Temblor, Truck, or Thunder?

Buenos Noches from Xela!
As of this week, I have a new favorite game in Xela. Scott and I call it "Temblor, Truck, or Thunder?', and like the name suggests, the game consists of guessing whether the loud, throbbing noise we just heard and felt was a brief temblor (an earthquake registering less than a 7.0), a truck with a wicked sound system and no muffler driving by over the speed limit and shaking the walls, or a thunderclap emanating from somewhere further up in the hills. There have been plenty of all three possibilities this week - the rainy season is a few weeks away and I think the thunder is getting warmed up for opening day; my host mother told me that little earthquakes signify the shift in weather patterns, which seems plausible to me at least; and noisy trucks are ever-present.

When I wasn't busy playing my new game, the clinic kept me occupied. The education team finished up with Llano del Pinal, the largest school in the valley, this week and I'm happy to be moving on to a new community. Though Llano is the largest and most prosperous community in the Palajunoj Valley, attendance rates for the class field trips to the clinic for check-ups and education lessons were atrocious. Less than half of all students, kindergarten through 6th grade, visited the clinic during their classes' assigned days. One theory is that Llano's relative wealth acts as a disincentive for clinic visits, in that families are less enticed by free health care. It's possible that families feel that since they live in concrete houses with running water, parasites and other diseases are not an issue. Judging by the number of students we did distribute medicines to, however, I don't think that's entirely the case. Also, when we visited the school to hand out medications to the niños who had come on their field trip, the students who hadn't made it to the clinic seemed enthusiastic about Primeros Pasos in general, and very excited about the possibility of returning for a consult at a later date. A mysterious and frustrating situation!

Whatever the reasons for the absent students, it was disappointing to see all the preparation and effort put in by the Primeros Pasos staff only reach half of the intended audience. We're hoping that with a different school starting their series of field trips this Tuesday, attendance rates will improve significantly. The students who did make it to the clinic this week, however, were tremendously fun to work with. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday brought classes of kindergartners and preschoolers, who were impressively attentive and very cute. The main thrust of our lessons for the littlest kids is healthy choices - the difference between good foods and bad foods, washing your hands often, brushing your teeth regularly (we give them soap and a toothbrush after their visit), and throwing your trash in a trashcan. One little boy raised his hand while the class was enjoying their bananas (the healthy snack they get after they wash their hands) and explained that sometimes, during Christmas, his family makes cakes and was it okay, during Christmas, since it was a holiday, to eat cakes to celebrate the season with his relatives? It was hard not to laugh, but I didn't want to offend him since he was so concerned. We explained that yes, eating sweets and desserts from time to time is fine, and that the important thing to remember is to eat far more good foods than bad foods every day.

Thursday's class was exciting as well, though not nearly as cute. The larger communities in the valley have Accelerated Primary School programs that offer a way for non-traditional students to cover grades K-6 in two years. I was impressed by these students' courage and dedication - it takes a great deal of each to start with kindergarten lessons as a 10-year old, for example. Over 25 students from the Accelerated program came to the clinic Thursday, and Scott and I had our hands full. We taught two different lessons, which was exhausting but really fun. The students were alert and eager to participate, and I was glad to finish Llano's lessons on such a high note.

Outside of the clinic, Scott and I took an adventure to Totonicapan on Saturday afternoon. This picture below might be my favorite taken in Guatemala thus far:


Totonicapan is about an hour outside of Xela by bus, and the views of the valley on the ride over are almost worth the trip itself. The village is also far more indigenous than the big city of Xela - Scott and I were the only two white people we saw in the town all day. We chose Totonicapan because it has a Saturday market, and we heard that the town itself was also quite pretty. The little girl above dashed into the picture as it was being taken, and I didn't notice she was in the photo until I uploaded all the shots onto my laptop. Not only is she precious in a pink and purple traje, but the fountains are painted like jaguars! The cathedral is on the left in the background and the municipal theater is to the right. I liked the landscaping in this town square as well - there were lots of flowers in bloom around fountains.

Totonicapan also has the distinction of having TWO town squares. I have no idea why, but it doubled the amount of photo opportunities. Here is a statue commemorating the 19th century indigenous peasant rebel leader Anastasio Tzul in the second central plaza:


As with most things in Guatemala, it helps to have a sense of irony. Though it's a nice populist gesture to have Tzul commemorated in a statue, it would be much more befitting of his legacy to enact policies to benefit those he fought for almost 200 years ago. Namely, the still-marginalized Maya, the socio-economically disadvantaged, and rural residents in general.

