Extreme Guatemala

More so than most weeks, this last one was rather insane with its high and low points. Really, that’s been Guatemala for me over the last two years—extreme highs and lows. It’s a maxim that after living in Guatemala for awhile, crazy shit will happen to you, and it has certainly held true for this past week.

I’ll delve into last week later here, but I’ll start with an update of the last month. Most importantly, I finished my second medical mission. We were in the Polochic Valley which is an incredibly poor area. There is one terrible road going out through the valley known for its poor condition and abundance of highway robbers. Throughout the valley there are a handful of towns and villages that have very little access to basic health care and much less, surgery. As such, we had a very good turnout and set another record for number of patients found. The temperature was upwards of 100 degrees during the day and it was a pretty stressful experience, however at the end of the day, we found a ton of patients who will be coming in for surgery. The valley itself is incredibly beautiful. Here's a pic.

After the medical mission, I spent some time in Antigua with a surgical team that was down to operate some of our patients from the rural mission. I then traveled up to Nebaj to work on the December medical mission before coming back to Coban for the beginning of my insane week.

Last Wednesday I was planning to head down to Antigua but got a call that one of our patients from the Polochic had died. It was a total shock, so I decided to drive out into the valley to see what had happened. Her name was Dominga Cuc Botzoc and she had been operated for both a prolapsed uterus and a hernia. What was so crazy was that although she had two major operations, she was one of the fastest patients to recover. She was 77, had 8 children and lived by herself selling tortillas to get by. Coming back from Antigua, she had gone with one of our managers and then got let off to travel the last leg of her trip home. She was apparently fine the first couple days at home, but got an infection that turned for the worse. 8 days after the operation, she passed away.

When I drove out into the Polochic, I kept thinking worst case scenario of how the family was going to be upset and I would end up getting chased out of town by an angry mob. When I came into town, there was a huge group of people around her house and she was laid out on an altar. I went to the wake and spent the day talking with the family about what had happened. Her children did not get along and no one had been able to really take care of her. When her health went bad, she had called our area manager who had tried to get her to the local hospital. However she decided she’d had enough and didn’t go. She said her goodbyes to her children and passed away shortly thereafter.

It was a difficult experience to digest. We helped with the funeral and the family was very supportive of us. However, mostly it was just a very sad situation. The family was upset they hadn’t been around to help out and did not place any blame. For us, it was incredibly frustrating that we couldn’t convince her to get to the hospital. She was a very strong woman and in the end was not interested in letting anyone else control her future. She decided her time had come that the she would decide the hour of her passing.

So, after going through all of that, I decided to take a day off and go hike a volcano. I went down to Antigua and met up with two good friends of mine from Peace Corps. We took off Friday morning and set to climb the Acatenango volcano outside of Antigua. This turned into another extreme Guatemalan experience that held true to the maxim I mentioned before.

For starters, I got food poisoning on Thursday night and by Friday morning I was still throwing up everything I tried to get down. After my terrible week, I was in no mood to sit around in Antigua being sick, so I went anyways. Despite a few yacks in the first leg of the trip, my body started collaborating and realized there were bigger fish to fry—namely my racing heart and need to ingest water as we hauled up the volcano.

Acatenango is a 13,000 foot volcano just outside Antigua right next to the active Fuego Volcano. The hike was brutal. It was straight up for 8 hours and we made it to the crater just as the sun went down. We were the only ones up there and we set up our tent right in the middle of the crater. It was eerily quiet and extremely cold. The only sounds were the occasional gusts of wind and the explosions of the Fuego Volcano. The air was thin and we barely slept.

At dawn, we got up to see the sunrise over Guatemala. Seriously, this was of the most incredible experiences of my life. We could see from Mexico to El Salvador and looked right down onto Fuego Volcano as it smoked. We could see all the other volcanoes of Guatemala and it made the country look tiny. The sun crested right over the crater of the adjacent Agua Volcano—it was euphoric and made the experience completely worth it given what followed on the way down.

