Mid-service

Well, it is true. I just got done last week with my midservice conference. That means I have completed 1 year of my 2 years down here. I don´t really have any reflections on it right now, but they might be written soon.

Besides my midservice conference, we also had All Saint's Day festivities as I already told you about. Below are some pictures of it as well as of Liam´s goodbye party (warning-don't look if you don't want to see a pig being killed).

Nov 2 people bring their decorations to mass to have them blessed. The decorations, which will be used in the cemetary, include paper machet flags, paper or fabric flowers (some are dipped in wax making them last long and look almost real), real flowers, and other plastic and paper things.

Here, people are leaving mass with their decorations in their typical baskets.

Here is part of the cemetary where I live. Some parts, as this picture shows, basically consist of a mound of dirt representing where the person was buried with a wooden but sometimes metal cross. You can see marigolds in the right-hand lower corner. They are the traditional live flower used for this day.

Other parts of the cemetary include cement structures. As I mentioned last year, it seems weird to see people standing on top of graves or playing in the cemetary. I played frisbee this year, but off to the side a bit where it was open. I had fun because there were so many little kids that whenever the frisbee went down the side of the mountain (the cementary is on top of a small mountain or big hill), the kids would run and get it. I also made an attempt at making a kite out of paper machet, a small one mind you. One worked great and proved too light and not strong enough for the wind higher in the sky. I probably had it up 100 yds when the wind snapped it in half. The other one was, well, a failure. I tried to make it out of aluminum and plastic. I basically did it because they said it could not be done. I still think it can be done, but they were right that day.

Here I wondered why the graves were not decorated very much. Well it turns out these 8 gravestones are of a family who were all killed at the same time. I was told it was a massacre of some sort, but the person telling me this did not know why it happened. I guess that explains why there is no close kin to decorate the graves.



As I think I wrote about, for Liam's goodbye party, we killed a pig. Here is the first picture of us early in the morning preparing the boiling water to skin the pig.

Hog tie.

I helped with the skinning. Of course it was already dead before this.






I was really impressed how they carved the pig. The stomach was huge (you can see the big white balloon just under the brown liver in the picture) yet we did not spill a thing from the intestines or stomach. For those of you wondering, the organ setup in the pig was quite the same as you would find it in a person.

From pig to pork chops with a special tangy sauce in 2 hours.

This is the vat of fat. We threw all the fat pieces in there as well as various organs. Eventually as the fat melted, it turned into a giant deep-frier, which we then used to deep fry everything, including some shrimp.










It's that time of year again... corn harvest time that is. This corn is being laid out to dry.

One of the gardens we planted earlier on. The bed that looks sparse already had its vegetables harvested.

Changes and Exchanges

On the work front things are still cleaning themselves out after the ousting of the president in my women’s group. The president also happened to be the person in charge of vaccines and medicines given to the chickens. When the chickens started dying, even though they had vaccines, I began to investigate. Well it turns out that she had been doing some shady practices as well as making some mistakes. She was not only giving the wrong vaccines, but she was also selling vaccines that were already expired making them ineffective and worthless. Over and over she has been told and taught that vaccines don’t last for more that a few hours after they have been mixed and that they needed to stay in the cold, but she continued to sell the vaccines 4 or 5 days after she originally applied the vaccines to her birds without ever having a refrigerator. So you had all these women buying vaccines with the little money that they have, just to have their chickens die. I can’t tell you how frustrated I was for these people. Just one good chicken during the Christmas season can go for about Q100, which is worth at least what you could only make in the fields for 2.5 or 3 days of hard labor. Turkeys sell for up to Q300. The worse part though, is that it comes to find out that my NGO had known about what the president was doing long before the chickens started dying but told me nothing. That is something I just don’t understand here in Guatemala. When people do something wrong, people are afraid to make corrections, criticisms or reprimands. They don’t like confrontations. People normally just say yes to everything rather than saying how they feel. If you ask someone if they will go to your party, they will say yes, even though they have no intention or means of going. With my NGO, this is especially seen in its treatment with the ex-president. Not only was she not reprimanded for her delinquencies as president nor as the person in charge of the chickens, but she was allowed to be elected to the presidency of the entire region. A sad fact that goes along with people not being held responsible for their actions is that only 0.1% of all homicide cases in Guatemala ever even go to court, with even a tinier percent finding a conviction in which the killer goes to jail.
I wish I had supervised this part that the president was doing for the sake of the other people who lost so much, but that is usually the opposite of what I try to do. I am only going to be here for another year and I am trying to find ways so that the projects will continue long after I am gone. To remedy the situation, I held an emergency vaccination campaign. I, with my NGO, started training more people how to vaccinate and we broke up in groups with the women vaccinating where the vaccine was wanted. Unfortunately seeing how some of the chickens had died with the bad vaccine, some already started feeling that the vaccine either did nothing or even provoked the death of the chickens.

