Teacher Games

The Juegos Magisteriales (Teacher Games) for Alta Verapaz took place last week. The site for the games rotates between the municipalities, and this year Tactic was the host. Hundreds of teachers from every corner of Alta descended upon Tactic for a week of competitions in basketball, soccer, volleyball, and track and field.

The only team from Tactic that placed was the women’s “Libre” (33 & under) basketball team that came in 3rd. Cobán basically dominated the games, which is to be expected since it is the department head and much larger than the other municipalities. It was nice to see, though, that their women’s basketball team went down to Carcha in the championship game.

What Tactic lacked in performance on the court, it made up for in style. I have never seen my community so clean and polished. The municipal building and market got a new paint job, as did the gym. The latter is what excited me the most.

Our gym was previously sponsored by Tigo (a cell phone service company) and painted in its colors of royal blue and white. About three months ago, it was decided to change the gym’s colors, which started the process of removing the blue paint. This process did not involve chemical paint strippers or hand scrapers. Instead, every day a group of men using the ubiquitous Guatemalan tool, the machete, would chip away at the paint. (Add paint remover to the ever-growing list of uses for a machete.)

Unfortunately, the process was painstakingly slow and not terribly effective. (Strike paint remover from the list of uses for a machete.) After three months of labor, less than a quarter of the gym was paint free, and there were piles of paint and concrete chips everywhere. I am sure the chipping would have gone on for at least a year before the gym was ready to paint again if it were not for the games. To avoid having a half painted embarrassing gym on display for all the fans in town, the idea to remove the paint was scrapped, and instead they just painted over what was left. Now we are sponsored by Pepsi.

To keep all the participants and fans entertained in the evenings there were dances in the municipal salon and a mechanical bull. Although I had a couple of invites, I passed on the dances, but I did try my luck on the mechanical bull. Unfortunately the operator didn’t crank the bull up enough to throw me off, but fortunately because of that I didn’t have to call the Peace Corps medical officer to report any injuries.

And to keep all the participants and fans safe (from themselves I guess) the army was brought in for the week. I find it slightly disheartening that it is necessary to have the army present to keep the peace at an event for teachers. Soldiers armed with assault rifles would stand in the corner of the gym during the games ready to quell any disturbances. Fortunately there were none.

Now the teachers have gone. The army left town. The bands have packed up and moved on, and Gallo has taken its mechanical bull. But Tactic still has its fresh coat of paint.