It’s All Q’eqchi’ To Me

I have now been struggling to learn a Mayan language for a year. Admittedly, I spent five or six months working on K’iche’ and then in June switched over to Q’eqchi’. Moving from one language to the other felt how I imagine it would be to switch from Spanish to Portuguese after taking only one semester. The pronunciation is mostly (but not wholly) the same, the grammar is similar, and there are just enough vocabulary words that are the same to keep you confused. My first teacher had almost no experience teaching K’iche’ and so was long on patience but short on structure; my current teacher has been teaching Q’eqchi’ for over a decade and is long on structure but somewhat set in her ways. My class sessions are dominated by me filling my notebook with dictations from my teacher on vocabulary and grammar, but very little verbal practice. Still, living in the community gives me opportunity for practice and most of the fault for my slow progress is my own lack of discipline to study.

In the beginning, the most difficult thing for me was learning to distinguish between different consonant sounds, and to then be able to make them accurately. In Q’eqchi there are six different letters that can make a sound like a “k” to the untrained ear.

• Q – Sounds like you’re clearing your throat
• Q’ – A click in the back of the throat
• K – Sounds like a normal English “ck”
• K’ – A forceful sound off the roof of the mouth
• Y – Depending on where in a word it is, it may sound like the “cu” in “cue” followed by other vowels, or it may act like a normal “y”.
• W – Depending on where in a word it is and its relation to vowels, it may sound soft like the “w” in “bower” or it may sound like the “coo” in “cool”.

The next hurdle was vocabulary. As with the classic example of the many names for different types of snow in the Inuit language, I have found that there are many distinctions between types, stage of development, and preparations of corn that I never would have considered creating a new word for before. Likewise there are different verbs for “to carry” based on if it is done in the arms, on the back, on top of the head, or on the shoulders.

One of the areas I’ve mostly given up on is the myriad of terms for people in the family. For one thing, people usually don’t introduce themselves to me with any explanation for how they are related to anyone else, so I don’t hear the words used much. For another, it’s just confusing. In the US relationship titles are usually determined by the gender of the person spoken about (a female child is a daughter of her parent; a male child is a son of his parent, although cousin is gender neutral). In Q’eqchi’, relationship titles vary by the gender of both the speaker and the person spoken of (a female child is a ko’ to her mother, but a rabin to her father; a male child is a yum to his mother, but a alal to his father). In the case of siblings, titles vary by the gender of the speaker, gender of the subject and the age relation between the two. Thus, a girl’s older sister is chaq’na’ but her younger sister is iitz’inixq, while her older brother is as but her younger brother is iitz’inwinq. On the other hand, a boy’s older brother is as but his younger brother is iitz’in, and a boy’s older sister is anab’ but his younger sister is ch’ina anab’

There is also the inverse problem in which words I consider vitally different are lumped into one term in Q’eqchi’. For example, one verb, wank means to live, to have, and to be. You have to figure out which one is being used through context. More frustratingly, ajok means both to want and to need. Thus, I have no way of explaining, “I want to eat another cookie, but I don’t need to, so I won’t.” Nor, on a cold morning, can I complain, “I need to take a bucket bath, but I don’t want to.” I mean, really, how do you raise a child to understand the difference between wants and needs if there isn’t a distinction between the two in your language? 

For all my griping, I do like learning Q’eqchi'. I signed up for this, after all. I savor the little victories of making it through small talk when I meet a woman I know on the road. I like breaking out a new set of vocabulary words with my host family and seeing them exchange glances. “She finally learned ‘slow’ and ‘fast’!” their looks seem to say. When I can more or less follow where we are on the agenda in meetings, or I get the gist of what the people next to me in the microbus are saying, I congratulate myself. It’s been more than ten years since I was at this beginning stage with Spanish, so it took a bit to resign myself to being a true beginner again. Now that I can explain my travel plans to my host mother and set up a play date with my host siblings, I think I’m almost ready to graduate back out of beginner status. 

