No soy bandita!
We were
walking around the city with our language/culture facilitator when suddenly a
little girl pops out from an alley. She
shrieks, and runs back to hide behind her mother’s legs. As we pass, she starts crying, saying “Ellas
van a llevarme!!” or “They are going to take me away!”.
Lesson of
the day: Guatemalan mothers tell their children that if they don’t behave, the
gringos are going to come and take them away.
Soy Americana. Soy gringa. Soy
boogyman.
Chuchos, chuchos everywhere!
Chucho is
the term used for street dogs in Guatemala and they are everywhere! Many are
flea-infested and mangy, with skin clinging to their bones. The streets are fairly dirty because dog poop
is all over (adding to the copious amounts of cow poop and horse poop).
Many
Guatemaltecos have dogs, but they are not seen the same way as pets are in the
US. The dogs here are usually tied up
outside of homes for protection against thieves. My first host family had a dog named
Spike. Spike got loose and killed three
chickens while I was there!
My current
host family has a dog named Bobby (pronounced “Buawby”). Bobby is some sort of cocker spaniel mix and
is eleven years old with bad hips. This
dog is SO adorable. If he isn’t barking
at chuchos through the door, he is usually sitting outside the kitchen or
underneath the stairwell. They call it
Bobby’s cave. Bobby enjoys eating the
family’s leftovers. He doesn’t like
picante. I asked…
Spanglish: The Official Language of
Peace Corps Guatemala
So, learning
Spanish has produced some pretty hilarious mix-ups. I know there have been a ton more, but these
are the few that I can remember from class and my own daily living:
“Embarrasada”
is not ‘embarrassed’ but ‘pregnant’.
‘Caballos’=
horses, ‘cebollas’= onions, and ‘caballeros’=men
‘Manos’=hands
and ‘monos’=monkeys
“muerden”=they
bite, “mueren”=they die
“mascota” does mean ‘mascot’, but also means ‘pet’
“huevos”
means ‘eggs’ and ‘testicles’. If you go
into a store and ask “Tiene huevos?” Do
you have eggs? The tienda owner will say, “Si, tengo dos!” Yes, I have two!
“chuchos”=street
dogs, “chuchito”= a type of tamale, “chapines”=slang for ‘guatemaltecos’
“Esconder”=to
hide, “Encontrar”= to find (you don’t want to know how often I have asked “Did
you hide what you were looking for?”)
“cervesa” =
beer, “servilleta”=napkin
“madera”=wood,
“mareada”= dizzy
“bomberos”=
firefighters, “bombas”=fireworks
Oh the weird
looks we get when we talk about hands in the forest and the firefighters
exploding in the sky…..
The sounds of Guate
Bombas crack
open the sky every morning for birthday celebrations. Once you get over the urge to roll out of bed
and hit the deck every morning, it actually becomes a fairly good wake-up call. If the bombas don’t wake you up at 5:30,
around 6:00am the propane gas truck rolls through town. This truck channels the blues mobile with its
white loudspeakers strapped to the roof.
Every morning and evening we are serenaded with a continuous pattern of
a loud horn blast follow by “Zeta GAAAAAAAASS!” and then the theme song “Zeta!
Zeta! Zeta Gas!” It took us a while to
figure out what the truck was saying.
One volunteer comically thought it was shouting “get uuuppppp!” every
morning.
Occasionally
the egg truck also rolls through town. It
too has large speakers attached to its roof lacks the catchy theme song. Instead, we hear “Huevos! Huevos! Quince
huevos por diez quetzals!” Not a bad price….
One of my
favorite sounds is the kids playing futbol in the allies and streets! Coming from a world where video games rule
all, it is actually refreshing to hear kids playing sports outside.
Another
sound that I find extremely comical—family conversations with the
grandparents. As far as I can tell, hearing
aids are pretty much nonexistent so when the abuelos come over, every
conversation is a screaming match. I had
all I could do to respectfully listen to my host mom explaining how the
tortilla cloth my abuela brought over was not my aunt’s, but rather my
mom’s. “ESO ES MIO! NO ES DE ELLA! YO LO
COMPRE!!” THIS IS MINE! IT’S NOT HERS! I
BOUGHT IT!
Creepy Crawlies
Not so bad
right now….knock on ‘madera’….
I did kill
an enormous spider in my room—some spindly looking daddy-long-legs creepy thing
that was a little bigger than a half-dollar.
And several other volunteers have reported cockroaches in the bathrooms.
And I have
fleas. My host mom says that they’re mosquito bites. I feel bad, because I think she thought that
I was inferring that I got the bites while I was in her house, but I probably
got them just from walking down the street with all of the chuchos…
Chicken bus: eventful story #1
I have
officially ridden the infamous chicken buses! The PCTs all went to Antigua to
visit a finca de café (a coffee farm).
The four of us from my training site went with our language instructor
from the training site to another city where we transferred to the Antigua
chicken bus. We round the corner to the
Antigua bus stop and immediately here choruses of “Corre! Corre!” (Run!
Run!). So we run, but not to the front
of the bus—we jump up into the back of the bus through the emergency exit. I’m not sure the door was even closed before
we took off!
