The Things Our Mothers Teach Us

Thursday 6.24.10

Today, in one of my many periods of annoyances with the 10 year old boy Danny who lives in my house, I couldn’t help thinking how much more mature, respectful, and just generally nicer he would have turned out if he had grown up in my home. After dinner I was sitting in the living room, and somebody had left the television on (we just got cable last week so naturally nobody ever turns it off anymore). I waited a good 7-10 minutes to see if anybody was going to claim the channel it had been left to, but nobody returned so I felt free to change the channel. I started watching a program on chimpanzees on Animal Planet, in Spanish, and the Abuela came to join me. We like watching nature shows together. Danny came in about 20 minutes into the program and grabbed the remote control. He didn’t change the channel, but he did start scanning through the options, you know, where you can see the list of other channels on the bottom 15% of the screen. He patiently waited for our program to finish and the second the credits started rolling he changed it to some silly 5 year old program about making really cheesy crafts. What an annoying program that was.

I wanted to say so badly to him, “umm, you know, we were watching a show and want to continue watching this channel. You could at least ask next time you want to change the channel on us.” But I didn’t. I’ll work up to it, it will be good for him in the long run to learn some basic courtesy. In my house growing up this would have not been acceptable. Well, we watched one hour of television a day at that age and always watched the same programs so there really was no arguing over the television. But to me it’s just not acceptable, if somebody is watching a program, even if it has already finished, to change the channel without asking if they’ve finished. It’s just not friendly or courteous.

Another thing that bugs me badly about Danny is how he treats the women in the family. When he’s hungry in the morning he just screeches “Abuela!! Comida!, COMIDA!!!” The Abuela then prepares the comida, food, and puts it on a plate or bowl and puts in on the table. When Danny returns three minutes later he doesn’t even bother looking around him, just walks right up to his grandmother and demands “comida abuela!!” She points to the table as if to say “idiot, open your eyes”. He then walks up to her and demands “tortillas!” even though they are sitting an arm’s length away from him and two away from her. I can’t stand this sort of helplessness. He’s 10 years old and, although I understand it’s traditional for the women to always serve the men, the other men I have met so far in Guatemala have had much better manors then he. Growing up with my mom, if she offered you food or a treat and you didn’t say “yes, please” you got passed by and didn’t get anything. It was normal to say please and thank-you…no, it was more than normal, it was expected. Here it’s not normal, it’s not expected, and I can’t tell if they’re okay with it or not. I would feel rather disrespected if anybody came up to me and demanded food in a strong tone, without saying please, without any thanks, but it’s hard to tell with the culture differences if the women here who feed the men feel anything similar or if they’re just used to it.

And it’s not just the Abuela he disrespects; no, he’s just as rude to his mom as well. About a month ago we all went for a little picnic and the mom wanted Danny to wear a hat. He didn’t want to wear his hat, he wanted to wear her hat. She said no. She had her baseball cap on her head and also carried his sombrero along in a hand and tried multiple times to put it on him as we walked. Remember that this is a 10 year old, so in the US he would have just finished 4^th grade. Every time she tried to place the hat on his head he took it in his hand and threw it to the ground. The mom proceeded every time to pick it up, brush the dirt off, and try to put it back on his head. He again would throw it off, once down a fairly steep hill which she descended to retrieve it. Not only this, he ran around behind his mom and tugged quite forcefully at her long braided hair to try to loosen her had from her head. When he had almost gotten it and she began to get frustrated with him he just trotted away giggling, only to return in a couple minutes to do the same thing.

I’ve never wanted to give a good smacking to a kid so much. In my family growing up we were always responsible for our own things. If you wanted to bring a jacket, you carried it; if you didn’t want to bring a jacket you didn’t have to, but you weren’t allowed to complain when you got cold. My mom would never force us (okay, if we were going to the snow, she would surely pack appropriately for us) but, for a half day excursion where no extra-ordinary equipment would be necessary, at age 10 we were able and expected to take care of ourselves. And that’s the way it should be. This kid is going to grow up not knowing how to do anything for himself.

Moving on from the annoying son, this is something everybody in the family does: shout at the top of their lungs from wherever they are in the house to any member of the family, no matter where they are in the house. It’s so annoying to hear screeches of “sely!! SELEEEEENA!!!” when Selina is in her room with the door closed listening to music. Obviously she can’t hear her mom yelling for her, but the mom’s too lazy to walk the 10 steps from her room to go talk to her daughter in person. When she yells for Danny usually he’s in the living room watching TV and just doesn’t respond to her even though I’m sure he hears her. In my house growing up we weren’t allowed to have conversations from rooms away; it’s just annoying and unnecessarily loud. Whenever I would call to my mom from rooms away I would always get an “I’m in the kitchen” or “I’m in the laundry room” and nothing else. I wish I could introduce this tradition to my family here. It also says to me that you respect your children, too, that you take the time to walk to wherever they are and ask them a favor or a chore, instead of yelling for them to come at your beck and call. It says that their time is just as important as yours, which would be a good thing for these children to learn.