Getting to Know You

After a few months of actually living with my host family, things are progressing well, though not without a few bumps in the road.

I have to say that as the younger of two, I now have more true empathy for older siblings than ever before. When the kids embraced me into the family, they did so without any concept of personal space or private property. My limited Q’eqchi’ skills reduced me to the vocabulary of a toddler with a new infant in the house. Without any verbal subtlety at my disposal, I was reduced to a lot of “ink’a!!” (no/don’t) and physically removing them from my room, or my belongings from their hands. Their eagerness and interest went a long way toward making me feel welcome, but also made me want to scream at times. When they lined up outside my window to called my name at three second intervals for ten minutes or so, I quickly learned they had nothing to tell me and nothing to show me (and I certainly wasn’t able to tell them anything), but just wanted my attention. This was endearing to a point, and then quickly tore my nerves to shreds.

Almost immediately after moving in I began a ritual around dinner time with the older two kids. Most nights I bring in some copy paper and crayons and we color before or after dinner. As my Q’eqchi’ classes progressed I was able to learn to say things like “play later” and “rest now”, which didn’t seem to register with the kids, but was enough for Clementina to step in and help place some boundaries. Now the moment I’m in sight during the day, the kids eagerly ask when we will color again. So, now we have a nearly daily play-date that helps channel all that energy and that acts as reinforcement for my new vocabulary words, too. It started out with all of us drawing separately, but we soon developed the habit of asking each other what to draw. Eventually I noticed that Heidi is quickly frustrated by drawing, so I’ve also started sketching the outlines of something and having her color it in. Freddie wanted in on that as well, although his confidence in drawing is stronger. I suppose kids demand equal treatment the world over.

On nights I get home in time, I also try to help make the tortillas for dinner. I use the word “help” a bit loosely, since the overall quality certainly suffers, and I’m not sure I even speed up the process much. But, it’s a nice way for me to hang out with Clementina, and she gives me tips here and there and points out when I manage to turn out a pretty good one. We laugh at the misshapen ones, and talk through the schedule for the next day so she knows if I’ll be around for meal times. Usually we get in past where my Q’eqchi’ and her Spanish will let us understand one another, and then we just wait for Mariano to get home and help translate. Often I will have tried several means of miming or drawing what I mean, and by the time we get things cleared up I feel I have played some combination of Pictionary and Gestures.  

I’m definitely learning to savor simple joys.

Some afternoons when I come home from errands or work I will pull out the chairs from my room and line them up on the walkway outside my door. The kids and I sit down and watch the world go by. Inevitably one of them will start crawling under the chairs while the rest of us pretend not to know where the crawler is. Simple games have simple grammar, and that works just perfectly for me. Now and then I’ll make a batch of popcorn or share out some apples or mandarins and we all munch away happily exclaiming about how tasty everything is. Even carrying water from my water tank to the pila on laundry days is a chance for the kids to feel helpful and included while we all troop around with buckets of water, shouting to hurry the next person back to the spigot before ours overflows.

So.  

Fill my cup and let it overflow. 

Celebrity in the House

My cat, Canchita, showed very little stress over our transition to Alta Verapaz. She rode on my lap in a carrier all the way in the truck on moving day, and was out exploring the cooperative immediately upon arrival. She quickly learned that she could enter and exit my room through the ceiling, and reigned over the rafters of the building in no time.

The community as a whole took a shine to her right away. Within days Site Mate Wendy and I were joking that she would get a bigger goodbye party than we would at the end of our time here. They certainly learned to pronounce her name long before they learned mine. Perhaps it was because it felt like a safe topic of conversation or perhaps because she is a pet and not just a rodent catcher, but just about every person I met asked about her. 

Everyone wanted to see my cat, they wanted to know what she ate, where she slept, and were convinced that I had brought her with me from the States. Over and over I had to explain that no, she is as Chapin (Guatemalan) as the rest of the animals in the community and that I was given her by another Guatemalan family. 

