Christmas in Guatemala

This year was my first Christmas away from home and family. It was definitely different, but fun to be in a place that celebrates Christmas with its own mix of traditions. Although my religious perspective is very open, being away from home this year I realized how important the holiday is to me.

The venerable 4th street, Zone 3 Christmas tree, made of green crepe paper over a metal frame, complete with lights and music box which plays MIDI Christmas carols only two octaves below the audible limits of human hearing. It's enough to make me want to break out in a rousing edition of "O, Tannenbaum"

Something interesting about Christmas here is the mixture of traditional and new. Due to the influence of returned immigrants – and to some extent blatant commercialization in a nearby city – some secular Christmas ideas from the US are making their way more into celebrations in my town (though always with a Guatemalan spin). Hello public Christmas trees, lights, and Santa.

According to Wal-mart in the closest city the Christmas season started a few days before Halloween, which was kind of strange. Here in my town it started at the beginning of December (as it properly should, haha), with a care package from my mom. That same night my street´s "Christmas tree committee" had its annual Christmas tree lighting and marching band contest. After that, Christmas decorations and the dreaded music boxes of MIDI-Christmas-carol doom started going up all over the place.

Annual Christmas tree lighting: one night I found the Macy's Day Parade outside my front door.

It was a noisy and cheerful month, if a little frustrating work-wise, since almost all my counterparts were on vacation physically and mentally. Even so it was a very happy time: I had my boyfriend´s visit to look forward to; we enjoyed dry, sunny weather; and I came home every night to find my street filled with ¨Christmas cheer¨: lights, excited children, and neighborhood stands brimming with fireworks and Christmas treats. We’re at around 8000 ft here, so it was almost freezing cold at night, which made it feel very Christmas-like as well, even without snow.

In mid-December the posadas started taking to the streets every night, commemorating Mary and Joseph´s search for shelter with candle-light processions and cheerful and off-key carol-singing.

Mom's care-package: Being away from home, I embraced the kitsch this year with enthusiasm I probably haven't had since I was about 12. Thanks, Mom!

I eventually even adapted to the incessant noise of fire-crackers and the music box on the street outside my house playing ¨Jingle Bells¨ on repeat for three hours every night. (Though I still can´t relate to the Guatemalan super-power of noise tolerance.)

The afternoon before Christmas break the municipality gave each employee a Christmas basket filled with basic staples and lots of typical Christmas treats like marshmallows, canned peaches, imported grapes, and Washington apples. From what I´ve heard this is pretty standard practice throughout Guatemala.

(Getting apples in the Christmas basket made me think of Little House on the Prairie— as an 8-year-old reading how Laura Ingalls got all excited about an orange in her stocking, I could only contemplate with horror the idea that a piece of fruit could possibly be a Christmas present. Now I get it a little bit more.)

While it's a fun time of year to eat marshmellows and burn firecrackers, there's also nativity scenes and lots of talk in the air about "el niño Jesus." Religious Catholics in my town go to church on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, while Evangelicals seem to play down the situation unless Christmas falls on their normal day of worship. In rural areas especially, but throughout the country, people prepare traditional paches or special sweet tamales, which they often eat at midnight, and many drink a spiked fruit drink called ponche.

Midnight on Christmas Eve is typically the main show. Those with money to blow go nuts with the fire-crackers and fireworks, lit off at precisely midnight (with a reprise at noon on Christmas Day). In my town at least, families typically don´t have the custom of giving presents - fireworks are cooler I guess -, but everyone exchanges the traditional ¨Christmas hug¨ between family and close friends. It's a nice idea, and I wonder how and when it got started.

Christmas tamale!

That's about all I've got on the general celebration here in Guate. I didn’t spend actual Christmas day in town, but with my boyfriend´s family in a nearby city – so I´ll share more on that later!

What to Pack for Peace Corps/ Guatemala

I can hardly believe a year's passed since I last wrote about what to pack. In less than a month we'll welcome a new group of trainees to Guatemala - including, probably, my replacement. Wow! It's exciting and bittersweet. It'll be great to pass along the reins to someone with fresh energy and enthusiasm, but also sad and difficult to close out projects and say goodbye.

