Party in the G.U.A.

We are invited to a birthday party for a two year old. It starts at 10:00 am with a mass. 10:30 finds me scouring the market for a gift that is not a toy car, by 11:30 I am back at home socializing with my site-mate and playing with the new puppy. At 12:00 we make it to the party, imagining ourselves very Guatemalan for showing up 2 hours late. We are the first non-family guests there. Good job. So we settle in to normal party activity. Sitting and staring. About an hour later we eat lunch and are told that there is a piñata and a clown coming at 2:30. By now I no longer imagine myself Guatemala and begin to panic thinking of all of the other things I could be doing at home in the hour that I will spend staring at a wall and futily trying to start up conversations. Napping is at the top of my list along with taking my clothes down from the roof before it starts raining at 2 o’clock. At 2 pm we shamefully make our excuses and leave, so sorry to be missing the clown, but defeated by yet another Guatemalan social event . Bag of candy in hand I arrive home and am greeted by my landlady who says she is thinking about heading over at 3 for the piñata. When will I learn?

Since I wrote the last post...

The bus companies have paid the appropriate parties and begun to run again, two courts have rejected the president's ex-wife's candidacy for president, and i have realized that I can hear everything going on in the apartment next to mine, which at the moment is a lot of baby talk and the occasional baby crying. All this to say that everything is normal. The woman who I buy bananas from in Kachiquel still insists on trying to have full conversations with me when its obvious that in the year she has been speaking to me in Kachiquel I have not gained any new vocabulary beyond "how much are the bananas," and either - "I am going to the market" or "I am going home," depending on the direction of my trajectory. Today she tried to add a new word to my repertoire by asking me if I was going far. Judging by how quickly I forgot the word for far, I am not a very receptive student. Never-the-less, her patience and persistence remind me that maybe I should have the same patience with schools that just don't seem to learn to wash their hands. Or maybe she just gets a kick out of the gringa trying to speak Kaqchikel. I have a feeling that that will never change. On the other hand, maybe I am finally starting to blend in. I gave a 4th grader quite a start the other day when he found out that I was from the US and not in fact, from Patzún. The idea blew his mind, and when I asked him if he had ever seen a Patzunera as tall and white as me he said yes, there is one other. It was probably Maggie.

Maybe skip this one mom...

Today there are no buses leaving or coming into my town. Yesterday a driver of a Patzún bus was shot and killed on his route- the work of unpaid extortionists. So today is either a day of mourning or a day of fear. On the way to school I heard a teacher comment:

”It was better during the military rule. We all kept our heads down and if you weren’t involved, nothing happened to you. Now something bad could happen to anybody.”

As misguided as this concept may be, it is one that is becoming more and more reasonable to more and more people as violence seems to increase across the country. This may not be the news my mom wants to hear, but leading up to the elections, it is the news that we are all hearing here.

For a while now I have wanted to write a blog about the up-coming elections here in Guatemala, but I have been unsure how to present the information without my personal political bias (which is something that us PCVs are not allowed to have). But as the election draws nearer things keep happening that I consider blog worthy, so I thought I’d give it a shot. Just a disclaimer- my views are not the views of the Peace Corps or the US Government… or whatever it says at the top of my blog.

With elections on the horizon and the perception of rising violence, security is a popular theme- hence the over-heard comment quoted above. This idea that the country was safer with military rule is something I heard often in Argentina, another Latin American country that recently experienced a period of state violence, and that I’ve now heard various times here in Guatemala. I imagine it would be easier for one to think that only the guilty were affected by the violence of the war, but to me this pervasive idea displays a lack of social and cultural memory of what actually occurred and a conviction that one’s personal experience was shared by all. This way of thinking can help explain the popularity of a party with the slogan “A hard hand” which is running a campaign based on security and a candidate who is ex-military special forces. The same special forces group, mind you, that was infamous during “la violencia,” or the civil war for their brutality and inhumane practices.

Another hot button issue in Guatemala is, of course, poverty, and another popular party has made it’s platform the continuation of social programs that give away money, food, cows, etc. Although these programs are popular in many areas, some Guatemalans make fun of them as ineffective by changing the name from “my family progresses” to “my cantina progresses.” This party’s candidate happens to be the current president’s ex-wife who conveniently divorced her spouse to be legally able to mount her campaign. The courts are still out on whether or not this move was constitutionally viable, but she pushes ahead with her propaganda and programs that some say are still funded with government money- an advantage to being the party in power.

