Week 25 - Falling Off My High, High Horse

I think by this point you’ve all heard my half-hearted griping about the fíjese que’s, the impromptu holidays, and the general state of disrepair in which the Guatemalan school system finds itself. It still all holds true, of course, but I find myself having, given what transpired this week, a harder time sitting on my high, high horse.

The MINEDUC (Guatemalan abbreviation for the Ministry of Education), in conjunction with the San Se mayor’s office, sponsor a trip every school year not for the students, but the teachers of my district. They mostly pay for transportation costs, but are also able to finagle discounts that would be otherwise unobtainable on a smaller scale. I was pleased, but not terribly surprised, when my boss, the CTA (Superintendent) invited me to go along, given that I am, in some sense, both a teacher and an employee of the MINEDUC.

Who knew Guatemala has a perfectly respectable waterpark in the middle of the southern jungle?

I was torn. On one hand it seemed like a great way to build confianza with my teachers. On the other, it was exactly the kind of non-accountability that I’ve grown so frustrated with. This two day trip, on a Wednesday and Thursday, was another glaring testament to the maxim, “teachers refuse to do anything during the weekend.” Much of the trip seemed to say, “Students? What students?”

Forget that this was a trip to the Guatemalan equivalent of Six Flags with a quick stop off at the beach first. Forget that it was heavily subsidized by the MINEDUC. Forget that it was perched comfortably between the ordinary work days of Tuesday and Friday. Well, maybe don’t forget that part; that’s kind of my point.

There seems to be no continuity, no flow, to the school week. It’s as if an axe murderer is lopping off a day here, two or three there, until the supposedly nine month school year feels like 3 or 4. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate a good vacation day as much as the next person, but it honestly feels like the MINEDUC panders to the teachers over the students, always forgetting—or ignoring—which ones are the children.

You might think that I would forgo the trip as a politick statement of my distaste for this style of education. You give me too much credit. Officially speaking, it was the chance to build relationships with my coworkers, and more personally, create friendships so I’m not stuck in the house every night after 4pm. Also, Xocomil (sho-koh-MIL) is a Mayan-themed water park. It seemed worthy of an anecdote.

Wednesday morning I woke up at 3:30am so that I could be waiting for the MINEDUC bus by 4. By this point a lot of the teachers know who I am, or at least my face, but I think they were still a little surprised that one of the two gringos in town was headed out with them for the coast. Lauren, perhaps more overtly dedicated to her principles than I, declined the invitation.

Only about 40 teachers came on the trip, and when we reached the beach at Champerico around 10, we immediately hit the surf. Well, I waded in with gusto, remembering just how hot the beaches can become. Swim lessons are not very popular (or indeed, available) here, so few teachers know how to cope in deep water. Combine that with a strong riptide and vicious waves, and only the most daring went past waist depth. The majority dipped toes.

We packed it in after lunch, where I had caldo de mariscos (crustacean stew). As I think I’ve noted in other posts, Guatemalans don’t put much stock in making it easy to eat food. The stew was excellent, but it was pretty shocking to see a miniature ocean biome floating in front of me. 3 crabs (shell on), a dozen or more shrimp (shell and heads on), a fillet of fish (possibly tilapia, skin on), and fifteen tiny mussels floating around the soup like a rocky garnish (shells opened, but attached). When I was done, there was a graveyard surrounding the bowl and nearly as tall. Filling, messy, delicious.

That night we stayed in Mazatenango. Some teachers, tapping hidden reserves of herculean energy, suggested we hit the discos after dinner. I was born with no such assets. I called it a night around 7:30 and was asleep by 8.

The next morning we finally got to Xocomil. It’s been quite some time since I was at a water park, but I can assure you, those I went to in my youth were nothing like this. Towering step pyramids, painted in garish colors, poked above the banana and palm trees. From your vantage point at the top, just before sliding down, you could see miles and miles of uninterrupted forest. Virtually the entire park was fill with teachers from other districts, apparently equally drawn by the MINEDUC discount of half-priced admission and free lunch (total cost for the day was 50Q, or roughly $6).

There were really all of the rides you’d expect at a large water park in the US: Waterslides for both inner tubes and people without, giant slides, a lazy river, and wave pool. Were it not for the exotic views, it could have been anywhere.

