Semuc Champey, Tikal and Livingston

Finishing service was pretty wild. I don´t know that it has really hit me yet that I´m not a Peace Corps volunteer anymore. I think that maybe it will feel more real once I´m back in the States again. After spending a relaxing couple of days in Antigua with some other RPCV friends, I headed back to Quiche to translate for the Canadian organization, Hearts and Hands. It was sad to say goodbye at the end of the week because we´ve worked together a bunch of times and there are a good number of people that come every time. I worked with a stove building team for the first day and then spent the rest of the week translating for a dental team that was doing extractions, fillings, and cleanings for one of the aldeas of Uspantan.
My friend Hilary worked as an tourism volunteer in Uspantan and helped develop Laj Chimel, the birthplace of Rigoberta Menchu, as a place for Tourism. Unfortunatly not many tourists make it to Uspantan, but it is a really good experience and definitely worth the visit for people who are willing to go off the beaten track. It was a bit over an hour bumpy ride to Laj Chimel, and there they show you where they hid in the woods when the army came through, killing community members because Guerrillas had used the forest near the village to camp out. We also had lunch in a woman´s house who hid out in the mountains for 18 months and was finally captured by the military. It was very sad to hear her story but also good to get a better understanding of her personal experience of the war. It´s not often that anyone will open up about what happened during the war, it´s still a very sensitive subject.
Sunday a week ago I started on my vacationing, taking the back road from Uspantan to Coban, which I would never recommend to anyone. It was very bumpy, dusty and a bit frightening. From Coban it was a two hour bus ride to Semuc Champey, a series of natural limestone pools and some gorgeous caves (that I didn´t work up the nerve to go in...). I got there mid afternoon, checked into the hostel and read in a hammock until my friends got in from Antigua. Monday and Tuesday we went to the pools and Wednesday my friend Rachel and I carried on to Flores.
Flores is an hour from Tikal, which is the best known and cared for Mayan ruins in Guatemala. It was an incredible experience, hiking up and looking all over the jungle and imagining people living and building there over 2,000 years ago. It was so hot that I think I sweated out several liters. I drank two while I was walking around and three when we got back to the hotel in Flores and were hanging out on the dock. It was Semana Santa all this past week, so we got to see people participating in processions and decorating the outsides of their houses. There were lots of Guatemalans on vacation in Flores since many people had all week off work for the celebrations.
Rachel and I got to Livingston yesterday and spent Easter hiking and eating seafood. I could not be happier. Tomorrow we leave for Belize, and if its not too, too expensive, will be getting our scuba certifications. There are supposed to be whale sharks coming to the part of Belize we´ll be in, which I suppose is a good thing because the guy who told us about it sounded excited for us to see it while scuba diving. Then Mexico, to see Frida and Diego´s work and eat some mole!!

Aguacatan adventures

This past weekend I went with a coworker to her hometown, Aguacatan in Huehuetenango. We went swimming at the pools, spent the night at her Mom's house, and went in the temascal, which is like a sauna, which is how most people in the aldeas bathe. We also found my traje! Photo below! The picture with the view of the mountains and the valley is me walking down for the last time from Llano Grande. The other picture is my health promoters giving a health talk!

saying goodbye

All 84 stoves are built. We had a big celebration this past monday, the mayor showed up and paid for a live marimba band. I was a little sad that no one would dance, because in Cunen there is always dancing if there is marimba, but the community where we built the stoves doesn't dance because it's prohibited by their church. Other than that, it was a fun party. I wore traje (the traditional clothes worn by K'iche' people) and gave a little speech and there were lots of presentations and speeches by different leaders. They made a sign for "Iglesia St. James" and I tried to get a picture but it was made with shiny material so it was hard to get a good shot of it. They had me cut the ribbon on the "inagural" stove along with the mayor. It felt a little cheesy, but fun.

Tonight Nicole organized a surpise goodbye dinner for Melissa and me. We were totally surprised, but, as we are still in Guatemala, although we showed up half an hour after Nicole told people to arrive, we were still some of the first people to show up. Oh dear. It was a really lovely evening; my host family was there, as well as a few friends from work and the new volunteers that are taking over our work.

Tomorrow is my last visit to Llano Grande (where the stoves were built). I'll be doing a workshop with the health promoters in that community, introducing the new volunteers, and doing some final house visits and interviews. I am pretty sad about all the goodbyes, but so excited for everything coming up in the next couple of months. I'll be visiting Belize and Mexico with my friends Rachel and Nicole, and then Peru, Ecuador, and Columbia with Melissa. She and I will be parting ways in Bogota. She'll be going on to Panama and eventually making her way back up to Guatemala, and I'll be home in time to see Billy graduate high school.

