So if you’ve been reading Jim’s wall, and it seems most people do. You will have seen the photos of wheat fields all over the mountain side. While he was gone they began harvesting, and one afternoon on my way to get water at the neigbor’s Masha showed me how they get a tasty snack out of the freshly harvested wheat. I thought, “You know, if Fletch was here he’d be taking photos of this to show everyone,” so I ran to get my camera.

The weather has changed dramatically in the last few weeks. We’ve had one rain that lasted for about 30 minutes and sunny days other than that. This means, there’s no water in the stream outside of our house; it’s dried up until the rainy season comes back. Clouds and fog no longer obstruct our views of the mountains, but now we see them through a dust haze. Likewise, we’ve got “fields of gold” the likes of which Sting can only imagine, all over the place. Some nights we don’t even bother to light the stove because it’s not cold enough. I think summer is here. And with it, people sit out in the yards over little fires and toast the fresh cut wheat grain on the shaft. They rub it between their hands, to loosen the toasted grain, and sift it between their hands blowing at the loose grassy bits. In the late afternoon kids and adults are seen eating handfuls of green, toasted wheat grain. It’s slightly soft and sweet. I think it’s kind of good, but as is the way with wheat, it’s a lot of work for such a tiny amount of snack. Somehow I don’t think that bothers anyone here.

Over the holidays last year, my brother John taught me a new word, agrícola. Turns out, it exists in Spanish too, and means “agricultural”. The last few days I’ve been engaged in all things agrícola, starting with building a greenhouse (more on that in a coming post).

Last night, however, Maria the Chicken Lady dropped by, carrying a large gunnysack. She leaned over our dutch door and dangled it into our house as though she was going to dump its contents out onto our floor. “Here they are!” she happily proclaimed.

Luckily, Emily realized what was going on and stopped her before she unleashed a pair of chickens. You see, it’s the custom here that people just keep chickens running loose in their houses. Part of our job is teaching the locals this might not be a good idea from a health perspective, but the going is slow. “Wait,” Emily said calmly, “Our gaillenero (chicken coop) is ready, lets put them there.”

So, that’s what we did. Emily let me grab them from the gunny sack and stuff them into the coop, and they cooperated peacefully. So peacefully, in fact, that the first one was already roosting happily before the second one was even out of the sack. If you click to enlarge the image, you can see the black one staring out at us. Emily told me later that she let me grab them because she was kindof scared to do it herself. Ha!

We’re now proud chicken owners. The includes the trying things, like chasing the black one all over the village after it escaped this morning. Luckily, Lucas and some of the village kids helped me catch it, or we’d be down to one chicken in just the first day.

I was walking back home from the outhouse tonight, and was struck by how pretty the night sky is here. We’re at just under 10,000′ above sea level, twice as high as Denver, so the air here is REALLY thin and clear.

For months I’ve been wondering how to get a picture of it, and last week I discovered a previously unknown function on my camera that allows me to take shots with up to 15 seconds of open shutter. It’s not as good as long-exposure film photography, but WOW! This little camera takes pretty good pictures for something the size of a pack of cigarettes. I never stop marvelling at how functional it is if you take the time to fiddle with all the settings. And I LOVE to fiddle with stuff.

Note: for anyone interested, the camera is a Canon PowerShot SD600. I used to own the previous version with fewer megapixels, and when this one finally dies, I am going to buy the next in the series.

Today I drug our village into the Internet Age. Emily has been working on this idea of helping the locals to form a craft co-op. This would help our people in so many ways:  

• Work the international marketplace, gaining DOLLARS which have a big advantage in exchange rate
• Brings outside money into the local economy, making things better for everyone here (not just the craftspeople)
• Teach women skills for managing a small business
• Give the women a feeling of empowerment
• Derive an additional source of income, to help pay for better healthcare and education for their kids

After MONTHS of humming and hawing on how to go about this, Emily finally just commissioned one of the local women to make a bag, and we’re going to sell it online. If it works, we can show the women of the town that this will REALLY WORK. They maintain the traditional Mayan skepticism, and I don’t blame them: it’s kindof rediculous to think that someone can take a picture, type on a computer, and someone else thousands of miles away that speaks a different language will send you a pile of money. But I guess this is the big test, huh? So please click the link to our online store and check it out. If you know anyone who might be interested, please pass the link along.

