La hora chapina

There is definitely one thing in Guatemala to which I never will or want to become accustomed: la hora chapina.

“La hora chapina” is the little phrase people use here to laugh off the fact that nothing starts on time. But I don’t think it’s funny. Being the Type-A American that I am, I find it maddeningly frustrating that people routinely do not show up for meetings for at least an hour after their scheduled start times. There is no excuse or apology when a person strolls in an hour and a half late—she just takes her seat and joins in on the meeting (that is if enough people had arrived by that time to actually start it). My exasperated countenance occasionally elicits the aforementioned irking expression, “Es la hora chapina, Seño,” but there is no compunction in the phrase—it is only the person’s way of dispelling any culpability in her tardiness.

A couple of weeks ago following a meeting with members of the European Union in which the last member of the board of my association didn’t show up until a full two hours after 8:00 am (saying that a meeting will start that early here is really just a joke), I delivered a stern speech on punctuality to the board of directors. The women intently listened and nodded as I went on and on about how punctuality is a sign of respect for other people and a reflection on how our association does business. I even translated the saying, “To be early is to be on time. To be on time is to be late. To be late is to be left,” into Spanish to get across the American mentality about time. After the lecture, the women seemed genuinely excited to turn over a new leaf, singing the praises of “puntualidad” and “la hora americana”. The next morning one women arrived 45 minutes late to leave for a meeting in Cobán and two didn’t show up at all.

This lax concept of time is by no means exclusive to my women’s group (as any Peace Corps volunteer would tell you), but is just the way of life here. Everyone has the mindset that there is no point in showing up on time because no one else will be on time and therefore nothing starts on time. This culturally ingrained habit isn’t going to change just because the anal gringa has anxiety if she is not at least 10 minutes early for a meeting. And even though I know this post already reeks of ethnocentrism, I can’t help but say that the way things operate here is just a horrible waste of time. Meetings in which everything could be accomplished within an hour end up taking half a day waiting for everyone to arrive (unprepared). So I am going to keep on lecturing on punctuality. Maybe by the end of my two years I’ll be able to deliver the speech in Poqomchi’.

False Alarm

Last Thursday afternoon all the PCVs here in Guatemala received this text: “Alert. Hurricane dean approaches Guatemala. Prep 4 consolidation. Respond 2 this msg by text.” A detailed email followed with instructions to prepare an emergency bag in the event the Consolidation phase of our Emergency Action Plan (EAP) would need to be implemented in the coming days.

Four days later, this past Monday, the EAP was implemented, kicked off with an ominous “CONSOLIDATE” text. Volunteers in the at-risk departments made their way to their respective consolidation sites to wait out the storm. And wait we did—for two days—for rains that never came. It didn’t even sprinkle. I hadn’t experienced a day in Tactic without rain, and yet there wasn’t a single drop for the whole two days all the volunteers from Baja and Alta Verapaz spent sequestered in our consolidation hotel. Any site of a cloud or picking up of the wind would produce a collective, “Here it comes!” but we, along with the National Hurricane Center in Miami (they had predicted a possible 5 to 10 inches of rain for parts of Guatemala), were all very mistaken.

Although it turned out to be a needless exercise, I think Peace Corps made the right decision in implementing the EAP. During hurricane Stan in 2005 (which was neither as strong nor close as Dean), some 2000 people died here in Guatemala in landslides and floods as a result of torrential downpours. Volunteers weren’t consolidated at that time and it took four days to locate everyone after cell service went out. Peace Corps didn’t want a repeat of that nerve-racking event, so they were very precautious with Dean.

Now I just have to explain to everyone here in Tactic why the crazy gringos ran off to a hotel when there wasn’t any rain.

Feria-ed Out

Today is the final day of the week-long feria celebrating La Virgen de la Asunción. Usually fairly tranquil, Tactic was a seven-day party complete with dances, carnival rides, parades, a rodeo, traveling salesmen, and makeshift aluminum speakeasies. The main road through town was completely shut down for the week, blocked by a maze of booths selling anything from slabs of coconut candy to knock-off Abercrombie and Puma shirts.

The only thing that put a slight damper on the festivities was the 12-hour downpour earlier this week that flooded part of town and caused destructive landslides. Six people died in Cobán, and 20 families were rescued from the floodwaters here in Tactic. Landslides knocked out homes, destroyed a church, and blocked roads, including the main highway from here to Cobán. Peace Corps’ security coordinator was calling to check on the situation to see if we needed to be evacuated.


