Today was a nice fall day- sunny, and awfully cold unless you were in the direct sunlight. We are packing to go to the south for a weeklong seminar, so we are in “get outta here” mode, but weird stuff kept happening. First off, LOTS of men are staggering around drunk. Not kinda drunk; I’m talking about slurred speech, staggering around almost falling over drunk. Actually, check that: I saw one guy sleeping in the road at about 2pm. Sixth-grade graduation was last night (a very big deal here) and the party got pretty out of hand, apparently. Then some people stood us up for a meeting, one of our kids that we’re friends with was crying for no apparent reason and wouldn’t talk to us about it, and all sorts of stuff like that.

Then, Emily tells me that one of the sheep had a baby last night, and I should go look at it. Turns out, the dog ate its leg off. Yep. So, the neighbors are trying to keep it alive. They moved it to the sunny hill above their house, and put its mother nearby to keep it company, and put a blanket on it to keep it warm. This happened once before, they said, and they were able to save the lamb. But it had a pretty hard life as a result. Duh.

When I went to see the lamb, the boys were flying kites. They made them from scrap cellophane and little reeds from the field, and strung them out with sewing thread. They worked surprisingly well! Here’s a photo of one that was hundreds of yards up in the air, with the kids flying it. There is a tradition here of flying kites for All Saints day, coming up soon.

Speaking of which, they have another custom as well. They clean up cemeteries and decorate graves during October, because it’s safe then: all the spirits leave the cemeteries to hang out in their former homes for the month. On Halloween, the spirits all have a big party, and on the following day (All Saints Day) they go back to their graves to rest in peace for another 11 months. To make the spirits welcome (or appease them?) the locals put up altars with candles and pictures and such. This evening, our neighbor/ landlady came by to ask us if we could leave our key with her when we went away, so she could set up an altar in our clubhouse. I suppose that means that a former occupant of our home died. I am generally OK with the concept of an altar, but not too thrilled about someone having our key while we are gone for 10 days. She is one of the three or four people in town we know we can trust, though, so I am not too concerned after she said that she will be the only person in here. (I had secret worries of a 10-person, all night prayer vigil in our house by people I’ve never met before. That happened to me in my last house in Guatemala.) So, Emily and I discussed it, and we’re going to leave her the key. My only worry now is the idea of someone leaving half a dozen candles burning unattended all night on a wooden platform in the middle of my wooden house. I hope I have a home to come back to in November.

So, here’s a few weeks of randomness I’ve collected for your amusement.

	The first is a picture of Alberto, one of our buddies that visits our house all the time. He’s demonstrating his ghetto Guatemala squirtgun. It is a syringe (sans needle) that he found lying in the field somewhere. At the time i took this picture, there was a full-on waterfight underway, as the other kids had them too. There are a lot of syringes lying around here, because there is this belief that if you get sick, directly injecting vitamins is the most effective way to get healthy again. They have a lot of misinformation like that. And since there is no trash system and they don’t biodegrade, the syringes turn up everywhere. Last week I came around the corner to see Michelle, the 2-year-old, with a mile-wide smile on her face, playing with a HUGE dirty syringe with the needle still attached. I tried to grab it from her, and she thought it was a game of “keep the rusty needle away”, yanking and slashing it everywhere. I calmed my hysteria, talked soothingly, and eventually got it away from her- and pitched it down the latrine. I am SUCH a party-pooper.
	Here we have a transport coming into Santa Eulalia from one of the aldeas- thankfully, one we don’t live in. We get to use microbusses. When this thing arrived, a few young guys guys hopped out and walked off to do their business. All the old ladies waited patiently until the driver could put the cattle ramp out so they could get down. The sheep and goats (not visible in this photo) were brought off last, after the people.
	It’s been awhile since i posted a cool bug. Emily noticed this one behind me as I was typing a few nights ago. We think it’s a luna moth. It’s WAY bigger than my hand. Also, it’s eyes reflected the flash from the camera. I tried to get it to, but if flew away through a hole in our ceiling. Maybe that tells you something about the size of the holes in our ceiling.
	Here’s me in our new bathtub. It cose 41q (about $6) and is a GREAT way to get clean on days they haven’t fired the chuj. I got the idea from my buddy Ryan; we made a similar bath from half a wine barrel at Pennsic one summer. A wine barrel we scavenged from Brian and Mel’s wedding, I might add. The difference: at Pennsic, we needed cold water to survive. Here, it’s as hot as we can stand it.
	And, finally, I got to go pastoreando (herding sheep) with the neighbors. It was pretty relaxing… you just watch the most calm, timid animals in the world EAT for several hours. It is communing with nature. Then, you head towards home and they all stampede back to their little jail. Bizarre. The two girls are our neighbors, Lina and Lucia. They are always friendly with us, and were pretty amused that I wanted to go stand around in a field with them for hours watching sheep.

