Adios

This is quite possibly the most offensive going away gift I have ever received.

Pour

I will not give credence to an Amazon customer review that claims a product to be of "pour quality."

Relativity

After staying at my parents’ house for a few days, I decided to come and stay with my brother, my sister-in-law, and my 8-month old nephew. The 240-mile journey from Rock Port, Missouri where my parents live to Columbia, Missouri where my brother lives is one I have made innumerable times since I moved there for college. In many ways the trip was a flashback to the past—driving my mom’s vehicle that is the same as the one I had before I left for Guatemala and listening to pre 2007 CDs I dug out of the closet of my old room—but in one way it was very different.

The “trip back to school” or the “trip home,” depending on which direction I was heading, always seemed somewhat like a large undertaking. But now after nearly three years spent crammed into buses traveling on winding two lane roads, a three and a half hour trip in a personal vehicle on the amazing Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways feels like a short jaunt. Time, distance, and difficulty are all very relative. Según como se mire todo depende.

World AIDS Day

Griffin Gridiron

Only one person bled this year! Sorry Matt.

Niagra Falls

On our roadtrip to Vermont, Regan and I swung through Canada and went to see Niagra Falls. Though the falls themselves were pretty, I must say I was a bit disappointed in the overall area given the proliferation of celebrity wax museums and other cheesy attractions. It is like the Branson of New York.

Operación Calabaza

So I actually ended my Peace Corps service about a week ago (COSed in PC lingo) and am currently in the US. The thing is, my parents have no clue.

Peace Corps has a policy that bans taking vacation in the final months of service. I originally only wanted to extend my time from July to the end of October but with my trip to France for my friend’s wedding in September I was given the options of either finishing at the end of August or staying until mid-December to have the required three months of time after the vacation. I wanted to be home for Thanksgiving, but I needed the extra time to finish up my project so I decided to extend my Peace Corps service until the middle of December.

And then the Peace Corps policy changed from three months to two months.

Even though it is against Peace Corps policy to change your COS (Close of Service) date once it has been set, with my special circumstances, I was given the option of changing my date. So after some deliberation (passing over my project to a local group was not going as quickly as I hoped and losing a month would leave me a bit pressed for time) I decided to move from date from December 16 to November 16.

Operación Calabaza was born.

With the help of my three brothers, I devised a plan to surprise my parents for Thanksgiving. Our family usually celebrates Thanksgiving in Oklahoma, but this year we are breaking from tradition and having it in Burlington, Vermont at my cousin Patrick’s house. My youngest brother, Regan, was already planning on roadtripping from Missouri to Vermont and this worked out perfectly for my plan.

On Friday night I flew out of Guatemala and arrived in Chicago at about one in the morning on Saturday (direct flight from Taca!). Regan picked me up there and we have spent the past three days driving across the country. My parents, on the other hand, are currently with my other brothers in route by plane to Vermont. I’ll surprise them at my cousin’s house in Burlington.

Well, that is what will happen if Operación Calabaza goes exactly as planned. Since I don’t know whether I’ll have access to the internet during our roadtrip, I am actually writing this while I am still in Guatemala and scheduling it to post automatically today while Regan and I are on the road and my parents are in the air. Barring any car problems or flight delays, it should work, but after over two and a half years living in an LDC (less developed country), I shall be hoping for the best but expecting the worst.

Now I just hope no one has a heart attack.

Hermelindo

Hermelindo (the one on the right sporting my sunglasses) is one of my favorite kids. I'll write more as to why in a future post.

Chafalandia

The "Sharyle" permanent marker...


that is strikingly similar to the "Sharpie" permanent marker.


Coincidence? I think not.

Navajazo

I love how the Spanish language has words for things that English does not. What would take 3 or 4 English words to describe can oftentimes be summed up with one Spanish word.

Example:

Navajazo – a knife wound

Navajera – a female criminal armed with a knife

Navajero – a male criminal armed with a knife

With information such as this I usually like to invent new –ar verbs like navajazar – to stab someone with a knife. It should be a real word.

Bean Powder

I don't know about beans made from powder, especially given that two of the listed ingredients are chicken meat and chicken fat. I guess these aren't vegetarian friendly beans.

Rodeo Boy

This kid who performed at the Tactic rodeo had a Vicente Fernandez type amazing voice and was quite the ham which made for a very entertaining intermission.

A diputado (Congressman) from Alta Verapaz

Guatemala's Starbucks

Unfortunately there aren’t any Starbucks in Guatemala. (Perhaps the fact that most Guatemalans would have to work more than a day to afford a cup of coffee from there has something to do with that.) No, instead of there being a Starbucks on every corner, in Guatemala the sacred fried chicken joint Pollo Campero gets the ubiquitous chain award.

The picture below is of Calzada Roosevelt (pronounced ruse-e-belt), the road that heads out of Guatemala City to Antigua or Chimaltengo, depending on which fork you take (I highly suggest the one that leads to Antigua). The Pollo Campero sign circled on the left does not belong to the Pollo Campero restaurant circled on the right. No, just out of view of this picture is another Pollo Campero restaurant that sits directly across the street from the visible one. And there is also another Pollo Campero in the Tikal Futura shopping center (next to where I took this picture) as well as another in the adjacent Miraflores shopping mall. That is four Pollo Campero restaurants in less than a square mile radius. Now that’s a lot of chicken.