But wait, there is good news. First of all, this problem was uncovered and a new system can be setup within the group. And the volunteer who lives in close to me and I had an excellent idea that now has turned into a big success within our communities. I think the idea started when I brought 100 oranges (which cost me less than $4) to a birthday party where the other volunteer lives. Where the other volunteer lives, it is very cool, so cool that nothing tropical really grows. There are no oranges, bananas, loquats, plantains, mangos, limes, lemons, guayavas, and other fruits that I have no idea what the translation to English would be. (On a side note, it is interesting to find fruit that is not imported to the United States and then try to understand why it is not exportable enough to be exported, whether because of taste, hardiness, or whatever.) On the flip, where she lives, things like potatoes, apples, broccolis, cabbages, and cauliflowers grow really well, something that does not grow at all or very well where I am. So we had the idea of doing the exchange. With the help of the priest who is always driving around visiting communities and saying mass, we were able to do the exchange fairly easily sending a few potato sacks full of foods. In both our communities, we have seen the people gobble up their rare commodities. Instead of eating nothing or possible junk, the volunteer in her community has seen kids going around eating bananas and oranges for snacks while in the street. We have done the exchange 2 times now and each time it has gotten more and more popular. We’ll see how the next exchange goes as I am starting to put more responsibility on the women themselves.

On another good note, my NGO held an exposition of all the products that were produced in the communities. My community participated and even made a song about the community which included a couple lines about me - I was pretty surprised and flattered.

If anyone has any good recipes for using zucchini or pumpkins, I would be very grateful if you could send them my way. Liam, the other volunteer who is just about going to leave, gave me the seeds and the plants are really growing well. They are already harvesting the zucchinis. I am hoping the pumpkins will be ready by Thanksgiving.

Speaking of Liam, just the other day we had his despedida, a going-away party. We got up at 5am to start the fire to boil the water to peel the hairy skin off the pig that we were going to kill. Don’t worry; we killed the pig before we did any of that peeling and cutting. We all helped slaughter it in some way, with the expert, a cousin down here, doing the gutting and sectioning of the meats. It was a lot like the cat I dissected in high school; the organs were pretty easy to identify. Pretty much every silly part of that pig was used. The hide, tail, feet, bones, heart, lungs, and ears were all to be for human consumption. Most of the meat, organs, and slabs of fat and hide were deep-fried in the pigs own grease. I was a little hesitant at first since this is what had helped to make my previous Christmas a very un-merry one. But the preparation was good and clean and I made sure I drank plenty of beer and whisky, which I was told was necessary to do when eating all that fat. And thank the Lord that two days later, I am still good. The next time we kill a pig, which is not very often, I am hoping I can get some things together to make some bacon.

The Spanish doctors have left. I did not get to spend as much time with them as I would have liked, especially due to the problems that were going on in my community, but I still did get some nice evenings with them and some days helping them do their exams they did in the villages. One day after finishing the day’s exams, 2 severely malnourished children were found and with the parent’s permission and presence, we all went to drop the kids and their moms off at a place run by nuns. There they get the kids back in good health and educate the parents how to better take care of their kids. The trip was pretty long and bumpy since we had to go to two separate and faraway communities to pick up the kids and the moms. Unfortunately for one of the parents, she got sick nearly the entire time we were driving. My job as well as the job of one of the nurses was to hold one of the kids inside to protect it from the wind (the rest were riding in the bed of the truck). The kid did not make a sound the entire time, which probably was not a good thing. He probably had received so little attention that by now, at 4 years old, he new that crying never worked. The four-year old though, was just like an infant. It weighed maybe 15 pounds and I held it like I would a baby for the entire trip. It did not talk. The only sound it made was an occasional cough. On the way to this center with the nuns, something a bit scary happened. We were pulled over by the police, who quickly saw that two people not from Guatemala had Guatemalan babies in their hands. They quickly began the accusations that the doctors and I were robbing babies. After about 10 minutes of checking the papers of the cars and questioning the parents, they let us go. I was nervous because even though we were not in the wrong, the police here are corrupt. I don’t trust them generally. In a case like ours, they most likely pulled us over because we were in a nice truck and they were hoping to get some “fine” money. And worst of all, I did not have any ID’s on me. But everything did work out OK and when we arrived to the center, where the kids who were there were already in their pajamas. They were so much more full of life than the 2 we were bringing. The bigger ones that could walk ran and gave me a hug. The mothers were still up too chatting with us wondering where we had come from. I think I am going to have to go there another time in the future.

So from the doctors, besides getting some really good meals and Christmas music, I also got their pictures. After looking at them, it made me realize some of the beauty that I don’t every show to you all because I see it every day. So thanks to them, I posted some pictures below.

Oh, winter, which is the wet season, has officially ended, I think. About 3 days ago high winds came in and it has not rained since. This is perfect timing for tomorrow, All Saints Day, when people fly their kites to communicate with their dead loved ones. The clear nights and wind though have brought cooler temperature much like late September to early to mid October in the MI. When I take my cold showers, I feel like I am going into a battle. I have to prepare myself usually by doing some sort of exercises, and then go under the shower all at once, like ripping a band-aid off. I quickly turn off the water, and soap up my whole body, and then rinse off. Thus, there are only two times when the spigot is turned on; I try to greatly reduce the time I under it. When I finish, I come out feeling like great, as though I had just accomplished some feat or victory. I guess that is one advantage of things down here, even things like cold showers make me feel accomplished and victorious in the day.



