I might have mentioned that it’s cold here, unlike most of Guatemala. We’re at about 10,000′ above sea level (twice as high as Denver) and it gets into the 40s every night. That’s nice weather, if your house is heated. But for us, we see our breath as we boil water to fill the hot water bottles for our bed. Then we put on our thermal underwear, then our fleece pants and tops, then we get in our bed and put our down blankets on top. This keeps us warm through the night, but does NOTHING for the awkward hours between nightfall around 6:00pm and when we actually hit the sack at about 10:00pm (WAY later than the locals).

We talked briefly about building OURSELVES a stove after the Peace Corps model, but that won’t go in our house because it’s a wood house on stilts (an anomaly in Guatemala) and the heavy masonry of the stove would go crashing through the floor. Then I remembered that I once looked into portable woodburning stoves for hunting outfitters and yurts. Maybe that would work!

So, I was dumb and started looking on the internet. I soon found the dream stove I remembered: a Cylinder ™ Hunter. Emily and I are now obsessed with the idea of being WARM in the evenings. It’s compact, heats a tent about the size of our cabin, holds heat for 5-6 hours, and is super efficient with firewood. Nothing remotely like it is available in Guatemala (Cylinder Stoves are made in Utah).

There is but one problem with this otherwise GREAT idea to get us through two winters: cost. The stove runs about $250 with the minimum accessories, and in Quetzales, that’s nearly 2,000. To make it worse, I emailed the company and the cheapest shipping to Guatemala they could find is $300. We would have to take a loan out to get that stove! Now I know how the locals feel.

So, if anyone has a clever solution to this dilemma, let me know. I toy with the idea of spending the last of our money in our US bank account and having it sent to my Dad’s house. Then, if I somehow am able to come back for the holidays, I can carry it on the plane back to Guatemala (it only weighs 30 lbs) and save the $300 shipping. That’s still three months of freezing my butt off, but better than nothing

OR… if you want to help us keep warm this winter, you can donate to our personal Stove Fund! I want to make it clear that this is not money to help any Guatemalans or other charitable deal, this is purely for us. Though I guess it helps Guatemalans in a roundabout way; if we survive the winter, we can keep helping them. If you feel like donating something, click the button. You can donate as much or as little as you want, through PayPal. Thanks!

PS: We will not be offended if no one goes for this. We know you love us, even if we can’t feel the warmth!

One of the first commonalities we discovered when Emily & I started dating is that we both like chickens, and wanted to have some one day. That day is fast approaching. A lady in town has some extra young ones she is willing to sell us, so I built my gallinera (chicken coop) this weekend. And, yes, i used a machete to do it. And an axe, as well as more traditional stuff like hammer and saw.

It’s connected to the stilts that hold up our house, and it is big enough for two, maybe three chunk-chunk-chickens. We are hoping for free eggs in a month or two. BRAAAWK! This is mostly for our personal enjoyment, though we lie to ourselves and say it’s a good idea economically… eggs are up to about .80q each (about 11 cents) and that’s getting to be a pretty expensive habit at our income bracket. But the chickens cost about 75q each, so that’s a hundred eggs just to break even. Not including feed, which isn’t that necessary because there are a lot of bugs to snack on in our cornfield. I’ll keep you posted on the Chicken Project.

No, not Iraq. That’s to the east. I’m talking about Cuba.

There are three doctors that service our entire municipality of 40,000 people. We know all of them, and occasionally we hang out with them for work, or to go out to eat, or just to practice Spanish with someone who speaks it better than I do. Yes, that’s right- most of the locals have WORSE spanish than mine. But the doctors are all from Huehuetenango, and don’t speak a Mayan dialect; just good old Spanish. Oh, and they have a lot of formal education, unlike the other 39,997 people in our region.

When we have long discussions, we usually get around to talking about Cuba. This is because all three of them did their entire med school there. Did you know that Cuba has the most effective health care system in the western hemisphere (in terms of cure rates, waiting room times, and overall patient attention)? Did you know that Cuba has the highest average lifespan of all western nations? The US is included in these statistics. Of course, you can’t get good plastic surgery in Cuba, and some of the trickier high-tech surgeries are unavailable in Cuba, due to a long-standing technology embargo by the USA. But all the rest of basic healthcare- from routine exams and prenatal care, to c-sections and organ transplants and heart surgery- is completely free. The Cuban government feels that healthcare is a basic human right, just like the right to free speech and the right to an education.

