Fubolistas

Julio dodging Kevin's kick.

Guto blocking a shot.

"Chino" post kick.

Amilcar playing defense against Mario.

Chino slide tackling Kevin.

Old Age

At the COS conference about a month ago a fellow PCV pulled nearly 20 white hairs out of my head. She found the exercise somewhat of an exciting scavenger hunt (“Oh my gosh, here are three more in a clump!”), but to me it was just a slightly scary reminder that I am getting old. I just hope there is no truth to the old wives' tale about two gray hairs growing back in the place of one pulled.

Tears and Ice Cream

The husband of one of the Nu’Kem weavers died last Saturday of a heart attack. Doña Esperanza and her late husband Don Victor are from an aldea of Tactic called Pansinic. They have six children, the youngest of them is only six years old.

Doña Esperanza was one of the founding board members of Nu’Kem. Though she was no longer on the board during my time with the association, she served as the community organizer and leader for the weavers of Pansinic. She is an excellent weaver (all the Nu’Kem products with “Esperanza” in the title are named after her because she was the person who created the design), and she doesn’t mince words, a quality that I vastly enjoy about her but unfortunately will get one branded as enojada (angry) here.

Since Doña Esperanza was the representative of Pansinic whenever I would schedule a meeting in that community everyone would gather at her house. I made countless trips out to Pansinic to talk about order deadlines, association news, quality control, and new designs. Through my visits I became close with Doña Esperanza and her family, and it breaks my heart to know the pain they are all in now with the death of Don Victor.

I attended Don Victor’s visitation, funeral, and burial on Monday. It was a day that was both saddening and angering.

It is the custom in Guatemala for the family of the deceased to provide a lunch to all the mourners on the day of the funeral. I arrived at Doña Esperanza’s house at 10 in the morning with the intention of paying my respects, leaving, and then attending the funeral later in the afternoon. But Esperanza and her eldest daughter Lily (she was also a Nu’Kem weaver) were so grateful to see me, I decided to stay.

I ate my portion of kak’ik and tamalitos in the company of Beti, a Nu’Kem weaver from the aldea of Chijacorral. From our spot in the corner, we watched as mourners filed into the room with the casket to make place a monetary offering in the basket for the family and as the Mariachi band entertained the gathering.

At 2:30 in the afternoon everyone piled into micros and the backs of trucks to make the journey to the Catholic Church in the center of Tactic. The funeral started at 3:00 pm and lasted for an hour. Afterwards the hundreds of mourners followed the casket, the family, and the Mariachi band in a walking procession to the cemetery over a mile away. A few words were spoken at the cemetery and Don Victor’s casket was placed in a concrete mausoleum. I walked home in the rain at 5:30 pm.

Funerals always make me cry, but as I said before, this one also made me angry.

The only other funeral I had attended here in Guatemala was that of Mynor, but I have gotten “invites” to many others. I have turned all the offers down, because although I have known people who have died, I was not closely acquainted with any of them. But funerals here are more social than sad. It is less about mourning the death of a person and more about just being a part of an event.

To be sure there are a lot people who attend visitations and funerals who are there because of some relationship with the deceased or in support of the family, but many others go just for the free food and the amusement seemingly derived from watching a family in bereavement. Is the wife going to faint? How are the kids holding up? Does he look very distraught?

As the procession made its way to the cemetery, people in the group were taking pictures of the casket and family with their camera phones. In the cemetery, ice cream vendors were making a killing off the apparently famished mourners. People would buy a cone and then climb up on top of one of the nearby mausoleums to get a better view of the action. The man delivering the final words could barely be heard over the conversations emitting from the crowd. This is not my culture and I shouldn’t judge, but I was infuriated by the complete lack of respect for the deceased and his mourning family.

The priest’s sermon at the funeral was the other thing that angered me the most during the day. In it he said the crying over the death of a loved one only shows a lack of faith in God. What a horrible and fallacious thing to say at a funeral. Why make an already devastated family feel even worse by asserting their tears signify that they don’t have enough faith in God?

Crying is a natural response to such an emotionally painful experience. It has nothing to do with faith, or lack thereof it. The children were crying because they lost their father. Doña Esperanza was crying because she lost her husband. Others were crying because they lost their son or brother or friend or community member. I was crying at the sight of Doña Esperanza and her family in so much pain.