The last pet-peeve that I’m going to write about today has to do with another phrase I heard a lot as a child: “first do what I ask, then ask why”. Oh, if I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard those words… But it makes sense now. It says: I’m not going to argue with you about why I’m asking you to do this, I’m the mom and you’re the kid, but what I’m asking of you is not arbitrary; I’ll explain myself but that doesn’t mean you’re going to get out of doing it. The adults and children here definitely do not work on this kind of system. The mom asks the daughter to do something, the daughter starts arguing, the mom continues pleading, the daughter flatly refuses and skips away (usually giggling), and the mother goes and does whatever it was she had asked the kid to do. There’s no discipline, and there’s no respect. Now, I’m not a big fan of authority figures or of doing things just because I’m told, however, I think that if you have respect for a parent, grandparent, or elder, than doing something for them just because they ask is perfectly acceptable. Here both parties are at fault: it’s the parents’ job to teach discipline to the kids, so if the kids can’t or don’t listen, it’s mostly the parents’ fault. It’s also the kids’ job to be a part of the family and to have responsibilities as well, because if they can’t learn responsibilities when they’re growing up they will never be able to be contributing members of their community.

I am a long, long way away from being a parent myself, but when I see all these atrocious habits the children and youth have here I can’t help but think of all the things I would do to make sure my offspring come out 180 degrees different.

Father's Day

Friday 6.18.10

Yesterday was Father’s Day for all of Guatemala. We had quite a discussion, actually the same discussion with the same people that was had on Mother’s Day, about the fact that those days always fall on Sundays in the US. Why do they always happen on Sundays? How should I know? Do I look like I had a part in the planning of national US holidays? I did not actually say that, but I wanted to. Sometimes I just receive a bunch of ridiculous questions.

We celebrated Father’s Day with a little party and a series of concursos, competitions, which included prizes. Each teacher at the school here came up with one game where two fathers competed to win a prize, although I think that the concept of prize-giving is lost here as both of the participants each received a prize. For all the competitions. I can understand why though, it’s hard to get participation in Guatemala. After the first two competitions we ran out of volunteers so the MC asked the wives to volunteer their husbands. They began calling out names but still the husbands were shy, so then the MC started calling out names to waves of giggles and laughter and pointing from the audience. Everybody in this community knows everybody, and even though there are probably a hundred Josés, when the MC calls “Don José”, everybody just magically knows who he’s talking about.

Each of the teachers took turns with the microphone to explain their competition and to call on the participation of two fathers. When my host mother María, who lost her father almost exactly 15 years ago in a car accident, got the microphone it was clear that she was having a really hard time that day. She got about a half a sentence out before started tearing up and about a whole sentence out before she could no longer hold back from crying. She continued, however, and in the silence while waiting for volunteers to come up, she made a little speech. “I just want to say something to all of you out there who still have your fathers: care for them, love them, because fathers are precious and wonderful and someday they will no longer be here. I still love my father, I think about him even though he is in Heaven and not with me, and this day is hard for me. I am not embarrassed at all because I love my father and for all of you it’s important you understand just how special fathers are.” I couldn’t tell you why but I started tearing up also. I have not lost anyone that close to me in my life so I have no idea how hard it would be, but for some reason I started feeling so sad listening to María talk about her dad through her sniffles and glassy eyes. Shortly after she received her two volunteers, the competition continued, and everybody’s spirits lifted, although for the rest of the day it was hard to look at María because I knew nothing I had to say could ever be enough.

The first competition consisted of two fathers making tortillas. Each was given a ball of masa, corn mush, and proceeded to roll it and clap it between their hands to form a tortilla. After about a minute the crowd decided by round of applause who the winner was. The second competition consisted of a dance, where two dirty old men with very few teeth and who probably smelled of working in the field all day were given two lovely young (15ish probably) lady students from the institute to dance with. It would have been more than sufficient to dance for just a minute to some culturally typical marimba dance of Guatemala, but no, they danced for at least 7 minutes to various types of music: a waltz, a typical marimba song, the theme to the World Cup 2010, and yes, bumpin’ and grindin’ club music. I felt so embarrassed for the two girls but the crowd had a blast and all the participants were really good sports about it. Another competition consisted of two fathers, who were again given to young girl volunteers, and were instructed to do the hair of the girls. Both fathers combed and braided the long black hair of the girls, to my surprise, quite well. In another competition two fathers were given blusas, the typical top worn her by the women, corte, the skirt, and the faja, a special belt used to hold up their corte. They were in a race to dress themselves and then had to do a little dance once they had put on all their traje, what all the traditional clothing is called . During the middle of the dance one of the fathers lost his corte due to a loose faja and all the women in the crowd burst out in laughter. That was my favorite competition. My second favorite competition was when two fathers were given little baby dolls, had to dress them, and then had to wear them on their back using a square of cloth, which is the typical manner of baby/child transportation here in Guatemala. My counterpart José won this competition because his opponent could not properly tie down his child. This again resulted in uproarious laughter from the females in the crowd, including myself.