But they do something else that i think is fantastic. They have a top-notch national med school that trains more doctors than they need every year. This school is FREE, and all that is asked of graduates to repay this gift from Cuba is that they spend the first 3 years out of school working to help make humanity better, by serving in underdeveloped nations or underserved places like inner-city slums. That’s it. What’s more, this program is available to anyone who wants to apply, regardless of race, nationality, religion, whatever. 10-20% of the students are foreigners, such as the three Guatemalan doctors that work here. So, in effect, Cuba is donating hundreds of lifetimes of medical care to the poor all over the world. It’s staggering. Dr. Ervin said that in his class, there were med students from Africa, the middle east, and Latin America. But there were also med students from countries you wouldn’t expect, countries I would imagine don’t need to get their doctors trained as a charity project: Spain, Germany, Saudi Arabia. Apparently, there are even Americans there, though only a few, and they have to go through a MILE of red tape to do the program. They are almost always from poor minority families, and their promise is to return to places like the Bronx or downtown Atlanta and work in clincs there for 3 years before they pursue their normal medical careers.

I can’t help but think, “This is the sort of thing America should be doing”, and I’m kindof embarassed that a tiny, underdeveloped island nation can do it so much better. Now I am not just spouting a lot of propaganda I’ve heard form these doctors. Much of this information is available to those who care to dig for it, and I’ve heard much of it before. But it gets me thinking about the nature of what the American government tells us. I always heard of Cuba as this evil, communist nation to the south. We aren’t even allowed to go there. But why is that? It’s not the Cuban government that prohibits us from visiting. Heck, they’d LIKE us to see what they’re doing right, and maybe spend some of our tourist dollars in the process. The US government doesn’t allow it. Is that Liberty? Is the Freedom? Back in the 80s,I remember hearing about Russians defecting during the cold war. They had to break the law to leave their country. Do I have to “defect” from America if I want to take a week vacation in Cuba? And why doesn’t this BOTHER anyone, why doesn’t anyone talk about that in high school civics class?

There were two bright spots in our visit to Quixabaj. Fletch already mentioned Francisco, the young guy who took it upon himself to teach his nieces and nephews the Spanish that he knew, drawing lessons from comparisons between the Spanish and Q’anjob’al bibles. He was a very proactive guy, who had in fact attended our charla the day before, and was pleased as punch to offer us some coffee and sit and talk awhile. Then there was our dinner with Don Nicolas. As I mentioned before, we only ran into him again because he happens to live by the highest point in town, and we went there to see where a water tower could stand.

He obviously had a bit of a raport with the nurse, Victorina, who accompanied us, so when invited we all ducked in the low door to their kitchen. Their kitchen was one of the nicest we’d seen all day, and we’d seen about 15 by that point. They had an improved wood burning stove that was crowded with four or five women making tortillas and cooking soup. Nicolas said it was interesting to meet more foreigners, as the only other ones he’d met were the Cuban doctors who’d worked in the town for a while.

I will note here that the Cubans are pretty popular characters in these parts. I think it’s the novelty of them, as they were apparently the only foreigners to make it out here before we did. This was not the first time we’d heard of them, nor of their peculiar habits. Nicolas told us, just as every other Guatemalan here has, that the Cubans do not eat tortillas, as though not eating tortillas is a serious character flaw. In fact, it is somewhat offensive to them as the tortilla is their main staple, and it’s considered rude not to eat what you’re offered. “The Cubans,” they say, “don’t eat tortillas.” They say this many times with wonderment, then, “They eat a lot of rice and pork. And horse meat! Can you believe it? They eat horse meat.” Then Nicolas told us the story of how he went to see his Cuban doctor friend at the health center and his friend had two huge plates of meat. The doctor offered some to Nicolas, who almost took some. Meat is a rarity here. But then he asked where the meat came from and when the doctor said it was horse, Nicolas said no thank  you. “Who knows what it tastes like? It could taste just like cow, but we just don’t eat horses here. They don’t eat tortillas, but they do eat horses. Do you eat tortillas?” Believe it or not, this is about the fifth time someone has taken this exact route to asking us if we eat tortillas. They’re so pleased to offer us some when we tell them we do. So we were served tortillas and soup as he continued on. “The Cubans just happened to be around when this horse turned lame and they had to kill it. The doctors asked the owner what he was going to do with it, and they said they were just going to kill it, so the doctors asked if they could have it, and they took it and skinned it and took all the meat.” I keep sitting through this same story, and it always makes me laugh. Everyone tells it with the same wonderment. It makes me wonder, what will they say about us when we’re gone?

