Life in San Lucas

Sometimes when you have been living in a place for a long period of time, it is easy to forget to stop and notice the beauty of the world around you.  This week I decided to stop and appreciate San Lucas, and share some pictures of my town.

I will start with my house.  We have a nice open living space and a “kitchen” with a sink and a coffee maker:

 

The house is surrounded by a beautiful garden as well, with rose bushes, a banana tree, and a pomegranate tree.

Behind our house is a big pila to wash our clothes on, and lines where we can hang our clothes in the sun.

Each day, as I walk to the parish for breakfast, I walk up to the top of a hill with a stunning view of the lake, as well as many other amazing views around town.

Sometimes in the morning, we climb on top of the church as the sun is coming up.  From this vantage point we have a beautiful view of the lake and of the entire city.

Not a lot of words to share today, just images, but sometimes is it just nice to sit back, look, and enjoy!

Diversions

            After such a long post about the work I do, I thought it would be nice to fill everyone in on the way I spend my (ample) free time.  After we are done for work at 4 each day, the rest of the day is open to spend how we please, and although as a group the volunteers tend to go to bed by ten at the latest, this is a lot of time to fill in a house with no TV, no kitchen, and limited games/puzzles, etc. 

Brains!

            We try to keep our brains working as much as possible, since most of us are in the middle of continuing our education.  In addition to the assigned readings that Chris and Madeleine give us, each of us is usually reading two other books at a time, one for pleasure and one related in some way to volunteerism or Guatemala.  I am currently about halfway through Cien Años de Soledad by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter.  

I have also found some videos that teach beginning guitar lessons, and I have been trying to teach myself how to play the guitar (the volunteer who just bailed left a guitar behind).  My lessons have to take a break for a while, however, because I managed to cut myself at work and had to get stitches on my finger.  

Bodies!

            Given the richness of the food we are served at the mission, we have decided that in order to avoid gaining a ton of weight, some kind of daily workout is in order.  We developed a little workout plan that goes like this:  Every other day we run up into the mountains (with mace, and very carefully) for about 6 K.  The other days we do a little circuit training that we developed in our back yard.  We made some weights by filling little plastic soccer balls with cement and connecting them with part of a broomstick, and we use this random metal rod we found to do squats with.  We also have a jumprope and pull out a mattress for situps, etc.  This circuit lasts for 45 minutes. 

Fun!

            As a group we have become quite obsessed with playing Scrabble and cards, especially Hearts.  Sometimes we download movies online to watch, and sometimes we just sit around and talk while we crotchet.  Sometimes I feel like I am living the life of a 70 year old, but it has been nice to slow down and enjoy the things that I have not had time to do in the past few years of school. 

Comings and Goings

Although my last blog post was about the monotony of daily working life here in San Lucas, I think it is important to mention that there are constantly changes going on in our personal lives and relationships with Gringos.

            Short-term groups are the first variable in our lives.  Since I have been here there have only been 6 or so, but they always interrupt our daily schedule for better or for worse.  Besides having to lead them on tours, orient them, and take them to their daily work, we often have to take days off of work to translate for medical groups.  Although I really like these groups and the variety that they provide, it can get taxing to have the same conversations with new people week after week, knowing that they will leave within a few days.  As we come into the holiday season, there will be weeks when the mission will be full with up to 7 groups—some 100 short-term volunteers. 

            Another variable is the time spent with long-term volunteers.  Because there is no set end date to the program and each volunteer stays anywhere from a month to a year, there are often volunteers moving in and out of the five-person volunteer house.  With people leaving comes moving for the other volunteers in the house, because there is a sort of “bedroom hierarchy” depending on how long each volunteer has lived at the house.  The rooms range from a tiny closet of a room without any storage (mine), to a large room with two beds, a closet, and a personal bathroom.  The first move came two weeks after my arrival, when Gus left, freeing up a spot for me to move from a separate hotel into the volunteer house’s newly vacated tiny closet room.  