After sunrise, we packed up and started down the mountain. We passed some other tourists coming up and kept heading down from the crater. My buddy Bryan was in front of me by about 20 yards and I saw him stopped and talking with some scruffy looking Guatemalans. It didn’t look like a cordial conversation, and when I caught up one of the guys pulled a zip gun out of pocket and told us to have a seat. They went through all our bags and got our phones, camera and money. Thankfully, we convinced them to leave us the memory chip out of Bryan’s camera. They wanted to continue up the mountain to rob the tourists up top and told us we had to come with them so we wouldn’t run down and get the police. We refused and said we’d keep our lips sealed and they let us go. As we hiked down, the robbers came by us again and continued down the mountain. They then robbed some kids from a youth group coming up the mountain and kept going down.

When we caught up with the other group, they told us there were some cops coming up the mountain with a group of Salvadoran tourists. Just as they mentioned that, we started hearing the gunshots. We knew the thieves only had one shot, so we assumed the police did most of the shooting. When it ended we followed down the mountain and met up with the cops. They said they recognized the robbers and just decided to open fire. That’s how it works in Guatemala. The justice system is so ineffectual that the cops prefer to just kill the robbers. However, these cops didn’t shoot so well and just scared the robbers off into the woods. I asked one if he hit anyone and laughing he said, “Oh maybe I hit one, I shot a clip at him so maybe you’ll find some bodies down there.” We thanked them for their efforts and ran down the mountain.

With all that behind me, I’m still glad I went up Acatenango. Living in Guatemala, I can never complain that I get bored.

I’ll be home for Thanksgiving.

This last month or so has been all over the place. After getting back from the States in August, I spent a lot of time getting ready for my first medical mission. We had the mission in Chisec and the surrounding villages—about 2 hours north of Coban. I ended up running back and forth a lot to set up radio programs, talk to local health promotors and NGOs to get the word out about the mission.

The mission itself went really well. It was the first one I was responsible for and we had a new group of doctors down, so it was totally stressful and hectic for me. However, we found a record number for patients for surgery, so the bottom line is that it was a great.

Essentially, the rural missions are one half of our total operation where we just look for the patients who might need surgery. The ones we find, we then give them a date and take them into Antigua for surgery at a later date with a different group of surgeons. The goal with these missions is just to find as many people with surgical issues as possible—hernias, cleft lips and palates, clubbed feet, tumors, prolapsed uteruses and cysts make up the most part.

The planning for the mission starts months in advance so we can promote them as much as possible. During the mission, we worked at a different site over four days. The hope is that a bunch of people are there waiting for us each morning. We start with a presentation to explain what exactly we’re doing and then start passing the patients in to see the doctors. Out of a group of 200, maybe 20-40 will be surgical candidates.

By the end of the week, I was totally exhausted. We found over a 100 patients. Despite Hurricane Felix, flooded roads and all of our Peace Corps translators having to leave mid week because of the storm, we made it through just fine. I’ll definitely change some things for the coming mission in October, but it was a good start.

This is the start of one of the missions giving a talk to all the people waiting outside. We mostly just explain that we're doing and then try to get people in line, it's like herding cats. We also do an introduction of the team. I would always give the first few minutes in Q'eqchi' just to see everyone act all surprised that the gringo speaks Q'eqchi --it's a good ice breaker

On our last day, it had rained a ton and our van couldn't make it out on the roads. We found this guy on the corner with a truck and ended riding out about 2 hours to the mission site in the back. At first I could tell the docs were a bit hesitant, but the road was really beautiful and it was pretty sweet.


On that same road are some amazing lagoons. We stopped by one on the way back that afternoon.

Kids crowding in the doors to see what the crazy gringos are doing (we were eating lunch)

I'm back home from Gautemala at the moment and have been for about a week. Before the trip, work had been totally overwhelming, so I really hadn’t had any time to think about coming back or to make any plans. Needless to say, it’s been relaxing and great. I went to a friend’s wedding in Ohio for a few days and have spent some quality time down at our farm cabin.