Pretty much the all-time most popular blog post I ever wrote was about what to pack for Peace Corps in Guatemala (click here to open). That's gotta be for a reason. In that vein I thought I would link back to that original post, which offers a comprehensive list, and also offer a few quick tips:

(1) Bring your laptop! For security reasons and perhaps wanting to go minimalist, I think many invitees question whether they should bring one. If you're asking yourself, you should. You may not need it urgently, as Internet cafes abound during training, but it is so useful for work, communication, entertainment, and sanity generally. You can cut down your risks substantially by keeping your house secure and simply not traveling with it.

(2) Less is more. You really do not need to bring too much stuff, clothing or otherwise. There are really well-stocked used clothing stores (paca/ropa americana), and stationary stores/markets/supermarkets sell almost anything you could find in the US. Just bring stuff to get you through training, including business casual/semi-formal to wear to the Peace Corps office and to swearing-in.

(3) Enjoy the ritual. Entering Peace Corps is a very exciting and stressful time. I think packing gets a lot of our attention because it's a very physical part of the transition. Don't stress out about it - you're not going to the moon for two years - but if you are stressing about packing, it may be your way of processing the transition. So roll with it and give the packing some tender love and attention if you like.

But above all, remember that just as you will be changed by your experience, very little of what you pack now will probably make it back into your bags as you prepare to come home in 27 months, let alone be important to you then!

The Tragedy of the Pumpkin Pie

(SimplyRecipes.com)

There’s this amazing bakery run by Mennonites* in the closest major city to me. Throughout the year they offer a dizzying array of donuts, breads, cookies, dairy products, condiments, and other assorted baked sweets. And they sell honey in empty, repurposed Jack Daniels and rum bottles. How could one not be all for it? (Yes, I’m talking to you, A!)

Every Thanksgiving they take pre-orders for pumpkin pie. I, being a good US citizen, did my part by pre-ordering three pies. I was thinking to present two for snack at a meeting we were to have on Wednesday before I left for Thanksgiving break… and leaving the other for… general household consumption. There’s just something about being able to have a little taste and sight and smell of home, even if you're far from family.

And I was missing an important meeting on Friday because of Thanksgiving vacation, so in my head the pie was a way to make up for lost points with my colleagues. Oh the accolades and acceptance that pie would bring on the wave of each delighted bite…

The only problem was that they open solely on Tuesday and Friday, from 9 am – 6 pm, which is always a bit shy of fitting into my work schedule, unless I happen to be going into the city for the weekend. And while I tried to beg and plead, I had to get the pies on their timetable.

I had already pumped up this pie to my colleagues who would be at the Wednesday meeting, and I’m a bit of an anguished people pleaser sometimes. I had to deliver. I just had to.

(As with any time of unusual stress, you occasionally fixate on weird and insignificant things during Peace Corps- this was certainly one of my better moments.)

The situation was: meeting on Wednesday morning; pie pick-up on Tuesday or Friday. It had to be Tuesday.

Only problem, I was already double-booked on Tuesday. I had a workshop all morning and a meeting all afternoon. Maybe I could slip away at lunch. Or, worst case, head out a little early and bust down to the city before 6.

As to be expected, everything on Tuesday ran a good hour and a half behind schedule. By the time I got away from my afternoon meeting it was questionable whether I could make it or not. I wanted those pies, though, so I crossed my hopeful fingers and hopped on a bus.

The bus driver I chose must have been ahead of schedule or taking sedatives, because he moseyed down the highway at a cozy 30 miles an hour for six miles, slowing down and personally inviting every single pedestrian on the side of the road to board.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a Guatemalan mini-bus, but their drivers are generally not renowned for their moderate pace or adherence to traffic laws. I took this as a sign that the universe perhaps did not want me to have those pies. Or wanted me to get a lesson in patience. Patience was not really what I felt, though, as we crawled down the highway at two-thirds the normal mini-bus speed.

When we finally got into the city, a quick glance at my watch revealed that there was still a good chance that I might get the pies. Hopeful, I sprinted off the bus seven blocks from the bakery, and ran.