www.TemuxMayanArtisans.etsy.com

It’s funny, I generally don’t get sick very often, but I am sick AGAIN… sortof. My tongue started feeling funny last week, like I burned it on a hot drink or something. But after a week, it didn’t go away, so I got suspicious and looked in the mirror. My tongue is brown! How gross. Luckily, I was passing through Santa Lucia (home of Peace Corps HQ) today, so I stopped in to visit the medical officer. The best they can figure, I have contracted something called “geographic tongue”. Never heard of it. They tell me it’s a viral infection, and it makes your tongue look blotchy like a map (hence “geographic”). I don’t like it, but since it’s viral, I just have to wait for it to go away. Blech.

Here I am in the last little bit of my week home alone, as Fletch should be back within the hour. Do I look sad? He went to the states for a friends wedding, and for many reasons I felt best that I not accompany him. One of those reasons was that we didn’t have to worry about people thinking we were leaving them forever without telling them–they really worry about that a lot here. We took advantage of my staying here to not tell anyone but our host family where Fletch was going. Everyone else just thought he was taking our friend Devin to the airport when the two of them took off together on Monday morning. I must say, it was liberating at first. We hardly spend any time apart here, which we’ve learned to deal with pretty well by now, but having a space suddenly all to myself felt great!

And then I realized how strange an idea that is to everyone here. They must have asked, “Emily, are you sad? Jaime isn’t here anymore; you’re all alone…” with a pity trail off, twenty times or more in the first two days. It didn’t help that, the night before the guys left, I started getting a head cold that is STILL hanging on, and it made my eyes water constantly. So while I was mentally ending their pity trail offs, “You’re all ALONE! YEAH!” I apparently looked on the verge of tears for the first few days he was away. Perhaps that’s an appropriate reaction for a Guatemalan wife that worked to my advantage? I joked with Reina and her mom that now I was free to find another boyfriend. Lina laughed, “You can date a Guatemalan now!” But then she’d say again, “Poor you. You’re all alone. How are you going to sleep by yourself?” I told them I thought I could handle it. I sleep literally 10 feet from Reina; there just happens to be an outdoor walkway between us. “Well, still, it’s scary to sleep alone. You can come sleep in the house with us if you want to. Just come right into the house with us.” That was very considerate of them, but I couldn’t really sleep well in my own bed due to not breathing well, so the idea of sleeping in someone else’s bed held little interest to me. “Don’t be sad, just come right on in and sleep with us if you need to.” Thank you, thank you, thank you…

So then I was washing all the dirty clothes and dishes the guys left behind, and it’s pretty normal for the chickay, the grandma, to talk to me while I stand working at the pila. Our conversations are usually about the weather and the chickay’s current state of health. It was warm, she was feeling good sitting in the sun, and then. “Pobre usted, Jaime ya no esta. Estas solita!” That translates to…can you guess it? Poor you, Jaime isn’t here anymore. You’re all alone! Then she too asked me, “How are you going to sleep all alone?” I told her I used to do it all the time when he traveled for work in the states. “Oh, I had to sleep alone when my husband drank. He’d drink and fall asleep somewhere and I slept alone then.” She comiserated as though this sleeping alone took a certain amount emotional strength, but it could be done if one set her mind to it. “Do you miss him?” she asked me. “I still miss my husband a lot.” I told her I did miss him, but he wasn’t leaving me forever. I was kind of joking when I said that and thought the tone conveyed it, but she seemed to relax and be generally relieved, “Oh, he’s not leaving you. That’s good. I miss my husband so much. He died eight years ago and I still cry for him. I cry con ganas, sometimes I scream like a drunkard. I miss him so much. Poor you. You’re all alone….but I slept alone when my husband drank, when he was sucking on the bottle.” That last bit in a tone as if to say, “I did it, so you can do it, too.”

