Presentation in the school yard.

The 15th of September is Guatemala’s independence day, but they have a tradition here where they light a torch in Antigua, Guatemala on the 13th, and delegates from all over the country go to light a flame off it, which they then carry back to their homes. The delegates from our town were made up largely of the school director and teachers, and the whole thing plays out a bit like the olympic torch where they don’t just bring the flame back, they run it here in teams. We, of course, had no clue about much of this until it all happened. We’d been asked a few weeks earlier to judge the Niña de la Independencia beauty contest on the evening of the 14th, and we knew the torch would arrive before the contest which was to start at 8pm, which meant it would really start about 9.

Sunday the 14th was pouring down rain and cold, so we spent most of the day inside just hanging out. About 3:30 in the afternoon just after I’d fixed myself some coffee and sat down with a book, Fletch was standing at the window and said, “There’s a ton of people heading down the road! I’m going with them!” He threw on his rain coat and took off. I opted to enjoy my coffee. An hour or so later I started to wonder where he’d gone, and then I felt a little bad I hadn’t gone to see what was up myself, but not too bad. I kept reading until about 6 when Reigna came to tell me the torch was coming. I headed down to the school to wait for its arrival along with my host family and everyone else in the village.

We waited for probably a half hour with marimba music blaring in the background before anything happened. As the sky was darking you could see in the distance a snake of light getting longer and longer as it curved up the road to the school. It was really quite pretty, and kind of reminded me of the scene in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast when the villagers storm the castle. Luckily this was much less violent, as in, not at all violent. In fact, it was quite pretty, and I was glad to have stayed behind to watch from where I was. The messenger runner arrived to tell us the torch was on its way, but didn’t say much, since we could all pretty well see that for ourselves. I started taking pictures and as all the school kids with gasoline soaked rags in coffee cans attached to turned wooden legs (and why not, since just about everyone’s dad here is a carpenter) came running past me and in to the school yard, so too came Fletch running and waving the Guatemalan flag like crazy.

Everyone stood in the school yard for speeches and then national anthem. The school director gave a big speech and at one point thanked God everything had gone so well and nothing bad had happened. I looked around at 200 kids with lit torches and thought, “Yeah, someone probably should thank God.” The kids were happy as clams holding their torches high, and happier still when the whole thing was over and they got to spill the contents out on the pavement and dance around the flames. Pretty funny.

As contest judges we ate with the school teachers beforehand, and they invited us to run with them next year for the torch–an offer I do believe we’ll take them up on. And all of them praised dear Jaime, who showed up out of nowhere to help get the kids to the school house running with torches. “He’s was just so wonderful, so helpful!” 🙂

Just as we had anticipated, the beauty contest started about 9pm. I had been fairly dreading the whole thing, being that I’m pretty opposed to the whole idea of beauty contests. But more than anything, this was a great show of patriotism, and there were only 4 candidates–ranging in age from 6 to 13.

The coolest part was the show of regional trajes, the traditional indigenous wear, but all in all the experience was quite strange. The two littlest girls were cute and occassionally frightened looking, but when we smiled at them they beamed back at us. The two older girls where a different story. One looked like she was going to throw up at any second for the entire duration of the contest, and the other just looked like she was pissed as hell. I tried smiling at them, and nothing. I tried it over and over and their expressions never changed. It was so bizarre, and kind of disturbing. There have been lots of studies done that indicate pre-pubescent girls have far fewer inhibitions than matured girls, but it was like we were looking at happy little girls and beat down young women. How does one judge that? The numbers on my score sheet had the two little girls winning first and second place. The overall results gave one of the little girls first place and one of the older girls second place. Jaime and I got to thank everyone for their beautiful presentations and announce the winners. The experience was pretty funny, but I was also quite thankful when it ended, if for no other reason than that the two older contestants were released from their apparent misery.

Jaime gettin' his dance on with Catarina.

