

Here is another picture of them decorating another niche. You can see on the left another group painting an above-ground tomb.

Here is a picture of some of the kites in Santiago. This was the ¨launching area¨where people were trying to get their kites of the ground.


Here is me in front of the massive kites. They did not fly, but were stood upright by the wind and rope. The detail on these is even more than the kite we saw during our nutrition presentation. Be sure to click on the picture so to really get some of the details. These kites, I think were about 15 meters or more tall!
Here is picture in the cemetary at Santiago showing people pulling a rope to keep one of the giant kites upright. As you can see below on the ground are mounds, where people are buried. For me, it was certainly strange at first to see so many people running over the graves.