Week 11 - A Portrait of the Writer as a Slightly Older Manchild

How is it already week 11? How am I about to swear in as an honest-to-goodness volunteer in only 3 days? Where has the time gone? I’m sure I’ve talked about it before, but the distillation of time around here is truly awe-inspiring. It feels like forever since I last ate a Juicy Lucy at the Blue Door while sipping a craft brew that had both nuance and flavor. At the same time, I simply refuse to believe that I have now endured more than 70 frigid bucket baths, decimated entire generations of fried chicken, weathered countless stomach illnesses, and emerged both healthier and happier than when I started. It simply cannot have been three months since I stepped off the plane.

However, in that time I have come to learn things about myself that I never knew (or indeed, would have had cause to learn were I still in the United States). Even last week, while on my IDA (Independently Directed Activity) field training I found out three very important things all of which, at least in retrospect, were interrelated:

1)      I handle myself pretty well even while uncomfortably close to gang warfare.

2)      I can hike more than 20 miles, over rivers and mountain ranges, and emerge with enough energy to teach English to giggly middle school girls.

3)      I am able to navigate even the most complicated bus schedules and routes in unfamiliar parts of Guatemala to wind up “accidentally” at beautiful lakesides for lunch while still returning to my host site by dark.

As some of you may remember, I went to the department of Huehuetenango in the northeast part of Guatemala to learn, for the second time, how volunteers live and behave themselves. I was stationed for the latter part of the week in a little town called Malacatancito (Malacas for short) about twenty or thirty minutes from the department capital, not-so-cleverly also named “Huehuetenango.” Kyle A. and I were stationed with a volunteer in the same program who’s a year ahead of us.

But on to gang violence: The three of us were at the supermarket buying all the groceries we’d need for the next few days (read: lots of pasta and Bacardí) barely thinking past that night’s meal. As we were passing through the checkout, the armed guard for the store slammed down the security gate, insulating the store from the outside world. The urgency and unexpectedness of the gesture surprised us; after all, we have been to many supermarkets over the last three months and never has the big steel screen been closed, preventing the entrance and exit of patrons.

A crowd began to form, and the guard explained what happened: He had seen a car pull up in the parking lot, guns being waved, and then shots fired. Not knowing what else to do, he did the only thing he could: He hid us.

When he opened the grate again a few minutes later, the lot was clear. Hesitantly the three of us stepped out into the growing dusk. A few hundred meters off we could see a phalanx of police officers with hulking automatic weapons engaged in some sort of assault-and-advance movements, the militaristic equivalent of leap frog. Even after playing years and years of Modern Warfare 2 (thanks, Will), you don’t get used to seeing futuristic weapons that spit death at 30 odd rounds per second.

“We should probably get out of here,” we all agreed simultaneously. Of course, being Peace Corps volunteers (or almost, anyway), we have no private transportation. We had to wait for the bus virtually on that same corner. The crowd of curious civilians that was starting to tentatively ring the police suddenly broke and began sprinting towards us. Something had scared them into getting the hell out of there. Oh God.

“Perhaps it would be more prudent to wait for the bus a little farther away,” we again decided as one. We began to jog, then run farther from the activity. The army began to fill out the already impressive ranks of police, passing us going as they sped towards the warzone. Humvees of camouflaged soldiers sat grimly while the standing gunner, using his M-60 for support, acted as guardian and scout.

The bus came after what felt like ages, and we practically leapt in. On the radio, the police chief for Huehuetenango was issuing a city wide alert about the violence that had just occurred, and would likely increase. “Huehue doesn’t abide Zetas,” he said, “and anyone in the area should find an excuse to get out of there. The drug lines flowing through the city and into Mexico [a few dozen kilometers north] will not be tolerated.”

My mother called, even as the emergency address continued. “Hi honey, I’m at the GAP getting that pair of jeans we talked about that I’m going to put in your care package. Is it alright if they are prefaded, or will that be too informal to wear to work?”

“Hey Mom; now’s not really a good time. Can I call you back?”