We’ve heard several times that you need to keep an eye out in Guatemala, and never get into a bus with a drunk driver. This sounds obvious, but like most warnings of this nature, if it were that easy, they wouldn’t have to warn you. Turns out, it’s a pretty subtle danger that you can miss entirely if you aren’t vigilant, as we found out today. We’ve had hundreds of bus trips since we’ve been here, and never before a drunk bus driver- they drive so fast and furious here, I can’t imagine a driver being dumb enough (drunk enough?) to think he could keep up. So, I became complacent. Turns out, the local microbusses in the north where we live can’t go so fast, due to the foggy conditions, TERRIBLE roads, and 300-foot dropoffs at all the cliff passages. Now add to that the even-more-depressed-than-the-rest-of-Guatemala economy that makes a lot more alcoholics, and you got problems.

We got in a microbus this afternoon for a 40 minute ride from Soloma. As is typical, there is a period of waiting for 10-30 minutes while they try to fill the bus to make the trip worth their time. We don’t yet know the drivers in Soloma like we do those of Temux, as we spend a lot less time there. Today, after we’d been sitting in the microbus for a few minutes, the driver turned around and greeted me in sketchy English.

This happens occasionally. We OBVIOUSLY speak English, being white and all, and those locals that worked long enough in the US to pick up some English like the opportunity to practice it, so we generally oblige. But I noticed an alocholic reek as we were talking. The sad thing is, i didn’t really think much of it; often in a bus of 20 people, you get at least one guy that is so drunk he’s sweating alcohol. The driver’s speech was slurred as well, but I figured it was just becuase he was speaking English, his third language. We taked about what type of work he did in the US, and he said how much he liked it there, and how grateful he was that he had the opportunity to go and make some money to buy his house and microbus etc. etc. This is pretty normal stuff, and I usually just follow along with the small talk. I explain what I do, and mention casually that I am an unpaid volunteer (to stave off the requests for money that eventually come). I mention that the people are kind here, and the countryside beautiful. I say I am learning the local mayan dialect, and that I enjoy it. I must have had this conversation a hundred times before.

Then, he gets more emotional then they normally do, and thanks us profusely for coming to the aid of his people. “We need to take care of you Americans that come to help,” he continued. “That is why I just had my ayudante (the boy that collects the fares) call a friend of mine to come drive the bus. I am pretty drunk, and I don’t want you two to get hurt on the way to Santa Eulalia.”

WHAT?!?!?!? So, then another guy (Edgar, I’d seen him before) comes up, talks to us a little bit through the passenger window, then opens the driver door and switches with Joe. Joe then crawled in the back with us, and we were off. Does this bother anyone? Sure, I’m mad we could have gotten hurt. But I was just about at the point of us getting out of the micro and catching a different bus. What is MORE scary is that we might have just saved the lives of the other 20 locals on board, just by being white. Joe didn’t seem to have any qualms about drunk driving THEM to Santa Eulalia.

This weekend we got away from our site, and took the 5 hour trip to Huehue to vote. It’s complicated, but the Peace Corps distributed our absentee ballots to our regional representatives, and we all came in to vote by region. Then, the reps go to the HQ in Santa Lucia Milpas Altas and the Peace Corps Guatemala scecretary sends them all Overnight DHL (very expensive, but very reliable) to Washington DC, where national Peace Corps people get them to our local election boards in time, theoretically. The joke here, though, is that George W probably has a mole at Peace Corps Washigton that throws all the ballots into the shredder, as most of the volunteers are pretty liberal, and all voted for Obama. This is, of course, not true (there are SOME conservatives here) but makes for funny dinner conversation.

This was also a fun opportunity to see the sites of two other volunteers. The first one we saw was the home of Emily Crawford, my good buddy from training. Her town is pretty out-of-the-way and small, though not quite so much as ours. Her weather is REALLY nice, too. But she has tough living conditions: she rents a room that is a concrete block shed with a corrugated tin roof about 5’6″ high. The roof doesn’t cover the whole thing, so she gets rain inside, and rats, and cockroaches. Also, the shed is bigger than her bed by about a foot in each direction. No kidding. Here she is, standing in the courtyard in front of the door to her home.

The second volunteer we visited was Cat, our regional rep. She lives in a really crowded, urban setting and has a several-room apartment on the second floor, with a cool terrace you can hang out on. We met her there to do our voting, and she put us up for the night in her guest bedroom, along with another volunteer (Nick) who’s been in Guatemala for over a year. It was fun to socialize with gringos for a day, cook some good food, and generally relax a little. Also, it’s a good chance to catch up on the chisme (gossip).