The other point of interest to people is our relationship. I have had to clarify many times that we are really married. But it means so many things here: whether you were married in a church, and by the mayor and it’s legal; or whether you were married in a Mayan ceremony that doesn’t count for anything legal–but in those parts people are so largely ignored that legalities matter little; or whether you’ve just lived with the same person for most of your life and had ten children together. In all of those situations the couple is considered husband and wife. We were married in a ceremony, but not be a priest or by the mayor, and yet it is legal. So we usually just tell them we were married in the church. It’s easier that way. Nicolas asked us all the usual questions about the legitimacy of our marriage. But then he asked, “How many times did he have to go ask your father for permission?” I told him he didn’t even ask my dad once, he just asked me. Fletch explained that was okay to do in the states. “How many times did you have to ask to marry your wife?” I asked. He looked up and around, “Oh, my dad and I had to go ask permission from her father probably ten times. So we did that, and then they gave us permission. Then we had to wait for four months while the plans were being made. During that time the girl watches the boy in public to make sure he doesn’t talk to any other girls, because if he does that means he’s looking into another wife. In that case the girl will refuse to marry him. So he didn’t even ask your dad once?” he asked, nodding in Fletch’s direction, “Were you robbed?”

What? I was suddenly very confused. He explained that now a days it happens a lot that the boys don’t bother with asking permission they just come in the night and take the girl away to live with him. I told him I thought my parents were pretty happy about us getting married, or at least they didn’t seem to mind. They liked Jaime. “So he came to your house once before you got married?” he asked. Ahah! “Oh yeah, he’d met my parents a few times before we got married.” Nicolas seemed content with that. He said that some fathers get so angry when their daughters are robbed they want to kill the guy. Nicolas himself seemed more sensible, saying it was disappointing, but as long the man didn’t drink and abuse the daughter, as long as he worked and tried to make a living, well, there wasn’t really any need to get so upset about the robbery, because there wasn’t really anything you could do.

Then the next famous questions, “Do you have a family?” My answer: “Yes, we have lots of family, but we do not have children.” People are pretty blown away when they hear we’ve been married for two years and have NO CHILDREN! *GASP* I’ve learned I can figure out what religion a person is by the order in which they ask the following two questions: What religion are you? Do you have children? If they ask about religion first, they’re evangelical. Evangelicals are worried about my immortal soul more than anything, where as the Catholics’ primary concern seems to be the state of my womb. Nicolas hadn’t talked about religion yet, and sure enough, it came out later he’s Catholic. By the way, the ratio here is pretty much 60%/40% Catholics to Evangelicals. At this point there’d been about 15 different people in and out of the kitchen, so I asked Nicolas how many children he had, “Oh, man, I don’t know? I have a lot, hombre. Ten?” This response cracks me up, and yet, it’s pretty typical. He asked me how old I was, and then was shocked all over again that we don’t have babies. “People in Quixabaj usually get married at about 12 or 13 years old, so by the time they’re 16 or 17 they have a few children already,” he said. I know this, and I knew it before he told me. Still it just freaks me out.

After all the talk of marriage and children he turned to questions about the states, which one we came from, etc. etc. Nicolas said there were some guys from town who went to the states for a time. “The problem is that beer is very cheap there compared to here, so they get used to drinking it, and then they keep drinking it when the come back.” Interesting, he’s the only guy we’ve heard speak negatively of this habit. Then his son came in, a tall skinny guy with a huge smile, and asked, “How are you?” in heavily accented English. He’d lived a few years in Riverside, California. When he asked us what state we were from, he ran to the next building over and came back carrying an airplane magazine with a map of the US, and a ReMax real estate catalog of all the listings in Riverside, California. In no time he was telling us about the work he did, and how hot it was, and how they loved  to drink cold beer after work. It was so cheap!

After a bit, it just becomes uncomfortable to hear all the praise lavished upon the United States. It’s not that I don’t like being American, or that I don’t like the United States. With critical analysis and judgement, I like both of those things very much. But it’s like this other thing I’ve had happen more than once here, where I’m in a group of people and quite suddenly the conversation topic changes from something like the weather to how beautiful I am. Aprubtly everyone is staring at me and commenting on how pretty my hair is, and my eyes. It’s just kind of creepy, because I it’s not who I am that is beautiful to them at this point, but what I am. What I am is quite exotic and different in comparison to them, but who I am is something they don’t yet know or understand, and thus their value judgements are not so much flattering as they are uncomfortable. I feel like viewing the world in such a way leads people quite easily and accidentally to different degrees of self-loathing or degradation, and I think that’s the case on both an individual and international scale. Nonetheless, the experience is at least interesting, something to reflect on.

