Things That Don't Exist in Guatemala

I really should have started this list at the beginning of my Peace Corps service as I'm sure it would have been pages long, but below are a couple things that are thought of as commonplace in the United States, but simply don't exist in Guatemala. Guatemala is a poor country so some of this won't be surprising. Disclaimer: I'm sure they do in some places such as the cosmopolitan capital, but not anywhere that I found out in the rural Western Highlands.

• Substitute teachers - If the teacher can't come in the kids don't either.
• Indoor heating/cooling.
• Parking lots for schools.
• Hot water coming out of faucets.
• Subways.
• Washers and dryers in every town (the closest laundromat to me was an hour bus ride away and I didn't know a single home in my town with one).
• Babysitters (that's what family is for).
• Refrigerators (I didn't know of a single family in my town with one - that's right I did't have one either).
• Wifi (I did buy a modem and was able to buy internet that way).
• School buses (to bring kids to school) - kids walk to school often with only their siblings. American school buses on the other hand are driven down through Mexico, given a killer pain job, and used as the public buses in Guatemala.
• Bus passes - Pay the man who comes walking through the bus cash (and it better be exact change or else you probably aren't getting that back).
• House pets. (At least in the rural villages). Animals serve a purpose and that is to protect the house. There were a ton of street dogs in my town and 0 dogs were ever walked or put on leashes.
• Supermarkets (at least in my town - we had an outdoor market twice a week).

Tinted Windows

Non-tinted strip in a tuk-tuk window

Tinted windows are far from against the law in Guatemala. In fact they are the norm. It is even common for the windows to be so tinted that there is a little non-tinted hole cut out for the driver to see through. This is undoubtedly designed to help prevent car break-ins by keeping people from seeing what is inside of the car. It seems, however to be a moot point as I have yet to see a car in Guatemala that had more than the standard radio in it. These super tinted windows appear to me to be super unsafe as it practically converts your whole front windshield into a small hole, but somehow they make them work.

Non-tinted hole on the left in front of the driver

Planting a New School Garden!

Part of the Healthy Schools Project includes school gardens. The idea is that not only will it teach the kids about gardening, but also so that the vegetables can be used to make the school snack healthier. I don't know about where you went to elementary school, but at mine there was a small garden and there was an after school program called "City Sprouts" where we learned about gardening and made some healthy recipes. I'll be honest I only went to a few days of City Sprouts and remember making Kale soup way before Kale became popular. 

I really liked the school garden part of Healthy Schools mainly because it is so applicable to their lives. In the town that I lived in, and the surrounding area the main industry was agriculture. However, I would guestimate that over 90% of what was produced in this area was corn. Literally there were corn fields and only corn fields everywhere. 

Town center (during our fair) surrounded by corn fields 

To start off with, the patch of land that this school decided to grow its garden on had its problems:

The plot to the left - soapy run-off from the bathroom to the right

Burning the school's trash

The school's kitchen billowing smoke

But all that aside the kids, teachers, and I got to work.

Little kids are usually deemed responsible enough to work with machetes

Me getting down and dirty (the kids really did most of the work)

Resourceful

The teachers and I

While the garden plan could use some more work, they did get an ok crop of radishes. It was a start and hopefully next year they will grow their garden so that the vegetables can be used in the school snack. :)

And one picture of the little ones because they are just so stinking cute. This is in the school "playground" aka the dirt field in front of the school.

Animals Sure Are Treated Differently Here in Guatemala

My host family has many "pets." I say "pets" because the most interaction that they have with them is yelling at them to get away or occasionally throwing them leftover scraps of food. (*I'm sure there are many people in Guatemala who love their pets and treat them nicely, but from what I have seen this is not the norm out in the rural countryside*). Animals here serve a purpose and it's definitely not to cuddle with you at night. They are used to protect the house. The vast majority of the animals are "outdoor" animals, meaning they are given free range of the family compounds and often the whole town. From my experience in the states usually when you call a dogs name you want them to come to you, but when they say the dog's name it intuitively backs away and goes back into the yard. Even the two year old knows to yell and throw things at the dogs when they get too close. Being an animal lover this was really hard for me to become accustomed to. I for the most part just tried to ignore it and be nice to the animals myself, giving them food, and hoping that my host family would see me doing this and being a little nicer to them themselves. I'm pretty certain that this just put me further on the list of crazy foreigner. Worth it. This cat and dog (below) I happened across on the street and are probably someone's "pets."

They also tied the animals up to wherever with whatever they could find.

Our skinny dog, "canchita" tied up and eating some bread I gave her

Animals pretty much had free reign over the house. A pig once walked into my kitchen (no it's not a joke).

Front entrance to our house - you can see two of the cats hanging out in the yard/driveway

our backyard

View from the window on my door - pigs everywhere

The front door to my room

Bathroom trash bid that had just been washed

I found some chicks eating my mint plant (and I just thought I had a brown thumb).

On the flip-side, here is a chicken that was a little bit of an "indoor pet" at least at that moment. 

On one especially cold night I let two of their cats into my room whileI gave them some eggs. Big mistake. After that they always tried to get into my room. I would have let them into my room more often except for the fear that they were going to give me fleas (which really did happen - I even wrote a blog post: Fleas...Not Just for Animals). 

I NEVER saw a single person in my town walk their dog, but I did see plenty of people walking their sheep.