winner takes the turkey

Last night was the health commission’s fundraiser for reducing maternal and infant mortality. Have you ever been to an event where the raffle prizes were: first prize- a prepaid cell phone, second prize- a live turkey, third prize- a tea set? Only in Guatemala. Melissa and I bought some tickets for the raffle. We were really hoping for the turkey. And we decided that if we won the cell phone, we’d convince the turkey-winner that they wanted to swap it for the phone. Unfortunately, we didn’t win anything, and I ended up giving a very hurried thank-you and goodnight to all the people that attended since they started running out en-mass after the raffle winners were announced. It was good that they started leaving, I don’t think I was in any condition to give a proper speech since I’d been there for about five hours, the windows don’t have glass yet so I was chilled to the bone, and I was so tired I was starting to panic that it was never going to end. But, disregarding the prolonged nature of the event, it was an enjoyable evening. There was a comedy routine that involved 13-15 year old kids dressed up as street people spitting water in each others’ faces. It was hilarious, if not completely on-message with the health and hygiene focus of the event. The other events were the usual dances, some lip-synched reggaetone, and some funny contests for prizes in between acts.
This week is the last week of building for the stoves project. On Friday I went to the mayor’s office to ask for a marimba band for the inauguration event. I think he’s going to give us one. He spent more time talking about whether I would stay and teach him English and eventually become first-lady of Cunen. I said I wasn’t really thinking marriage at this point. Plus I know he hits on Melissa when she goes in on business. He speaks pretty decent English, but I guess he didn’t pick up on the no-sexual harassment in the workplace thing while he was in the states. Oh well. I only have three weeks left in Cunen and I’m spending half of next week at the Peace Corps office to do my close of service medical evaluations and a few other errands.

building and winding down

It has been a pretty incredible two weeks. Two weeks ago the materials hadn't been delived yet and the SPA funding hadn't been deposited. Now, all the SPA money (and all other funds) has been spent, all the matierals delivered, and almost all the stoves are built. All 84 should be done by the end of the day next Tuesday.
Tonight I went to dinner with my host family and we were talking about when I'll be back. My host mom, Maru, said I should come back for Maria Isabel's quincinera, which I would like to do, but it made me sad and a little freaked-out just thinking about it. Time moves too quickly. I only have four weeks left in Cunen. It's sad, but I'm also extremely excited about seeing Tikal, relaxing on the beach, exploring Mexico City and all the other great places I'll be headed in about a month!

Four days in!

Its been as crazy as could be expected, perhaps even more so. On Monday the whole community gathered, and we waited together for the trucks to start rolling in. Of course they were a little late, but that was a shock to no one. There are some great pictures of everyone getting involved, from grandmothers to small children. Things went relatively smoothly, with lots of phone calls back and forth with the hardware store. Monday afternoon I left the health promotors in charge while I traveled to El Quiche to fix things at the bank. I took every possible form of identification and all of my bank documents, but, unbeknownst to me, you must have an electricity bill or they will not make any changes to the account. I nearly wept; it was less than an hour until closing time and there was no way I could make it back to Quiche anytime this week. I called all the people who might have been able to fax it to me and no one was picking up. Finally I got through to my landlord's neice who lives next door and, crazily enough, she was in Quiche a short tuk-tuk ride away with a copy of the electric bill. Dispite the setbacks and times where I felt pending disaster, things always have a way of working out, usually by getting the right person on the phone. It doesn't come very naturally to call people up and ask for help, but when I do I am always surprised at how willing people are to go out of their way to help. It's a good reminder that "sticking it out" isn't always the most effective way to get things done, even though it feels like the stronger thing to do.
Since then we've all been working hard and getting stoves built. I've kept my health promotors extremely busy visiting houses and making sure the families are working side by side with the professional builders to get maximum learing and also keep up their end of the deal with the community contribution. With the majority of families we don't even need to remind them because they're so excited the stoves are here that they want to pitch in and get the stoves built.
The top left picture is the first stove nearing completion, top right is what we're replacing-- for this woman it was an open fire on an adobe platform, for many families it's an open fire on the floor. Then there are the community members moving materials and laying down the stove's foundation.

Nebaj and Cunen

Last night I spent the night for the first, and most likely only time in an aldea. In Guatemala the country is divided up into departments, which are similar to states. The next subdivision is municipalities (like counties) and then after that are aldeas. I am pretty sure that although I've done a decent amount of traveling here in Guatemala and have visited other volunteers, I have always stayed in the main town where the municipal building is located. It was a very cool experience and I was a little bit jealous to see what a strong connection the volunteer I visited has with her community.
I have good friendships here in Cunen but it is a totally different for volunteers that live by themselves in a very small town. They are more isolated and naturally turn to the people living near them for support and friendship. It must be a harder adjustment but it was really cool to see how much everyone in the aldea connected to her and are so sad to see her preparing to leave.
I was not jealous of the micro ride, which was on a bumpy, muddy dirt road for about forty minutes. I also came to appreciate living in the Muni for the consistent running water we get here. An hour or two after arriving in Xix, where this volunteer lives, the water went out and didn't come back at all the rest of the visit. However, this morning we traveled back to the Muni, Nebaj, which is a tourist attraction for its rich history and unique language, and because it attracts tourists it has certain luxuries that Cunen doesn't offer. We stopped in El Descanso, a restaurant started by a former Peace Corps Volunteer that has pretty amazing chicken barbeque quesadillas. There is also a restaurant run by an American that has grilled cheese, french toast and other U.S. comfort food. It's nice to have those things in Nebaj, since it's only an hour away but I've only been there a handful of times throughout service.
Tomorrow is the big day! I'll be up and out early to meet with the community members, work out last minute details and oversee the distribution of materials. Send positive vibes my way, because things have a way of not going as planned here!

The first couple pictures are of Xix, and then the girls are my host sisters and there is a picture of the sunrise view from my porch.