A dance followed the contest, and the judges and contestants got to kick it all off. The music was, of course, marimba, which means it didn’t vary much, and the dance is this double step in a circle over and over and over and over. Men and women never touch. It was fun for a few rounds, though as midnight approached and no one continued to dance after the judges stopped, we decided to go home and sleep.

The actual 15th was interesting in that there was marimba ALL day, and randomly some bombas (huge firecracker) so loud they shook the house when they went off. Everyone who walked by our door asked if we were going to go to the dance (that was where all the music was coming from) and kept telling us we had to get there before it ended! There was much talk in the weeks before the 15th of me donning a traje to go dance in, and the talk continued all day long. All the women wanted to see me dressed up and I kept saying, “Sure come on over and show me how to tie up the corte, then we’ll go dance.” They all seemed pretty amused at the idea, but no one ever came. The two of us wondered down to dance a few rounds right before the evening ending, so as to show our support for the whole event, but once we’d shown our faces we went home to enjoy the freshly killed sheep in the form of stew for Nas Palas’ birthday celebration.

Alright, I’m not as up on this blog as Fletch-o-matic. He’s got 40 posts to my 10, so for all of you who like to give me flak about being the big talker, I think there’s some evidence here to suggest I married my match. However, I’ll see if I can catch you all up a bit on what’s been happening here on my end.

My birthday happened, for one. But not just my birthday. August is for our Guatemalan family what May is for my biological family. We walked in on a rash of cumpleaños celebrations, mostly for grandkids of the family: Delvin turned 3, Chalio turned 9, Delmy turned 1, I turned 25, and last but not least Nas Palas our infamous host dad turned ?? (not exactly in August, but we’ve already celebrated). After about 25 or 30 people here seem to stop counting and have trouble remembering (just like after about their 4th or 5th child it takes them longer than it would ever take an American to tell you how many children they have). In Q’anjob’al there’s a “How old are you?” phrase for young people who are likely to know exactly how many years they’ve been alive, and a separate phrasing of the same question for older folks who are not likely to remember how many years they’ve been alive. To me, that kind of defeats the purpose of asking, but oh well. One would think they could tell you in corn growing seasons since they have so many other references to corn, but alas is does not work that way.

Delmy before her cake.

Birthday celebrations are part of what established the haphazard routine we have of eating with our host family about once a week, and, since they were birthdays, we felt like we should contribute something. I think we were invited back for so many parties in part because they were curious to see what we would bring to each one: there were chocolate chip cookies for one, ginger snaps and apple sauce (made from their home grown apples they kept giving us), chocolate cake made by Fletch, and then a chocolate cake made by me (it was a competition and I won, just so you know). All of these tasty treats come from our wonderful and slightly mysterious oven. Mmmmm. The outcome of this is, even though the littlest ones hardly speak spanish they now come to our door on a regular basis asking for galletas! That’s spanish for cookie.

The cookie habit started because we didn’t have a pan in which to bake a cake for quite a few weeks, but we found the comal, a round flat pan for making tortillas works well enough for baking cookies and bread. Cakes are pretty unusual here. Delmy’s mom, their daughter who is my age and also a nurse, is a bit modern and bought a cake to throw a party with all the nurses and the local doctor. Reigna takes Delmy to work with her just about every day, all the health workers are pretty close, and we were kindly invited to attend the party. I’m happy to say that what they did to Delmy with her cake they did not repeat to me on my birthday.

Delmy after her cake. Amazingly she didn't even cry.

For my birthday we’d decided to skip town, in part because all of our friends were gathering to celebrate having completed a month worth of service, and also because it’s pretty impossibly to entirely relax here. We didn’t exactly tell them we were leaving to party, rather there is a very convenient word in spanish we use, reunion, which means to meet or gather either for enjoyment or work. We just injected the word with a tone of seriousness about having a reunion with our fellow volunteers and it made the vacation sound obligatory. Yay! If only it were that easy in the states. Anyway, we decided to celebrate with my family the night before leaving, and it turned out to be one of the best nights we’d spent with them since we arrived.