Seriously? Part of me had to try very hard not to laugh out LOUD about that crying and screaming like a drunkard just because the chickay is such a petite little lady with a high pitched voice and two teeth, in such gentle spirits all the time; it seemed darkly comic. But on the other hand, SERIOUSLY? It was frustrating to receive so much pity. Mentally I was reverting to that charming habit of yelling so people will understand, “I AM JUST FINE ON MY OWN! REALLY!” But it would have done no good to voice this at any volume. Thinking about it for a second I realized, no one here is ever alone. You are born into a crowded, multi-generational home, are raised right along with multiple siblings cousins, uncles and aunts your same age, and you get married and start having your own children between 15 and 18 years of age. I myself was born into quite the full house, and didn’t really understand the idea of personal time or what to do with myself while on my own until I was in my twenties. I had to move to Barcelona and learn how to be alone before I could decide I liked it, so it wasn’t that unreasonable. Then i joined Peace Corps and sacrificed both personal time and the ability to attend family and friend events with any facility.

Mostly I was not sad about being on my own. The kids still came to see me all the time, except 5 year old Alberto, who maybe just likes Fletch more. 🙂 And  the family invited me over to eat with them probably 5 times. And Thursday through Saturday I went to spend time in the cities with some girl friends, which was a great. It wasn’t until about Sunday that I was just sad about not being in the US, too. It brought up a constant conflict in me. Why do I always choose to go so far away from the majority of people I care the most about? It’s almost a little sick. On one hand I feel like these things I go away to do are always calling for me when I’m not out there doing them, but once I get out and start doing them I feel terribly left out of things everyone else is doing back home. And that, too, is a problem many people here can’t relate to. The nice thing about not feeling lonely because you’re always with your friends and family, is that you probably never feel left out either. So maybe I should halt my very own pity party (perhaps somewhat induced by the pity heaped upon at the beginning of the week) and view this being left out as a privilege of my modern existence. In that respect It’s similar to the joy of alone time.  

But seriously, guys, I hope you know that I miss you all quite a bit and often. I once had this teacher who is a music aficionado. He is amazing with trivia and his cd collection is enormous and he’d lend us cd’s of all types just to expose to more music. While conversing once he said, “Sometimes I think about all the good music there is the world, and I feel so sad that I’ll die before I hear it all.” And at the time I thought, “Huh, I feel that way about people.” So maybe what I’m doing with all this running around is, while recognizing I can’t meet all the hidden gems of great people in the world before I die, I’m giving it a fair go, for what it’s worth.

If you’re REALLY lucky, it’s possible to do the trip to Antigua from our site in one day, if you leave at 6am when the sun comes up, and are OK with getting in when the sun is on the other side of the horizon and the thieves are getting ready for their night’s work. But that only works if everything goes right and you catch all the buses right when they leave, a statistical improbability. We always budget two days for the trip; it’s a lot less stressful and tiring that way, too.

When I took Devin to the airport, the two-day plan really paid off. About three hours into the trip, the bus started making funny noises, and before we knew it, we were standing by the side of the road with 20 other pedestrians looking at a broken bus. We were in the middle of nowhere in the Cumbre, but there is only one road through that part of Guatemala, so we waited a bit and eventually another bus came along. Always allow extra time in Guatemala.

Despite the setback, Devin and I still had enough time to visit the Mayan ruins at Zacaleu, just outside of Huehuetenango. Zacaleu was the regional Mayan capitol from about 400AD to 1525AD, when the Spanish conquistadores showed up with their steel and horses and guns. They put an end to all things Maya after about a month of Euro-style seige, and the weeds grew to cover the bones and stones. In the 30s, the site was rediscovered and excavated, and the pyramids and temples were preserved under a protective coating of plaster, with a grant from the United Fruit Company (perhaps they felt bad about enslaving the Mayans after the Spanish got tired of it?)

Here we have Devin posing on the ruins, first in the ancient ball court, then atop the main temple.

The only other interesting thing we did was visit Pastores, the town where Emily did her training. My host-dad’s brother (Victor) owns one of the many fine boot shops there. Pastores is world-famous for producing custom boots, ranging from the simple to the extravagant. The excellent workmanship combined with low cost (due to the weak quetzal) means that just about every PCV eventually gets a pair during their service. The bootmakers trace your foot for a custom fit, will stitch your initials into the sides, whatever you want. They will even make boots from a sketch, as one of our volunteers who is a also a fashion designer discovered! Devin, being a clothes horse, couldn’t resist. The hardest decision for him was whether to get them in ostrich skin or water moccasin.  