Town fair and preparing for stove building

I'm going to start off with a plug for my sitemate's stove project. We work on different sides of town and she is still looking for funding for her projects. She was also put in a bad situation because of Peace Corps' decision to have our training class take early close of service, so she is staying a month after finishing service to monitor the construction of the stoves in her communities. Here is the link to her blog http://30stovesin90days.blogspot.com/. She's doing a paypal or FOG check option, for FOG its the same, but with Melissa Amyx- Cat II in the memo line.

Good news on the SPA project proposal! I got the call Friday afternoon to let me know it was approved and I will be beginning construction at the beginning of next week!! The project is now fully funded and will be completed by March 5th, with a few weeks of evaluation and monitoring before I finish service and turn over my responsibilities to my replacement.

Town fair was just as fun as I hoped it would be! We were invited to a first communion lunch, went over to another friend's house to watch Convite (kind of like a parade, but it's all day dancing to marimba in heavy costumes) and had friends come to visit Cunen. The Conejos (the most famous marimba band in Guatemala) did come to Cunen, but because the Municipality was left in heavy debt, we had to pay an entrance fee. Last year it was in the park and free. The nice part about charging an entrance fee, is that all the drunks that wandered through last year's free performance stayed out to save their quetzales for alcohol.
On the main day of the fair there was a parade and Melissa and I walked with the other health center workers right behind the new mayor and his administration. The fair is in celebration of the Virgin of Candelaria so there were just as many religious processions as there were parades and dances. It was cool to have so much going on in town when its usually pretty quiet and low key. Most people are usually home for the night by six or seven p.m. but the night of the Conejos we left the dance around 1:30 in the morning and there were still lots of people dancing or watching and enjoying the music. All in all it has been a successful and enjoyable week. Things are turning out better than I expected with the new close of service date, and it has allowed me to make fun travel plans before returning to Pennsylvania. I will be traveling to a few sites in Guatemala that I haven't seen yet, then head on to Belize and Mexico, get in some beach time and hopefully see some Digo Rivera and Frida Khalo art in Mexico City. Then I'll be on to South America to visit family in Ecuador, perhaps see either Chile or Bolivia and definitely to Peru to see Machu Picchu, which has always been on my travels wish list.

I will be adding pictures as the stove project progresses!

big changes

In the last post I talked about how I had less than six months until returning home. I will be home in June, but my new close of service date is March 24th. I spent several days in this past week at an all-volunteer conferece in the Xela-area to hear about the restructuring of Peace Corps Guatemala. Currently, there are over two hundred Peace Corps volunteers serving in Guatemala. By March 24th, PC would like to have less than 120 volunteers. This is to have a better staff to volunteer ratio, and a more manageable number of volunteers. Although it is sad to see many sites losing volunteers, perhaps forever, it is an understandable decision given the security situation in Guatemala. Guatemala, as part of the "Northern Triangle" of Central America, was called the deadliest non-war zone in the world by the Pentagon.
What does this mean for Cunen? Not too much, beside the national budget going more towards militarization instead of infrastructure or health initiatives in Guatemala. This area of the country, like most rural areas (except near borders), is very safe and far removed from the gang and drug violence that plagues the capital and drug corridors. The problems found here are poverty related, one of the worst being chronic malnutrition (in some areas of the western highlands the numbers are as high as 7 in 10 children are malnourished). In our most recent health center meeting we were talking about malnutrition and heard that there are 1,200 malnourished children under five in our Municipality of 60,000 people. A pretty scary number, considering that, especially before the age of two, children's nutritional status dictates growth in adolescence and adult health. Children who are malnourished before the age of two are more prone to stunting, decreased mental capacity and chronic illness.
I joined Peace Corps with the hope of creating big changes, working hard and feeling like I had "made a difference." Once I actually came down from the high of training and had my feet on the ground, I saw how difficult that actually is. Language barriers (my K'iche' is still barely functional, unless talking about food, likes and dislikes, the weather or similar topics I am pretty hopeless), an overworked and underfunded national health system and community groups with a barely lukewarm interest in hearing an overeager gringa talk about preventative health, all made this task daunting. My actual successes have been on a smaller scale than I envisioned. I used cooking classes to lure the women's groups to my health talks and concrete skills like first aid to keep health promoter groups intact. I still lost some people, but there are the regulars that come back every month for information on nutrition and a new recipe. I will be finishing up service with about twenty graduated health promoters, instead of the forty or fifty that initially signed up.

When we were told that our close of service date was changed, it seemed as though our project would be postponed and left in the hands of our replacements. I was upset and wanted to figure out a way to still build the stoves in the time that I had promised the community. Yesterday morning I went to the mayor's office and begged and flattered to try to convince him to cover the rest of the funds needed for construction. I was told to wait and come back after the town fair, and that the previous mayor had left them with considerable debts. In the afternoon I got a phone call about the SPA funds. The committee will be meeting next Friday, and if they think it's a good project and that I can finish before close of service, they will approve it!
It's been a time of outrageous ups and downs, and I am going to be very busy for the next two months, but for the next couple days I am going to relax and enjoy the town fair with Melissa, Nicole and our Cunen friends.
The one picture is of my house, which I will be sad to leave because goodness knows when I'll be able to afford to rent a whole house again! The other is of Melissa getting a shoe shine because it amused me and the shoe-shine boys have been hassling us to get a shine since we got here.

2012!

It seemed so far away when I got here April 2010, but 2012 is here and I will be home in less than six months, but there is still so much to do here! After many months and obstacles I finally submitted the SPA application, so if it is approved, construction of the improved wood-burning stoves will begin mid to late February! Thanks so much to everyone who contributed through FOG, it was a huge help and made this project possible! I will be updating and posting photos as things progress.

