Field Trip!

I have been working with a women's group in Pachaj, Cantel for the past 3 months with another volunteer, Marissa. The group of women was started over ten years ago and has done various projects, the last of which was a literacy course through the Guatemalan agency CONALFA. Marissa and I were asked to help them with their next venture, a medicinal garden. I was really excited about the prospect until I remembered that I don't know anything about medicinal plants and even less about gardening... However, with a little Internet research you can "seem" like an expert on just about anything. The group meets every Friday and we've done a mixture of nutritious cooking classes and preparing the land for planting. We've made some fun stuff like homemade peanut butter (made by grinding the peanuts on the hand stone grinder), lentils and stir fry on the wood stove, home made jam and no-bake cookies with oatmeal. We were purposely stalling with the garden because we were having a hard time finding seeds or starter plants for medicinal plants. A couple of weeks ago after we had churned the ground, disinfected the soil and built a fence around the garden we decided to go a head and plant some "winter" plants, squash, carrots and such until spring when we will have the resources to start the medicinal garden.

One of the great things about Peace Corps is that since there are over 180 volunteers in Guatemala there is usually someone that has experience with a project that you might be working on. During training I met another volunteer, Olivia, who is working with an association of women that has a medicinal garden on Lake Atitlan. After contacting her she invited us to bring our women to her group to learn about what they are doing with medicinal plants. Our group was very excited about the trip. Many of the women had never been to the lake, which is only about 3 hours from Cantel. We rented 2 micro buses and left at 4:30 am with 20 women and their children. We did introductions and they gave us a tour of the garden. We had lunch on the lake and played in the water. The trip ended up being a huge success with both groups excited about the cultural exchange (the groups speak different dialects of Mayan, our women speak K'iche and the women in Olivia's group speak Sutuhil) and being able to share knowledge of the medicinal plants. Olivia's group is going to help us get seeds for our garden and send someone up to Cantel to help us get started. My experiences with this group of women have been some of my best times in Peace Corps! Here are some of the pictures of our field trip.

Group picture

Marissa and I with women from our group

Charla

Garden tour

Waiting for the Holidays

One thing that we learned in training was to always look forward to something, anything. It could be as small as a trip into town to eat Taco Bell, but just have something on the horizon to look toward. Now that school is all but over for the year and I have some time to plan for next year (I mean procrastinate), I find myself needing things to look forward to.
Things I am looking forward to…

1. The Rockies winning the World Series

2. Having healthy bowels again

3. Dave coming to visit

4. Having too much fun in Antigua

5. Mom coming to visit

6. Thanksgiving in Guatemala

7. My next pay check (I am getting really hungry)

8. Someone to call from home

9. Seeing bolos asleep in the gutters

10. Going to Belize and being warm again

11. Christmas in a hut on the beach

12. School starting again

13. Riding my new bike around Salcajcá -- Thanks Uncle Sam

I would love to hear what people back home are looking forward to.

Salcajá Market

The market in Salcajá is every Tuesday and Saturday. Tuesday is the bigger day with animal (live ducks, chickens, cats, dogs, turtles, turkeys, etc... ) and furniture venders. People come from all over Quetzaltenango & Totonicapán for the market, as Salcajá is well known for their corte. The market has several blocks dedicated to the corte venders. There is also flowers, veggies, meat, spices, pirated cds & dvds, and much more. Mosiah and I try to buy as much as possible from the market as we just learned that our little super market, the ¨despenca familiar¨ is actually owned by Wal-Mart... The below pictures were taken this morning.

corte vender

woman buying corte

girl shopping for a new huipil

sweater section

huipils

Our Little Pink House

After 5 months of living with host families we have finally moved into our own little casita!! Finding a place to live was a bit of a challenge as not much was available. This house is actually the only one that we found so it was easy to make a decision and besides the landlord lowered the rent to Q500/month (about $66) for us since we´re volunteers... A definite plus! It´s located a little bit outside Salcaja in the milpa (corn fields). It´s about a 20 minute walk to the center of town. It´s been fun and interesting buying and transporting all of our furniture and supplies up to the house. We´ve bought a bit of stuff in the market in Salcaja and then hired pickups to drive us up to our house. Here are some pictures and remember there´s plenty of room for anyone wanting to visit! And yes, the whole house is pink (inside and out), there are plans to paint in the future...

Our pink house

pink bedroom

kelly washing dishes in the pila in the back (pink) patio

mosiah drinking morning coffee

the pink kitchen

pink dining room/pink living room

Best Day Ever

A few days ago I went to bed feeling like hell. Apparently, when I get a fever I start acting strange and shivering speaking gibberishy Spanglish in my sleep. After a day of being kind of unconscious Kelly convinced me to go to the hospital to have a… well a poop sample analyzed.

