La Navidad en Guatemala

The Christmas celebrating here started in the afternoon on the 24th. I began with the ninth consecutive Posada (See video in other posting of a Posada), which is a re-enactment of Jesus and Mary searching for a place to stay. This night for the Posada, instead of processing from one house to another house where celebrations would occur and Joseph and Mary would stay for the night, we went to the Church where after the Posada, midnight mass was celebrated (for the first time, midnight mass was celebrated at 9pm – I was thankful for Padre Victor´s mandate). The service, since there was no priest, was held outside. People brought their candles for light along with hoards of loud fireworks (there only purpose was to make noise), firecrackers, sparklers, and fountain fireworks. Firecrackers or things that explode loudly are used for any festive occasion here – birthdays, independence day, whatever. Sparklers, fountains, and
candles were extra things to celebrate Jesus being born, the light of the world. All these things were used throughout the service with kids constantly running around jumping through fountains of ¨fire¨ or carrying sparklers or gazing where the loud bang occurred. For me it probably was the most distracting service or mass I have been too. I mean, how am I supposed to put my attention level to super (something necessary for me right now while listening in Spanish if I want to understand) with so many giggling kids and pretty lights while a homily is going on? After seeing the kids during the service, I also understood while there was a national campaign to keep kids safe from burns during the holiday season.

So as I said, I did not get much from the homily itself, but a significant thing for me was something that was done when the service ended. Everyone blew out their candles and ceased the fireworks and everything else so that there was complete silence and darkness. Then after a bit, lights were turned on and everything relit as the baby Jesus was brought out to accompanyJoseph and Mary. After a veneration of the baby Jesus, and placing the Holy Family in the Nativity, the celebration ended and moved to the homes where the traditional meal is tamales and hot fruit punch.

The family with whom I am staying killed a turkey for the Christmas Eve dinner, which occurred at 1:00 AM on the 25^th. They also used part of a pig for lunch on the 24^th. Unfortunately for me, I paid my respects by eating everything, almost all which was foreign to my stomach whether because I had never tried it before or because my stomach was now used to the bean and tortillas diet.. Well I paid dearly the next day and I suspect the culprit was the 8 pieces of chicarón, which are deep-fried chunks of pig fat, however I am sure that the factory cookies, turkey, and loads of hot fruit punch did not help.

My plan for the 25^th, Christmas Day, was to go to San Carlos to spend it with Padre Victor and other guests. I still went feeling bad, but I think I visited more with the toilet and my hearty piece of bread, rehydration drinks, and guisquiles (their like thorny potatoes that grow on a vine) were not exactly was I was expecting to eat when thinking about the meal the days before. I was actually really thankful. The people at the Church took care of me very well. Not that I was that bad off, but it was reassuring to have them help me. Plus the Church had a toilet, hot shower, a couch, and even a TV which added that touch of relaxation needed when you not feeling good. By the next morning, I was feeling better, but would not start eating normally til the weekend. I know it will be easy to remember next time not to eat pig in my town again.

Until I talked with family and realized people were together at Gee Gee's or Uncle Ben's or Aunt Deb's or that Charlie and Katie were taking the younger cousins to the movies on Christmas Day, December 25^th did not seem like Christmas. The religious aspect was there, but where was my Christmas Eve mass at St. Pete's? Where were all the family gatherings we have? Where was the cold and the snow and the Christmas songs which I could not find on the radio and missed so much? Most importantly, where was my family? For me, I guess I don't know if Christmas happened. It´s not necessarily something sad or happy, but its as though Christmas was left out of the calendar for 2007 and that I need to wait longer.

Something which did not exactly put me in the Christmas spirit during this time was a surprise I had. It was something for which I was praying I would avoid but still thinking at the same time when it would come. The surprise came after felling something crawling on my in my bed while sleeping and then examining my bed after now being able to sleep from crawling and bites. The bites, though, did not hurt, which made me think it was something like a bed bug of some sort. When I took off my sheets, however, I found hoping tiny monsters – AKA fleas. I spent the day washing everything from my clothes to my bedding, going to San Carlos to buy a bug killer and to wrap my wimpy mattress in plastic, and spraying and thoroughly cleaning my room. Upon cleaning my room, I realized 2 things. There is a lot of dirt and dust that is coming from outside into the room through the space between the wall and ceiling. I also realized other bugs were entering in my room too when to my surprise after and hour after spraying the all purpose killing agent, I found a dying scorpion under my bed. Although I don't really like using this poison, it just might be a preventative spray if I see another scorpion.

Finally, to update you all to where I am today, I´ll let you know how New Years went too.

So after a relaxing weekend where I went off my all-vegetable diet (due to me being sick earlier in the week) to the normal food I was used to eating, I was convinced to go to Lake Atitlan to a tourist town in Sololá for New Years. There nearly all the new volunteers would be meeting to bring in the new year. I hit the road on the 31^st bright and early at 5:30 and made it to Panajachel by 2:00pm. I think I am getting used to long, crammed camioneta rides as I was not that beat afterward. The town was quite warm, warmer than my site which felt really good, and was filled with North Americans and Guatemalans alike.

The evening of the 31^st we had a nice dinner, danced and celebrated and then for midnight some of us went to the lake to watch people shooting of fireworks. I thought this was a much more peaceful option to where we had been where people were lighting off what seemed to be sticks of dynamite. Their explosion was so loud my ears were still hurting the next day. I would call the thing a US quality firework explosion (like what you hear when the big fireworks are exploding in, for instance, Grand Rapids) except that it did not leave the ground leaving those around the ¨bomb¨ deafened.

New Years Day was filled with relaxment including wearing shorts, eating lots of peanut butter sandwiches and oranges (a family from my town gave me 40 to bring on my trip to Sololá), walking the beach and walking through the city and all the vendors, and finally going swimming in the lake. Unfortunately I did not take my camera, but there is a picture of the lake in a previous blog.

Here was the little altar the family made in their house for Christmas
Here is the unlucky turkey with his feathers in the plastic container. To our defense, he was mean to people who tried to enter into the coop.
Here was one of my new friends I found in my room. I found this guy after treating my room for the fleas I had in my bed and then after sweeping the floor. In this stage, the scorpion is pretty close to dead
Here is a picture of the posada for those of you who can view the video.

Here is the Nativity in the Church. No pine trees were used, but they did use a bunch of green plants and flowers as you might be able to see in the picture. This picture is still from before Christmas so Mary and Joseph and Jesus are not in the Nativity
Here is a picture of the church in my aldea
And here is a picture of the Church from the outside
This is one of the tiny school building that is in the aldea. Also in it is the main playing court of the aldea where soccer is played. Soon there will be a basketball rim set up. You can see it resting in the right of the picture. I cant wait as I am the equivalent of an actual good basketball player down here when compared to everyone else. I guess my height might have something to do with it.Here are future tortillas . It is corn dried on the stalk and thrown on the ground in front of the hosue. It only needs to be dehusked and then the kernels needed to be removed from the cob. From there you cook the kernels in water for a day. Then you grind it all with calcium to get your dough to form your tortillas. In the back right, you can see the black plastic wall which represent 1 of the 2 walls I use when bathing next to the pila. Although you can see the actual pila I use, another pila , which is blue, is in the photo on the left.
More future tortillas

Constructing a house -- Instead of using adobe like most of the house, these people are constructing their house with concrete brick. I got to help with some of the work.

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.

Here comes the sun

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tomorrow is the day I find out my site!