My original group of roommates: Chris, Kelly, Katie and Lily.

            The second and third moves happened this week, and one was a surprise.  My male roommate, Chris, had gone home for Thanksgiving and was planning on returning Thursday of this week, but we received an email a couple of days ago saying that he had changed his mind and was not coming back.  It was disappointing because it was so sudden, but it is his prerogative in the end.  The one exciting part was that with Chris not returning, a nice room was freed up for me to move into for the remaining two weeks until I get my palace with a bathroom and internet.  The third move was planned, and very sad for the remaining roommates because we had to say goodbye to Kelly.  Luckily for me, I will be meeting up with Kelly in a month to vacation in Costa Rica together!

We will miss you, you goof.

            So now there are only three of us in the house, the remainder of the group of six that was here when I arrived almost two months ago.  In a week and a half, we will be saying another goodbye to Lily, who is returning to Colorado.  

Bring your Guate style back stateside!

 For two nights it will be only me and Katie in the house, and then on December 15^th, three more boys will be arriving, essentially turning life in the volunteer house on its head.  We will see how life turns out at the volunteer house without a team of four to play Hearts with for a while…

The Secret Garden

After having graduated from college, the most common questions that I am asked are; “What’s next?” and “What are you going to do?”  After I was accepted into the San Lucas long-term volunteer program, I was able to give a partial answer to that question: I’m going to volunteer in Guatemala.

“Great… but, what are you going to be doing?”

In response to this question I would either throw together some answer based on the programs that I knew the parish ran, putting emphasis on the ones that seemed most productive: teaching, working on coffee processing, working with reforestation… things that seem valuable and worthwhile to the American mindset.  Or, I would simply reply that I would not know until I arrived. 

            Well, I have arrived, and in previous blog posts I have described the projects that I have made myself a part of, and the kind of work done in each of those projects.  However, I haven’t described the actual work that I am doing up until this point because, well, it seemed a little boring or pointless to mention.  Maybe even a waste of my time.  Maybe even a waste of my “volunteer” experience here in Guatemala.  However, over the last couple of weeks I have gone through a series of emotions that have helped me to recognize the true importance of doing work that to many may seem pointless, and to me has become monotonous.

            First, I will explain what a typical workday looks like for me.  After breakfast at 8, I walk down to the vivero where Efraim and Julio work, and let myself in the door.  After greeting both men, I gather my milk crate, shovel, and plastic bags and settle myself down in front of the huge pile of dirt that never seems to get any smaller.  For the next three hours, I repeat this process over one hundred times: Scrape some dirt down from the pile, rub it in between my hands to break up clumps of dirt, meticulously pick out every rock bigger than a pea, then shovel the dirt into a little seedling bag.  At noon I head out to wash my filthy hands and eat lunch, then return to do the same work until four in the afternoon.  If the sea of little seedling bags around my seat gets too big for me to reach to add more, I bring a wheelbarrow over, carefully fill it with bags, then find an empty aisle in the garden to line them up in little rows of five to wait for Efraim to plant something in them.

My office in the vivero

Seedling bags that I have filled and Efraim has planted a new little life in

            So, I do this every single day.  After about a week, I was filled with questions:  What am I accomplishing here?  What good is this for the Guatemalan people?  The answers?  More complicated than you might expect.

            What I am accomplishing may seem trivial.  I am slowly filling little bags of dirt that will eventually house little plants.  Those plants will move on to bigger bags and eventually, when they are big and strong enough, they will be taken out to be planted at one of the parish projects.  I’m not saving the world or educating the poor masses.  I am playing a small role in making some parts of town more beautiful.  In a town so stricken with poverty, alcoholism, malnutrition, spousal abuse, and homelessness, this feels like a silly job.  However, I have come to realize that what I am really doing is what every other poor Guatemalan lucky enough to have a job does every single day, year after year.  I am putting my hands in the same earth that produces all of their food, firewood, and sacred plants, and I am working with that earth over and over and over again.  It is the same thing that Efraim has been doing everyday for years upon years.  It is the same thing that his partner, 65-year-old Julio, will continue to do until he can barely get out of his bed in the morning.  I don’t have a right to come into their town and do work that I think is more important or valorous than theirs, to attempt to change their lives and save them in some way.  The most that I can ask for is the privilege to be giving this ability to work alongside them, in solidarity with them, and learn from them.