Here are some of the faces I see every day.

One of the severely malnourished children we encountered.

Cooking corn and making atol, a hot drink that can be made from soy, corn, wheat, oats, or other grains and fruits

A formerly severely malnourshed baby recovering at the center run by the nuns.






Another severely malnourished baby.

This is a picture of typical teeth here. People usually get their teeth pull out, especially the ones in front. So they have partial dentures put in for the front teeth. These teeth are usually colored gold or are decorated with gold figures like the stars you see here.










The one above and below are morning pictures of the landscape not too far away from where I live. How lucky am I

Here´s me helping the doctors by recording weight, name, age, and height of the children that pass by.

This was the pass to get to one of the villages. Let's just say we got stuck there in the truck for a while but luckily as you can see in the picture, the locals got us through it.

Halfway through and the hardest of hills behind

Oct. 8, last week, marked the halfway point of my service and training. I have just 1 year and 1 month that remain officially. As I have said before, if I had to leave right now, I would be satisfied. I would feel happy knowing that I had already made a difference in people’s lives here, albeit small, and that they, the people down here, have made a difference in my life. As the Jesuit Volunteer Corps slogan used to be, I feel too as though I am “ruined for life.” How exactly I am or will be “ruined,” when I get done, that is to be seen. I get frustrated not knowing what my next step will be afterward. I am the type of person that wants to prepare and focus on something to get really good at it. I know what I am doing only benefits me, but I still cant help but feel I am wandering, whether because I am lost, exploring, or both.

The halfway point also marks the arrival of new trainees in the food security program, the program in which I am. They actually came in August as I did last year. Two of them paid a visit to two of us here in Jalapa, one to my site and the other to the other volunteer who lives close by. Just like I had done, they came to see what being a volunteer was like. The first day, we decided to make it a “weekend day” to give the trainees a little break (I remembered how it was when we were trainees). But before you say “Geeeez, that must be nice to just not work whenever you want”, you should know that yes, it is nice to be able to plan out your work schedule. Instead of working that Thursday, we worked Saturday.
So that Thursday, we went to the ecological park here. The owner, a very enthusiastic and innovative man, dropped everything when we asked him if the park were open. He was with us the entire day instead of working at his home where we had found him. We did, somewhat unexpectedly, all the high cables in the forest (I forget what they are called in English, but we used a harness and wheels that hooked onto the cables to glide down) and the wooden bridges like you see in Indiana Jones movies. Afterward, since it was actually the first time that I had got a chance to meet Randolfo, the owner (I had actually talked with him over the phone a few times to organize help for a kid who had a hugely swollen tongue that barely made it possible for him to eat and gave him the threat of choking to death. I believe it was some sort of tumor or cancer.), he showed us around his yard, which consisted of several “running” vehicles that needed just “a little work”. The masses of metal included a ford bus, land rovers, a ’59 datsun, and something that looked like it could have been something similar to jeep wrangler its day. All these things, he brought down here from trips to the US driving to and from Guatemala through Mexico. I got overly excited when he offered to take us two volunteers back home when we complete our 2 years. For me, that would be an amazing trip. I just don’t want to get too excited though since a lot can happen in 1 year and 1 month.

If I can get myself in the routine of it, I am going to try to write something down every 1 or 2 or 3 days, and then post those things on my blog every 2 weeks. It probably won’t help to make my blog very unified, but it might give a different perspective that I don’t normally write about.

Last week, the parents of the volunteer, who lives in my site and is sadly ending his service next month, came down to visit his site. I took some time to go around with them through the site and see some of the local sites, like the lake that his near by. The first night that they came in though, the dad completely, absolutely surprised me. He told me something that later on we would do that I thought would never be possible to do in Guatemala, just absolutely impossible. I thought the only place that I could ever think about doing this was back home, exclusively with my family. I had not even known that it was done in other parts of Michigan, let alone other parts of the country. What he told me was, well, here is how it went. I asked the volunteer’s parents if they had ever played cards and if they wanted to play knowing that they are quite a few good 4-player games. They named off a few, and then suddenly the dad spurted out the impossible. He knew how to play pedro! Pedro. Pedro, I could not believe what I was hearing. When he explained the game, sure enough, it was the same game. Easter hallelujahs went off in my head and I immediately gave him a big hug. The next 3 nights we played pedro (They said they really wanted to play as well, but I think had they not wanted to, I probably would have forced at least one game) and the competition was good, just like back at home. So basically, that was my big surprise for me of the month, or maybe of the year. Pedro in Guatemala. I guess anything can happen down here.

Pictures, Finally!

This post will mainly just be pictures. I figured you have been missing out since I have not been able to post them for some time. Enjoy.

This picture and the following 3 below are of the Independence Day parade in my town.

These girls are in typical indigenous dress that was once worn where I live but is no longer used. Unlike other parts of Guatemala where large populations speak an indigenous language, I have been told that there are only a handful of people that speak the indigenous language that was once spoken here.


I am not sure why it said pain, but I am sure it is not supposed to mean pain. I dont know how those little girls could impose any pain anyway.

