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.

Week 6 & 7 - Verbal Defenestration

Dear All,

Field-Based Training is over…finally. A week of presentations, early mornings, cramped minibuses, and being trotted around the greater Quetzaltenango metropolitan area is finally over. It was great, and I definitely learned a lot, but with such a high-stress/low-privacy situation, it feels good to be back in San Lorenzo, where I again have my own space.

Field-Based Training, or FBT as it’s usually called, is roughly the midpoint of Healthy Schools training. It’s the summit of the three-month slog through procedures, cram sessions, and general orientation to Peace Corps; everything from this point, volunteers assure me, will be downhill in terms of difficulty. Frankly, that’s probably a good thing—I’m kind of missing my snowboard anyway, and look forward to riding gravity to my final destination, the Swearing In ceremony on March 25th. For the moment, I’m going to forget that March 25th really marks the beginning of my two-year commitment.

So more about FBT—I suppose all you nosey types will want to know what that actually entails, besides a tired sentence in an exhausted trainee’s first paragraph. As I mentioned in the last post, I—along with 8 other trainees from my cohort—were placed in Olintepeque, a town not far from Xela (SHAY-la). For those of you who are both nosey and overachievers, you won’t find the name “Xela” on your map; it’s the common nickname for Quetzaltenango, Guatemala’s second largest city. Olintepeque was a fairly nice place, though we really didn’t have much time to hang out and see the sites.

Instead, we spent most of our time in schools throughout the area. Some were in Olintepeque, obviously, but others were miles outside of its borders. Yuna and Christie, the volunteers stationed there (and our gracious hosts for the weekend), have been busy doing what I’ll be doing in a little more than a month, namely coordinating with schools, administrators, students, teachers, and parents to improve health in the area. Naturally they were pretty excited to show us what they’ve been up to, which, as it turns out, is a fuckin’ lot.

Sunday – Drive from San Lorenzo to Olintepeque. Begin preparing for a presentation to be given the next day on the importance of washing hands to 4th graders. Joe discovers that writing legibly on a poster is hard. Joe also discovers the utility in writing in the third person.

Monday – Joe wonders if he’ll shit himself in fear as he waits to give his first presentation in Spanish in Guatemala. Wishing he could go to the bathroom first (just to be safe), he is ushered into a classroom where 30-odd students grin at him expectantly. All Spanish suddenly leaves Joe. He’s sure that ten year-olds never looked so intimidating. Rallying, Joe gives the approximately 20 minute presentation in about 10 minutes, though it took 4 hours to create.

Tuesday – Marginally less likely to crap himself in public, Joe gives a different 15 minute presentation at a magisterio, a school for aspiring teachers on classroom management techniques. Joe quickly realizes that the assembled group of 50 middle-aged adults are not students, but the professors at the school. All Spanish again heaves itself out of the third-storey windows, preferring defenestration to staying and helping Joe be articulate. Joe is left wondering if it’s presumptuous to think he has anything to teach career teachers about classroom management.

.

Wednesday – A final presentation (repeated three times) for parents is given on the recipe for Suero Oral (oral rehydration liquid). Spanish tries to escape, but Joe, using a powerful combination of forethought and lecture notes, manages to keep it roughly immobile.

Thursday and Friday– 12 meetings over two days with education administrators, mayors, and health centers is too much. Joe finds himself fantasizing about three-hour siestas and un-dubbed American filmography.

Saturday – Return to San Lorenzo, begin writing an post that hopefully sounds irreverent rather than jaded. Joe recognizes that he's probably failing.

Aaaaaand scene! No more third person, I swear.

There’s more, of course, and much of it almost seems too foreign to describe—hearing Kiché (Key-CHAY) spoken fluently (and Spanish only by a few), seeing the truly remote aldeas and the traditional Mayan-style of dress known as traje (TRAH-hay) become more common than jeans and t-shirts, and the wind-burned and scabbing faces of school children because the air is too dry and cold (at 8,000+ feet of elevation) for healthy skin maintenance. With almost all of the families, moisturizing lotion is an unaffordable luxury item.

Some parts of it really appealed to me, and it’s perhaps for this reason that I almost exactly described Olintepeque when I was handed my “Site Preference Form”, to help Peace Corps figure out where to place me.

“I want a temperate-to-cool environment, with a significant indigenous population. If possible I’d like to be placed in a middle-sized cabesera (basically, a regional hub) of 5,000 to 10,000 people with easy access to a larger town.”

Of course, I’m sure almost everyone else put the same thing. Add that to the fact that Peace Corps Guatemala has a suspicious track record of placing volunteers in sites almost the polar opposite of what they desired, and  I’m not expecting my site to match up very well to this ideal.