That aside here are some highlights from the feria:

Being on the “Zipper” carnival ride while the operator had to climb up to fix it by putting air in the tire (using a hand held bicycle pump) on which the whole thing spun and tightening some bolts. Michelle and I were the only people on the ride…hmm, maybe the Guatemalans knew something we didn’t.

Watching four drunken men at the rodeo (which they actually call “jaripeo” here…but rodeo is a Spanish word) play poker in a ring with a bull to see who could remain seated the longest. Of course, the drunkest guy won.

Spending almost an hour on a ferris wheel that operated at over twice the speed of any in the states (I was told to tuck my hair into my jacket so it wouldn’t get caught in the cable). Our numerous requests to be let off where denied—not in the American, “No” way, but in the Guatemalan “Okay” way that never happens.

Seeing two on-duty police officers drinking beer while directing traffic.

Eating fair food—corn on the cob with ketchup, mustard, and green hot sauce, fried plantain strips, fried breadfruit, french fries (truckloads of gas tanks were brought in just to provide the energy for the fried foods), peanut brittle-esque cookies, and the fore mentioned coconut candy slabs. My waist doesn’t agree that this was a highlight.

Counting the bolos passed out on the sidewalks during the day.


While it was interesting and entertaining, I am definitely ready for the carnies to pack up and leave town. After experiencing my first feria, more than anything, I am just surprised that no one dies during these festivals that take place in every Guatemalan town. A mixture of large quantities of alcohol, exposed engines and moving parts of carnival rides, the carnival rides themselves, drunken men and angry animals, and fireworks is just ripe for tragedy. But everyone survived and will be ready to do it all over again next year.

Rides and Parades

Scenes from the feria

Case in point

How ironic that two days after I make a post concerning child stealing and lynchings that I should receive a site mate who was evacuated from her town for just that reason.

The director of the Healthy Schools program called Wednesday morning to inform me that as a result of an “incident” in Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, the volunteer from that site was relocating to Tactic and was scheduled to arrive that afternoon. The incident that occurred in Fray involved an angry mob that attempted to lynch the CTA (the director of schools in the area), the mayor, and visiting members of the Ministry of Education who the townspeople claimed were running a child stealing ring.

These accusations stemmed from rumors of a dead girl being found on the outskirts of town missing her organs the preceding weekend and reports that five children had been stolen from a local school the morning of the unsuccessful lynching. Two months prior a child had been stolen and transported to Cobán, where the 17-year-old kidnapper attempted to sell him. The kidnapper was apprehended, taken back to Fray, and tied to a school flagpole to be burnt to death. Instead, he got off with a severe beating.

The members of the Ministry of Education and the mayor were all meeting with the CTA in her office late in the afternoon when the lynch mob formed. What started out as 30 machete bearing angry men eventually swelled into over 1,500 people surrounding the CTA’s office. Everyone managed to escape seeking refuge in “safe houses” and hiding out in the surrounding mountains, until eventually evacuating the town by boat (the townspeople had blocked off all the roads). The mob set all the vehicles of the Ministry of Education on fire and burnt the mayor’s dog to death.

Michelle (my new site mate) was actually waiting for a scheduled appointment outside the CTA’s office (the CTA was her counterpart—PC lingo for the person with whom we are to work most closely for our assigned project) when the first two truckloads of armed men arrived. Knowing any rumors of child stealing are eventually tied to gringos, she wisely left the area, went to her house, and informed Peace Corps of the happenings. With just an evacuation backpack of essentials, she left Fray on the first bus out the following morning at 4:30.

While my situation obviously in no way compares to what Michelle has gone through (she can’t even go back to Fray to collect her things for at least a couple of weeks), my Peace Corps experience has/will change considerably as a result of this too. Out of my whole training group I am the only one in the department of Alta Verapaz, and I was fully expecting to be the only volunteer in Tactic until at least the end of November when the new group moves out to site, if not for my entire service. A part of me regrets not having Tactic all to myself, but then I am also thankful to have someone with whom I can speak English. Perhaps that is a bad thing, though. Vamos a ver.

I don't want your children.

Guatemala is the second largest source of foreign adoption for the United States, recently surpassing Russia and trailing behind only China. However with a population 1/100 of that of China (over 1.3 billion to less than 13 million), Guatemala has by far the highest foreign adoption per capita rate in the world. Americans adopted 4,135 Guatemalan babies last year, a shocking 1 out of every 100 babies born here. You can’t spend a day in Antigua without seeing at least a dozen adoptive mothers toting around their new babies in back slings or bouncing them along the cobblestone streets in strollers.