Of course, as soon as we were a safe distance outside the city, the three of us were suddenly aware of the spastic muscle control that an adrenaline rush always brings. We gripped our seats a little less tightly. We were out, and lucky for it. Had we finished at the grocery store five minutes earlier who knows what might have happened? Had the bus come five minutes later and who can say?

But such is life here; we do all we can to prepare for emergencies, but when they come all you can do is tell your mom that pants are not your priority at the moment.

The next day, my cardiovascular system was again tested. We were going to hike to one of our host’s farther schools, about four hours distant. Of course, to get there we had to ford three rivers and summit three mountain ranges. It could have been the impossible task of a fairy tale had we, you know, only had to read about it. We hitchhiked when we could, sometimes with an NGO going a mile up the road, or a teacher who’d take us as far as the next T-junction, but 95% was walked with the plodding feet of young adults eager to see a place where no other aid workers had the cojones to get to.

We awoke at 4:30am and were on the road by 5, trying to get as far as we could before we got baked by the merciless sun. Two backpacks full of water, a pound of granola, and a dozen cookies were all that we took. Another IDA group, joining us for most of the way, packed similarly.

We got to the school at around 9:30, watched and critiqued a health lesson, played soccer for almost an hour with the students, and then were on the road headed back again before 11.

We estimated that we walked between 20 and 25 miles over 8 full hours of hiking. Exhausted but exhilarated, blistered but satisfied, we took a nap for a few hours and then hoofed it a mile or two out of town again to work on the secondary project of our host: Teaching English at a subsidized girls’ school. I slept well that night, to put it mildly.

Saturday morning Kyle and I left Malacas, with the objective of getting back to our respective host sites by dark. Four busses later we found ourselves in Panajachel, a trendy tourist-destination-but-also-hippy-commune sort of town on the banks of Lake Atitlán. “We deserve burgers,” we decided, “with lots of cheese, and bacon if possible.” After all, we walked a marathon the other day. No big deal.

We found our burgers, the most delicious that I’ve encountered since coming here, and enjoyed each other’s company over a beer that turned into two as we migrated closer to the water.

I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Lake Atitlán, but it’s one of the most impressive bodies of water I’ve ever seen, and I feel pretty confident in my estimation of lakes coming from a state with 10,000 of them. The graceful slope of volcanoes, their flattened peaks rising thousands of feet above the mist at their bases, commanded my attention even while feeling the bubbles of our icy beers wash over our dry tongues.

A more idyllic spot for a beer cannot be found, but time waits for no PCT, and less than two hours after we got there Kyle and I were again on a bus headed back home. Four transfers later and we were there, barely minutes before the sun set. Damn, we’re good.

This installment is getting long, so I suppose I should wrap it up. A few notes before I go: As I alluded to earlier, this week is full of goings on:

Wednesday I find out my permanent host site, where I’ll spend the next two years of my life.

Friday afternoon I officially swear into the Peace Corps at the US Ambassador’s mansion in Guatemala City.

Of course, neither of those will be the most exciting day of the week: Sunday is my 23^rd birthday.

PS. As usual, please find the accompanying photos here: https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week11?authkey=Gv1sRgCITcm4Xj65u-hQE#

Week 10 - Operation Beach Bum

There are big changes in the works. Training is almost over—a week from Friday and I’m done—but it’s been quite a slog to get here. Sure there are good moments, just as there are bad ones that follow, then inevitably good ones again, ad infinitam. I realize that my blogs must seem to disproportionately focus on the bad, so I vow to make this one balance the others out. Bucket baths and chronic illness aside, I really am loving life.

My family and I finally went to the beach, which they have been promising for nearly as long as I’ve been living here. Of course, like everything here it’s very different from how I used to go to the beach in Minnesota. First, though, should probably talk about international events, and their sometimes shocking effect they have the world over.