Years upon years of work have produced hundreds of rows of plants just like these.

Even with limited resources, Efraim uses the earth around  him to cultivate his garden.  For example, a sunshade made of sticks and bamboo

Efraim does all of the work in the garden by hand, as exemplified by his handwritten signs.

            I’m learning a lot too.  As I sit on my milk crate and dig, often Efraim will sit down and chat with me, playing with the dirt in his hands as he talks.  He asks me a lot of questions about where I come from, and shares the traditions of his own life.  We talk about everything from the price of a bottle of Coke to holiday customs to social injustices around the world.  Efraim shares his life with me openly, and if conversation gets sad or depressing, he always knows how to lighten the mood.  He has a simple way of stating the things that are so rarely said back home, things that, while powerful, would be seen as simple or silly if said out loud in English.  When I talk about my struggles in learning Spanish, he will respond with “Somos todos humanos, todos comiten errores”.  We are all human, we all make mistakes.  When talking about social injustice, he smiles and says “En el fondo, somos todos hermanos, somos todos hijos del Señor”.  In the end, we are all brothers and sisters; we are all children of God. This is a man I can learn a lot from about living.

The simple things: a small harvest of garden fruits

Just a few of the plants that are so sacred to Efraim

            When everything else seems to get me down, when my back hurts and my fingers are scraped from digging up rocks, I also have one more, absolutely magnificent, gorgeous joy that I can get out of my job.  I can stop for a minute, get up and walk around the garden and be amazed at the beauty of this place.  Often Efraim will see me walking and walk alongside me, teaching me about his flowers and showing his great love for the life that he has cultivated.  I wouldn’t have my experience any other way.  

Pictures can never tell the whole story, but I hope that these help you to experience in a little way what I experience every single day:

Weekend Adventure

This weekend I traveled with four other girls to visit Antigua, a nearby city that is hugely different from San Lucas.  While San Lucas is very traditional and conservative, a very Mayan community where most of the women wear traje, Antigua is very modern and European.  Although very touristy, Antigua is a great place to go if you need a breath of fresh air—and great restaurants, shopping, and nightlife.  I also have a friend from college, Brianna, who lives in Antigua and is currently volunteering with Common Hope. 

            Before we could enjoy the luxury of our vacation, however, we had to endure a mode of public transportation that many Guatemalans use every day: the chicken bus.  Chicken Busses (or camionetas for non-gringos) are old school busses that have been painted over brightly and run routes between various cities in Guatemala.  To get to Antigua, we had to first catch a bus to the city of Escuintla, which is about three hours away by bus.  The bus ride, which only cost about two dollars, was by far the cheapest and most uncomfortable journey that I have ever taken.  When we boarded, there were already two or three people in every seat, so we all had to split up and sit on the edge of seats that already had two passengers in them.  The man in charge of collecting fares stood in the back of the bus and kept urging us back, so that we had to push through people that I had no clue we could fit between, especially with our backpacks.  I was soon to find out that this was not even near the maximum amount of people that would fit on the bus.  By the time we had gone through a few more stops and left town, every seat on the bus had three people sitting in it, and two people stood between each set of seats.  It was so packed that I was essentially sitting on the lap of the old man next to me, and the girls in the aisle next to me were sort of sitting on my shoulder.  With the afternoon came rain, which is when I learned that Guatemalans, like cats, will go to any length to avoid getting wet, even if it meant closing all the windows on a bus packed with more than 100 passengers.  Needless to say, we were ecstatic to switch busses in Escuintla and move into a bus with only two passengers in each seat.