This was way better then the Mother’s Day competitions we had. Although the theme didn’t really have anything to do with Father’s Day, as all the competitions were really things that fathers never actually do, everybody had a really great time and I believe all went home in good spirits.

Homosexuality

Wednesday 6.16.10

Yesterday I traveled to the finca, soon to be named PAXIL (Parque Agroecológico educativo iXIL). Guatemalans like their acronyms, and they like them to sound good. This one actually has another meaning – Paxil, pronounced pa-sheel, is the name of the place in the Popul Vuh, the ancient text of the Mayans, where corn came from. This is a very sacred place and therefore the word is of great importance to the Mayans. I went with my new counterpart José Castro who is about 40 something years old, has 5 daughters and 5 sons aged 5ish to 25ish, and who is also the pastor of one of the four local Evangelical churches. We left at about 7 in the morning not to return again until 2 or 3, so that’s at least 7 hours spent together. And we’re going to be doing this once to three times per week. I’ll write more about my work at Paxil later, but today I’m going to write about an interesting conversation that we had during one of our breaks.

We had just walked non-stop about 2 ½ hours down steep hills to visit a river and climbed back up for about ½ an hour. We decided to rest, drink our water, and eat our bananas. The week before when we made a different but equally long journey I explained to him that I had brought so many bananas on our trip because they’re good for the muscles when they tire and also for cramps when we climb and descend such steep hills. This time he brought two bananas also. He started asking me about my house in the US, if it was very big, if we had cows and chickens, if we farmed our own maíz, etc… I responded that my house was not very big, that my mom’s house had two bedrooms and a small kitchen/living room, and that my dad’s house had three bedrooms and also a small living room and kitchen. What astounded him the most was that my mom and dad did not live together. I had already told him on multiple occasions that my parents were not together, that they had gotten a divorce when I was young, but maybe in the typical Guatemalan way he needs to hear things a bazillion times before it sticks. I spent at least 10 minutes explaining the various reasons why people might get a divorce, what happens with the children, no I do not know how much it costs to get married as I have actually never been married myself, yes they were actually married legally by the government, no they were not just boyfriend/girlfriend, no I don’t know if they had a religious ceremony as I had not been born yet, no they did not tell me the story later in life because by the time I had grown up they had already separated, no neither of them have remarried…questions of that sort.

He then asked me, also not for the first time, if it was true that the US permits men to marry men and women to marry women. I told him that some states permit it but most do not. We have a set of national laws but states are also allowed to form their own laws too. He, being an Evangelical pastor thinks of homosexuality as a sin because that’s what it says in the Bible. I debated in my head for quite some time whether or not to point out some of the many instances of homosexuality in the Bible, and then decided not to. Surely this conversation will come up again and I’d like to have my evidence a little more clear and eloquent before I start bringing in biblical references. He asked me what I think about homosexuality; if I think it’s a sin like it says in the Bible. I said that I don’t think it’s a sin. I called on the power of God to back me up here; I said to him, “if God makes us, if God makes us all different, if God gives us different preferences, how can what God gave us be bad?” He really didn’t know how to respond to that. He asked me again, as if my response wasn’t clear enough, what I thought about homosexuality. I told him that I had plenty of friends that are gay and they are still nice people, hard workers, they love their family and their friends, so I didn’t see a reason why they should be treated any differently than anyone else.

I asked him if he though gay and lesbian people could be hard workers, could love their family, and live good lives. He agreed very heartily, but still wasn’t sure about the whole marriage thing. He asked me if I believed they should be allowed to be married. I said I didn’t see why not if they were willing to love each other for their whole lives. He didn’t argue, but still wasn’t convinced. He continued to question me so I thought of the simplest albeit a little cheesy analogy I could think of. I have certain foods that I like a lot. My friend has certain foods that she likes a lot. Sometimes I don’t like the same foods that my friend does, but that doesn’t mean they are not tasty, just that they are not tasty for me. We may not understand why other men prefer men or other women prefer women, but that doesn’t mean it is wrong for everybody, just not for us. With a pondering look on his face that felt like it should have been accompanied by a rub of the chin and a glance into the far off distance, he thought about what I said and nodded his head in a very sincere way.

But here’s where I started to get a little more uncomfortable. He asked me how I thought a man and a man or a woman and a woman would have relations. He said very simply that their “apparatus” just doesn’t work. He asked me if I knew how it would work, and started making gestures with both his hands as if trying to figure it out. I simply said I did not know. He then asked me why I had never asked any of my gay or lesbian friends how it worked. I just said that was a very personal question that I did not feel comfortable bringing up, even with close friends. If this moment was a cartoon movie, that would be the moment that milk would come spewing out of my nose. Or rather water, because I don’t drink milk here.