For the most part that’s fine by me. We also have a site partner (a “co-“), and to me that’s way more important. We work virtually side by side for two years, and may be the only breath of familiarity—at least at first—for miles around. Perhaps it’s for this reason that I am way more concerned with a good co- placement than a good site placement. I think that I could be happy with a really difficult site if I had a great relationship with my co-, but even the best site would be terrible if ours was a toxic relationship.

On Monday we had a speed-dating activity to help us discuss work styles and general pet-peeves, which I think to relatively little to change the mental list I had already compiled. Still, it was fun to sit in the park, the trees with their waxy leaves shading us from the harsher afternoon rays, and see all the people who I’ve been missing for the last few weeks. I will say I have a pretty firm list of people who I would be very happy to work with, and an equally firm list of people who I’d despise working with. For now, I’m going to keep both lists to myself, but I’ll find out my co- by next Tuesday. It feels a bit like prom right now: I’m super excited, super nervous, and more than a little afraid I’m going to do something stupid to screw it all up. Can you have two left feet when it comes to work relationships? As someone who’s left footed, would that help me??

Best,
Joe

PS, here’s this week’s link to the accompanying photos: https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week6?authkey=Gv1sRgCN_J39ynqN-MkgE#

Week 5 - Heads Should Usually Remain Attached

Sorry this post is coming late. It’s not my fault; someone (drug lords?) cut the fiber optic cable connecting the Peace Corps center to the internet people in Guatemala City. To make up for it, I promise that this post is going to be good. Really good. Perhaps. A lot has happened in the last week, much of which I’m still trying to process. Because it happened first, I’ll start with the good stuff.

Thursday night I received a call from one of the Peace Corps staff asking me how I thought my Spanish classes were going. I thought this a bit odd, and immediately started to answer as ambivalently and diplomatically as possible until I could figure out just why they wanted to know. Mid-training reviews weren’t for another week, so this clearly was something different. “Um, they’re going well, I guess. I think that I’m doing alright, but of course there’s still a lot left to learn.” After circling around in such a fashion for far longer than was necessary, I finally decided I was being stupid and just decided to go the “mature” route: “Can I ask why you want to know?”

“Oh, it’s just that your Spanish teacher called us and said that you were doing really well. Perhaps formal language classes are no longer the best way for you to learn. How would you like to do an independent study project during the time when you’d ordinarily be with him?”

I was stunned. I had placed into Intermediate-High (level 6 of 9, with 1 being not-a-word and 9 being a native speaker). I have of course noticed that my Spanish has gotten loads better since coming here, but she was saying that I was essentially fluent, that I had learned all I could from grammar classes and that all that was left was for me to do something in the community that would allow me to practice my speaking ability and increase my confidence. I told her that I’d do it, and she gave me the weekend to choose a focus.

I found out later that this is slightly less rare than it sounds. Anyone who achieves Advanced-Medium (level 8) and higher are given the choice to work independently. Allison, another trainee with me in San Lorenzo, got the same call, along with several others in our training cohort. Still, I’m not going to short-change myself. I’ve been working my ass off to learn, speaking with my host-family for hours during the day and studying at night, and it feels pretty good to be recognized for it.

After a comprehensive game of Twenty Questions with another staff member, I found out the bounds of what is an acceptable study. Apparently, a “critical investigation of the Guatemalan agronomy” (read: sampling the coffee in Antigua) does not pass muster, but “independent study” did not necessarily preclude the possibility of working with a partner. I’ve been talking with another trainee, Rebecca, who lives in a neighboring town, and we’ve decided to investigate issues of domestic violence. Our host families put spousal abuse at around 70%, and Peace Corps estimates it’s closer to 80 or 90% in some areas. With such a high incidence, it seems quite likely that we’ll run into it in at our permanent sites; it would be nice to know what the resources are when confronting it. It’s still in its infancy of course, but since there are few, if any, official organizations in the area that work with survivors of domestic violence, we’re expecting to speak to other groups that may run across it. Puestos de Salud (Community Health Centers), police departments, divorce attorneys (women leaving their husbands are rare here, but it does occasionally happen), and survivor accounts are the sources we’re going to tap first. Given the timeframe we have, this will of course not be a hugely in-depth exploration, but we’re supposed to give a presentation about it at the end of training. It would be really great if we had useful things to say. More as it develops.

The weekend was great. Our final Spanish class was in Antigua on Friday, where we were essentially big tourists (but feeling outrageously superior to “normal” tourists because, after all, we’re Peace Corps). Just like the last time I went, I spent greatly outside my means—this time both a morning snack and lunch, which totaled about $12—but I felt profound gastronomic contentment, so I think it was probably worth it.

Saturday we went to the Peace Corps center, where a Mayan priestess demonstrated a traditional religious ceremony. I wish I could describe it better, but most of it was in Kaqchiquel, one of the 20+ Mayan languages. Further, I was more tired than I’d like to admit since I’d had to wake up at 5am to get there. I eventually understood that she was praying to 20 different energies (Gods?) who are in charge of daily events, using offerings of tobacco, candles, sugar, rum, incense, and a tarry brown solid that may have been a large brick of chocolate. It was really interesting, especially from an anthropological standpoint, and I hope to see more of such ceremonies when I get to site.

Sunday was really the only bad part of the week, though “bad” is almost certainly not the right word. It was melancholic, odd, and violent, but perhaps not truly “bad.” It was the Corrida de las Cintas (Running of the Ribbons), which originally sounded like a fairly dainty event; I thought it might be the Guatemalan equivalent of decorating a Maypole.

But May Day it is not.

It started out innocently enough. 20 or so men on horses took turns galloping at full tilt at a clothesline strung across San Lorenzo’s main street, a pencil clutched firmly in their dominant hand. Along the line were dozens of short ribbons with metal rings tied to them, each approximately one inch in diameter. Using the pen as a lance, they tried to put it through the ring, tearing the ribbon from the line while charging past. The cowboy with the most ribbons by the end was the victor, and the recipient of prizes which included leather goods, cash, and liquor. It was quite fun the watch, especially since the crowd lining the street got very into it and would “ooh” and “ahh” when someone made a particularly skillful pass. Eventually, though, the ribbons had all been plucked from the line, and it was time for the main event.

I had some forewarning for what was coming. My family had explained it to me, but I had been so incredulous that I didn’t fully believe that such a thing could actually occur. Not there on main street. Not virtually outside my bedroom window. Not in San Lorenzo.

The festival organizers led out the duck, which squawked resignedly, as if it knew the fate that was to befall it. The men tied it by its little duck ankles to the line, letting it dangle above the street upside down. Another man began to grease up its little duck neck.

“Aw shit,” the duck squawked again.

And so it began. Each of the 20 cowboys took turns charging towards it, their hands empty this time. As they flew by, they tried to grab the duck’s head. Like with the ribbons, this event would not be over until someone had torn it from the line. When someone was able to grasp the head, it was too greased for them to hold on. As they galloped past, the line would become taut, then slingshot the duck back to its original place as it slid out of their hand.

Cowboy after cowboy, round after round, the event continued. The duck didn’t die until the middle of the third round—after more than 60 attempts to decapitate it. Finally, at the beginning of the fifth round, attempt number 82 or 83, the head could take no more and made its escape. Pin wheeling beak over eye sockets, it flew twenty feet into the air before falling to the cobble stones below. It bounced wetly a few times before finally coming to rest.

People cheered, the victor was congratulated, and prizes were distributed. The festival was done.

I couldn’t figure out what to think. On one hand, it was a cultural event that clearly held meaning in the community. On the other, it seemed horribly barbaric and unnecessarily cruel to my PETA-loving sensibilities. At the very least they could have killed the duck first, sparing it the pain and ignominy of having to wait for its neck to leisurely rip in half. It seemed, at least to me, that life was not a necessary perquisite to the actual sport. I suppose, though, that I’m superimposing my own moral code onto the fabric of Guatemalan culture. In my defense, I’ve been taught that complete moral relativity is both a non-sequitur and often morally reprehensible, so does the fact that I can’t achieve it really make me a bad anthropologist?

I guess, after a couple days of reflection, I’m glad I saw it, though I will be quite content to never see it again. In many ways it’s like so much of my time here so far in Guatemala: Thoroughly foreign, simultaneously disquieting and intriguing, and occasionally difficult to get through. I still maintain that I love it here, but I will be quite pleased to forego any other animal-mutilation-for-the-crowd’s-enjoyment style events.

Oh! One last thing before I sign off: I found out my Field-Based Training site, where I’ll be basically shadowing real, live, volunteers in my technical program (Healthy Schools) for a week starting this coming Sunday. The site’s called Olintepeque (Oh-lynn-teh-PEH-kay), and it’s in the department of Quetzaltenango, in the western highlands. I don’t know what my internet situation will be while there, so don’t be surprised if I don’t post next Tuesday. If that happens, I promise to make up for it by writing a double one during week 7.

PS: As per usual, I’ve uploaded some photos (and a short video clip) taken over the course of the week. As a warning, some of the photos are a little graphic. If you don’t want to see a duck being tortured, tread carefully through this week’s selection. For those of you that do, they can be found here https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week5?authkey=Gv1sRgCMv7wt762t3NqgE.