HI! So we’ve been away again, but it wasn’t really our fault. You see, the plan was to go to our In-Service Training and then my friend Devin was going to arrive the day we finished and we’d start our whirlwind tour of Guatemala with him. He bought his ticket to arrive on said date, then Peace Corp moved training up a week, boo. So we went to Antigua for a week, came home for 5 days, and went to Antigua again to pick up D-ho. About 3 months after arriving to our new home here in the mountains, in the midst of one beautiful, rainy hike through lush greenery and waterfalls, Fletch and I were talking and we came to agree that there was one person on earth we knew needed to come see us here, because he’d probably appreciate the place as much as we do. That person was Devin Hogan. Shortly thereafter we set about convincing him he needed to be here. We didn’t really have to twist his arm… Devin and I met sophomore year of college in one of the most transformative classes (sortof joking, but mostly not) of our Knox career, London Arts Alive, which means we hung out in London together for like 3 weeks during winter break. Our friendship started on a traveling adventure and thus it continues…

Friday morning Fletch and I set out on our marathon bus ride straight from our front door to Antigua, arriving in just under 12 hours. Devin’s flight was dirt cheap, which meant it left Chicago at 3:00 am and got to Guatemala at 6:30am. He was doing us the huge of favor of brining two pelican cases of computer equipment for the computer center project, thus we went all out and rented a taxi to and from the airport rather than taking a cheap shuttle. We had no idea if the airlines would slap Dev with ugly baggage fees that would prevent him from getting the cases here. Nor did we know if immigration would let the pelican cases through once they got here. But the taxi pulled up to the arrivals exit and Devin was standing, all chill in his MIB sunglasses, with a bulging backpack and two pelican cases, right at the taxi lane. Impeccable timing plus VICTORY. The baggage fees were only $50, but immigration was a little trickier. The officer that first checked the cases out had a bad case of Self-Importance. He hassled Devin about the boxes for a while, asking what he was doing bringing so much computer equipment into the country, what the value of it all was (not much; it’s all used). The customs official declared that the boxes, since they came with no official Peace Corps documentation to back up his skinny backpacker story of helping out a to-be computer center in the highlands of Huehuetenango, had to be left at the airport until someone could come pay taxes on them. And this is where Devin kicked butt. He does actually speak spanish, but he was kind of rusty for not having practiced in a while, and he’d been at O’Hare and on planes since 1am, so he breaks out some flimsy spanish skills, looking totally square (obviously he’d not put on the sunglasses yet) and starts telling the officer, “It’s just, well, my church donated this equipment for a project here in Guatemala, and, I mean, we’re supposed to leave for the mountains this morning and the villagers are all waiting for these boxes they are know are coming…” Exit custom officer, enter next in command. Devin was told he could take the cases out of the airport, but was getting a special stamp in his passport. If he’s found trying to enter the country again in the next twelve months with more computer equipment and no documentation he will have to pay taxes. But on this day he got off scott free with our start up boxes. YAY DEVIN!

I think he was generally a lucky charm his first day here. We a took him, very loopy and all, to breakfast at our favorite place before meeting up with our “shuttle” to Lake Atitlan. We showed up early, about 20 minutes before said shuttle was supposed to leave, and less than five minutes after arriving a little car pulled up to the travel agency and asked the woman if he had any passengers. She pointed to us. We got a private car to take us, in amazing comfort, to Atitlan (2 1/2 hours from Antigua) on pretty back roads not used by big camionetas–for less than we paid for a taxi to the airport and back (a 30 minute trip)!

Here we are riding the boat to our hostel. Fletch and I were beat from the massive travel the day before and getting up early to meet Devin. Devin was beat from flying all morning long. The lake was just the anecdote of relaxation we needed. Being there is kind of like being in Hawaii, which is to say my brain just kind of shuts off. I can read and kayak and swim and do yoga, and my thoughts go no further than the next meal because the food is amazing. While there we ran into a lot of spring breakers from the US, and I thought, “Man, why didn’t I ever think of running away to central america for my spring break in college. That would have been so cool…” Then I tried to remember what I did do….One hiking trip to Cherokee National Forest with my dear Allison first year of college, next year in Hawaii getting to know my boyfriend’s family, next year in Morocco for ten days with same boyfriend, last year of college in Hawaii again as an early wedding present, climbing the volcano. I actually laughed out loud that I didn’t immediately remember that stuff. Apparently there wasn’t time to think about running away to Central America; I was too busy with other trips. Anyway, Atitlan gave all three of us time to rest, recuperate and catch up on all sorts of news. It was so relaxing, in fact, that we couldn’t bring ourselves to leave and had to stay one night longer than planned. Then we really had to go and meet up with the EWU student and all the computer monitors before we distributed the students to their PCV hosts.