The next question was usually when she would have babies. When I explained I had had her fixed to prevent such things they looked at me like I had three heads. Never mind that litters of puppies and kittens are regularly born and die before making it to maturity here in my aldea. I think because she seems so healthy and is a good hunter, they all wanted my cat’s genes working to keep their own house rodent free. In their minds, her health seems to be totally unrelated to her having been vaccinated and being fed a diet of real cat food. 

Overall, I was thankful to have her along as an extra means to connect with the people coming through the co-op while I was living there in June. The only exception to this was the day I returned from travelling out of town and found myself locked out of the cooperative. My future host father had loaned me his key, but I was having no luck getting into the building. The instructions he had given me amounted to a secret handshake of some kind with turning the key all the way around a few times then pulling back on the door while doing a quarter turn the other way. 

I had made the mistake of calling to Canchita when I walked up the stairs. When I didn’t appear in the room right away, she made her way through the rafters to stand above me in the ceiling over the porch and mrooowl and miaaaht at me like I was an idiot for not understanding how to make the key and lock cooperate with one another. Eventually she found a hole in a knot in the wood and stuck her head down to peer at me and my doorway incompetence. 

I decided to cut my losses, take a picture of her looking ridiculous, and take a nap on the porch until someone with the knowhow to get the door open came by the coop. When someone finally did, his first question upon opening the door for me was, ”Ut lamis?” (And your cat?). It’s not so bad living in the shadow of a celebrity. 

With

I feel as though the dam has broken on my enthusiasm. What I thought had drained away in a drought, I had actually carefully walled away in a big cistern. When I saw no natural spring in my Sololá community, I bottled up my own motivation and eagerness in anticipation of rationing it out to bolster my resilience for the next year and a half. I did so out of fear and in response to a situation that seemed impervious to all my attempts to plant seeds of relationships, knowledge, development, and community.

I feel reborn. I feel refreshed. I feel renewed.

My first two days in site were spent with Wendy (as my site mate is known in our community), learning the ropes of local transit, checking out my housing options, and being introduced to a few key friendly faces. The next two days I was flying solo, as Wendy had to travel to Guatemala City to pick up a friend from the U.S. I arranged my things in my temporary quaters, I went with my counterpart Andres to his house to meet his family and admire his crops, and I successfully navigated getting to Coban and back for my first Q’eqchi’ class.

Tuesday, my fifth day, was shaping up to leave me at loose ends. Irma is Wendy’s counterpart, an impressive translator, and currently in the running for Guatemalan I most want to be like when I grow up. On Monday evening, she was looking at my calendar for June and asked where I would be for the last day of May. I had no answer. She mentioned she wouldn’t be coming in to the office (where I am living) because she and the other members of the cooperative would be out at a project packing bolsas (bags) to plant coffee. I asked to tag along, and she immediately arranged for Filomena me to walk out to the community where the work would happen. Filomena was among the first people I had met upon arrival, was the first to greet me in Spanish, and her calm broad smile made me categorize her immediately as a good egg. I felt I was in good hands.

After breakfast with my future host family (starting in July, after the construction project to give me a room gets completed), I was walking toward Filomena’s house and she met me on the path as she came in search of me. We chatted comfortably in Spanish for about half an hour on the walk out to the other community, as my eyes darted between admiring the scenery, dodging hitting my head on cardamom and coffee branches, and trying not to trip on the uneven path.

Immediately on reaching our destination, I was drawn into Irma’s house and given a place to leave my things. Next thing I knew I was sitting on a small flattish rock shoulder to shoulder with a group of women crouched around a pile of sifted dirt as we stuffed small black plastic bags to be used as containers for coffee plant seedlings. Around us there were boys, perhaps 10 year-olds, shuttling the filled bags from the circles of women to young men working on a shallow trench to hold the bags upright in lines running across the hillside. The older men worked further up the hill to transplant seedlings into the bags and water the ones already transplanted. The older boys were kept busy shoveling dirt onto a wooden frame with screen on it to sift the soil, which two other boys would shake back and forth while chatting idly.