Week 4 - Healthy Schools and what It Means

Another week gone, and tomorrow will mark one full month in country. It’s odd looking back on my time here; on one hand, the sheer number of things that I’ve done and experienced makes it seem like I’ve been here for ages. On the other, those same experiences keep catapulting me headlong into each day, and the weeks themselves seem to fly by. Time really is quite a tricky thing.

I suppose it’s about time that I actually explain what it is that I’m supposed to be doing here. When I came, I had little more than a paragraph abstractly explaining that I would be working as a “Municipal School Health Coordinator” and attempting to improve the health of school children. The number of specifics I could divine were depressingly few. Well, now that I’ve been receiving training for a while, I feel much better informed.

There are around five or six technical programs currently in operation in Peace Corps Guatemala, but only two in my training cohort—Healthy Schools and Sustainable Ecotourism. Though it probably goes without saying if you read the previous paragraph, I’m a part of Healthy Schools (“Escuelas Saludables”). The Healthy Schools program began several years ago, but recently it has undergone a change in focus. Whereas Volunteers used to take an active role in teaching K-5 students directly, mine will be the first training group to focus on the larger picture. The Peace Corps has determined that a single volunteer working with five to ten schools is much less efficient than two volunteers working with 30 to 40 schools. We are, they tell us, going to become “trainers of trainers.” We’ll continue to lead lessons focusing on preventative health, but rather than teaching students we’ll be leading workshops and seminars aimed at parents, teachers, principals, and superintendents. The belief is that if we train the educators, they’ll teach their students. We can reach ten, even twenty schools in a single session rather than going to each school individually to teach the same material, , and it will be a lot more sustainable over time because there will be much greater continuity from one year to the next.

The lessons focus on the biggest health issues in Guatemala, almost all of which are a direct result of poor nutrition and/or hygiene. Essentially, this means a lack of hand washing, brushing teeth, and eating a balanced diet. Guatemala is in the top five for stunting (shortness due to chronic malnutrition) in the world. The average height here is probably around 5’4” for men and 5’1” for women. At 6’0” I’ve towered over almost everyone that I’ve met; many women do not even come up to the base of my neck. As for contamination, the rivers and general body hygiene here can be awful. At the risk of denying the agency of economically-disadvantaged Guatemalans, it’s in many cases not their fault. Occasionally the only source of water is the river, which is used for everything from washing clothes and food to defecating and throwing away trash. Thus, one of the most important infrastructure goals of Healthy Schools is to get at least eight clean running water faucets installed in the school for hand washing before and after meals and trips to the bathroom. The implementation of a healthy snack—which in some areas can account for up to 30% of a child’s daily caloric intake—runs a close second.

If a school fulfills a set of given goals, they can be certified by the Peace Corps as a “Healthy School.” Admittedly, I was a little dubious about the value of such a certification, or rather the motivations of a teacher to teach this curriculum, but apparently it’s pretty legitimate. Peace Corps is well respected in Guatemala (or at least that’s what they tell us!) and it’s a good career move, especially for non-tenured teachers, to get certified. Administrators take pride in running such schools, and parents are, just like in the rest of the world, pretty gung-ho about their children’s health.

So in a word, that’s basically it. I will be working with dozens of schools in a given area with a partner from my same training cohort, conducting baseline surveys, leading workshops, and monitoring each school’s progress towards certification. As our program director often reminds us, “In 20 or 30 years we can change the face of health in Guatemala.”

In more local news, this weekend was San Lorenzo’s yearly Feria (fair/carnival). It’s pretty wild. Men dress up as women and act hyper sexually, especially with each other. While it’s not uncommon (or so my anthropology professors tell me) for a society to have socially-acceptable occasions for usually socially-unacceptable behavior, it was a bit shocking to see in my own sleepy little town. As a rather obvious target, many of the men felt that it was their duty to include me in their displays of pseudo-homoerotic behavior. In essence, I was “all grinded up on”…a lot. It certainly caught me off guard, and at times it felt like people were invading my personal space, but I admit that it was pretty amusing.

A lot of teenage couples, who usually canoodle in secret, away from the devoutly Christian eyes of their parents, appeared to have no problem conducting their more PG-behavior in the streets. Things like hand-holding, dancing closely, and even moderate kissing seemed to be permitted for this weekend only. On Saturday night there was a live salsa band, and on Sunday there was a DJ from a local radio station playing Guatemalan top 40. I went to both and had a surprisingly good time. There seemed to be no end of 15-to-19 year old girls that wanted a chance to dance with the awkward gringo. For the most part, all the girls closer to my age are married with children, so keep that in mind before you start haranguing me for being a cradle-robber!