Hello everyone.

It feels like it’s been quite a while, so let me try to catch you up. There are some paradoxes to Peace Corp we’ve been adjusting to lately. One is that the days seem very very long, yet weeks and months feel like they go by very quickly. The other is that I feel very busy, yet I have all sorts of down time. The thing is our heads are always working on all sorts of things, but we can’t take action due to constraints with host-country-nationals, or waiting for email responses, or our mandatory wait for grant application to be up etc.

In general, life here seems to have normalized for us as the rainy season kicked into high gear, and instead of lots of newness and fun, we’ve been going through lots of ups and downs. Ha, it’s worth noting that, after all my struggling to prove I could do it myself, little Michelle is now the only family member who helps me with my washing, which is not really much help at all. But it’s funny. The clubhouse feels more and more like home. Our latest additions have been, number one, a table at which to work and write. We were happy about it every minute for the entire first week after it arrived because our bed was really the only place to sit and work on things before it came into our lives, and as the rain has turned almost every inch of earth around us into mush we have stopped going outside so much. The table is well used. It’s somewhat symbolic of our ridiculously all-the-time-together life right now as well. Since it’s just a bit shorter than the end of our bed, we sit less than a foot apart while we’re both working there, and we both sit there much of the time. Our second and very newest addition, as of Sunday, is an enormous plastic tub. We’d been throwing the idea around since just after we got here about buying a big plastic tub and using it to take baths in occassionally. For a mere 40Q (that’s not quite $6) we have a mini-bathtub, and it’s a huge improvement over standing in one of our dishwashing tubs while washing off with a tiny, steamy washcloth as chilling winds blow right through the house. As uncomfortable as the aforementioned procedure was in-process, doing it actually did make us feel cleaner and help us sleep better. Now, we fill the giant tub less than a third of the way up and dump in a large pot of boiled water, curl into the thing which puts the water level at the top, and washing up outside of the chuj is now kind of enjoyable. Yay! This feels like a huge victory.

The thing is we have been fighting major battles against the cold, as I’m sure any of you who have read the posts about the camp stove already know. The last few weeks were very difficult, especially during the week and a half I had a horrendous head cold, could not sleep for all the congestion, and could not get warm at all. In packing to come here I thought I was being perhaps a little too cautious bringing fleece layering and long johns to a country that is mostly tropical, but as it turns out, I would be beyond miserable without them (I am, at this very moment, wearing all my long johns and fleece). At the same time as I was walking around feeling like my head was floating just over my body and freezing my #@$ off, we began to get the feeling that we were being used and disliked in these here parts.

It started off with our honey supplier, a pharmacy owner in town who sells us local honey that tastes amazing and which we use in large part for making bread. This guy is a ridiculously nice man who works on the local health committee and attends meetings with us regularly. He always seems overjoyed to see us in town. We were running low, so we went into his store to get some more of the goods. This is always a long procedure because the local honey is not on the shelf; it’s in a back store room that is kept locked and only the owner, not any of his 5 daughters running store, has a key. We showed up, he knew what we were there for and he scurried away and was back in minutes with our honey in the jug already in the plastic bag. So we get home, and it turns out, he must have been running down to the last little bit because the honey leaked out of the jug it was so watered down. But the real proof was in the fact that it didn’t even harden up after a night on the shelf. We always have to stick the jug in boiling water to get some out. It’s COLD here. We were so sad. It’s really disheartening when you feel like you’ve built a relationship with someone, and then find out they think it’s acceptable to cheat you. Not to mention, the honey is not inexpensive. And, maybe because we have so much time to think and think and think, the whole issue bothered us for days until we could get back in to town to talk to the guy. We felt we were letting him get away with being unfair if we didn’t say anything, yet we weren’t sure that returning unsatisfactory goods was anywhere near acceptable here. We talked it over with our q’anjob’al teacher, and he seemed to think, albeit hesitantly, that we could return the honey and talk to the owner. He agreed with us that the guy was indeed a really good guy in general. Just so happens that here, even really good guys will try and pull a fast one on you. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that being a little crooked is pretty well institutionalized. I’d heard others say things to suggest that, but I always just give people the benefit of the doubt, and maybe I shouldn’t? Maybe that’s just being too naive.