The whole process threw my thoughts back to the fall semester in 2005 that I spent in Oaxaca, Mexico. Some of my favorite memories from the whole experience surrounded very similar bags, which we were using for a reforestation project. The language was different, the purpose was different, but my experience of it was the same in all the important ways.

We worked together companionably, smiling and laughing over the repetitive and mindless work. Few of them speak any Spanish (and fewer speak it well) and I know only a few words in Q’eqchi’. Still, I felt included. When we took a mid-morning break, Filomena made sure to bring me a mug of fresca (a sweet fruit drink… in this case probably mixed from a powder) and also passed along a banana that another woman wanted to give me. One girl kept an eye out for me any time we broke the circle to move to a new pile of freshly sifted soil. If I hesitated even a moment she’d catch my eye, smile, and pat my designated rock in an invitation to join back in. After lunch the women who had shared my circle stopped by Irma’s kitchen door to collect me as we walked back to the workspace.

I heard my name mentioned several times in any given five minute period, as people tried to remember how to pronounce it, and commented on my bag filling skills. Often my name was followed by peals of laughter, and I just chose to take it as inclusion without needing to know what the joke was. At some point I’m pretty sure two women were commenting on my lack of love handles (after one tried to grab for them), and when Irma and I took a turn at the sifting station there was laughter about how we looked shaking the wooden frame about. When it threatened to rain, they were concerned for me (I had forgotten my rain coat, but then, none of them had any rain protection either) and suggested I go take shelter. When I refused, we all giggled as we scrambled to fill as many final bags as we could before the rain really set in and the dirt turned to mud.

We waited out the rain, sipping on more drinks, and they thoughtfully provided me with more fresca, knowing I don’t drink coffee. When there seemed to be a break in the weather, the crowd dispersed and eventually Filomena and I took our leave of Irma to make our way back. Halfway there the rain started up again, harder than before. I made it home wet through to the skin, my back sore from hunching over a dirt pile all day and with streaks of dirt and mud all over me. But I was perfectly content.

It was not a day in which I taught anyone anything important. It was not a needs assessment or a community action survey. It was just a group of people coming together to get something done, working with each other, talking with each other, laughing with each other. I learned some new friendly faces, and many of them learned my name. Perhaps this seems a small victory, hardly worth commenting upon. But I have spent months feeling acutely how lonely it can be to be in a crowd, how it is possible to work in the same space as someone yet not work with one another, how two can eat at the same table but not be sharing a meal. I have travelled the same space without travelling with those around me.

The months ahead will have challenges. I will search for purpose; I will be confused by the language; I will be short of patience with myself and those around me. There will be days that I am exhausted by being watched by all and wish for the anonymity of living in a city or at least being an unremarkable community member. For now, all I want to do is to unleash my flow of enthusiasm to meet the hospitality I have been offered. They are small gestures, yes, but I am deeply grateful for each and every one.

I feel welcomed. I feel wanted. At last, I feel I am with.

Half step forward, Full step back.

Greenhouses.  Tomatoes.  Selling!  Profit!



I have been hearing about these things as a project for my site since before I arrived. The women in the womens group that invited me here had tried growing tomatoes and peppers with previous volunteers, but they just didn't thrive. Not terribly surprising, given that we're at over 8,000 feet in elevation. Somewhere around the middle of 2010, someone suggested to them that maybe if they built greenhouses they could get some real growth going. Keep the heat in, help the sun loving nightshade cousins toast their toes a little and hopefully they could produce some tasty crops to eat and sell.