As per usual I’ve uploaded a couple of pictures to go along with this post. They can be found at: http://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week4?authkey=Gv1sRgCKu_yLnGusWS4AE#

Week 3 - Lots of Interesting Things about My Stomach

Another week has come and gone. Right now I’m sitting on my bed (I'm writing this Monday night) and listening to the sounds of one of the many games of soccer going on at the concha (paved court) next door to me. Sounds of soccer, barking dogs, and over-laden trucks whizzing by have been the constant soundtrack to my world since I came to Guatemala. It’s a mixed blessing, I guess. On one hand, they’re all familiar sounds, and on some level I can project myself home for a couple minutes when I feel I need it. On the other, it’s super loud, typically goes on all night long, and constantly wakes me up when I’m trying to sleep.

There really has only been one noteworthy thing to happen to me since I last wrote. On Tuesday, I ate street food for the first time. Walking through the market in Antigua (on the way home from a day at the Peace Corps headquarters), several friends and I stopped for papoosa, which I think can probably be best described as a quesadilla with coleslaw on top. It came fresh off the grill, and tasted amazing. Unfortunately, the Peace Corps warns us about eating such things. By Wednesday morning I knew what they were talking about.

It started as a minor discomfort, a subtle sense that things were not as they should be. By noon this malaise had turned into a headache, a fever, and a whole lot of gastrointestinal distress. I didn’t accept it for what it was. “It’s just a bit of stomach irritation from breakfast,” I thought, “it’ll go away soon.”

But it didn’t. By that evening I was shivering from fever and frequenting the bathroom at least twice an hour. We had to go back to the Peace Corps headquarters on Thursday morning, and I was strongly considering not going. Only one thing made me pause to reconsider: Cell phones. The PC had promised us that we would get them on Thursday, and though they had promised us this very same thing every couple of days since we showed up in country, on this particular occasion I happened to believe them. I took my temperature before going to bed on Wednesday night, and it read over 100. “I’ll revaluate in the morning” I told myself.

Thursday morning came and I knew I was sick, but was unwilling to admit the extent of it. I had promised myself that I would go to Santa Lucia, but refused to be a whiner. I would not ask for special considerations. Luckily, my friends noticed that I had no color to my face and was generally miserable and when noon hit and I still hadn’t gone, they practically frog-marched me to the medical office.

One of our medical staff had no problem telling me that I was sick, a fact that I was still trying to avoid, and that I would need to give a stool sample. I won’t get into the nitty gritty, but let me just say there are an awful lot of “what ifs?” that go through your mind as you’re holding a tiny specimen cup under your ass in a third world country.

I finished, handed the container over, and three hours later had my results. I had a nasty trifecta: Bacterial diarrhea, Symptomatic Amebas, and Amebic Cysts (which apparently are little Ameba eggs. I also don’t know what happened to the “O” in “amoeba”, but none of the medical staff put it in, and so neither will I). I was assured that I did not have Amebic Dysentery, even though the symptoms are generally the same.

The cure? Pills. Large pills. Lots and lots of them. For quite a long time. I was immediately put on Ciprofloxacin, Tinidazole, and Iodoquinol. The first two are a fairly short regimen, just once or twice a day for 3 days. The third, however, is taken 3 times per day for 20 days. Twenty days! Add all those to my Chloroquine that I’m taking to prevent malaria, and my weekend had some pretty interesting dreams.

Even by Saturday morning I was feeling well enough to go with my language group and explore Antigua, the old colonial capital before it was moved to Guatemala City. While we’ve passed through it many times on the way to and from the Peace Corps office, this was the first opportunity we’d had to actually explore. It is a city that does not disappoint. The architecture is amazing, and the number of shops, restaurants, and curios are equally so. It’s a bit touristy, but definitely worth it. We stopped at a little café that gives discounts to Peace Corps volunteers, where we had the single most amazing breakfast I’ve ever eaten. I don’t know if it was because it was the first food I’d eaten in 3 days, or because we had stumbled on perhaps the only place in the country that serves fresh bagels, but it was glorious. Throwing caution to the wind, I had an egg, ham, cheese, and garlic cream cheese bagel and a latte made from Guatemala’s finest. The textures, flavors, and ambiance of the place made me want to cry from relief and satisfaction. I didn’t realize how stressful it had been being sick in a foreign place until I found myself feeling normal again.

I spent a little beyond my means—breakfast came to $4 dollars, including tip—but I would go back in a heartbeat. We strolled through the cobbled streets for the rest of the day, snapping photos and remarking on how cosmopolitan everything seemed compared to San Lorenzo. We stopped at a Jade museum, and I now know more about this semi-precious stone than I’ll ever need to. Even still, very cool.