After slogging my way through a rainy and busy week of charlas, the Friday of being ill I gave up. I put on all my warmest clothes and decided I would just stay in bed and sleep all day. I didn’t feel fully conscious as, on this same day, people kept stopping by the house with a myriad of questions. They would say, “oh, pobrecita (you poor thing)” when they saw that I was in bed and ill, but they didn’t go away without getting what they wanted and they wouldn’t talk to Fletch since they all claim not to understand him. That includes our friend who came to borrow money. Stupid, stupid, stupid. At the time, Fletch and I agreed it seemed like an okay thing to do. By Sunday we both agreed it was quite an idiotic thing to have done, and on Monday we were swearing over and over to one another that such a thing will never be done again. Our friend had told us when she would pay us back. BUT, it seems that in addition to doing a little watering down of the honey, it is also customary for people just to tell you what they think you want to hear. They won’t tell you the truth if they think you might not want to hear it, which in effect means they just lie to you to your face. This is really disconcerting! Especially if you’re me and your pet peeve in life is someone who can’t just tell it to you straight. So our honey man cheated us, and our friends were lying to us. I spent most of the weekend in bed as it rained and rained and rained. But then on Sunday there was a bit of a break, where the sun didn’t actually come out but the rain stopped. I felt like a walk would do me some good, and Fletch was happy I was feeling up to it, so off we went.

On our way up the hill out of the main part of our village and into the hills beyond, right at the edge of a cluster of homes, live 3 very chatty sisters with some 16 children between them. We always say hi to them. They sometimes invite us in for a hot drink or to chat a while. On this Sunday, they asked us where we were going even though we almost always tell them the say thing, “We’re going for a walk.” This day one of the sisters decided to add, “Well, be careful up there, because lots of them [the people just outside of the main part of the village] think you’re miners and that Manuel [the president of the health committee and our local guide] is showing you around. They say they want to pistolear him for showing you where the mines are.” Can any of you guess what that verb means without me giving a translation? So I asked this woman, “Did you tell them we aren’t miners, that you know us and we just like to go walking to get exercise?” The woman replied pretty unconvincingly after a pause that lastest a few seconds too long, “Oh yeah, we told them we know you, and you’re a very nice couple working here in town.” We’ve heard from several people they are trio of busy-bodies, which I am inclined to believe. Even though they are nice to us, they complain constantly about their lot in life and have never ONCE come to a health talk we’ve given even though we invite them every time we talk to them. Oh, and they live less than 100 yards from the health center where the talks take place. So their news was really annoying to us. I had visions of the rock-throwing incident going through my head once again, and that was a very un-fun day. We set off walking, and their news just served to make the two of us immensely paranoid about the group of 5 young guys walking behind us at a steady distance. We decided not to go to the top of the hill, and not to enter the woods. We got to our host family’s milpa (corn plot) and turned around to meet the guys head on. We were nervous about the interaction since we’d spent the last 20 minutes being overly paranoid, but we whipped out some handy phrases in Q’anjob’al that made them laugh through our nervousness. And then found out they’re cousins to our host family. Ridiculous.

Even so we trudged home rather annoyed. People were cheating us, lying to us, and spreading rumors. Grrreaat. But just before we reached the busy-bodies again, a very kind man we’ve grown to like a lot, Don Simon, stopped us as he was heading home with his daughters. They talked with us until it was almost dark and sent us home with corn from their field. The cultural norms here can be grating, or just down right infuriating, but then we seem to run into someone who goes so beyond his or herself to be kind, to talk to us, to send us away with a gift of food. This happens frequently, and it’s really humbling. It quiets our inner annoyance at things.

The next day, Monday, we were escorted to the village near the rock-throwing incidence by the teenage daughters of their local community leaders. We thought this to be a good move that might discourage rock-throwing in the future. They’d sent their daughters because they were not confident in their own Spanish speaking abilities, but their daughters speak it quite well. It was a very funny, gathering. The community leaders are, big surprise!, all related, the girls who came to get us cousins. They led us through one of the muddiest, winding mazes of corn we’ve been in yet, up the hill to a community we’d never seen. There, we were led into a big open room with a dirt floor, where there were two chairs, and no other furniture in view except a table near the far wall and a bed pushed into an alcove. We sat down and were handed atol and a sweet roll each, then family members began flooding in the door and around us in a big circle watching us eat, sitting, squatting, leaning against the wall, the table, the bed, kids of all ages milling around. They wanted to know what we were doing here, so we explained we’re here to give educational health talks. They asked us engaging questions about health for some two hours. The men who’ve been to the U.S. threw in their English from time to time, and then the kids started asking us, “How do you say…txat, in english?” “Bed,” the list went on and on to everyone’s amusement, and when we were pretty tired and ready to get home before the sun went down we started the litany of polite excuses to get us on the road. But they had to feed us one more time before we left, chilicoyote (a local type of squash) and corn. We left stuffed and tired, in a parade of some 15 kids swarming in circles around us, running in front of and behind us, laughing and squealing. The sun was setting beautifully, orange and pink and gold spraying over clouds a few miles high. We felt accomplished and happy. Suddenly all the boys in the group disappeared in front of us, and we were left with two adorable girls following behind us and giggling. We crested a hill into our village, and all of them were clustered together and sang in unison, “Give me money! Give me money!”