This dancing gymnastics competition, as it was called here, is related to the independence day celebration because this was the qualifying competition in my town. The winner got to go to Jalapa for the Independence Day celebrations. The two photos are actually of the students where I work (my aldea) and I have been teaching English to these students. (On a side note, they will be finishing the school year next week and I will be administering a final exam... how weird is that). The students actually won and got to go to Jalapa where they placed second in the whole department.

Here is a pictue of corn. Wow. Actually it is a success of the work that I am and my NGO have done. If you look at the picture, you can see corn that is bigger to the right and corn to the left which is smaller, yet they were both planted at the same time. The corn to the right only uses organic fertilizers including animal poop and the corn on the right uses chemical fertilizers. Obviously it took more time to plant and fertilize the corn on the left, but the farmer saved some money and has healthier corn. Here is an example of a person who is starting to incorporate this organic method. In the past, he bought 5 bags of chemical fertilizer for his land. This year, he only bought 2 bags and bought 10 bags of chicken poop. Chemical fertilizer is costing about Q300. The chicken poop cost only 20-25Q. (1500-600-250) He saved Q650 this year which is about $85. To me, that is amazing. Now the next goal will get them to produce all of their own ogarnic materials so that they wont have to buy the chicken poop.

These 2 pictures are of the women in the group who have been going around to member's houses making vegetable and medicinal gardens. As you can see, the women are tough and get dirty. In the picture above, they are using pick-axes to loosen the soil.

Just Another Day on the Throne

The 15th of September here in Guatemala, as well as in other countries in Central America, marks the independence that the Guatemalans gained from Spain in 1821. Some of you may remember this from my reporting last year. In my town this year, as well as last year there were parades and dances and presentations and marimba music. I even got to see the running of the torches, which I had only heard about last year. Basically this is where people from a town or school travel to some distant place in Guatemala or even to other countries in Central America the 14th. They then spend the whole day and sometimes the entire night returning to their towns but with torches lit and running part of the way. Now just imagine the fact that every town and school does this on this day – I think just maybe, it might have been a little more hectic on the highways than is normal. I got to see students arrive with their dozen torches lit as they entered town at 9:30pm. The whole town was waiting in the park listening to music and ready to cheer them on and douse them with water. Whenever and wherever people see groups running with their torches on the road, they throw water, and not just when they arrive to their home towns. Supposedly this is to cool them off, but I think it is more like an excuse to have a water fight.

An aspect about being a foreigner here is that some of us are put on thrones, especially in times of celebration and holidays. Some are invited to special dinners or fiestas, others might even be asked to be in a parade or be a judge for a beauty competition. And I am no exception. Christmas, Easter, and now this Independence Day I have had the opportunity, whether I liked it or not really, to sit on a throne – of course, should I tell you that my throne was made of porcelain. Yes, unfortunately my streak continues. The night of the 14th and the 15th amoebas decided to attack me in full force leaving me without sleep or anything in my GI tract and only with sulfurous burps. I always thought those amoebas looked cool under the microscope… I still think so, but they belong under the microscope, not in my small intestine. Thankfully for me, Peace Corps always has a nurse on call and by 3pm after seemingly constant diarrhea, I was told some medicine I could look for. I needed 2000mg of something called Tinidazole but in my town, being so small, there was only something that looked similar, Metronidazole. The pharmacist told me that it was the same as what I need. Seeing that the later killed amoebas as well and figuring it could be just a brand name for the same medicine, I believed her and took the medicine. Well, the nurse called up the next day to see how I was doing, and I found out that it was not exactly the same. It did kill amoebas, but required a different doses and regimen. Instead of the 2000mg I took all at once, I should have taken 8x less (250mg). Thankfully nothing serious happened; I only woke up with a stomach ache and a little burning from the harshness of the medicine. I guess I’ll have to question a little bit more about my medicine the next time.

As you can guess, work my work has been the same for the most part, but unfortunately, for my part, it was recently converted into a scene from a novela (a Spanish soap opera). So if you want to read something that is completely trivial outside of the bubble here, read on… Information care out that money was missing (over $300) and the president of the women’s group stole it. On top of this, there were people, mainly the president, who were upset with me. The women had been (and still are) bringing one plant each to willing houses to plant medicinal gardens and to work on vegetable gardens. Unfortunately some regularly came well after the work was done, including the president. I said that those who did not show up on time to do at least some work, would drop down 2 spots in the list of homes that we would visit. This put some in a fit. Amidst this tension, the NGO here which helps run the governing body of a lot of the groups here, was secretly training another president and were plotting how to secretly overthrow her. I worked out the problems early on with me by talking with the president many times. The disappearance of money, I don’t think, will probably never be dealt with (It is almost like corruption at all levels here is taken as a given). Elections were held legally and without question, though, after it was realized that according to the group’s bylaws that elections needed to be held every 2 years. The president lost her position and thankfully at the last minute decided to give up her position gracefully.