We chatted a little bit more about how homosexuality is, overall, more accepted in the US although there are still many areas not as open. In the end it turned out to be a very interesting discussion and I was quite pleased that he actually seemed to listen to my answers and think about them rather than trying to fight with me with vague or unfounded arguments. This is the type of conversation I have been wanting to have since I got to Guatemala. A discussion where one side actually learns from the other, a discussion about something meaningful that includes an exchange of ideas and beliefs rather than an exchange of comments about something obvious (the rain sure is heavy today, isn’t it? There’s quite a lot of mud in the road, isn’t there? The milpa sure is green on this plot of land, don’t you think?) And while sometimes it’s frustrating to be repeating the same things over and over, as if nobody can remember back 48 hours to the last conversation we had about the exact same thing, it’s worth it to hold my temper and frustration to see where the conversation leads.

Some Things Seem So Simple

6.13.10

I already wrote paragraphs about why the grandmother is my favorite person in my town, but today warrents elaborating on that thread a little more. Last night I had a dream that my cat Ali was actually an ant, and I put her in a petri dish and sicked her on a spider. However, the spider became more ferocious than I had anticipated and turned on my cat (aka ant) so I grabbed the spider by the leg…and then became quite freaked-out because I was touching a spider and sad at the same time because the spider was eating my ant (aka cat). I’m still a little confused but I guess that’s just how dreams work.

This morning when I was making tortillas with the grandmother I started telling her about my weird dream, so she reciprocated and started telling me about her weird dream she had last night as well. She dreamt that a soltero, a police officer from the times of war, killed one of her little chickens with his gun, and that she didn’t understand why he would do such a thing. She complained to him about this killing of a chicken and he paid her Q25 (about $3) for her pollito, chick or little chicken, which she didn’t think was satisfactory. She said over and over “who knows why bad people do what they do” in her broken Spanish/K’iche’.

The exchange of dream stories is quite normal to me, as I enjoy having strange dreams and then telling the people that were participants all about them, though this particular exchange seemed special. It’s not that I think the Guatemalans I live with are strange or anything out of the ordinary, but it did feel a little weird but comforting at the same time to have actual proof that this old woman from another culture and a completely different background than me has strange dreams too and likes sharing them. I got rather giddy after hearing her story but I can’t really explain why.

La Abuela

(“The Grandmother”)

Tuesday 6.8.10

My favorite person so far in my town is Dona María, la abuela or the grandmother of the house. Almost everybody in this town is named María for females or José for males. This is no different for any of the 5 people (excluding me, of course) that live in my house. Grandmother: María, daughter: María, granddaughter: María, dad: José, son: José. The kids go by their middle names, Selena and Danny, which is quite helpful to me when I want to address someone more specific. The abuela speaks mostly K’iche’, but also speaks a fair amount of Spanish although at first it was nearly impossible to understand what she was saying. The people who speak K’iche’ as their first language, which is most people over the age of 25 in my town and many people under, speak with a very distinct Mayan accent when they speak Spanish. They tend to not finish their words; for example, to say “are you going to go to the store?” should be “vas a ir a la tienda?” but often gets shortened to “vas ir tiend?” with an enormous amount of annunciating on the parts of the vowels. This made understanding many people, especially the abuela, very difficult for my first month here but I am quickly becoming accustomed to it. The following paragraphs are various vignettes I have collected during the past few months about my favorite or most touching experiences with the Abuela.

The Abuela spends a lot of time in the home so she has become someone I talk with a lot. It’s still difficult to communicate with her, but the things we can understand from each other are just amazing. She’s a midwife, madrina in Spanish, and has been for 28 years – actually, I’m not sure if she said since she was 28 or for 28 years – either way, it’s quite some time. She still cares for pregnant women in my town and neighboring towns and she’s told me stories about babies being born, ceremonies related to the births, and the process of cleansing oneself after the birth.

She’s also told me some sadder stories. She herself gave birth to 8 children, though only 3 of them survived to grow into adults; the other 5 died mostly due to hunger when they fled to the mountain in the 80s during the war. She also lost her husband 15 years ago tomorrow due to a car accident. The Abuela doesn’t read or write, but she knows the date her husband died and she knows the date today, which is interesting to me. She also lost a grandchild who drown in the fútbol field about two years ago when it flooded considerably during a heavy rain. We walked by that part of the field together a couple weeks ago while she told me the story (for the third time, actually) but this time it was difficult for her to get the words out because of the tears that started coming. It was sad for me to hear this story and not know what to say to comfort her. I’m sure there’s nothing that I could have said, it’s just one of those times you have to be sad for a little.