I hear there was an earthquake of some note in Japan. The coverage here has been rather limited, though, and I admit I don’t know many of the details of what’s going on. Imagine, therefore, my surprise when I got a text from our Safety and Security Coordinator (SSC) on Friday afternoon that said “ALERT—TSUNAMI APPROACHING FROM JAPAN IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN. GUATEMALAN SHORES WILL BE HIT AT 15:00 hours with waves +/- 1.5 meters. Pacific shoreline is OFF-LIMITS until we lift the warning.”

In Minnesota we don’t have earthquakes, nor Pacific oceans for that matter, so it’s hard to conceive of an earthquake big enough to effect little ol’ Guatemala all the way from Japan. Of course, the next thing I thought was that I couldn’t possibly have the conversion from meters into feet correct. Did he mean fifteen meters? Was the Peace Corps really getting upset enough to issue a tsunami alert over waves that are shorter than most 10-year olds? Were waves of this stature really that much different than other unprotected shorelines?

I quickly called the SSC and got him to promise me that he’d call me with any updates. I ultimately got clearance from him to go to the beach at San José, about two hours south of me, on the condition that I would call when I got back.

Begin Operation Beach Bum.

The plan was for us to arise at 3:30am to get in the car by 4:00 and hit the surf by 6:00, 6:15 tops. My skepticism was put aside in favor of seeing “huge” waves and sunning myself on black-sand beaches next to attractive natives in minimal fabric. 3:30 it was. Also, Yuna, the Healthy Schools volunteer who had lived with Don Tereso and Doña Mayra before me, her site mate Christie, and her friend from the US were joining us. The more the merrier. Sometimes it’s good to inject a little new blood around here (just not, you know, literally).

It was black when I woke up. It was black when we tumbled into the car, and remained so as we wove our way through across the department of Escuintla and parked our car in the private lot near the beach. Even the sand was black, though I admit this is more a function of geological phenomena than the hour. We were there; where was the sun?

Not wanting to imagine how cold the ocean would be at 6:00am when my baths were barely tolerable, I decided to just put my toes in.

Ah, glorious, glorious water! It was a perfect temperature, perhaps even a little on the warm side. This of course did not clue me into the temperatures likely to appear later in the day, when I’d be too busy keeping my pearly dermis and the 200 degree sand from becoming formally acquainted. As an addendum, volcanic beaches, colored black due to the volcanic rock, are really cool. I had seen a few while studying abroad in Greece, but this beach was truly jet black. With my toes snuggled into the sand, it was not dissimilar to them being in rich soil.

The waves were big, I admit. At their point break (thank you for the vocab, Keanu Reeves) they loomed perhaps 5 or 6 feet above the water, which was around my neck line. It would have been great surfing if, you know, I had brought a board…or knew how to surf. Still, were they security alert worthy? I will not comment on this. I have recently become aware of how touchy Peace Corps bureaucrats can be over statements not in line with their official message (Solidarity, JR*). My official statement, if ever given, will suggest that the Peace Corps is concerned with our safety, perhaps even more so than my own mother…Or a hen.

We spent the next several hours frolicking in the water, running out to catch our breath, then returning to chill our charred feet, stopping every so often to exclaim how it must be time for dinner but was really not yet 10:00. When a socially acceptable lunch hour finally occurred, we went to a comedor (independently owned restaurant) a stone’s throw from the water for a meal of fried fish (skin and head still on. Sorry Nemo…), rice, and the ubiquitous corn tortillas. It was good, I admit, but it couldn’t compare with the almost mythical memory I have of eating fresh garlic shrimp by the kilo in Mexico, now almost a decade distant. Then again, what can?

I won’t bore you with the details of the rest of the day, but it was mostly more of the same, just with more mangoes and fewer repetitions of the word “black.” I will comment that my almost depressingly severe farmer’s tan has been balanced out somewhat. Lobster pink is not a good look for me, though you will be relieved to hear that I temporarily put aside my aversion towards sunscreen and applied liberally, for all the good it did: I expect to peel within the next few days.

