Second Guatemalan September

Often when one travels to another country, people have many ideas of what the US is like (or what they think it should be like) according to movies and pop culture. And often, Americans abroad encounter anti-Americanism. One thing that one can’t avoid as an American living in Guatemala is the incredible influence that the US has on Guatemala, especially because out of a country of 13 million people, there are an estimated 1 million living in the States. I can’t even describe how huge this is…remittances from abroad (the states) account for a large percentage of the country’s GDP, which in real life terms, means that people have money to build their houses, send their kids to school (or even private school), and live a much more comfortable life than the majority of Guatemalan citizens. There is a stark contrast between normal homes and which houses are built from money from the states. This is especially the case in the rural villages, where you’ll see some nicer, well-constructed homes, in literally the middle of nowhere. I recently attended a photo exhibition in the Spanish embassy in Antigua, which showcased "remittance architecture". On the very front of the all brochures is a photograph of a hotel here in my town in Chiantla called "Chicano’s Hotel". It is the only hotel in my small town and is very obviously remittance money - big, shiny tinted glass windows, four stories high...it definitely stands out next to all the surrounding small homes.

And as for anti-Americanism, that pretty much doesn’t exist here, which is surprising given how the US has an ugly history of meddling in Guatemalan political affairs. I have never once heard a nasty comment about my country here. When I say that I’m from the states, the reaction is usually, "I love the states!", or "I lived in the states!", or "My brother/son/cousin lives in the states!", or "hmm…Philadelphia…is that near Los Angeles?" It also means that I have to be careful when speaking on the phone or to other volunteers in English, because a lot more people here understand and speak English than one would think. And it’s interesting because people’s experiences in the states can lead them to have a lot more opportunity once they’re back in Guatemala. For example, a man who worked in an Italian pizzeria in Portland, Oregon for three years owns a small comedor near my house. His pizza is by far the best pizza I’ve ever had in Guatemala - even better than the fancy pizza places geared towards tourist consumption in Antigua. And then there’s one of the Municipal Policeman who lived in the states for a few years and did mostly construction and repair type work. He worked in the states until he made enough money to build his house, and then he returned to Guatemala. While his job working as a muni traffic cop certainly doesn’t pay too well, he now knows all these handy skills that allow him to do extra small jobs on the side (like fixing my sink when it leaks). One of the current city councilmen worked as a cook in a chain hotel restaurant in Michigan. He told me that there were "a lot of black people" where he worked and that he knows every single word in English related to making waffles and omelettes. It’s so interesting to think about having what seems like a very low class job in one country can lead to having one of the most important jobs on a municipal level in another country.

Being surrounded by so many people who either personally know the states or have family there has been a really interesting experience for me. Most Guatemalans live around the California and LA area, so a lot of people don’t know where Philadelphia is, but I imagine that Guatemalans know a very different picture of the states than if I were a Peace Corps volunteer in most other countries around the world where PCVs serve. I always took a more liberal perspective towards immigration policy, but even more so after living here. It’s so sad that illegal immigrants are treated like criminals when all they are trying to do is improve the lives of their families. I know that sounds really cliché, but for anyone who thinks that argument doesn’t have good reason, come live in the campo and see for yourself…people literally have no other option. But in any case, it can be fun to have people to chat with in basic English now and then, and to learn about their different experiences.

But despite the rapid globalization and influence of the US on Guatemalan life and culture (like the guys walking around in Hollister and Abercrombie shirts, signs on car repair places that say “car wash”, and the growing number of Guatemalan friends on facebook), there are still things that shock my Guatemalan friends in common conversation. For example, my counterpart Rosario was astounded that in the states, nobody goes home for lunch. I told her that the only people who would go home for lunch are those who actually work from home…otherwise, people’s workplaces are usually too far away for them to return home to eat. She asked what my dad does for lunch, and I told her that he doesn’t even work in the same state and that his commute is an hour long drive, so he usually brings his lunch because it gets expensive to go out to eat (at least $8, I told her, and she was shocked. I’m not actually sure she believed me...)