Devin got to enjoy the 7 hour ride from Xela to our site. The poor guy is even taller than we are, so the microbus was nothing but loads of fun for his long-legged self. However, once he arrived in Temux he was treated quite well. Since the arrival of Elke the town has demonstrated nothing but enthusiasm for more gringo visitors. As Fletch has told with all his pictures, he got to experience everything that is our crazy life here, ha, right down to being in town where we are less known and having clusters of children suddenly form a huddled, panic-stricken line to pass us on the street. “Did you see that? Did you see the terror in their eyes?” I asked him. He could only chuckle. It’s sort of sad but funny that they’re so incredibly scared of us. He also got the opposite treatment in Temux as we went walking along the roads to happy children holloring enthusiastically, “GRINGOS! JAIME! EMILY! GRINGOS!” and waving madly from front porches and yards.

One of the coolest things that Fletch didn’t mention was how the town leaders showed up on multiple occassions to show Devin around. We ended up doing two days of long hikes. Nas showed us where he was born and grew up before he moved down to the village center. There were tours of some natural springs that Nas and Manuel wanted advice on how to protect and use (welcome to our job, Devin, we have to give information plugs like this all the time!), and of course lessons on the plant life, what this tree and that plant are called in Q’anjob’al. While the guys talked to us, Manuel’s little boys made flower chains for me until I had set, then they made flower bracelets for Devin and Fletch. Something about that was really endearing, a “Yeah, I’m in Peace Corps” moment. That day, we hiked until the sun set. They kept thinking of one more thing to show us, one of our last stops being a cave where, according to Nas, people descend to light candles and communicate with the supernatural. I have to laugh every time they say supernatural here, because they use the word extraterrestre, which in my mind sounds like they’re communicating with aliens. Nas said one of his sheep fell into the cave–it’s up on a little hill, the opening is a grass and rock hole in the earth–so he’s been down there at least once to retrieve a lost sheep. I always wish I could catch just how vertical the landscape here is for all of you to see. I think these pictures of our hike make a pretty good show of it.

This was Devin’s first sampling of how cool Nas Palas is, but I really wanted Dev to have the experience of eating dinner with the whole family. This was tricky, because I knew they wouldn’t want to invite us unless they had meat, and I didn’t know if they were going to be buying meat while Devin was here, so I suggested he buy them a chicken and they teach us how to kill it. Pretty funny. Reina gave me advice on where to go to get it, but sent Chalio and Alberto with us to help us find this random place up in the hills where a lady sells live chickens.

When we finally got there, the whole chicken selling family had to come out to see these three giant gringos that had come to buy a bird. It was pretty hilarious. Reina had already told me, “Make sure you get the biggest one you see to get the best for your money.” I spotted the biggest one, but as I was trying to figure out how to say it Q’anjob’al Chaleo hollered, “We want that one!” (same one I’d picked out, good eye good eye) so the guy picked up the biggest bird and tossed him in the bag the family had sent with us. “Now you have to carry it,” I told Chaleo, and he looked a little sad about that. I started laughing and slung the chicken over my shoulder, but that proved a very uncomfortable way to carry it. It kept bumping up against my back, and it’s beak and talons were sticking out of the bag. It was pretty funny. But the whole thing got funnier as Masha and Reina showed us how we had to kill it. The two had an argument over who  had to ring its neck. Apparently their sister-in-law who wasn’t home at the time usually does that part. In the end Reina had to do it. And here’s a funny picture of me with the girls. As Masha and Reina were plucking the chicken, the girls woke up from their naps in the other room, so I went to pick them both up to stop their squaking and show them where their moms were. They all thought it was pretty funny.