I had a similar set of realizations when I came home for Christmas from Guatemala. First off, it’s just a huge shock to me how well everything works in the States. It’s all so easy. My first day back, I set out do run some errands and budgeted myself 2 hours based on my Guatemala expectations. I finished it all in 30.

When I went to Ohio, I spent most of the time with a buddy in the suburbs. To some extent, I felt like a foreign anthropologist coming into a new culture. In Guatemala, I got so used to the noise, crammed living and basically being on top of everyone else. In the States, we have our own space that’s clean and quiet. To some extent it’s like everything is compartmentalized. It works well, but has such a different feeling to it. In comparison, the U.S. makes Guatemala look like a total mess.

When I first came to Guatemala, there was a woman in Coban who opened up a hostel and was far more business savvy than normal. She was affectionate and always made a good impression on my friends who stayed with her. After the hostel was running, she decided she wanted something new. She sold the hostel and moved to Chicago with one of her kids to start importing Guatemalan antiques. Anyways, I thought she was gone for good until I saw her back in Coban 6 months later. Surprised, I asked her what she was doing back. She said that honestly she couldn’t handle her new life in the States. From her perspective, she couldn’t get over how everyone stayed inside and only left in their cars to go shopping. It was too quiet and sterile she said. She missed Guatemala for its constant problems, the bad smells and the general struggle that it is to work in Guatemala.

Coming back to the States, I keep finding myself returning to Doña Magda’s anecdote. It’s a simple contrast between the two worlds where I find myself. Her experience can certainly help me appreciate mayhem that is Guatemala. However, I still love the States and I’m fully planning on coming back after my time with Partner for Surgery.

Besides my culture shock, I had a pretty amazing experience the week before I came home. First, a buddy of mine who was a Peace Corps volunteer in my site before me married a girl from Chirrepec. The wedding was huge and fully Q’eqchi’. Dan’s family came from Georgia as did some former volunteers. It was really cool to see the two worlds under one roof.

Secondly, I spent my week prior to coming home in Antigua for a big plastic surgery medical mission. A group of surgeons we have worked with for years comes down every July and operates almost all of our cleft lip and palate patients. We had been planning for the mission for months. We started by calling in all our patients into Coban before getting a bus for Antigua. Some people had to make trips of up to 15 hours. Imagine walking three or more hours from your village, another two in a bus just to get to Coban. From there it was another 5 hours to the hospital.

We got 43 patients into the hospital 35 of them received operations. Almost all of them were children. A few were sick and couldn’t take anesthesia. Some babies were underweight and will have to stay in the hospital’s nutrition clinic to get them up to weight before they can be operated. Something we come across with cleft palate babies is that they can’t nurse. The deformity makes it so they can’t swallow and they lose weight. If these babies don’t get help, there’s a good change they won’t make it. A week before the mission, I was out in a village and came across an underweight cleft palate child that had lost weight since birth. He looked awful and his parents were afraid to make the trip into the hospital. However, I think they realize how serious it is for the baby and they are going to bring him in this week.

Coming back to the mission, seeing the patients that did get surgery was amazing. Cleft lips are so easy to fix, however the total lack of medical care in Guatemala makes it impossible for lots of people. By the end of the week, most people were looking much better. Here is a picture of one of my favorite patients, Magdelena. She lives in a one room thatch house far into the mountains outside Coban. She was completely embarrased about being in public when we brought her in. Her dad said she barely left the house and didn't go to school. This picture is of her in the Coban plaza right before we left for the hospital in Antigua. I saw her the day before I came home and she's now looking great.