I suppose I should probably wrap this post up. It’s 10pm and well beyond my bedtime. I should mention that at this point I feel totally fine, and am happily continuing to do what I need to with the Peace Corps. This has become the first of likely many (but hopefully not!) shitty events to befall me. Pun intended.

As usual, here’s the link to this week’s photos http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=sigrinj&target=ALBUM&id=5566117903988076129&authkey=Gv1sRgCP2rrrLNhuDsrgE&feat=email

Week 2 - A Word on the Discomfort of Cold Showers

Thank you for your responses to my post last week! They really make me feel good to know people are reading what I write and feel inspired to comment.

Let’s see if I can keep up the good work…

I’ve now been in San Lorenzo for a little more than a week, and a few things have been clarified for me. First off, Vilma and her husband don’t live full time here, but it seems that with the new baby they are in need of some support. The baby, who currently doesn’t have a name, is celebrating his 23^rd day of life today! Doña Mayra is more than willing, of course, to cook, clean, and care for the young ones with Vilma while Julio works, and they seem to stay for a few days at a time and then go back to Julio’s (Julio’s parents?) house. So while it can be a little stressful in the early morning when everyone is trying to get ready for the day, it’s not usually as bad as I previously thought.

On that note, I would like to register my growing distaste for bucket baths. It’s not that the practice is so bad—I’ve actually become pretty good at getting the water to wet what it’s supposed to—it’s just that it’s pretty uncomfortable taking a bucket bath in 55 degree weather with 55 degree water. Let me paint a picture for you, if I may:

It’s 6:43 in the morning. I’ve just brushed my teeth, taken my morning constitutional, and have stepped into the bathing closet, closed the door, and undressed. It’s brisk outside, and goose bumps are already beginning to form on my arms and legs. In collegiate vernacular, I’m “nipping out hardcore.” The water, taken directly from the spigot on the wall, fills the basin. I test it with my hand, grimace, and fill the dog-bowl-sized guacal (essentially, the “scooper”). With a wide stance, bent as far over at the waist as I can possibly be, I timidly dip my head into the frigid liquid. It’s not so bad. One might even call it refreshing. My head is somewhere in the vicinity of my knees, and all the water trickles up, past my ear, and spills onto the ceramic drainage basin. No water has touched me below the neck; so far, so good. I put shampoo into my hand, lather my hair, and let sit. Now comes the bad part. I sigh loudly. Now comes the cold part. Standing upright, I refill the guacal and bring it to mid chest. I take a deep breath, count to three, and pour it on myself.

A slew of words escape my mouth, some English, some gibberish, most consisting of four letter words or their offshoots, and all of which are thoroughly unprintable. If there was any doubt before, there can be none now: My body would rather be dirty than go through this every day. The first few are the worst—stomach, armpits, back…after that my body enters a mild sort of shock and doesn’t register the abuse it’s receiving with as much clarity. I scrub my body, rinse my hair, and then reach for my towel. One shower down, 76 more (but probably more like 800) to go.

I suppose I could ask Doña Mayra to heat water up for me, but since she’s already up before all of us getting breakfast (from scratch) ready, I don’t want to burden her with heating my bath water, too. She did it for the first couple of days, but she’s since stopped and I don’t have the desire to ask her to continue. When I’m able, I try to shower during midday when it’s warmer, but more and more often we’re doing something during training that takes up our entire lunch break. Frequently, the morning is the only time I can shower.

Besides that one uncomfortable aspect at the beginning, my days are starting to settle into an easy routine. Wake up, do Peace Corps, eat, do Peace Corps, fall asleep around 9pm, repeat. I’m finding San Lorenzo more and more charming. Everyone is exceedingly polite and friendly to me, a fact which Francisco (“the not-family-but-living-with-us-anyway tenant") attributes to me being a rich, college-educated gringo. He may be right, but I rarely feel unsafe here, even when walking alone. I still avoid going anywhere alone after dark, but during the day, when the paving stones of the main streets are warm with the tropical sun, I feel confident strolling through town.