Ughh, really? I’m so tired of this…I explained we were there to be friends if they wanted but we don’t have money to give them, and it’s kind of rude to ask like that. Sadly, I knew they didn’t understand what I said. Just then a familiar figure came walking down the road and greeted us, so I quickly asked him if he’d do me a favor and explain to the kids in Q’anjob’al what I’d just said in Spanish. He obliged, and as soon as he finished the kids all sprinted off home…

There’s so much to do here, really two years doesn’t seem like that much time. We’ve almost finished three months of service, and everything takes so long to come to fruition. I’m looking into helping our escorts from the neighboring village (mentioned above, the cousins) find scholarships to become nurses’ assistants per their request. I’m involved in the planning of a girls camp in the department of Huehuetenango for 13-17 year olds to take place sometime early next year. I’m having a heck of a time getting anyone to respond to my inquiries about Fair Trade cooperatives, but just got a new contact, who is supposedly a Returned Peace Corp Volunteer (RPCV for short) from Guatemala working at a Fair Trade organization in the US. We’re slowly learning more Q’anjob’al every week. Pedro comes to our house 3-4 times, and in exchange we provide him with coffee and tasty breakfast. We’ve been giving health charla after health charla, and meeting more people every day who claim they’d like to get in our educational talks too. So we’ll see how everything plays out. We’ve got one more week to go before everyone from our training group heads back to Antigua for a week of follow up, “processing” which we do a lot of here in Peace Corp, and remedial Spanish classes. You can bet we’re celebrating Halloween in style and eating tasty food at every turn while there.

So this is the way we go here, up and down, up and down, up and down. The highs feel very high, and the lows pretty low. Though I think that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Just as we started to get down again, we slept in on Revolution Day (October 20) and were woken up by family members as they came to get us to help them/witness the slaughtering of their pig. The sun was shining for the first time in over a week and the process provided us with a day to just hang out with the family. It was bizarre, and really kind of fun. Look for the upcoming post from Don Jaime, known in some circles as Fletch, in others as Jim. Here’s the man himself, learning q’anjob’al. He turned our first test into a competition. Then he was sad, because he lost. hehehe. But he’s been a pretty good sport all around.

Peace, guys. We miss you.

WARNING: this post contains images that may be disturbing to some. If you are opposed to the killing of animals, you may want to skip this post. Likewise, if you are one of my friends that uses this blog as an educational took for your children, you may wish to review it alone first so you can better explain what’s going on.

So, many of you read the “matando kalnel” post. In fact, the server stats say it was one of the most popular post I ever made. Weird. Anyways, this is kindof like a sequel.

Today is a national holiday, “Revolution Day.” That means that no one works today and the busses are unreliable. Just like many other days in Guatemala. ‘Round here, though, it also means that we’re gonna eat txitam (pig). Emily and I planned on sleeping in to celebrate, but at about 7am Nas Palas woke me to let me know that they’d soon be killing the pig. I guess my interest in last month’s sheep slaughter amused them. I threw on some clothes and moseyed out to the neighbors house. As I approached, I saw Porky a little ways up the hill munching cluelessly on some corn. Nas Palas was sitting on the porch, sharpening knives for the various assembled relatives that would be participating.

He paused in his sharpening, looking up to ask “Do you want to stick ’em this time?”

I was about to say, “sure,” feeling like maybe it would be a useful cultural experience. But fate intervened, and he followed it up with a “just kidding” and a little chuckle. That was fortunate for me, because I soon discovered that killing a pig Is NOTHING like last month’s benign experience with the ram.

First, they brought out some benches to use as a slaughter table. The Big Pig was way to heavy to hoist into the rafters like the ram. Then they tied ropes onto the pigs legs. Or, rather, tried to. This is where the experience went from “ho-hum” to EXCITING. The pig went nuts, squealing so loud that you could hear it all over the village. Turns out, this is a good thing, a sort of dinner bell for everyone in town (more on that later). The pig probably weighed twice that of the biggest man present (me) and was lurching everywhere, screaming bloody murder as people were trying to tie ropes onto its stamping, trotting legs. Then the dogs got involved, thinking that the pig and humans were fighting. This made things even worse. The pig got bit a few times, became even more furious, and some of the wives started throwing firewood at the dogs when they realized what was going on- the men were too occupied with the pigs to even notice the dogs. I got an awesome video clip of it, and I will add it to the blog later when I have high-speed access in town.