These last couple months where I haven’t posted anything have been far and above the busiest ones I’ve had in Guatemala. This past Friday, I signed out of Peace Corps and am no longer a volunteer. Monday, I started my new job. Before all of this, it had all been a big transition trying to finish my site projects while getting ready for Partner for Surgery. Furthermore, most of the Coban community that I’ve gotten used to over the past year has gone home over the past couple months-Josefin, Keenton, both Daves and Marsha. In between all of that, I had a great visit from home when my brother Andy, and two friends Nick and Courtney came down to visit in early June. I also moved into a new apartment.


For starters, transitions suck. Although I’m just starting the new job, it feels good to be doing one thing. On top of that, all the goodbyes are over. Being in Coban over such an extended period of time lends itself to seeing a lot of people come and go. After awhile, you just have to start establishing limits. i.e. if someone is only working here for a couple months, they are really not worth the investment of getting to know. Anyways, all the major goodbyes are over and I’m definitely turning another page down here.

With respect to work, the last two months on the cooperative were all over the place. I traveled pretty much every weekend for job training and tried to get everything finished at the cooperative during the week. Busy as it was, I felt good with where I was by the time I left. My schools are handling the gardening projects on their own and the cooperative is doing a great job with the tourism project.

However, the biggest part about leaving is saying the goodbyes. The almost two years working at the cooperative went by surprisingly quick. With that, convincing people we won’t be seeing each other anymore was difficult. You just get used to being there, and one day, it’s up and over. With that, I spent my final couple weeks visiting families, eating with them and talking over the past couple years. On top of that, the cooperative threw us a couple going away parties; one from the administration and another from the tourism students.

Guatemalan going-away parties are almost standardized. I remember how it went for the past volunteers and it was almost the same. Everyone gets up one by one, talks about how much they appreciate what we’ve done, apologizes for anything they might have done wrong and then starts crying. Marsha and I had a week of this and it was very intense. As taxing as my last week was, it certainly made me feel appreciated. Working there, I got used to being around everyone and sort of lost sight of the big picture on my relationship with everyone. They got used to us as much as we did being there, so when it hits that we’re leaving, it hits everyone hard and sort of clarifies how we were seen over the past couple years. I’m glad I’ll be able to see these people over the next year.

This week, I started the new job and it’s exciting. I’m a lot busier and have a lot more responsibility, but it’s all good. I always sort of dreaded having to drive in Gautemala and Monday, I took the wheel for the first time and had to go into the capital. Just call it a baptism by fire. I picked it up surprisingly fast and am comfortable with it all. Over the next couple weeks, I’ll be traveling around Alta and Baja Verapaz trying to get our sites ready for the fall medical missions. Also, we have a major surgical mission this starting a week from now where 40 of our cleft lip and palate patients will be operated in Antigua. It’ll be the first one I see, so I’m really looking forward to it. On the 28th, I’m headed back to KC for a break.


Here´s a pic of my hot new wheels.



And this is the view from my new apartment (it´s actually in the middle of the city, but on the third floor, so I get this sweet view despite the concrete jungle I live in)

Partner for Surgery

Coming this July, I’ll be leaving Peace Corps and beginning a new job with Partner for Surgery. This is something I’ve been thinking over for a long time and I recently made up my mind and signed a one year contract. I never imagined that I would leave Chirrepec early, but the job is really exciting and I couldn’t live with myself passing it up and not having a plan come November (my original date to finish). Anyways, I thought I’d explain what I’ll be doing for the coming year.

Partner for Surgery was founded 6 years ago by a former Peace Corps volunteer and his father, Frank Peterson. Concerned with the utter lack of surgical care for rural Guatemalans, they began looking for ways to bridge this gap. The short version is that Partner for Surgery looks to connect Guatemala’s neediest surgical patients with visiting surgical teams from abroad. This began with a strong partnership with a major Franciscan charity hospital in Antigua. Over the years, the organization has formed around the ability to send patients to this clinic.