On a related side note: While Guatemalans love PC’s (that is Pollo Campero, not Peace Corps) chicken, they generally find the establishment’s tortillas to be lacking, in both quantity and flavor. So, where there is a Pollo Campero, there is at least one woman sitting outside the front door with a basket full of tortillas. People will buy a Q or 2 worth of tortillas and bring them inside to enjoy with their meal. I would love to see how a set up like that would go over at McDonald’s.

Test Day

13 hundred hours.

In t minus 1 1/2 hours I'll be taking a test that will decide the future course of my life. Okay, so perhaps the GMAT isn't quite that important, but I worry that if I perform poorly, I'll spend the rest of my days as a sandwich artist at Subway (no offense to you current sandwich artists). However, if I do well, I could be the manager of those sandwich artists.

You've got to dream big.

Tactic Fútbol

Kilos & Pounds

I was reading a Prensa article the other week about a police seizure of over 100 kilos of cocaine in two separate operatives. It made me curious. Why do the US and Guatemala use the metric system when referring to quantities of drugs while they use the English system for most everything else? (Well, Guatemala is actually English/metric mixed depending on if its volume, weight, or distance, but trying to explain that is for another post.)

But thinking more on this kilo/drug connection, I realized it isn’t for all drugs. You never hear about the police catching someone with a kilo or grams of marijuana. It’s pounds and ounces for weed.

Is there actually some good reason for this, or is it just custom? I suppose I could ask one of the local traffickers for his insight, but really I’m not that curious.

Happy Halloween

or Christmas.

Holgazán

Mapache's two favorite sleeping positions:

It’s beginning to look a lot like…

It’s October 29th. 80 degrees in the shade. And as I write workers are putting the finishing touches on the Gallo Christmas tree in the park. Are we jumping the gun?

Horse Tricks

Money Tree

This is the guayaba tree in my yard…


…and these are guayabas (or guavas in English).


The guayaba is a tropical fruit native to Central and South America. I find that guayabas have a consistency similar to pears and the variety in my yard is a bit bitter—too much so for my taste. But Guatemalans love them, and now that my tree is in full bloom I have become a very popular person (even more so than usual).

Guayabas go for 50 centavos to 1 Quetzal a piece in the market, so I would estimate there are at least $13 growing on my tree. But the net worth of my giver of fruits is lowering daily as friends, neighbors, and acquaintances invite themselves over to take home bagfuls of guayabas.

Although in an effort to not appear rude they always come under the pretext of visiting me, I am not fooled. I have been here long enough to quickly pick up on when I am being used (which is about 83.2% of the time), but in this case I play along because I am trying to be the shining example of a friendly American and, well, I don’t really like guayabas (although Mapache is a big fan).

So in keeping with the ruse upon leaving, everyone makes a comment to the effect of, “Oh, I didn’t know you had a guayaba tree!” which I would believe only if it came from the mouth of a blind person given the tree is the first thing you see upon entering my front gate. That statement is always followed by the question, “May I have a few to take home?” Then I grant permission and all of a sudden a few changes into a few dozen and then the person leaves smiling with a canasta full of guayabas and the promise to come back to visit me soon.

Ah, the burden of having a money tree.

Inked

Why do I feel like I am doing something illegal and self-destructive when filling up my ink cartridges? Perhaps because of the “Use one time and destroy” warning on the syringes?

The Underwear Thief

Mapache has a penchant for stealing my underwear out of my bedroom and strewing out on the lawn.

By the Numbers

The UN came out with its latest “Human Development Report” on October 5th, which contains country factsheets with statistics and rankings based on factors that affect a country’s human development index (HDI). The HDI is the UN’s “broader definition of well-being” that takes more than just a country’s GDP into account by factoring in life expectancy, literacy rates, school enrollment rates, and purchasing power parity among other things.

Below are a few tables showing how Guatemala compares to the United States on a number of factors and where it falls in ranking overall. The “Countries” column shows how many countries were involved in the rankings for that particular index. The first number for each country shows that country’s ranking while the number in parentheses represents the value or percentage. The data used in the report are from 2007.

Some things to note:

Guatemala ranks 111th in GDP at purchasing power parity per capita, BUT it has the 13th highest Gini Index in the world. (The Gini Index is a measure of income inequality—the higher the number the more unequally distributed income is within a country.) This means there is a wealthy minority within Guatemala pulling up the per capita GDP while the majority of people are earning far less than $4,562 a year. For example, even if a Tactiqueño were able to find work everyday in the fields (a very common occupation for rural indigenous men), at the going labor rate he would only earn a little more than $1,300 during a year’s time. That’s $1,300 for 365 8-hour days of backbreaking labor. But most men aren’t lucky enough to find work everyday, so their yearly incomes are much less than that.

