Pachita = baby bottle

One noise I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get out of my head, long after I leave Guatemala, will be the pat-pat of tortilla making. You can hear the noise come from every household at intervals throughout the day. In the morning, it signals the first bowl of beans of the day, the madre making sure the kids are ready for school, and the murmur of plans being made for the rest of the day. Later in the evening, they’re patted out for the nightly bowl of beans, while the madre and daughters gossip about the days events, catch up on telenovelas, and sweat around the fire. Even though we don’t make tortillas in the US, the sound makes me homesick. I think of hectic mornings, with all of us getting ready for school, family dinners, and chatting about the mundane things in life with people that are vitally interested, for no other reason than they’re your family. One of the things I enjoy and admire most about Guatemala is the sense of family here. To us, it may seem odd that children live at home right up until they’re married, or that everybody has the time to sit down to not just dinner, but all 3 meals together, but out here they wouldn’t have it any other way.

This weekend I went to a baby shower for the sister-in-law of my host family’s oldest daughter who lives in a nearby aldea. Since I’d never been to a baby shower, I didn’t really realize until about half-way through how intimate and emotional it could be! After we did the mandatory embarrassing party games (I won at being fed babyfood the fastest while both the feeder and I were blindfolded) we got to the advice for the mother, and wishes for good health. I was the only non-mother there, so I’m sure I don’t fully understand, but it was so sweet to see these women reflect back on their times as a scared new mom. The only advice I could give was to spank the kid hard and often, just like my parents did to me. (Just kiddinggggggg, Mom and Dad!!! I didn’t say that!) After the party, as I sat with some of the ladies and talked about what I was doing in Guatemala and how things were going, I had nearly all the women in tears! One of the women asked me “But how can you do it all alone, without any family? What happens if you need help?” Another wanted to know “How can you do all the men’s and women’s chores, all alone in your house? Don’t you want someone to kill the bugs and dig up the soil for you?” I told them that of course it’s tiring living alone, especially when I can’t run to get fast food if I don’t want to cook, or just toss my clothes in a washer, but I get by every day and have constant support from people nearby. They all of course immediately pledged their help, and the help of their sons, cousins, neighbors, pets, uncles, and whoever else was around. It’s funny what I consider tough, and what they do. Having to do all the chores at my house is hard, sure, but I’m only doing them for one person. I would much rather do the man’s and woman’s chores at my house for 1 person than do just the woman’s chores for the entire family. That’s a lot of clothes to handwash. It was a delightful party overall, with a delicious spice cake with some marshmallow-type frosting and pulled-pork sandwiches.

Anywayyyyyy, the countdown is still in effect. Mark your calendars, ladies and gentlemen, because in T-34 days, I will be touching down in Atlanta.

Hogar = home

So I’ve moved! Hurrayyyyyy! I’ll hopefully be able to post pictures sometime, but ever since the unfortunate disappearance of my camera, I haven’t been documenting too much.

My new house is right down the street from my work, and across the street from the soccer stadium. When people here asked me where I moved to I say “the little white house that the Esquivel’s own that the doctors used to live in” and everybody immediately knows where that is. Not that too many people didn’t already hear it from 15 other people. The house is very small, but still too big for my scanty few possessions. The front door opens into a very short entrance, with two larger, rooms on each side. Very symmetrical. The back door opens into a great covered patio, where I’m going to eventually put my kitchen things. There a pretty large back yard, with plenty of space for my garden, and a pila and bathroom/shower about 10 yards away. All-in-all, the most simplest of spaces. So far, I only have a bed and a stove, and the 2 suitcases I brought from home, but I’m slowly building my own space. My Guatefamilia gave me my bed and dishes for free, and I bought the stove at half-price!! Hopefully I’ll be getting a table in the near future, but for now, I eat all my meals sitting on a ledge of my patio, watching the neighbor’s chickens peck around my pila. The thing I like most about my new house is the relatively private, open space in the back. I can have my garden, tan, and shower with little interruption.

The month of February came and went fairly quickly. Our training group all met up for Reconnect on Valentine’s Day, and enjoyed getting to see each other. Other than that, daily life is the same. Sometimes, especially on the weekends, it seems that there are more hours in a day than I really know what to do with. My typical day consists of waking up, going into the office for a few hours or going to the school to garden. Then I head back to the house for a quick lunch of whatever is in the market that day, and a rest with a book or tv show on the patio. After my 2-3 hour lunch, I head back to the office and mess around until 4 or 5, where I head back home to make dinner, hand wash laundry, work out, and laze around. I’m usually in bed by 8 or 9, and getting a full night’s sleep before 7am the next day. The weekends add some variety if I’m traveling, but when I’m here alone, I tend to lay around in bed a while longer, telling myself that I can’t get up before 9 on a weekend. Then I do whatever chores I have, go visit with my host family, tan, and be bored. It’s a very solitary life, but most of the time I don’t mind.

This past weekend, I worked on “home improvement” projects, and was very proud of myself. I’m becoming more like my dad every day. I started my fledgling garden, and have high hopes for constructing a table, if I can find cheap enough wood. I’ve also downloaded the Harry Potter books in Spanish, so that should be interesting.

Ok, so now that I’ve written the most boring blog ever, you guys will finally know how uneventful life here is on a daily basis. I guess that’s what it means to be “one of the people.” We recently had a group of American doctors come through our town, putting on a free clinic, and after talking to them, I realized how different it is to be doing a mission trip and to be living like a Peace Corps Volunteer. There are definite “pros” and “cons” to both.

This coming month, I’ll have a lot more interesting things to tell about. I’ll be going on vacation to Rio Dulce with the girls from the East and some friends of Kristen’s, and will also be going to Peace Corps’ 50^th Anniversary Celebration at the Ambassador’s house. Oh yea, and I’m going home in less than 6 weeks. Hurrayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

Vecino = neighbor

All Guatemalans know each other.

Ok, that may not necessarily be exactly true, but after being here 7 months, it sure seems that way.

A month or so ago, a group of us went to vaccinate chickens. When we missed the bus up to one of our aldeas, we just waited near the turn-off to go up the mountain, and hopped in the cab of the first person to pass. The way the women were talking to the driver, and the small size of my town, I figured they had known them for a while. Nope. He was a random deliveryman. Within the 25-minute drive, I found out about his impending wedding, AND what every single one of his relatives thought of the girl.

I was riding back with my family back from Cabañas, a neighboring town in Zacapa, and as we passed by the bus stop, we saw a small family with all their groceries, waiting on a bus to pass by. My host sister and her husband stopped the truck so they could hop in the back with us, and we continued on our way, eventually dropping them off in a small aldea of Cabañas, and later when I asked my family how they knew them, they said “Oh, we didn’t, we just figured they needed a ride.”

The way the mail works here is if someone sends me a package (hint hint), they only need to write my name on the package, and the town I live in, and in the entire population of 6,000 people, they’ll be able to find me. I moved to a different house here in town 2 days ago, and when I went to the post office to tell them the lady told me she already knew and would just walk the package down to my house for me.

I guess another thing that helps, besides the immediate bond Guatemalans form with random strangers, is that Guatemala is so small. Guatemala is roughly the size of Tennessee, and when you meet someone from your “departamento” it’s like meeting someone from your county or town, but it’s crazy that every time I mention Zacapa, someone knows someone from where I live! I live in a small town about two hours away from the capitol of Zacapa, with only roughly 6-8,000 people, but there’s still someone’s cousin or friend or even worst enemy out here.

And that’s why I bet you could play “7 Degrees of ‘________’” with any person in this country.