However, the big picture for Partner for Surgery is their connection with the rural areas and their patients. Whereas many surgical teams to Guatemala will operate on whatever patients show up to the area, Partner for Surgery looks to find the patients who have no other chance to receive an operation. This type of person is likely to not even have the means to seek out a free surgery. Predominantly, this will be someone who is from a very rural area that is Mayan and does not speak Spanish.

To make this happen, Partner for Surgery has a rural network of 15 local area managers who live in patient areas. These are Guatemalans who are well-known and respected in their communities. They are responsible for helping to set up triage missions, promote the organization and see to all the patients needs when coming in for a surgery. As it works now, a patient is identified by a visiting doctor in their communities and then booked for a surgery. As the date approaches, the local area managers then go talk to the patients to get them ready for the trip to Antigua. For many people, this might be their first trip out of their area. It is definitely not an easy job for the managers as the patients could be hours away in the mountains. Furthermore, some people are reluctant to leave since they have absolutely no money and a lot of fear built up towards the outside world. That said, the conditions people have push them beyond their reservations and most end up making the trip.

Most surgeries are taken care of in Antigua where visiting surgical teams are booked almost every week in the hospital. The majority of surgeries are things like hernias, cleft lips and palates, prolapsed uteruses, burns, tumors and cysts. Depending on the intensity of surgery, the patients then stay in a recovery dorm until they’re ready to travel. During all of this, the manager is with them to translate and take care of them. The hope is that they’ll go back to their communities and be able to get back into a normal life. Also, we hope they testify to the benefits of surgery so more people are willing to come forth.

So, where do I fit into all of this? Essentially, I’ll be in charge of everything going on outside of the hospital. Mainly, organizing missions to identify patients in rural areas as well as making sure they show up to their dates. The last thing we want is to be given spaces and then not be able to fill them. About 7 times a year, a team of doctors will come down for a week to identify patients. My responsibility is to make sure the managers do a good job promoting the mission as well as to select the areas and get the doctors out there (I’ll have a van). Each one of these will take at least a couple weeks to set up.

Besides the missions, I’ll be working with some side projects and looking to set up additional clinics for our patients. For example, the Rotary Club recently approved a project for 5 motorcycles so that our managers can get out to the rural communities and reconfirm patients. It’ll be my job to set the rules for the motorcycles as well as to train them on safety, maintenance etc. Funny thing is I haven’t even learned to ride yet. However, I’m not really planning to. Basically, I just need to scare everyone enough so they don’t joy-ride the bike off a cliff.

At the moment, Partner for Surgery is looking to have more patients than the Antigua hospital can handle. As such, they’re looking to help set up a small surgical clinic that can focus on PfS patients. There are plenty of surgical teams who have seen PfS patients before and would like to work with them. However, the lack of clinics is the current dilemma, so hopefully over the next year we’ll be able to equip one and start getting more people in.

So, that’s how the coming year is shaping up. However, I’ve got plenty on my plate before then. Trying to finish up my Peace Corps projects while getting ready for the new job has me busy as ever. My brother Andy as well as two friends Nick and Courtney will be down in two weeks, so I’m really pumped for that. The past month has been non-stop, I’ll enjoy the break.

Since Tacaná, time has crept by with me not having done anything quite as sweet as climbing that volcano. However, I’ve been traveling a lot, so that’s kept things interesting. I just got back to Coban last night after a meeting in Antigua and signing my contract for the new job. Prior to that, I went to Lake Atitlan during Holy Week and climbed a much smaller (and hotter) volcano in eastern Guatemala.

Holy Week in Guatemala is a big affair. Schools close for the whole week and most people take the time to travel. I hadn’t really made any plans, but suddenly realized that everyone I knew in Coban was leaving, so I decided I’d better go somewhere. Luckily, my buddy Chris from Miami has been working on community projects with a parish right on Lake Atitlan.

