Arriba

The first, of many, encounters with sickness. The last thing I ate before the sickness set in was pepian, a famous Guatemalan dish that is essentially a gravy stew served over rice. The sickness consisted of about 24 hours of severe nausea and stomach pain, overlapping with another 24 hours of diarrhea, totally about 36 hours of no fun. I’m feeling better now, but the thought of pepian makes my stomach twist a bit. This all began, of course, the day I told my family I have a stomach of iron.
Our Spanish teacher graciously gave us the afternoon off. This was perfect timing for me, as I still needed time to sleep and recover from the sickness. The other PCVs in Sta. Maria Cauque and I had decided to meet later that afternoon to weed our garden and check on our worms. As I strolled toward the garden, I see Nicole headed down with two hoes on her shoulder. Turns out plans had changed and we had been invited to a community a few bus stops from ours to help with something.
As we arrive in the community and greet the other PCVs, we learn that we will be judges at the local institution. Students had constructed projects to represent Guatemala for Independence Day, September 15. We 7 gringos, strolled from room to room at the school with grade sheets in our hands. To enter each room, we had to walk through a line of students crowding us, and as the last gringo entered the kids were crowded at our backs. They would describe to us their projects, some very elaborately and creatively constructed, even overtaking the classroom. One group sang to us, one danced, one gave us tamales and another pepian (I accepted with a smile and escaped the room without having to taste the cold gravy). After viewing 13 projects, we deliberated and decided the winner. The ones that gave us tamales. We presented the certificates to the winners standing on one balcony, looking down to the lower where the 200 students stood, eyes looking up.
As Nic and I walked to our houses, we saw his Guatemadre and 8 year old sister standing in the street. The torch was about to come through town. Nic, Jessica and I ran down the street to the plaza where people were already gathered around the stage. As we ran, we could see at every block the mob of people running together the next block over; all with whistles in their mouths, sounding with each exhale. We arrived in time to have the mob circle the plaza three times, whistles still sounding but this time adding “arriba” to every fourth or fifth whistle blow. They entered the plaza where the mayor gave a quick speech. I decided to head home at this point, as I was already a half hour late for dinner. As I walked the dim streets, a 6 year old boy with his mother was practicing his karate moves. With every jump or kick, he would land hands and feet on the ground, butt in the air cheeks exposed. He would recover the grounding, yank up the pants and in two steps was on the ground again, and again cheeks exposed. I was able to witness a comical dozen of these karate moves strolling behind, trying not to laugh too loud.