Aside from having cramps, a head ache, fever and a mean case of the boom booms I was feeling fantastic! To make matters even better the microbus that we got on to go back home was jammed packed with people. Now for the average Guatemalan standing in a micro is no problem, but for giant gringos such as myself you have to be an armature contortion artist to fit. So there I was smushed between the huddle masses with my head crammed up against a handrail holding on to the sides of the seats trying not to fall over onto the other passengers.

I would like to say that I had my guard up and that security was the first thing on my mind, but it wasn’t. My true thoughts were probably closer to “Oh my god please stomach… Please cooperate!... Who smells like tamales… Please god let me find a restroom soon!!” So in all the hustle and bustle I barely noticed the group of guys get on the bus cramming in behind me. At the next stop the guys all got off the bus and I dove into a newly empty seat.

Then it dawned on me. Wallet! Crap! After checking I found I was right, the guys who got off lifted my wallet. Then the passenger next to me added insult to injury by saying “Those guys stole your wallet”. She said it like she was saying “Hey, can you pass the salt”? If I had the strength and the language ability I would have said something, but all that came out of my mouth was “yes they stole my wallet”.

Kelly was good enough to jump right up and cancel the bank cards and inform the officials. I made it home with an aching belly and a wounded ego excited to get back in bed, when the phone rang. The medical office informed me that I was feeling bad because I had a bacterial infection and not one but two types of amebas. So it was pretty much the best day ever.

First 45 Days

Sorry for the delay with the new posts. We have been “Adjusting” to life here in the Peace Corps. With so many new things surrounding our lives we have found it hard to find time to post.

We have been in site now for about 45 days. In this time we have been consolidated twice for Hurricane Dean and Felix. I would have written about them if they had been more exciting, but they did not really affect us up here in the Altoplano. These events turned into social gatherings where we had a great opportunity to meet our fellow Volunteers and spend some real quality time doing all the things that Volunteers love to do (I’ll leave that to your imagination).

In between consolidations we had an opportunity to go to Panajachel and see Lago Atitlan. It is one of the most breathtaking places that I have seen here in Guatemala. We meet up with casi everyone from our training group to celebrate Marissa Lopez’s birthday. For all those who want to come visit the Lake will have to be on your itinerary.
We have also started working in our jobs. Kelly is working for Coop San Luis. She has started with an inventory project and is working to help them improve their computer skills and systems. Kelly also has a secondary project. She along with the infamous Marissa (our casi site-mate/hija) are working with a women’s group and are going to start a medicinal garden project.

I have been working in INEBOA or National Basic (middle school) Institute with an Orientation in Agriculture. I have started to teach a class here and there, but I am trying to figure out how I can best help the school. I am also working in the administration trying to build a database. If anyone has ideas about projects, let me know.

Hopefully as we get to know more people and how things work around here we will have more to report. We will also post more photos soon.

Juramentacion & first week...

July 19th we became official peace corps volunteers. The ceremony was at a posh hotel in Antigua and the undersecretary of state for the western hemisphere was there to lead us through the oath. The following day we moved to Salcaja. The first week was a little rough getting settled. It´s interesting going through the readjustment and settling in process all over again. However, it is great to be living together again like a real married couple. We´re temporarily living in a house owned by a widow who lives with her 19 year old muchacha. The Dona has been in the United States visiting family since we´ve been living there so we´ve just been hanging out . There is also another very young Guatemalan couple living in the house with a baby on the way. The living situation is good, but we´re looking forward to having an apartment of our own.

We had a busy first week of work. I (kelly) spent most of my time in the co-operative´s pharmacy trying to figure out how we are going to organize and start taking inventory as that is my first order of business. The co-op opened a pharmacy 2 years ago as part of it´s agenda to help the community by providing low-cost medicine. Mosiah spent the first week in his schools in Cantel and had the opportunity to sub in a few classes... We also joined the municipality of Salcaja´s commission for youth development. We´re lucky to be living in such a progressive town that is activally wroking to imporve the lives of it´s citizens. We met the alcalde (mayor) and staff, however as elections are in September we might be working with a different set of officials, ¿saber? On Thursday Mosiah invited me and another PCV in the area to join his school in re-forrestation project. About a hundred 7th graders, teachers and the American trio climbed up an increadibly steep mountainside, trees in hand, to a clearing half way up the mountain to plant the trees. I have to mention that some of the kids were wearing corte and heels and many we´re carring machaties and not one kid got hurt (and they all made it up and down the mountain before us...) On Saturday my pharmacy had their 40th anniversay party. It was a very guatemalian party with many speaches, marimba (national music) and a lunch that followed. They also had caldo de fruta the locally made fruit liqior... interesting to say the least.

Overall we´re doing well. We think about everyone at home lots and love and miss you all very much!

Whole training group

Youth Development group

Small Business group

Dona Rafa (mo-host mom), Dona Lupe (kel-host mom), Carlitos, Kelly, Mosiah, Don Jose

View from our roof in Salcaja

Kids & Mosiah planting trees