Yes, ran, full-out sprint, down the city blocks, spreading confused looks in my wake. In Guatemala the pace is not really conducive to rushing for much of anything, except perhaps a good seat on the mini-bus. And in that case, rushing has more to do with butt size and elbow sharpness than anything else. Despite a fair-sized and growing group of Guatemalan athletes who embrace the sport, running farther than half a block outside of a soccer field is generally something one does to escape personal danger.

I hadn’t run that hard in months, and I liked it. I had been forced to tolerate the mini-bus, and now I was in control: queen of my own pace, captain of my own team, destiny itself. Every stride was pounding out my frustrations at the day, the relaxed bus driver, those pies that might not wait for me.

I breezed past traffic lights, shopping malls and early-evening shoppers, commuters on foot and in their cars, high school couples hidden away in poorly lit corners, almost certain of my victory now.

6:03 pm.

That was when I arrived to find the store closed. Lights off, everything quiet as a mouse. At first I couldn’t believe I had gotten there on time. Or, what should have been on time. It seems unfair that in a country with such a relaxed culture of time, something as informal as picking up a pie should be regulated to the minute. How punctual they were in closing!

I briefly contemplated throwing myself to the ground and screaming in the style of Marlon Brando, A Street-Car Named Desire, but there wasn’t any audience, and it was getting late, and there wasn’t much to do about it. I jogged back to my bus stop, and made it back to site in record time, with a bus driver who was not put off by such minor details as the highway being full of non-moving cars in rush-hour gridlock. He'd just make his own right hand lane – weaving in and out of dirt parking lots and over minor ditches - when he felt traffic was too congested. The drivers are always most insane when you’re not in a rush.

In the end, of course, it wasn't such a tragedy.

My colleagues hardly noticed the snack change. (I might still be a few points short for missing the meeting, though.)

The pies were bought by others, or maybe fed to hungry suntanned Mennonite children.

I saved a few Q. and a few calories. And on Thanksgiving day, I had a delicious slice of apple pie (my total favorite) at dinner.

Truth be told I never have even liked pumpkin pie.

5 Things I'm Thankful For

Thanksgiving isn't a Guatemalan holiday, but it's one of a handful of holidays that Peace Corps gives us off - to find a delicious traditional feast or make one; making one meaning pay some exorbitant cost at Wal-Mart for fresh cranberries, and track down a good pumpkin pie or two. Oh, the lengths one goes to when subconsciously homesick.

This year my visiting cousins and I opted for the first route, at a little gem of a hippie avocado farm outside of Antigua, appropriately named EarthLodge, where for $16 I stuffed myself silly on mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, salad, and apple pie. Worth it!

Back to Thanks-giving, I try to subscribe to the school of thought that we ought to give thanks every day. Even so, it's good to say our thanks out loud with a bit of fanfare now and then, I think. In that spirit, there are many things I'm thankful for, but say I had to pick five, and stick to them;

(1) To get things rolling, I'm thankful for what in English we can only describe as nature. All our oxygen.. drinking water.. fertile soils.. Where would we be without you, tree? And moss and air and rocks and insects and bacteria and everything.


(2) Thankful for them:


(3) Thankful for this little guy and every flea on his head:


(4) Thankful for cell phones, which let me talk to them:


(5) And above all, so thankful for him!


Has living in Guatemala for two years made me appreciate more what I have? I think for the most part, although not necessarily for the reasons you might expect. Four distinct seasons, hot water for washing dishes, a washing machine for clothes and evil heavy blankets, (more) predictable structure in my work and daily life, waking up next to the love of my life every morning. These are things I relish now in their absence.

So while it's been extraordinarily frustrating at times, I have to admit that in the end, I'm grateful for the good and the bad. They come together. A package deal. And maybe that's a sixth thing to be thankful for.

Dia de los Santos

Last year I spent the night of October 31 sitting at the window of my rented room on the outskirts of town, watching as orange pinpricks of candlelight multiplied in the far-off darkness of the municipal cemetery. Curious. I painted a face onto a squash, wondering with muted hope what significance those pinpricks might have for us. Self-congratulatory as I was at the preparations I'd made for that little squash, I felt an acute emptiness where Halloween should have been. And by Halloween, I mean, my friends and family.