Once we arrived in Antigua, night had already fallen, which combined with a lack of street signs created a struggle in finding our hostel.  After about 10 minutes of trying to orient ourselves and find the center of town, we randomly ran into some friends from San Lucas who work in Antigua.  They graciously walked us to our hostel, which was located right in the center of town.  After quickly freshening up, we walked to a restaurant nearby called Sobremesa that is known for delicious, rich food and exotic ice cream flavors.  The tiny (two table) restaurant was staffed only by the owner and head chef, who chatted with us all night while we idled over a 4-hour dinner.  I enjoyed tomato bisque soup, spinach and mozzarella stuffed steak, new potatoes, vegetables and ice cream for about fifteen dollars.  After dinner we had intended to meet up with Brianna and go dancing, but we were so stuffed full and tired from our journey that we could barely muster up the strength for our 4 block walk back to the hostel.

Tired out at the hostel!

Día De Los Muertos

This Monday was a very special holiday in Guatemala, a day when families gather joyously to remember those who have died.  There has been a lot of preparation all week as vendors sold fresh flowers and paper wreaths to be used to decorate the cemetery.  Around 4 or 5 a.m. on Monday morning, the townspeople gathered at the cemetery to decorate the tombs that their families have been using for many generations.  The tombs varied based on the wealth and status of the families, ranging from the large mausoleums along the main road to simple square cement blocks to simple mounds of dirt on the ground.  Every year the families prepare for the holy day by repainting the cement tombs in different bright colors and then decorating them with flowers, pine needles, and paper wreaths.  

           

            Once the families have gathered at the cemetery, they are prepared to spend the entire day there.  Many families bring enough food to last for the whole day, such as a large pot of ceviche or a basket of tostadas.  For those who do not bring food, a lot of vendors set up just outside the gates or even walk around with large pots of food to sell to the families as they sit all day.  There was a mass held in the center of the cemetery from 1o to noon that many people left the tombs to attend, but other than that, most people enjoyed the company of the people at neighboring tombs all day. 

San Lucas: 2 Weeks In!

Two Weeks and Counting!

            This weekend marked the end of my first two weeks living in San Lucas Tolíman, Guatemala.  It is hard to believe how much has happened in my first two weeks here.  Between arriving during the second most important holiday of the year for the people of San Lucas, and coming when the entire volunteer community was in flux, I have yet to experience more than 3 days in a row of “normal” San Lucas life. 

            When I arrived in San Lucas on Friday, the volunteer house was full, so I lived away from the other volunteers in a hotel.  After Gus, one of the other volunteers, left on Tuesday, I was able to move into the volunteer house.  The volunteer house is a big five-bedroom house referred to lovingly as the “youth hostel” by the volunteers because it constantly houses about five long-term volunteers for the mission.  The house has a shared bathroom, a big living room, and a “kitchen” with a sink (but no stove or refrigerator).  My room is the smallest by far, with only one bed and no closet.  I cut a deal with the other volunteers that if I live in this room for six weeks, I get to move into the only room with a private bathroom after one of the girls moves out.  Right now my roommates are three other girls, Kelly, Lily, and Katie, and one guy named Chris.  Below is a picture of our garden:

            The first week that I spent here was unique because it was feria, a big carnival in celebration of the feast of St. Luke, the patron saint of San Lucas.  The feria consisted of two huge ferris wheels that spun on steel cords about three times as fast as a normal ferris wheel, a ton of street food, carnival games, vendors, and children’s rides.  Because of the feria, there was no work the first week that I was here, and we just enjoyed the feria.  I dove right into the world of street food and luckily did not get sick.  Some of my new favorite street foods include gringas (tacos with meat, salsa and cheese), rellenitos (little balls of fried banana filled with black beans), and fried chicken and fries with hot sauce!  I also braved the ferris wheel a fair number of times.  

This is a picture from the opening day parade.  Each of the secondary schools sent out their marching bands and cheer squads:

There were also clowns on stilts:

Lots of food!

Pageantry seems to be a big part of the celebration:

Sort of terrifying dancers: