Coming into my service here in Cobán, I was definitely expecting there to be a lot of down time. However, up until now that has really been a non-issue. These last few weeks have been especially busy and all over the radar. For one, Brandon, my old roommate came down to visit and travel. I also had my ¨Reconnect¨meeting in Antigua with the rest of my training class to sort of regroup and talk about where we´re at. At the moment, I´m back in sight after a fairly grueling week.

Getting out to travel a bit was an exhaustive but good experience. We took a few days to go visit the Eastern side of Guatemala. We started out by going to Río Dulce, a small river town about 20 miles in from the Caribbean. From there, we took a boat out to the mouth of the river to Livingston, a Caribbean Garifuna village that looks more like Belize than Guatemala. The river tour was by far the highlight. The area is thick with jungle and Africa hot, however there is hardly any development or residents for that matter. Unlike most other places I´ve seen, it was a pretty untouched piece of Guatemalan nature. Contrastingly, Livingston was dirty and fairly rough around the edges, yet it was interesting to see this completely different culture. From Belize on down the coasts of Guate, Honduras and Nicaragua, there are small populations of Garifunas. They are of African descent, speak their own language and hold onto their own traditions far different from those of indigenous Guatemala. Livingston is the center of Garifuna culture in Guatemala. Beyond the village scene, we were able to walk up the coast a few miles where we found a cool beach. Livingstone was interesting and all, but after a full day of bus travel, the hammocks on the beach were a welcome sight.

After Livingston, we took what was quite possibly the worst bus trip ever. Going from the Eastern seaboard to Antigua requires that one passes through the arid and desert-climate departments of Guatemala. Our bus was a jalopy and only had flat backed, narrow vinyl seats. What´s worse is that we were both having pretty serious bouts with stomach bugs. So, that sucked, basically. Luckily, with Antigua as our destination, we got to enjoy the mountain climate for the rest of the week. We climbed Volcán Pacaya the next day before Brandon left for Atitlán and I went to my reconnect meetings. It was great to just have a relaxed week in Antigua with all my friends that I hadn´t seen for months. The whole experience felt like training again; pointless meetings and no responsibility-a definite break from my hellion 3rd graders. I also got to spend a day catching up with my old host family from training. Leaving was something of a downer as I really enjoyed my time in that part of Guatemala.

Coming back to site this week has been a bittersweet experience. Workwise, I got a lot done planting with my women´s group every day. However, on Monday I got news that one of the coop kids, Bryan, who is the 8-year old son of the president had died while I was in my reconnect meetings. I haven´t been here that long, but I knew him briefly. He was adorable and was close with all the past volunteers. When I got back to site, they had already had the funeral, so it came as a big surprise frustration as I couln´t be here to deal with it. They don´t really know what it was. All I got was that he died from an "internal pain." He got sick one day and died the next. This is what is so depressing about the whole matter. While he came from a family that had done relatively well for themselves, they still had no access to even nominally adequate medical care. It´s just plainly frustrating and sad to see someone die who had been climbing out of the poverty that afflicts almost everyone else.

It has been interesting to watch how people here come to terms with death. Superficially, people just returned to work and seemed to go about their way. I know mothers who have given birth to 20 children and lost 8 of them. With those types of experiences and everything that happened with the war, it is easy to imagine that people just deal and move on. From my point of view, I just can´t imagine it possible to be attached to so many children with death lurking all over the place. However, while I was planting with a mother from my women´s group, we started talking about it. She said losing a child was "un dolor que nunca se quita, que se queda toda la vida" or "a pain the never takes itself away, one that sticks with you all your life." People are careful where to express themselves, and it mostly comes off as if they are really simple and subdued. Though given this experience, I can only imagine how much there is behind it all.

Since my last entry, work has been busy, but good. I am teaching in schools usually two days a week and then working with families on the cooperative the rest of the time. Most of my coop work has been with a women´s group where we work in different member`s garden each week. Other than that, I´m still working on putting a stove project together, but that`s going to be a fairly slow process before things really get moving.

The only really big news as of late has been the change of administration at the cooperative. Every two years, the coop members elect a new president and directive who are essentially in charge of all decision making concerning the tea and all development issues. This includes our projects as well. For me, this change is great as the last president tended to dominate all projects and intimidate the other people in the office. He gave the last volunteers a lot of problems. However, the new president is much younger, university educated and an all-around easier person to work with. We are still just getting started with him, but already, I can see how things are far more relaxed around the office.