Every seat
had at least three people, some four if they had kids. We squished onto a seat—one cheek in the
isle, one on the seat, which meant that every time the bus whipped around the
corner of the mountainous road, you ended up doing a squat in the isle. As one volunteer said, the two people sitting
next to here were passionately swapping spit and were sitting very close so she
had a bit more room….
We arrived
in Antigua and needed to exit the bus.
Three of us, plus our instructor, started working our way to the front
of the bus but one volunteer got stuck in the back. We got off the bus and I turned around to
find the other volunteer. I started to
panic because the bus pulled away and I didn’t see her right away. Turns out
she jumped out of the emergency exit in the back!
We switched
buses again to get to the finca, and while this bus was less crowded, it was
just as humorous. I need to describe the
interior of this bus to give the appropriate image of Guatemalan public transportation. Most of these buses are discarded school
buses from the US. Most have LED running
lights around the windshield and some sort of sticker theme happening on the inside:
spiderman, Disney’s Cars, transformers, etc. This particular bus lacked the
stickers, but had a giant holographic image of Jesus, a teddy bear chilling in
a hammock and a stuffed monkey peering out of one of the luggage racks. The ayudante—the guy who walks through the
bus collecting the fare—was wearing a shirt that said (in English) “This is
what the world’s greatest mom looks like”.
I’m not
being sarcastic when I say that this was truly one of the most fun things I
have ever done!
Coffee Finca, hubo muchas mariposas!
Trumpet Flowers
Papaya Tree
Aves de Paradiso, of course!
Something to think about.
Many of our
clothes in the US are made in Guatemala.
We wear these clothes for a while and then donate them to charities.
Charities bundle up these clothes in large “Pacas” and then sell them at very
cheap prices to countries around the world.
The Paca clothes end up back on the store shelves of the people who made
the clothes in the first place. Try
explaining this to your host dad…
Doing laundry
Generally,
my host mom does my laundry, but on the occasion when my clothes are really
dirty or when I have to wash my ropa interior, this is how it’s done.
1) Fill up the round circular bin with
water and a bit of detergent, then dump your clothes inside. Let your clothes soak for a good 15
minutes.
2) Eat breakfast/lunch while clothes are
soaking.
3) Take one piece of clothing (let’s say
a sock) and place it in the clothes lavadora side of the pila. Using one hand to hold the top edge of the
sock, enjabonar (put soap on) on the sock and then scrub the sock back and
forth across the corrugated cement sink floor.
Flip the sock over, repeat. Turn the sock inside out and repeat.
4) Rinse out sock with pila water and
put into a clean bucket. After washing
all of your laundry, bring it up to the roof and hang it on the clothes line by
wedging the corners of your clothes between the braided strands of line.
5) Hope that it doesn’t rain. If it does rain, shrug and just believe that
your clothes are getting an extra rinse.
Being sick…doesn’t matter where you
are, it’s still horrible!
Without
going into too much detail on the internet, I spent two nights in Guatemala
City in the hospital. I know I wasn’t
feeling well, but I think PC went a bit overboard with the number of tests I
had done! Every time I went into a test I got the same question, (either in
broken English or Spanish) “Who are you? Why are you getting all of these
tests? And who is paying for this?”
The exam
rooms (Xray, ultrasound,CT, etc) were the only rooms that had air
conditioning. My room had two fans
hanging on the wall and an open window.
But interestingly enough, my doctor in the hospital is the only doctor
in Guate qualified to attend to the US president if he ever needed medical
attention while in country.
More
interesting than my actual stay in the hospital was my return home. Still not feeling 100% my host mom and family
refused to serve me ‘cold’ foods. Any
type of pasta (be it hot or cold), salad, or fruit was out the window for the
next few days. My host dad constantly
teased me because a few days before my hospital stint I had helped with some of
the family chores by washing and cutting up a mountain of guicoyitos. He kept saying that they gave me too much
work to do and I was stressed! Hahaha!
The feria. AKA the entire town is
really cranky from lack of sleep…
BANG! Pop!
Pop! Pop! All night every night for the past week or so. Bombas—fireworks and
firecrackers. I had previously gotten
used to waking up early every morning to
the sweet sounds of bombas for birthday celebrations, but now that it is the
final weekend of the Feria, the joyful sounds of celebration continue on ALL
NIGHT!! Music, bombas and borachos.
Halfway through the night, I lost one of my ear plugs so every time I rolled
over I had to switch ears.
The
interesting thing about this Feria is that it is put on by the Catholic church
in my town. My host-family is evangelical
and therefore their church does not allow them to attend. (They are not permitted to dance or
sing). I tried testing the waters to see
if my host family would suggest that I stop by at night to check out the Feria,
and if I were to ask, I’m pretty sure I would get a resounding “NO!”.
Two of my PCT site mates (and me)!
The e;ntrance to the Puesto de Salud where three other trainees and I are going to host a health fair!
mercado!
Vendors for the Feria
Are you brave enough to ride?
The "Muni" or municipalidad where most city functions are held
Your average tienda...this one tends to over charge us because we are gringas!