As we were talking, the rain returned, pouring down in torrents for a while. The moment it let up they rushed to get umbrellas and towels to cover us as they walked all three of us back to the health center. So inspite of the difficulty that was Quixabaj, I felt that night like we’d done our job at least. We’d participated in a cultural exchange.

This morning was the first without rain in long time, so we took this opportunity in the sun to get a lot of chores done around the house. We:

• Washed our laundry in a basin, by hand (an hour or two)
• Burned all of our plastic trash from the last 2 months (another few hours)
• Repaired the hose that brings us our water from the stream (damaged by the storms)
• Hung all the laundry to dry
• Finished and hung the Horsey Tire Swing (swing = t’urt’urich in Q’anjob’al)
• Swept the house
• Washed all the dishes in the stream & cleaned the stove
• Split some firewood
• Took all the wet laundry in when it started raining

That is what happens before noon in Guatemala when it’s chore day. Oh, and for you that were wondering about “burning plastic trash”, we stand UPWIND. This baffles the locals, who wonder why we don’t just burn it in the cooking fire in our kitchen like they do. Um, yeah, that’s going to be in our health lecture tomorrow, I think.

We went on a hike with Manuel and his family yesterday, to see the derrumbes (landslides) that happened in OUR valley. Luckily no one was killed, but a pig died, crops were lost, and one of our favorite hiking trails just got a lot more challenging. At the right, you can see where a bridge was taken out by a small slide, and we now have to ford the river. I wasn’t fast enough with the camera to get Manuel’s oldest son carrying his youngest across the river on his back. Then we talked to another local who showed us a bigger slide that stopped right above his brother’s house. “It’ll probably go the rest of the way in the next few days,” he said nonchalantly. Then he showed us a slide that almost happened, but stopped for some reason. If you click on this last picture to enlarge it, you can see where the earth is cracked across the path and up into the corn field. All the ground on the left is about 6 inches lower than the ground on the right; just a tiny bit more rain and the whole thing would be down in the bottom of the valley. I do not know why they are all standing on the side that is about to go.

This one is for HT, at the request of Ryan. Yes, I do indeed have a sword hanging on the wall next to the door. Just in case. I carried it around yesterday when we went walking, because Manuel recommended I do so. Machete culture here is interesting; it’s expected that any male who ventures from his house should have one with him. The idea is that if you suddenly need to fix a trail, or clear a fallen tree, or kill a poisonous snake, you are prepared. And to NOT do so, you would be a lazy non-contributing member of society, which just isn’t done here. I don’t want to look like I am lazy or not involved in the community, so I guess I will have to start carrying one around. And by the way, no one ever gives you a second look around here if you’re toting a huge pointy knife. All our second looks are due to being white.

There are several types and shapes of machetes that you see around here; I will do a sketch of the main ones when I get a way to scan it into the computer.

The terrain in this part of Guatemala is very mountainous, and it rains a ton. Much of the trees are gone in some parts, because the people use firewood to cook and heat. As a result, we get the occasional derrumbe or deslave (landslide). We’ve had a LOT of rain this week, and some big slides happened inour valley. One took out someon’s cornfield- terrible deal, but life goes on. The other covered our only road into the region. We were coming back from an errand in town, and our bus stopped about halfway up the valley. We had to walk in the rest of the way from there. On the left, we have a picture of all the microbus drivers pitching in to fix the landslide old-school with hoes and shovels, so they can get back to earning money from passengers. They got lucky; when the landslide is above the road, it means you only have to dig it out. If the landslide is BELOW the road, it sucks the whole road and its supporting structure away into the valley below. Major reconstruction is then required.

Otherwise, things here have been slow this week. Our boss came to see how we are doing, and seemed pleased with the work we’ve done thus far. He also brought me my official issue Peace Corps tool kit, which includes useful things like a hammer, saw, bubble level, and machete. Sweet! I have a machete now! Hopefully no future posts will have to describe self-inflicted machete wounds. If it stops raining this weekend, I am going to make us a chicken coop. Using the machete.

Here’s the last item for the day. Some of the local kids came by and were excited to show me some baby birds they found. ARGH! I had no idea how to tell them that the momma bird would never come back once they played with the babies, and they would probably die. I lamented the accidental, innocent damage caused by ignorance. Then, later that day, i was talking with one of the other kids that I am closer with (Chaleo) and he told me that the first group of kids had collected the birds to use as a lure to draw the mother in so they could stone it to death and eat it. Hmm. So much for “innocent damage caused by ignorance.”