Among other candidates are Indigenous rights activist Rigoberta Menchu, an ex- mega-church pastor, the wife of another ex-president, a member of the family that owns Pollo Campero (Guatemala’s McDondalds)- the list goes on. It has been interesting to watch the debates and the appearances of the various candidates on TV. Guatemala is facing many difficulties and it is interesting, although occasionally frustrating, to hear the candidates’ ideas for solutions. Coming from a system that is functionally two-party, it can be overwhelming, but it is also exiting to have so many candidates participating. After living here for only a year and a half I have begun to feel invested in the country, and I, like most Guatemalans, wish for the country a future government that is able to find solutions to problems of corruption, violence, underdevelopment and poverty.

How many elotes locos are too many elotes locos?

This thought provoking question has arisen many times over the course of Feria in Patzún this year. Last year it wasn't an issue because I had yet to try an elote loco. I looked down upon them as a gross guatemalan combination of condiments. I ordered my elotes (corn on the cob) with lime and salt like a civilized person. But I don't know what came over me this year. Maybe I have become more open, less sensitive to varied culinary strategies, lost taste buds to sugar beverages, or gone off my rocker so to speak. But I decided that to criticize the elote I first should try it. I turned up my nose as the woman slather mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup, and hot sauce on my corn. "Just a little mayo...light on the hot sauce... parmesean cheese please," and I had my elote. I am a bit ashamed to say that it was delicious. I hope to one day take this secret recipe back to the states and make a killing. Now I am just fighting to limit myself to just one elote loco a day. This is not a breakfast food.

The elote saga opened my eyes to the flow of creative ideas that Feria sets loose. Once a year we celebrate the patron saint of Patzún, St. Bernard (not the dog) with a week or so of candy, fair food, rides, parades, dances, rodeos, etc. I have found myself commenting repeatedly with Eric (who is visiting from the US... look out for his guest blog) on all of the great ideas people have had during Feria. I dedicate this blog to these people and the creative spirit.

Great idea #1: Neon yellow suits with ankle length coats and ... wait for it... neon orange shirts




Great idea #2: How to power a mobile Ferris Wheel? Got it! TRACTOR. It even has the advantage that it can go in reverse. Really fast.



Great Idea #3: As if the idea of having all of the kindergarden, first, and second grade students from all of the villages surrounding patzún come into town parade under the midday sun wasn't already a pretty good idea... the theme was "Traditions of Patzún," pretty legit. Kudos to the really great idea of bringing goats and handing out fresh milk along the parade route. The town authorities especially like it when the goats paraded onto the brand new soccer field that was being inaugurated.



Great Idea #4: Gringa in Traje. This actually was a pretty good idea. I think it is winning me votes toward my 2016 mayoral campaign.



Great Idea #5: FIRE. and crowds. and traditional mayan sports. See if you can spot the flaming ball and hockey sticks.



You'd think a popsicle on a hot day would be a winning idea...



Oh yea... and #7... ELOTE LOCO!!

La Locura de Marzo

La Locura de Marzo, March Madness, in Spanish it sounds like some kind of illness, a time of year where everyone goes temporarily crazy- like Mal de Mayo, a time of year where more people have diarrhea. In some ways, it is an epidemic of sorts. People who never care about basketball fill out brackets and all of the sudden depend upon the final scores of games between teams they know nothing about, and chose to win because they like the mascot, or the geographical location of the university, or maybe the sound of the school’s name. Or maybe that’s just me.
Every year I participate in my family’s brackets for March Madness, and I have tried all of these tricks to pick my winning team, without much luck. Some years I even tired learning a bit about the teams or at least asking someone who professed know, but to be honest I haven’t had much success with any of these methods.
This year is going to be different. “Why?” you ask, “Surely in Guatemala you haven’t been keeping up with college basketball,” you think. And this is true. I didn’t even know college basketball was happening until March came and the catchy title “March Madness” reminded me just what mayhem was around the corner. But I still think this year will be different. It will be different because I am now a basketball player, which gives me the extra intuitive push that comes from being on the inside. Sure I may have randomly filled out my brackets, organizing them just so, so that my two favorite teams (UF/UNC) face off in the finals. But random choice and intuition may go far with my newfound love of the game.
If some of you remember, this is not my first attempt to break into the highly competitive Patzún women’s basketball league. The combustive combination of my height and lack of skill and/or knowledge of the game, which seemed to cause me to foul a lot in practice, intimidated the first team I attempted to join. I gave up on the dream for a while, but it was reborn as I watched my average height site-mate dominate the tiny Guatemalans on the court. When a kindergartener told me with wide eyes, “Seño, you’re a GIANT,” I thought of the quote, “With great power comes great responsibility,” and knew I had to use my power for good.
After mentioning my interest to enough random people, I finally hit upon someone who actually played on a basketball team and invited me to play with them (example #1 of the effectiveness of randomness and intuition). That is how I ended up playing on the Magisterio team. This is an elite, handpicked team of primary school teachers, most of whom I work with. Their patience, encouragement, and willingness to teach me EVERYTHING has been amazing. I guess it’s good that I found a team of teachers because they have had to teach me everything from defensive positioning, to how long I can stay in the paint, to how to dribble.
I have played in 3 games so far and I would say I am making great strides. In my first game I got called for traveling at least 4 times, and I don’t even hold the ball that often, but my coach said I was doing great because the other team got distracted by staring at me when I got the ball.
My second game was a Patzún classic, gringa vs. gringa- my team versus my site-mate’s. We lost by a narrow margin and I almost fouled out (according to Maggie, I still don’t know how to tell when I have been called for a foul). But I was improving; after the game I was compared to Larry Bird (by my site-mate) and Shaquille O’Neil (by me, ‘cuz I’m huge). In my 3rd game I only traveled once, and I made my first two baskets of my basketball career! When I made my first basket my team went CRAZY. They are amazing. They make baskets all the time and no one cheers, but they encourage me continuously and never tire of getting excited over the small steps of progress I show. I never really liked basketball before, but they have made me love it. And that is why I have high hopes for my brackets this year, and for another Gringa vs. Gringa face off in the city championships. I’ll keep you posted.

