The girls.

What does a volunteer in a village have in common with a student in middle school? Social acceptance is top priority. But instead of waiting around to deliver sarcastic one-liners, a volunteer has to invest time and energy into becoming a part of the community.
But communities are stratified, and you can’t get to know everyone with the same approach. Based on age and gender I’ve identified five interaction groups: Men, married women, unmarried women, boys, and girls.

Getting to know the men is simple and straightforward. We can go out in the morning, pick coffee or plant corn in the mountains all day and by dinner we know each other.

The boys are also easy. They want to play soccer, they want to learn English words, they want to know what I’m doing, they want to hang out.
I’m great at soccer, so we play soccer. I’m not great at basketball, but I’m Meadowlark Lemon next to these kids.
Or we play a game called Hit Me where they ask how to say ‘hit me’ in English and I say, “Hit me.”
And then they say, “Hit me.” And then I hit them.
We would play this game a lot less if they could just remember the words, but they honestly can’t remember them from day to day and the curiosity eats them up.

Married women don’t work in the fields and they don’t play sports. So I have to go to the kitchens and have them teach me how to do something. This is pretty funny to them because they never see men chopping chicken or keeping the fire.
The married women are still impressed with my progress in Q’eqchi’ which is lucky for me because I don’t have any other tricks.

Unmarried women are sort of similar to married women but they have a habit of totally losing their minds at the sight of me. If I turn a corner and see them on the road I can watch them trying to decide if they should keep going or turn around or disappear down a side path. If there’s a group of them they can at least turn to each other and whisper until I’m gone.
There are a few that will talk to me. Sometimes they make romantic jokes that I need a day or two to decipher. This is a tough group to reach.

But the girls are the best. They’re shy like the young women, but they’re enthusiastic and playful like the boys. So they’re always trying to balance how to act around me. If there are one or two, they might say hello and keep it together until I pass and then yell as much of the English alphabet as they can remember while they run away.
Individually, they hover and disappear like butterflies. But sometimes they travel in packs. When they do, they’re brave enough to ask for photographs. And suddenly they’re borrowing art supplies and singing songs and showing me the dances they know.

The men have jokes, the women have gossip, the boys play games, but only the girls give dance recitals and draw pictures and wear costumes. So when a pack of girls shows up, I drop what I’m doing and go see what they want to show me.

Well since I’ve been in site for almost a year, I decided it was time to give the bathroom a door. The cooperative donated some second rate lumber and I got to work. Little Jose got a stick of gum for helping. He found a hole and squirreled away the wrapper. So I showed him how I put trash in my pocket until I can find a wastebasket (use those teachable moments).
I was sawing until my arms were worn out. But from time to time a friendly passerby would arrive and (out of curiosity) take a turn sawing. I hung the door on its hinges and evened things out with a machete. A successful project.
I’m trying to think if anything else interesting happened over the weekend…
Oh yeah, there was this:

I went home for the holidays. Before I did, I made a list of the things I wanted to do and the things I wanted to eat in the USA. Partial results below:

1. Christmas with the family √
2. Pick up supplies for the coming year √
3. Speak English √
4. Pecan pie √

As you can see, the visit was a success.
My friend J Dilla is serving in Mali with Peace Corps. She wrote about a typical day in her site. It was a nice window into her life in West Africa.
When I was home, several people asked me about my typical day. But every day is different; there is no typical day. This is an unsatisfying answer.
So here I’ve decided to document one day for me in my site. The day, January 9, 2009, also happens to be one year after my first full day in-country.

7:00 AM In my dream, Barack Obama is giving an address in elementary Q’eqchi’. He’s saying things like, “How are you?” and “What is your name?” which aren’t things you say in an address. Also, who is your demographic adviser?

7:30 Awake. It’s cold in the house, probably sixty degrees. It’s not the Virginia January I just left, but it’s also not the indoor weather I want to wake up to.
It’s misty and gray outside and I consider going back to bed. But someone is setting off bombs left over from (something we were celebrating) yesterday.
I put on the water and some clothes.
Oatmeal and pressed coffee. I’m listening to some Kojo Nnamdi that I downloaded in Cobán last Sunday. Something about a greenhouse gas initiative in Maryland.
There’s some desultory preparation for the hike ahead.