Anyway, here I am in the second central plaza, slightly in front of and to the left of Mr. Tzul's statue:

This fountains have jaguars, too!

Visiting Totonicapan on a market day - though I couldn't pull the trigger on bunnies, bags of chicken feet, or yards of fabric - was an opportunity to participate in an authentic highland Guatemalan experience. Similarly, I spent Wednesday night in a cooking class focused on chapin (local parlance for 'Guatemalan') specialties. This week's lesson? CHILE RELLENOS! Here they are, just after stuffing:


And here they are, ready to eat! MMMMMMMMM.....


Though time and labor intensive, the recipe is not technically challenging and I am excited to give it a try in the Entremundos kitchen the next time I pick up some peppers in the market.

Finally, I wrapped up the week with an ecclesiastical celebration. The church I've been going to is Saint Mark's/San Marcos Episcopal, and today was the feast of Saint Mark AND confirmation Sunday AND the bishop was there. It was a big deal. The requisite marimba band was present, of course, for the post-service celebration, and everyone was definitely in a mood to celebrate since the bilingual service contained baptisms, confirmation, communion, and all the scripture readings twice (once each in English and Spanish). In addition to the marimba, the beef stew, loads of cupcakes, and watermelon smoothies, however, was a teenage alternative rock band. I had to take a picture:

The bishop seemed impressed.
I, in turn, was impressed with the bishop although I didn't get a photo. His home church is in Chichicastenango, and his outfit (mitre and all) were custom-made in the traditional textiles and colors from that region of Guatemala. It was beautiful, and I liked the respect and significance behind the action, too. Hooray for church authorities with social consciousnesses!

This concludes another week's post, and another month's worth of entries as well. Hasta mayo,
Katy

C-c-c-cambios....

Happy post-Tax Day greetings to all my American friends!
Since I'm an aspiring graduate student living out of the country for six months, my parents kindly requested an extension for filing my taxes, so April 15th was not, in fact, my tax day. It was, however, my father's birthday and the day I returned to Xela from a 3-day vacation in Antigua. Both excellent reasons to celebrate!
Also a cause for celebration, mi novio of three years finally made it to Guatemala. I met Scott in the Guatemala City airport Monday afternoon and we took a shuttle to Antigua. Isabel and Jose, my homestay parents from last summer, graciously received us as guests and prepared us excellent Guatemalan breakfasts (refried black beans, eggs and tomatoes, chili sauce, fresh bread, cream cheese, orange juice, and coffee) each morning. To say that staying with them was delightful is an understatement.
Scott had never been to Central America before last Monday, and Antigua is a small enough, tourist-friendly city that his culture shock was mostly mitigated. Consequently, we got right down to the serious business of enjoying our vacation. For our first adventure, we visited the ruins of the San Francisco church, a former convent abandoned after a series of earthquakes tumbled the walls and convinced the city leadership to move the capital from Antigua to Guatemala City in the late 1700s. San Francisco is also the home of San Hermano Pedro's tomb, housing the mortal remains of the first Guatemalan saint. Here's a snapshot from the interior courtyard of the monastic ruins:


And now from another angle:

I thought the colors and the lighting were spectacular. Even though I spent four weeks living two blocks away from San Francisco last May, I had never visited the inside of the ruins, and I'm very glad to have finally checked that box.

Antigua also has its own mirador point overlooking the city, somewhat similar to El Baul or La Muella, two easy dayhikes I enjoy in Xela. I took the photo below right as the sun was beginning to set, and you can see the entire town of Antigua (about 12 blocks by 12 blocks in total) and the partially obscured Volcano Agua providing a dramatic backdrop.


Our final day in Antigua started with a bike tour of a nearby coffee plantation, something I highly recommend to anyone visiting the city in the future. The bike company (Quijote Cruisers) operates out of the front room of Isabel and Jose's house, and there's a dog named Estella who helps clients pick out their cruiser bikes. This is what an Antigueño coffee finca looks like:


The finca we toured sells to Starbucks and they use organic, eco-friendly methods of agriculture, including planting macadamia trees to naturally shade the coffee plants. Here I am whacking a macadamia nut shell with a rock, cave woman style, to get the nut inside. Our guide told me that squirrels have a better technique, but I feel like they have more practice cracking macadamia nuts than I do, so I'm okay with that.