It’s becoming more and more obvious that my family is very wealthy by Guatemalan standards. Don Tereso, Jacobo, and Fráncis all work 6 days per week, and I’m assuming the children’s money goes towards the general family fund. We have two cars and, as of Friday afternoon, a brand new motorcycle. Don Tereso and I had a rather frank discussion about the differences between Guatemala and the US the other day, and he told me that he makes about 400 Quetzales per week (about 50 US Dollars). They’re getting an additional 450Q from the Peace Corps for hosting me, and assuming that Francisco pays ¾ of that for his rent, that’s still only about 7,500 dollars per year. Add 350Q each for Jacobo and Fráncis, and it bumps it up to 12,000 USD. It makes me feel kind of guilty for spending what I did on my tuition…

I took Doña Mayra’s sister’s 10, 5, and 3 year old children (my host-nephews?) to the circus on Saturday. I can’t recall if I mentioned in my last post that there’s one parked just up the street from me. I had already gone once before, but they kept making it obvious that they wanted to go, if only they had the money. At first I was a bit uncomfortable about it—if I paid then, would I always be expected to act as a source of money? Would I box myself into the very common stereotype around here of rich gringo? Then I noticed just how they were asking: They never explicitly requested, but instead kept circling around it. “I’ve never been to a circus, and tonight is the last night”; “I would go if I could, but my mother doesn’t have the pista [cash]”; “Don’t you want to go to the circus again before it leaves?” This lines up well with my more general observation of everyone being hesitant to explicitly say no. Instead, they too dance around it without explicitly saying it. Does indirect questioning breed indirect answering? Eventually, I decided that I could afford the amount, 20Q for all four of us (about $2.50), and it seemed an equitable exchange for this valuable bit of cultural information. For this relatively low price, I had learned out how to approach subjects here that I want but shouldn’t ask for. As we left, any remaining doubt was erased; their faces were truly priceless.

This weeks pictures: https://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/Week2?authkey=Gv1sRgCMqOz-DHwb6Q5QE&feat=directlink

Week 1 - I've Arrived!

I’m here! It’s been a very stressful, though exciting, couple of days. I only arrived on Wednesday afternoon, but I’m amazed at how much the Peace Corps can fit into only three and a half days. I can’t fully describe how much I feel like I’ve already learned, and the staggering feeling of knowing how much more I have to go.

Virtually all of my time has been spent in the Department of Sacatepéquez, the Guatemalan equivalent of a province or state. When 53 other volunteers (or rather, trainees) and I arrived in Guatemala City, we were became the 128^th such training group in the history of Peace Corps Guatemala’s 48 year history.

As we walked towards the baggage claim of a mostly deserted airport, we were met by several PCVL’s (that’s Peace Corps Volunteer Leaders; apparently the Peace Corps likes acronyms and abbreviations nearly as much as Carleton). They all were friendly, but there wasn’t much for them to do while we collected our luggage. As we left, I discovered that one of the PCVL’s was from Minnesota, so we chatted about that as we left what I later found out to be the 4^th more homicide-prone city in the world. Apparently there are something like 48-50 murders per 100,000 inhabitants—in the US, that number is 5.6.

We rode on our own bus, which is called a camioneta in Spanish, and has garnered the name “chicken bus” in English. It felt squished sitting two to a seat in a more garish version of what I rode to school every day in the 4^th grade. Or rather, I should say I felt squished until I saw us pass another such bus on the road out of town. I believe the seating capacity of a normal school bus is between 55 and 70, but there must have been at least 150 people crammed 3 to a seat and many more standing in the isle. I felt rather fortunate after that, but I anxious about how I will fare when I inevitably must be one of those many passengers.

When we finally reached Santa Lucía Milpas Altas, I was unsure what to think. I had tried to picture it in my mind, but it wasn’t close to the reality. I had expected forests and traditional Mayan lifestyles. Instead it was at 7,000 feet, a little bit chilly, and clearly a town. My host family, who I met later that day, even had a flat panel TV!

The Peace Corps headquarters here is a beautiful compound with rooms lining the walls and a flower-filled courtyard with picnic tables in the center. It’s at least a few acres, and more exploration revealed a basketball court, several additional classrooms, and a smallish field for soccer. I think it will provide a huge breath of Americanism and normalcy if I ever need it.

PC-128 (a term no one but me has yet termed it) seems pretty great. There definitely seems to be a Peace Corps “type”, which is fine by me. Everyone for the most part is smart, outgoing, and enthusiastic about international travel and experiences. There may be one or two who I’m not so sure about, but at this point I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I can see real friendships blossoming with many of these people.

After several hours of information by the Peace Corps staff, we were led to our temporary host families. I was paired with one other person, a trainee from Tennessee with a thick drawl that I continually found myself copying accidentally as I talked with him. He only spoke about ten words of Spanish, so most of the conversing was left to me.

The following three days were spent there, doing almost nothing other than attending workshops during the day and hanging out with our family at night. Everything is much earlier here, so I’ve been waking up at around 6:30 and going to bed between 8 and 10pm. Needless to say, this has taken some getting used to on my part.