The only other things worth mentioning is that I successfully delivered my final taller (tie-AIR; lit. “workshop”) on Friday, which lasted about 2 hours along with Allison and Kata from San Lorenzo, and now am that much closer to becoming a full-fledged Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV). Also, starting Wednesday I will be going on an Independently Directed Activity (IDA), which is a very fancy way to say I will be going to Huehuetenango with Kyle A., a great friend from my training group, where we will basically relive Field-Based Training (FBT). Am I overloading you with acronyms? Well too bad. Welcome to my life, the life of a PCT-about-to-become-a-PCV-in-the-502.

As always, here are this week’s photos: https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week10?authkey=Gv1sRgCLnbkujk6IO59gE#

*  “I MAY NOT AGREE WITH WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY, BUT I WILL DEFEND TO THE DEATH YOUR RIGHT TO SAY IT.”  -Voltaire

Week 9 - Double Fried. Twice.

You all know me. You know that I love food, but am not terribly hard to please. You know that my tastes tend to skew to the exotic, the flavorful, and the guilty pleasures. So when I tell you that Saturday’s dinner was too much, even for me, please take that not as a sign that I have somehow become pickier, but that I simply am no match for the Guatemalan food pyramid.

I should probably preface this anecdote with the fact that I was diagnosed with Giardia, a parasite transmitted via fecal/oral contamination, about a week and a half ago. I’ve beaten it (with a little help from my friends and a staggeringly large dose of antibiotics), but after the second stomach parasite in as many months, the Peace Corps is rightly getting a little worried about me. Of course, they practically skipped over the fact that I ate, at some point, a little piece of someone’s number two, but they seemed—for a while—gravely concerned that I might have something called “Malabsorption,” which is rather technical but basically means that my intestines aren’t doing their job because I’ve been sick for so long.

“Now Joe,” the staff nurse began, “I’m sure you already know this, but Uncle Sam is paying for your medical bills, so I feel obligated to remind you. Please stick only to bland food for the next couple days. Avoid anything spicy, with dairy in it, and most of all greasy. You should be thinking bread, rice, and bananas, not fried chicken and sugar, mmkay?”

“No problem,” I told her. “It shouldn’t be too hard to stick to those dietary restrictions, especially around here.”

A day passed, and Doña Mayra called me down for dinner. I had, of course, made her aware that I wasn’t feeling well and my stomach couldn’t be strained. I sat, smelling the rich aromas of her kitchen, looking forward to whatever magic she’d done with the insipid foods I was allowed. My plate was put before me. It appears to be some kind of empanada (called dobladas here, which means “folded”), something that I’ve not yet seen here, but remember fondly from the days when my brother’s Spanish tutor would cook for us years ago. It’s a fried dish, but it appeared to be reasonably grease-free. Beside it were two things that may or may not have been eggs. I’ve never seen them quite so…deep fried.

Now, I appreciate a good egg as much as anyone. Ask anyone who knows me and you’ll learn that most of my brain food comes from some variation of the fried egg sandwich. Almost by definition a fried egg must be at least a little greasy. Still, it is no match for a fried egg that has subsequently been deep fried. A double fried egg. Two of them.

With a resigned sigh, I bit into it, knowing that if I didn’t I would offend my host family, whose respect I’m really trying to gain. It would be a bad idea, I reckoned, but so be it. There are worse things that a little upset stomach. Grease ran down my face in little rivulets. Wiping it away I reached for a doblada. Even grasping it gently between two fingers, grease squirted out. So much for grease-free.

Huh, I though while biting into it. This is interesting. Most fried things typically don’t have another fried thing in them, so I was quite surprised to find a pork rind nestled comfortably in its crispy tortilla blanket. Pork rinds, and I could be wrong on this, are pig fat (and skin?) that has been deep fried. Once again, I found myself eating something fried inside of something that had been fried. I began to gag a little bit.

I somehow got through it, mostly by alternating bites of the meal with bites of bread (which I later found out is made with generous helpings of lard). Surprisingly, I only had a mild-to-moderate stomach ache for the next 12 hours. What I find so hilarious, though, is that despite eating food like this on a more regular basis than I’d care to admit, I’ve lost 15 to 20 pounds. Perhaps that will put my sickness into a little more perspective.

Sunday was another free day, the nine hour phenomenon we get bimonthly that is about as close to a weekend as we get. Our training cohort is getting closer and closer, but we get to hang out with each other so infrequently that it’s truly a treat to go to Antigua and pack as much living into as few hours as possible. We still need to return home before dark, which means getting on the bus no later than 6pm, but we have some truly epic lunches. Meals like the above make one, for lack of a stronger word, ravenous for light and vegetable-centric foods. Salads are a prized commodity among us, and no expense is spared in the pursuit of such divine perfection. Add a bottle of wine and it’s almost like we’re able to cook for ourselves again.

Of course, by 3 or 4 in the afternoon most people were done eating, no matter how leisurely they polished off the last of the hummus and pita wedges. Spread by word-of-mouth, more and more began to meander over to the Ocelot, a jazz bar run by Peace Corps-friendly American expats with the best all day happy hour in town. I felt so sophisticated to be sitting in a cosmopolitan city, letting the cool carbonation of a Cuba libre tickle my throat while surrounded by the swirl of banter and music. None of those sensations are terribly out of the ordinary from my old life, but it felt really great to be surrounded by compatriots in such a trying enterprise as the Peace Corps enjoying a few of  the finer things in life.

That’s all I’ve got for now, though I’ve been struck a lot this week by how much I feel like I’ve changed since arriving; it’s amazing how many deep thoughts you can have while swinging back and forth in a hammock at a macadamia farm. I’ll be done with training in two weeks, but it’s scary and exhilarating to think how different I’ll be in two years.

Also, Two of my dearest friends, Becca D. and Heather C., have, as of today, began their own service with the Peace Corps in Kazakhstan. I’m not going to post their contact information for the whole world to see, but if you know them, please consider giving them the same wonderfully heartfelt sentiments you gave me when I began my own epic journey. They’re a lot more poised than I am, so maybe they’re so full of excitement and optimism that they’re inured to preoccupation. I, however, was shitting myself—almost as literally as I am now that I’m here.

PS, per usual, please peruse this week’s photos at your convenience. They can be found at https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week9?authkey=Gv1sRgCKGU64n7mqGvTg#.

Week 8 - Scalded Scrotum

It’s been quite a week since I last wrote. For the most part all I’ve been doing is work—and frankly, I’m surprised I found the time to write this week’s installment—so you should really congratulate me for being such a mensch. I’m not going to talk too much about work though, mostly because I’m tired of it, but also because there’s really not much to tell: It’s still the same, it’s still being done, and it’s still being (I suspect) barely read by the people who assign it. Also, I hung out with the 2 other half-Jewish trainees in my cohort today, so I suspect that the following may have an unnecessary amount of Yiddish buzzwords. My apologies.

Today I’m going to talk about parties. That’s right, the good ol’ Guatemalan fiesta. You might wonder how I can possibly be so swamped with work that I can barely allude to its quantity or confounding complexity, but still have time to shake my rump to the mad beats of banda (Guatemalan country music, the kind that talks about trains and scorned lovers and working on the range). That’s a funny joke, so please laugh now.

…I’m waiting.

No, the truth is, it’s hard to find time during the week, but everything grinds to a halt on the weekends, where my schedule would normally be chockablock with commitments were I back in the US. I say with almost no irony that the -end is perhaps the hardest part of the week to get through. This week, however, I had a lot of things worth doing.

Francis’ 19^th birthday was Friday, who you may remember me saying in earlier posts is the younger of my host sisters. At the moment she’s a hairstylist in Jocotenango, a medium-sized town on the way to Antigua, but aspires to be a doctor once she’s saved enough to go to University. Currently she has no idea when that will be.

Her birthday was a sight to behold: The family said they expected 70 guests, each of which was to be served a plate of tortillas, rice, bread, soda, and pepian, the traditional dish that seems to only be reserved for the most special of occasions—weddings, funerals, the arrival of pasty-looking gringos, and birthdays. It’s a good thing, too, because it takes all day to prepare, and the cauldron that Doña Mayra was slaving over must have contained more than 5 or 6 gallons of the soupy brown liquid. Being boiled in it were 4 full chickens that would later be dismembered so that each guest would receive a piece with their serving.