After our 2 hour bike and coffee adventure that morning, Scott and I cleaned up and headed off to Las Capuchinas, another colonial ruin, except for this complex was a convent instead of a monastery. Here Scott is gazing over the former great hall:


The architecture is stunning, and I decided that if I had to be an 18th-century nun, living and working in Antigua's convent wouldn't be so bad at all.

It's high mango season in Guatemala, and I've been savoring the chance to buy them fresh and cheap in the markets. My technique, like with the macadamia nuts, clearly needs work since I can't eat a mango without covering my hands and face with pulp and juice, but I did convince Scott to carry two mangoes around Las Capuchinas until it was snack time. We had a mid-afternoon refacción in the garden (see below:)


Thursday morning, we took a 2.5 hour shuttle from Antigua to Xela and go settled into Entremundos, an NGO/pension house 3 blocks from the Parque Central. Entremundos is a partner with Primeros Pasos and they do a lot of really cool volunteer/development/sustainability work on their own. I'm excited to become a part of the community over the next four months. Also importantly, Entremundos has wireless, hot showers and an OVEN. Ovens are a rare commodity in rental housing around Xela, and I have already baked a squash casserole. I have big plans for brownies and other such delicacies as well.

Friday morning, Scott and I both headed to the clinic for his first day AND a big announcement - after a month or so of searching, Primeros Pasos has named a new director! Everybody is really excited about Margarita, la nueva directora, and I'm looking forward to working alongside her in the coming months. She is originally from the Valley and has been a practicing social worker for years, both traits that can really benefit the clinic's scope of operations. And though I've only interacted with her briefly, I hope that I can learn from her experiences and perspectives as a woman working in health care and development.

After the clinic meeting and announcement, the education team (currently consisting of myself, Scott, and the education director) hitched a ride with a medical student who has a car to distribute medicines to the students who visited the clinic last week. This was my second time handing out parasite meds in this school, and I was still struck by how excited the students were to receive anti-parasite drugs in front of their classmates. Instead of a stigma, it was a source of pride for the students receiving our attention. At the very least, the niños' excitement signifies an openness and willingness to discuss health issues, qualities often lacking in other public health intervention situations. And if the Guatemalan students aren't embarrassed to get anti-parasite meds in public, then there's really very little reason for anyone, anywhere, to be ashamed to receive healthcare treatment.

In my volunteer work on the clinic's development side, I'm still mastering Salesforce.com but I have grand plans to enter/organize all of the 2009 donations by the end of this week. Stay tuned for updates there. Outside of the clinic and a mini-vacation in Antigua to celebrate the boyfriend's arrival though, la vida quetzalteca continues as usual. A Dutch friend of mine turned 23 this week and we celebrated her birthday with a piñata Saturday afternoon - at one point, the majority of the party guests were speaking in Dutch amongst themselves and I had to remind myself that I was in Guatemala. Globalization, indeed.

The kindergartners are visiting the clinic this week as their field trip, there's a costume benefit party for Primeros Pasos Thursday night (the theme is nerds vs. monsters, if you have any dress up suggestions), and I've penciled in three different yoga sessions, so the next few days should be wonderful as well. The first two months in Guatemala have been fantastic and I'll be very fortunate if the trend continues! Besos until next time,
Katy

Volcano!

Good morning! It's a beautiful day in Xela, Guatemala, and the smell of chile relleños wafts through my homestay as I write this blog entry. Today is my last day of two months living with Doña Elena and her family and she's decided that the only proper way to send me off is with a batch of chicken-stuffed peppers. I'm certainly not going to disagree with her!

After the conclusion of Semana Santa and 9 days of vacation last Sunday, it was nice to get back to the clinic. I was the only volunteer health educator working in clinic this week, so I got a taste for leading the education classes all by myself. Fortunately, it was not a disaster. There were a couple of minor mishaps registering the kids (for example, five students arrived late on Wednesday, and I had already printed off the attendance sheets), but nothing catastrophic. All in all, the first graders were receptive and attentive enough to the importance of hand washing, healthy snacks, and regular checkups with the doctor.