UPDATE: We heard some announcements in Q’anjob’al this morning over the loudspeaker at around 5:30am, but couldn’t quite make out what they were going on about. We slept in till 8, and arose to find most of the village deserted. Turns out, there was a big landslide & flashflood in a town two valleys over, and most of the able bodied people went over to help out. I guess several houses disappeared, they have 4 dead already, and many missing. I wish they would have asked us to go and help, but i am not really sure what we could have done that several dozen farmers with tools couldn’t do. I just feel kindof helpless and left out. Oh, and it’s STILL raining.

So last week we went to the other side of our municipality, to the aldea of Quixabaj. We’d been working up to this trip for about a month, trying to talk ourselves into getting there. Thing is, the only way to arrive is in the back of a pick-up, winding through mountain roads and along ridges for 4 hours. When I say in the back of a pick-up, I don’t mean sitting. Sitting would mean the driver was not maximizing space, and they always maximize space around here. I kept thinking about how badly the trip was going to suck. Little did I know that getting there would turn out to be pretty much the easiest part of the whole trip.

On the way there I wore a long sleeve shirt, my sombrero, and sunglasses to keep the sun and dirt off as much as possible. As it turned out, most of the way was overcast. Standing in the truck wasn’t terribly difficult since the roads are so bad the driver can’t go fast. You get knocked around some, but not as much as if the truck were speeding right along. Also, in comparison to the micro-buses, in the truck you get tons of fresh air and nothing obstructs the view, which is pretty much always gorgeous. Sometimes awkward things happened, like the time I suddenly realized a women’s head was supporting my gluetous maximus. Once during the trip the ay

udante (driver’s assistant) yelled, “Ocho!” and I thought we were taking an 8 minute break, which is just a strange increment of time. But all these guys jumped off and started peeing in the bushes as the pick-up started slowly up the hill. It occurred to me to count, and there were 8 guys who jumped off the back of the truck, apparently the right number to lighten the load in order to climb the steepest hill of the journey. When we arrived in the village I felt relieved because the ride could have been a million times worse. The nurse had lunch waiting for us, and all the community leaders where there waiting for us to meet with them.

The leaders had arrived from all over at 8 am. They thought we were coming in a private car like we had the first time–would have been nice. The nurse informed them that we’d be there at 1 when the pick-up rolled in to town, and they decided it was easier to wait than walk home and back again. So we ate quickly and then went right into meeting with them.

Someone told me along the way that they speak more Spanish in Quixabaj than here in Temux. Let me tell you, that’s a big fat lie. Fletch’s Spanish is better than the community leaders. Once we realized they didn’t really understand us much, I kind of took over the meeting in the clearest, slowest, spanish I could muster. The problem was that, with every word coming out of my mouth I could feel myself getting more and more tired. I felt

like I’d literally been beat by a stick by the time I got to the question, “Where are we sleeping tonight?” In fact I’d essentially beat myself against the steel bar supports of the truck, thus the exhaustion and muscle sore tired. All the men looked nervously around the room, a silent, “uhhhhhh…” It only took them about half an hour–not exagerating–in rapid fire q’anjob’al to come to a decision. From there we decided we’d all meet at the health center at 8 am the next morning, and the health president would show us to our room.

Turns out, our room was a tienda, a little convenience store, where we got a piece of floor along with 3 migrant farm workers and two pick-up drivers. It was not cool. Luckily we’d brought our thermarests, but the five men didn’t come all at once, some came in smoking and talking loudly near midnight. I just kept thinking, from a security stand point this is awful. These men aren’t from town, so no one here can vouch for their character. They don’t know who we are or what we’re doing here, so basically we just look like rich gringos. Arrgh. It made it very hard to sleep. Then in the morning neighbors started showing up at about 5:30 to start purchasing things, coming in and out of the store like nothing was unusual. I was really uptight about the whole thing, worried about our belongings and our safety. I also hated that the only latrine available was like 5 houses away.

I couldn’t stand all the way up in it, nor did I dare to sit all the way down while in there. It felt like the floor could cave in at any minute, first of all. Second, they’d constructed it with some sort of metal support bar right under the toilet, and the thing was full of diarrhea poo, not to mention all the school papers pulled from some kid’s notebook that littered the floor smeared with what I’m sure was not mud. I hardly drank anything the night before in order to avoid using the bathroom as much as possible. I figured as long as we were going to be in the health center the next day, I could just wait until I got there. This was mostly affective, but a little uncomfortable.