Wednesday morning, I hopped the bus for Guate and it immediately got in a wreck with a pickup. No one died or anything, but it slowed us down and set the tone for the day. Later, it was a total mess trying to catch a bus from Guate to Lake Atitlan. What I didn’t realize is that practically half of Guatemala travels on the Wednesday of Semana Santa, so the terminals were jam-packed. Most busses passed by full with doors closed. Whenever one even remotely slowed down, hoards of people mobbed by me to get on before I could think to move. This went on for an hour or so. Meanwhile, I was becoming more desperate and contemplating just going back to Antigua as the bus situation was not getting better as night approached. However, an Atitlan bus rolled by shortly thereafter. Normally, I’m very polite in crowded public settings and make a concerted effort not to be the imperial gringo, but I’d had it. When I saw that bus, I stepped out in traffic to make it stop and let no one get in front of me. What resulted was me blowing through a crowd of people, lots of chatter and “¡Ay Dios!” I didn’t care and most importantly, I got on the bus. Despite standing for the next 5 hours in the aisle of a chicken bus, I made it to the lake and it was all worth it.

Lake Atitlan is in the Mayan Highlands at the base of three volcanoes. It has 15 or so small villages on the surrounding shores. Panajachel and San Pedro are the two touristy towns first popularized back in the 60’s by hippie ex-pats getting out of the States. The other towns are traditional, indigenous and materially very poor. Chris works in a couple towns like these at the base of the Toliman volcano. He works with an NGO started by an American priest who was been there since the 60’s and through the war. I spent the first day checking out his sites and some water projects they have going. From there, it was mostly hanging-loose on the lake. The water is deep blue, clear and chilly.

Besides the lake, Chris’s village was in full celebration of Holy Week. This began with nightly processions to parade Jesus and the Virgin Mary through town. On Good Friday, the town gets out to make alfombras which are carpets made of dyed sawdust, flowers and pine needles. Later on, the processions march over the carpets in celebration. The most unique tradition is the presence of Maximon.

He’s a sort of fallen-saint figure revered by the Mayan communities around the lake. Every community creates his figure out of wood in varying completeness ranging from a stump with a hat (Santiago Atitlan) to a whole body. During the year, people ask him favors that they wouldn’t usually pray for. This could be a small monetary gain or something bigger like asking to have your neighbor whacked. He’s admired for his fallibility as this makes him the deity most similar humans in behavior. Anyways, he’s paraded around all during holy week outside the main church. Finally, on Good Friday, Maximon appears hung dead from the front of the church as he incarnates Judas and his betrayal of Christ. The whole spectacle is a really cool example of the synchronism of Mayan and Catholic beliefs.

So besides the Holy Week trip, I also hiked the Ipala Volcano a few weeks ago. It’s in Eastern Guatemala which is far less populated, not Mayan and very hot. The volcano is much older than those in the west meaning it’s much shorter. It wouldn’t be so sweet were it not for the crater lake at the top of the volcano. The hike only took a couple hours. We left really early to beat the heat, but it caught us, so the lake was an awesome reward. What’s more is that inside the crater, the lake and altitude create a tiny cloud forest in the midst of a complete desert. Very cool.

To finish up, things are good for now. Finishing up Peace Corps and getting ready for the new job can be hectic, but that’s fine. I’ll mostly be working with my schools. Chris is coming up next weekend and we’re planning to hike into a cloud forest outside Coban known to have the highest concentration of Quetzals in Guatemala.

Lastly, here's a pic of one of my schools I visited last week. I did a garden with them last year and when I showed up recently, they'd already gotten started on another one.

Since my last post, things have been normal with work. I’m still waiting out the dry season to start my school gardens, but I’ve been plenty busy with our tourism project, worm-composting and family gardens. As for BIG news, it looks like I’m gonna take a job here in Cobán with Partner for Surgery. I will finish Peace Corps in early July, come home for a break at the end of the month before coming back to start in August.