When I arrived in November, we had a meeting to introduce me to the women. I asked for patience as I got to know them all, and also for input on what projects they might like to work on. The only thing any of them volunteered was growing tomatoes in greenhouses.

Through November and December I went to a few houses to help people plant radishes and carrots, and learn my way around. Mostly, though, there wasn't any work to do because of holidays, and the fact that my counterpart was on vacation from her work at school (and wanted to be on vacation from work with the women, too).

In mid January things got rolling at school, so we started having a few meetings with the women about greenhouses. I went to the city to check out prices on materials. We tried to get a sense of who was committed to the project so we could get going on a trial run.



Throughout all the meetings we played a game of telephone through my counterpart, who shuttled the information from K'iche' to Spanish and back again so I could communicate with the women. Well, somewhere in the game (as often happens) part of the message got lost.

Initially we had over 15 women who wanted to sign on to the project. They each thought they could pony up the Q50 (about $6.25) required to purchase a shared roll of the UV resistant plastic that would hold up for at least a few years on their greenhouse. In mid February we had a meeting to select which greenhouse size and design they wanted to use. I walked them through the costs of production I'd found based on the material prices and quantities I'd found for six different size and shaped greenhouses, ranging from Q200 to over Q500.  The women were quiet.

I had thought I had been very clear about the fact that the plastic was just one of many costs in making the greenhouse. However, they hadn't considered that purchasing materials to build a frame, to make supports for the tomatoes, and to buy the tomato seedlings would add up to much more than the Q50 they'd discussed with their husbands to cover the plastic. Although I had emphasized how much more cost effective it is to team up to make one or several larger greenhouse rather than build many, many smaller ones, that alternative doesn't appeal to them. My suggestion of making very small shelter pegged to the side of their houses to try growing just for consumption and not for sale this first year wasn't popular either.



Every woman chose to withdraw from the project. Perhaps in the future when they can save up, they said. It seems more likely to me that we would need to find some source of outside funding for them to be able to build much.

If they are unable to commit more than Q50 to the project, their household budgets are even tighter than I imagined.  My host family spends Q300 a week on groceries.  They are better off than many of the women in the group, but even so, Q50 is not a huge sum of money in Guatemala. Whether from lack of motivation or lack of means, the greenhouses aren't going forward any time soon.

Honestly, I was both disappointed and relieved. Working on such a tangible project is rewarding because you can see your progress as you build the structures.  On the other hand, I was nervous about making our first project together something that was making them stretch financially, when we didn't know each other well. Building 15 or more greenhouses and planting tomatoes in all of them was asking for trouble as far as I was concerned. Tomatoes are disease prone, for one thing. For another, I don't know how much these women are willing or able to commit to caring for their crops. They wanted to sell them for income, but this is a small town. If they each had a successful crop coming ripe at the same time they likely would have flooded the local market and not made as much profit as they dreamed.

So, four months into site we had spent a lot of time winding up, only to decide not to throw our pitch after all. To mix my metaphors, we're going back to square one. Time to shelve this idea and check out others. Maybe we'll come back around to this one down the road. Maybe not.

Harvest

One of the more impressive stalks of corn I've come across; they are usually between 10-12 feet tall, but this one seems to be approaching 15' (I'm 5'8").  I have seen a few fields in marginal land that were only about 7-8 feet tall, but in general, I'm definitely in the land of the tall corn.  No wonder so many towns call themselves "[Name of Saint] Milpas Altas."

At the end of November and beginning of December, the corn is judged to be dry enough for harvest.  On a daily basis I see lines of men and boys on the paths heading out to the fields with costales (feedsacks) slung over their shoulder.  Earlier this week, I tagged along with the group heading to harvest my family’s land.  Usually this is a two day event for my family, as they have about 5 cuerdas* of land split across six locations, but this year we completed it in one day because the harvest was pretty poor, perhaps due to the extremely wet rainy season.