I was back at the beach for New Year's eve, and it was fantastic. The pictures are of the ferry ride in through the mangrove swamp, and the last sunset of 2011 on the beach. The weekend included lots of dancing, good seafood (amazing ceviche!) and some swimming although the surf is pretty rough in Monterrico. It calmed down the morning of the 2nd as I was about to head back to Cunen, so I made it out past the breakers for about 5 mins and then had to swim back in because I got scared of sharks and other sea creatures. There were skates (or small sting rays?) jumping in the surf; it was strange to see them flapping above the waves. I'm not ashamed to admit I was a little scared of them too, that is how Steve Irwin died!

Due to low funds, work, a standfast, and town fair I will not be out of Cunen again for the rest of the month. Standfast is when Peace Corps tells us to stay put for a few days until the weather (or in this case, inaugurations) calms down. All the new mayors, govenors, and the new president will be taking over this weekend, so just to be safe, we'll all be staying in our respective towns for a few days. Standfast is always a good time to catch up on reading, watch tv/movies for hours on end, hang out with people in town or, as Melissa, Nicole and I usually do, bake something delicious. The weekend after next kicks off town fair preparations, although the real days of the fair aren't until the 30th-Feb 4th. Town fair is a huge event and the biggest marimba band in Guatemala, Los Conejos, is coming to play for the dance (if rumors are to be believed, and I hope so, because they came last year and it was excellent). It should be a productive and fun couple of weeks, and good for my bank account after all the festivities last month!

Feliz Navidad y Año Nuevo!

Last Sunday I enjoyed my first Christmas in Guatemala. I did not, however, celebrate in true Guatemalan style. There were fireworks, which filled the streets with smoke and loud, gunfire-like sounds but not too many bright colors. It seems as though sound is valued over bright colors popping in the sky, which is my preference, but no one asked me. Guatemalans traditionally eat tamales at midnight on the 24th, which are cornmeal and meat boiled in a banana leaf (the christmas ones are special because they put dried fruit in them as well). The other thing that is served at christmas is ponche, a warm fruit punch served with lots of fruit still in it. I didn't have either of those on Christmas because Penni and I were at the beach. Seafood is pretty much impossible to come by here in Quiche (unless you want to figure out how to cook the tiny dried shrimp that sit next to other equally questionable dried animal bits)so we had seafood on the 24th. I really enjoyed the typical Garifuna dish, tapado, which has plantain, coconut milk, fish, shrimp, and crab. It was my first time on the Carribean coast of Guatemala, and although the beaches weren't as nice as I hoped there was still a lot of fun to be had.
We didn't stay long in Rio Dulce but the boat ride between there and Livingston was really pretty. There is a colonial era castle, lots of cranes, cormorants and pelicans and gorgeous tropical foilage. In Livingston we hiked the Siete Altares (seven altars) which is a series of waterfalls that are a short boat ride or an hour and a half hike from the main part of town. We hiked on the way there and then took a taxi for the second half of the way back because rainy season isn't over in that part of the country and we kept getting rained on. We also went Canoeing and had a pelican land in the water less than a foot from the Canoe! It was not scared of us at all and actually seemed like it wanted something. Maybe it is used to tourists throwing bits of food, but we didn't have anything and he eventually went away.
The weekend before Christmas Penni arrived and we hung out in Antigua. Saturday morning we hiked Pacaya, which is an active volcano and we got to roast marshmellows and warm up in a steam vent. It was a much easier hike than Santa Maria in Xela but still had great views of the other surrounding volcanoes. We also had a really fun tour guide who was wearing a leopard print scarf without a trace of irony. This is not terribly uncommon however (men wearing women's fashions unknowingly) because clothes arrive from the states in big bales and then are separated by newness, quality, etc but not by the gender for which they were originally intended. From Antigua we headed back to Cunen so that Penni could get to know my site. We hiked to the waterfall, went to a few of the communities I work in and she met my coworkers and host family.
The first picture is of decorating the Christmas tree my host sister and Melissa's host brother helped me find and the second is from the English class Christmas party. We had baked chicken instead of Turkey but there was stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans and we made brownies for dessert.
It was, unsurprisingly not a very successful month for work, with several meetings cancelled at the last minute by the community members. I hope to get some good work done in January before people are carried away with preparing for the town fair which is January 30th-February 3rd.

thanksgiving and turtles

It has been quite a while since I updated. The last month has been a mix of ups and downs. I wanted to sit down and write several times, but it never felt right. My uncle who always read my blog passed away, and it was difficult to not be able to be home with the family. Thinking about updating the blog felt like writing him a letter he would not read. He was so encouraging of the work I am doing and was a positive influence in my life.

It was a fairly normal month in terms of work, I met with the regular women's and promoter groups. Topics this past month were natural disasters and emergency planning, first aid, reproductive health, and family planning. I also taught cooking/nutrition classes; we made some super yummy black bean burgers and in another class we made pineapple jelly. The promoters in all my groups are getting close to graduation. I will still be working with them after graduation, but more in a facilitator position to help them figure out their role in the community.