Finally, two doctors from the US came to Jalapa the other week to plan for their medical trip their group will make in February and I had the privilege of helping them out translating. I think that I am the one that got the real bargain though. I got excellent meals which they graciously paid for and I got to pick their brains for hours asking them about their jobs, medical school and the path to become a doctor, and what kinds of lives they lead outside of their job. These encounters definitely excite me and push me more to consider going to medical school after Peace Corps; but only time will tell for this. Through the doctors, I also got to meet some doctors in Jalapa, including the director of all the health posts in Jalapa as well as the director of the state hospital here. One of them invited me to pass by whenever I had time to see some births, which I think would be quite the experience, as long as I don’t faint or anything. I am excited too for February, when the doctors come because they’ll give me an opportunity to scrub in and see surgeries being performed (as well as give me an opportunity to pick their brains some more). So who would have thought that “running away” from medicine, I would be found by it here in Guatemala?

Stories from the Front

Well, I thought I would just share some interesting stories that I have had in these days. Hope you enjoy them.

I have to say, I have had a couple good moments that I can name off easily. The other day I got really, above normally smelly. I was making another compost pile with a family who had heard about the wonders of compost and wanted my services. So I went to the next village over with the daughter of the family leading me. I had asked them a week before what they had to use to make it; when they said they had cows, I got excited, which seems pretty strange to be excited about but to me, it means there’s a lot of good material to work with. Well, along with several corn sacks full of green leguminous leaves, banana leaves, and other dry leaves, to make the compost, we hauled tons of cow poop that was nice and fresh and goopy from all the rains. Of course, that goopy poop did not really stay in its holey containers and found itself all over my cloths. The awesome thing though was that no one, including me, was bothered by it. Afterward, I visited another family that I had visited before in the past to follow up on their how their chickens were doing. When I stopped outside the barbed wire fencing and yelled in saying “Buenas tardes” for permission to enter, the little kid of the family saw me and yelled out my name. He immediately came running up to me and gave me a big hug, the first time a little kid had done that to me! So pretty much, that made my day, not to mention that he did it even though I had cow poop all over my shirt and pants.

Another is kind of a weird cultural-barrier success. So I have been befriending a very friendly girl down here. I had just met her 4 weeks ago and really enjoyed being around her, but was trending the water very carefully because of all the assumptions and rules that play out here. Well a bit ago, she invited me to her house to see her town and meet her family (she only works and stays during the work week in the town where I live). Well, this and some other things rang a few bells in my head, namely because many people have told my straightforwardly that if you are invited to someone’s house by a girl, she wants to start going out with you. And considering the other beliefs down here that I have been told, like only a few weeks of dating takes place before getting married and that friends who are girls are not possible in Guatemala (told to me by my training officers), I got a little irked. So instead of being direct, I evaded giving an answer (aren’t I so good at not answering questions) hoping to find out what was going on and to save some embarrassment on both our parts. Well, a whole stew of events happened in a couple days when she brought her boyfriend here for a day and people thought she was cheating on me and that I was angry (It is really sad to think how quickly people came to those conclusions). With all this in the air, we sat down and had such a good talk. And what came out of it was awesome, because all the misconceptions were cleared, including the ones that I had such as that she wanted a boyfriend in me, I learned a lot about this person I had just met, and most of all, I gained a new friend, who is a girl. It probably seems like a strange moment, but it just felt good to do something that seemed culturally impossible to me and felt good thinking about having a new friendship and all the new possibilities that that would entail. It’s funny how difficult things can be made when crossing culture and language barriers, not to mention how complicated things are made when you add me to the mix.

Last Sunday, I started out the morning with a good laugh, thankfully, because it could have been a little different. So I where I am staying, recently the daughter-in-law and her 3-year-old son of the owner moved into the house where I am because the daughter-in-law had her appendix removed. The son is really timid and has been slowly warming up to me, to the point where when I wash my clothes or clean my room, he is right by my side helping me. That Sunday morning, I wanted to show him and his mom how I carried all my cousins back home. I put him on my shoulders and walked around a little bit within the house. I then started to walk toward the mirror to show him how tall he was, but on the way, I heard a big thud against the wall and was stopped from moving forward. Well, I had forgotten that there are parts of the house that still come down really low, sitting only some 5 inches above my head. I quickly looked up and saw the kid ducking covering his head and saying over and over “I got hit.” I felt bad, but luckily the kid wasn’t crying and the mom was laughing.

Finally, when I thought I had finished telling some of the interesting stories, something else happened just today.
Sunday mornings here are similar for here as they are back home in the sense they are usually slower paced and relaxing. I usually go to mass, and then eat some breakfast with something special like a pineapple to really bring out the tiredness you get after eating a good meal. Today was no exception, and I left from where I ate feeling content. As soon as I walked out to the street where the outdoor market was, I saw some people running up between some tin buildings. I thought that was pretty weird what they were doing, especially since there were adults among them. Well I soon found out why within 2 seconds. As I put my focus back on the street and the market sellers ahead of me, I found some very angry toros (bulls) charging through the market right at me. Astonished at the sight at first and unable to move for maybe a second, I managed to quickly jump toward a building away from the street. I watched as the 10 or so bulls went raging on at full force down the street toward the river and then saw the owners running after them a minute later. I soon found out that the bulls were the bucking bulls that were brought in for the rodeo that we would have today. I just could not believe that the owners allowed those bulls to rage at full force (really, they were some angry bulls) through a street made very narrow because of all the vendors that put up their stands to sell things (2 hours later, as I was walking up a mountain, I saw them still trying to wrangle the bulls into the stadium but with little luck since the bulls were still running away up a bank). With as many people as there are in the town where I live on Sundays, which is the day that the market is here as well as the day that people travel to town to go to mass, it is surprising that no one was injured. This is just one of the millions of reminders I get that I am not in Grand Rapids anymore. I guess I don’t need to go to Pamplona, Spain anymore.