And then emerged the subject of hired help. Here, even people who are not financially well off have hired help, who either lives in the house or comes and does chores and takes care of the children. It is so inexpensive that it’s not even necessarily a status symbol to have babysitters or cleaning ladies, because so many people do. My counterpart, for example, does not have a high paying salary but it only costs 400 quetzales ($50) a month to pay a young woman to live in her house and look after her baby. And for the past few months, I’ve been paying a woman to come wash my laundry every other week…she charges me between 25-40 quetzales ($3-$5), depending on how many clothes and sets of sheets there are. It is insanely cheap, but I am happy to pay the money to someone who needs it, and it saves me about 4 hours of hand washing…plus, I will still probably never figure out how to properly hand wash bed sheets. When Rosario asked me who is in charge of cleaning in my house, I told her that my parents share everything, and that when my brother and I were younger, we’d have assigned chores that rotated according to the day of the week. She really liked this idea and thought it was “muy correcto” and said that she admired my parents for sharing all the work in the house, because here, that probably happens in about 1% of households. And then she said, “So how do they manage all the housework if the both have jobs?…oh wait, you have washing machines over there.” To think that I used to dread laundry day, which came about every two weeks, and consisted of me dragging my clothes hamper into my apartment building basement, throwing some money on my laundry card, waiting for empty machines, running four loads at once, and then spending 45 folding everything when it was all over…seriously, I used to complain about that?! And now, even though I’m no longer washing my own laundry, I still have to worry about everything getting enough drying time in the sun before the downpours come in the afternoons. One of the things I’m most looking forward to about going home (besides eating sushi and Thai, playing with Toro, and drinking water from the tap) is putting my clothes into a washer/dryer and the wonderful smell of downy that I will enjoy afterwards.

On September 15^th, Guatemala celebrated its 189^th day of Independence, which was fun and special. Like the states, it is a very important holiday, filled with parties, fireworks, and parades. Unlike the states, it always falls during the school year, so the kids are busy decorating the schools with their national symbols and practicing for their parades. The muni employees had a parade, which consisted of us walking behind a banner. Pretty simple compared to some of the other parades, but it was really fun because I got to carry the flag. It made my arms really tired by the end, but it was also a really cool experience.

It is cool to be at the point in my service where I can look back and remember exactly what I was doing and how I was feeling a year ago. A year ago at this time, I still had no idea where my site would be and what my life in site would be like. And although the year in country mark makes one reflect on the service thus far, and goals met or goals that have yet to be met, I feel proud of where I am at this point and excited for things that I hope to accomplish in Year Two.

Independence Day pardes
Carrying the Guatemalan flag for the muni parade


My counterpart´s baby´s first birthday party
Baby´s first piñata. I was in charge of buying the piñata, so of course, I opted for the panda

The baby, who now loves walking, taking me for a stroll around his party
Chiantla´s hotel

Bailando y Corriendo...Dancing and Running

I am happy to report that two things I recently did lately turned out to be a huge success: “Corriendo por la Juventud”, the Fundraiser 10K that I organized for ADESJU (the local youth development NGO) and the Convite Femenino for Chiantla’s September Feria.

Since the Convite was the more recent of the two activities, I’ll start with that. So every Guatemalan town has it’s own saint or virgin, and every year, there is Feria on that saint/virgin’s birthday. Guatemala has two celebrations for the same Virgin Mary: La Virgen de Candelaria (February 2nd) and la Natividad de la Virgen (September 8). So the February Feria was my first time experiencing a Feria in my town. They stretch the virgin’s birthday into a weeklong celebration, with street vendors taking up every walking inch of the town. There is block after block of people selling food, sweets, DVDs, clothes, kitchen items, etc. They even take the school gymnasium and convert it into a mini shopping mall for a week. It is really crazy. There are some rickety rides as well, and even inside my house I can hear the kids screaming in sequence every 20 seconds or so. There are also concerts every night and fireworks at all hours of the day, even more so than usual. Anyway, there is both a men’s and a women’s “convite”, which I am roughly translating to “procession”. The men’s is two weeks before, and consists of a group of men putting on huge, cartoon character-style costumes, and dancing all over town, from 7 am until 10 pm. The women’s is a bit different, in that it has different costumes, more elaborate dance steps, and goes from 3 pm to 8 pm (dances in less areas of the town – only in the urban center, as compared to the men’s which goes to more rural areas too). Anyway, I watched the Women’s Convite in February with David and my two sitemates, and it looked so fun, I immediately told my counterpart Rosario that I wanted to participate and she told me that I am crazy but that it’s a good idea. And so I asked one of the women involved if I would be able to join their group, and they happily accepted. This is back in January or so. Then, about six weeks before the actual Convite day, we started rehearsal. We practiced every weeknight, from 8:30-10 pm. All the dance steps were relatively easy to learn, plus we did each one a million times so by the end I felt really prepared. It was a mix of marimba, reaggaeton, cumbia, duranguense, and hip hop music.

So basically, we put on these crazy costumes, and dance a combo of three songs on different street blocks throughout Chiantla’s urban center. Then, after dancing in seven different little sections of the town, we go to the central park in front of the muni to do the “homenaje”, or tribute, to the Virgen. The homenaje is different every time, to keep the whole thing new and fresh. This time, we each had to bring a little girl, dressed in white, with a basket of flower petals. We formed an aisle, the girls threw the petals on the ground, and then they walked the Virgen through the flower carpet aisle. After that, we dance in a big line, and the MC called each of our names, at which point we pulled off our masks and reveal our faces to the crowd. People gave huge cheers when I pulled off my mask – I think a lot of people didn’t know I was participating and were really surprised, which was fun.