On the way out to the field, my host “dad” asked me where my tool was.  (Sidenote: he’s only 32, so feels more like a brother age-wise, but since the kids claim me as their sister, I’m not sure how to refer to him).  Well, in the first instance of Guatemalans being more prompt than I am, they had headed out without waiting on me, so I had rushed after them without getting the tool memo.  Luckily, a sympathetic guy in the group lent me his**, showed me a quick slit and slash motion once and I was off and running.  Well, fighting my way through the cornstalk jungle.

I think most of the group were just using a nail tied to some string (to loop around their wrist), but I had a lovely gem, carved out of some kind of bone.  I asked what kind of bone they use and the answer was “any kind, it doesn’t matter.”  This is a classic response in which I ask for specifics and they give me the general answer – for all that my Spanish gets me by, there’s still a language or cultural barrier there that leads to misunderstandings.

These three were around 10 years old, I think they were earning a little cash on their "summer break."

We all spread out choosing one line of corn, working from one end of the field to the other.  I quickly (although perhaps less efficiently than the others) picked up the rhythm of bending the stalks in half to bring the ears within reach, slit open the husk top, peel back the husks, and wrangle off the ear of corn.  Sometimes the corn was pearly and dry, sometimes the ear was half putrid and moldy.  We took it all (apparently the rotten stuff goes to animals). 

After clearing out one area we dumped our sacks and sorted the corn by quality, bagged it again, and took it to the terrace (roof) of the house to be laid out to finish drying in the sun, there sorted by color as well.  Then we moved on to the next area in a different part of town.  Since each generation inherits land from their parents, each successive generation has less land, divided into smaller pieces scattered further from one another.  It’s not so bad in my family; the grandfather was one of five children, there are three in the parents’ generation, and two children right now (no plans for additional).  Many other families have 6-10 children, so I can’t imagine how their land gets parsed out. 

 

*A cuerda is 25 x 25 varas, a vara is officially about 84 cm (but often measured by an arm length).  So, theoretically my family grows enough corn to eat each year and extra to sell on a little more than half an acre.  On the other hand, it felt like more land than that when I walked it, so I don't have huge confidence in those calculations.

**Was this just a kind gesture to the newbie?  Were there gender dynamics at play, either chivalry or sexism?  What about class issues; the white girl can't work with her hands?  Welcome to the brain of a PCV with a Liberal Arts background and not enough actual work to do just yet.  Over-analyze much?  Guilty as Charged.  Really though, I was thankful he offered it, but uncomfortable taking it since it means he did it bare handed, which gets pretty tiring.  

By any other name…

I have begun the process of meeting the women in the women’s group with whom I’ll do the majority of my work in the next two years.  It turns out about ¼ of the women in town (or at least in my group) are named Catarina, and another third of the town is named Isabel, Manuela, or Ana.  Literally.  I crunched the numbers in Excel (no comments from the peanut gallery on my dorkiness, thank you).  Of the remaining 30 women, only 11 have unique names.

One recent evening Aunt Isabel asked me to go drop gifts off at two graduation parties.  When we went to the first house, Isabel introduced me to the lucky graduate, Isabel.  Upon arriving at the second house I asked the name of the graduate.  “Isabel,” replied Isabel.  At my confused face, she explained, “they’re cousins.”  My expression only deepened.  “Their grandmother is named Isabel.  We call the second one Isabel Maria to keep things clear.”  Indeed.

I guess I better get good at making nick names.

Big Friendly Giant

I have a new identity, or at least one I’m striving to take on as I integrate into my site.  I have no say over that fact that I’m a big/giant figure in town.  What I’m going for is a friendly instead of scary impression.

My first day at market in a neighboring town I found that most of the awnings were strung comfortably above the height of the Guatemalans I was accompanying, but that my head ended up sliding along the ceiling of the stands where we walked.  I ended up being like a wandering tent pole, raising the roof wherever I went under the tarps strung flat above stalls and walkways. Every so often I wouldn’t watch where I was going and would end up knocking into the occasional stand using a parasol, sending it spinning with my forehead (or shoulder). 

