There’s Always Room for One More

I decided to name this post according to things I’m learning about Guatemalan society. There is always room for one more – always. I will explain the “chicken bus” as the main example. These buses are the primary mode of transportation in Guate, and they are very different than the city bus that come to mind when you think of public transportation. Guatemala, as well as other countries in Central America, use old US school buses that have been retired or deemed as no longer fit for taking American children back and forth from school. So, they send them down here, where the engines are replaced and the buses are painted with many colors and adorations and given a title based on the driver/owner’s personal affections (such as “Jesus Es Amor” or “Mi Princesa Nancy”). And they are nicknamed “chicken buses” because of the livestock that can sometimes accompany the human passengers – but in Spanish, they are just “camionetas”. Riding these buses can be quite the exhilarating experience. First, because they tend to squeeze three people into a seat intended for two school-aged passengers. When the seats are all full, they fill up the aisle in double lines of people. Through this packed mess of people, the “ayudante” (bus driver’s assistant who yells out the stops and takes care of the bus fare) somehow manages to finagle his way down the aisle to collect money from every single person, often jumping out the back door of the moving bus and running around to the front door to swing himself back inside. Seriously, these guys make the Cirque du Soliel performers look like wimps.

The other night, my 4 fellow community trainees and I took our Spanish teacher out for dinner in Antigua, which was a fun bonding experience for the six of us, plus nice to get out of our community for a night and be able to speak English and relax a bit. We had a delicious yet over-priced Mexican dinner, probably to be expected considering how touristy Antigua is. Although it was definitely worth it, plus we found some real ice cream after dinner which made the night even better! After waiting an hour for the bus that returns to our community, we decided to cab it. Finally, machismo worked in my favor for once, when I was given the front seat of a taxi and the five guys has to squeeze into the back!

I have really enjoyed my family here and spending time with them. Every day I am introduced to more and more family members but they are so nice and welcoming to me. Today was the baby shower of one of the nieces, which was held at my host family’s house because of its larger courtyard. Experiencing a baby shower in Guatemala was so great. Even here, they call it a “baby shower” which I found comical, but it really was just like baby showers in the US. We played some fun games, which was nice to be included in and showed me also that perhaps Guatemalan society is not as conservative in some ways as the Peace Corps makes it out to be. One of the hysterical games involved a race between two sets of partners, in which one sits on another’s lap in baby position and has to chug horchata (a delicious milky rice cinnamon drink) out of a baby bottle. I also met a really nice woman and her super cute five year old, who I chatted with for most of the party and they invited me to their house for dinner in Chimaltenango, a nearby city which I haven’t visited yet. This is indicative of some nice cultural differences between the US and Guatemala. Allow me to explain: one cultural difference between the US and Guate is frankness. People here are less likely to say what exactly is on their mind or to give flat out “no” answers for fear of offending others (which we now have to learn to do the same – surprisingly difficult to do, as we are taught in the US to just speak our minds, within reason, and be direct about what we feel and what we want). But I also feel that Americans sometimes offer or suggest things without truly intending to follow through. So when early in the party, this woman says, I’d like to invite you over for dinner, I was thinking that it sounds great but maybe skeptical that anything would come of it, but then at the end of the party, she found some notebook paper to write me the address and phone number to her house, along with more specific directions to get there.

The four guys in my town and I have been bonding with our community pretty well, considering we’ve only been here for nine days. We sometimes go up to the basketball courts by the main church plaza after our Spanish classes and technical trainings to play soccer, and have made many small friends in the process. On Friday, for example, was the first time that I ever saw younger girls hanging out there, so we played a fun game of futbol, girls versus boys, and then two hours more of freeze tag and hide and seek. It definitely goes down as one of the best afternoons I’ve had in a while. While us five huge gringos may have looked somewhat silly to the rest of the town, I feel that playing with these kids and connecting with them is really important for more than just mental and physical diversion. If we want to be successful volunteers, we need to show the community that we care about them and are willing to engage in non-municipal development related things as well as things that match more of our “job descriptions”. Plus, my soccer skills are actually somewhat improving. I still have no hope when it comes to shooting and scoring, but I’ve developed a technique in which I just full-speed charge at the person with the ball, which occasionally works out in my favor!

One of the most challenging parts of this experience thus far is allowing myself to just be humble and realize that I am pretty incapable in many areas. After six years of moving out of my parents’ house and two years of living alone, it is difficult to allow myself to really give into this fact. Here, I have to learn how to bathe differently, wash clothing differently, eat and cook differently, take public transportation differently, etc. And coming from the US, a country puts so much value on independence, it is kind of counterintuitive to allow myself to mentally give into letting others assist us so much and teach us life skills anew. But I am really thankful to be with a family who supports me in this way and with a lot of patience. Being in a new environment forces me to evaluate what it is that I do know, both in terms of my technical work and day-to-day living, solely because of a new cultural context in which work and live in. I am consistently reminding myself to stay positive and that moving to another country is not supposed to be easy, but in all honesty I am really happy to be here and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be right now!

With my fellow trainees and Spanish teacher in Antigua - we got real ice cream!

A famous street of beautiful Antigua

Waiting for the bus with our favorite old man in the community

At the bus terminal in Antigua

In Spanish class, learning Guate slang (like ¨bish¨, written on the whiteboard, which means pee-pee. oh the necessary things we have to learn!)