Today's random thought.

While eating my requisite avocado of the day it dawned on me that at today's Sunday market $1 US bought me 2 avocados, 2 mangos, and a pound of blackberries. Life is good.

this will really beef up my resume

Has anyone ever heard of divining or dowsing? The method of finding water under ground using a tree branch or metal rods? Until today I was pretty skeptical about this method of choosing a location to dig a well. If you are going to invest a few thousand quetzals to dig a well wouldn’t you want a bit more of an expert opinion, like say from an engineer? Well we got the expert opinion from the engineer, and according to him this method is about 95% accurate. So today I woke up at 5 am to go out to our farthest community where the school has little to no water and meet with the diviner.

We have been very lucky to have the opportunity to work with an NGO called Agua para la Salud on a variety of water projects in our schools, so we were very excited to find out that they want to keep working with us with another grant proposal in September. Taking advantage of the fact that the engineer is staying in our site for a few weeks, we started visiting potential project sites this week. When we went out to Pachut, the farthest community in my municipality, the director of the NGO decided de una vez that he could fund the well that the school had been hoping for. So we began to scout locations. From him I learned that it is not just the metal rods that help find the water. One can also look for an area that is green all year and where wetland plants grow, such as elderberry (just part of the random knowledge I have accumulated by following him around). We also looked at where the other wells had been dug and mapped out the possible trajectory of the water running down from the mountain to the spring.

And then it was time to bring out the big guns. Except that they are not so big. When the man arrived today with two little pieces of bent metal sticking out of tubes from a regular ink pen I was surprised. I was also surprised that the man that carried these precious tools was not actually the community diviner. The diviner was sick and had been very reluctant to lend out his tools, claiming at first that he didn’t know where they were. I have to remember that trick next time I don’t want to lend something out. But they were finally found and the fact that it didn’t actually take a professional to operate them gave me great hope for my future in the well digging business.

As we tested out the rods around the school and nearby wells it was amazing to see that when they approached a well they began to cross. At a very shallow well they crosses so strongly that they began to turn all the way back towards the man that held them. When it was my turn to try near a well, I was very disappointed to find that they didn’t work, apparently because of my un-guatemalan-ness. I lost faith for a moment, but on a second attempt with more instruction on the proper angle at which to hold the pen tubes I had success! (see attached photos).

I am excited to say that not only did I gain a new skill today, but that we hope to begin construction next week on the well and if I am able to get funding we will be able to buy a pump and run water to a school that has never had it before! Then hopefully they will buy soap.

Here is a list of other random things I have learned recently that may or may not be useful in real life:
⇒ What to put in a pit latrine to combat odors: limestone, ash, tp
⇒ How many wheelbarrows make up 1 cubic meter of sand or gravel: 15
⇒ What to do with a baby if its head starts falling in from being vertical too much: hang it upside-down and dip it in water
⇒ How to cure a sore throat with marshmallows and coke: boil, then drink
⇒ How many inches are in a vara: 33 or 36, depending on which old-time king you favor