"From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity."
- Edvard Munch
Brace yourself: this post is going to be a long one (in
other words, Ann got a little overeager with her camera over the past week, and
can’t resist showing the results).
With the end of the strike at my health center came a
difficult realization: they don’t have very much for me to do. I’m excited to propose some projects of
my own (i.e. forming a support/information club for local pregnant women,
improving computer literacy among health center personnel, etc.), but I’m also
nervous to immediately propose these ideas without fully understanding how the
health center works. For this
reason, I’ve spent the past two weeks mostly as an observer. I’ve accompanied educators on house
visits to weigh and measure babies, attended staff trainings, and done some
data entry on malnutrition and dietary supplementation.
I’m also spending time getting to know the local community,
aided by my delightful host family and my equally delightful site mate, Laura. My host family is only too happy to
include me in their daily activities, whether that’s Mass at one of the two
local churches or a visit to my host mother’s indigenous family (even though
her grandmother only speaks the Mayan dialect K’iche, she knew enough Spanish
to ask me if I was married. I am
learning that for lots of Guatemalans, this is the most important information
about me. They always seem
disappointed to learn that I am unmarried and unattached at 23—basically a
spinster).
Laura, always generous with her time and knowledge, is doing
a great job both showing me around the area and introducing me to her
Guatemalan friends. We spent a
memorable Sunday afternoon climbing a steep hill (I would even go so far as to
call it a mountain, but maybe that’s the altitude talking) to the radio towers
overlooking San José Chacayá. We
were rewarded with a beautiful view of Lake Atitlán,
our first site mate photo,
and a hair-raising but invigorating climb up one of the
radio towers.
The outing made me genuinely happy, both because it was fun
to talk with Laura and her friend Oscar, aka Coca (don’t get me started on the
weird nicknames here), and because it reminded me of how much staggering beauty
there is all around me. I don’t
think any location will ever replace northern Minnesota in my heart, but gazing
at the Guatemalan countryside, with all its tangled greenery, precipitous
cliffs, and myriad waterfalls, makes me feel more at home here.
Laura then suggested that we organize a pumpkin-carving
activity with my coworkers and some of her students (she works in the Peace
Corps’s Youth in Development project, in the local high school). Halloween really isn’t a thing here,
and neither are pumpkins, but we decided we could improvise with some enormous
local squash, dull kitchen knives, and horrifically scented tea lights found at
Walmart. The results were
surprisingly pleasing:
After our costume-less (and, more devastatingly, candy-less)
Halloween celebrations, I got to experience Guatemala’s own death-themed
holiday: Día de Todos los Santos (All Saints’ Day). As you may have guessed from the name, it’s a religious
holiday, dedicated to honoring both the saints and departed loved ones. And although Guatemalans spend much of
November 1 and 2 in their graveyards, the holiday seemed to me to be about
anything but mourning. No doubt
this perception is partly to do with the bright colors of Guatemalan
cemeteries, which seem to banish melancholy.
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| The Sololá cemetery |
But it’s more than that. The weekend of Día de Todos los Santos seemed to positively
ooze happiness, from the festive grave-decorating activities, in which
Guatemalans bedeck their family member’s tombstones with pine needles, flowers,
and food…
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| Flower vendors outside the cemetery |
…to the graveside cookouts and serenades…
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| A graveside band |
…to the kite-flying competitions held across the country.
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| My host brother, Jon Isaias, and his kite |
Interestingly, perhaps the only sour note in the entire
weekend took place at San José Chacayá’s kite-flying spectacle. I noticed right away that all the
children were flying red-and-white kites, which were being handed out by my
host dad’s sister. I assumed that
red and white were just the colors she’d had on hand. But after about an hour of watching the soaring kites, an
orange-and-blue-bedecked pickup drove by, jeering at the children. This pickup was full of orange-and-blue
kites, and was labeled, “Partido Patriota.” The “Patriotic Party” is one of the two main political
parties in my town; the other is Lider (whose colors, wouldn’t you know, are
red and white). I quickly realized
that the children’s kite-flying activity was color-coded according to their
parents’ political allegiances. Then,
when I asked my host dad’s sister if the Patriotic Party children would be
joining us, I learned that they had their own kite-flying event, and would not
be mingling with us. This left me
feeling somewhat dumbfounded. I
know that the local political parties are at loggerheads, due largely to their
fierce competition for voter support, but I never imagined they would segregate
such a happy children’s activity.
By the way, this is probably a good moment to mention my woefully
incomplete blog page documenting the different Guatemalan political parties,
which you can conveniently access from the main menu. End advertisement.
Laura and I spent the second day of Todos Santos
celebrations on a grand journey to Sololá and Panajachel, a nearby tourist
hotspot with breathtaking lake views, excellent restaurants, and two (two!)
stores peddling American wares, including olive oil and Parmesan cheese. We started our adventure in the Sololá
cemetery,
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| A distant view of said cemetery |
which afforded us some lovely sights of the local
celebrations and the lake scenery.
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| Lake Atitlán, as seen from the Sololá cemetery |
Even though there are frequent (and cheap) buses from Sololá
to Panajachel, we decided to continue on foot, as it was a sunny but cool day
and we both relished the thought of stretching our legs. This turned out to be a great decision,
because the road to Pana is dotted with scenic overlooks. A few of my favorite shots from the
day:
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| One of the volcanoes overlooking Lake Atitlán |
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| Panajachel |
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| A waterfall along the road |
We then spent the afternoon enjoying all that culinary Pana
had to offer: fresh strawberries, Thai food, and real coffee (despite Guatemala’s
status as one of the world’s coffee capitals, the coffee actually served here
is pretty, pretty bad. This is
because they export all of their quality product (or sell it at outrageous
markups in tourist destinations), and serve all the leftovers to the
locals. It’s a crying shame,
especially when you consider the mere cents Guatemalan coffee farmers receive
for every dollar of their coffee sold abroad).
And on that happy, caffeinated note, I bid you good night!
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