Last week I celebrated Thanksgiving all over Guatemala. Wenedsday night some friends and I cooked dinner in a cute hostel in Xela-- we bought part of a turkey (there were only four of us) and put that in the oven for a few hours and spent the day cooking and playing spades. It was really lovely. There were also sweet potatoes, stuffing, mashed potatoes, creamed corn, cranberry sauce, green beans sauteed in garlic, a spinach salad, and pumpkin pie for dessert. Needless to say, there were tons of leftovers and we had them in a modified version for brunch the next day. Then, I ended up going to Earth Lodge outside of Antigua for dinner Thursday night where another Thanksgiving meal was served. As it turned out, I had Thanksgiving three meals in a row! It was an extremely delicious and successful Thanksgiving for being out of the US.

On Friday I hopped on a bus headed toward the coast, and with only minimal difficulties arrived later that day in Monterrico. The Pacific coast of Guatemala is mostly black sand beaches, and Monterrico is one of the nicest and best known on that side of the country. It has turtle hatcheries, boat tours, and other tourist attractions. Both days I woke up early and saw a beautiful sunrise, Saturday on the beach and Sunday in a mangrove swamp. Apart from the turtles there are caimans, iguanas, herons, pelicans, sting rays and many more animals I don't know the name of but enjoyed seeing. Watching the pelicans skim the breaking waves for food was very cool. The tide is very strong in Monterrico, so I never went in too deep, but I'm hoping to make a trip to the caribbean coast for Christmas and make up for that. Penni will be coming to visit, so I think we'll be visiting the Livingston/Rio Dulce area. I am very excited to have her here to help me celebrate my first Christmas in Guatemala (I made it home to PA last year).

Both of my sitemates are away right now, and it has been odd but enjoyable to be the only gringa in Cunen. Today was spent planning for international HIV/AIDS day (Dec 1). A coworker and I will be doing a workshop and poster contest with the young people here, so we walked around today and put up posters promoting the activities.
After work I stopped by my old host family's house and chatted over an atol with them, then we watched some telenovelas, played go-fish and they invited me to stay for dinner, which was nice. They had been visiting relatives in another town for a few weeks so it had been a while since we'd spent time together. I've also been spending more time with my landlady and her niece. The three of us go jogging together most mornings. Now that it is the dry season, there are usually pretty awesome views of sunrise and the mist rising out of the valley and moving between the mountains. Although it sometimes feels really far away from everything, Cunen is a very beautiful place to live.

planning projects, aka I am almost done asking for help

Time is going so quickly! Next week is November, which means we shouldn't be expecting any more rain, woohoo!! We've had several days of sun, so I have clean, dry clothes and purified water (I hand-wash and line-dry my clothes so if it rains a lot nothing dries, I also purify my water using the solar ray method, leaving a 2-3 liter bottle of tap water on the roof for a full day of sunshine). Now that the rain has stopped we have clear, cold nights, with so many stars! With so little pollution (light or otherwise) and the altitude, I think around 6,000ft, the view of the stars is amazing but it is quite chilly. I am sitting here in a jacket and scarf but during the day a t-shirt is still fine.

I will be turning in the SPA application soon to be reviewed in November. When I turn it in I need to show a breakdown of how the money for the project will be spent and where the money is coming from (split between the community contribution, the municipal donation, donations via Friends of Guatemala and then how much I am asking SPA for) so if anyone would like to donate to the stove project in Llano Grande and has not done so already, please send that off in the next week or so (and email me to let me know that you did so, there is a bit of lag time while FOG processes the checks-- katemhoffer@gmail.com).
And a huge thank you to everyone who has donated!! I sent postcards as well, I hope they got there OK since the mail system here isn't 100% reliable.

This coming weekend is Halloween, which is not celebrated here, and November 1st is Todos Santos (All Saints day), which is celebrated. My sitemates and I will be celebrating both holidays in Antigua or near Antigua. There is a kite festival in a community about half an hour away from Antigua on Todos Santos. Kites are starting to pop up all over the place; many are home-made with different colored crepe-paper and sticks. The traditional belief is that the kite symbolizes the connection between the world of the living and the world of the dead, one end held by the person on earth and the kite up above in the sky. In Sumpango, where the festival is held, the best and biggest kites in the whole country are displayed on Todos Santos. I will be posting pictures next week!
People here also re-paint and bring flowers to the tombs of their relatives/ancestors and on November 1st they take lunch and eat in the cemetery. It is a day to celebrate ancestors and honor them by visiting and decorating their graves.

down in the valley

Cunen is in a valley ringed by mountains. It has its distinct advantages, one of which is a marked temperature difference from the higher mountain towns where it is only warm in the middle of the day when the sun is out. For the last two weeks it has been like living in a bowl of clouds. The sun has been out three days in the last two weeks and only one of those days did it stay out for long. The clouds drift in and sit, making it impossible to see past the lower mountains surrounding us.
I have always felt the effects of a lack of sunlight pretty quickly; after a few days with no sunshine it is much harder to get out of bed in the morning and I have very little energy throughout the day. The cold that has accompanied this rainy spell makes it that much harder to get out and do things. The only time I am warm is if I am hiking around, or in bed with lots of wool blankets. I haven't felt sad during this stretch of clouds and rain but it does sometimes feel like living in a dream world that is somewhere between waking and sleeping.
To cheer myself up and try to still accomplish things I make lots of hot tea, read online news to remind myself that the world outside of the cloud bowl still exists, and listen to Stevie Wonder-- I think it's literally impossible to listen to Stevie and not feel at least a little bit happier. I've also been reading a lot, as always, but because the rain has caused a lot of landslides that keep me from leaving home I have had an usually large amount of free time. I recently read The Feast of the Goat, about the Trujillo era in the Dominican Republic. It was a nicely layered story with good characters and lots of real Dominican history. I also read The Help, Year of Wonders, The 40 Rules of Love, The Hunger Games and am currently reading The Last Novel. Those are just the books I've read in the last two weeks. It has been rather nice, but I am hoping that the rain holds off and I can get back to work soon.
My sitemates have been doing mostly the same, we all share books and when we get tired of solitary activities we get together and cook. Melissa and Nicole both really like baking, so I have been eating more than my fair share of cinnamon rolls, cookies and scones. We were on Standfast for about a week, which means we cannot leave our community, and Melissa changed it to StandFEAST which describes pretty accurately what we've been doing. I get tired of sweet stuff after a while and crave salt and veggies so I've made sure we eat at least one regular meal a day with vegetables in it.