We showed up to eat dinner with them, soup and tortillas as

Everybody loves chocolate cake!

usual on their end, and brought stir-fried vegetables and chocolate cake with icing that Fletch had fixed. They were so excited about the cake that we had to eat it first, and since the family all-told adds up to about 17 people, the cutting and dishing out is always exciting commotion. In the middle of it someone disappeared outside and set off two rounds of fire crackers, because it’s not a birthday in Guatemala without firecrackers, and the family presented me with a gift. These folks are not stingy in spite of having so little, and their gifts are so practical–I got a soup bowl. This was perfect because it’s tradition to give your house guests something to eat and or drink when they show up, but we only bought two of everything when we moved since we had to be careful about not spending too much. They were pretty pleased I was so happy.

Our host-mom, Lina.

Everyone was excited about Jaime baking a tasty cake, but our vegetables were a big hit too. Perhaps not as big a hit as our non-stick pan and wooden cooking utensil. Maybe they just ate the vegetables to get to the pan. A big discussion was held to talk about the pan, it’s use and cost, and our wooden utensils. Fletch explained the wooden utensils were used so we didn’t scrape the pan, and as he said it our host mom, Lina, turned bright red. She had to have been really red for us to see it so clearly because she’s pretty dark skinned and the light in the room is always incredibly dim. She dished out healthy servings of vegetables with a big old aluminum spoon. Guiltily she held it up to show us and then laughed nervously. Everyone died laughing. The thing is our host mom is usually so get it done and confident, she looked like a nervous little girl. I think she figured it was ok when we died laughing. It was just so funny.

The last birthday, which was actually Sept. 16, was moved to the 15th just so we could participate. Refer to the “Matando Kalnel”  post. Since they moved the date for us and everything we couldn’t show up empty handed so I made the best darn chocolate cake we’ve ever had, recipe thanks to the PC survival cookbook. All in all, we’re having a good time with the host family, and if nothing else I think they like our cooking.

The lake at sunset.

My birthday away was pretty much the best weekend we’ve had in the last 5 months. Lake Atitlan is a vacation spot anyone who comes to see us must visit. We stayed at a chill little hostal that gives discounts to PCVs. They had fantastic food, and since I lost over 20lbs with the dysentery mishap, I took it upon myself to eat bacon every morning for breakfast–we’ve had a hard time finding it here. It tasted soooo good. There was dancing every night, and Saturday at the Iguana Perdida is cross-dressing night. They have a dress up room full of clothes and wigs. My birthday ended while I watched a meteor shower over the lake with friends. Maybe this sounds bad, but it feels so liberating to escape the poverty here, to just shut off all the needs and wants of the villagers. We got to be ourselves with a bunch of Americans for a whole weekend. It was a great birthday.

Saturday night cross-dressing, kind of.

I just got home from Quixabaj. The trip back was hellish; there is only one truck a day to get back, and it leaves at 3am. So, i spent the time from 3am to 7am riding in the back of a truck bed in the pouring rain, in the dark, crammed in with 27 Guatemalans getting bounced over the roughest 4×4 trail I have ever seen. Babies were puking, people’s butts were in my face, it was four hours of Auschwitz freight train. In the dark.

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RYAN: THIS ONE IS FOR YOU

Today is Independance Day. Guatemala kicked Spanish rule 181 years ago, and they’re pretty excited about it. They have this tradition, so I will describe it to you as best I understand it. There is some sort of “sacred fire” in Antigua, and the day before Independance Day, delegates from town go there to get some of the flame and bring it home for the Big Independance Party. We were hanging out in our house yesterday afternoon, and i saw a mob of people heading down the street with torches. Since they were unlit, i ruled out “going to burn down Frankenstein’s castle;” they must be headed to get the Fire. So, i ran out and followed them.