Our school had a little party for Mother’s Day, the 10^th of May. I was responsible for handing out baskets as party favors as the mothers walked in. At that time I had only been here for a little over a month and I was not quite so well know as I am now. Many of the mothers who attended didn’t yet know me nor were accustomed to my gringa accent. Also many of them don’t speak much or any Spanish. I greeted all the mothers with a feliz día de la madre, happy Mother’s Day, and presented them with their basket. Most of them looked very confused and some of them tried to walk off without taking the basket. Running up to me as fast as her little legs and bad hip could take her was the Abuela. She, a little out of breath from sprinting those 10 meters, started explaining to the mothers in K’iche’ what I was doing and why I was trying to give them the basket. They smiled at her, then smiled at me, received their basket and hug, and proceeded into the party. It was really comforting to find out that day that I had somebody really looking out for me.

Sometimes we watch movies together like “Babe” and “Winnie the Pooh” and “Bambie” and a whole host of other kids films. She asks me how to say words in English, so I tell her how to say “sheep”, “pig”, “dog”, and then she repeats them in her horrifically hilarious accent “ship, shup, hahahahah”, “pick, peek, hahahahaha”, “dug, doog, hahahaha”, every time ending with a childish giggle followed by a que bonita la palabra de usted, how beautiful your language is. She then teaches me the same words in K’iche’, and gives me the same incredibly genuine laugh at my equally terrible K’iche’ accent. It’s quite a fun way to pass an evening.

One day last week I was lying on my bed upstairs with my window open when the abuela tapped on my window, really startling me because I scare quite easily, saying “Katy, Katy, we found a little animal, come, get your camera to take your pictures!” I eagerly grabbed my camera and ran downstairs to her gleaming face ready to point out the insect that they found. It’s more that cliché to say “like a child on Christmas morning” but that’s exactly what her face looked like. I assumed it was going to be some sort of beautiful butterfly, or something else injured that it could not fly away and that’s why they found it, but no. I come downstairs to find a 8-10 inch fat insect with two humungous sets of wings and a pair of pinchers (that I later realized could actually do no pinching) three times the length of its head. I, once again, jumped because I was more than a little surprised. The abuela laughed heartily at my reaction and became very active in getting sticks to position the animal in a place where I could better photograph it.

One Sunday a couple weeks ago I went with my family, all six of us, down to the finca to have a picnic. The Abuela had planted her milpa, corn, there so she had also gone down to work. I brought my sketch book because the last picnic we had was a little boring. I went out into the field with the Abuela and started drawing. She was “cleaning” the field, which basically means weeding the little plants that grow around the milpa and removing other brush so that the milpa can get water and grow without any hindrances. I told her I was not very good at drawing but I wanted to practice by drawing some milpa. She, standing in a field of thousands of milpa plants, began to point out to me the buenas milpas, the milpas which were very good to draw. In our immediate vicinity she probably pointed out about 90% of the milpa that she could reach with her machete as buenas milpas, making sure to describe to me in detail just why each one was good. One was very green. One was very healthy. One had torn leaves so it was not good to draw. One was very large. Every time she pointed out a good milpa plant she smiled glowingly, incredibly proud of her work, and even more proud to show it off. One reason I really respect the Abuela is that she always takes time to talk to me. She always takes time to explain things to me that I don’t understand, and if we come across a communication barrier we figure out a way to get over it; she doesn’t just give up like other people.

I’ve got plenty of other stories about the Abuela which I will collect and post at a later time, but I think this is enough anecdotes for one day.

An Interesting Dream

Monday 6.7.10

We were all marching in a single-file line through a building that had a lot of twists and turns and stairs. I was at the end of the line. Everybody was singing a song, some sing-a-long, where one person sings the first part and then the chorus sings the same verse all together afterwards. Only, the chorus sang the first part and one person sang the same verse after that, in a fancy, voice-fluctuating, over the top vibrato, American-idol-wannabe sort of way. She was annoying. We kept singing until we all reached a large living room at the top of the building with a lot of sofas on which everybody sat. I found my fellow Peace Corps buddy Chad and sat on the couch with him. He pulled out a green laminated folder, roughly the size and design of a restaurant menu, with yellow writing in Hebrew on the cover. It had song lyrics in Hebrew also on the pages which apparently everybody else knew how to read and sing. How did I know what language they were in? Well, in dreams, this is stuff you just know and don’t question.

After we were done singing I went downstairs to find another Peace Corps buddy Trent setting up a pink grass volleyball net on a perfectly groomed large lawn. When I asked where he got it, he said somebody brought it to him from the states. I told him he had no idea how happy I was (I have now not played volleyball in over 5 months).

I continued walking down the hall of a hotel, presumably the hotel we were all staying at, to find a bunch of other people waiting for a meal in the dining room. The dining room was pretty fancy, with white linens and little reddish pink flowers in softball sized spherical vases on every table. I recognized all of the faces as fellow Peace Corps Volunteers I have meet in the past few months. I talked with another friend, Jordan, who was rooming with some girl I went to high school with, though I was never friends with her nor have I spoken to her in the past six years. We decided to go to Chad’s house, which was just down the street.