Partner for Surgery is an NGO focused on bringing surgical relief to the most remote regions of Guatemala. About 8 weeks out of the year, doctors from the States and Canada come down to visit rural communities and to identify patients. From there, there is a team of about 15 Guatemalan gerentes from each region in charge of seeing the patients to Antigua for surgery. The charity hospital Hermano Pedro provides the surgeries at little to no cost in Antigua. Almost every week, a foreign team of surgeons comes into Antigua to operate on the patients identified in the rural medical missions. The most common operations are hernias, cleft lips, tumors and burn revisions.

www.partnerforsurgery.org

My technical title will be “Director of Rural Structures,” meaning I’ll be more or less accountable for everything going on outside of Antigua. It’s a lot of responsibility and will be a big change in pace from my Peace Corps assignment. I’ll have a car and be traveling much more often; however, I’ll still be based in Coban. All in all, I couldn’t be more excited with the job. It’s a good spot to be in.

Besides this job news, I had a pretty amazing trip last week out to the western side of the country. I was headed out for meeting and decided to take off an extra day and to hike a volcano with some other PCVs. Getting to the meeting took me a good 8 hours on a chicken bus. From there, it was another 5 to the base of the Volcán Tacaná in the department of San Marcos.

The Western Highlands are a world apart from Cobán. It’s a dry scene of grasslands spotted with peaks and outstanding volcanoes. Furthermore, it’s really cold as the elevation can get up to around 12, 000 feet. After our meeting, we headed out to the tiny town of Sibinal at the base of the volcano. We stocked up on water (all of which had to be hauled up) and got a good rest before taking off the next morning.

I could go on forever describing how sweet this hike was, but I’ll let the pictures do that. Basically, it was a tough 5 hour haul to the top where we camped in the crater (it’s a dormant volcano). The next morning, we got around 4AM to hike to the tip of the volcano and see the sunrise. From there, it was about a 2 hour hike down and then a lovely 13-hour chicken bus ride back to Coban. This hike was awesome. It’s one of those experiences that make me have to pinch myself to believe it was all real. Guatemala is sweet.

Blogging is so much easier when someone else does it for me.

Here´s a post on my buddy´s site about Chirrepec, my Peace Corps site.

http://gringologue.wordpress.com/2007/03/14/te-chirrepeco/

These past couple months, things have been a bit slower with work as I have to wait for the rainy season before I can really get working with agriculture again. However, that’s not to say I haven’t been keeping busy. I’ve had some visitors, I made a trip to Belize and this week I’m working in a medical mission doing some translating (and also trying to figure out if I want to work for the NGO that runs the missions). Also, my buddy Dave and I have started to work with a little-league baseball team on the weekends for fun.

By far the highlight this past month was the trip to Belize. Mom and Dad came down a week earlier to travel around the northern part, and I met them on the second leg in southern Belize. I flew to Belize from Tikal in a tiny 3-person plane and it was sweet. We flew over jungle the entire time and spotted some Mayan ruins. Once in Belize, we spent almost the entire trip on a tiny atoll right on the reef. The scenery was stunning. I managed to get in a couple dives and went fishing for an afternoon with lots of hammock time in between.

We also met up with a friend on our last night in Dangriga which is Garifuna town on the mainland. She had worked there as a JVI volunteer and gave us the grand tour. Overall, I only spent 4 days in Belize, but it was wonderful. It was great to get some time with Mom and Dad to catch up.

With work, I’m just now getting back into my schools. We have to wait till April before we can get the garden going. So for now, I’m just doing some random talks on hygiene and getting the compost piles going. I usually arrange my visits to coincide with Phys. Ed on Fridays so I can play soccer afterwards. This past week, one of my schools waited for me to get back from Belize so I could celebrate Valentine’s Day with them (which fell on Wednesday). In Guatemala, this consists of bringing flour, confetti and confetti-filled egg shells to schools so you can plaster all your friends. I got covered in crap, but definitely dealt more mess than I took. Being 3 feet taller than everyone can come in handy.