As soon as we got to the health center on Wednesday morning I talked to the nurse, explaining “the house was rather full and we didn’t want to be a bother to the family if they already had so many people staying with them.” We asked the nurse if we could just sleep in the exam room, and she seemed to be cool with that. Thank God. Then we launched in to a 3 hour demonstration of our health talks for the community leaders. They seemed really skeptical about what we were planning on doing, so instead of inviting community members to the talks, it was a closed demonstration where, I guess, they decided they were ok. T

hey scheduled a community-wide talk for the afternoon.

You should know, it was raining from about an hour after we arrived until lunch time the nex time. When we told the leaders we’d probably need a room in which to do this, they seemed confused. Why not just do it in the yard of the health center? “What do we do if it rains?” we asked. They suggested maybe we could possibly if we really needed to perhaps use a room in the school? Literally, it ended in a question mark. OK, then, so we just hoped it didn’t rain.

We ran to get our stuff from the tienda where we’d left it, and brought it back to the health center before having lunch with the nurse. Then we laid down for a nap because she said, “They’ll probably be here at 4 or a little after since they said 3 o’clock.” She was right. We were so exhausted that we decided our strategy was for me to do basically all the talking and let Fletch be the props man, that way it would go as quickly as possible.

Our first charla, or health talk, in any new place is always about why people should practice preventive health and how it’s everyone’s responsibility in order to maintain a health family and a healthy community. We play a quiz game at the beginning asking true/false questions about healthy habits. Then we have a little skit that illustrates how one is better off financially if they practice preventive health because their family members don’t get sick as often which means they don’t have to buy medecines or pay for doctor’s visits and also they don’t miss days of work. It’s usually pretty popular. However, at the same point in the charla both during the morning and with the community I asked the question, “True or False, we should always keep our food properly covered?” Both times it was a man who got the question, and both times before responding to the question he said rather angrily annoyed, “Why are you asking me this question, that’s women’s work.” Both times I got to smile nicely at them and say, “Most of the time it will be women who are responsible for covering food, however if you, sir, grab a tortilla from the basket and neglect to put the napkin back over them you and/or your children could become ill because the flies contaminated the food. That’s why it’s important for men, women, and children to learn all of these things together.” Then they gave me a blank stare, and we moved on. During our skit the town drunk kept trying to participate and different people from the community would have to pull him back and tell him he wasn’t allowed to participate if he was going to come drunk. In short, it was a tough crowd. By the time it was over we were exhausted and relieved, and I was losing my voice for having to do presentations all day.

The leaders had informed us that afternoon that this would be our only charla while we were visiting this time because they all had a meeting about potalble water they had to go to, so they wanted us to just visit houses on Thursday. This is really tiring work, as I’ve explained in past posts, but we thought it best to do something rather than nothing. There were two men who were to meet us at 8 am to start house visits in the morning both to be our guides and translators. Before leaving for the evening one of them asked, “And what if it rains tomorrow? Should we still go?” I just kept thinking, “Do you really want us here? Because if we decide to do nothing tomorrow because of a little rain we are officially wasting our time!” I told him, rain or no rain, we were prepared to go on house visits. He looked a little disappointed with that response, but said good night and went home.

Let me say here, I sound frustrated throughout this post, and I was for much of the visit. I don’t think the people of Quixabaj are lazy or intentionally “wasting our time.” I truly believe they do desperately want out help. It is a function of the indigenous communities to be very timid, which affects their already limited capacity to communicate. It’s also worth noting that I am living in Guatemala, but I am American through and through. I find it difficult to maintain high expectations and attempt to maximize the way I use time. So I’m not trying to insult our hosts in Quixabaj, but rather paint a picture for all of you that depicts exactly why this was a frustrating experience.

On Thursday morning at about 9 the two men showed up to begin the house visits. We stood around and looked at the sky. They discussed the likelyhood of rain. Then sure enough, it started pouring. It had rained all the night before. Then they started saying, “Better if we don’t go while it’s raining. You two should go in the health center and wait. We’ll come back when it stops raining.” I tried to assure them our jackets were water proof and we thought we should probably just go anyway. “No, no, you should go in the health center and wait until it stops raining.” So we did. I sat down and started reading, but couldn’t help but notice that although they’d said we needed to come inside and wait out the rain, they stood out in the road for the duration of the downpour. When it stopped raining, they came in and sat down. Their question, “So what should we tell these people? Which ones are you guys going to build stuff for?”