We entered through the garage door, and stacked in his garage were hundreds and hundreds of cardboard boxes filled with egg cartons. He couldn’t stop complaining about the price of eggs and how difficult it was going to be to make a good profit off of all the eggs he has.

We all walked back to the park where the volleyball net was still being set up, only now the lawn had converted itself sand, so now we were setting up the net and lines in sand. We finished setting up, I grabbed a ball and a partner to warm up. We started throwing, warming up our arms, practicing our topspin, and…just as I tossed the ball to my partner to start peppering…I woke up.

I had to pee really bad.

Incredibly disappointing.

A Good Feeling

Thursday 6.3.10

(Quite a long post, but lots of updates)

Since I’ve been out of writing updates for a while, I feel like I should just review a little my general feeling of my time spent here in my site so far: I’m happy. The children whom I encounter on the streets no longer stare and point all the while hiding behind their mother, no, they say “buenos tardes Katy!” When I walk from my house two blocks down to the store, the kids don’t giggle and call me gringa anymore, they ask me when I’m going to come play fútbol with them. I’m on a first name basis with the microbus driver and helper. When I meet adults in the street they greet me with a genuine smile and a “buenos tardes” or a “xb’ek’iq’” or the appropriate greeting for whatever time of day it is. People in the market in a town 45 minutes away recognize me and shout “Katy!” when they see me, even though I don’t recognize them most of the time. People in the microbus terminal see me and don’t ask me anymore what town I’m going to because they already know. They know me, and I feel like a real part of the community because of this.

I do still get the weird looks and stares and silly questions like “don’t you miss your family?” or “how old are you?…and you’re not married!!?” from people I don’t know. And every person that I meet feels like it’s their moral obligation to explain to me how many relatives they have that are now or have ever worked in the United States, in what state and/or city they live in, how long they’ve been there, if they themselves have ever been to the US with all the corresponding information, and then they recite to me all the words in English they have ever learned in their entire life (which is usually between two and five).

“hchigh, hhuw auyuu” hi, how are you?

“wash yoo niim” what’s your name?

“guut” good

“ohkeeey” okay!

“guut beigh” good bye

This is a little more than irritating but I have learned to accept it and try to segway rapidly into some other topic to talk about, like the weather, the milpa (corn harvest), how many brothers they have, or the fact that in the US people do not get married “just for two or four years or a certain set amount of time”. It’s quite interesting to me how many people have asked me, “so, in your country, do people get married forever or just a little while, like two years or five years? Because I’ve heard that you can say at the beginning that you just want to be married for two or five years?” I always reply that the idea is always to be married forever, but sometimes people just find out that they don’t work as well together as they thought. Or sometimes one person turns out to be a bad person or a drunk and they get a divorce. “Oh, well I heard that they just get married for a short period of time.” Yes, that happens sometimes, but the idea from the beginning is that they will be married forever. “Oh, but some people just get married for a short period of time, right?” Yes, but that is not the plan from the beginning. “Oh, because I heard that people just get married for a few years and that’s all.”

The first couple weeks I spent here at site I was really frustrated with all these questions. It consumed a lot of my energy to answer the same boring questions over and over, and I was quite frustrated. Now I get these questions less and less, and I get more questions like “where are you going?” and “it’s beautiful how sunny it is, isn’t it?”. These topics are considered quite advanced for Guatemalan small talk so I feel quite honored and much less frustrated to be in this next stage of conversation topics.

I’m getting busier with work, doing more interesting stuff than I had been during the first month. This week I’m going down to the finca twice to scout out where we want to make trails for horseback rides. My coworker thought this could be done in half a day, but I told him we should plan on a full week. We compromised on two days and then we’re going to see where we are at that point. We have a test-run with a group of tour bus operators that are going to come sometime in July and act as tourists to evaluate us and give us pointers, so we have to have our main points of interest up and running by that point.

I have another idea for a nighttime activity that I think will be popular with tourists – especially from other countries. The idea would be to go to two or three different houses, spend about 30-45 minutes at each one, and hear a story and get a snack or a drink at each house. The people of El Quiché were severely affected by the war in the 80s and I think the stories about the hardships of the war, being displaced from their homes, and living in the mountains on the run for four years of their life share a very rich and important part of their culture. Right now I’m trying to find families willing to tell their stories, willing to have tourists in their home, willing to share a chuchito or enchilada, snacks; an atol, a typical drink; and a cuxa (cusha), the local moonshine. I think that talking in small groups, in a more family-like and relaxed setting, and without the pressures of a schedule to keep is exactly what tourists who come to visit a small town are looking for. They want the experience of a small town; to learn the history of the locals, to experience their customs and eat their food, to see their houses and their actual standard of living. Not necessarily to live exactly like the locals, but I think when people really seek culture they seek this kind of experience.