I’m now in San Lorenzo el Tejár, which is about 35 minutes north of Antigua, the old colonial capital. I’m staying with this host-family for the next eleven weeks while I complete training. My host parents, Don Tereso and Doña Mayra are very excited to have me, and have been doing their very best to get me to burst from overeating. Unfortunately, there’s also another Peace Corps Trainee named Joe in the town with me, so he became José and I got assigned Chepe (CHEH-pay), a rough equivalent to Joey. Their three grown children, Jacobo, Fráncis, and Vilma, still live with them, along with Vilma’s husband Julio and their two children (one is Jefferson Daniél, aged 2, and an infant whose name I cannot remember), and Francisco, whose relation to the family I can’t distinguish. Needless to say it’s usually a pretty busy place, and I’ve even taken to drawing kinship diagrams to help me remember names and relationships…It’s only sort of helping. Just when I feel like I’ve got a bead on everything, I get introduced to someone new who happens to be the cousin of my mother’s uncle or something. Very confusing! It seems that everyone is somehow related in this town, and several generations live within a few blocks of each other. Hopefully I’ll figure it out soon, but it’s an intimidating process!

Beyond that, San Lorenzo is a rural pueblo nestled among the mountains, mixing charm and dilapidation in equal measure. Everyone is extremely friendly, and it’s rare to go more than two or three steps without greeting or getting greeted by someone. Despite this, we’ve been repeatedly warned not to venture out without a local escort after dark. So far I haven’t much felt the urge to disobey—not only because of the possibility of crime, but I’m not sure I could wind my way through the cement-and-corrugated-steel houses with enough skill that I would be able to find my way back.

My house is actually one of the nicer ones in town, however. While it still has a steel roof, it’s two storeys, made of some kind of stucco, and is a painted a friendly yellow. My room is actually two parts: a set of glazed glass and iron French doors open into a sort of sitting room with a desk in it, which in turn connects to my sleeping quarters, where there’s an armoire and my bed. In terms of amenities, the house is a little strange: We have regular electricity, but no bulbs over 50 watts; we have a flushing toilet (used toilet paper goes in the trash, not the bowl), but no running water in the rest of the house. To compensate, we, like many people in the area, use a pila, which perhaps can best be described as a bathtub four times the normal size that stores water for future use and forms the basis of all cleaning activities throughout the day. In the morning, we fill it from a spigot and will later use this water to do dishes, laundry, wash hands, and yes, take bucket baths; of course, this means that I’ve finally had to figure out for myself exactly how to conduct one. Usually my host mother will boil some water that I then dilute with colder water to the final desired temperature. Next, I bring the bucket (approximate 4 or 5 gallons) into what essentially amounts to a closet off the closet with the toilet in it, undress, and begin pouring water over myself with a smaller bowl. It can be a little tricky judging where the water will actually hit when I pour it behind me, so I would say only about half of the water at this point is actually doing the job it’s supposed to. The rest decides to bypass my body and make it to the drain as expediently as possible. To be fair, given the role it had been assigned, I can’t say I blame it.

I’m reaching the end of my post, and I just realized that I haven’t talked at all about the weather. As I mentioned, we’re in the mountains, at about 7,000 feet of elevation according to the Peace Corps. The days can border on hot—about 80 degrees in the sun during the hottest part of the day. When the sun sets, it drops to about 40 or 50 degrees pretty quickly, which may not sound like much by Minnesota standards, but since is no insulation, it can get quite chilly at night. I’m under two polar fleece/afghan-type blankets and my sleeping bag draped on top for good measure, but I still find myself having to wear socks and pajama pants.

So that’s about all I’ve got at the moment. I haven’t even been here a week yet, but the US seems quite distant. While I find myself wishing for modern conveniences every now and again, I’m for the most part enjoying myself. That doesn’t mean I don’t want letters though! Once again, my address until the end of March will be:

Joseph Sigrin, PCT
Cuerpo de Paz/Peace Corps
Apartado Postal 66
Antigua Guatemala, Sacatepéquez, 03001
Guatemala, Centro América
That’s it! It seems like I’ll only be able to check email on Tuesdays for the next few months, so I may be a little out of touch. I’ll be getting my Peace Corps-assigned cellphone by next Tuesday, so when I find out the number I’ll pass it along and hope to hear from some of you.

PS, I just uploaded a bunch of pictures to my picasa account. Follow this link to see it. I don't have time to make captions, but the majority are in Santa Lucia. The pictures of the yellow room is my permanent training site for the next three months. The dog is one of my host family's, named Oso (Bear), or more humorously, Oso Peligroso (Dangerous Bear)

http://picasaweb.google.com/sigrinj/FirstDaysInGuateStaLuciaYStLorenzoElTejar?authkey=Gv1sRgCMieuvme3oeHzAE#