Happiness

I have not written in a while as maybe some of you have noticed, so sorry. My goal is to write every 2 weeks. I’ll see if I can pick up the pace in the coming weeks. The sad part is is that I had this written for a while, but could not post it because of the slow internet.

Work has been the same good old stuff I talked about in the last entry. The one new big thing that occurred down here recently was the 4^th of July, for which all the volunteers got together and had a big celebration with dancing, American food and beer, and even a talent show. It’s not the same as going down to South Haven or staying at Aunt Carol’s at White Fish Lake, but I have to say I still had a lot of fun. When the party was over, we celebrated even more in Antigua, where places had more 4^th of July celebrations with some even having cakes and a piñata of Uncle Sam.

So besides that and my new battle with hopefully just a few fleas in my room, (I just recently found 3 while reading in my chair; I am pretty sure I am bringing them with me from Sabanetas. I was hoping cleaning and mopping weekly would be sufficient, but I guess not. Either way, I am waging an entire campaign now to stop them while they are just starting. After a long day of cleaning, last night, I had no fleas bother me… I slept in just my sleeping bag, but still, I had no fleas bother me.) the only other thing I wanted to write about was something that I think I am starting to learn more about, what it means to be happy. It is nothing new, but just something refreshed and more firmly founded. We all say that happiness cannot be bought, and I think I and many other believe it or think we believe it. I know though, that there are many actions of mine that correspond to something else, something that says, “You can buy something to improve your conditions by gaining more comfort, extra time, more pleasure or whatever, and that these gains will bring you happiness.” For instance, when I have a hard day, I look for my trail mix and dried cranberries to cheer me up. While it might cheer me up, eating them certainly will not cheer up everyone and the cranberries and trail mix are not actually causing happiness in themselves; there are other underlying reasons. When I moved to San Carlos, I became excited to just have a door to my room, to bathe in cold water that came from a shower spigot, and to be able to eat 4 eggs a day. Coming from my aldea, it was certainly an improvement and would seem to follow the old rule I wrote that happiness can be bought. Probably at first this was my natural programmed reaction that having something better corresponds to being happier, but soon after I began to think, “Why am I happy to have 4 eggs a day or a door or a shower spigot?” If I were in the US, would these things give me some happiness? The answer would most likely be no, especially in the case of the eggs which would probably make me grouch at what I were eating. So I asked then, “What is the difference?” Well the obvious difference is that here I am ‘moving up’ and from the US, it would be a move downward. The more subtle difference though is that my perspective has changed. I learned be more happy with fewer things; I was more grateful for the tiny things that I had so easily just taken for granted. So basically, I feel like happiness can be obtained through practice and a conscious effort. If I train myself or learn to be happy when I get something new, why can’t I train myself or learn to be happy with what I have, both concrete things and things like friendship, family, etc. If I make an effort to be more conscious of these seemingly little things I get each day, I will be over flooded. Ordinary days become good days and hard days become something not so hard to bear.

Dirty Work

Well the big news down here is that I finally moved. It has been something I had been looking forward to for a while. Having a room with a door, bathing in an enclosed place, having a light designated to my room all seem a bit trivial but it is a nice change of privacy and independence. It was a hard decision to move, though, for various reasons. I had originally wanted to live with the only other open room in my aldea, but they tore their house down when I first arrived and are still working on it. Before and after the decision, I wondered if I were a cheater of some sort. Was I supposed to live under the conditions that I was living? Is that the Peace Corps experience? Well, I don’t know…there is no typical experience. I did know, however, that living in my aldea had served its purpose of getting to know the people and their way of life and building their confidence. I knew I could continue working as much or probably more and my living conditions in my new place would be much more conducive to staying healthy. As the first rains came and began to enter in my room through the walls and roof, I finally made the decision. As more than luck would have it, the Spanish doctors were here in Alzatate and offered me their spare time to move my stuff in their vehicle. To me that was quite the generous act. I mean, who wants to move someone during his free time when he could rest or see new sites in the different country he is in let alone do it under normal circumstances back at home. Having done the move, I can not imagine how I would have done it with out their help.

Overall I really enjoyed the doctor’s company. We cooked each other meals, shared different stories and card games, and worked together even though what I did was very limited and meager. It was certainly a nice “up” after leaving home.