On Devin’s last day here Manuel took us on a hike to the mountains across the valley, to where he was raised. You have to descend to the river then hike UP. The paths were so well worn it felt like the roots and rocks formed functional narrow stairs. On the way there he pointed out where, during the conflict, a guerrilla from Todos Santos was hiding in the hills, and where he was consequently shot. For those of you who’ve read the earlier entries this story isn’t new, but coming from Manuel, who was about 12 at the time, it was told with much more revelry and pride in the moment than Nas’ confession of a few months ago. The disparity was a little disturbing, really, but it’s all a matter of perspective. And listening to the different perspectives is part of our learning process here, to understand this place and the people we’re living and working with.

Later in the afternoon they presented Devin to the community at a formal gathering. We try pretty hard to make people understand that the things we’re doing here are all supported by other people who care back in the US, our friends and family and other distant supporters, so we figured presenting him to the community would help emphasize this point once again. It was very interesting, as we were seated on the stage in front of the community, to look out at the room. The men and women, with very few exceptions, sit separately. All the women sit close to the front, but guard their mouths and faces. All the men sit in the back against the wall, and mill around the front organizing the program. No meeting here gets underway without the men writing up a formal agenda and speaking order first. They only ever write the agenda just before the meeting starts, as everyone is waiting around. So I’m sitting up on stage with Fletch on my left and Devin on my right, and we’re all talking about what’s going on. Suddenly it occurred to me that all the women in the room were watching us, and I wondered if it was strange for all these women to see this. I’m in the middle of these two men, interacting with them equally, but one is my husband and the other one I’ve introduced as my friend. In general, Guatemalans do not have opposite sex friends. In fact, it’s generally assumed that if a woman or man is speaking privately with a man/woman other than her husband/wife that the two are lovers. There’s really no middle ground. With such a system it’s no wonder the gender divide here is so strong. It’s just easier on everyone if the men run everything and do all business between themselves, but it also makes me a little sad. It’s going to take a lot to animar the women to participate more fully, but I guess we’ll take baby steps, just showing them it can be done. Or maybe they don’t think about that at all…maybe they just think I’m a morally lax gringa with some lovers on the side. Who knows? In the end, everyone was happy to meet Devin, and the leaders were incredibly happy to know the computers are one step closer to being in Temux. They thanked Devin and his parents profusely and all the town leaders took turns to talk about what the presence of a computer center in the village means for the community. “Now we can go from using our hoes in the milpa, clearing land during the day, to learning how to work on computers in the evenings,” said Don Simon, and when you think about the life these people, especially the eldest members of the community have had, that is a pretty huge leap for them. Devin was pretty touched by everything, much like Fletch and I were on our first visit to Temux. There was a town acta drawn up in the log books to record Devin’s visit to the village, and everyone present signed that they were in attendance and happy about the coming computer center. He’s officially part of the village historical record.

Early Monday morning Devin and Fletch took off, leaving me home alone for the first time since before I was in Peace Corp. But before he left Devin said, “I read your blog, but this stuff wasn’t on it.” He wanted more pictures of our village. So here’s some pictures I told him I’d post. But no matter how much we put on this blog, I think his statement is evidence to the fact that you all get a glimpse of our life only. If you want the real thing, come visit! Temux would love to have you.

This is the local cemetery, the campo santo, or holy field. In person it’s pretty cool because of the grave decorations the families put up on the first of November. This is Devin in front of our town. He really thinks people should know what it looks like up here. The last is pretty explanatory; we get to see lots of pretty sunsets around here. And just like that, the sun has set on Devin’s trip and this post.

How many horsepower does your vehicle have? Chalio’s truck has one duckpower engine.

As I’ve mentioned before, Devin Hogan came to visit us. He’s one of our friends from Knox, and he now works for CareerBuilder.com. He took a break from his busy life to see what really goes on in Guatemala. So, being our first (and possibly only) visitor from home, we tried to show him as much of our life as possible. We started with tourist destinations. Side note: for anyone else thinking of visiting us, this is a sample of how our good times roll.

Lake Atitlan is a great place to relax, so we took Devin there straight away… and he slept through most of the first day. An international flight that starts at 2am will do that to you. But, we spent two more days there, and he got to take advantage of the beauty of the place. When it came time to leave, we piled in the boat and returned to Panajachel. Devin’s Spanish is pretty good, so he did most of his own ordering in restaurants and so forth. Muy bien! Emily helped him some with haggling in the artisans’ market, but that is mostly because she is an expert bargain hound, not for any lack of conversational ability on Devin’s part. Sometimes she drives such a hard bargain I can’t even bear to watch, but Devin seemed fascinated by the process and let her pummel the vendors a bit.