I leave the house in the late morning. The sun’s out and everyone in the village has been awake and active for hours. I’m on my way to Sanimtacá.
While I was in the United States I printed some photos for some of my friends in the village. I’m handing out photos as I run into people on the road.
When someone gets a photo, they ask what it cost so they can reimburse me for it. I don’t want money so I’ve been telling them not to worry about it or, time permitting, “Sa il ch’oolejil ch’oq awe sa’ ralankil,” which means Merry Christmas.
But I’m starting to hatch a plan. Perhaps in exchange for printed photos (something they can’t make), I could get a home-cooked Q’eqchi’ meal (something I can’t make).

As I pass, some boys I know call for my attention. They’re working on a high shoulder above the road and they’re obscured by brush so I can’t really see them, and I have no idea what kind of work they’re doing.
To reduce (your) confusion, the ensuing dialogue will follow this format:

{Q’eqchi’}
[Spanish]
Action
(Commentary)

Boys: [Don Pedro! Good morning!] {How are you?}
Pedro: [Well, good morning.] {I’m well, how are you all?}
Boys: {Also good. Where are you going?}
Pedro: {I go to Sanimtacá. What are you all doing? Working?}
Boys: {We’re working,} [well, yes.] {Will you be around later?}
(That last part is a dirty joke.)
A young woman named Cristina arrives on the road with her sister.
Girls: {Until later.}
(This is a typical greeting)
Pedro: {Wait. I have your} [photo.]
Boys: {[Whoop!]}
Cristina: {Nice photo. What size?}
(I think she means what size is the price of the photo, but I’m implementing my food-for-photo plan.)
Pedro: {Tortilla.}
Girls: [Four?]
(The Q’eqchi’ word for “tortilla” is the same as the first syllable in the Spanish word for “four” and since my answer didn’t compute, they assumed I had switched languages.)
Boys: Laughter from behind the foliage.
Pedro: [Four?] {No. Tortilla. To eat.} Hand motion meaning “eat.”
Cristina: {What size?}
(Okay, I can’t tell if she’s restating her original question or asking how many tortillas I want. Or asking what size tortillas I want.)
Pedro: …
Boys: {Maybe you guys should try English!}
Pedro: {To eat?}
Cristina: Staring at photo, trying to understand.
Pedro: {It pleases me to eat.}
Boys: Uproar
Girls: (unknown Q’eqchi’)
Pedro: Silent and hopeless attempt at translation {Good?}
Girls: {Good. Until later.}
The girls continue down the road
Boys: {Don Pedro, all good?}
Pedro: {Yes. All is goo-} I realize that they’re making fun of me. {Until later!} [Goodbye!]
Boys: Laughter. {[Whoop!]}

Li xCristina (Cristina)

The next hour is a hike through the mountain pass to Sanimtacá. I catch and photograph the lizards and gnarly spiders I find along the way.

I visit Ernesto’s house to drop off the radio and flashlights I bought for him in the States. He’s not home, but his four kids are. They bring me hot juice and five bananas. I head back up the trail to meet my students.

I teach a guide class in Sanimtacá focusing on birdwatching. Up until now, all of our classes have been indoor affairs with copious illustrations on the whiteboard to bridge the language gaps.
Basic education is lacking in the village. The city has assigned one teacher to Sanimtacá and he has to manage grades one through six in a single classroom. He arrives around seven in the morning and motors out on his dirt bike at lunchtime.
In my guide class, have a dozen or so students in their late teens.
I quickly discovered that understanding of fundamental science concepts was lacking. So up until now, we have been learning basic science principles to pave the way for bird study.
We’ve been over earth science, basic biology, and a few giggly weeks of sexual reproduction leading us to evolution. I had some concerns about teaching sex and evolution in a traditional Mayan-Catholic society. So I kept it light. But there were no torch-bearing villagers, no Scopes trial, no hook-faced birds to pick at my Promethean liver. Nothing.
Religion is not self-conscious here, the people aren’t sensitive to ideological conflict. As far as they can tell, there are two religions: Catholic and Evangelical, and they come from the same book.