But now the tears have dried. The funeral spectacle is over. The mourners have eaten their ice cream cones and gone home, but unfortunately the grief felt by Doña Esperanza and her children won’t dissipate as quickly as the public’s interest in it. Now they have to live in the painful reality of life without a father and a husband.

Pila Room View

Having this as a view makes washing the dishes a much more enjoyable undertaking.

Lista

Students in the universities in Cobán are now required to wear masks to class to prevent the spread of Influenza A. I am sure I would cause quite a bit of panic if I started wearing one around Tactic.

Gripe Porcina

Guatemala has not been immune to the worldwide Influenza A panic. To the contrary, it seems to have embraced it.

At last count there were some 120 confirmed cases of the flu in the country. Due to this “high number,” the Ministry of Education has suspended school for 15 days, public events and gatherings have been cancelled or postponed (including the Cobán half marathon), and government officials have asked people to stay in their homes. Soccer matches are excluded from the restrictions, because they occur in “open air”…and their cancellation could lead to civil unrest.

But it’s just the flu.

When gripe porcina (or “gripe de coche” as it is sometimes called here) was first discovered and thought to be dangerous, Peace Corps put us on alert and sent us instructions to prepare to “shelter-in-place.” We were to begin to stockpile food, water, medicine, and other necessary supplies sufficient enough to be able to quarantine ourselves in our homes for a week or two should the flu reach our communities. I bought a lot of Coke Light.

As the Guatemalan government has scrambled to obtain units of Tamiflu, the drug used to treat Influenza A, I have my own supply of the medicine safely tucked away in my medical kit. Due to the avian flu scare back in 2005, Peace Corps began issuing a package to Tamiflu to each volunteer. During training the medical officer (PCMO) explained the use of all the contents of our med kits (including a plastic emergency whistle). Since Tamiflu runs at over $100 per package, we were told to never use it unless we had explicit authorization from the PCMO. We actually have to present our unused Tamiflu to be able to leave the country at the end of our service. I am not quite sure what the consequence is of losing or using the Tamiflu without permission, but I imagine it probably involves indentured servitude to Peace Corps or having the cost of the medicine deducted from our readjustment allowance.

I am interested to see what is going to happen when they open the schools back up again at the beginning of July. It is certain that the number of cases in the country will only have risen between now and then. Is the Ministry of Education just going to cancel classes again? I know prevention is important, but so is education. The kids here already missed a week of school due to the teacher games and now two more are going to be lost because of the swine flu.

And once again, it’s just the flu.

Perritos

My friend asked me to take care of two of his pitbull puppies for a couple of days last week. I think as adults pitbulls are somewhat of an ugly breed, but as puppies they are absolutely adorable. And fortunately they didn't try to bite my face off.

Wanting to play soccer...puros chapines.

La chica deep in sleep.

El pirata (the pirate).

Taking a nap.

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.

The Action

Los Juegos

The "libre" team.

The "master" team for women 33 and old (what an arbitrary number for a cut off)

Rain, go away

Winter has begun again in the Land of Eternal Spring.

For all those fans of geography, you are not mistaken. Guatemala does sit in the Northern Hemisphere, but it is winter here now. Instead of four distinct seasons like in the states, Guatemala has two: winter and summer. Ironic for a country nicknamed the Land of Eternal Spring.

Winter is the raining season that lasts from May to October, while summer is the dry season from November to April. But since I live in Alta Verapaz were it rains “13 months out of the year,” it pretty much always feels like winter to me. Our summer consists of the months of March and April when it rains less, meaning not every day.

While the rest of the country hadn’t seen a drop of rain for the past six months, there was no reprieve here in Tactic. Towards the middle of the dry season, volunteers in the Western Highlands begin to complain of the dust, but what I wouldn’t give to see some freely moving dirt instead of mud.

Just as I had gotten used to Alta’s version of the dry season, winter has started again and the rain has intensified. And now it’s not possible to go to other parts of the country to escape the rain. It is not a question of if it is going to rain during the day. That is a given. The relevant questions are: How many times? How long? How hard?

I think I am going to live in the desert after I leave Guatemala.

Mira flores

One of the many reasons I love living in Alta Verapaz is the availability of gorgeous and cheap flowers. Most people here only buy flowers for funerals, so I am sure the women in the market find it odd that I show up on a weekly or bi-weekly basis to purchase a new bundle…or they think I am the grim reaper.

But with such a large supply of a time sensitive product and a fairly low demand, I am able to make beautiful flower arrangements for under $1.50. FTD can’t even come close.