See you in consolidation...

The second category 5 hurricane of the season made landfall in Central America earlier this week and for the second time in less than a month all the volunteers here in Guatemala were back at their consolidation points to weather the storm…that never came.

The Guatemalans thought we were crazy for fleeing to a hotel for Hurricane Dean and I’m afraid our consolidation for Felix has only furthered that notion. I must admit I scared the wits out of a fair share of indigenous women with talk (and maybe a few frightening computer diagrams) about Dean, but with Felix I slunk out of town informing as few as people as possible of my reason for departure. “Oh, yeah, there is a hurricane coming, but I am sure nothing will happen here. Peace Corps is just really cautious.”

But I do not fault Peace Corps. Once again I think they made the right decision to consolidate (a point I wish to make clear in the event any bored Washington desk officers are browsing through volunteers’ blogs). Felix left a wake of death and destruction through neighboring Honduras but fortunately dissipated before making it to Guatemala. Predicting the future can sometimes be a difficult task.

If anything our tri-weekly hurricane consolidations have become a great bonding time for the volunteers in the Verapaces. After Dean’s Enrique dance party, this time we had Felix’s marathon charades game. The overall friendly competition did have a tense moment during the “Battle of the Sexes” round when the clue Anna Karenina (submitted by the girls’ team) led to a heated debate and the later banning of books as a category. I should note that we would have won the match even had the boys correctly guessed the famous novel—a fact that in no way lessened their bitter anger.

With predictions of potentially four more hurricanes during the month of September, we were already planning possible diversions to pass the time at the next consolidation. Capture the flag and hide and seek were thrown out as options, but of course any outdoor activities would have to be suspended in the event a hurricane actually hit during hurricane consolidation. But I think the odds are in the favor of capture the flag.