I spent the day alternating between two groups of people, and by the time I was done I felt like I had created some foundations for friendships that will last me while I’m living here. I think it helped to be seen in a less professional, stiff environment. Everyone bends over backwards to properly greet and acknowledge the titles of others. At Xocomil, standing there in my oversized bathing suit, laughing, wading, floating, just like everyone else, I think it helped me be seen as a real person. I’m still a light-eyed, English speaking, sorely burnt oddity, but now slightly less so.

So was it worth it overall, swallowing moral indignation in favor of further establishing myself here in San Se?

I hope so.

The pictures, of which there’s only one (it’s hard to take pictures at a water park!),  can be found here: https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week25?authkey=Gv1sRgCNT89MuHjszl7AE#5623078790259948386

Week 24 - The Faux Fixety of Time

I believe it was Shakespeare who once said “Time: What the fuck?” Sometimes it passes slowly, sometimes quickly, but rarely do its distortions feel like both at the same time. That may, in fact, be a lie. When I was still at Carleton I felt that it was full of long days and short months, supposedly quick papers that turned into marathon slogs, and hourly battles between my fatigue and jump starts at the coffee shop. Still, deadlines teleported to the present, terms ended spontaneously, and somehow college concluded in only four pinched years.

I really don’t write a lot of papers here but, like Carleton, I find myself marveling at the time paradox. It’s been 24 protracted weeks, give or take a day, since I last saw my oldest friends, drank water from the faucet, or fell asleep in America. That means it’s been six miniscule months of riding camionetas, exaggerating religious fervor, and straining to understand what’s culturally appropriate.

It really depends how I look at it, a sort of “glass half full/half empty” situation. If I think about the last time I was in the US, it seems like it’s been forever. I’ve changed, the US has changed, as has our relationship to each other. Where has all that time gone? My life back then was just that—a different life. I’ve found new parts of myself that I didn’t know existed, unknown reserves of patience and strength as well as buried flaws and irrationalities, and used those as tools of reinvention. There is a truly significant break between what I was and what I am. It’s been years since I was Old Me.

On the other hand, if I look at my time here, it’s passed in almost a blink. The time blurs and meshes together into irregular chunks, so it feels like it’s been only a few hours since I wrote Week 23, a few days since I got to site, and perhaps, with a huge burst of mental reckoning, a week or two since I was getting Spanish lessons around a kitchen table during training. Indeed, I’ve only been New Me for a couple of seconds.

The day I left Minnesota, my brother, an RPCV himself, and I sat in a commercial bar in the airport, styled to look beaten down and faintly dive-like. We sipped mass-produced microbrews in a booth at ten in the morning, much more for my sake than his. As my tremoring hands gripped the contoured pint glass, already steadied once a few hours earlier by a mother-sanctioned slug of bourbon, I remember him telling me, no matter what, to stick it out for the first six months.

“If you make it through the first six months, you’re probably fine,” he told me, suggesting that it takes at least that long to feel comfortable in such new surroundings. “It’s not the physical hardship that gets you; you get used to that pretty quickly. It’s the mental stuff that’s the hardest, the loneliness and feeling out of place; the boredom. The sense that what you’re doing doesn’t benefit anyone. You’ve got to get through that.”

I looked up from my beer and the little circles the glass’ condensation made on the wooden table. I didn’t really believe him about the physical hardship. He had a house with electricity and running water when he was in Namibia. I was positive I’d be shitting in a bucket stored under a reappropriated army cot, picking the tarantulas off me with improvised salad tongs. Still, six months seemed like an eternity. Even as I prepared myself mentally to go, I was sure I wouldn’t last. Parts of me at that moment hoped that I would get injured and medically separated within the first few weeks, sent home for something that wasn’t shameful or my fault.

“I know you’re scared, Jóbalo,” he said, calling me by a pet name that only older brothers can get away with, “but just take it one day at a time. Every night that your head hits the pillow is a victory. And when it gets really hard—and it will—just keep telling yourself ‘for better or worse, this too shall pass.’”