At about this point, the pig came at ME so I stopped recording. Once safely out of reach, I thought, “Hey, this is dumb. Those guys are never going to get a line on that thing.” So, during the havoc, I made a slipknot lasso with one of the several ropes lying around. Then I snuck in and got it on the pigs back left trotter. The pig took off, the knot slipped tight, and I HAD THE FIRST CATCH! GO TEAM GRINGO! (they laughed about that later) At this point, the pig wasn’t going anywhere, and about five guys jumped on it. The picture at the right was taken with me holding the rope in one hand, the camera in the other.

Once the legs were tied together with a million knots, they had to lift the pig onto their makeshift table. This involved a LOT of guys, and the pig was still thrashing around and squealing like crazy, despite having its mouth roped shut during the fracas. It was so worked up, excrement blew out the rear, and bright green mystery fluid (bile? vomit?) was oozing out of both nostrils. One of the guys held its head back, and Nas started rubbing its neck, much like a nurse does to your arm when she wants to raise a vein to draw blood.

In went the knife, and blood HOSED out of its jugular. The pig was still squealing, thrashing, and four or five guys were still sitting on her. One of the wives appeared out of nowhere with a plastic basin, and started collecting all the blood. “Jump up and down on ‘er a bit,” Manuel said to his eldest son, who did so to help pump out more blood. The squealing lessened, and after a few minutes, the blood was down to a trickle and the pig dozed off to eternal sleep. Manuel stuck a corn cob in the hole to keep and more blood from coming out later as they worked.

These people have teamwork down to a science, and were well-prepared. Everyone stepped back, and the wives all showed up with cauldrons of boiling water to pour over the pig. “It loosens the hair,” they explained. I assumed they meant skin, but no, they meant hair. A minute later everyone was scraping and shaving, talking off all the bristles and hair. This process took a LONG time, maybe half an hour. We’d already spent more time on the pig than the sheep, and we hadn’t even started any butchering yet.

Once all the shaving was done, they washed the pig with soap and water. “HUH?” I wondered, “Why go to all that trouble?” Turns out, they eat the skin. More on that later, too. Oh, and notice the hose they’re using to rinse it off- it is just a piece of hose with one end stuck in the stream uphill from the house. Gravity does the rest.

Now it was time to get down to disassembly. This part is a lot like butchering the kalnel (sheep), except bigger. So I will spare you the boring details, and just post a few photos of blood and gore:

At this point, something funny (?) happened. One of the wives said, “Hey, there are only three feet here!” Everyone started looking around for a missing dog, who sure enough, was about 30 yards away chewing on something. There was a lot of shouting, and the kids tore off after the dog. Here’s Orante, returning proudly with the snitched trotter. For the most part the kids just watch everything with mild interest, but when you give them a job, they get pretty excited about it. Next we have Alberto guarding the feet against further thievery, as the dogs ponder how to pull of another heist.

What started out as an animal soon became lots of meaty bits you might recognize in the supermarket meat section: pork shoulder, hamhock, tenderloin. And also some things you won’t often see, like The Head.

As you can see, everyone is having a pretty good time. A festival atmosphere pervaded.

All that was left now were the big parts. I heard the word machit, and I remember that’s local dialect for “machete.” Sure enough, no Guatemalan project is complete unless you use a machete at some point. In this case, it’s just the thing for removing the ribs from the spine. I got a great video clip of that too… i will post it when I can. Then, they had to get the spine apart. After some Herculean over-the-head machete swings, Manuel called for the axe. “Um, porque no usan una serrucha?” I asked (Why don’t you guys use a hacksaw?) They thought this was a sillly idea, but I went and got one from our clubhouse anyway. Manuel gave it a try. “Wow, that works GREAT!” he exclaimed as he cut the spine into several segments for easier handling.

The other job of the kids is to run around town letting everyone know that there is fresh meat available. Between this and the hellacious squealing for the first 15 minutes of the process, a lot of people knew that pig was on the menu. The system is pretty clever. A family killing their txitam couldn’t possibly eat it all on one day, and there are no refrigerators here. So, everyone else in town shows up to buy meat. That way, a whole pigs gets devoured in one sitting (at multiple tables) and it makes it so you can eat pork regularly but only have to kill and slaughter every tenth time or so. Here we have Lena, Nas Palas’s wife, weighing out meat. 13q a pound, or 18q if you want a piece without bone.

One of the “customers” wanted some ribs. Manuel tried the hacksaw, and it was unwieldy for this work, so he finally got to use the axe after all (video clip coming soon). I guess you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him into a professional butcher.

About this point, they mentioned that we were invited to lunch. It seemed appropriate, so I went to the only store in town and bought some beer to share, and everyone was really excited about that. I discussed it with Emily beforehand, and she agreed it would be a good idea, for a few reasons: One is that the men are always asking me to have beer with them, and it’s something they feel is important. We want to integrate with the community. But also, it’s a good opportunuty to show that it’s possible to have a beer, and not go nuts and have 8 (see earlier post about alcoholism). Did I mention that Nas Palas and Manuel both had hangovers at the start of this adventure this morning?