The clinic also got a new batch of Guatemalan medical students this week, and they all seem nice and friendly. It was a bit surreal to realize that I knew more about the clinic's day to day operations than they did. I felt like protesting 'but I'm a volunteer! I can't explain how things work!', but actually, I managed quite capably when asked to explain the intricacies of the front desk. It was empowering to be introduced and treated as a clinic veteran :)

I was not very active photographically this week, but getting back into my regular routine did not provide nearly as many picture-taking opportunities as Semana Santa parades. Yoga classes, afternoon jogs, Spanish lessons, and hours logged in sun-lit cafes with wireless internet access are nice and all, but they just don't beg to be photographed. My project for the week (clearly necessitating hours and hours of drinking coffee and licuados in cafes) consisted of revising and translating the Primeros Pasos Annual Report into Spanish, a task I undertook on behalf of the clinic's Development Director as a way to help out on the non-medical side of the organization. Though challenging, it was an overall pleasant and illuminating experience. Next up: mastering Salesforce.com and compiling an accurate report of clinic donations. Salesforce is an Oracle spin-off (shout out to you, Brad Miller) that is apparently the newest 'it' tool in the non-profit world. The Development Director pitched it to me as a useful resume-building tool - we'll see how that goes.

The week did present one spectacular photo opportunity, however, more than making up for the less photogenic aspects of my normal routine. Friday night/Saturday morning, five of us left Xela at 12:30 am to summit a volcano at sunrise. My American homestay brother, the two medical students I went to the beach with (an Española and a Quebecoise), and an Irish backpacker set out with a guide on a four-hour hike to the top of Santa Maria. It was very dark and very cold, as expected, but exhilarating. This picture was taken a little after 5 in the morning, just as the sun started to think about rising. We had been hiking since 1 am and reached a point half-an-hour below the summit just about 4:30. I took the coldest nap of my life, because there wasn't anything else to do in the dark on the side of the mountain at that hour of night. None of us really had any energy for small talk.


Once we saw dawn's rosy fingers, we hoofed it to the top to catch the sun break over the horizon. When we reached the summit, we met a dog named Killer who had beat us to the top. I'd never seen a volcano pup before, but decided we should be friends:

This is a view from the top of Santa Maria looking over toward Antigua and Lake Atitlan. This photo is also my new desktop picture on my laptop, replacing a sunset over the Ponte Vecchio in Florence from two summers ago:


Here I am, wearing knit pants under hiking pants, and a tanktop, thermal henley, t-shirt, sweater, fleece jacket and my raincoat/windbreaker. I'm also sporting gloves and earbands. Brrrr! The mountain in the background is on the Mexican border and is the highest point in all of Central America. Possibly an excursion for another weekend, but right now, simply a beautiful
backdrop.


And finally, Santa Maria overlooks Santiaguito, an active volcano that erupts every three hours or so. We had been at the top for maybe fifteen minutes before it gave us a show. Great timing on our parts, though completely inadvertent.


I have plans to upload the rest of my volcano pictures to shutterfly.com by the end of the weekend, possibly while working with Salesforce.com this afternoon and sipping strawberry smoothies in a wi-fi cafe. Tomorrow, I'm taking a first class bus to Guatemala City to meet my boyfriend in the airport, and we'll be spending three days in Antigua with my homestay family from last summer before returning to Xela for four months together. Hooray! Expect some photos from Antigua and environs next week. Until then, besos!

another Semana Santa come and gone

Happy Easter!

While Holy Week in Guatemala is a huge deal, the actual day of the Resurrection is less so. For example, I went to a bilingual service this morning (great for community and ambiance, terrible for the music given that half of the congregation will always be singing in their non-native tongue) and walked through a bustling market. Easter morning at 8:30 was business as usual, but almost everything was closed on Good Friday. Also, as far as I know, there's only one parade scheduled for today, Easter Sunday, while there were at least seven on Friday.

This blog entry will mostly be photos, and I have finally gotten around to depositing many more of my pictures on Shutterfly. You can visit them at http://katyphelpsmiller.shutterfly.com, the password is rice09.

Without further ado, here is a float celebrating the Virgin of Sorrows. This procession wound its way around the Parque Central, and I especially loved watching the parades at night. The illumination is spectacular!


Here we have a close-up shot of the alfombras (carpets) made of sand, sawdust, and milled flowers that line the procession routes on Good Friday. The designs are so intricate and must take hours to put together, but they exist only to be walked over by the men and women carrying the floats.Some more alfombra shots, these ones leading into the Parque Central. You can see another parade passing towards the end of the block in the first photo. The Parque was unquestionably THE place to be on Friday.