When I go on house visits be introduced to the women in the group where I will be working, I must duck to make it through many doorways, and some ceilings are uncomfortably close to my head as well.  Walking with my counterpart is a pretty leisurely affair for me, as I take measured tiny steps and still outstrip her.  To be fair, this is as much because we are pacing the 2½ year old as because she’s small, but it leaves me feeling a giantess all the same.  On the other hand, her sister in law keeps a pace that’s comfortably quick to me despite being close to a foot shorter than I am.

Overall, I’ve found that lots of nodding and smiling is getting me through alright.  Most of the people (especially women) in my town are pretty timid; they often will not respond to my “good morning/afternoon/night” greetings, with more than a smile or sometimes will speak from behind a hand over their mouth.  Still, as long as I smile broadly they will usually smile back.  If I can manage to do something silly and laugh at myself (like getting lost trying to leave a compound that only has one entrance), they will happily laugh with me.

The one exception to all this friendly success occurred last week.  I entered a family compound with my counterpart and did my usual broadcast smile to the children as she launched the usual spiel (in Ki’che’ inviting them to a meeting on Saturday).  I smiled particularly warmly at a barely walking little rug rat who was watching me with big eyes.  Far from the desired answering smile, she immediately sprouted tears and began to wail.  It was that particular variety of wail where there’s a period of silence every time she pauses for breath to wind up anew.  Although I tried to not take it personally, I was still pretty sure I had been the trigger to her dismay.  As confirmation I later learned that she associates strangers in pants with imminent vaccination.  Ah well, at least it was my pants and not my smile that struck fear in her heart.

Not to self; it’s easier to cultivate a friendly image in a skirt.

Snail mail... a whole new meaning

Although I’ve written several letters (well, little cards, actually) I cannot send them to the US because, get this, Guatemala is out of stamps until next month. 

Apparently in Guatemala the government doesn’t organize the mail system, and their stamps are printed in Canada (where there is a backorder of some kind).  It’s still possible to send mail, but you have to take it to the post office itself for a stamp to be printed onto the envelope (rather than the stick on variety). 

In my community the post office open one day a week, and only on random days.  The reason: there is only one employee who does all the deliveries in Sumpango and also mans the store the other day of the week.  For me to mail anything from my community I have the option of walking by the office every day hoping someone will be there.  Since I have class during almost all office hours and I live high on a hill above the center of town, that hasn’t been a very practical option.  Of course, I’m not sure how many other communities even have their own Post Office so I can’t complain too much.

Usually we trainees could send money with a driver from PCHQ to Antigua (nearby larger town) to buy stamps to bring back but that takes us back to square one.

We’re restricted to our own communities for the first three weekends, so I am unable to get to Antigua (where the post office is presumably open on a more regular basis) to have stamps printed onto the envelopes until September.

Once I get the stamps I’m hoping I get to leave the mail at the same office, because I sure haven’t seen any friendly tamper proof blue drop boxes anywhere.

All of this is not a tale of “woe is me.”  It’s just one of many ways I’m becoming more appreciative of that unsung resource that the US is awash in; Infrastructure.  

First Night on the Town

On my third night in Guatemala, my Santa Lucia (first) host mother decided to take my fellow PCT and me to a 15^th birthday party for the daughter of a childhood friend. 

For those unfamiliar, this is a bit like sweet 16 or a debutante party big in many parts of Latin America, with the Quincieñera birthday girl as the star of the show.  There had been lively discussion over whether we would be allowed to go at all, because we are supposed to be home before dark every night for safety purposes.  While that’s somewhat flexible if you are out with your family, in this case we were going to a neighboring town meaning we would be traveling by camioneta (aka Chicken Bus).  Having had strict instructions from the Training Director to be home before 7 pm, we double and triple checked with our host mom that we would be home on time.  She assured us we would, as it wouldn’t be good for her to travel after dark anyway, and that yes, we’d be home before the buses stopped running and before it was dark.