For the change of administration, the coop threw a big all day assembly followed by an enormous feast. We killed over 200 chickens and something like 60 turkeys. For the meal, you just get a big chunk of bird with a mountain of this traditional corn meal sauce on it. All 600 people just sort of grabed a plate and went to town.

Beyond work, I´ve spent that past few weekends here in Coban. A friend of mine just opened up a language school, so handful of other foreigners moved to Coban. We´ve got our own ex-pat circle going. My buddy Brandon just took off from the States by bus last week and should be here in Coban by the 18th. It´s my first visitor, so I´m pretty pumped. I´ll put up another post after then.

The last month has easily been the busiest thus far. Mostly, it´s been good, but I´m also feeling pretty overwhelmed by all the work people are asking of me. Primarily, it was my own doing by saying yes to too many ideas. I started is the Coban school this week. The kids are wonderful, but they want me to work two four hour shifts with them. I agreed to work one day a week and they turned that one day into an eight our straight shift of teaching. Kids are great and all, but trying to control 35 at one time really sucks. Moreover, planning for that takes a lot of time and it´s taking away from my primary project on the cooperative. Given that, I think I´m gonna try and make my exit from that school this week. They´ll probably feel pretty let down, but damn, I gotta protect my sanity. If that all goes as planned, I´ll be working in one school on the cooperative and I´ll be able to focus more time on my other projects.

As for other ideas, we are tying to put together a stove project. Like most people in Guatemala, the families all cook over open flames inside the house. On any given day, you can see smoke pouring out from under the roofs. This style is traditional, however it´s terrible for people´s health. In fact, some studies consider it to be the leading cause of premature death. I met an NGO director that runs a stove project who got me on the idea of bringing it to the cooperative. Essentially, the stove runs off 70% less wood, it eliminates smoke from the house and drastically reduces the chance for burns. The doctor who designed the stove got his ideas from seeing repeated burn victims and hernia patients. This was all related to the way people cooked over open fires that required large amounts of wood to be carried in. Check out the site for more details:

http://www.onilstove.com/

Anyways, someone from the NGO came out to the coop last week and gave a presentation about the stove. The people were delighted and are really interested in the project. We think we can get some funding from the Rotary Club so that everyone can afford it. This should be a project that runs over the next two years. The funding will take awhile as will the delivery of the stoves. More importantly however will be the training an upkeep of the stoves to make sure everyone knows how to use them correctly.

This whole stove idea came from a chance encounter I had with the director of the Helps International NGO at one of their medical missions around Coban. The NGO runs the stove project, but their main focus is bringing in doctors to rural communities. So the whole stove idea began with the experience of taking a coop kid to the medical mission run by Helps. He had a really severe burn on his hand from a house fire a few years back. The scarring basically melted the back of his hand to his forearm. I had talked to the dad about taking him in to see a doctor and then we heard about the mission on the radio.

We showed up with Anibal to the hospital only to see about 2,000 other Guatemalans waiting. I remember sitting outside the gates thinking that there was no way we could get in. Luckily though, I met one of the American nurses who got us an appointment. With the mission was a plastic surgeon who was able set up an appointment for the next day. We came back the following morning and the doctors removed the scar off his hand and placed in a skin graft.

This experience was by far the most intense so far. I had to translate and explain the procedure to the dad who had never even heard of anesthesia. I just remember trying to get this howling kid into a surgery smock while explaining the details of a skin graft to the father. They were both terrified and I felt way in over my head. Thankfully everything has turned out pretty well. The skin graft took hold and he should be able to start using his hand again.

The only other hijink was that the doctors left me in charge of changing the bandages. We cut off the cast about two weeks ago and I about barfed when I saw what a skin graft looks like. It´s disgusting if you couldn´t guess. I had no idea what to expect and I couldn´t tell if things were going all right, so I asked a Guatemalan nurse to take a look at it. He responded by telling me it was infected. Of course I freaked. As reliable medical care is nonexistent here, I had horrible ideas about what could happen to the kid if he didn´t get in to see someone. I called around and eventually ended up taking the kid to see another group of American doctors in the area. The checked it out and said it looked just fine. God I hate the Guatemalan medical system. I changed the bandages again yesterday and it still looks gross, but I was assured by the doctors that it´s supposed to be like that. Anibal can move his fingers for the first time and he says he doesn´t feel any pain. It is a huge relief to see that it is working out.

All in all, the last month has been crazy. Mixed in between all thes events were two awful spells of diarrhea, but I really don´t need to get into that. Hopefully I´ll get this school business worked out and things will calm down for awhile.