Before I left for vacation, we specified a time and place to meet for the next class. As I arrive at the designated place, I wonder if planning so far in advance might have been a mistake. There are no students waiting for me.
So I find a seat on the side of the road and pull out a book. This is incidental free time and my days are littered with it.
After fifteen minutes, four of my girls come around the bend. But instead of starting class, they stop in the road. I motion for them to come over, which makes them laugh. Instead, they take a seat in the grass next to the road.
I’m about fifty feet away. There is a book in my hand, but I’m clearly not occupied, I’m ready to start class.
I sit where I am while the girls chat in Q’eqchi’. From time to time I catch “Qaw Ped,” which is my name (sort of), and I look up. Every time I look, the girls laugh.
It may seem strange that I would let my students waste my time like this, but I’ve learned that I get better results from going with the flow than from imposing my own schedule. After an hour, the girls get up and come over.
We head up the trail and start looking for birds. I had some suspicion that bird class attracted students (especially the girls) because it’s a novel activity that takes place outside of the house. But once on the trail, the giggling dies down and the girls walk quietly with their eyes on the trees. I let them pass my binoculars around and I have them use the field guide to identify species.
Once we have a species identified, they surprise me by jotting down the name. They turn out to be more interested in learning than I gave them credit for.
We ascend the valley towards the cloud forest. We see bushy-crested jays, slate-throated redstarts, and assorted migratory warblers. But after a few hours, it’s getting late. We end up turning around before reaching the forest.
We set a time for the next class (earlier, in case the girls need an hour to chat) and part ways at a fork in the trail. I hike out of the valley alone and head back down the road towards Samac.

I walk for an hour as a full moon crests the hill. As I reach the village I stop at a family store. Margarita is at the window. She covers her smile as she sees me coming. I ask for two cans of beans and four eggs. Margarita’s front teeth fell out last month and she hides her mouth behind the cans as she tells me the price.

I get home and drop my pack off at the house. Then I head to my nearest neighbor’s house to buy tortillas. When I get there they tell me they don’t have any. I think they must be joking, but they send me next door to Don Felipe’s house.
Felipe has twelve children. While I wait in the dining room for my tortillas, the kids swarm me and give me an impromptu Q’eqchi’ lesson by naming everything they see.
But they don’t realize that some of the words they use are derived from the Spanish.
A truck rumbles by on the road and Freddy yells “Camionet!”
“B’eeleb’aal ch’iich,” I correct him.
Little Felipe Baudilio points at my hat and tells me it’s called “Gorr.”
“Kaxlan punit?”
“Oh yeah, kaxlan punit.” he amends.
Don Felipe arrives with a stack of tortillas and a scrap of chicken. I ask what size the price is. He tells me that there’s no price. Many thanks around and I go home to make dinner.
I cook up the eggs and beans and roll them up in the tortillas with lettuce and chili. I put on some music and eat at my desk. Now that it’s dark, the village has retired and there’s no one out on the street.
I enjoy the night time because it’s quiet and I can read or write without interruption. I boil some water for tea and use the rest of the hot water to wash my hair in the pila outside my window. By now it’s cool enough to see my breath against the dark and the fog is rolling in.
My house has two rooms. I live in one and sleep in the other. Now it’s time for bed so I go to the other room. I consider setting my alarm, but with nothing special scheduled, I’m confident that the combination of roosters, honking, and leftover rockets will be sufficient to get me up in time for tomorrow.

Guatemala is one of the top ten coffee-producing countries of the world and half of the nationally grown coffee is exported to the United States.



Did you think of me this morning when you had your coffee?
Because I thought of you when I planted it.

May began the corn season with controlled burns. By the middle of july, the charred plots were bristling with green stalks high enough to hide a Pedro. The corn is ready in September, but harvest is delayed for a month while the stalks dry where they stand.
On October second, I surprised the men of Sanimtacá when I went with them to q’olok (harvest corn). The tracts of cropland are steep in Sanimtacá and this late in the rainy season, muddy and slick. While the men trooped downhill from the road to the corn, I lagged behind, warily negotiating the muddy grade.
The procedure for harvesting the corn is fairly simple. The ear is pulled from the stalk and the stalk is bent to the ground (to mark it spent). The apical remainder is snapped off the ear and the outermost leaves come with it. What’s left is a heavy elongate teardrop of a missile. At this point the corn is pitched toward a common pile somewhere in the field. From a distance, the process resembles trench warfare. Potato-mashers rain in on shared targets from obscured positions.
The harvest was fun. The haul was not.
Each man loaded up a huge sack with as many ears of corn as it could hold. It’s important to make use of the natural wedge-shape of the ear to maximize your carrying capacity. Each person then takes his 100+ pound sack of corn, straps it to his head, and hikes to the house.
I chickened out and (taking the distance ahead of us into account) carried about forty pounds over my shoulder. The climb back up to the road was even trickier than the descent. Back on the road, I did manage to slip and fall, corn and all. The president of the cooperative offered his cargo for me to carry. He thought it would make a good photo. I assured him that it would kill me.