The next day I headed off to a nearby city with my mother-in-law, to pay respects at her husband's tomb. That was when I understood more clearly what Dia de los Santos really is about. Not everyone - perhaps not even a majority - strictly believes that their loved ones' spirits return to the earth around midnight on November 1. Even so, in the majority of Guatemalan towns relatives still visit their loved ones' tombs, decorating with flowers and wreaths, leaving candles and trinkets. Some hire bands to serenade their loved ones' tombs. Others bring offerings of alcohol and food, while street vendors dedicate themselves to feeding the living. It's pretty much a carnival in the cemetery.

In the weeks before the celebration, the rain more or less stops, and children go out in full force every afternoon to lift their kites on the fall winds, inviting the spirits of their ancestors to return to Earth for a brief and sacred window of time.

In my town almost everyone decorates and spends the night of October 31 accompanying their relatives' tombs, staying until 7 or 8 am on the 1st. By mid-day the place is deserted. Maybe folks figure that by then the ancestors either will have made it back, or given up trying. It's also darn tiring accompanying the dead all night.

Last year I didn't go. My host family is Adventist, and they don't believe in spirits. You bury your loved ones, you miss them awhile, and that's it. The leftover bones aren't important. The important part was the reconciling your loved ones did while alive. And no quantity of cut flowers on a tomb will do anything for anyone's soul at that point. Or so they say.

(Oddly enough, Adventist children still fly kites. I guess it's not completely lost on them that some rituals are secretly just for the living.)

This year I did go to our local cemetery in the night - invited by a good friend, whose father insists grandpa and grandma be serenaded yearly with the traditional Mayan music they so loved. At 3 am I pulled myself out of bed, and by the time we got to her great-grandparents' tomb, the trio of hired musicians had already been playing 3 hours, a little bonfire keeping them warm in our tucked-away corner of the cemetery.

Words cannot describe the eternal feeling of those moments, the music and smoke and candlelight weaving us all into some enormous tapestry whose existence I've never doubted, even when I could not touch or feel or see it. Although that night, let me tell you, it was palpable.

At 7 am, on the heels of daybreak, they served hot tamales and tea to everyone assembled, and later on I traveled to that same nearby city, to help arrange flowers once again on my father-in-law's family tomb, to revel in the massive crowds gathered in observance of a common denominator.

I'm not sure why, but I adore Dia de los Santos in Guatemala. I adore the communal ritual of the cemetery, the flowers, the street food. Maybe it's because it serves as a reminder that while it's true we're alone in death, we needn't be alone beforehand.

Why I Love Peace Corps #1

One series I've been contemplating is "Why I Love Peace Corps." Some posts will be sincere, others a bit tongue-in-cheek, but I'll let you all judge. Without further adieu:

Why I Love Peace Corps*, #1:
You can use children as free labor to decorate your house.


In a matter of an hour and a half tonight I had an entire wall covered in charming drawings, and all I had to do was give them scrap paper and put up with a little bit of screaming. Felices as we say here. For that matter, you can ask these kids to sweep your house, mop the floors, wash the windows, fold your clothes, and do the dishes and they will do it. Some will even think it's fun before a more lazy/rowdy kid in the bunch points out that, hey, if we were doing this in our own houses right now it would probably be considered work. But I try to draw a line somewhere.

*I should specify off-the-bat that some of these reasons will be more specific to "why I love living in a small Mayan town in the highlands of Guatemala for two years", however Peace Corps is one of few opportunities that ever would have allowed me to do that, and certainly was the most accessible opportunity.

Time flies

Wow, I cannot believe it's been more than a month since I got home from NY. Since then I've weathered a week straight of rain, neared completion on the first phase of our sign project, pushed along the guide training class, sat in on way too many meetings, celebrated Dia de los Santos, had to find a replacement for my netbook that died, baked some killer pizza in my oven, and hosted a 5-day photography camp for 16 adolescents. Times have been busy.

Since my computer crapped out the blog topics had been piling up without release, both in my brain and on the computer. Now that the power's flowing through my motherboard and we survived photo camp, I'm planning to send out a few posts in a row to make up for the radio silence of the past months.