There have been a few days where the rain held off for long enough to safely get to the communities where I work. I have been pleasantly surprised by the commitment of the health promoters I am training. The groups have shrunk with time, but the people who are still attending the health talks are genuinely interested in helping their communities. Volunteerism is not as big here as in the states, so convincing people to sign up for a program where they will be doing health education for free was rather difficult. Now, after almost a year of working with the different groups I have three health promoter groups in three different communities. One only has three members, but they are really involved and have already given several health talks independently, even on days where I had to be somewhere else working. Another group has about six or seven promoters that show up regularly to meetings and they have been invaluable in doing all the house visits necessary before completing the SPA application. It has also been a great bonding experience to hike all over the mountains together visiting houses and joking and sharing our snacks. We even joke and laugh together, which I wasn't really expecting since they are from a very small, reserved community that is not hostile but definitely not warm to outsiders. In another community there is a group of eight to ten people that come to the trainings but its been a while since we had one. They live in one of the harder to get to communities and the road gets washed out when the rain is bad.
I was able to skype my friend Peter, who is a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cameroon, earlier today. It has been a really interesting experience staying in touch and comparing experiences. It's a great support to have someone that understands many of the frustrations of PC life (there are a lot of shared experiences, but also many differences) and its a reminder of how different each posting is. Signing up for Peace Corps, you don't really know where they're going to send you and my experience would be drastically different if I were living somewhere else. I am happy that I am where I am.

ain't no sunshine...

Oh I cannot wait for rainy season to be over. I think I have made it through the day with dry feet maybe once in the past week. And there are new mudslides pretty frequently on the main roads, so I haven't been out of northern Quiche since the beginning of September. The weather should improve towards the end of the month; I just have to aguantar (tolerate/bear) a few more weeks. The only thing that saves this season from being unbearable is the fog that rolls down the mountains and hangs over everything. It is really magical looking; especially in the afternoons before the rain when the dark thunderclouds gather behind the mountains and in the valley the clouds are low and misty.

The Hearts and Hands group was awesome, as usual. I really enjoy watching the group dynamic develop over the week. By mid-week each person has their tasks mastered in the stove-building process and my job as translator isn't so much to help them understand each other to build the stove, but to let the volunteers get to know the Guatemalan technician and the families who are receiving the stoves. It was an especially fun group of Canadian volunteers because all of them had been on a H&H trip before so they were already comfortable with the work, each other, climate/food changes and it was a smaller group than usual so we all bonded quickly.

Things are moving along with the stove project in Llano Grande. I met with community leaders from the Community Development Committee to put the final touches on the SPA application this morning. We only need a few more letters/signatures about municipal support and contracts for skilled labor and we'll be able to send it off for review.

Melissa and I started teaching English again after a summer break that was then extended to include the weeks around elections and independence day. It is fun to be working with our students again. I was impressed to hear how much they remembered after a few months without classes. We did a review class last week and will be starting with new material this Wednesday. They can introduce themselves, ask where someone is from, describe their families and hometowns and other things that are useful for basic conversation.

Sunday, which is pretty much always my day to relax, do laundry and go to the market was extra special this week. While walking the market circuit Melissa and I paused by an ayote. It is pumpkin-like gourd that Guatemalans prepare by boiling in cinnamon and brown sugar for Dia de los Santos (Nov 1st). We stood for a while and debated the pros and cons of buying it. It was huge and it was clear it would be difficult to break down for recipes, but I love pumpkin things in the fall and have been thinking about all the deliciousness that I am missing out on back home. We asked the price (10 quetzales, about a $1.25) and decided that it was worth a try. Several hours and one grater accident later, we were enjoying pumpkin bread (3 loaves) and ayote prepared the traditional Guatemalan way (enough for about 5 people) and we still had a fourth of the raw ayote!