In all, it made for a really pleasant morning- beer, friendly chat, and the first clear, sunny day in WEEKS. Then, once all the spare meat was sold, the whole extended family went to Nas’s house for the barbecue. They’d saved the best part of the pig, the backstrap (it’s filet mignon on a cow), for just this occasion. Everyone got steel skewers and about a half pound of meat, rubbed down with salt. I am not a big pork fan, but I have to tell you, it tasted pretty awesome. Perhaps my reaction was helped by the beer I had, the fact that it was my first meal an about 20 hours, and my relief that we weren’t going to eat something like Blood Soup or Boiled Head. The first two pictures are inside Nas Palas’s house, which I described a long time ago as being pretty medieval- open fire, smoke just drifts through the holes in the roof, etc. The third picture is Nas Palas at the backup fireplace outside, which they have for when the WHOLE family shows up.

After the barbecue, they started making chicharrones, basically fried pigskins. I didn’t mention this before, but one step in the butchering process is taking the blanket of fat off of the pig:

Here we see the blanket being trimmed off: it’s about an inch of fat, with skin on one side. Then, they cut the fat into chunks about the size of a deck of cards, and boil the whole mess down in a big kettle. After a few hours, what you get (besides an awful smell) is a few liters of hot molten lard to use for cooking later, and crinkly fried pigskins that everyone except me goes crazy for. Little kids running around everywhere, faces and fingers shiny from grease, smelling kindof like week-old bacon fat. I had to keep the door to my house locked for the rest of the day, for fear they might come in and touch my stuff.

So, that is my Matando Txitam adventure. I hope you liked it.

We just made headway in the War on Cold. I talked to two different stove vendors, and one of them (in a suprise move) knocked 25% off of the price of the stove, since he felt that our work with the Peace Corps is a worthwhile cause. It’s pretty moving when people show that kind of charity and support, especially since we didn’t even ask him to. So, if you ever need to buy a canvas tent or a woodburning stove, please visit Rich and consider buying from his store: http://www.walltentshop.com/. His prices were already the lowest, but he helped us out a lot. Though, shipping is still the most expensive part, and I can’t expect him to discount that since it’s direct cost to him.

By third world development standards, we’ve done a horrible thing. One of the Prime Directives of helping improve conditions in underdeveloped countries is the concept of “capacity building.” You teach them how to do things for themselves, and to avoid dependence on outside resources, technology, and money. In this way, sustainable development can continue when the aid workers leave. It’s the old adage, “Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.” But by getting our stove through the mail using American money from an American vendor and shipping it here? Totally contrapurpose. We struggled with this for a while, but were able to rationalize it with the following:

• We’re cold. Really cold. Can’t feel-my-fingers-to-type-my-reports kind of cold. Several days of each week. It affects quality of life as well as job performance.
• The only stoves available here are the ones we (and they, after we train them) make ourselves. They are masonry and too heavy for our structure.
• Propane and electric heating are REALLY expensive, and are a poor environmental case.
• An open fire (what they would do in our place, all else being the same) is a serious fire hazard in a wooden house, and we’re spending a LOT of time trying to teach them the dangers of daily smoke exposure.
• The stove is for us, not for locals, or even to demonstrate to locals. Like our laptops and outrageous vaccination sequences, sometimes as Americans we just have better stuff than they do. That’s life. We try to keep it on the down-low.

Likewise, we had to do some rationalizing to convince ourselves we could afford it. The $500 total cost is about a month’s combined wages for us (yikes). But, we were already considering doing a house improvement for the landlord, since he is not charging us rent. If we amortize the cost of the stove over 12 months, it works out to about 300q… more or less what some of our friends are paying in rent in other locations. So, the stove will be our present to Nas Palas when we leave in 2010. Again, unustainable from a development perspective. But what else are we going to do? We’re so cold.

Cold enough I can barely type. Still no snow; don’t know why. Neighbor suggested we get carbon (charcoal) and burn it in a brazier in the center of our house. Says there’s no smoke. Um, yeah, except for invisible hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide etc. Guatemalans! Sent inquiries to 2 stove companies in USA. Going to charge the stove, and figure out how to pay for it later. Thank you to those who have donated so far, you will not be forgotten.

Emily can’t even feel her fingers to knit.