We then moved on to Antigua. I won’t bore you with lots of pictures, because we didn’t take many. Emily and I have been there so many times, it’s old hat for us. But we DID go into the McDonalds, just to show Devin the cool courtyard, which I would rate as one of the best in Guatemala. It’s got fountains, topiary, flagstone paving, Victorian lamps, and 500-year-old ruins in the background. All for McDonalds customers. Check this noise out, Devin and Emily posing with Ronald himself (click to enlarge).  

After the touristy stuff, we moved on to the Peace Corps stuff. You know, the “real Guatemala”. Being a pretty adventurous guy, Devin was game to try the arduous journey to our village. He spent several days with us getting to know our neighbors and a little about the campo lifestyle. He even got to meet some of the native wildlife:

Saturday, after we’d recovered from the journey to our site, we decided to take him into town. We missed the microbus, but luck was on our side: a guy with a flatbed truck was going that way, so we hitched a jalón (ride) with him and Devin got to experience the classic Guatemalan transportation adventure. Aaaah, there is nothing so fine as riding in the open air, hair blowing, watching the mountains roll by. A quick 40 minutes later we were in town. Again, he got to experience our life: we were ogled at, we dodged drunks, we chatted with friends, we refused to give beggars money. After discovering the postmistress was not in the post office (she is by FAR the most lazy and irresponsible government worker I’ve ever met, and that’s saying a lot), we stepped into the market. Here’s Devin, watching Emily again brutalize the vendors with her L33T haggling skillz.

Once we’d bought our supplies for the week, we stopped by to see our buddy Pedro. He took us out for beer. Devin decided that Gallo is pretty awful stuff (I concur), but when drinking beer in this situation, it’s about the company, not the brew. Pedro is awesome, and helps us out a lot with things like navigating the culture and learning Q’anjob’al. He was pleased to meet Devin, and we were happy to continue our quest of showing Guatemalans that it’s OK to have a beer without the other nine beers that normally follow it.  

Once we were home again, Emily taught him the ropes on the household tasks, and he was a good sport about pitching in and helping. He helped roast coffee (which Emily does on the stove, with beans from the local market) and wash clothes in the pila. I stood around and took pictures, doing my best possible to avoid any manual labor.

Having another big white gringo in town for a few days caused some excitement, especially amongst the children. They brought their puppies by to show him, and wanted to try on his shoes. Everyone was certain that Devin was my brother, since we look so much alike (?) and when he stepped out by himself to go to the latrine, people called him Jaime. To me, many Guatemalans look alike until I know them pretty well. I can only imagine the same happens to them in reverse. :]

On Devin’s last day in the village, the town called a meeting to present him to the people (that’s Devin, up on the school’s water tower holding the loudspeaker). Word had gotten around that his family donated gear for the Computer Center, and the village elders were keen to not only meet him, but to make him feel welcome. They were truly excited to see a third gringo, as well. Several speeches were given to the assembled villagers, and Emily talked about how we’re not the only foreigners that care about our village, and that there are lots of unseen Americans working to help them. Nas Palas got up and talked about how progress is slow and hard to see, but faith will carry the town through. Don Simon explained how in his day, the tool of survival was the azadón (hoe), and the tool of his sons was the typewriter, and how the tool of his grandchildren would be the computer. Many of the villagers understand nothing about the electronic age, but they have heard of computers. To hear their respected leaders speak like that is a really powerful message for them, and helps them to realize the importance of the project. Though they themselves might not benefit directly from a computer center (most are illiterate!), they want to give their children an opportunity for a better life.

“Please take back our message of thanks to your family,” they said. Then they broke out the book of acts, and everyone signed that they had been witness to the ceremony. Devin was handed the pen first, then everyone else followed… even the illiterate women I mentioned before, who signed with their thumbprints.

And that is my brief, superficial summary of Devin’s “Peace Corps in a week” vacation. “Wow,” Devin said. “Even though I read your blog before I came, I still don’t think I was prepared for all of this.” True, that.