Through the doctor’s work, I was able to meet a family in my aldea with whom I had not met, a family whose conditions are probably some of the worst in the aldea. The mom came with some of her children to have one child examined for her niguas she had. Niguas are parasites that burrow into ones extremities like toes and then continue to eat away more flesh all while laying thousands of eggs. The tiny child’s feet were horrible; they were blackened, hot, swollen, and full of those niguas and their eggs. I’ve had one nigua and know what if feels like – I cannot imagine what the tiny little girl was feeling.
After examining the little girl and seeing that her big sisters had the same thing, it was arranged to bring the girls to get them treated. After first agreeing, the next day when we went to pick up the kids the dad had changed his mind and did not let the children go. He conveniently was not there, though, to try to convince again. The mother wanted them to go, but had not way to do so since she told us her husband would and has beat her for not obeying. So along with the beating, we found more serious problems relating with the dad. He was a drunk who spent the family’s money on keeping up his vice. He didn’t like working in the fields, so he didn’t or did very little of it. Thus his family was forced to buy their food but that is hard to do when they is little money to begin with. When I visited with the family I saw the kids looked hungry and gave them my bananas. I asked if they grew any bananas, which grow as easily as a weed, or other fruits – they didn’t. Some of the few fruit trees around the house that the wife had planted, the husband had cut down while drunk. The story seemed almost unreal and really put me in sorrowful mood just seeing the conditions of these innocent kids. It seemed to me this dad was not only not doing good for his wife and kids that were still living (3 kids had already died most likely due to malnutrition), but that he was putting effort into making their lives worse.
With an intervention from the priest, the dad let 2 of his daughters go to the children’s hospital. While this is only a temporary fix, it was certainly needed. A permanent fix will hopefully be on the way. The neighbors will continue to help the mom and the kids and I will do what I can. I’ll stop by to see if any of the conditions improve to let local authorities know and try to get permission from the dad for the mom to grow some things for her kids.

So yes, there are hard moments and days, times to reflect and think how fortunate my childhood was and how those of countless other children in the US are fortunate. Overall, though, work has been good, and there is plenty to keep the days flying. The rains came real late this year, beginning when Tropical Storm Alma passed through at the very end of May. I was certainly looking forward to the rain not only to green the countryside but to move into sowing seeds and planting plants. It makes me feel like when I was a child growing up at home doing work in the garden or in other parts outside dirtying up every piece of clothing. I feel like there won’t be much of my aldea left after I get done with my service since I take so much of it (the dirt) with me when I go back to my house. Still, a large part of my duties, though, is visiting houses and the land they own, which means hiking up and down mountains through forests and planted plots and over creeks. This too reminds me of my time back home spent in the backyard. So while it can be hard, I am having fun while still making an effort to do some good.

Photos from the last blog

Alright, here are the photos that correspond with the last blog. I hope you all enjoy them.





I want to say thank you to grades 5,6,7, and 8 at Holy Trinity for letting me come to their school and for participating in the presentation I gave. I hope you all enjoyed the presentation and that you were able to have answered some of your questions. Just remember, if you ever have questions, feel free to email me and I will be happy to answer them, though it may take some time for me to answer them. Also thank you so much for raising over $300 so that some kids from my community can go to school next year. You guys made quite the effort, especially considering all the funds came from 50-cent suckers!





I also want to say thank you to everyone who came by to visit me while I was back home this past week, especially considering gas prices and a limited time window. You all made me feel so humbled in doing so. Your support and friendship and love and prayers are the best things that I could ever get and take with me to Guatemala. My time home was amazing, and I have all of you, especially Mom, Dad, Charlie, and Katie to thank for it.













Here are one of the families that made one of their worm composts. I think it is so cool and important that the whole family pitches in to do these little projects.






First the wall was gridded into squares and so was a small drawing of the world. Then we began drawing what was in one square on the small world map into a corresponding square on the wall. I think it turned out well, but the sketch the most precise. Once the painting began, we lost our good boarder we drew and lost some entire islands when painting the Pacific.


Sorry to the people from the Philipines. Your country is present, but I am not sure if you are going to find all your islands on the map.

The map is starting to come along. We 3 volunteers who live in or near San Carlos are tracing the country borders and the kids are filling them in.


The process got to be a bit tiresome, especially since we were in the sun and I had broken my 4th and last pair of sunglasses earlier in the day.

(HT) (6) Catching up

Sorry for the larger than normal span of time between posts.

I thought I would dedicate this post to a general catching up on what I’ve been doing.

One thing earlier on that I participated in was a chicken conference or I guess it would be better called an exposition on the raising of chickens, but I enjoy calling it a chicken conference. I mean, would I have thought that I would be going to chicken conferences a year ago? I don’t think so. You will never know or be able to predict everything in a year, month, week, or even tomorrow. There are always surprises or changes, fantastic and challenging. We are the ones that decide what to make of them and how to react.
So anyway, the conference, was well, quite interesting. People came from several different communities to showcase their successful chicken practices, all of which were done utilizing the resources that the community had. How do you get rid of parasites in chickens? One community was making their concoction from local moonshine, garlic, marigolds, and other ingredients. How do you disinfect the chicken coops? Well, just make your own vinegar from fermenting unrefined sugar cane sugar blocks and the skin of a pineapple in a bucket of water. It was good for me because there were several new techniques that I hadn’t known. It was even better, though, for the community members I brought along. For those that showcased something, you can imagine it got them some recognition for their creative efforts and hard work. Everyone that came was able to gain an abundance of information and got motivated seeing that “Yeah, these things actually do work.” Besides sleeping on cement floors in 2 large buildings, the other event which brought people closer together and made it feel like a camping or community experience was when we had some musicians play for an evening dance.