That’s when we realized that in spite of the very thorough job our counterpart from the main health center had tried to do to explain everything to these folks–in q’anjob’al even– they didn’t get it. We aren’t building anything FOR people, we’re only building WITH them, and even that we’re not allowed to do until our second year of service after everyone has recieved a years worth of health charlas. Thus we sat with these men for over an hour trying patiently and methodically to explain the goals of our project to them, again. And at the end they asked, “So what are we going to do when we go to these houses today?” I said, “We’re going to tell them who we are, what we’re doing, and invite them personally to the health talks we’ll be giving when we return in November.” (We explained to the leaders the day before that we will give them a months notice before we come and in that time they should arrange a schedule for us so that we can use our time more effectively. Though I’m not sure they understand the concept of “effective use of time.” I’m not saying these people specifically don’t get it, rather I think it’s a country-wide problem.)

Once we thought they pretty well understood the goals for the day we set off to visit the agreed upon 5 houses before lunch. We were going to take a break and then go out for more houses afterwards. What really happened was that we visited 13 houses in a row before we stopped. We thought we were going to die by the end of it. Our tour guides seemed quite tired as well, but they just kept pushing us into one house after another.

The conditions of these homes were dismal to say the least. Out of 13 we saw two that had sanitary infrastructure (cement floors, improved stoves, one had a latrine). The other 11 were houses made of wooden planks, huge gaps between them, dirt floors. The bedroom was usually a separate structure from the kitchen, which is better than nothing, but they were right next to one other. In the bedroom there were bed legs made out of tree branches stuck into the dirt floors and wooden planks covered with a few blankets for the bed. Usually the room was lined with these beds to accomodate everyone in the family, so between 5 and 12 beds I would say in the family bedroom. The kitchen room was usually right next door, constructed with the same materials, but with smoke billowing out of all openings and gaps because everyone cooks on open fires. Most people did not wear shoes and many of the children had visible skin diseases and/or distended bellies. So the reason this experience was tiring was not for the sheer number of houses, but also the emotional effort of seeing family after family living in such conditions. And these people tried. Just about every house had things as neatly put away as one could in their conditions. Their dirt floors are swept off with branches for brooms every day. They all thanked us for coming and said, “We’re just very poor here, and we’re so far away from things. We’re always forgotten.” And the worst part, they’re thanking us for nothing. We have actually done NOTHING for them at the moment. It made me so sad.

When we finally finished the visits we had just enough energy to scarf down lunch, then we both passed out asleep for an hour. The guys never did come back to get us for more visits after lunch as they’d said they would. Instead, the nurse took us to see the two wells that are the source of water for the 200 homes in the area. On the way back we ran in to one of our guides, Bernebe, who looked a bit sheepish when we saw him, like he’d been caught. We asked him if he was tired, and though he looked exhausted he said he was not, then changed the subject. He explained that, thankfully, the springs never dry up all the way, but in the dry season when the water is extremely low, women start lining up at 2 am to fill their water jugs for the days cooking. He mentioned that they town leaders have discussed trying to get help with a water tank project that would pull the water up the mountain and then distribute it to the houses in tubes. Novel technologies, my friends, wow. Fletch asked him to show us where the highest point in the village was so he could start drawing out diagrams for a local water specialist we worked with during field based training, and coincidentally our second tour guide lives right next door to highest point in town.

Our serendipitous dinner with our second tour guide deserves it’s own post. Suffice it to say that when Nicolas Tomas invited us in to sit down, Bernebe disappeared. We’re guessing he went home to rest.

We went home after that and right to bed since the only trasportation out of town leaves at 3 am. At 2:30 we were up backing our bags, and we were the 3rd and 4th people on the truck. It was raining so they’d covered the cage with a taurpalin and we were all to pile in underneath it. We were much more fortunate than the people after us. I got the wheel well to sit on and Fletch was against the back of the truck sitting. The other 20 some folks piled in with their bags and babies and stood, squished together as close as they could go. I was glad to be sitting where I could flap the taurpalin to bring in some fresh air. The whole mess was a rather heavy combination of unpleasant scents: mud, woodsmoke, morning breath, overripe oranges, and messed baby pants. The smells were our only details as it was so dark we couldn’t see at all, just smell and feel things. There were two babies right next to me, one that rested in the curve of my neck for most of the ride and the other that swung in its sling for a headbutt every time the truck rocked. That was preferable to when one of the babies switched positions with their mother so that their messed pants flew in my face at every sway of the truck.