In keeping with the cooperative nature of the community, all the men pitch in with their neighbors’ harvests and receive help with their own. So we all worked the same plot of land that day and we all carried the day’s harvest to one house.
The houses in Sanimtacá are wooden structures with dirt floors and peaked thatch or corrugated zinc roofs. Living and cooking space occupies the bottom floor, but most buildings have a second-floor attic space for furniture and supply storage. The space above the kitchen is blackened by cooking fire and receives twelve hours of heat and smoke every day. This is where we deposit the corn.
Sanimtacans are tough. Even so, as we neared our destination, heavy steps quickened and furrowed brows dripped. Each of us in turn climbed the ladder to the second floor to add our hauls to the larder. When I got to the second level, the hot smoke hit me hard. I emptied the bag and got myself outside in a hurry, coughing and tearing up.
It’s possible to grow corn twice annually. But where we live, cardamom and coffee season block the people from growing corn more than once. Corn is a staple crop in Guatemala, but it’s not a cash crop. It’s worth the investment for a family to grow its own corn, but it doesn’t pay to grow more than they need. So in October the people harvest all the corn they’ll need for the year. Then the small mountain of corn is stashed above the daily fires where the smoke discourages weevils, mice, and moisture from ruining the family’s reserve.
Over the year, the corn is separated from the cob by hand and ground on a heavy stone with water to make a masa, or corn dough. The masa is used to make tamal and tortilla. Corn tortillas (wa) are the dependable companions to all meals. We have tortillas with our breakfast eggs. We have tortillas with our lunch beans. We have tortillas with our dinner (eggs again). And in the city, it’s not unusual to see someone at a comedor scraping their spaghetti into a tortilla.
After the work, the women brought us hot fruit drinks and we waited for everyone to come in from the fields. Once everyone was back, there were a few prayers and we had chicken stew with tortillas. Everyone took turns asking if I was tired.
“Lublukat?”
To which I replied, “Tawajenaqin, usta yo’o jun sut chik.”
I’m tired, but let’s do it again.
And in typical reaction to my Q’eqchi’, they laughed and repeated it for anyone who might have missed it.

When I arrived in Sanimtacá last week they informed me that the fiesta for San Francisco was approaching (October 11, which I knew) and that our work would be on hold so we could celebrate (in preparation. This was news).
So we made our way to the house where the first party would be. Under the mild influence of a boj I sipped politely, I helped weave pacaya fronds into broad mats we hung from the rafters. While I dozed in a chair, they lit candles and covered the floor with pine needles.
As the sun started to disappear, the guests began arriving. The party kicked off with prayers to San Francisco and an incense blessing. There was a candle shrine at one end of the long room with offerings for a small saint behind glass. The only other light came from a single incandescent bulb connected to a gas-powered generator. The music equipment was hooked up to the same generator and the amps belched marimba, keyboard, saxophone, and bass into the room.

After dinner, a few men stood in front of the shrine to give thanks. They shuffled through a dance with their hands behind their backs. After the men danced a few songs, a group of women approached the front. The women repeated the dance but with arms flat against their sides and eyes on the floor. Between songs, each woman covered her face with a hand (probably in devotional reflection, but it appeared to say, “Oh dear, what am I doing?”)
After the ceremonial dances, the floor was open. But Mayans can be timid, so it took some time for the swinging to start. I had already been to a dance in Samac (I even spun a few Q’eqchi’ women across the pine straw once or twice in Samac), so I was not surprised to see the women dancing with each other. But something I had dismissed as an exception in Samac turned out to be a socially-acceptable convention. As the partners rotated around the room, I saw more than a few boy couples. Some of the male pairs were young men in their late teens and twenties.

