Mi Madre [Guest Blog]

I was fortunate enough to have my family come to visit in February for a precious 9 days so I could share a quick taste of what my life has been like here in Guatemala before I head out at the end of March. Below are some reflections written by my mother.

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Guatemala is a land of contrasts. The landscape and culture is like an ancient and expertly woven fabric, its drapes and design shaped by volcanoes, water, wind, sea, and her Mayan people. Earth tones prevail: terra cotta reds, sage and forest greens, dusty browns, sky blue, leaden gray. The texture of the weave is deeply carved with steep slopes, high ridges, eroded valleys, and sink holes. The threads of water are precious, even though it falls copiously from the skies in season. There are places where newer threads intersect the old... paved highways that are frayed by mudslides; cell phone towers that rise in spires above the coffee and cardamom groves; glistening plastic litter strewn along the highways. It is as if someone took a look at the ancient weaving and decided to repair the worn spots by stitching in sequins, baubles, and twist ties.

This was most apparent to me as we sat in the main room of our host's house, a room of wooden planking which measured about 12 X 12. The room had two sources of light: the open doorway and a bare incandescent bulb flickering yellow with the fluctuations in power. No windows. Overhead the corrugated tin roof protected us and the family's corn supply from threatening rain, and diverted the water into a plastic lined catchment since no running water is available for miles. A duck was brooding her eggs in one corner of the earthen floored room, while a lame chicken pecked beneath my plastic chair. The three children sat coloring on paper my daughter provided or climbed onto our laps for a game of horsey rides. Meanwhile, our hostess used a rectangular grinding stone and cylindrical pestle carved from volcanic rock to mash the prepared corn into the dough for the fresh tortillas she would cook for us on the wood stove. We sat at a bare, plank table, while she worked at another, methodically grinding the masa, scooping it up, shaping it into tortillas, and deftly depositing them directly onto the hot stove surface. We spoke quietly in English punctuated by exchanges in Q'eqchi' between my daughter and the host family. Suddenly a chirping noise broke the pattering rhythm of the tortilla making, and our hostess turned to a makeshift shelf nailed to the wooden wall by her work table and answered her cell phone. A land of contrasts indeed.

Semuc Champey

In mid-February my site mate and I met up with some other PCVs from our training class and high tailed it to Semuc Champey in Alta Verapaz near Lanquin. We took a fantastic tour both walking and swimming through caves carrying our own candles along for light, and then enjoyed the afternoon above ground admiring the scenery and pools.

It was a beautiful place and I´m only sorry I only got to go once. I´ve already added it to my list of places to return to on my next trip to Guatemala.

Chipi Chipi [The Famous]

I got out of bed one night to head to the latrine.  I blearily made my way outside into the intense quiet and for one heart-leaping moment, I was convinced it was snowing.  In the glare of my headlamp I could see gently falling flecks swirling around my head.  Of course, I was comfortably standing outside in shorts, a tank top, and rainboots, so that explanation didn’t hold water.  It dawned on me that this new precipitation – not quite fog, mist, or drizzle – was the Chipi Chipi that the Verapaces are so famous for. 

The rainy season seems to be transitioning out of its roaring phase in which the clouds open up and pound down on the tin roof with a force that makes hearing one’s own thoughts a challenge.  This new mood of soundless wet creeps in and out of the valley and leaves laundry damp even when hung safely under the eaves.  This gentler phase is welcome.  It means the pathways are drying out into solid ground once more, and I no longer fear an involuntary slip-and-slide experience on my way between my house and the road. 

It does signal that dry days are probably not far off.  I need to begin to monitor how well the rain fills my water tank.  In the months to come I may wistfully think of the days when my laundry wouldn’t dry once I reach the point that water is not readily available for laundry on a whim.

Crunchings and Munchings

Women in my town have a time-consuming trifecta of tasks that take up the bulk of their day: cooking, cleaning, and weaving. These are in addition to ongoing childcare, which is no small thing in any family, and is particularly impressive where families with upwards of 10 children are not uncommon.  In this post I'll tackle Cooking.  

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One of the "estufas mejoradas" that many international aid organizations help to get into communities around Guatemala.

Since I've already spent some time on food in other posts, I won't delve into what the women in my town cook, but I thought I'd look a bit at how they cook it. First of all, the majority of cooking happens over wood fired stoves here in my site. My host family has a gas stove they use as well as fire, but most families have just a wood stove. 

In other areas of the country there are families cook over an open fire, which is terribly inefficient as far as wood usage goes, and leads to loads of respiratory illness in families, particularly in infants strapped to their mothers' backs while the daily cooking gets done. Most families in my town have an estufa mejorada (improved stove), which really increased the burning efficiency of the stove, and decreases the amount of smoke and pollution inside the house.  

Grilling outdoors, more for tradition than taste, in this case.  This was a soup for Day of the Dead and so even though it was in a pot and probably didn't absorb much flavor from the flame, it just couldn't be done indoors on a gas range.

Just like in the U.S., there are opinions over what method of cooking tastes best, and sometimes people choose to grill over an open fire anyway. Who doesn't want barbecue now and again? There are plenty of people who could cook on a gas stove and choose not to because they think it changes the flavor of what they're cooking.

This is one of the places that sells firewood in town... this pile gets brought in and then mostly decimated on a weekly basis. Notice the wheelbarrow in front of the stack... it might help give a sense of scale.  

Even with the estufas mejoradas in town, cooking meals over flames three times a day leads to using a lot of firewood.  Deforestation is definitely a problem.  When I went for a hike up the ridge with my host family a while back, it was clear that all the remaining trees had been limbed up far above the height of a Guatemalan.  Any lower branches had long since been cut off for firewood.  The majority of the firewood sold in my town doesn't come from anywhere nearby -- it's cut down up in Quiche, which is two departments away (like states in the US) and brought in.  There really aren't any native forests left to speak of where I am. There are some trees up on the ridge lines and clinging to the very steepest of hillsides where farming is impossible.

So, I'd say that cooking is time intensive for the women, health intensive for the families, and resource intensive for the land. Obviously there are downsides to cooking with natural gas or electricity as well, but it seems that the forests in Guatemala have not been managed with sustainability in mind. My knowledge of land use policies in Guatemala is very limited, so I'm speaking strictly from my own observations. However, it appears that what could be a renewable resource here is being used faster than it can be replenished.