I was pretty calm for the first 40 minutes or so as we rolled out of Quixabaj, trying to keep my body big and not be crushed by the all the people around me. As we crawled along slowly I could hear the truck’s tires crunching wet cravel, straining not to slide over the rocks as we headed down hill. Suddenly the truck lurched so far to the the passenger’s side, right where i was sitting, I was pretty convinced we were going over. The truck stopped to everyone’s squeals and screams, then eased its way out of the trench that threatened to tip us. I just kept thinking, if this truck goes over they’re all going to crush me. At that point it became difficult to remain calm, the situation almost unbearably clausterphobic. I started some deep breathing to help me stay calm prevent throwing up. It took me well over an hour to relax. It gradually became lighter under the tarp.

There’s this point closer to Santa than Quixabaj where the road is abruptly reduced to one lane. It’s while the road is on the ridge, and a landslide has washed the other half of the road away. There’s nowhere for the truck to skirt to the side of the road because the narrow lane is the only flat space, landslide on one side, steep mountain sloping down the other. It had been raining for the better part of three days and nights, and as we discussed after the trip both of us were praying that this would not be the day the rest of the road would go. When the rain lightened, men at the back started to peel the tarp forward and stand all the way up, until it got to me. Although the woman next to me looked right at me and said, “Don’t stand up,” I stared right at her as though I didn’t understand and stood straight up out in the open. The fresh air was heaven. We went right over the landslide bit as we were looking out the top. After that I relaxed most of the way. We made it back to Santa at 7 am, took a bus halfway to our town and walked 45 minutes in the rain to reach home.

The problem with underdeveloped countries is that they’re already so far behind they spend most of their time reacting to problems that have suddenly come up. The majority of their citizens spend most of their days worrying about making sure they have food and shelter. That’s why preventive health is something pretty outside of their paradigm because it’s proactive instead of reactive. But it affects everything. What they should do is close the road between Quixabaj and Santa for a week or so. Guatemalan men are some of the most bad-ass laborers I’ve ever seen. I know they could have a small bridge up in no time. Instead, what will most likely happen is that, one day, probably not terribly unlike the day we crossed the landslide, the road will give way, the truck will plummet, and quite a few people will die. Then they will fix the road because it’s the only way to and from the tiny string of villages in that part of the municipality. It’s so frustrating and sad, but true. That’s just they way they work.

Friday we busied ourselves with cooking delicious food and cleaning. Our family lit the chuj for us when I told them the last time we’d bathed was the day before we left because there was nowhere to do it in Quixabaj. We slept for 12 hours and on Saturday I felt like I’d been pummelled. The morning was so bad I ended up bawling my eyes out, going back to bed, and waking up for Saturday morning Take 2: Done With Quixabaj (for now).

I was just coming back from the chuj and I saw the chikay, so I asked her how she was doing. She turned to me with tears in her eyes, and touched her stomache and said it was hurting a lot. Her wrinkled face looked awful, and it broke my heart. Then she said the pain was probably form sadness, because she misses her husband very much. “How long ago did he die?” I asked her, and she explained that he died about 9 years ago from cholera. CHOLERA?!?!?! Are you kidding me? I thought that horrible disease went away in the 1800s. But now I remember some of the people in Quixabaj saying something about a cholera epidemic, as well.

Again, be glad you don’t live in a third-world country.

Today Emily had to go to Huehuetenango for a committee meeting, so I had one of my few days alone. As luck would have it, Manuel came by and offered me the chance to go with his family into the hills to gather food and firewood.

We walked for about half an hour in the beuatiful countryside, and eventually came to a pine forest. “There are mushrooms here,” he said, and sure enough, there were. Some types are poisonous and others are tasty. I am going to pass on the wild mushrooms, thank you; though they must know which are which since they are all still alive. We then continued over the mountain to the other side, where his wife has some property. We picked a huge bag of ub’al (beans) and looked for potatoes but didn’t find any. Then, they got downto cutting firewood.

This is all done with machetes, mind you, which they take with them anywhere they go. I got to give it a try. It’s kindof fun, on the small stuff, but it’s really hard to cut up logs 6″ in diamater with a flimsy sword. When the cutting was done, they tied the wood in to ricks and strapped them to their backs with headstraps to take back down the mountain. I explained that I used to help cut wood on my uncle Leon’s farm in Oregon, but instead of machetes and rope, we used chainsaws and a pickup. They thought that idea hilarious. Check out the two pix below; the first is the baby, watching us cut wood. The second is loading up everyone for the hike back. Click to enlarge and check out the little girl doing her part, with a single log on her back. I think she’s 4 years old. Some how I just can’t imagine Brian (Y. or F.), or Mark, or Karl, or any of my other friends with little kids being like, “hey, honey, strap that log on your back, we’re going hiking!”