By the time men were slumping on the benches, it felt late and I was ready to go. A quick check of the watch showed 10:30. Since a handful of us were leaving, I assumed the party was winding down. No, they assured me, the party wouldn’t stop until three or four in the morning. And I was high in the valley when I brushed my teeth to the sound of an invisible but thriving fiesta in the cloudy darkness.

In the third grade I wrote my name on Dominic’s shoe. We’ve been friends ever since. But in the nearly twenty years we’ve known each other there has never been a stronger demonstration of best friendship than the time he came to visit me in Guatemala. I know this because for five days he wouldn’t stop saying it.

September 15th is Independence Day in Guatemala (no worries if you have trouble remembering that, it’s written right on the flag). Dominic arrived just in time for the celebration. In Cobán this meant martial parades of schoolchildren with burning coffee cans on sticks, salsa dances in the square, and explosions in the sky.
Back in Samac, they were throwing candy in the schoolyard. I was winged by a lollipop and swarmed by piranha children. While the piñatas were meeting their brutal fates, the cooperativistas asked us to join their soccer team.
The teams were grouped by committee. Dom and I played on the ecotourism team, but our uniforms were pure Madrid.
The Q’eqchi’ don’t have a name for “Dominic,” but they decided it was close enough to “Domingo” that they could use their word for Sunday. So Qawa’ Lu’ and Qawa’ Cu’ joined the field on defense, towering over the opposition (and the support) for ninety minutes on the pitch.

I tried to ease the transition to campo life so as not to shock his system. He had a few days to process what took me six months of acclimation. He was a trooper. But there were a few moments when I suspected Dominic had a different picture of what life would be like here. Some excerpts:

“But there’s a bathroom, right?”

“Where’s the regular food?”

“They’re stopping? The bus is already full.”

“No beans for me. Why do they keep bringing tortillas?”

“I’ll just buy some postcards in your village.”

“They didn’t give us spoons.”

We went to a Mayan ceremony in Sanimtacá. Dom sat down to rest near the coffee patio while I watched the climbing ceremonial fire. The next time I looked up, he was completely surrounded by children.
He had taken out his camera to shoot a quick panorama. As he panned from right to left, the kids noticed he had a camera and crowded in to look. When we watched the video later, there was a sweeping shot of the empty coffee patio with a few people in the distance. And as the camera turned back, the frame was suddenly full of curious young faces.
The people offered us boj, a sugarcane moonshine, which made us both very dizzy. We had to climb most of the way out of the valley to find a place to lie down.
The next morning we had to hike the rest of the way out. Dom sat down on a pile of cinderblocks at the top of the trail to rest. As he was explaining how tired he was, a Sanimtacan arrived behind us, loaded three of the cinderblocks on his back, turned around, and headed back down into the valley.

A brief visit, but a good one.

Also, buddy, I didn’t want to embarrass you while you were here, but “Guatemalteco!” is not how we say hello.

Some of us had a project design management conference at Peace Corps headquarters last week. After the two-day seminar, a few of us escaped for an earned beach weekend in Monterrico on the west coast. Besides beach soccer, beach volleyball, beach baseball, and beach beach, there was swimming in the pool and fruit licuados in the shade. A nesting sea turtle kicked sand in my face.
My father once told me how to watch the sun set twice on the west coast, but I had never had the chance to try it. I explained the idea to the others, but we weren’t sure if it would work.

Until now I have failed to mention a recent addition to my independent studies. It isn’t easy to explain with words or pictures alone, but Tex shot a video that explains everything.
Click the photo below (and do not try at home).


photo by Chris Barry

And at that very moment, “McAfee, you’re gonna miss it!”
I looked back to see the sun sinking, and we all got down on our backs in the sand to watch the sun set. As soon as the last sliver disappeared, we jumped up and climbed to an elevated point just in time to watch the sun go down again.
Success all around, all injuries were minor and sports-related. Now back to work.

What am I doing now?

Apologies for the lack of updates. Work picked up. Now they’ve got me out in the campo, hiking caves, teaching classes, and scouting trails in the cloud forest. When work doesn’t extend into the weekend, I have Q’eqchi’ classes and (todavía no tengo mujer) washing to do.
I plan to catch up as soon as I catch up.

Wan chik.