Marimba!
So I spent a
significant amount of time listening to Salsa music and the Spanish radio
station in Tampa in order to prepare for Guate.
Turns out, the major music preference is Marimba, not salsa. Today at the Feria seven different Marimba
bands joined together on stage to form a 50-member band. The town had spent a great deal of time
assembling a large stage with a giant red canvas tent in the middle of the
market. It started raining…well, down
pouring, and the Marimba band just kept playing on! Everyone huddled underneath
the canvas and under covers of the food vendors and I lamented the fact that my
laundry was getting a second rinse.
After the
rain let up, the crowed spread back out, the Marimba continued, and people
started dancing. I think the most
adorable couple was this 70 year old gringo couple who were tearing down the
house! The other volunteers and I all agreed that we hope we have that same
vivacity for life 50 years down the road from now!
Drunk horses.
Like all
scheduled events in Guatemala, the Feria’s horse parade started about 2 and a
half hours later than it was supposed to.
This gave us an excellent opportunity to chat with the volunteers from
our sister city and people watch.
Venders walked up and down the street with cowboy hats piled three feet
high on top of their heads with shouts of “Sombreros! Sombreros! Sombritos por
los ninos!”
We met
another gringo and his family who moved to Guatemala a little over a year
ago. They built a school and now the
father of the family facilitates the running of the school. How cool!
Now back to
this horse business… when the parade or “desfile” finally began, horses pranced
sideways and backwards down the street.
With their feet clopping choppily they made their way down the
street. I began to notice that some of
the horses were frothing at the mouth and not knowing much about horses, didn’t
think too much of it. That was until one
of the smaller horses was stopped directly in front of us and a rather large
cervesa (beer) was force fed directly into the horse’s mouth. A little further down the parade route, we
saw a horse eating pizza as well… After
I picked my chin up off the floor we surmised that this was how they got the
horses to ‘dance’ down the street.
I asked my
host mom about it later, and her exact words were “La gente está loca!” (People
are crazy). She was watching from
further down the street and saw that they were feeding beer to the horses right
in front of us. She said that they give
beer to the horses every year before the parade but I got the impression that
it was odd that they just happened to stop and do it in front of six American
girls….
Chicken bus: eventful story #2
This
particular bus had a small flat screen TV above the windshield. For the entire 30 minute ride back from
Antigua, we were serenaded with Latin music videos from the 90’s.
Check that one off the bucket list!
I rode a
horse up a volcano. Yup! Sure did!
We arrived
at the PC office bright and early with full water bottles, some banana bread
and sliced sandía (watermelon). We spit
off into 3 minibuses and took off for Pacaya, one of the few active volcanos in
Guate. (Pacaya’s last major eruption was three years ago!)
The paved
winding roads leading up to Pacaya turned into dirt as we approached the
base. Children surrounded us as we
climbed out of the vans asking if we would like to rent walking sticks for Q5. After “subir-ing” for a good 20-30 minutes uphill
on foot, I caved in and rented a horse!
Hahaha!
The horse
took me to a point about 25 minutes from the top of the volcano and then it was
on foot from there. We walked upwards on
paths carved through the sharp volcanic rock.
A fairly constant stream of white airy smoke puffed out of the mouth of
Pacaya looking like nothing more than white clouds, but the occasional belch of
black smoke and the steamy vents peaking out of the quagmire of rocks was just
enough to remind us that we were indeed climbing up an active volcano.
We spent a
good 45 minutes at the top where I was fairly content to just sit back and take
the whole experience in. The green Lake
Amatitlan was off to my right; the Volcán de Fuego, Volcán de Agua and
Acatenango were to my left, surrounded by puffy white clouds; and the smoking
Pacaya was directly behind me. I’m not
sure what more I could have asked for.
We didn’t
take exactly the same route to ‘bajar’ the volcano. This new path involved what we called
“snow-shoeing” down the side of the volcano on what was at least a 60 degree
incline. The volcanic rock was crumbled
into round tiny pieces that varied in sizes from peas to grapes, and we
‘walked’ down it. And by ‘walked’ I mean
that we surfed, bounced, slid, skidded, jumped, rolled and just plain fell down
the side of the volcano! Ha!
This fairly
direct route took us about half way down.
After taking a minute to empty out our shoes, put band aids on our
elbows and ankles, and complain about how our host moms were going to kill us
for getting our socks dirty, we continued on!
We landed at
the bottom of the volcano with a few scrapes, ashy faces and wobbly knees but
overall, no worse for the wear. However,
I did crack up when I got home because when I blew my nose, everything that
came out was grey!!
“I’m on top of the world, hey! I’m on
top of the world, hey!”
Vulcan de agua
“Been waiting on this for a while
now! Been paying my dues to the dirt!”
“I’ve been waiting to smile, hey!
I’ve been holding it in for a while, hey!”
They grey rock is the lava from Pacaya's last major eruption, three years ago.
“I’ll take you with me if I can! I’m
on top of the world!”
From left to right, Acatenango, Vulcan de Fuego and Vulcan de Agua
Pacaya
No more horse....
Volcanic Vent
Lake Amatitlan