Well.

The event started with a Mass at 4:00 that we missed because we were still in class, so we went straight to the reception/party portion at a local municipal building, arriving around 5:45  (45 minutes late, according to the invitation) after a quick pass through the outdoor market to pick up a gift. 

The room was filled with about 40 round tables with white tablecloths and 9” tall plastic princess figurines in blue ribbon covered wire hoops that were suspended at eye level when seated.  The birthday girl’s name and the phrase “a dream made reality” (translated) were suspended over the cake table in large blue sparkly Styrofoam block letters.  There were towers of white cakes below with blue frosting flowers surrounded by another dozen or so of the plastic princess figurines.  These ones had batteries inside them that made a heart shape on the skirt glow in ever changing colors.  The table was a huge Lazy Susan, making a spinning sculpture of confections with glowing princess dolls.  There were waiters putting out the last of the goblets with white cloth napkins folded inside them, a screen for live and prerecorded videos, two walls of speakers playing very loud music, a DJ, and a blue oddly sized swing set with one basket shaped swing on it. 

In conspicuous absence was the birthday girl, most of her family, and guests to fill the 80% empty seats.

So, we sat with our host mother around a table, mainly silently due to the music already playing.  During the next hour the music gained volume steadily until I wished for the earplugs that had been on the packing list a former Volunteer sent me.  The music itself consisted mainly of American pop music that had a saxophone playing the melody in place of a singer.  I thought it odd when, “It Must Have Been Love (But it’s Over Now),” came on but figured it’s peppy enough if you don’t know the lyrics are about heartbreak.  What really got me was when they played Phil Collins’ song, “Another Day in Paradise,” in the midst of all the extravagance.  Odds are none of the people present knew the original,  so I suppose it was my own personal dish of irony.

As the clocked neared 7:00 my friend and I considered worrying but decided against it just because the situation was out of our hands anyway.   We were hungry and thirsty, she had a headache, and we had lost hope of making it home by dark since darkness was actually imminent and there was still little evidence that the party would begin any time soon, nor that our host mother had the slightest inclination to leave.

Luckily, the actual event got going pretty soon after 7 (guests had finally started filling the room around 6:30).  It began with a procession of that looked like every younger cousin the Quinciñera had in blue dresses and suits, followed by the girl of the hour in a blue ball gown accompanied by her grandparents, while her parents waited tearfully at the swing set.  There were many hugs and tears, followed by a series of symbolic first and lasts.  This began with the birthday girl “breaking” her “last” piñata (oddly enough, shaped to look just like her), swinging on a swing for the “last” time, and getting her “first” shot at wearing makeup and high heels.  Of course, the next item was a slide show of her childhood which had plenty of beauty pageant and dance competitions that showed plenty of makeup- and heel-wearing in her past.  Then there was a series of dances including father/daughter, mother/daughter, grandfather/daughter, grandmother/daughter, and daughter/boyfriend pairings.

At this point (which felt like “at last” to me) there was a full sit down dinner for everyone with champagne, beef, rice, potato salad, rice, and rolls.  Next there was the ceremonial gift delivery after which point our host mother agreed to take us home.  I wouldn’t have been so antsy except that my friend was feeling more and more sick, both feverish and nauseous.  We walked a bit to grab a taxi, and made it home without incident (although we did pass a landslide area that took over one of the lanes on the road.

The whole experience was fascinating on several levels and I was thrilled to get to observe the event!  Hopefully I’ll get to attend another later on to see how these events vary from place to place and family to family.  I was frustrated we didn’t have more options when my friend was feeling so ill, but I’ll chalk that up to a lesson in direct/indirect communication styles (especially now that she’s fully recovered).  Also, if that’s a birthday party, I can’t wait to attend a wedding!