I´ve been in site for awhile now. Really though, that first month was something of a jumble. Between running back and forth for the holidays and moving apartments, I never really felt settled down. However, during the past couple of weeks I have been able to get a grip (I think) on what life should be like here for awhile. Mostly, I should be pretty busy between planting with families, working in the two schools and training sessions with both a women´s and youth group (also, more language classes). It feels like a lot.

Moreover, there is a heavy cloud ouncertaintyly weighing over these activities. It was pretty unrealistic to think my three months of training would be enough to start weighing in on everyone´s ag techniques. As such, I´ve been taking a rather humble approach as to making recommendations. When I go out to plant, it´s under the impression that I know more than everyone else. Not true. I´m trying to take in as much as possible before I even try to rock the boat. So for now, most activities are something of an experiment and a lesson. It will be awhile before I really know what work will be the most effective. Till then, I just gotta run with what people are willing to do.

Oh. I also went to Semuc Champey a couple weeks ago. It was awesome.

A Merry Christmas to all!

All right, to be honest, it is really hard to tell that Christmas is happening. It must be the temperature, but I really can´t imagine the event without the cold. However, I am enjoying myself here in Antigua and I´ll be with my old host family for the holiday. I think once I start talking to some folks back home, I´ll realize that Christmas is really going on.

As for work, life unexpectedly busy. We always heard how quiet it would be around the holidays, but my organization apparently slows it down by taking a half day off for Christmas. Also, I have finally decided to leave behind the roosters, roaches and general dismay of Chamelco and to get myself a shmancy apartment in Coban. I had convinced myself that I could hold out with the Chamelco room for the three months that we are supposed to live with families. However, the introduction of a caged rooster outside my door sealed the deal. That´s right, the damn chickens win. This must be karma. My history of fowl-related murderous activities are coming back to peck me in the ass. As such, the Dan vs. Chicken saga continues....(I´ll be back, just a minor defeat for the moment).

Gaining an exception to any rule here seems to require something like a perfect alignment of the planets, yet I somehow got one (Santa is real!). I had to stretch my Spanish to the limits to get my own apartment, but in the end I convinced my boss go along with it. So that is a relief. It will be great to be settled-in once and for all in my own spot. That leaves me next week to go through moving again. As for January, I have freak-out scheduled for the week prior to the start of classes. In mid-January, I begin teaching organic agriculture and science to hoards of 4th and 6th graders. Oh shit it right--I gotta figure out how to manage all that, any ideas?

So that´s the rap on Christmas and Coban. I´m busy and things have been somewhat unsettling lately. However, I´m beginning to see where things are headed and I like what I see. Talk to you all soon.

Two weeks at site and it´s been good. I´m not doing a whole lot at the moment it terms of work. Mostly, I´ve been hanging around the office to get to know everyone. However, I did spend one day planting an another working with the tea processing machines. Come next week, I will begin on some family garden projects.

At the moment, I´m renting an apartment in Chamelco, a small town about 15 minutes from Coban by bus and about 15 minutes on foot from the cooperative. My rational for living in Chamelco was that it was a nice small and quiet place where I could walk to work. However, the first two weeks have changed that image somewhat. For one, my room is right next to the Cathedral. Unlike most churches I´ve known, mass is celebrated here daily at 5AM with marimba music, bass and bells. Moreover, my backdoor is visited every morning by a particularly vocal rooster. I´ve gotten used to it by now, but the first few nights I spent awake in bed scheming about how I was going to kill the rooster. Had I not gotten used to him, I think a machete would have been involved in the solution.

Also, I started Q´echki classes this week in Coban. It´s pretty crazy to be starting from zero on a language. However, most of the old volunteers managed to get a handle on it. The instructor is great and I´m pretty excited to start speaking the language on the cooperative. It´s a great confidence builder. I should be fairly busy with language for the next couple months. Come mid-January, classes start and I´ll be busy with the schools.

Damn, training is over. Things are finally starting to sink in for me now as I`m starting my service. This last week was busy as hell and now all of a sudden, I´m in Coban, I start work on Monday and I still don´t have a house. It´s exciting and all, but it´s rather shocking to become comfortable after three months and to then start it all over again. Anyways, last week saw a host of events. Continuing with the chicken saga, last Saturday we slaughtered all 30 of our birds to cook for our family appreciation day party. We went out in Antigua that night and then swore in at the ambassador´s house on Monday morning before celebrating another night out. Needless to say, I haven´t been sleeping much. Wednesday, I spent a final day with my host family. When I told them that I was considering staying in Guatemala for my last night, the kids all starting crying, so I ended up staying there on Thursday evening. Thanksgiving itself was fun, but certainly not the same as KC. The vice-ambassador had us over to his house and treated us with a really good dinner. Yesterday morning we said our final goodbyes and took off for our sites. So now, I´m here in Coban and trying to get myself organized. I´m hoping to find a house by tomorrow, but there´s no big rush. Although I feel like I´ve been here for awhile, I frequently need to remind myself that my two years of service just began on Monday.