Aside from the work part, which occupies a surprising amount of time considering what I actually accomplish in one day, the rest of my social life is going pretty well too. I feel like I’ve actually made a few friends based on more than the fact that they are also unmarried young women. I have build rapport with the people who manage the local stores and I’ve gotten pretty good at small-talking and spending a good half hour chatting about nothing much when I go and visit them. I can even remember most of their names!

As far as my Spanish speaking goes, I have now advanced from a Spanish-English word-for-word dictionary to a Spanish dictionary with the definitions in Spanish. I find the Spanish-English dictionary to be useful for day to day use but insufficient for really understanding new vocabulary words and their context. However, it takes me a good 10 minutes to look up one word because in the definition of one I find two other words that I don’t understand…and have to look up. In their definitions I inevitably find another one or two words that I don’t understand…that I have to look up. In this way I actually learn a good dozen words when my only intention was to learn one. I’m reading Don Quijote in Spanish and this is why I’m looking up so many words. The first part is about 500 pages long and my goal is to finish it in one month, which makes it about 20 pages a day. I usually read at a pace of one page in two minutes or a little faster, so I’m thinking more like one page in five minutes for this book. I don’t mind, I’ve got plenty of free time, I’ve heard it’s a really good book, and it’s nice to have something to talk about with other people.

I’ve also been taking a lot of photographs, mostly of insects, but soon I’m hoping to branch out and do some more artsy-fartsy stuff. I love photographing insects, but it’s feeling a little rudimentary and I feel like I could be doing a lot more advanced stuff and learning more about photography by branching out into different genres. But nothing fascinates me as much as nature does so I’m a little short on ideas right now.

So, emotional health: good, psychological health: good, physical health: umm…lacking. I try to take a long lunch every day to go for a walk or a run, but it’s hard to explain just how important it is to my physical and mental well-being to do something active every day. Plus except for the past week it’s been raining basically every day all day, or off-and-on when you never ever know when it’s going to start or stop.

The food situation is going really well, also. One of my new favorite foods is platanos fritos, fried plantains. I cook them myself and I use way way less oil then I was taught to, but they still taste delicious with a little sugar or cream. One platano costs Q1.50 (12 cents) and it’s a perfect amount for the dinner of one person, maybe with a few black beans too. Another favorite dinner of mine is cooked green beans in scrambled eggs. This may sound strange, but it’s actually not. You whip up one egg until it’s nice and fluffy, line up 8-10 green beans in a bowl and coat them with the airy eggs, then cook them all together in a pan. I eat them with a little tomato sauce or hot sauce and some salt. The first time I tried them I thought it was a strange combination of flavors, but now I really like them. It’s cheap and easy and quite healthy. I introduced my family to the concept of French toast, which was quite delicious even though we used powdered milk. (On an off note, I will never ever be able to hear the phrase “powdered milk” without thinking of Garrison Keeler and his song on Prairie Home about powder milk biscuits.) I’m almost ready to try cooking meat on my own. There actually is one store in town that sells fresh chicken by the pound, so I’m going to go one day and buy me a half pound of meat, season it (because nobody in Guatemala knows how to add flavor to their food besides hot sauce or cilantro), and cook it my very own self. I don’t really care so much if it comes out tasty, at least for this first try, but it has to come out cooked all the way through because I really don’t want to get sick.

I haven’t been sick in the past few weeks, and I attribute this to becoming an agua pura (filtered water) snob. My family boils their water, but I had a feeling that even boiling water for the recommended 15 minutes was probably not enough to remove all the bad guys living in the water causing me bathroom problems. So now I buy 5 gallons of water every week for Q15 (about $2) and it more than lasts me for all my weekly drinking, tooth-brushing, and cooking needs. To any of my PC buddies reading this and still drinking boiled water, vale la pena bastante (it’s quite worth the cost) to buy your agua pura every week.

On a musical note, my counterpart just got his keyboard fixed so now I can start playing again and hopefully start teaching as well. Before he got it fixed I could play, but the connection was iffy which made the sound crack no matter how loudly or which notes you played. My counterpart also really wants a youth choir to be on the program of entertainment for when tourist groups come, but the music teacher doesn’t know how to read sheet music and I doubt she has any experience directing a choir. I don’t have any experience directing a choir, but I feel like I have more basics than she does, more patience, and a better method of teaching. Besides, none of the students like her. She’s one of those people who was really nerdy and controlling in high school, who always thought she was right, and who everybody thought was a big pain in the ass because of all her opinions and thoughts that never really had anything to do with anything. Now, Marta is not a pain, but I understand why the students don’t like working with her. She’s one of those people that talks down to everyone else, whether she knows it or not I’m not sure, and always has a firm opinion that she is correct. Last week I gave an English class and I instructed everyone to put their pencils down because we were just going to speak for a little, that we would have time to copy after we were done speaking. I told them this about four times before I confiscated two pencils (hers and her father’s). Everybody laughed and was in good spirits, but I was a little frustrated that a teacher would have that hard of a time following simple instructions.