It has been far too long since I put up pictures, I often forget to take my camera with me to events and then when I do take pictures the internet is so slow because of the rain that I haven't been able to upload any. I will work on that the next sunny day that I am around and at the computer.

cabin fever

I've made it safely through the first round of elections here and only suffered from ennui, which, considering the hubbub leading up to all of this, is quite good. I live on the outskirts of town which saved me from hearing the campaign songs that played all day everyday for the last few months. The songs were especially annoying because they are all popular songs redone with political lyrics, so I'd be walking down the street and start bobbing my head to Don Omar only to realize the lyrics are about jobs and progress instead of dancing.
Elections were Sunday a week ago and then the town immediately transitioned into preparations for Independence day, which was Thursday. There was a great parade with every school in town wearing different outfits and doing human pyramids and other routines as they went through town. I took tons of pictures but my internet is very slow so I'll have to post them later.
As I suspected it would be, work was very slow the last two weeks and that gave me way too much time to worry about work without actually being able to accomplish much. I had a few meetings and went around to different hardware stores to price the materials for the stoves. Right now I'm working on the community proposal with my counterpart and some community leaders to apply for Small Project Assistance grant money (through USAID) but its quite a process and we'll have to have a few more meetings before that can be sent off for review.
This coming week I'll be in the next town over working with Hearts and Hands, a Canadian organization that builds stoves in that municipality, doing translating and stove building. I'm very much looking forward to the work; the Guatemalan staff is really great and I'm getting to know some of the Canadians that come as there are usually a few that come more than once a year (this will be my fourth time working with the organization). Its also nice to have a clear-cut job since Peace Corps work is very rewarding but everything requires a lot of patience and flexibility because things often change and because of the difficulty of communication (no one has land lines, many people have pre-paid cell phones but never have money on them, so they can't call you anyway) there is always a touch of uncertainty about whether an event will happen as planned.
It has been an interesting and trying couple of weeks and I am looking forward to more work and a change of pace. It will also be good to be busy and not have to dwell on my extreme jealousy of everyone who is able to celebrate the beginning of fall with pumpkin spice lattes.

heavy rains and bad roads

This year it seems like bad weather is not just a Guatemalan problem; people here in Cunen have mentioned the earthquake and hurricane that hit the US last weekend. It hasn't been so drastic here yet, but we've had tons of rain every single night starting in the afternoon or evening that makes a deafening noise on my metal roof. The rain also makes traveling, even within my municipality, pretty awful. The road up to some of the communities I work in isn't paved, so when the rain gets bad the gravel gets washed away in some places creating deep ditches and holes and the micro-buses aren't exactly in tip-top shape so its a very bumpy ride.
But the rain is a nice excuse to drink lots of tea and read when I'm not out working, no one really leaves their houses when its raining this hard. I just finished "La Casa de los Espíritus" by Isabel Allende (The House of the Spirits). It's definitely the longest book that I've read in Spanish and although I still had to look up some words it was an enjoyable read.
I've been here in Cunen since I got back from in-service training and the weekend at Lake Atitlan, which has been good for catching up on work and spending time with my friends here Cunen. The people I see the most are my sitemates Melissa and Nicole; we cook dinner together several nights a week and alternate between southern dishes (Melissa is from Georgia and anything that calls for frying she does incredibly well. She also shares my addiction to way too much salt) and curries or stir-fry. I also visit with my old host family in the evenings sometimes. The room where I lived the first six months in Cunen is now a sitting room where Maria Isabel and I played Candyland when I last visited. I brought Candyland back from the States when I was home in July and she absolutely loves it. Just like six year-olds all over the world, she likes to play the same game over and over and over again. I think we played six games in row before I suggested we go outside and see the family's animals. They have a goat, which I'm not sure what they plan to do with and a whole family of ducks which I'm pretty sure is destined for the dinner table.
As predicted, the combination of heavy rain, build-up for the upcoming elections and Independence day has affected attendance of some of my health talks and training but there have still been many good days. This month I trained many of my groups in the basics of first aid, the importance of vaccines and also did a training with local teachers on HIV/AIDS transmission and prevention. Some of the promoters I've been working with also did their first health talks at a school last week. It was a great moment to watch them; when I first started working in Cunen it was a struggle to get groups formed to listen to my health talks, so having a promoter group that is far enough along in training to present a talk without me is pretty awesome.
Tomorrow morning I will be headed out of town in the early hours to go to the Quiche celebration of national health workers' day. There will be a parade, a basketball tournament (Melissa is playing and I'm cheering from the stands) and a dance! I'm very excited; last year I didn't feel as close to my coworkers so this year should be much more fun.

touching base with Peace Corps: lots of meetings!

After a full week of in-service training I feel very intimidated by the amount of work I have to do between now and November. The first three days last week we practiced making different infrastructure projects—stoves, cement floors and latrines. By day two, I realized I am in terrible cement mixing shape. I’ve got the technique down pretty well from all the years working with Dad, but the most heavy lifting I’ve done recently is carrying bags full of health talk or cooking demonstration materials. I was so sore for a few days. It was a fun couple of days because the families we worked with all had young kids who kept asking questions about how to say different words in English and talking about their favorite American musicians. They were big Michael Jackson fans and said that it’s a popular belief in Guatemala that he didn’t actually die or that he did die, but then came back to life. It was pretty funny.
After the infrastructure training we had project design management training with our Guatemalan counterparts. I still do not have a good working relationship with my official counterpart at the health center but a community leader from Llano Grande and a representative of Save the Children, a NGO that works in Cunen, who translates the health talks and trainings for the health promoters into K’iche’ for me both came to the workshop. We talked through all the different phases of planning a community project, from pricing the materials, paid labor and getting municipal, community and outside funding. It’s going to be a crazy process, but I’m looking forward to a new challenge since I’ve been in the health talk routine for over a year and am feeling ready to make this happen.
Friday, after our morning meeting, Melissa, Nicole and I headed to Panajachel for a much needed break. There we enjoyed crepes, lattes, the amazing Saturday barbeque at La Rumba, reading time in hammocks at La Iguana Perdida, some mediocre live music aided by mojitos and restocking on peanut butter and other hard-to-find groceries. It was a great weekend.
Today I went with Melissa to one of her communities to do a health promoter meeting. We talked about birth control and intrafamily violence. As always in such a conservative culture, it took a lot of explaining that this was just an informational session and because they are training to be health promoters they should know these things but we’re not forcing anyone to use birth control. There was a lot of giggling and also some people that sounded upset, but it’s always hard to tell when the discussion is happening in really rapid K’iche’. But when we did the condom demonstration a good portion of the group was paying close attention. There were still some people who were pointedly looking away, but it’s a touchy issue since many of them are opposed to birth control for religious reasons. Hopefully some of them will feel comfortable enough with the topic to talk about the different methods once they have finished training.
The last few months have been absolutely nuts with elections coming up on September 11th but the political propaganda music and parades will be coming to an end in less than a month! The beginning of September will be tough to get work done because right after elections is September 15th, Guatemala’s independence day. But working around local/national holidays is pretty much a constant struggle here so I suppose it won’t be too much worse than usual.