But with the recent approval of the Hague Adoption Convention in the US Congress, it is plausible (though not probable) that all American adoptions from Guatemala will cease by 2008, unless Guatemala comes into compliance with the stipulations set forth by the Hague (Canada has not allowed adoptions from Guatemala since 2001). The State Department is already discouraging prospective parents from initiating the adoption process here.

The Hague Convention has its share of both outspoken opponents and proponents. Those against the treaty point to swelling orphanages in countries that have ratified it, while supporters (in the case of Guatemala) assert that something has to be done to fix a broken system in which there are claims of children being bought and stolen. And it is this claim of child stealing that affects my existence as a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala.

Partly due to old rumors of Americans stealing children to harvest their organs (hypothesized to have been started by the Guatemalan military during the civil war to prevent the people from talking to foreigners investigating war atrocities), but increasingly as a result of stories of people going into villages with the intent of buying babies, there is suspicion of foreigners (including other Guatemalans unknown in a given location) among the Mayans in the remote parts of the country. Propelled by fear and lack of faith in the authorities thought to be ineffective and/or corrupt, the local population takes “justice” into their own hands through lynchings. On July 1st an American and a Guatemalan were overtaken by a mob in Chicaman, Quiche after talking with a local boy (they were eventually released unharmed), and on July 17 a Guatemalan man accused of child stealing was beaten and burned to death in the Petén. The mob later burnt down the police station and held 11 officers hostage for arresting four people involved with the murder. Thus far this year, eight Guatemalans have been lynched in connection with child stealing accusations.

Living in a town with a long history of Peace Corps volunteers, among people accustomed to foreigners, these reports have seemed as surreal to me as they might to some living in the states. It wasn’t until last Thursday that the magnitude of people’s fears here really hit home. I was traveling out to the small municipality of Tamahú, about a 40-minute micro ride on a gravel road, to meet some of the weavers in the association. Just outside of town, the bus stopped near a small shack for someone to disembark. A little boy was amusing himself with a pile of dirt and a stick in the yard by the road. Upon seeing me in the front seat (the best place to ride), the boy’s father ran from the house, snatched up his son, and ran back inside, the whole time staring at me with a look of both fear and anger.

Now I have prompted this instinctive fear in babies in Africa who had never seen a white person (or white-ish in my case), but never have I experienced this kind of reaction from an adult. The incident left me slightly alarmed, but mostly just disheartened. As if life isn’t hard enough eking out a living by subsistence farming or some other form of manual labor at which they are skilled, these people have to worry (whether founded or not) about someone coming along and stealing their children. But the irony in all of this is that I don’t even really want kids of mine own—let alone do I have the desire to steal someone else’s.

Ma’xta b’ih niraq chiriij

No longer in the constant presence of other English speaking gringos, this past week has been a bit of an adjustment learning to completely live in another language. Granted I have been utilizing and learning more Spanish daily since arriving in Guatemala, but there were always moments everyday during training when I could express more complex thoughts and feelings in my mother tongue with other volunteers. Here, it is all Spanish, all the time, and I am constantly frustrated with my inability to perfectly articulate what I want to say.

Adding to my frustration, whenever I am in the presence of more than one woman in the organization with which I am working, they prefer to speak to each other in Poqomchi’ instead of Spanish. And as the title of this blog indicates, “I don’t understand anything.” I have had in total one four hour crash course in Poqomchi’ (which was taught in Spanish—nothing like being two languages away from completely understanding what is going on), during which the whole time on was on the verge of gagging trying to speak such a guttural language. But despite the protests of my throat, I have decided to request a tutor through the Peace Corps Mayan language program—at the least I want to understand what the women are saying when they are talking about me (because I know they are).

With my ears resonating of Spanish and Poqomchi’, my internal monologue has become more like an intense discourse given it is the only place I can “speak” English. But even during these lengthy personal conversations, I often make myself switch over to Spanish out of guilt that I am not practicing enough. (It really is a bitch being an anal perfectionist). Laughably, for further practice I attempt to translate English songs as I am listening to them, which most of the time simply ends up being a wearisome exercise given I am metaphorically challenged in Spanish.

So currently my mind is a jumbled mix of Spanish, English, and Poqomchi’ (Spanglichi’, tal vez?), and I currently lack the ability to effectively converse in any of the three (I thought I could still bank on English, but according to my parents, I am now incomprehensible in that too). Hopefully within the next two years I will learn some language (any language!), otherwise I’ll be returning to the States communicating with rudimentary grunts and hand signals. And, unfortunately, as I have learned here, not even all of those are universal.