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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.

Killing animals: It’s a normal part of life here, but as Americans, we are often completely insulated from this part of eating (unless you are a hunter, or one of the few remaining small-time family farmers). Here, it’s what you do when you want meat for dinner. Tomorrow is Nas Palas’s birthday, so we’re going to eat kalnel (sheep) to celebrate.

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More weird Guatemalan animals. This is a sheep with 4 horns. I don’t know why. (click to enlarge)

We’ve mentioned before that there is no shortage of drunks in town and, reflecting on this the other day, Fletch mentioned he thought it would be interesting to do a study on immigration and alcoholism, to see what percentage of the population of alcoholics has immigrated to the states for any period of time, and what their experiences there were, because it seems that so many of them know at least a little bit of English. Having immigrated in reverse (though legally via an airplane vs. illegally on a months long journey that involves walking through a giant desert) I can see that the experience would be nothing short of daunting. And while I

know that I’m here for a short time and will return to the comfort and luxury of the US, they are in the US temporarily and then return here. Honestly, even though I do really love being here and the work we’re doing, I don’t think a day goes by that I don’t remember that I will be going home after all of this is over. That is unspeakably comforting.

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The area we live in is gorgeous. There are mountain springs everywhere, rushing down to the valley floor to meet up with the river. There are rolling corn patches, called milpas, sprinkled all up and down the mountain side. There are big green spaces on the slop down the valley where the grass has been trimmed by all the grazing sheep, and huge grey black rock breaking through the green landscape, and sprouting flowers out the top. It is beautiful in the sun and mysterious in the fog. One day as it was preparing to rain, the clouds moving through the valley curled up and over just like the swirls around the stars in Van Gogh’s Starry Night. To put it mildly, we’re stoked about the scenery. And we could almost sing Old MacDonald substituting q’anjob’al words for all the farm animals. We might not know a lot, but we do know that. We try to take hikes every other day, both to familiarize ourselves with the area as well as to familiarize the locals to our presence. In this way, we count hiking as part of our job. We’d really like to run, but gringos walking is strange enough for the moment. Running will come later.

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Yay! As you might have guessed form the deluge of posts that just got online, we finally got our internet. It’s slow (14.4K, EDGE system) through the cell towers, but better than nothing. It just demands patience. Like the rest of Guatemala. So, now, maybe I will be better about regular posts and such. But it’s not fast enough for videoconferencing, online games, or other mayhem. Maybe that is for the best. 😛

Here is a picture of Emily and I in the computer room. It is totally cocindence that our pyjamas match our laptops. Honest. And she told me I could only use this picture if I confessed that I took it the day BEFORE we got the internet.

Our nighbors/ host family have a live-in grandmother (actually, a great-grandmother). They just refer to her as “the chikay” (the granny) and she is pretty funny. She’s REALLY old, they actually don’t know how old, but everyone puts it at 80+. She can’t see much, walks at about 3 feet a minute, and uses a crooked stick for a cane. But her face is always wrinkled into this enormous smile, and she sits around by the fire looking content for much of the day. When it’s suny out, she sits around on the porch looking content. There is one thing exceptional about her: she speaks spanish, which is SUPER rare for females of her generation. As a result, i can converse with her somewhat. The other day, i asked her how she was doing. Mayan culture, unlike ours, elicits a factual response to this question, instead of a programmed “just fine.”

“My head has been hurting for about a week,” she replied.

“Really?” I asked. “Does it help when you lie down in the dark?”

“Yes, a little,” she said.

I wonder if it’s a migraine? It seems like a long time for that, though, and I am not a doctor. At her age, i suppose it could be anything.

“I will probably die soon,” she added. This is another Mayan thing: a very honest and straighforward relationship with death. It’s weird. Anyways, i hope she hangs around a little longer, she’s nice. Oh, and that’s her daughter on the left, Lina (Nas Palas’s wife).