We got our firewood today! Here we see the firewood salesman and his delivery vehicle; it doesn’t tear up the yard like the pickup truck that brings my dad’s firewood every fall. This turned out to be another “cultural moment” for us. You see, we paid for this wood about three weeks ago. “I can get you a good deal,” Manuel told us, and being new here, we figured he could. So we gave him 275q and said “thanks.” After two weeks, we started to wonder where our wood was… we waited that long, figuring this is Guatemala and all, before we even asked about it the first time. But he assured us it was on its way. After more badgering, it did come; miraculously before our existing supply ran out. The day it arrived, our neighbor Lina came by to tell us it was here. “But it’s green!” she said, frowning. We have this problem, where we tend to get taken advantage of a lot in this kind of situation, being gringos and all. But there wasn’t really anything to do about it, so we went up to check it out. “How much did it cost?” Lina asked the firewood guy.

“250,” he replied.

“That’s a good price, that’s what we paid the other guy,” she replied.

Nice. So, yeah, Manuel skimmed 25q. And we got green wood. After a little conference (in English), Emily and I decided that next time we are going to give Nas Palas the money and let him buy ours the same time he buys his, since we share it anyways and he is scrupulously honest.

Manuel has hot been our favorite lately anyways. His wife came by two weeks ago, asking to borrow 300q for an emergency to buy corn for their family to eat, and she would pay us back the next day after she was able to get to town. Well, a week later, no money. I asked them if they were going to pay me back, and Manuel said, “Oh, i have to go to Soloma for a job tomorrow, i get paid there. But i don’t have enough money for the trip, can you lend me 50q?” And, dumb as i am, i actually DID it. And, of course, he didn’t bring me any money the next day. By this point, Emily was so mad she couldn’t speak with him, so I had to badger them daily for a week to get it back, and they were amazed that I wanted it ALL back. He finally gave me 300q a few days ago, to get me off his case. I bugged him about the last 50q this morning, and he looked uncomfortable, and said he’d bring it tomorrow. Vamos a ver.

Needless to say, we learned our lesson. We are officially out of the lending business. We were dumb to do it in the first place, but you get so used to this role of “community helper,” you sometimes forget and cross into unsafe territory. And with Manuel it’s even trickier; he does a LOT to help us and make our job easier, and he’s 90% of why we’re in Temux in the first place. He’s useful, but like a wild dog, we have to make sure that we never let him into a position where he can harm us.

We needed a break from Guatemalans, so we went on our first road trip to see another volunteer. Or, in this case, two: our married friends Katy and Joe. They are stationed in Cabricán, in the department of Quetzaltenango to the south. We left at 6am from Temux, and 4 bus transfers and 12 hours later, we were at their door. It’s fun to see how different two assignments can be… they have a flush toilet, a hot shower, cable tv, a pila to wash clothes, and most consumer items (like cheese and milk) are available to them in their town or with only a little travel. Yet, much is the same old Guatemala third-worldness. They’ve gone to the trouble to set up a nice kitchen with spices and yummy food, they have their little computer setups, and they are content. Their house is cozy for guests; they have a second bed and everything!

Another weird thing about their site is that they have “sitemates”, a phenomenon that occurs frequently in Peace Corps, just not with us. There are 4 Peace Corps volunteers in Cabricán, and 3 in villages within walking distance. Cabricán also has a few other foreign aid workers from other organizations. They’ve been getting aid for nearly a decade now, so their level of infrastructure is WAY higher than ours here in Temux, and gringoes doesn’t get a second glance as they stroll down the street. It was kindof weird for us.

This poses a challenge for Katy & Joe that is different than ours: they have to find ways to engage a population that is now “ho-hum” about aid work, and they have to dig deeply to find the people that need aid the most. We, on the other hand, have PILES of work and EVERYONE needs help; so for us the difficulty is where to start, and who to help first.

We went with J&K to their Market on Sunday, and witnessed one of the recurrent themes in Guatemalan culture- the bolos (drunks) passed out in the street. We see this sometimes when we go into our own market in Santa Eulalia, and it’s pretty sad. But we saw a LOT this weekend, more than usual. Joe and I are starting to take pictures of them on the sly. It started as a joke, kindof, a way to try to cope with this sad thing we are regularly exposed to. But now, it’s starting to become a sort of photojournalistic project. I am not yet sure where it will lead, but we’re talking about having a photo exhibition next year once we get a lot of material and think of a good conceptual way to present it. Alcoholism is the #1 killer of adults in my municipality, and is in the top three in Guatemala as a whole. Perhaps we can do something to raise awareness. Perhaps I am being too optimistic.

So, to end on a lighter note, we had a great weekend and are all set to work really hard here in Temux for a few more weeks before Reconnect training, when all of the volunteers from our group get together to talk about what we’ve seen so far, get some remedial Spanish lessons, and socialize a bit. That’s about all I’ve got for now. Take care!