La vida llamó

I envisioned that my Peace Corps experience would involve a fair amount of boredom and looking for novel ways to entertain myself in a place with limited options (I brought and have bought enough books to serve most people a lifetime). But spending my evenings delving into new books is not the case. Not at all. Hopefully after next week my schedule will open up a bit and I can finally revisit “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” (a great book—if you haven’t already read it, I highly recommend doing so), but right now it is all work, all the time.

Between communicating with the speakers and setting the agenda for a volunteer conference on the 3rd, securing a venue, renting sound equipment, sending out invitations, and working out all the details for a Independence Day party on the 4th, editing a Peace Corps cookbook to have it ready to print, writing up an article for the quarterly Peace Corps Guatemala publication, buying new thread colors and preparing packets of thread to be given out in the communities for a huge order Nu’Kem just landed with Cemaco (Cemaco is a Guatemalan Bed, Bath & Beyond meets Home Depot big-box chain store that is going to stock our placemat settings, pillow cases, and table runners for a trial period. If they sell well, then they will become permanent items in their stores!) , and writing run-on sentences (I think this one is a personal record), I don’t have time to read for pleasure. I don’t have time to be bored.

I write all this to serve as an apology (more of an elaborate excuse really) to all my loyal blog readers (aka my mom) for my recent lack of posts. I’m sorry, but you’ll just have to be entertained with pictures for a while. But some substantive (as if any of my posts have substance) written posts are coming soon…I promise.

To celebrate the huge accomplishment of winning the Premio, naturally, Nu’Kem threw a huge party. A testament to the resourcefulness and hard work that won them the prize in the first place, the women were able to pull off a widely successful bash with less than a week and a half of planning. And both the party and the preparations were extremely entertaining.

After the 200+ person guest list was finalized (6 slots were designated for “gringos”), invitations were meticulously made and delivered to all the weavers, the mayors of Tactic and Tamahú, all the organizations that have ever given assistance to Nu’Kem, and the sponsoring organizations of the Premio. A menu of soup with chicken and turkey (for the honored guests) and rice and tamilitos was decided upon. A women’s marimba group was contracted to provide the entertainment. A sound system was rented to supply my “disco” music while the marimba group was resting. Tables and chairs were borrowed from the Tactic municipal office. Plastic sheeting was purchased to construct a covering for the dance floor. Vases were filled with flowers to provide decorations. And a keg was bought to quench everyone’s thirst (although I took care of the ordering and delivery of the keg, it was completely the women’s idea).

Providing food for over 200 people is no easy task, especially when you have to kill all the chickens and turkeys. The day before the party was entirely devoted to just that—an all out poultry slaughter. In an afternoon, the women killed, defeathered, and dismembered over 40 chickens and 10 turkeys. The whole process functioned like a well-oiled machine. Turkeys and chickens were strung up by their feet all over the area behind the office awaiting their deaths. Some women were snapping the necks of the female chickens, others were slitting the throats of the larger male chickens, and others still were cutting out the tongues of the turkeys. (I asked if I could chop the head off of one of the turkeys with a machete, but I was told that would be inhumane.)

When a chicken or turkey had stop convulsing and the blood flow slackened, it was then passed onto the women in charge of removing the feathers. Each fowl was dipped in a boiling hot caldron of water to loosen up the feathers, which could then be almost pealed off like matted hair. After the birds were feather free, they were sent to the last group of women who were chopping up the animals into pieces to be cooked in the soup. Hardly a single part was wasted.

The women found my interest in the slaughter about as amusing as I found the slaughter itself. I was taking pictures and shooting videos the whole time. Whenever a fowl was about to meet its end, the woman in charge of its execution would yell, “¡Seño! Voy a matar esto ahorita,” and I would rush over to document the killing. The most fascinating deaths by far were those of the turkeys. The women would first wash their mouths out with a bar of soap. After the mouth was good and clean, two women would hold the turkey as still as possible while a third would grab a hold of the tongue and slice it. I didn’t understand the point of cleaning the turkey’s mouth until I saw the bucket of cilantro prepared to catch the blood—a special ingredient for the soup. The first batch of bloody cilantro had to be thrown out after the second turkey vomited in it. Mmmm.

The day of the party the first tropical storm of the season was rolling through Guatemala, but the rain didn’t put a damper on the festivities. The guests started showing up at around 11:30 A.M. (I think parties are the only occasions to which Guatemalans show up on time, if not early.) At half past noon, Yolanda and I gave some welcome and thank you speeches, and then the members of the board of directors set about serving everyone their soup, accompanied by a styrofoam cup full of foamy keg beer. The marimba group provided enjoyable (enjoyable, that is, if you like the marimba. I am NOT a fan…a confession that could probably get myself shot in many parts of Guatemala) background music while everyone dined, but it wasn’t until after the meal was finished when the real fun began.

On the days Lisa and I are preparing the thread to distribute to the communities and the women come in to drop off their finished products, I bring in my portable speakers and play “gringa” music. The women are always trying to induce me to dance, and although at times I would indulge them by busting out some moves, I had yet to completely satisfy their desire to see a how gringa dances. So that was their goal for the party—to see me dance…and “bolita.” They got one of their two wishes (okay, maybe one and a half).

After the marimba group played its last song (¡Gracias a Dios!) and started packing up to return to Tamahú, I plugged my iPod (already prepared with my “Hiphopalotamus” mix) into the sound system to start the dance portion of the party. It was difficult to get the women to join in at first. I would try to grab women and pull them out onto the dance floor, but they would burst out into laughter and refuse. The first woman to finally break the ice was Josefina (the trooper who vomited during Chubby Bunny but later participated again when we held a second competition). She sheepishly came out onto the floor, but then put on a show (to the cheers and laughter of the rest of the women) dancing to a Justin Timberlake song. After that I would get the women to come out one at a time to dance with me until eventually there was a group of women and girls tearing up the dance floor.

Although the women enjoyed dancing with me, the highlight of the party for them was getting to dance with the three gringos I brought. Mike, Dan, and Dan made the trip down from Cobán to participate in the festivities (I mean it was probably the first ever indigenous women’s keg party in the history of the world), and their dancing skills were put to good use. Now I keep getting requests, “Seño, puede imprimir una foto de mí bailando con un gringo,” and there is already talk about throwing an even bigger party for Christmas. My job is to bring more gringos…and beer. So now all I have left to teach the women about American culture is hot dogs and college football. Maybe I’ll throw a party at my house this fall to cross those last two things off the list.