oh, so much time away from site

It has been a long run of vacation or work-related time out of site. I started the month in Antigua for the all-volunteer conference and after a few days there it was off to the USA! It was an amazing trip; I got to catch up with a lot of friends and family and summer in PA is gorgeous. Shannon and Brian's wedding was in the afternoon on Saturday July 9th. We spent the days leading up to the wedding getting all the final preperations done. I stayed with Nour so I had the opportunity to watch her make the wedding cake-- with baking, prep work for the icing, assembly, decoration and clean-up it was a many, many hour-long process. But definitely the most beautiful and unique cake I'd ever seen. After the service everyone enjoyed good food and a great night of dancing.
Sunday was a wonderful, quiet, happy/sad and definitely non-traditional day. Instead of giving the bride and groom some time alone together, we all showed up at their place in the early afternoon and went to lunch. It had been a very long time since we'd all been together and they left about a week later for grad-school in Idaho and I'm back in Guatemala.
The rest of the week flew by! Monday Nour and I got on the megabus headed for Harrisburg and Izzy picked us up in the parking lot by the mall. Drifting around the Target was slightly overwhelming, as all ventures into big stores are. Cunen doesn't have anything big enough for isles. Most stores here only carry a few types of soda, some candy, eggs, canned beans, toilet paper, dish soap and other random assortments of daily neccesities. I wouldn't caracterize the shopping exeperience here to be one of deprivation, only a lack of variety. If you are patient you can find almost anything (except nice cheese) in one of the stores or during Sunday market. So it is very weird to walk into an American grocery store and have an entire isle of just different chip and pretzel brands.
Tuesday I went to Philadelphia and walked around Villanova's campus with my college roomate Caitie, her boyfriend Jack and our friend Christine. It was a great but short visit and I had the opportunity to talk to the head of the accelerated nursing program there. Peace Corps fellows works with their nursing program so it's something I'm considering for after this is over (which is strange to think about since I'm only a little more than half-way done, but already time to start making applications).
Wednesday I, with tons of help from my family and Nour, made dinner and had a presentation at St. James about what I've been up to here in Guatemala. It was a really fun evening and I got to see a lot of people that I haven't seen in a very long time.
Thursday Mom, Izzy, Nour and I had a fantastic lunch at Rachel's Creperie and then I went to Manor Barber and had pretty much all my hair cut off. I think that they took off about fourteen inches and donated it to Nour's organization of choice. Danita and Penni met us at a cafe on Chestnut street and then we all rode up to Harrisburg to drop off Nour. Thursday night I had dinner at home, saw a few more people and tried to watch the movie Beutiful but was so sleepy that I'll have to finish it when I have netflix again (August 2012!).
Friday was off to the airport and goodbye to the U.S. and summertime. It is rainy season here so it gets rather chilly and rains pretty much every day, but the clouds hanging low in the mountains make for an incredibly beautiful view. After a rather extended period of intensely missing my friends, family and the long summer days filled with good food and much better transportation options, I am feeling happy to be here again. And I had a fantastic time seeing all my training friends at our midservice conference a week ago and got to enjoy the Antigua lifestyle for a few days. The Refuge has better espresso drinks than anywhere else I've ever been. I'll be back in Antigua in a few days for my midway medical check-up where I'm sure they'll find a few cavities. Guatemalans put tons of sugar in all hot beverages and fruit drinks so despite plenty of brushing and flossing, I'll probably need at least one or two fillings. I'm getting tired of all the travel (from here to Antigua is about 6 hours +/- half an hour depending on traffic and road conditions) but I can't help but be excited everytime I get an opportunity to be in a place where good coffee is served. Well, this has been a very long, rather rambling and perhaps boring entry but it really has been an interesting and fun couple of weeks.

In the USA

I'm hanging out in Pittsburgh for a few days getting ready for Shannon and Brian's wedding. It's been amazing to drive around and just see the city, eat at our favorite restaurants and enjoy the summertime. I'm loving being back in PA, even if it's just for a short trip.

Next wednesday I'll be giving a talk at the St. James parish house on prince St in Lancaster. So if you're in the area around 6 pm I'll be presenting on the Peace Corps experience, life in Guatemala and describing my program. There will be food: rice, beans and chicken, but if you come for the food you still have to listen to me talk!