But there were basically two crazy things about this whole ordeal. First is that, even though we practiced all the dance moves for six weeks, we practice un-masked, in sneakers, on one of the women’s even-leveled garage floor. So add this huge mask with small slits for the eyes and nose, makes seeing and breathing much more difficult, plus big high-heeled boots, plus the unevenness of the street…I literally felt like I was drunk the whole time from my inability to see or walk correctly. And then, the really really crazy part: so during our rehearsals with the little girls (mine is a friend’s adorable niece), they told us what to expect for the homenaje….that that they were going to set off a series of 36 fireworks for 36 different petitions to the Virgen Mary (love, peace, health, etc etc) and then a man wearing a “Torito” would run around the center of the big aisle that we had all formed. A “torito” is basically a cage that one places over their head, with a painting of a bull on it, and all these wire racks that shoot off sparklers and fireworks. Then the person wearing the Torito runs all around, while the fireworks and such shoot off. And the woman in charge of everything told the little girls not to be scared, that the Torito wouldn’t get close enough to burn anyone. WELL. In reality, the guy who did the Torito was completely drunk, could barely walk straight, and the fireworks are shooting off in every which direction. Two of the little girls actually got burned and of course my little girl was scared as s***, which I don’t blame her at all for…the only reason that I wasn’t totally freaked out is because I was wearing this huge mask and costume and felt that it would protect me from getting burned. I think that my sitemates facebook status from that day best describes it: What I just witnessed at the Chiantla feria just made my "Top 5 craziest things I've ever seen" list... Picture this: Drunk Man, wearing a cow covered in fireworks, stumbling through a crowd of 500 innocent civilians and children, exploding for five minutes, to screams and applause...

Luckily, the women who are in charge of everything also agreed that it was a bad idea. Which worried me, because sometimes things I see here that greatly concern me have no concern to Guatemalans (like all the Feria electrical wires lying in puddles). But all in all, the Convite was a great way to participate in all the Feria things, plus experience part of Chiantla’s religious culture, which is really important here. There will be two more Feria’s during my service, and I will gladly participate again. It is really fun, plus something to do to occupy my time. Something that I was hoping to achieve by participating was making some new friends. I definitely feel like there are now 31 more women whose names I know, but in some senses during all the practices I totally felt like the new girl at school, since they are all already friends and know each other. But I think that after this experience, I feel more comfortable to be myself around everyone and hopefully be a little more outgoing.
The whole group of the Convite Femenino before departing for the dance procession

The first stop along the procession
With Marcela, my little girl for the tribute
La Natividad de la Virgen
At the end, after the revelation, with my counterpart and her baby


The other big thing that took place recently was the youth race that I organized. After a lot of stress, it turned out really well. We solicited different businesses and people for prizes and water, so that we didn’t have to spend too much money out of pocket. The inscription fee for every runner was 10 quetzales, and all that money went directly to the organization. In the end, we had 63 runners from all different age groups, plus 4 PCVs who ran which was fun. We had been expecting more runners, but I was happy with the turnout and the focus of the whole event. The attempt was to make the event more focused on achieving goals instead of winning, so we gave diplomas to every runner, and during the awards ceremony, asked each of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place runners what message they have for youth and improving the lives of youth. We also had a marimba playing, the help of the police to direct traffic, and volunteers to hand out water, direct the runners, and keep time, which all made the whole event run more smoothly. I was very happy and relieved once it was all over, and am already looking forward to planning next years! Plus, my friends at the NGO have promised to keep this an annual thing, meaning I guess I’ll have to come back to Chiantla every year on International Youth Day to keep up the tradition!






On a more sad note, Guatemala is been receiving a much stronger rainy season than normal, resulting in many landslides and deaths (apparently reported as the worst in 60 years). Currently, the Pan-American highway between Huehue/the Western part of the country and Guatemala City is completely blocked by a landslide. Lucky for me, I don’t have any travel plans this month, but it does really complicate things and is tragic that so many people have lost their lives. The president declared a state of mourning and national emergency and Peace Corps has put us all on “standfast” which means that we aren’t allowed to leave our communities until further notice. This is something that will not last much longer and I am confident that in my part of the country, things will be fine, but I am hoping that it will not cause further damage everywhere else.

Did you all know that Peace Corps has three goals? They are:
1. Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
2. Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3. Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

So by writing this blog, I am actually trying to accomplish more of Goal Three: Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans. So if there are things that you are curious to know about Guatemala that I haven’t touched on, please ask!