The site swap, Coban, and more

Finally some long promised pictures. No reflections today, just some pictures with comments.

When my friend Brian came down, one of the things we did was go kayaking near Coban, the same area where I ran my half-marathon. Wow is this area absolutely beautiful. I am so glad I made it up there before I leave Guatemala. The river was a bit rough at parts. There were very challenging rapids (hence the helmits) but there was one class 4 or class 5 rapid that was especially hard. It consisted of a rapid that went over a giant raised rock, fell down 3 or 4 meters, and then immediately rebounded up because of a lower giant rock that was immediately ahead of it. The danger especially was the second rock and the raft flipping on it or a person banging up against it after the raft flipped. The guides studied it for about a half an hour literally and came back to tell us it was up to us but that it was dangerous. Since we had the raft with an experienced Guatemalan guide and a former guide from the US who was with us (who thought we could do it), we all said let's do it. We made it through OK, and so did the second raft, but the third raft did not. Instead of avoiding going directly over the dangerous rapid, they went straight over it and all got shoved out. Unfortunately for the person in front, he went right for the rock and ended up parting his upper lip and smashing his teeth back and smashing his nose. My stomach just sank. Luckily we were able to pull everyone in and we got the guy on the road to the hospital. We still finished though, contrary to what my stomach was feeling.


Taking a picture while the guides were studying the rapid


Getting close to that dangerous rapid
Working hard against the currents to avoid all the rocks
Here's all the volunteers that went with us that day rafting.


The next pictures are also of Coban, but when I went in late June for the half-marathon.



Before the race at 6am...I'm ready to conquer this.
After the race.... ummm, I can't lift my legs let alone feel them.
The lone casualty... this was the first time I ever had a blister that caused me to lose my nail.

This apple came in first place. I had the notion that I would eat it during the race but only ended up holding it the entire time so that it could earn a spot in history...the first apple to run a half-marathon in Guatemala, maybe the first in the world?


After the race, it was only relaxation. We went to some natural pools for a swim (and to stretch our muscles).

Where I am sitting, the water was springing out of the mountainside. It was nearly the amount of water that flows in Indian Mill Creek behind my house.

The next set of pictures are when I and Lauren (she is also the one who ran the half-marathon with me) did a site swap. She went to live in my site for a week doing my work and I went to her site for that week. I had already been to her site before and had met many people from there through out product exchanges that we had done many times between our sites, so I fit right in. The only thing I was not too excited about was the cold. I slept in long johns, pants, a sweater, fleece jacket, hat, and scarf with 4 blankets and I did not even sweat. She lives in the highest part of all Eastern Guatemala so of course it is going to be colder. I spent the whole week with an unstoppable runny nose (to my defense I came to her site already sick, I just could not get rid of it at her site). Lauren get's my vote for the iron woman award for Peace Corps. And the thing is, it gets much more cooler in December and January. Her clothes have frozen before in those cold months. And to top it off, it ended up that she had fleas. I got bit a few times sleeping which luckily now does not wake me like it did. I only noticed them when I washed my clothes and found a bugger in my sock. (I have gotten to be an expert and spotting and finding them). I felt bad and thought I had brought them only to find out that Lauren had had them for months but though that it was some other insect out of her control. It is lucky that fleas don't like the cold otherwise they may have really multiplied.

So besides weathering the cold, I got to plant broccoli seedlings, help milk some cows, makes some dewormer, make twice-baked potatoes and pineapple cookies, and give an AIDS talk. Here are some pictures:

Harvesting carrots in Lauren's site. This picture is actually from another time I was visiting her.


Here you can see some of us putting the broccoli seedling into the soil. We ended up planting 2000 that day. Unfortunately for me, I forgot my sunscreen and only brought a winter hat so I end up having to wear my rubber rain jacket to protect me. I did not get burnt, but boy did I get hot. I had to wring out my shirt when I got done just like when I am washing my clothes.Tossing the seedlings into the holes.

Here the person is throwing processed chicken poop into the hole as fertilizer. Processed chicken poop costs 55 quetzales the sack, chemical fertilizer 300 quetzales.

This is what I ate one night: noodles, garbanzos, lentils, eggs, and lots of spices. It actually is good. And when I say one night, I mean every night, since I ended up making a hug pot at the beginning of the week which lasted me til Friday.
Here we are making a dewormer for chickens from moonshine and native plants.
Here's a rare spotting of Jack. I found him up in Lauren's site. Ever since he brought Gee Gee part way up the volcano he has escaped and has been wandering the streets.

Yummy. Fresh, warm milk. I tried milking for a few seconds, but could only get a squirt out. I am sure it takes practice to get a good technique down without harming the cow.
Storing the milk to sell. 1 cup of milk costs 1 quetzal or 12.5 cents of a dollar. I would imagine that these containers sell even cheeper in bulk though. Unfortunately for the farmers, the price has gone way done. The previous president used to buy milk for school children. This lifted the price of milk and got people buying their products. People actually started buying more cows to produce more milk to deal with the demand. Then came along the new president who decided instead of buying milk for school children, he would buy incaparina, a soy drink. It just so happened though that a big backer of the president was also the owner of incaparina. Hmmm. So now there is low demand for milk and a big supply from all the additional cows on the market. So if you studied your economics, you know that low demand and a big supply spell out trouble for sustainable prices. These cows that I helped milk could produce up to 10 L if there were fed with feed. Instead to save money, they are just pasture fed and I think produce 4-6L. I might be a little off with the figures, but the basic point is is that there could be a lot more milk supplied if the price were ok. The crazy part to think about is that areas in Guatemala are suffering from a drought and that there is widespread malnutrition. There are children who are dying. There are many things that could help including milk. Unfortunately, when all your crops fail like in some areas, you can't even pay the 1 quetzal because you get your food and money from your harvests. Thankfully, the public is starting to do something after the story went out that more children than normal were dying. They recently did a large food drive. I just hope it will be enough to last til next year's harvest.
Birthday party in my site. Thanks Betty Crocker.
Here is a picture of the confirmation mass that was held in my site. I would dare say 120 people came from all around to receive the sacrament of confirmation. Instead of having the mass inside the tiny church, it was held outside and a special stage, canopy, and decorations were made.
This critter was fluttering around in the street when I found it.
Baking banana bread using a wood stove. Instead of putting the bread inside the stove, we did it on top. First we filled some sardine cans with water. When the water was boiling, we put the sardine cans filled with batter on top of the sardine cans filled with water. Then, we flipped a giant pot over it all and in 40 min came out moist banana bread!

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.