I´m back in Antigua today after visiting taking a site visit to Coban. I spent the time with some other volunteers looking for housing and meeting the folks on the cooperative. It looks like I have got plenty of work ahead of me. I´ll be working with families, women´s groups and two schools on the cooperative. Also, I´ll be teaching one or two days a week in an all-boys primary school in Coban. I spent all of yesterday looking for a house, but I can´t make up my mind. I think I will live in my site mate´s house till I find my own.

Prior to Coban, we had a pretty incredible weekend. On Saturday morning, the trainees played the Spanish teachers and tech trainers in soccer at the center. 10-2 was the final score. They made us look like fools. However, those two goals were both mine (a fact that many have told me to shut up about). Afterwards, we drove south to climb the Pacaya Volcano. Awesome. You start out at the base in the woods and walk up a couple miles to where the rock begins. From there, it´s a straight climb up the slate-rock cone of the volcano. It was really cloudy and rainy, so the view wasn´t much, but we were surrounded by the sulfur ducts. We even got up close to the lava at one point. I got completely soaked, but it was worth it and definitely something I would do again with anyone who visits.

On Sunday, we woke up bright and early and our tech trainer Roberto took us to Monterico with his family. It´s a small beach town down on the Southern Pacific Coast. There were great waves and I probably spent about 5 hours rolling around in them. It´s definitely a different side of Guatemala. It´s got black sands and unlike Antigua, it´s hot. So all and all, it made for a busy, but wonderful weekend before meeting our counterparts on Monday.

Training pretty much feels over. At this point, my thoughts are focused on life in Coban. It is
kind of weird to be so far away from all the friends I´ve made through training. Most everyone else in my groups has their sites on West and thus, very far from Coban. However, those living in the Coban area form their own community. So it will be something of an adjustment. We have two more weeks here at the center before we swear in. I´m having Thanksgiving with an embassy family in the capital (gonna miss KC) before taking off on the following Friday. From there, it´s all Coban.

Big events this week. We started by painting Antigua red on Halloween and yesterday we ate lunch with the new ambassador. However, all of that paled in comparison to our site assignments. I had placed my bet and mentally prepared myself get the remote, arid site out in the Western highlands. To my surprise, I got Coban (the site I secretly coveted). Needless to say, I am really pleased with how things turned out. For the event, our jefe came out to the center and drew a big map of Guatemala on the ground. We all closed our eyes and our teachers placed us on our respective sites. At the same moment, we all opened up and saw our placement and sitemates.

I am going to be working on the Chirrepec Tea Cooperative and I´ll have two sitemates from the ag. marketing program. Unfortunately, another volunteer who was supposed to be placed in Coban decided to go home. It´s a bummer as she was the most knowledgeablele of all the ag. volunteers (she regularly ¨field butchered¨livestock). Since her site will be left open, my boss asked me to pick up some of her work at a school in Coban. So with that, I´ll be working with families on the cooperative and teaching to 4th and 6th graders in the city. Also, I´ll have to start Kechki classes as most families on the cooperative do not speak much Spanish.

If two months ago you had told me I´d be living in a city, teaching 4th graders and working on a tea co-op speaking kechki, I would have laughed. I had imagined the Peace Corps experience in far more rugged and subdued terms. It´s amazing to think back to the beginning of training and to see the difference between my expectations and how things have turned out.

Anyways, I´m pumped about Coban and I´ll be going back on Monday to start getting things together. Perhaps I´ll visit the Children of the Corn....

Best week so far. We went on out second and last field-based training up North in Coban. We spent the week running around with two volunteers who are on their way out and are going to be replaced by two of us. Both are good volunteers, but more importantly, they´re actually sane. Both have learned to speak both Spanish and Kekchí­ and have had a lot of success with their communities. It was encouraging to spend the week with them.

Basically, we ran around with them all week and had some training activities. This included giving presentations to local groups in order to practice. I gave mine to a bunch of fourth-graders on how to use worms for composting. I had planned on giving it to adults, so I scraped my plans at the last minute just walked around and let them play with the worms. I think they liked it.