Well, I have tired of writing today, but I’m going to try hard and give more frequent updates and hopefully some interesting pictures that are not of insects. The sunrises are exceptional, but they only happen around 5:20am and if I’m unlucky enough to be awake at that hour it’s because I have to pee, and then when I exit the restroom the sun has already risen and the clouds are no longer lined in gold nor the hills textured and illuminated by the extreme angle of the sun. But I’ll try for something interesting soon.

Dreaming in Spanish

Wednesday 6.2.10

I think I’ve hit a landmark in my Spanish speaking abilities. For the past five nights in a row I’ve dreamed in Spanish. Now, it’s rather unusual for me to remember my dreams five nights in a row; if I’m lucky, every other night. But this is strange. The first night I was trying to cut down plantains and bananas out of incredibly tall trees from a 5 or 6 story building using only my machete. Another night I dreamed that this community I’m in now wasn’t actually my permanent site, but rather another 3 month training period. I was really upset and worried because I’m really happy where I am and don’t want to leave. I should have written all the dreams down the mornings after because now I don’t remember them all, but I do remember thinking each morning when I woke up, wow, I spoke a lot of Spanish in that dream.

I’ve heard that this is really the mark when you begin to feel really comfortable with speaking the foreign language, when it stops being so foreign and starts becoming more natural. I’ve been waiting for this day since I landed in Guatemala almost exactly five months ago. I’m going to try to avoid sounding cliché here but it may be unavoidable: I can hardly believe I’ve been here five months already. They say something like “the minutes pass like days, and the months like seconds”, meaning of course that the day-to-day can sometimes seem slow and uneventful, but before you know it your two years are up and you’re back to the states in major tortilla withdrawal. Now, it is way too soon to even think about what’s going to happen two years from now, but after saying “five months” it suddenly doesn’t seem so impossible to live in a foreign place for that period of time.

A First

Tuesday 6.1.10

Yesterday I did something I never thought I’d do…teach English. I’ll be teaching a one-hour class two days a week to the teachers at my school here, and another two-hour class on Sundays for the people who can’t make it during the week. I’ve heard that, with teaching English, you’re either really into it or you’re really not. I’m really not, but, it something that everybody really wants so if they’re willing to put their time and effort into it I suppose I am also. Yesterday we learned the alphabet and one animal for each letter. It was really funny listening to them trying to pronounce lizard and zebra. I tried to give them easy words or words that sound very similar in Spanish and English, like elephant (elefante) and giraffe (jirafe). The thing that I’m doing differently than my K’iche’ teacher is I’m explaining to them how to hold their tongue and mouth and how to move the air to make all the sounds. My K’iche’ teacher doesn’t do that, she just says, “no, it’s kach not kah” or “it’s qa not qua”, when I really can’t tell the difference between kach and kah or qa and qua. I tell her multiple times per day, “I know you can hear the difference because you’re trained, but I can’t hear the difference. Can you explain to me what goes on with my tongue and throat to make that sound?” All she can do is repeat that “it’s not kach, its kah”. It’s frustrating.

So I’m going to do my best not to frustrate my pupils like she frustrates me. There’s a whole ton of other stuff that bugs me about my classes in K’iche’, for example, the unstructured, unplanned nature of each day. We’ll learn two or three worlds having to do with parts of the body, then we’ll learn two colors that are found nowhere on the body, then we’ll learn three verbs that have nothing to do with the body or colors, then we’ll learn five fruits. I could understand if here theme for the day was words that all end in q’ and k’, and that would account for the seeming-randomness of the groups of words, but even in pronunciation I cannot find a common thread. She was also incapable of explaining to me the difference between the future tense and the present tense. She gave me examples of two verbs: to jump and to work, then we conjugated them, but differently. I asked her in as many ways as I could think of the reasons for the differences in the two sets of conjugated verbs. All she could tell me was “here, there is one person. Here, there is more than one person.” “Well, yes, I understand that, but here this one person is different than this same person there. Why are the patterns different?” She couldn’t answer. She could have simply told me that there is one pattern for the present and one pattern for the future, but instead she tried to explain to me how “this one thing you can do without materials, and this thing you need materials”. She was trying to get at, this thing you can do now, and this other thing you have to wait until later to do. Why the words present and future didn’t pop into her head, I don’t know.

I know I’ve written in the past how with Guatemalans you have to repeat yourself over and over and over, saying the same thing to get it to stick. I have to figure out some way to tell her that I don’t need that. She has only one way of explaining things, and if I don’t understand she just repeats the same thing, perhaps slower, perhaps louder, perhaps she annunciates different words or uses gestures. But she is incapable of thinking about more than one explanation to a problem. Which is frustrating, because I’ve always prided myself in my teaching and coaching on figuring out may ways to explain, show, or walk the students through the problem because I understand that everybody learns in different ways.