This angel float was the first procession we saw Friday morning. Doña Elena's god-son was carrying the float, and while she insists that normally she doesn't like walking all over the city to see the processions that happen the same way every year, Doña Elena made an exception to see her god-son. We woke up and had pancakes, and cereal, and sweet bread, and coffee before 8 and then trouped up the hill as a group to watch the parade go by.

I loved watching these little girls! They were precious with their angel wings, and much better behaved than I feel I would have been in their place.

Each procession also includes at least one band. The Friday morning procession, however, contained the first band with female musicians that I had seen all week. Girl power!


Also, if you were wondering how the lights on the floats were powered, (as I was), someone behind the float has the very important job of pushing the motor.

The streets of Xela are only full of processions one week a year. Therefore, it's understandable that the power lines were not implemented with the floats in mind. Yet another someone with an oh-so-important job is the man in charge of lifting the power lines out of the way of angels' wings, virgins' halos, or other such appendages.

The next few photos are from Thursday evening. Our vantage point was on Avenida 12, three or four blocks above the Parque. The next morning, this road would be covered with the alfombras pictured above.

Maundy Thursday is a special day for processions because the niños have their own parade, complete with all the solemnity of the adult processions. The floats, thankfully, are kid-friendly and child-sized. Here are the young ladies, all dressed in white, carrying an image of the Virgen toward the Cathedral in the Parque.

Purple is the traditional color of Lent, and this bunch of boys seems to be enjoying the chance to dress up and be the city's center of attention. The four year old in my homestay dressed up and accompanied one of the processions Friday evening, but I couldn't spot him in the crowd of participants and spectators. I'm sure he performed flawlessly though.

Finally, here is a representation of the Virgin passing in front of the main Cathedral at night. I loved the lighting of this shot and thought it would be a fitting selection to wrap up my selection of Semana Santa blog photos.

Semana Santa was by far the big event of my week, but I did manage to fit some other excitement into my otherwise lazy days. Since clinic was closed, I was able to climb two different summits outside of Xela. My homestay brother and I scaled la Muela (the volcanic rock scramble) again, and all three of us pensionistas managed to conquer El Baul one afternoon as well. It's a pretty quick ascent - we took 50 minutes from Doña Elena's to reach the top - and there's a recreation area at the summit, complete with giant concrete slides that kids and teenagers were using to stage varying degrees of shenanigans. I didn't get any pictures of the slide, but I did snap a shot of the view back over Xela:

Finally, my Spanish teacher invited me on an excursion Tuesday morning. I was excited a) for the opportunity to visit another town and b) because we went as amigas instead of teacher-student. I think that's an important milestone.
We visited Salcaja, a pueblo 20 minutes or so outside of Xela. My teacher let me accompany her to a girl's home in Salcaja, run by Capuchin nuns, the sister order of the Franciscan monks. Twenty little girls have moved into the nun's shelter from abusive/dangerous situations, and they are given a safe environment to re-learn socially, academically, and spiritually. My teacher likes to support the home with visits and by donating her own clothes, as most donated clothes tend to be men's or boy's clothes. For these girls, the chance to wear sweaters in pastel colors or t-shirts cut to fit them is a real treat. I very much enjoyed the opportunity to meet the sisters and chat with the girls in such an optimistic, positive environment.
After we left the girl's home, my teacher showed me through Salcaja itself. Because it's outside of Xela, if only just barely, the religious traditions have been conserved more so than they have in the city. I was initially skeptical, having already seen processions in all their fervor within Xela, but I came to see what she meant. The homes, for example, were all decorated in purple mantels and makeshift altars were commonplace on the street corners. I especially liked this corner, because it had banners and flowers on the balcony. If I had a house like that I would decorate it similarly for Easter.

Not to be forgotten, Salcaja is also home to the oldest remaining church in all of Central America. It wasn't open when we walked by, but I did get a nice photo-op. There are some bananas carved into the pediment, which is a clear sign of the Spanish priests' flexibility and blending of local traditions with the imported Catholicism, even in the 1520s. Bananas, of course, do not exist naturally in the Vatican or in Old Europe.


Next week should see me back in the clinic after an extended absence (stomach bug + Semana Santa), so I'm hoping I can get back into the swing of things pretty easily. It is also incumbent upon me to attend at least two yoga classes to justify my month's membership. A busy week ahead, indeed.

Until next time, besos y abrazos!