We also met with a family of Mennonite missionaries who are running a school in Coban. They run a large organic farm outside the school where we spent they day. They were hilarious. They´ve been their for four years and the whole family is tri-lingual, including the kids. What´s best is that they look like the Children of the Corn and live in totally indigenous community. On Thursday, we ended up going out to a nature preserve with them. There were a bunch of waterfalls and caves. We cooked-out and soaked it up. It was great to go swimming.

We also had meetings with the jefe to discuss our sites. After seeing the two Coban volunteers, I decided I´d really like to learn another language and requested a Mayan-language site. We find out this coming Thursday. At the moment, we know all the sites, but they have yet to be assigned. All we have to go on is hearsay and hunches, so we´re all pretty nervous to find out. Based on my requests, my guess is that I´ll either end up in Coban or way out West. I´m suspecting I´ll get the one out West. It sounds pretty rugged, but I´m up for that. However, in the past, people have gotten sites totally contrary to their requests, so I could end up somewhere else. We´ll see. Till then, we´re placing our bets.

Not a whole lot going on this week. Right now, we are in between our two field-based training trips. Basically, that means two weeks of training in the center until we leave a week from tomorrow for Coban. We still do not have much information about our sites. We should be getting our assignments the week after going to Coban.

We did spend some time this week working to rebuild from some of the damage of the hurricane. A couple of the villages around Antigua took some serious flooding that left a lot of houses and property buried. Our work was to help dig out what we could. In this area, help abounds as many tourists from Antigua have lent a hand. From what I have read, many of the communities in the western part of the country have it worse. As such, some of the sites our director had picked out may have to be changed.

While working, we met a bunch of other PC volunteers who had been stranded in Antigua and could not get back to their sites. Having met about six ag. Volunteers, I would characterize them on a scale from seemingly normal to utterly crazy. One year working out in the field seems to have a strange effect on some people--some far more than others. The three that stand out more than others are Sara, the 50 year old ex-hippie, Justin the misanthrope and Billy, the far too happy cowboy from Nebraska. I don´t have enough time to elaborate on their complexities, but let´s just say it offers an interesting insight into how we might be in a year.

So here it is, I started a blog.

I am a little over a month into training at the moment and I must say that Guatemala has been a great time. Although I spent most of last week stuck out west in Xela due to the Hurricane, everything has been an experience.


While most of Guatemala got nailed pretty hard by the storm, we managed to have a good time in the hotel. The rains caused landslides blocking the roads out of Xela, killed the power and broke all the water lines. We got by with rainwater and gas stoves. The storm made the trip a wash, but the nights of cards, politics and drinking made it a worthwhile time to really get to know the other trainees.

Beyond last week, training has been a good time. I landed a great host family that is the envy of everyone else. A couple weeks ago, I went along with them to their family finca down by the El Salvador border. The place was incredible. They grew about 25 different crops on a huge piece of land up in the mountains. It was a family plot with 3 houses, about 30 family members and four generations. There are no roads in and we had to walk a mile to arrive. It´s seriously a scene out of 100 Years of Solitude.

Beyond the travels, I have been fairly busy with training. I opted out of Spanish classes to focus more on technical training. So far, we´ve terraced some land, planted a bunch of vegetables and built a chicken coop. We finished the coop last week and bought about 115 chickens to raise and produce eggs. At the moment, we´ve got about 100 somewhat happy chicks, hens and roosters under one roof.

Unfortunately, of the 15 full grown birds we bought, some have gotten sick and we´ve had to cull them from the flock. When this whole ordeal began and the hens started getting sick, it was my job to kill them (I had mentioned my hunting experience before, so I got the job). My instructor told me to take the hen down past the avocado trees, do the deed and to then bury her. Instead, everyone else came to watch. I thought I could get by with the old ¨wounded duck¨move and just snap the neck without making much of a fuss. So I grabbed the hen by the feet and the head and pulled. Nothing happened, it just sat there and blinked at me. On a second and more concerted try, I gave the bird a harder pull and managed to tear the head right off. As there are three Dan´s in the ag program and we need to distinguish ourselves, I now sometimes find myself responding to Dan the Butcher. However, the other Dans find their names prefaced by Diarrhea and Delicate Peaches, so it could be worse.

So that´s the first month in a nutshell. I´ve got more training in the center for the next couple weeks before we go on another training trip to Coban. Hopefully, I learn some more about where my site will be.