Fin del Entrenamiento y Juramento

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.