It’s usually the nights that are the hardest. After I’ve eaten my solitary dinner and finished my single serving of dishes I perch on top of my bed and don’t know what to do with myself. It’s in those undistracted moments then that the longing resurfaces, that desire to see my roots, my friends and city, sharp and disorienting and animal; like a hook twisted along my guts, pulling me backward and up from somewhere behind my navel. In all truth I still can’t face the idea of 21 more months without an element of panic insidiously seeping in. And so I think of the months I’ve been here instead, stroking the number like a baby would a security blanket. It grows longer and more solid every week, better able to remind me that despite my occasional misgivings, I am still here. I am succeeding here.

And now that it’s been six months—that length of time that seemed like aeons to Old Me—I see what he meant. He has been prophetic, a slightly taller Yoda with a curly Jew ’fro. I feel more comfortable here. I still have low moments, moments of panic, but they’re not met with the same canned responses to the silent, landscaped question:

“What. Am I. doing, here?”

I am here because I enjoy it. I am here because I want to be. I am here because the alternative would be a cubicle in a hospital talking about interest rates and potential repayment plans, making ten times the salary I make now with one tenth the thrill. I am here because life’s an adventure and I want to push myself, to be that indomitable spirit that’s alright with looking like an idiot in the name of self-improvement.

Old Me wouldn’t be comfortable with that.

Please find the pictures, a veritable clip show of my service, here: https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week24?authkey=Gv1sRgCJ25md_hjvv0nQE

Week 23 - Decadence and Luxury in the Third World

A lot of people conceive the Peace Corps to be a life of discomfort, loneliness, and mental anguish. It’s hard, I won’t even attempt to deny it, but like anything, you acclimate. While I risk eroding the illusion that we’re all superhero ascetics (for the record, we are), you get to a point where intestinal parasites, irregular utilities, and large arachnids don’t bother you. You find that you can go months without a proper shave, and, with hardly any effort, your life continues to proceed without you 2600 miles to the north.

One of the main reasons I joined the Peace Corps was for the excitement and adventure that it promised. My service has certainly offered me the opportunity to explore the highest and lowest emotions my psyche has to offer, and also put me in situations that I never thought I’d see or experience (Heads Should Usually Remained Attached, On Second Thought, Let’s Change that…), but one thing that has been lacking has been the sense that this is any sort of luxury vacation.

This past weekend I had the fortuitousness to experience luxury that would have qualified as “luxury” even if I were still in the First World. It was awesome.

About an hour outside of Xela exists a medium-size town called Zunil. If you grudgingly pay a very smug man 20 quetzales, he’ll take you up into the mountains, past the road’s switchbacks framed by pines and the patchwork of farm plots tucked against the slopes, until you arrive at what is almost certainly God’s bathtub.

When Kate, a recently-made non-PC friend, and I got to the parking lot of the Fuentes Georgina, it was deserted save for a few idling parking attendants, who instructed us to continue along a path leading even higher than the several thousand feet above Zunil we were currently standing. The heavy wooden bannisters and the bare rock face quickly gave way to a clearing and, proudly displayed in its center, three cascading pools, the roughly-hewn flagstones lining the bottom dyed green from mineral deposits. The steam shone golden as it curled off the water and became backlit by the sun.

There was just one other duo there, and we were easily able to pretend we had the place to ourselves. For the first glorious hour we joked about the unfamiliarity of true decadence. This was what traveling is all about, right? To find those hidden gems far away from the norm, soaking in (sometimes literally) their charms?

Changing into my bathing suit, intentionally bought when it was uncomfortably tight, I noticed that it seemed in danger of slipping off during the next particularly boisterous bought of cavorting. I appreciate a good cavort now and again, and this boded ill.

“Can you get a bathing suit tailored?” I asked myself as I examined my weak muscle tone and general level of abdominal pastiness. I’m going to have to start on that P-90X stuff that all the volunteers keep talking about. Running and weightlifting are practically impossible here. Of course, more exercise means more weight loss, and thus more tailoring.

Kate and I surveyed the pool before us. Irregularly shaped, with two walls butting against the rock face that fed it with its boiling waterfall, it could have been mistaken for a natural lagoon if the underwater tiling didn’t give it away. Had we come later in the day, the café and bar making the third wall would have been far more inviting. Instead, it was impossible to ignore that it was nine in the morning, almost, but not quite, entirely the wrong time for a beverage. It was too late for coffee to sound very appealing before a hot soak, and not quite late enough to sanction a brew.

