The name of the camp was Lideres de mañana - Leaders of tomorrow with the great and fitting quote: "las grandes personas de la historia también fueron niños" "the great people in history were also once children."
Two of my good friends in the Peace Corps took the initiative to put together a huge multi-department leadership summer camp. The camp took place at the beautiful Laguna Chicabal. All volunteers in the Xela/Toto area were invited and each volunteer that participated in the camp brought a Guatemalan work partner and four campers from our sites (two boys and two girls). The camp was four days and three nights. PCVs even took turns patrolling on night duty throughout the night. It was a crazy time but amazingly it all went pretty smoothly. I was exhausted at the end of it all, but I am so glad I participated in it.
Summer camp for kids here in Guatemala is not a thing. Maybe for the affluent in the capital, but out in the rural areas where we all live and work summer is a time for the kids to be at home and probably working. This camp also helped to fill a gap in the educational system. Many girls leave the sixth grade (if they are lucky enough to get to the sixth grade) without knowing what menstruation is or how that relates to their ability to bear children.
Volunteers lead activities on a wide range of topics such as: leadership, the importance of working in a team, a hike to the laguna, self-esteem, nutrition, recycled crafts, decision-making, gender equality, reproductive health, and HIV. We also did some fun camp activities such as: an ice cream social, movie night, lots of dínamicas and ice breakers, and on the last night we had some fire dancers come in from Xela and put on a show while we roasted marshmallows.
The finished product. I hope we made enough for everyone (seriously)
This will be my first Christmas away from home. I will be in Guatemala. While I am very sad that I won't be celebrating with my family, I am trying to make the most of it and bring some of our traditions here to Guatemala. Therefore I decided to make Christmas cookies with my host family. We made two different types of cookies: sugar cookies, and candy cane cookies. Without refrigeration and a couple other minor things that the recipes call for I figured this way at least one of them might turn out well. The sugar cookies turned out a little different than normal, but both ended up tasting great! We also had a holiday movie night a couple days ago where I showed them Frozen in Spanish projected on a white sheet on the wall of their kitchen.
I like getting the boys to help to show them that cooking (or arts and crafts, etc.) isn't just women's work. The men in my host family hardly ever (basically never) wash the dishes or cook the food and are served their meals by their wives, daughters, and sisters. Dan, however, (the young boy on the left in the pictures above and below) is always the first to participate and help out with my activities. While an article was just published online of the 39 Most Iconic Feminist Moments of 2014, parts of rural Guatemala are still a little behind the times in terms of gender roles and stereotypes. Wow this blog post took a turn. Anyway. Yay cookies! A fun time was had by all. :) Feliz Navidad.
It was an all-ages event
I even got my new sitemate/housemate to help out (right)
Ever since I arrived in my site I have wanted to do a training with the local health center. When I first got my Peace Corps nomination, I was told that I was going to go do HIV work in sub-saharan Africa. That's not exactly where I ended up. Working in primary schools with kindergarten through sixth graders I don't get a lot of opportunities to give HIV trainings, although I have given HIV trainings to high school students. I am a Healthy Schools Volunteer and since school is not in session, I have to get a little creative so that I stay busy. So I planned this HIV workshop for everyone who works at the Health Center in my town. This included: doctors, nurses, students, and people doing their practicum. I repeated the same workshop on two different days so that half of the health center staff participated the first day and the other half the second day and the Health Center could remain open.
I started the workshop out with a short quiz to see how much they already knew about HIV and advanced HIV (which is the new term that is replacing AIDS). After that we did the "street talk" activity where I put up posters with the words: penis, arm, testicles, breasts written at the top of each paper and it was their job to go around and write down all of the slang words that are used in place of these words. The point is that there are a lot of slang words for all of the aforementioned words except for arm and how important it is for them as health officials and teachers to use the correct words. It also helps to get people giggling and to open up a little. Up next was the TeachAIDS health education animated tutorial video which is a great resource for teaching about HIV to any age group. I obviously showed the Spanish version. If you have 20 spare minutes and need a refresher on HIV transmission and prevention it's worth a watch. I followed this with the basic information on transmission, prevention, etc. Then we got to the good part. They paired up, picked an activity from the Peace Corps HIV manual, and presented it to the rest of the group. This way they got to see all of the activities in the manual as well as practice presenting the new information. Below are some pictures of the Health Center workers presenting the HIV activities in front of the group.
Condom demonstration
"101 ways to love someone" (without having sex)
Finally I passed out the post-test and diplomas. I am happy to report that there was a great improvement on the test. I was so happy that they agreed to let me do this training. They didn't have to, but they came, were present, and learned!
Diplomas! Yes her name is correctly spelled as Bilma. With a B.
There seems to be some confusion on the internet as to what a tamalito is. Maybe Guatemalan tamaltios are different? The best way I know how to describe it is like a tortilla but in the form of a tamale. It appears to be the same ground corn mixture that is used to make tortillas, but is then formed into an oblong ball, wrapped in the leaf of corn stalks, and boiled. They are served piping hot with meals and are very dense.
There is a lot of corn consumed here in Guatemala from tamalitos and tortillas to Corn Flakes. I believe that this has something to do with the fact that corn has been a part of Guatemalan's life and diet since the beginning. Have you ever heard that Guatemalans are "gente de la maiz" (people of corn)? That's because in the Mayan creation story the first humans were made out of corn.
I have a hard time eating tamalitos by themselves or worst with another carbohydrate like rice, but I like dipping them in sauces and soups. At special occasions such as weddings and birthdays they always serve tamalitos instead of tortillas. Perhaps this is because of the amount of work it takes to shape and cook tortillas (although I don't think making tamalitos is the easiest either). The short video below is of my host sister, Maria, explaining how to make a tamalito.
