So, we have a mouse (or mice?) in the house. It is annoying, because it leaves poop on our kitchen counter; click on the picture at the right if you want to see them. It also likes to eat Emily’s bananas (driving her bananas in the process). We’ve even seen it scurry up the wall a time or two in the late evenings, so I figured I’d pop into town and get a trap. This proved difficult for several reasons, the first of which is that “mouse” in the local dialect is tx’ow, which is kindof hard to pronounce correctly. Secondly, they do not have mouse traps as we know them in Guatemala. I went to three different hardware stores, and they all tried to sell me this thing that cost 80q and was essentially a beaver trap- you know, with the huge metal spring you step on to open it, and you set it with a stick. I didn’t buy one, not just because such a trap would cut the mouse clean in half and spray my walls with entrails, but also because it would take an animal the size of a beaver to step on the trigger hard enough to set it off.
Another cultural wakeup call happened today. So, we were giving this presentation to the village about healthy diet habits and balanced meals. This is important, because until recently, they could only afford corn. All the time. This led to things like kwashnikor (a nasty type of malnutrition you get from eating the same thing every meal), to eye problems from vitamin A deficiency, to anemia from iron deficiency… you get the point. Anyways, people have a little bit more money now that the war is over (it’s all relative) and can afford to diversify, adding beans and the occasional chicken to their diet.
As part of the presentation, we do some sort of icebreaker. For this one, we had people go around the room introducing themselves with their name and favorite thing to eat. As an example, I started out with “My name is Jaime and I like to eat chocolate cake.” They were really confused at first, so it started pretty slowly. Once they got the hang of it, it went something like this: Pancho, corn; Martin, potatoes; Simon, corn tortillas; Tomas, corn AND potatoes; Nas, beans…. you get the idea. At first I thought, “Gee, these people aren’t very creative.” I mean, i KNOW they’ve tried cookies and ice cream and so forth at least once in their lives. I’ve seen it. But then I realized: if you live your life as hungry as most of these people have been, you don’t really care WHAT you eat, as long as it’s available. The idea of developing a “favorite food” is as alien to them as having a “favorite kind of planet.” Wow.
So, today went form bad to worse. On top of the computer center mess (see previous post), someone tried to kill us this afternoon. The problem is, i am not certain that it was intentional. Let me explain.
To relax and unwind from our stressful morning, we thought we’d have a little picnic. I baked some challa yesterday, and Emily brought back some Cheddar and tuna from Huehue, so we put these delicacies in my backpack and hiked down to the creek. It’s quite pretty there, i even took this picture while we were eating. There is a nice grassy spot for our blanket, we took off our shoes, and were eating and chatting.
About fifteen minutes into the lunch, I heard a THUMP. Weird. We turned around to see a baseball-sized rock slowly roll past us. I didn’t think much of it at first, as there’s a trail about three feet above our spot, but no one was on it. Weird. Then there was a nother THUMP, and I actually saw the next rock hit the ground. I looked up, and saw there was a 100-foot cliff above and behind us… with another rock spinning through the air at us. Emily saw it at the same time.
First, the good news. My friend D-ho just pledged some awesome equipment for the computer center project:
- four fast, big machines (including a linux server and a Mac)
- two BIG flat-panel monitors
- scanner
- printer
- nice CRT monitor
- tons of other stuff
Go Team Hogan! Now, the bad news. I went over to the school today, and they were really excited to show me what they have in the computer classrom as of Friday: 16 brand-new Dell workstations, still in their crisp cardboard boxes!
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This post might contain some anger, and babbling about internet. Feel free to skip it.
So, we have been without internet since we got to our site. This is to be expected in a remote valley of a third-world country. I looked into satellite internet, and it’s out of my budget when I earn only $200 a month. However, both cell providers in Guatemala (Tigo and Claro) promise cellular internet in the near future, so I was hoping for that.
A few weeks ago, we made the 5-hour trip to Huehue to talk to Claro about thier internet. Yep, they have 3G broadband and sell iPhones. Yay. But, you only get coverage in the capitol. Grr, that is annoying and a show stopper. So, we went into the Tigo regional office to talk to them. They promised internet in September. Encouraging, but I didn’t believe a word of it- everything is late in Guatemala. “Will it cover our remote area?” I asked.
Here’s a weird twin banana. We found it at the market. It actually had two separate edible parts within it. We ate it dipped in chocolate frosting I made last week. Not bad!
We are about 10 hours into our Q’anjob’al lessons. It’s fun, but hard. We have a private tutor, and are spending a lot of time up front learning how to make the five or six sounds that don’t exist in either Spanish or English. I never imagined I’d be trilingual, but I guess that’s what we’re working towards.
Being an ancient Mayan language, Q’anjob’al has some peculiarities that are worth sharing. Today we talked about articles… you know, “the”. In English, there is just one: the. Spanish is trickier: el is for male things, la is for female things. German is worse, because they have things that are male, female, or neuter: der, die, das all mean “the”. Q’anjob’al outstrips all of these languages, having more than a half dozen ways to say “the”. And instead of being based on an arbitrary idea of things being male or female (in Spanish, a table is female, a lime is male, etc. Go figure.) the nouns are grouped by what they are made from. They say “the” differently for the following groups of things:
Here’s some fun architecture from Guatemala. The first is a house I saw while at Lake Atitlan. It sits on the shore of gigantic lake ringed by volcanoes, a lake that was once the cone of a volcano itself. Modernism lives; Meis (and Hoffman) would be pleased. The second is a hotel tower on the same lake. I assume the color is to “camoflage” it, so it blends in with the abundant natural beauty. You can can decide for yourself if it is successful. (click on images to enlarge)
Gross food: one topic that never goes away. But first, some backstory. My dad and I have gone hunting together since I was pretty young; it’s a semi-sacred business in our family, and I was taught from an early age that it is generally bad to kill an animal unless you plan on eating it.
Last week, I learned to kill turwex (giant dragonflies) with the kids. Much like dove hunting, it’s heaps of fun and the bodies pile up rapidly, but you have to come up with something creative to do with the meat. We put a lot of doves on the farmers’ dinner tables back in the day, and around here I solve the dilemma by giving the turwex to the kids I am hunting with, and they gladly gobble them up.
So, I am sure most of you’ve read The DaVinci Code. In the story, there’s a shadowy religious fanatical organization that has these monasteries located all over the world, and they are refuges of calm but hide all sorts of crazy espionage and are outfitted for the end-times.
We have our own version here, located in one of the major cities in Guatemala. On the surface, it looks like your typical run-of-the-mill Guatemalan Catholic mission: it has a contemplative courtyard, a seminar room, and rooms for meditation and sleep. But a closer look reveals perimeter defenses and concertina wire atop the parapets. What is afoot here? Well, it’s a Peace Corps hideout/ command center. We went there last weekend to pick up our packages; when we approached the door, the staff saw us and asked, “Peace Corps?” We nodded, and were left to wait in the courtyard. Soon a footman appeared and took us downstairs and through a door to a room equipped with computers and Internet. This is also where we go if there is a national emergency; it is stocked with food and supplies. The best part: we found a hatch that goes down to an even DEEPER level. It’s where you hide americans… or maybe it’s just a water tank. I dunno.
UPDATE: The day after I wrote this, we all got emails that PC is going to shut down this command center due to budget cutbacks. Darn!