Beside the chicken conference, I still haven’t stopped working on the compost piles. It has been pretty challenging motivating people and convincing them that composting and other similar methods are cheap methods to replace their dependence on expensive chemical fertilizers. I have, though, been able to get through to some people and I am hoping that these people will be examples of the successes of organic fertilizers. Below I have some families who recently made their worm composts. This is a pretty big deal for a couple of reasons. One is that people here have such a fear of worms, mainly because the worms you find here are usually not in the ground but in the stomach. There are quite a few who wont even touch these California red worms. The other reason it was notable was because the whole family, husband, wife, and children all helped out in 2 of the 3 cases. Again, I just hope that through the examples of the brave, others will see the rich soil the worms make and the abundant juicy filets of “steak” the worms become when fed to the chickens.

With the grade school I am working with, things are not going too successfully. The children are full of enthusiasm, but the teachers are definitely lacking. Both that and the fact that the teachers can strike without penalty (they went on strike for 3 months last year) and can take weeks off for what I would call weak reasons or no reason at all have made it hard to show up when there actually is class let alone stick to my original curriculum. To give you an idea, last week kids had class for 2 days with the teachers taking of class for unknown reasons to me. This week, they had class on Monday but on Tuesday they came home after an hour saying there would not be class until next week Tuesday. For me, it is just sad because the kids are losing. Luckily, while there is not a private grade school, there is a private and equally affordable middle school in the community. This non government backed school seems to have some higher guidelines, such as the days there are to hold class.

Finally, the other big project the other 2 volunteers and I have been working on is making a world map for the community of San Carlos Alzatate. Just in the days that we sketched the borders of all the countries, it became a town spectacle. People would spend hours just watching us work our artistic magic but saying confusingly that it did not look too much like their town of San Carlos. (We are doing quite a good job, but I just hope no one from another country comes to measure up their country and hope that no one is counting all the islands). When we finished for the day, people would rush over to sit by the map and continue to talk about it some more. Just picture some old small town scene like in Mayberry to picture these men. It’s the most exciting thing that has happened since the arrival of these foreigners. The only hard thing about leaving such a small town is that it will be hard at first not getting so much attention back in the U.S.


Sorry I couldn't post any pictures because of problems with the internet, hopefully I'll be able to
put some up soon.


“There are no ordinary people.” “It is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit.” – C.S. Lewis

Videos - Good Friday Procession and Mass

Both of these videos were taken on Good Friday in San Carlos Alzatate. The first one is of the procession which began at 9:30am from the center of town at the church and processed up a mountain while going through the Stations of the Cross. As you can see in the video, there is Jesus being held on a very heavy platform along with Mary and Saint Raymundo, the patron saint of the city, on smaller platforms a little farther back.Here is to where the procession led. It was a place next to a corn field about 150 or 200 meters up from the church. The simplicity of it all made it that much more beautiful and meaningful.

La Semana Santa

I wanted to share with you all some of my experiences from Holy Week. The pictures below are all of Good Friday and I will let the pictures and their captions explain. (There are also 2 videos in another post of the processions). On Holy Saturday, I went to the vigil mass. The congregation gathered about 1/4 mile away from Church where the Easter candle was lit and then where all the candles of the congregation were lit. We then processed to Church for mass. The mass was just like any Easter vigil mass I had been to back at home, but afterward unlike at home, we had another procession at midnight. We paraded through the streets celebrating the resurrection of Jesus with a marching band, generator for lights, and of course fire crackers and the loud exploding fireworks. I told Padre Victor that had he been in the US doing this, he just would possibly end up with a nice fine and maybe even would pay a visit to a jail cell.



Here is where Holy Communion was kept after it was taken out of Church after the Holy Thursday MassThe start of the procession leaving from the ChurchHere is the first Station of the Cross. As we processed up the mountain, we stopped at each one. The families along the way were in charge of setting them all up as well as the decoration in the street. The flower petal decorations on the street were just a warming up as to what would be coming up in the path. Along the path of the procession, besides having the 14 stations, people made religious works of art out of sawdust, dye, and flowers. It was amazing the work that was put into them only for the works to be gone at the end of the day.




More "sawdust rugs" below and above





Here you can see the procession stopping at another station higher up in the mountain. As you can see, the procession includes a very heavy wooden platform which holds Jesus carrying a cross as well as speakers and a generator. Behind this platform are the band and two other platforms holding Mary and the patron of the city, San Raymundo. In the background you can see the dormant volcano Alzatate
Another station of the Cross.
After finishing the procession, we ended up about 200 or so meters up from the city on a high overlook next to a corn field. Here is where we could have the Good Friday mass.
As you can see, on the ground are more sawdust, and pine needles. Pine needles, as I have said, are used for special occasions as a sign of celebration.
Mass