One of my perfectly wrapped tamalitos
The basket in the center bottom is filled with tamalitos
Laguna Chikabal is a sacred lake that formed in the crater of a volcano. It is a natural and cultural monument here in Guatemala. It is extremely well taken care of and respected. The story goes that there was a lake partway up on the side of the volcano, but people didn't take care of it and it became polluted. One day the lake was gone. It had been moved up to the crater of the volcano. Now it is considered a sacred spot. I wish that this could happen again in Guatemala. So many of the lakes are disgustingly polluted. I'm not sure how serious this is, but upon starting up the hike there is a sign that says: "before walking up to the laguna please ask permission from the creator of the Earth." No one is allowed to swim in the lake and the legend goes that if you do you will get sucked into a spiraling vortex to hell. (I elaborated the spiral vortex to hell part, but it is something similar).
It is beautiful. From the town below (San Martin, about an hour outside of the center of Xela) visitors can call a pickup truck to take them to laguna seca (dry lake) a flat resting area where the lake used to be. From there it is about an hour's steep hike up to the lookout point (mirador on the map). To get from there down to the lake you can either hike down or take the 580 stairs down.
Clouds covering the lake
Clear view from the lookout point
There are 580 stairs leading down to the lake
Cool tree that is in and out of the water - we were extra careful not to fall in
so that we didn't get sucked into the spiral vortex to hell
The laguna is a special place for Mayan ceremonies. Sometimes walking around the perimeter of the water you will see leftover flowers and candles or even a ceremony in progress.
Mayan ceremony in progress
My good friend and fellow PCV wrote a nice article about the lake. Click here to read the article.
I heard a statistic that there are 2 or 3 times more cell phones in Guatemala than there are people. I haven't fact checked this, but from what I have seen it seems about right to me. There are three different main telephone companies here in Guatemala: Tigo, Movistar, and Claro. Each one of these has special discounts for calling other numbers or texting within the same company. So some people have one Claro phone and one Tigo phone or a phone that has two sim cards. Some people also have a work phone and a personal phone.
From what I have seen, not many people buy a monthly plan for their phones as is the norm in the U.S.. Instead, most Guatemalans (at least out in the rural areas where we live) use pre-paid plans and just put little bits of money on it at a time. The least you can buy at once is 5 Quetzales ($0.65). To buy saldo (the money you put on your phone) you walk to any of the little shops (of which there are a ton of even in my town, tell the person working there (sometimes a child) that you want to buy a recarga (recharge), tell them your phone number, and how much you want to put on your phone.
Another trick to saldo that took me a while to figure out are the "tripple saldo" days. There are about 3 of these a month. These are days when Tigo sends me a text message at 6am to tell me "HOY (insert date here) TRIPLE SALDO TIGO EN RECARGAS ELECTRONICAS desde Q5." Which means that if you put Q5 on your phone you get the Q5 of normal saldo which you can use for talking or texting and then Q10 of promotional saldo which can be transferred to a modem and used for internet or used for talking. I generally transfer it over to my Tigo modem (in the form of a USB stick) and use it to buy internet in my site.
This is probably more than you ever wanted to know about Guatemalan phone plans, but if you are planning a trip to Guatemala or going to live here for a month this is gold. You're welcome :)
They also advertise triple saldo days in the newspaper
November 1st is a big holiday in Guatemala. It is called Día de Todos Santos (All Saints Day) and it is celebrated by eating Fiambre, visiting cemeteries and remembering deceased relatives. Last year I went to the giant kite festival in Sumpongo, Sacatepéquez. This year I traveled to the little village of Todos Santos Cuchumatán in the department of Huehuetenango. They are known for their traditional traje (pronounced traw-hey) that both men and women still wear and their unique All Saints Day tradition: drunk horse races. To be clear the men riding the horses are drunk, not the horses themselves.
The idea is that the men drink the whole night before and then ride the horses the whole next day drunk. The men and horses did rotate throughout the day. I have heard many different "reasons" behind this custom. Besides celebrating All Saints Day the races are to symbolize the beginning of the harvest. In one of the races a couple of chickens are sacrificed by the men by swinging the chickens around by their necks as they ride.
The whole "race track" was probably only about a quarter mile long. The people who were regulating the races blew their whistles and off the horses went. There would be a short break at the other end, we would hear more whistles and back they would come. I don't think that they picked a winner of the race, we tried speculating on what exactly the men were trying to do and decided on the factors that we would judge them on: fastest time in each race, drunkenness (the more the better), general style points (shouting as they pass by, no hands, etc), amount of time racing, and of course just staying on the horse. We did see three men fall off their horses. We saw all of them get up and walk away, but it all still seemed very dangerous.
It mainly seemed like general drunken debauchery to me. As a rule of thumb I stay as far away from bolos (drunk men) here in Guatemala as I can. However here the streets were full of them. Drinking and dancing and walking down the streets. If there is an open container law here in Guatemala it certainly isn't enforced.
To really get a feel for the races check out my short video:
The whole town, event, and people were so colorful and this was so unlike anything that I had ever seen before that I took over 500 photos over the weekend. I tried my best to weed them down a bit.
"Welcome to the horse races"
There was drinking at all times: both on and off the horse
The little town was so beautiful
I am used to seeing women in traje so it was cool to see all the men wearing it.
They even looked pretty from behind
Young boys in traje típico watching the races
Standing watching on the sidelines we periodically got
hit by flying mud