Another part of the day is a secret-Santa type gift exchange between all the kids. Basically, everyone brings a gift and the teacher draws names for who exchanges gifts with each other. From there, the kids have to get up, say some cheesy stuff about friendship, exchange gifts and then hug their partner. For same-sex interactions, it went over easy. However, imagine 4-6th grade boys and girls having to hug each other in front of the whole class. Awkward and totally hilarious. Here’s what it looks like:


Beyond all this, things are going well. Marsha (my sitemate) and I are working together on a tourism project for the cooperative. We did I practice run today and it went well, so we´re hoping tourists can start arriving soon. Within a couple weeks I should know whether or not I will stay for another year. Tomorrow, I going to translate with the NGO on one of their medical missions to feel things out. I’m definitely on the fence, but would like to just make my decision so I can plan out the rest of the year accordingly. Will advise.

Here’s some recent photos:

This is Marsha getting swarmed on Valentine´s Day at one of the co-op schools.

Batting practice with the Coban little-league team.

These are the ruins of Yax-Ha that I flew over on the way back from Belize. This is where "Survivor Guatemala" was filmed.

Here´s a snapper I caught on the Belize trip. We ate him for lunch.

Here´s a view from right outside the cabin. The reef was right off the beach.

This is a waterfall outside Coban we hiked out to when I had some friends visiting.

Here are a few recent photos from work:

This is a guisquilero that I made with Humberto, my counterpart. We planted 5 guisquiles (potato-like squash) back in December and just this week made the support. The goal is for the vines to grow up into the strings so that the squash will hang down and be easier to harvest. Also, having the vines planted in one spot (usually they´re just planted wherever) makes it so you only have to fertilize one area. I´m hoping we can get at least 400 squash out of the vines.

This is a coop family (and their chickens) that Marsha and I both work with.

And here´s a family garden we planted back in November.

The last time posting something here feels like a really long time ago. Between now and then, I’ve been back to KC for Christmas, up to Chicago for New Years and have now been in Coban for two weeks.

Going home, there was definitely the expectation of culture shock. However, after the first night back, it felt like I was just back in the stride of things at home. I spent that first week just catching up with the family and being extremely lazy. Around Christmas, friends started to come back into town and things got busy. My trip to Chicago was wonderful as I got to check out Liesl and John’s new digs as well as see a ton of college friends.

The time at home made me realize how many things there are that I really miss. Clearly, the best part about home was to see people (and Scout). However, I had forgotten how little things like dry air, hot water and a good place to wash my clothes can make life so much easier. These aren’t exactly necessities, but just little things that a year in Guatemala will put into perspective.

Being home, I sometimes felt like I hadn’t left. On seeing people for the first time, the interactions usually went like this:

“Wow, you’re back. Everything going good down there?”
“Yeah, it’s been a great year.”
“Cool. Let’s get a drink.”

From there, any talk of Guatemala was over, and that was fine for then. I guess what surprising is how much I’ve realized Guatemala and home are two completely separate environments for me. Guatemala is a different world with a whole different set of rules than home. Accurately explaining Guatemala at home is just as difficult as it is to explain the States to people here. Somehow I’ve got it figured out how to live comfortably in both.

Getting back into things back here took me awhile. The month prior to going home, I had been thinking in little other than the trip itself. As such, I hadn’t planned much out for myself and had to kind of scramble to get thing back in order. Furthermore, I’m thinking seriously about taking a job here with an NGO that would cut my time short with Peace Corps but extend my overall time in Guatemala. It’s all up in the air and a lot to think about. The job would be amazing, but I really miss seeing people. With that, it’s tough to plan out the year not knowing if I’ll be in my current spot all the way to November, or just till June. I think I should be able to figure that out within a few weeks.

All that said, things have been pretty good this week. School started on Monday and it was great to see all the kids. Michelle, the volunteer before me at Chirrepec came back for a visit this week and we’ve been seeing a lot of coop families, so it’s been interested to see how things have changed. Come February, I´m off to Belize for a few days to see Mom and Dad. Can´t wait.