The fourth wall of the pool created a walkway between the largest, hottest, and prettiest of the pools, and the second in all three categories. Underground pipes from the first, assisted solely by gravity, cascaded water that kept the second’s temperature more or less constant. The same occurred in the third.

I dipped my toes into the first pool. It was hot, but bearable. I immersed myself up to my knee, and right about then decided that I was too much of a weeny to go any further. The heat, to which I had hoped I would acclimate, did not seem to get any cooler. Instead, words like “searing,” and “ohmygodthisissohotican’tstandit” kept thumping themselves against my consciousness. Is this the way a lobster feels as it contemplates the final moments leading up to the great beyond?

“What do you think? 140 degrees? 150?” I asked Kate as she walked up beside me. She shot me a look that clearly suggested I needed to re-zero my internal thermometer. “Forget this, let’s go to the cooler pool.”

Kate’s example and snide allusions about my manliness eventually got me up to my chest in the main pool. When I tried to move however, my zen-like concentration on penguins and snow days was instantly broken, and we spent much of our remaining time alternating between pools number two and three. While they were certainly cooler than the first, they were plenty warm enough to work away at our muscle knots and induce that sleepy, sluggish feeling that hot water brings. I hoped the minerals would be good for my skin, but found myself wondering what the students at my 15 schools would say if the gringo walked up dyed as thoroughly green as the stones. I’m already huge here; would “you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry” translate, or would it be taken as a polite, though obvious, statement of personality?

After several hours, our skin seemed irrevocably pruned, though still depressingly similar in color to when we had arrived. Throughout the morning, the cloud forest kept sweeping in dense fog, then lifting it just as suddenly. We didn’t even get bronzed; I’m still rocking the farmer tan.

Eventually other obligations reminded us that we couldn’t stay forever. Standing fully clothed a few minutes later, I surveyed my surroundings one last time. This wasn’t mental anguish, and I’m not even that lonely, I decided. Is Guatemala simply the Posh Corps, or have I found a hidden gem?

The photos for this week can be found at: https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week23?authkey=Gv1sRgCPv7vNPVwpjJQw#

Week 22 - Across the Great Disparity

Some of the best things in life are free. Unfortunately, most things require a little bit of cash, especially in Guatemala. As I figured out what I would need for lunch in Huehue last week, this little tidbit should have been more prominent in my brain. Instead I covered the basics: Cellphone? In my pocket. Wallet? Different pocket. Pen, keys, and USB drive with the documents I needed? Pocket, pocket, and pocket.

When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the twilight of my room, I had only two things on my mind: Getting my grant applications in on time and a ride into town. I headed down the path that would take me to the highway, not really in a hurry, but anxious to check my email on a connection that wouldn’t conk out when I tried to do something as taxing as reading the New York Times.

I got to the highway, crossed it, and sat down on in the shade of an overhang. Sitting next to me was an indigenous woman of perhaps 60 or 70. Her traje implied that she wasn’t from San Se. She smiled, though was clearly confused why a gringo such as myself was sitting in the middle of nowhere, far from the nearest tourist attraction.

“Are you coming from La Mesilla?” She asked, referring to the Mexican border crossing 75km to the northwest. I guess she thought I must simply be passing through.

“No, ma’am, I actually live here in San Se. I’m the new Marcos, working in the schools.” Marcos was the volunteer before me and Lauren.

Her eyes lit up. “Oh, I knew him! He was so nice, always singing with his guitar. He’s left now though, right?”

I responded in the affirmative just as the bus heading to Huehue pulled up. She was headed elsewhere, I guess, because she didn’t move to get on. “Goodbye!”  I shouted just as the bus started to pull away. As I found an empty seat, that familiar sense of accomplishment washed over me. Another successfully banal interaction. Perhaps I’d reward myself with a parasite-free salad when I got into the city.

Still smiling, I reached for my wallet, getting my money ready for the ayudante (eye-you-DAHN-tay, lit. “helper”) to collect. You never knew when someone would try to squeeze in next to you, trapping your back pockets. Then the only way to access them would be to root around in that sweaty, fleshy chasm between their leg and yours. No, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

I looked in my wallet: Peace Corps ID, my Guatemalan debit card, two vouchers for free coffee in Antigua, and a few assorted things that were both American and long since expired. The one thing that was missing was the only thing I needed: Cash, equal or greater to 5 quetzales to be exact.

Worriedly, I looked up and saw that the ayudante was still chatting with the driver. At least I had a little bit of time.

I looked in my wallet again, hoping that the paycheck which had been deposited into my account had magically spilled from the abstraction of cyberbanking into my billfold. Still nothing.

I cursed the laws of physics as I frantically started patting my body all over, looking for a forgotten bill somewhere. The people nearby began shooting me sidelong glances, and moved away ever so slightly. Either the gringo had been the target of a sudden and coordinated assault from a renegade band of fleas, or he was going crazy. Either way, a little distance couldn’t hurt.

I found a single quetzal note after tearing through my backpack and clothing. This wasn’t good. Alternative methods needed to be explored, and I was desperate. We were at least 9 or 10 miles from anywhere, and the most common result of failure to pay is to get booted from the bus.

I looked behind me, hoping there was an acquaintance or friend that I hadn’t seen who could lend me 4Q until I could hit up an ATM in Huehue. No one. I was on my own, unless I wanted to explain to a total stranger how I, as the perceived rich gringo had absolutely no money and was begging from subsistence farmers. The irony was not lost on me, and I didn’t think that it would be on them, either. I would avoid it if I could.

The ayudante started his relaxed, ponderous stroll from the front of the bus towards me, collecting the fares from each person as he went by. Each of them was able to pay. I would not. With mounting dread, I looked through my wallet one last time, hoping that I had somehow missed something during the previous two searches. It really isn’t a very big wallet.

By some stroke of luck I actually had.

In the hidden pockets behind the sleeves for the credit cards, I found a single, folded one dollar bill. I noticed a slight tear on one end and dimly recalled how the bank had refused to convert it when I tried several months ago. The current value of the US dollar is around 7.50 or 8Q. Maybe, just maybe, this could save me from a hot, dull, slightly perilous trek along the highway back to San Se.

The ayudante reached my row, and took the fare from the guy sitting across from me first. As he turned, I began to sputter the carefully-rehearsed lines I had prepared.

“Hi. Fíjese que I just realized that I don’t actually have enough money to pay the fare.”

The ayudante looked at me like he hadn’t understood, which he probably hadn’t since I was too nervous to actually consider the grammar or pronunciation of what I was trying to say. Gamely, I struggled on, his face slowly showing recognition that the “rich” gringo was a pauper.

“What I can do is run to the supermarket near the terminal where there is an ATM and come back and pay you. It wouldn’t take a minute.” I smiled weakly, hoping a joke might lighten the mood. “Unless you take plastic?”

“No,” was his simple reply, and I wasn’t sure to which statement he was referring. He started looking back at the driver as the passengers around me began to catch on. He was going to tell the driver to pull over. I guess he meant “no” to both. The whispers, which I was too preoccupied to translate in their entirety, were of a nature that suggested the irony was not lost on anyone.

“Well, look. What I can do is give you this one quetzal note and this American dollar.” I let the word “American” hang for a second to emphasize its exotic and profitable nature. I tried to hide the tear from view. “The dollar is worth 8 quetzales, so in some sense it would be like I’m paying nearly double the regular fare.”

He turned back towards me. Incredulity was etched over his uncommonly-expressive face. Again I smiled weakly, trying to shove the two bills into his hand. He looked at me for a second, then down at the bills, and back at me again. Was this gringo for real?

He took the bills grudgingly. I highly doubted he’d go to the bank to actually collect on the fare, but they were on a deadline, and stopping would throw them even more off. He turned, and continued collecting the fares of the other passengers. Those nearest to me, who had heard the entire, mortifying exchange, chuckled. I sank lower into my seat, trying to hide for the rest of the trip. Unfortunately, school buses are not meant for people of my size, and it didn’t work. From the back of the bus, I’m sure you could see my scarlet ears towering over the backrest meant for 4^th graders.

When we reached Huehue, I got off at the mall, ran in, and promptly withdrew 500Q. I was a rich gringo again, and had traveled from one end of the great disparity to the other in only 30 minutes.

Find the accompanying pictures here: https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week22?authkey=Gv1sRgCNqw56TRyOfPSA#