The preparations were extensive. In addition to the thorough cleaning of the entire house (including my room, though no one would go in there but me), the spraying down of the dirt parts of the yard with water and the putting up of dozens of balloons and streamers, the dress code was strictly enforced:

“Hey, Chepe, are you going to wear that to the party?” Don Tereso asked me, 6 hours before the party began.

“I hadn’t thought about it, but I think so. Yeah, probably,” I said, looking down at myself. I had bathed within the last dozen hours, and tossed on a button-down that I had only worn 3 or 4 times since it had last been laundered on the unforgiving cement of the pila. Jeans, with hardly a smudge on them, completed the ensemble. I had even shaved within the last few days, and this look had been acceptable at every “formal” event I had attended in San Lorenzo since arriving. Damn, I was looking fly.

“Oh,” he replied, clearly not sure how to proceed. “It’s just that you need to wear a tie, slacks, and black shoes for this. Do you have a suit? A suit would really be better.” He looked at me hopefully, hoping that I had somehow smuggled a suit into the house without him noticing.

“No, I don’t. I’m sorry. I do have the other stuff though,” I said, feeling more shlub-­like by the second. “I’ll wear the best that I have.”

Six hours later the guests came and I felt horribly overdressed. There was not a suit in attendance. Ties were limited to my neck only. Oh well.

After riding the sugar high over the next few days from too much cake, Anna presented me with an interesting proposition. “Joe, my host sister’s not going to be home tonight, so we’re going to have a slumber party at my place. You’re coming, right?”

I wasn’t sure how to respond. Sleepovers in San Lorenzo are all but unheard of, and co-ed sleepovers maybe one of the most scandalous things you can dream up around here. It didn’t matter that Anna’s host parents and other host sister were going to be home, and it definitely didn’t matter that the boys would ultimately sleep in one room and the girls in another. I assumed that it would be talked about for weeks afterwards by the gossip mill that operated out of the community pila.

I said “what the hell” and agreed to go. It was going to be fun, and I needed some more of that. It was Saturday, after all. When 8:30pm came, we all went over to Anna’s house, changed into our PJs, and watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail on my computer. Halfway through, I looked up and only Allison and I were still awake. I settled back into my position, blinked, and the credits were rolling. I had slept through the bits about Castle Anthrax, Tim the Sorcerer, and the Knights Who Say “Ni.”

Apparently we had slightly miscalculated the stamina of people who routinely go to bed at 9 and wake up at 6. By 10:30 we were too exhausted to do anything but call it a night. As I fell asleep for the second time, I recalled the sleepovers I used to have with the Crew, my best friends from middle and high school. Soda-fueled video game marathons until 4 or 5 in the morning were not uncommon, and shenanigans always ran high. It seems that I have since turned into an old man.

The cap to the weekend came, of course, on Sunday night, when I declined my family’s invitation to go to church in favor of catching up on homework. When they came home they called me downstairs. I went, expecting that they just wanted to wish me good night. Instead, I found myself eye-to-eye with a face not unlike a 70-year old man’s badly scalded scrotum.

Not knowing what else to say, I exclaimed, “Wow. That’s a big turkey!” Eluding me were more insightful questions like “whose turkey is it?”, “why do we need a turkey?”, or “are you aware that your turkey is currently taking a dump on your shoes?” When I got over the shock, I figured out that it was for someone’s birthday in a month or two, and that there had been a sale on live turkeys outside the church they had gone to. That must be some church.

That’s all I’ve got for now, though I know you’ve all been waiting with baited breath for the news on my co-. As of a few minutes ago, I found out I’ll be working for the next few years with Lauren D. from Indiana. I’m sure you’re all excited to Facebook stalk the hell out of her. Let me know if you turn up anything juicy.

Also, please peruse this week’s pictures at your leisure. They can be found at: https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week8?authkey=Gv1sRgCJiF5ey5i-DauQE.