Guatemala has the 4th highest rate of chronic malnutrition in the world. In the world! Nearly 50% of all Guatemalan children under the age of 5 are malnourished and that number jumps to 70% in predominately indigenous areas. There have been crop failures this year due to the worst drought Guatemala has seen in 30 years, but the real root of the problem is not the lack of food (although countries have sent food aid because of the supposed “shortage”) but the lack of income to buy food and the lack of education about the proper nutritional needs of children to buy the right food. Tortillas alone do not satisfy the dietary needs of a child.

As an Economist article stated, malnutrition in Guatemala should be a “national shame.” And from looking at the numbers there is much improvement to be made in other areas too.

October Rains

After what has been an abnormally hot and dry October (Guatemala is facing a severe drought), today the temperature dropped by 20 degrees and it has been raining non-stop all day. Ironically since last year’s dreary cold and damp October I had been dreading this year’s, but now I find today’s downpour a welcome relief from the heat and monotony of the weather. But whether I continue to find the cooler temperatures and rain a pleasant change depends on how many days or weeks it is until Tactic sees the sun again. A day of showers can be enjoyable; two weeks straight of showers is just miserable.

GMAT Prep

GMAT studying by candlelight courtesy of the Peace Corps and Guatemala's overtaxed electrical grid.

Paris to Guate

Guatemala City is apparently 9001 kilometers from Paris according to this sign in the Eiffel Tower.

Guatemalan Roots

One of my kids (well, not my kid) cleared up a matter today that he seemed to have been mulling over for a while. Given that I am brown and apparently Chinese looking (I don’t see it), people here are often puzzled as to how I can be an American. Through my time spent living and traveling abroad, I’ve found this confusion surrounding my ethnicity to be widespread and universal, so I am accustomed to fielding questions on the topic.

Marvin started off with a question I’ve answered a million times: “What country were you born in?”

“The United States.”

This answer did not provide the information he was looking for so he continued. “What is your mom’s name?”

“Janet.”

Still not enough. “What is your dad’s name?”

“Stan…like the hurricane that killed all those people in Guatemala.”

“Oh. Yes. Estan.”

I could tell that Marvin was still not satisfied with the information he had received, but I didn’t know where he was headed with this line of questioning. Then he continued with, “Where are your parents?”

“They’re in the states.”

“But where were they before?”

“Before? I don’t get it. Before what?”

Finally Marvin’s brother Brian chimed in to get to the heart of the matter. “He thinks that your parents are from Tactic, and that they went mojado [illegally] to the United States and had you there, and then you came back to work in Tactic because you’re really Guatemalan. Is that true?”

Hmm. I should have just said yes.

Vinos

I wish this photo were taken in Cobán instead of Paris, but unfortunately there are no such stores in Alta Verapaz.

What does my shirt say?

If it weren’t against Peace Corps regulations to set up money making operations, I would start a one-person side business translating people’s t-shirts. For a meager 1Q fee, I would tell you what is written across your shirt in English actually means in Spanish. Not only would I pull in a little extra monthly income, I think my enterprise would have a profound affect on the wardrobe choices of many Guatemaltecos.

Shirts in English are very common here. Used clothing from the states gets packaged into huge bundles, shipped to Guatemala, and resold in the numerous “Ropa Americana” stores all over the country. (Does it make you feel good to know that your generous donation is helping to clothe many a poor Peace Corps volunteer?) And since 99% of rural Guatemalans don’t understand English (that is a rough estimate), shirts are chosen based solely on cost, size, and color without any consideration given to what it says.

So therefore you get macho ayudantes wearing shirts with slogans such as “Shall we dance? Do you even have to ask that question?” and old men sporting “World’s Best Mom” sweatshirts and teenage girls wearing shirts basically proclaiming themselves sluts. But only the English speakers find this amusing, because everyone else is just as clueless as the person wearing the should be embarrassing shirt. For just a Q I could change that.

Churrasic Park

This is by far the wittiest business name I have ever seen in Guatemala. It is a churrasco stand that the owner rolls out into the park every evening. Hence the name:

Single Use Only

I hope the doctors and nurses at the health center who made this float for the feria actually know what “single use only” means.

Strapped for time

A man in town was just put in jail for sexually assaulting his 11 and 12-year-old daughters. The police were made aware of the situation when one of the girls’ teachers made a denuncia (pressed charges) against the father. Unfortunately sexual abuse of children, spousal abuse and the like are not terribly uncommon here, but it is rather uncommon that it is actually reported to the police.

Apparently the father had been abusing the girls for more than a year. When the police asked the mother why she hadn’t made a denuncia before, she replied that she had been very busy and could never find the time. You can’t find the time to keep your husband from raping your daughters!?

According to Guatemalan law the mother is not guilty of any crime and the daughters are going to stay in her custody. Some future they have to look forward to.

Armas

Firearms are a really popular accessory at the desfile hípico.

Desfile Hípico

Desfiles hípicos (horse parades) are very popular in my part of Guatemala. They are, as the name would suggest, simply parades of people on horseback. Last year I participated, but this year my horse fell through (a wild horse from the monte that had never been ridden in a parade before), so I just took pictures. Here are a few.

The original Marlboro Man.